Global warming

[mhaze]

I might even make a mistake, and then you could berate me for being a stand-up guy and admitting when I was wrong. You know, I have to say that giving someone crap when they are more of a man than you'll ever be really gives us a good look at your character, super-genius. So go ahead. I've set the bar; I admitted when I was wrong. Do you have the stones to do that?

Set the bar, did you?

GW #543
Thank you for your prompt reply.

However, I still do not get it. You assert that ice of 110,000 years is melting for the first time in the Arctic. You are asked to prove that, and provide a reference that indicates the Larsen B ice may have been 400 years old or it may have been 12,000 years old. Larsen B is Antarctic. Wrong end of the planet. I would shrug this off just a mistake, no big deal.

Next subject.

 

[Locri]

Programming is about writing code, not determining data. Bad code will generate false outputs, but that's not the same thing as false data.

Er.. yeah, that's pretty much what I was trying to say, but I didn't get the wording quite right. Sorry about that. My thought process was that regardless of the input, if the program is flawed then the data set it is running with is flawed while in memory while the program is running. Same difference really.

And on the topic of numerical accuracy: It's true that you can be fairly accurate, but if you use too high of a level of programming language you have to be very careful. Some of the higher level stuff implements various rounding techniques in order to speed up processing and some processors do as well. Mind you, for the most part this isn't an issue unless you happen to be running an old P4 with the rounding bug that happened some time ago.

Either way, I think the general point of this topic is that programming (like setting up a proper science experiment) can be a tricky thing to set up properly. It would actually make a lot of sense if they had stuff set up for coding practices to try to reduce the number of errors. They might have things like that in place, but considering that it's rare enough in the professional programming world, it's not a hard logical leap to think that they might not do such a good job in the science world.

 

[rockoon]

This is without refererence, but I suspect that the most common numerical error in regards to floating point is greatly underestimating the amount of error one gets when using a naive summing technique on large sets of these values.

A naive summation method is simply adding the values to a single accumulator:

for each float in list
  sum += float

The problem with the methodology is that the deeper into the list of values you go, the more biased the error. In the pathological case the error exactly cancels the term being summed (that is, you end up doing .. 0.0 + 0.0 + 0.0 + 0.0 + 0.0 .. )

Perhaps the simplest summation algorithm which avoids the majority of the error bias involved with the naive method:

While (list.length > 1)
  term1 = list.getsmallestitem()
  float1 = list.item(term1)
  list.delete(term1)
  term2 = list.getsmallestitem()
  float2 = list.item(term2)
  list.delete(term2)
  list.insert(float1 + float2)
sum = list.item(0)

The first algorithm scales as O, the second scales as O(n^2) .. so nobody uses the second one in practice ..

.. In general, floating point precision issues are most often "solved" by simply using a greater precision float .. 32-bit floats run into the bias relatively quickly (often reaching pathological situation at approximately 16.77 million terms)

 

[stevea]

I have difficulty with that reasoning too. You talk about unsupported assertions, yet make a blindingly bald one in the very next paragraph. FWIW, I don't believe anyone wants to bring the planet's economies to a grinding halt, they are actually trying to protect them.

You've asked a sincere and reasonable question, so I'll reply. Note that the topic you ask about is political. I already posted about this, so "unsupported assertion" is inaccurate. I won't fault you or anyone for failing to read the ~60 pages of this thread !

I suspect we 'mostly' agree that humans have increased atmospheric CO2 levels substantially in recent decades as well as levels of other greenhouse gasses and in the process also released other pollutants. Reasonable people can quibble about the levels but that humans pollute is clear enough. That such pollution impacts human health and the supporting biosphere is also virtually undeniable. Now the additional claim that GHG pollution leads to AGW, and perhaps catastrophic AWG. No one (I hope) is in favor of this pollution, but there is a very real question of how urgent is reduction. Exactly what are we willing to pay is rationally related to the differential outcome we expect.

