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  1. #51
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    These show different types of scale, one for time and one for size.

    http://hereistoday.com/

    http://htwins.net/scale/

  2. #52
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    Quote Originally Posted by hortence View Post
    These show different types of scale, one for time and one for size.

    http://hereistoday.com/

    http://htwins.net/scale/

    Now, you see, that almost proves my point. We are little eerie weenie insignificant little insects, bits of dust in the history of this world. 70 odd years, wtf is that, on that scale of time, and, the scale of macro weather changes? I find it so arrogant that present day scientists, with so little data to work with, tell me what the past is, and what the next few hundred years will be.

  3. #53
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    You know how pants don't grow so well you don't water them? It's a similar idea. If you want to complain about tiny differences having measurable impacts do you have a field where you might understand a bit better how these conclusions are reached? It's not like just one sample tells you everything, it's a measurement of trends over many sources. Sorta like how one vote doesn't mean shit but they add up to real information.

    Its gonna be interesting to see how this goes this summer. I hope my family has enough water to keep their tiny orchard alive. But it might be bad enough that they can't.

  4. #54
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    I find it so arrogant that present day scientists, with so little data to work with, tell me what the past is, and what the next few hundred years will be.
    Did you look a the NOAA site? They have a wide variety of data sets some of which are quite deep.

    How can you be in any sort of position to judge the sufficiency of anyone's science simply because you don't understand it?

    Every scientist I've ever known has been quite humble and quick to admit to things they didn't know. They didn't insult people or call them "arrogant" simply because they didn't know. They asked questions and read up on the subject.

    This seems like something you are unwilling to do.

  5. #55
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    Benny's channeling some of his inner deliberately-obtuse, semi-creationist, anti-science streak in here. Thanks for making the thread entertaining.

    Quote Originally Posted by abraham View Post
    I hope my family has enough water to keep their tiny orchard alive. But it might be bad enough that they can't.
    Where at? Down here?
    Quote Originally Posted by Ernest_Hemingway View Post
    I realize there is not much hope for a bullfighting forum. I understand that most of you would prefer to discuss the ingredients of jacket fabrics than the ingredients of a brave man. I know nothing of the former. But the latter is made of courage, and skill, and grace in the presence of the possibility of death. If someone could make a jacket of those three things it would no doubt be the most popular and prized item in all of your closets.

  6. #56
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    Here is a pretty cool animation from NASA. It's only 63 years so it must be meaningless!

    NASA scientists analyzed data collected over the past 63 years by 1,000 meteorological stations from around the world, and the animation they compiled shows just how rapidly the Earth’s climate is changing.
    http://news.yahoo.com/watch-63-years...154500932.html

  7. #57
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    Quote Originally Posted by hortence View Post
    Did you look a the NOAA site? They have a wide variety of data sets some of which are quite deep.

    How can you be in any sort of position to judge the sufficiency of anyone's science simply because you don't understand it?
    Explain it to me in laymen's terms, please. Really. Maybe that's the problem. I sometimes think that most upper middle class white people really don't understand any of this shit. I certainly don't want to jump into those papers. I don't understand the language. But, I do understand English. And, I have never heard anyone adequately explain this stuff, like tree rings and ice cores. Just, you know, have faith, we know better, shut up. Sorry, that won't work. I question authority. And, if you can't get somebody like me on your side, who is leaning in your direction, but, just wants things explained better, than how the fuck do these scientists expect to convince the forces of evil? You know, like Friends of Exxon?

  8. #58
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    Quote Originally Posted by Benny Profane View Post
    Explain it to me in laymen's terms, please. Really. Maybe that's the problem. I sometimes think that most upper middle class white people really don't understand any of this shit. I certainly don't want to jump into those papers. I don't understand the language. But, I do understand English. And, I have never heard anyone adequately explain this stuff, like tree rings and ice cores. Just, you know, have faith, we know better, shut up. Sorry, that won't work. I question authority. And, if you can't get somebody like me on your side, who is leaning in your direction, but, just wants things explained better, than how the fuck do these scientists expect to convince the forces of evil? You know, like Friends of Exxon?
    Why the fuck are we supposed to do your homework for you? You don't have to participate in the conversation. If you're so curious and actually care, why haven't you endeavored to figure it out for yourself? The internet is a wondrous place if you're not a lazyass.
    Quote Originally Posted by Ernest_Hemingway View Post
    I realize there is not much hope for a bullfighting forum. I understand that most of you would prefer to discuss the ingredients of jacket fabrics than the ingredients of a brave man. I know nothing of the former. But the latter is made of courage, and skill, and grace in the presence of the possibility of death. If someone could make a jacket of those three things it would no doubt be the most popular and prized item in all of your closets.

  9. #59
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    There ya go. Still no explanation. C'mon, admit it, you haven't read it either, right?

    Oh well, nighty night.

