Global warming forecasts

None of what you just said substantially means anything.

Bottom line, the simple science is:

- greenhouse gases warm the earth. If they didn’t we likely could not survive.
- CO2 levels have increased over 50% in 150 years to levels higher than many thousands of years.
- the amount of extra co2 in the at atmosphere correlates pretty closely to the incremental additional amount emitted by human activities
- the earth has warmed in the past 150 years.
- none of the other known factors that cause warming (such as levels of sunlight) can come anywhere close to explaining the rise in temperatures

This is really basic stuff. Just because you don’t like Al Gore or a magazine printed a cover 50 years ago about global cooling has nothing to do with the basic facts above.

Can you find any material flaws in the basic facts I have articulated above? I’m an accountant and understand it, surely you as an engineer ought to be able to.

 

Ok boomer. Not that any of that is remotely relevant here, but nobody taken seriously said “the world would end” with Y2K. Media overhyped for sure, but your take is even more histrionics about how it was presented. There were some unknowns, most enterprises with modern (at the time) systems were pretty confident not much would happen. I remember a bunch of nonsense with “y2k compliance”. Not like the tech companies wouldn’t use that whole thing as an opportunity to sell corp clients NEW product and services on top of something that could be fixed with simple software patches 99.99% of the time

It was pretty stupid that the “bug” of having a 2 digit year persisted into the 90’s as by that time almost no system should have been that memory constrained, that was a product of early computing design with literally 1950’s and 1960’s limits. Nevertheless until that date actually passed we could have seen temporary disruptions (esp for govts and enterprises using really old legacy systems) like with that crowdstrike fiasco or the airlines bookings system that collapsed recently - and those were all y2k compliant.

Peak oil is at least a parallel topic to this global warming discussion, the theory as I understand it is basically just based on math. They look at the amount of known reserves, capacity to refine it, vs the anticipated demand for oil. It’s more of an economic/mathematical equation for when the world oil production can’t meet oil demand. Of course that equation can shift with new oil field discoveries or technology like fracking to help extract the oil. Those advances may increase the “supply side” of oil, but additional oil consumption means additional environmental degradation. It may be true they get the precise date wrong or seemingly push it out decades, but fundamentally it’s indisputable oil is a finite resource which will run out. Drill drill drill just means you bring peak oil theory back into the fold sooner even if we wanted to burn through it as fast as possible. Not sure why some of ya’ll cheerlead “drill drill drill” (which at this point relies on fracking) but are against other types of innovation which lead to cleaner energy or efficiency gains, gains which generally also have the benefit of lowering emissions (whether CO2 or other toxic bullshit). You breathe air, right?

 

In fairness Tesla hasn’t dropped because of Musk “tanking it”. It’s more due to ultra cheap Chinese EVs flooding the market and the potential for lower sales.

Also don’t bet that self-driving EV cars don’t start out first from Tesla.

 

Tesla also had (still has, really) valuation that basically assumed it will have an automotive monopoly. This is why Musk has to convince people it’s really an AI company or a it’s really an energy company. Even after its fall its valued >2x Toyota and >10x Honda. Not as crazy as before… but still.

 

Fossil Fuels & Health – C-CHANGE | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.


Research from Harvard University, in collaboration with the University of Birmingham, the University of Leicester and University College London, found that more than 8 million people died in 2018 from fossil fuel pollution,

Here in DFW Tx area we have about 60 ozone action days a year - indicating poor air quality.

Historical Ozone Action Days

on the positive side

Texas just became No 1 in the US for most utility-scale solar

Texas just became the top state for utility level solar


The Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which became law in 2022, has been the main catalyst for the US solar industry’s rapid rise. Solar panel manufacturing capacity now exceeds 31 gigawatts (GW) — a nearly four-fold increase under the IRA.

The solar industry has added 75 GW of new capacity to the grid, representing over 36% of all solar capacity built in US history, in just two years. Nearly 1.5 million US homes have installed solar since the IRA passed.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/com...eneration looks,output period over the summer.

Texas growing both renewable and fossil fuel energy, which begs the question, if it weren’t for the extra power provided by renewables, where do they think that power would have come from?

Solar power and batteries help Texas handle record-high energy consumption during heat waves

Solar energy has literally helped the summer ac and lights stay on:

Texas has experienced an intense summer with temperatures above 38 degrees Celsius in large parts of the state. On August 20, 2024, the power grid, operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), set a new record for electricity consumption at 85,931 megawatts, reports Canary Media.

Solar power has played a crucial role in meeting the high demand. On August 20, solar energy production nearly reached a record of 20,799 megawatts. This helped keep the electricity supply balanced during the hottest hours of the day.

As the sun began to set and solar energy production decreased, electricity consumption continued to rise due to ongoing air conditioning use. At 7:50 PM, ERCOT reached a new peak for "net load" at 70,900 megawatts.

In this critical situation, batteries came to the rescue. Energy storage in batteries set a new record of 3,927 megawatts at 7:35 PM. This helped stabilize the power grid and avoid emergency measures such as rolling blackouts.


The irony is TX pro business and low regulation environment has helped solar and wind prosper and rapidly grow. That should be something that conservatives crow about.