Anyone who thinks the CAGW thesis correct, should rationally want us to return to far lower net GHG release levels instantaneously. Even the AGW believers who accept the recent temperature trend is mostly anthropomorphic in origin must believe that continuing this trend will eventually be catastrophic. If you believe the temp hockey-stick increase Hensen regularly shows is anthropomorphic (see pg two of):

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/distro_peakrevandgistemp_070907.pdf

then a rapid return to some pre-1960 level of carbon emission is critical. Hansen's graphics indicate his view that a sub-300ppm CO2 level is needed,

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/gustavus_3oct07.pdf

yet he states, "CO2 below 450 ppm technically feasible", is "good news" ??? It's a bit like saying that we are driving toward a cliff, yet limiting our speed to 180kph is a good idea - nonsense.

Yet look at the IPCC group3 scenarios (fig 5.2):

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc/emission/116.htm

None of these ~40 scenarios returns to the pre-1960 level (~4.5GtC/yr) by 2100. The lowest net carbon emission scenarion of the IPCC (B1T Message I believe) has average carbon emissions at 7.65GtC/yr average for the next 93 years. This is a shocking 70% above 1960s levels average for the century. That cannot be acceptable if you believe the AGW. Yet the B1T scenarios involve radical reduction of economic and population growth (reduction actually!) far below historic norms and switch to non-fossil fuels. So even this scenario of tiny growth and reducing the population (from 1990 levels) cannot provide acceptable carbon reduction for the AWG adherents.

In the US for example we'd need to reduce both electrical generation and tranportations emissons in half from current(2005) levels to achieve overall 1960s carbon emission levels. That is a radical change that would require a major diversion of resources and capital for decades. Economic upheaval.

Much of the high per capita energy use by certain nations(US, Canada, Scandanavia, Australia) is structural. Cold climate, cities not built for common-transport, long distances between population centers. I am not suggesting energy savings plans aren't useful, but there are real limitations. Restructuring N.American sprawl cities for common transport systems is a century long task. Replacing buildings to more energy efficient specs is a century+ long task. Also consider the grain fuel ethanol (scam) and the economic problems already evidenced in corn foodstuff prices in Mexico from this meagre effort.

Yes, radical disruptive economic changes are required if you believe the AWG schema.

The work of Hansen is only a small part of the case for the IPCC. Australia, for example, has it's own independent temperature records and scientists. Guess what, they correlate with what Hansen has come up with.

I agree. I was only addressing Hansen's code and the few highly repetitive papers and presentations he has made available. CISPRO has a model I would like to examine (but is it available?).

In case it's not clear, I do not disbelieve Hansen's result, but neither am I an ardent supporter. I an a skeptic, not a disbeliever. This sort of confirmation by other teams is a necessary part of the accretion of evidence in science.

As I mentioned long before, climatology is not an experimental science (for some obvious reasons) so they must make many inferences from the limited data available. This leads to fairly weakly supported hypotheses which are often revised. We see similar problems with the issues of human nutrition and toxicity, cosmology, astronomy .... fields were results are re-written every decade or two.

Yes, perhaps Hensen's ideas are right, they are certainly a reasonable if not compelling explanation, but we are still placing a lot of weight on a relatively weak foundation.

-S

 

[Megalodon]

Next subject.

How about an older one?

Here is Lyman.

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/hc_bias_jtech_v1.pdf and
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/people/gjohnson/hc_integrals_v1.pdf

Any comments on the manuscripts?

So? You brought them up... Let me guess, like with the PDO, you don't agree with them...

Thank you for your prompt response

 

[Schneibster]

Set the bar, did you?

GW #543
Thank you for your prompt reply.

However, I still do not get it. You assert that ice of 110,000 years is melting for the first time in the Arctic.

