Comments by "PM" (@pm71241) on "The Rubin Report" channel.

  1. Daylan Hammer ... which reminds me of something Trump said yesterday.
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  2. Daylan Hammer If you have followed US politics the last few years you would know that what's "moral" is highly contented.
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  3. Nirvan Sengupta yeah ... I had the impression you were trying to pull off the "this-looks-like-a-very-small-number-it-must-be-insignificant" stunt. It's a 40% increase in the concentration to 400ppmv. Let me remind you that given the right physics and/or chemistry even small concentrations can be significant. Try walk into a room with 200ppm Hydrogen Cyanide.
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  4. Nirvan Sengupta " What is the per unit of CO2..." It's not linear. It's logarithmic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_effect "What is the rate of temperature change over time in previous interglacial periods ( dT/dt in previous IG periods) and what is the dT/dt currently? Can you show me that it's different now than in previous IG periods?" No - and what's the point? Many different things influence climate in general. But they are not happening now. Are you seeing any signs for a glacial-interglacial transition?
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  5. Nirvan Sengupta "I think NOAA started recording sometime in the 1800s." Yeah... and? "If we're in the middle of an inter-glacial warming period, you would expect temperatures to rise regardless of human activity." Only if you didn't know anything about interglacials and really believe that they were "warming" periods and not just "warm periods". I honestly thought it was a typo, but you seem to believe it's a rule temperature should go up all the way through an interglacial. "I'm basically asking the scientists and Anthropogenic climate change supporters to explain why interglacial warming doesn't explain the current rise in temperatures" First of all because the warming which brought us the interglacial ended ~8000 years ago. Secondly - we know of no mechanism related to the glacial cycle which explains it and can be observed. The onus is actually on you to demonstrate one. "And if possible give some quantitative measures of heat capture increases due to 0.01 % increase in historic CO2 concentrations." ... which (as I said above) is meaningless. It's a logarithmic effect. Even Alex knows this well enough to make an argument out of it.
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  6. Nirvan Sengupta Yes - Milankovitch cycles does appear to be the triggering factor for the glacial cycles. However... whether you can call them "clockwork" depends on whether you actually understand how they work and what that then would mean. The orbital forcing is pretty predictable. ... but that doesn't mean the resulting glacials and interglacials will have the same duration. The current accumulative effect of all orbital parameters indicate that this specific interglacial (The Holocene) would last at least 16.000 more years... and probably 50.000. ... so let's cross that bridge when we get to it.
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  7. Nirvan Sengupta "When I say clockwork I mean you can model them with sins and cosines pretty well." Ok... fair enough ... Wikipedia has a nice overview graph over the clockwork then: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/MilankovitchCyclesOrbitandCores.png Notice than, that the next 50.000 years will have remarkable stable forcing.
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  8. Nirvan Sengupta "earlier you said the last interglacial ended 8000 years ago" No. I said: * We are in an interglacial (the Holocene) * The warming leading into it ended 8000 years ago. * It will probably last 50.000 years (under no human interference)
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  9. aCycloneSteve "If there was a model published 10 years ago that matched up with historical the record and in the 10 years after being published correctly projected temperature measurements the debate is over you win. Just give me a link to the paper or article published 10 years ago and the temperature data that shows it was correct and I can go all in on CO2 restrictions." Before we discuss the evidence for the models actually doing pretty good predictions - both in hindcast and 10 years forecast, I would like to be sure that you understand that for a model to do a good prediction of the general trend on a 10, 20, 30 years timeframe it does not mean that it can also capture every little detail of internal variability on the system on smaller scales. It's like doing a model of a bath tub being filled with water while someone has started a wave in it. You can predict the general trend of rising water level, but you cannot predict the exact height of the water at a given place at any time. We agree, - Right? And given that the climate system does have large internal variablity (El-Nino as a prime example) and there are unknown changes in forcing from other places there well be small stretches of years where the models only match within the error bars and are not directly spot on. You agree with that - right?
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  10. Nirvan Sengupta "Any links you can provide?" I would regard it as rather uncontroversial. The term "Holocene Climatic Optimum" does not exist for no reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum Just to be sure about what we are discussing here. You repeatedly spoke about an interglacial as a (quote) "warming" period as if it consisted of a warming trend throughout its duration - as opposed to just being a "warm" period. That's not the case. I just objected to your claim that the default during an interglacial is a warming trend.