Also, the good news for conservatives (and bad news for climate change ) is fossil fuel use is still increasing, but having the additional renewal energy helps keep the fossil fuel prices down.

 

Engineers and doctors are often the most difficult patients I suspect for the reasons you stated. Anecdotal but my wife is a PT who works in multiple fields including neuro, wheel chair clinic as well as ortho, etc and has expressed the same sentiment. Credit to the difficulty of their fields but their expertise and knowledge doesn't translate automatically to any and all other subjects.

 

If we’re to enter into this discussion….. we need to place lawyers at the top of this list ….. with a significant margin over the #2 professional whose expertise does not translate automatically to other subjects. My wife is a PT with over 45 year’s experience in acute and rehab environments and she will attest to lawyers being #1, especially when it comes to some who love to practice medicine with their injured clients …. eg referring to PT and with treatment plans.

 

Maybe it’s because you, as an accountant want to buy it, and don’t have the technical background to question the so called “settled science”. Myself, an engineer who has pushed many envelopes of science (physics and chemistry) all of my career sees too many dots connected without sufficient technical logic.

 

“Pushed many envelopes in science” = not understanding that burning hydrocarbons produces CO2???

Instead of “pushing the envelope in science”, wouldn’t that be more like a CPA posting on a message board and getting something very basic incorrect, like misunderstanding revenue vs income?

Some aspects of climate are deeply complex. The basic facts are not that complex. On the other hand longer term predictive models are indeed extremely complex and difficult for any layperson to understand what goes into it. You may notice i_boy didn’t engage in that. He didn’t raise predictive models or possible doomsday scenarios or speculative “points of no return”. He just laid out the basic facts and figures.

 

Unwad your panties and take a few deep breaths. I know it’s hard for you but just give it a try.

 

Again instead of making these broad generalities, tell me specifically what is wrong with the set of facts I have laid out.

 

You want specific points and rational discussion? Unwad your panties bro.

 

Aging, @BLING’s was a reasonable post that didn’t deserve this personal insult, IMO.

To your argument, I take @l_boy’s point that if a question regards physics, usually it’s a good idea to consult a physicist over an engineer, just as I would consult an engineer over a physicist, when the question concerned engineering. Not that an outsider can’t improve a field, but this a reasonable rule of thumb.

Engineers are an interesting case study here, because of all the fields of science (e.g. physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and climate science), they are by far the most skeptical of climate science. What should we take from this fact? Based on your esteem for engineers, you would probably say that this is evidence that the science is shaky, but what about the physicists, geologists, and company? Are all of these other scientific fields riddled with people who don’t understand the logic and methods of science? That’s an extraordinary claim, and as Carl Sagan counseled, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What exactly are the gaps in measurement and/or faults in reasoning that have led all these people astray? To arrive at any solution, we must start with this question.

 

Nor can you explain things like how this should have been a massive year for hurricanes, as the year after El Nino historically is, but it isn't. And stuff like the greening of the Southern Sahara due to the convergence zone shifting north (weird). That said, no matter what you think, no way in Hell humanity gets in front of this so we're probably better off preparing for the worst.

 

It's also too disconnected. I'd argue that most of the industrialized world - specifically N. America, Europe, East Asia - is on track to reduce emissions pretty significantly. Personally, I'm still stunned by the number of electric cars on the road now compared to just a decade ago. That said, it's the developing world where you have the problem. They're not going to give up said "development" for the betterment of the future as they're concerns are in the moment or very near future.

 

The next thing you're going to tell me is the world is round! LOL! Everyone knows that's just "woke" nonsense.

 

To be fair, the CCP's green energy agenda spends a lot of non-green energy to create "green solutions" for the westerners to buy up. Thus, unless you put those Chinese solar panels up in a specific (dry, sunny) region, they'll never pay back the carbon debt it took to make them. This is all geopolitics for the CCP, all about gaining leverage in western markets/countries. For instance, these cheap electrics they want to dump on us? That's not about saving the world, it's about putting a Trojan Horse into the economy and society for the purposes of geopolitical leverage (just like their domination of rare earths). This isn't due to cheap labor (Mexico's is cheaper and has higher value add), but to complete subsidizing by the CCP.

So, be careful before buying into the CCP's bullshit propaganda. They're about as green as a cherry Tootsie Pop.

 

Because with scaling - and more R&D - we could get it to be a lot cheaper. Right now we're working off 50+ year old models and tech. Face it. The resistance is all political. . . to the point of being almost religious.

 

That goes both ways, especially nuclear. Like, the left is still working off The China Syndrome model. FYI, that movie came out in the 70s.

 

I expect it is mostly tribal - engineers seem to generally lean conservative and climate science is not acceptable in conservative circles.

However, it is possible that engineers are used to a high degree of precision in their fields. 80% or 90% precision doesn’t even come close to cutting the mustard. Climate science deals with models that by historical data seem to be fairly accurate, but maybe at a 80-90% level of accuracy. That’s certainly good enough to broadly explain such events, and even to act on them but engineers are incorrectly applying their own standards of high precision to a field where it’s just not possible and not needed.