I did not. I said:

So how's this grab you: in 2005, the Larsen B Ice Shelf in Antarctica collapsed. Now, that ice has been there since the beginning of the last glaciation, and that's 100,000 years. This year, the Arctic Ocean icepack retreated to a point that it's estimated not to have reached since the Eemian Interglacial, which was before that same last glaciation. Now, I don't know about you, but when I hear people talking about global warming, and I see ice that's been there for a hundred thousand years just up and disappear, I gotta sit up and take notice, know what I mean?

I encourage you to read that most carefully. I said precisely what I meant. I did not say that there is ice in the Arctic that has not melted in 110,000 years; nor did I say that there is ice in the Arctic that has not melted in 100,000 years. I did not say that there is 110,000 year old or 100,000 year old ice in the Arctic. I said, as you can easily read above, "...the Arctic Ocean icepack retreated to a point that it's estimated not to have reached since the Eemian Interglacial, which was before that same last glaciation." Anyone who knows anything about Arctic ice knows that that ice turns over on a regular basis; we've known that was true of most of it for half a century or more. What I asserted was that the icepack has not reached this low a level since the Eemian. That is not a statement of the age of any individual piece of ice; it is a statement of a pattern of behavior of the ice sheet overall. And you lied about what I said, right up there in black and white, period.

On the other thread, I said,

Let's put it this way: Ice that hasn't melted since the end of the last glaciation is melting now. A LOT of it. Most of the ice in the Arctic melted this summer and fall, which hasn't happened in at least a hundred and ten thousand years. Is that abnormal enough for you?

I encourage you to read that most carefully as well. I did not say that there is 110,000 year old ice in the Arctic; I said that the ice sheet as a whole has not behaved as it is now in 110,000 years.

And I have responded to this charge once before: http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3065798&postcount=543
It was a lie then, and it is a lie now. Had you not lied repeatedly in the past, I might be more charitable and chalk it up to a misunderstanding on your part; however, you have, and have been proven to. I think this pattern of behavior is clear.

You are asked to prove that, and provide a reference that indicates the Larsen B ice may have been 400 years old or it may have been 12,000 years old. Larsen B is Antarctic. Wrong end of the planet. I would shrug this off just a mistake, no big deal.

It's not my fault if you can't read. I stated both that there was 110,000 year old ice melting, IN THE ANTARCTIC, AND that there was a pattern of the WHOLE ICE SHEET IN THE ARCTIC that has not been seen in the same time period. If you'd like proof of the second statement, start here, on the first page:

Despite 30 years of warming and ice loss, the Arctic cryosphere is still within the envelope of glacial-interglacial cycles that have characterized the past 800,000 years. However, although the Arctic is still not as warm as it was during the Eemian interglacial 125,000 years ago [e.g., Andersen et al., 2004], the present rate of sea ice loss will likely push the system out of this natural envelope within a century.
Climate models corroborate this projection with depictions of sea-ice-free summers within the same time frame [Arctic Climate Impact Assessment, 2005]. There is no paleoclimatic evidence for a seasonally ice free Arctic during the last 800 millennia.

Note as well that after this year's melting, projections are no longer "within a century" but "by 2040." But that's hardly all. This article gives persuasive evidence (and this evidence is duplicated elsewhere) that the Holocene Thermal Maximum did not occur all over the Arctic at the same time; it began in Alaska, a couple thousand years after the end of the last glaciation, and progressed across Northern Canada, not reaching Baffin Island until several thousand years later, at which point Alaska, the Chukchi Sea, and the Bering Straits had re-frozen; and the HTM was followed by a downturn in temperatures that is theorized to have forced the development of agriculture 4-6ka. Therefore, it is safe to state that at no time since the Eemian, which ended 109-120ka, has the Arctic ice coverage been as low as it is today, for the entire Arctic Ocean. Which is what I said.