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  11. aCycloneSteve No ... that wasn't what I said. I asked you two simple questions in order to ensure that we was on the same page wrt. what a meaningful question wrt. to the models were. I'm sad to now get the impression that you were actually not interested in a serious discussion about this, but rather would take the first opportunity to find a cop out. Btw...Just to be sure you understand (I've already said it) Even though I'll gladly provide you the answer to the question you raise about the models, you are IMHO approaching the the wrong way. It's fine if the models is what convinces you, but that really a misunderstanding of the science. The science isn't founded on the models. The models are a tool in the understanding. The science is founded in physics. The models are only as good as the skills of those who programmed them and the complexity they can manage to include in the software. If a model is wrong it can mean that the theory is wrong... but it can also just mean that the software quality, the development complexity and maybe the hardware available to run it is not sufficient to represent the theory fully.
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  12. aCycloneSteve You are changing the subject and running from your promise to enter a serious dialog about it ... please just answer the two questions I posed... it's not that difficult if you are actually interested in know what the models tell us.
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  13. Nirvan Sengupta ... waiting for aCycloneSteve to reply to the above questions - then we'll look at the actual situation wrt. models vs. measurements.
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  14. Nirvan Sengupta "It doesn't matter to me as a downstream user of the models as to why the models are wrong. I am only interested in whether or not they are accurate." I didn't say the models were "wrong" ... (anyway, that 's a subjective measure which you kinda have to know what the models are intended for to judge) But given that there seem to be a general misconception of what the relationship between the models and the theory is, then it's important to know a bit about what's included in the models and what's not. You cannot just ignore this. Example: You can make even the best model, but it it doesn't include the exact time of a super-volcano exploding it can have everything about the theory correct and still be "wrong" - for a given subjective definition of "wrong". I have to say, that - if you can't see that point, then you are really not a "downstream user" of the models but just someone using a tool for something it wasn't intended for and out of context.
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  15. aCycloneSteve "I would have more faith in a model if it showed a 10-15 year pause somewhere in the neighborhood of this time so you can say look, we predicted a 10 year pause" But if the "pause" is not actually a "pause", but rather the effect of some super-imposed internal variation, then such 10-15 years would not change the overall trend - having in mind that 10-15 years is still way too short  a timespan to evaluate the general climate trend. "El nino & things like that are weather events. They should be in the model." Not really - depending on that the intent of the model was. If it was to simulate the effect of El-Nino - yes. If it was to simulate the long term (100 years) general trend of the climate, then no.  ... Since one must realize that the El-Nino/La-Nina cycle doesn't really add or remove any energy from earth. In the long run that cycle should be zero-sum. That being said... You asked for (quote): "a model published 10 years ago that matched up with historical the record and in the 10 years after being published correctly projected temperature measurements" Since the last modeling project CMIP5 did not end more than 2-3 years ago, it obviously doesn't meet your criteria. So we'll have to look at the CMIP3 project: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CoYiOVQWYAA3K0d.jpg
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  16. Nirvan Sengupta ehh.... no. One has to understand the concept of "anomaly" ... which is basically "deviation from reference". And the reference in this graph is clearly stated as the 1980-1999 average. ... so clearly - if the temperature has been rising throughout, then the anomaly from the 1980-1999 average would be expected to be negative before 1980. The reference really doesn't matter. Whether my body temperature is 37 C or 310 K - I'm still the same temperature.
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  17. aCycloneSteve > "could be convinced that man made global warming is a problem. I don't believe it's true and I don't trust the "scientists" so I think the way to put me in a box is to produce a model that both predicts the temperature forward and matches the historical temperatures. (And also predicted dangerous rising temps in the future) If that model was made public, then after 10 years of seeing the accuracy of it's  projections I would need to be either be a fool or be corrupt to not take the situation seriously." ... I guess this went nowhere ? https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CoYiOVQWYAA3K0d.jpg
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  18. Nirvan Sengupta "How about 50-100 years?" For obvious reasons we cannot evaluate that question the same way. Not only have not not known the severity of the problem for 100 year, nor had computers to do the models. We don't even have sufficient direct temperature data to do the comparison. ... and due to the nature of the problem, if we sit down and wait 100 years to do that, it'll be too late to act anyway. But we know a great deal from the paleo-climatic record about what happened under earlier similar situations in earths history and we have no reason to believe physics has changed.  "And then the next question is, how do we know that the catastrophic climatic consequences results some claim are predicted by temperature rises are reliable?" Depends on which consequence you are thinking of. But one of the most simple ones is that it's simply not possible for the planet to maintain polar ice under the predicted temperatures. There might be uncertainty about whether it'll take 300, 400 or 800 years to melt most of the ice ... but it's very obvious that we will see double digit meters of sea level rise within few centuries. "I've heard environmentalists swear to me that if the temperature rises by 2 degrees C the we're in for trouble." How do you define "trouble" ? ... would you think it would be troublesome if we returned to the state of the Pliocene within 200 years?