You could also review http://www.clim-past-discuss.net/3/999/2007/cpd-3-999-2007.pdf for example. But the really compelling evidence is here (if you have trouble with the link, and I did, go to here and select the link titled, "Fisher, F. et al, Natural variability of Arctic sea ice over the Holocene, EOS, 87, 2006.pdf"):

The establishment of perennial Arctic sea ice cover in the late Tertiary led to the evolution of ice-adapted mammals,including the bearded seal, ring seal, walrus, polar bear, narwhal, beluga, and bowhead whale. Continued existence of this community is evidence that the sea ice cap has not disappeared during the Quaternary.

The Quaternary is the current period, and extends to about 1.8ma (1,800,000 years ago). This implies that the HTM did not melt the entire Arctic Ocean; it could not have, or these species would not exist today. Further evidence in the paper dovetails with the characterization of the HTM as a rolling change across the Western Arctic rather than a thaw of the entire thing all at the same time; migration is cited as a key survival strategy; and it has to be obvious that it won't work if there's nowhere to migrate to. Note that this further implies that if the Arctic Ocean becomes entirely ice-free in the next thirty years (2040) to the next century, this will be unprecedented in the last 1.8 million years. Current projections are in this range.

With the combination of all this evidence, biological, sea ice model-based, seafloor core data, and ice cores from Greenland, Baffin, Ellesmere, and others, as well as the permafrost records and peat moss data that I have not even mentioned, I am confident that it is a true statement that the state of the Arctic Ocean last summer has not been seen since the Eemian, prior to the last glaciation, and since the Eemian ended 110,000 years ago, that supports my statement quite firmly.

The HTM exact ice extents at high resolution are not yet available, but seafloor cores from Alaska, Ellesmere, Baffin, Northern Siberia, Greenland, and the seas in between are being analyzed right now, and should give a good indication at high resolution of the way that changes propagated from 12ka to 6ka, which brackets the HTM. It is, however, clear from what we already know that the HTM "rolled" across the Western Arctic; there are sites that never unfroze, as well as differences of thousands of years between the times when the sites that did were clear of ice.

Next subject.

Not so fast. First, you misrepresented what I said. Second, you claimed I had not presented evidence of what I said, but it is clear I did. Third, I have provided evidence you did not ever ask for because you were too busy misrepresenting what I said to ask for evidence of what I actually did say. So I'll ask the same question of you: do you have the stones to admit you were wrong? I have.

 

[CapelDodger]

The HTM exact ice extents at high resolution are not yet available, but seafloor cores from Alaska, Ellesmere, Baffin, Northern Siberia, Greenland, and the seas in between are being analyzed right now, and should give a good indication at high resolution of the way that changes propagated from 12ka to 6ka, which brackets the HTM. It is, however, clear from what we already know that the HTM "rolled" across the Western Arctic; there are sites that never unfroze, as well as differences of thousands of years between the times when the sites that did were clear of ice.

Thanks for another most informative post.

Six thousand years for the world's essential fluids to settle down after a change as precipitate as a glacial/inter-glacial shift doesn't sound outrageous to me. Things have been quiet ever since - until very recently, of course.

 

[CapelDodger]

Anyone who thinks the CAGW thesis correct, should rationally want us to return to far lower net GHG release levels instantaneously.

And I want world peace. So what?

Even the AGW believers who accept the recent temperature trend is mostly anthropomorphic in origin must believe that continuing this trend will eventually be catastrophic.

That's fair to say.

If you believe the temp hockey-stick increase Hensen regularly shows is anthropomorphic (see pg two of):

What is it with Hansen? The hockey-stick is Mann - remember that demon? - and what really matters is how temperatures have behaved over the last three decades. That's when the accumulation of CO2 first broke throuhg as a clear signal. We've boosted CO2-load by a full third now, and most of it within the last fifty years. This is what's going on. There's no refuge in the past, because there are no prior examples. Nobody did this before us. Not even the dinosaurs.

I agree. I was only addressing Hansen's code and the few highly repetitive papers and presentations he has made available.

Hansen's code for what?

CISPRO has a model I would like to examine (but is it available?).

Well? Is it? Is the gummint hiding it, perhaps?

In case it's not clear, I do not disbelieve Hansen's result, but neither am I an ardent supporter. I an a skeptic, not a disbeliever. This sort of confirmation by other teams is a necessary part of the accretion of evidence in science.

The accretion of evidence has been happening in the real world. That's what a predictive model is validated against, and for all the dismissal of predictions twenty years back as being non-computer-scientific those predictions have panned out. Do you think that's coincidence?

AGW is the ride we're already on. Look around you.

 

[CapelDodger]

Yes, radical disruptive economic changes are required if you believe the AWG schema.

Is that a re-casting of "bringing modern society grinding to a halt"? As, apparently, the heartfelt desire of Hansen and his cohort of imps. It's a retreat, but in truth you should abandon the whole position.

The Stern Report gives the lie to this idea. The disruption would be no greater than has happened over the last thirty years for purely economic and political reasons.

(AGW schema? Typo for scheme, perhaps?)

I'm still waiting on what The Hansen Theory is. Is it the title of an upcoming Chrichton airport-novel? It fits the airport-novel naming convention - The [Proper Noun] [Precious Noun]. The Andromeda Strain, The Bourne Obsession, The Da Vinci Code, The Holy Bible.

 

[CapelDodger]

This is without refererence, but I suspect that the most common numerical error in regards to floating point is greatly underestimating the amount of error one gets when using a naive summing technique on large sets of these values.

I strongly suspect you're posting out of your fundament.

Who does naive these days? It's a competitve, dog-eat-dog world out there. You gotta be right or you're out the door.

Your insight into the matter is not as esoteric as you seem to think. Floating-point arithmetic isn't mysterious, it's pure and well-documented invention.

 

[Schneibster]

Let's be extremely frank here.

1. The easy oil is running out. We might or might not run out of oil, but whatever we do, it's going to cost more, and it likely won't be as good; less light fractions.
2. Natural gas is not a good solution for electrical power generation; it costs too much.
3. No renewable can replace coal; and coal is a mess whether it makes AGW or not.
4. If we're going to stop making pollution and using up oil, we need electric cars; CO2 and AGW just make it more urgent, it doesn't change the basic fact.
5. There is mass hysteria about nuclear energy, and has been for twenty years; as a result, the largest economy in the world can't build reactors in less than five years, and it may take as much as ten.

Screw global warming, we're in trouble anyway. Global warming just makes it harder to find a solution. Now we have to have carbon sequestration, plus we have to do it not only for coal power plants, but also for cement plants and fertilizer (ammonia) plants and steel mills and foundries. Now we can't just replace the coal plants with nuclear, we have to have enough more capacity to have electric cars.

We are in real trouble, and it's far worse than it would be otherwise because a bunch of greedy idiots sat on their fat flabby butts for fifteen years. I won't be surprised to see a billion people die of this, and in case you hadn't noticed some of the most likely to die have nuclear weapons.

This is gonna be one hell of a mess. We are screwed. Which I believe I said about six months ago.

 

[rockoon]

Who does naive these days?

..just about every programmer?

It's a competitve, dog-eat-dog world out there. You gotta be right or you're out the door.

Except in very specific circumstances, you cannot get 'right' out of floating point work.. the best you can usualy do is minimize the errors involved.

Your insight into the matter is not as esoteric as you seem to think. Floating-point arithmetic isn't mysterious, it's pure and well-documented invention.

Companies like HP field "bug reports" from professional programmers that are actualy misunderstandings of these very issues. To quote from their floating-point guide: "The most common types of floating-point "bugs" reported to Hewlett-Packard are not bugs at all, but rather a class of programming mistakes." where they then go on to detail the common errors that programmers fall into when using floating point.

Well documented? Sure.
Well known? Nope.