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  19. Nirvan Sengupta Sure ... But I have yet to meet any of the "doubters" who will be convinced by that ... or anything at all (in most cases).
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  20. Nirvan Sengupta "Well I'm to be your first reasonable and open minded climate skeptic" ... Which is kind of an oxymoron ;-) Actual "Skeptics" are supposed to be reasonable and open to evidence.
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  21. Nirvan Sengupta   "I think you mean "open minded skeptic" is redundant? Since skeptics are supposed to be open to evidence?" Yes. That's my point. ... and the observation that many others who call them selves "skeptics" are really not open to evidence. I've actually once had a guy directly admitting that yeah, - maybe the science was solid, but that didn't matter. The only thing which mattered to him was to protect his liberties from the "red".. ... explicitly admitting that dogmatism was his strategy. And experience shows that many who call them selves "skeptics" have in fact a dogmatic approach (though not wanting to admit it like this guy). ... so it's nice to meet an actual skeptic - open to evidence.
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  22. aCycloneSteve cop out. No topic has been changed. And your straight forward question has been answered.
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  23. aCycloneSteve "That makes you an activist." That's nonsense... If the question has a wrong premise I should be allowed to point it out. ... anything else and you are an activist.
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  24. > The Progressive Atheist ... or as Einstein once said: "Next to me, Churchill is probably the most misquoted guy on the Internet" ;-)
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  25. First of all ... the quote from Bernie was taken out of context. Seconly ... I would expect Bernie to actual be able to sit down and have a rational discussion out the subject - unlike the regressives.
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  26. Andrew Jackson Alien Slayer easy now... * Obama weighs his words carefully too.You might disagree with him whether that's a good idea, but calling him "regressive" is simply an overreaction. * The issue of "securing the border" is more complex than you make it. You can be all for immigration, but still think a secure border is a good idea - simply because you need to be able to control the process and not also having criminals with no actual immigration wishes exploit the system. I would btw. ask for a quote to prove what you said. * Likewise with the nuclear claim you made. Can we have a quote (with source) ? You see... the point is that Nuclear power actually DO release carbon emissions. Not from the process it self, but the material you "burn" in the reactor needs to come from somewhere ... and mining does release CO2. That doesn't mean nuclear (especially Thorium) can't be a good and necessary solution to the climate problem, but don't fool your self into thinking nuclear is magical.
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  27. I still don't buy Sam Harris' idea of an AI apocalypse. Apart from the basic misunderstanding about what current "AI" actually is in the terms of "intelligence" and that many small super human "calculators" added up doesn't necessarily make "general intelligence",... the argument simply seems to be "you can't rule out my vague what-if scenario".
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  28. I don't know if anything he said was wrong or conspiratorial. But it would have helped me greatly to trust him on his word without thorough fact-checking if I didn't also know as a fact that Paul is a climate science denier... of the most conspiratorial kind.
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  29. illkhan Well... as a libertarian, I really don't care about MLKs sexlife. But I do care about people deliberately trying to sabotage action on leaving a livable world for my children. No all ridiculous shit is made equal.
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  30. "Marx was the greatest social scientist of the 19th century" ???? * cough * Henry George * cough * ... and he got it right.
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  31. YogGroove ok... I agree then. It's a general problem. Every party/candidate which is somehow on the "edge" of the political spectrum will attract a good deal of extremists from further out who feel they can get their voices heard there. Many political parties have the same problem.
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  32. Yeah... Daniel Hannan is probably the most interesting conservative politician I know of. (maybe the only one)
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  33. Koen van Amerongen Well... yeah... maybe. I've not missed Europe in the conversation. I have however missed the clarity of what "liberal" means which we have in Europe :)
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  34. Koen van Amerongen ... maybe my bias is that I think European politics is pretty mediocre these days :) Not that the GOP circus is preferable.;-)
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  35. Koen van Amerongen Hehe ... Well... Being a member of a EU skeptical party, I have to be optimistic :)
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  36. Thank you for not "building the crap", Dave. Some of us really appreciate to be able to try not to "deserve the BS".