Its the same issue with, for instance, buffer overflow exploits. The dangers are well documented so you would think that most programmers would take steps to avoid them. In practice that isnt true at all because while its well documented it isnt well known and even when the programmer does know, the issue simply doesnt get the attention it should.

 

[a_unique_person]

..just about every programmer?



Except in very specific circumstances, you cannot get 'right' out of floating point work.. the best you can usualy do is minimize the errors involved.



Companies like HP field "bug reports" from professional programmers that are actualy misunderstandings of these very issues. To quote from their floating-point guide: "The most common types of floating-point "bugs" reported to Hewlett-Packard are not bugs at all, but rather a class of programming mistakes." where they then go on to detail the common errors that programmers fall into when using floating point.

Well documented? Sure.
Well known? Nope.

Its the same issue with, for instance, buffer overflow exploits. The dangers are well documented so you would think that most programmers would take steps to avoid them. In practice that isnt true at all because while its well documented it isnt well known and even when the programmer does know, the issue simply doesnt get the attention it should.

Sheer speculation. Because "it might happen", it has happened. Evidence, please.

 

[rockoon]

Sheer speculation. Because "it might happen", it has happened. Evidence, please.

What did I say "might happen?"

Don't bother answering.. the answer is nothing. I didn't say anything of the sort. You seem to manufacture your own arguement quite a bit.

 

[mhaze]

..just about every programmer?

Except in very specific circumstances, you cannot get 'right' out of floating point work.. the best you can usualy do is minimize the errors involved.

Companies like HP field "bug reports" from professional programmers that are actualy misunderstandings of these very issues. To quote from their floating-point guide: "The most common types of floating-point "bugs" reported to Hewlett-Packard are not bugs at all, but rather a class of programming mistakes." where they then go on to detail the common errors that programmers fall into when using floating point.

Well documented? Sure.
Well known? Nope.

Its the same issue with, for instance, buffer overflow exploits. The dangers are well documented....

Obviously you've been on the devious side of the numerical accuracy equation. But it's not unreasonable for better than average end users to be completely ignorant about these matters. They use Excel, it works, it computes; they type into a high level language something like

do 1 to 500;
((a-b)^3)/((c-d)^3);
end do;

and they just expect a "right answer".

I'm not even going to bother compounding the above program with error bounds respectively for a,b,c, and d....

 

[Harpoon]

Please forgive this excessive length

Let's be extremely frank here.
1. The easy oil is running out. We might or might not run out of oil,
but whatever we do, it's going to cost more, and it likely won't be as
good; less light fractions.
2. Natural gas is not a good solution for electrical power generation;
it costs too much.
3. No renewable can replace coal; and coal is a mess whether it makes
AGW or not.
4. If we're going to stop making pollution and using up oil, we need
electric cars; CO2 and AGW just make it more urgent, it doesn't change
the basic fact.
5. There is mass hysteria about nuclear energy, and has been for twenty
years; as a result, the largest economy in the world can't build
reactors in less than five years, and it may take as much as
ten.

Great points, Schneibster. The hysteria about nuclear power is a good example of how the policy wonks have totally screwed up, and plan to keep up the practice.

I don't know how much attention our situation in eastern Nevada with Harry Reid is getting. I didn't get a chance to see the PBS "News Hour" report on this issue (they were in town last week), but I did catch the snipett on PBS' "Nightly Business Report" on Oct. 23.

The reporter, Stephanie Dhue, said "What happens in places like this will help determine coal's future."

Harry Reid has vowed to block construction of three coal plants being proposed in Nevada, two in our rural county. He says Nevada must lead in the changeover to renewables. And do it immediately and without question or debate.

Nevada has already set what I believe is the highest standard for utilities in the country (please correct me if I'm wrong). They must increase the share of 'green' energy in their mix annually by 3% until they provide 20% of their power thru alternative sources by 2015 and a
quarter of that must come from solar. They currently have 37 renewable projects under contract for a total of 580 megawatts, most of which would come from geothermal plants in Northern Nevada but also including solar plants, biomass and hydroelectric projects.