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  37. +Pedro Yapor And the answer is: Your freedom extends exactly so far that it doesn't harm others and doesn't interfere with other peoples equal freedom. The government can use force to ensure that principle is not violated. The problem comes when people who call them selves libertarians refuse to acknowledge which actions actaully harm others. ... the Koch brothers spring to mind.
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  38. Pedro Yapor No, I didn't refer to money-in-politics per se. I referred to their fight to prevent reigning in CO2 emissions, which are as a matter of fact doing harm to the society as a whole.
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  39. BobWidlefish "If CO2 is causing harm, shouldn't you want stronger protection of property rights so that when people are harmed they can sue?" That's a complicated can of worms. How would you suggest that in specific terms would work? And what happens when the perpetrator(s) declares bankruptcy? "It seems like you should also want less government regulation... " I see your point - and I agree. Emission limits and cap-and-trade systems are broken by design. But my personally opinion is also that we should abolish such bureaucracy which ind the end only benefits the bankers trading the permissions and instead fix the market to be actually free by pricing in the negative externalities associated with generating energy from fossil carbon by implementing a fee-n-dividend carbon tax.
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  40. BobWidlefish "and 2. that party X did the damaging." You don't have to be a lawyer to see that even though you can clearly point to climate change as the cause, determining exactly who X is is futile. "The same thing that happens today: the harm stops (mission accomplished!)." Then you don't understand the physics behind the problem. The CO2 is still in the atmosphere. With regard to "buying insurance ... the problem is that the costs of this problem are increasing at alarming rates. The re-insurance companies (Like Munich-re) are some of the ones sounding alarm. Soon you won't be able to afford insurance, and no one will sell one.
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  41. BobWidlefish "Are you sure?" Yes. CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere. Either such a trace gas won't track CO2, or it will just have the same reading everywhere. "I do understand, though neither government regulations nor private lawsuits can rewrite history." You cannot rewrite past history - but you can prevent future emissions. But the potential of private lawsuits have time and time again shown that it doesn't solve that. It'll be an endless string of lawsuits which just have to conclude that the perpetrator is bankrupt (maybe even before the suit is filed) and that we (unfortunately) can't rewrite history. "Though it still seems to be the case that if you want to reduce CO2 lawsuits could definitely help" Probably ... but not via property law. There seem to be a basis for prosecuting at least ExxonMobile for deceiving at least its stockholders wrt. climate change - and maybe the public too... (Via RICO). But that's another issue. "Well I don't know about that.  Insurance companies are companies like any other." Yes. And they are not stupid. Insurance prices will go up - until it makes no sense to sell them at all. If humanity can't get its ass together and fix the problem before it goes so far, we deserve the consequences of our own stupidity. "Though with the ever-accelerating pace of innovation and the increasing global wealth I see good reason to be optimistic" Only betting on luck is playing Russian Roulette with the future of our grandchildren. The Internet came about because of market forces. Right not the market wrt. energy is broken. Emitters of CO2 doesn't pay the true cost of their production and are effectively receiving huge subsidies in terms of negative externalities. (IMF estimates several trillion $/year). Before betting on luck - fix the market.
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  42. BobWidlefish Listen... the lawsuit idea is a non-starter. In physical impossible and economical useless. It simply doesn't work the same way as - say - polluting a neighborhood with chimney smoke. When someone starts emitting CO2 it contributes to a global CO2-level, which in turn have statistical influence on consequences around the world. ... and the CO2 stays in the atmosphere and causes damage after the lawsuit. There's no option to "pay for cleanup" and the effects are global. It's meaningless to talk about "which" CO2 caused your specific loss. The weather system moves the accumulated energy around globally. That effect alone makes it a meaningless wish to try to find the specific legal person responsible. Wrt. to your NASA picture... look at the scale. - not just the colors. It goes from 387ppm to 402ppm. Much of that due to the hemispheres being different naturally with the seasons. But the levels we're talking about which causes problems are anything above the pre-industrial level of 280ppm. The raise in global mean from 387ppm to 400ppm happened in a few years. You are simply looking at noise on the surface of a much larger problem. "I can understand why you would say that if one assumes the worst-case predictions are true." No. Not "true" ... possible - or even likely. That's what science tells us. There are possible non-tolerable outcomes which we have to avoid at any cost. "Though we've all seen how the various predictions for future warming have been repeatedly revised downward as more information has become available." No - I haven't. But I could easily imagine such propaganda coming from the denial echo chamber. Scientists are a worried now - or more - than they were 28 year ago. "The satellites monitoring earth temperature also showed zero warming trend over the last 15+ years as CO2 emissions have continued rising completely unabated" You have been taking too much Ted Cruz. This is simply pseudo-science talking points. First of all... the man behind the satellite dataset used to make that point (Carl Mears) have him self said he regards surface thermometers as more accurate and denounced Ted Cruz' misrepresentation of his research. Secondly... no body serious about climate science regard a cherry-picked 15 year period as telling for anything in it self. And Thirdly ... it has never been a prediction of climate science that temperature and CO2 would follow each other strictly over so short periods. It's simply nonsense. ... and I'm rather sad discussions about the best political response to the climate problem with libertarians always have to degenerate into discussing whether scientific facts as presented by the climate scientists are actually facts. We should be above that.
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  43. charles wooley Libertarians believe in the forces of the free market. However... a monopoly market is not a free market. There are plenty of way a market can have flaws which make the free market forces not work. Monopolies and externalities are examples. If you believe that it in it self is a goal to not interfere with market forces whether the market works or not (in other words, if you think "free" means "untouched" and not "working") then that's anarcho-capitalism and you should be prepared for the market to take you to really bad places. In the case of the fossil-fuel problem that potentially means the destruction of the biosphere. Libertarians should ask them selves whether they believe in a functioning market where free market forces work towards the best solutions - or whether an untouched market is a goal in it self regardless of the bad consequences it may have when the market have errors.
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  44. mark js How has government cause the negative externalities by emitting CO2 into the atmosphere? Wrt. monopolies... There are plenty of mechanisms which can provide feedback to generate monopolies. "Network effects" is one.
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  45. mark js Ok... first of all... just before 3;30 he explicitly says that his pollution argument doesn't cover climate change. Secondly... so, assuming we had not broken the legal system to not respect property rights (as he suggests), then answer the questions: 1) Who do I sue for damages wrt. global warming? 2) How would that bring the CO2 level back below the safe-level of 350ppm ? 3) How is government in any way responsible for this negative externality? .. it's not explained by his examples.
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  46. mark js Ad 1) Yeah... that was his argument for general pollution. I must admit I think it was a silly one, which he got around way too easily. "Sue the highway owners" is not an answer either. Their part in the pollution is also only a small fraction. Anyway... WHO is the "biggest polluters" ? The USA? ... which court would I use, and how do "government" cause that not to work???? I'm afraid your link didn't answer anything. (or you'll have to explain it). He just ends by saying that: "Here, we truly have a case where it can "be a violation of property rights to do something that causes no harm itself, but leads to harm only if other people do something." Basically ... he just doesn't get that damages from global warming is a statistical phenomenon. ANYONE oxidizing fossil carbon into the carbon cycle contributes to raising the chance that some damage will be done somewhere. But when damage is done you can never pinpoint the exact perpetrator. It's just physical impossible. Ad 2) My question was: How does that get the CO2 level back below 350ppm? Either you just didn't address that question, or you simply don't understand the problem or the physics of it. Ad 3) How would you hold corporations responsible for CO2 emissions (or anything at all) without a government? ... Who makes the laws and who runs the courts?
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  47. ***** "Cuz everyone is going to have their own private courts and there would be no problems or complications with that situation.." I assume you meant that just as sarcastically as I would have done. The concept of "private courts", just be the name of it makes you think of a lynch mob with pitchforks approaching the corporate HQ of a polluter.
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  48. Boo Hamster "They do not buy into Thomas Sowell's simple proposition that "reality is not an option"." Exactly. .. or as Neil deGrasse Tyson put it somewhat equivalent: "The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it" You cannot magically wish reality away just to preserve a higher principle of "no goverment regulation". So when libertarians (say) deny climate science in order to not have to deal with the problem they have IMNSHO gone of the deep end and lost all credibility. I honestly can't see any difference between that reaction (denying climate science) and the way creationists behaves toward the theory of evolution. I've personally run screaming away from one of the Danish libertarian parties when realizing that they were in fact dogmatic anarcho-capitalists. I've come to believe that the rational approach to liberalism is in the tradition of Thomas Paine and Henry George. - namely geo-liberalism.
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  49. Leo Anchieta  who are you asking?
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  50. ***** "War. Slavery. Poverty" Correlation doesn't imply causation. ... and if you disagree, then please explain to me what I can conclude wrt. the above from a virtually government free society like Somalia?
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