Nevada Power in LV hasn't made that mark yet and the legislature is considering sanctions. Part of the delay is the 60 MW Nevada Solar One project, which just came on line last June. It's the third largest solar project in the world (the company boasts), but it came in three years late.

Not good enough for Reid, who has marshalled the Sierra Club and about every other environmental group to fight the proposed coal projects.

That's an interesting anomally, as SPR has an older coal plant that the EPA has fined for exceeding pollution standards. The proposed Ely Energy Center (EEC) would allow SPR to take that plant off line. The other two, unrelated projects are not as defensible, as they intend to
sell their power on the open market.

Part of the EEC plan includes a transmission line connecting Northern Nevada with Southern Nevada. That will allow much of the excess geo power in Northern Nevada to be transmitted to Las Vegas. And it will enable renewable groups to piggyback on the transmission line.

Ausra, a solar outfit, is investigating sites near the proposed line and two wind farms also are interested.

Reid is determined. He denies there's any future in IGCC or carbon sequestration. Nevada utilities must instead switch to renewables immediately, which would derail the current state efforts to provide power to meet Nevada's growth and bring in more renewables.

He says he has introduced a bill in the Senate (I haven't seen it yet) that will mandate any power lines on public lands carry at least 75 percent renewable power -- and no nuclear, of course! The bill is to include funding for any "green" comany proposing a 1000MG facility to build its own transmission lines -- to be paid back with user fees.

So Reid says no more coal, but no nuclear either?

We've felt a little of his muscle in this. I'm editor of the local newspaper -- a 2,700 circulation weekly; not exactly an opinion setter.

Yet Reid has personally rebutted one of my columns -- about the British court's nine errors in an "Inconvenient Truth." I noted Gore deserves his Nobel for bringing AGW to the front burner (pun intended), but the movie is just a movie, contains several scientific errors and is alarmist.

The following week, I wrote an editorial about CO2. Many of our local people have mistakenly understood that CO2 is a poison. I just wrote a light piece based on the Wikipedia entry on CO2 and explained (non technically) its role in photosynthesis, our respiration and some uses we have for it -- like in Pop Rocks (sorry if that reference gets lost on non-US candy-eaters).

I recapped some of Wiki's past history of CO2 in the atmosphere, and noted there is 35% more since the beginning of the Industrial Age.

Without trying to explain how GHG works in the atmosphere, I noted our planet would be frigid without them. I did make a blunder. Wiki said the earth's average temp would be 33C degrees colder without them. But knowing few of my readers use celsius, I clicked open my celsius-to-Fahrenheit calculator, typed in 33 and got 91.44, which I rounded to almost 100 degrees.

That would be fine for converting an actual temperature, but was 32 degrees off for a temperature difference. Knuckleheaded.

Dr. Michael Mann, in a LTE, noted that was one glaring error in the editorial, which was full of "a number of errors and misrepresentations, and a cherry-picking of the scientific evidence."

Ely is quite some distance from Penn State. I find it intriguing that Reid, arguably the second-most powerful man in the U.S. government, and an illustrious paleoclimatologist like Dr. Mann feel they must respond to what I'm writing for less than 3,000 rural Nevadans -- unless, it's the idea of a paced and reasonable transmission to renewables that must attacked whereever it pops up. We need policy not panic.

Reid's reaction I understand: he's a frequent subject of the editorial cartoons I draw. But Mann? I would think he has better things to do than sweat small-town newspaper opinions.

I've included links to the offending pieces and the reactions. You won't find them particularly interesting, but since I cited them, here they are.
CO2 editorial:
http://www.elynews.com/articles/2007/10/31/opinion/opinion01.txt
Mann's letter:
http://www.elynews.com/articles/2007/11/08/opinion/opinion04.txt
"Inconvenient Truth" column:
http://elynews.com/articles/2007/10/17/opinion/opinion02.txt
Reid's rebuttal:
http://elynews.com/articles/2007/10/24/opinion/oped02.txt

 

[CapelDodger]

Great points, Schneibster. The hysteria about nuclear power is a good example of how the policy wonks have totally screwed up, and plan to keep up the practice.

You speak only of your policy wonks. French and Iranian policy wonks are well up for it.

Nuclear power went into abeyance for commercial reasons, not policies. That may change, but it hasn't changed yet.

Your best bet is to promote a nuclear power station in the heart of Las Vegas, with a casino and hotel on top of it. Gambling above an active core - that's a USP that could draw in billions of capital overnight.

 

[CapelDodger]

..just about every programmer?

Is that an answer?

Except in very specific circumstances, you cannot get 'right' out of floating point work.. the best you can usualy do is minimize the errors involved.

Nothing revelatory there. The "usually" is redundant.

Companies like HP field "bug reports" from professional programmers that are actualy misunderstandings of these very issues. To quote from their floating-point guide: "The most common types of floating-point "bugs" reported to Hewlett-Packard are not bugs at all, but rather a class of programming mistakes." where they then go on to detail the common errors that programmers fall into when using floating point.

These are common errors of the benighted programmers that resort to a bug-report to HP. Not of professional programmers as a whole. Ask yourself : how large and representative is that sample?

Well documented? Sure.
Well known? Nope.

Yes, well known. Not in the sample you've referred to, but that's not representative. People who deal in floating-point arithmetic generally understand it.

Its the same issue with, for instance, buffer overflow exploits. The dangers are well documented so you would think that most programmers would take steps to avoid them. In practice that isnt true at all because while its well documented it isnt well known and even when the programmer does know, the issue simply doesnt get the attention it should.

Buffer overflow exploits?

 

[a_unique_person]

What did I say "might happen?"

Don't bother answering.. the answer is nothing. I didn't say anything of the sort. You seem to manufacture your own arguement quite a bit.

.just about every programmer?

"Might" was being generous. You have no evidence other than anecdotal hearsay.

 

[Harpoon]

You speak only of your policy wonks. French and Iranian policy wonks are well up for it.
Nuclear power went into abeyance for commercial reasons, not policies. That may change, but it hasn't changed yet.
Your best bet is to promote a nuclear power station in the heart of Las Vegas, with a casino and hotel on top of it. Gambling above an active core - that's a USP that could draw in billions of capital overnight.

A nuclear power plant for the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power was our county's first attempt at diversifying our mining economy in the late '70s.


Three Mile Island killed that idea, with LADWP switching to a coal-fired plant plan. It took years to get the groundwater rights and various envirnomental permits. By then, after LA's big quake and Rodney King riot damage, LADWP's needs dropped.


Harry Reid pounded the final coffin nail in the early '90s by blocking access to the Southern Nevada power corridor. Ten years later, a new company approached the county to establish a coal-fired plant and the permiting process began again. Three years later in 2005, the state's biggest utility announced it wanted to build a coal plant here, run transmission lines and serve an associated wind farm.


Four years into the process, last August, Reid discovers AGW and demanded the plants get stopped, although they are complying with current law. His actions would make sense if he was suggesting a moritorium until emission standards are set, but instead he wants total compliance with his unilateral AGW views.


So your suggestion for an LV nuke plant has merit. But there will be no nuclear power in the United States while Harry Reid is Senate Majority leader. The fallout from surface nuclear detonations at the Nevada Test Site and lies by the Atomic Energy Commission turned many Nevadans of Reid's generation permanently against anything nuclear.

However, I'd like to site a nuclear plant somewhere that would give Reid a radioactive sphincter.

By the way, Dr. Mann thought I was being rude and has a story about my celsius gaff on RealClimate.org. I'm enjoying my 15 minutes of fame, or should I say shame?