  10. #60
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    Quote Originally Posted by Benny Profane View Post
    Oh well, nighty night.
    isn't it like 7:30? Can't even stay up to watch Murder She Wrote anymore?

  11. #61
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    Listen, I'm just a layman like anyone else. If you want to go deeper, you'll have to do it on your own. Think of it as brain exercise to prevent Alzheimer disease.

    And really, I'm not trying to convince you be on my side or any side. It's not a popularity contest.

    In this society, reliance on experts happens multiple times a day, from how your car was engineered to whatever meds you take, to how you enjoy your scotch. So singling out scientists, with years of training and experience seems disingenuous. Do people do that because they dislike the message?

    Are you familiar with the Cassandra complex? I think scientists are facing that right now. Clearly the scientific process is quite different from a gift of prophecy from a god, but in this case the outcome seems about the same.

    From our friends at the wiki:

    Environmental movement

    Many environmentalists have predicted looming environmental catastrophes including climate change, rise in sea levels, irreversible pollution, and an impending collapse of ecosystems, including those of rainforests and ocean reefs.[13] Such individuals sometimes acquire the label of 'Cassandras', whose warnings of impending environmental disaster are disbelieved or mocked.[13] Environmentalist Alan Atkisson states that to understand that humanity is on a collision course with the laws of nature is to be stuck in what he calls the 'Cassandra dilemma' in which one can see the most likely outcome of current trends and can warn people about what is happening, but the vast majority can not, or will not respond, and later if catastrophe occurs, they may even blame you, as if your prediction set the disaster in motion.[14] Occasionally there may be a "successful" alert, though the succession of books, campaigns, organizations, and personalities that we think of as the environmental movement has more generally fallen toward the opposite side of this dilemma: a failure to "get through" to the people and avert disaster. In the words of Atkisson: "too often we watch helplessly, as Cassandra did, while the soldiers emerge from the Trojan horse just as foreseen and wreak their predicted havoc. Worse, Cassandra's dilemma has seemed to grow more inescapable even as the chorus of Cassandras has grown larger."[15]
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra_%28metaphor%29

    This thread makes me need a drink, and I know just the ticket.


  12. #62
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    Quote Originally Posted by LightRanger View Post
    Benny's channeling some of his inner deliberately-obtuse, semi-creationist, anti-science streak in here. Thanks for making the thread entertaining.



    Where at? Down here?
    Fresno and Sanger area. Not commercial, just a bunch of old trees of various types on their lot.

  13. #63
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    Read a book, Bennie. Read "Collapse". It's got about as little proselytizing as possible.
    Sometimes pride comes after a fall.

  14. #64
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    Quote Originally Posted by Benny Profane View Post
    Now, you see, that almost proves my point. We are little eerie weenie insignificant little insects, bits of dust in the history of this world. 70 odd years, wtf is that, on that scale of time, and, the scale of macro weather changes? I find it so arrogant that present day scientists, with so little data to work with, tell me what the past is, and what the next few hundred years will be.
    You're not a denier you claim but you repeat one of the deniers favorite claims that scientists are somehow 'arrogant' which is simply casting the deniers biggest weakness on their enemies. The pot calling the kettle black.

    Billions strong we aren't exactly insects but that doesn't matter anyway. We are burning all the fossil fuel we can find that has been stored sequestered for millions of years as trillions and trillions of living things and creatures and decayed over eons and venting it straight into our atmosphere. Turns out that has a huge impact and the results are already becoming obvious to those of us who aren't living in the alternate conservative universe.

    Go build a low house oceanside if you really believe this is all bullshit. Some of that land is going to be very affordable in the next decade or two.

  15. #65
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    What I don't get is the arrogance of those god damned scientists and engineers... Telling us they can transmit our voice over the air to someone else on the other side of the (flat) planet! I'm just a layman, so I don't believe in this cellphone black magic stuff. If I don't understand it then no amount of experts in consensus is going to convince me it is real-- those arrogant, smarter than god bastards!

  16. #66
    spook Guest
    that's hilarious. "i don't understand it so unless you can teach it to me you're wrong."

  17. #67
    spook Guest
    that's fucking tea party shit, man. never will i catch you with your hand up my cow's ass.

  18. #68
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    Why do you guys read shit like Collapse? So bleak. I would rather watch my son get lured into a creepy ice cream truck than read bloated treatises about how we are suiciding ourselves.

    Maybe I listened to too much David Lee Roth as a youth but I am fine with just enjoying myself and admiring beautiful women and running out my own personal clock. I dont want to hear about how I am nominated for Best Supporting Actor in an extinction event.
    "Buy the Fucking Plane Tickets!"
    -- Jack Tackle

  19. #69
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    Well, I guess Spook hasn't read that stuff either.

  20. #70
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    Quote Originally Posted by Benny Profane View Post
    Now, you see, that almost proves my point. We are little eerie weenie insignificant little insects, bits of dust in the history of this world. 70 odd years, wtf is that, on that scale of time, and, the scale of macro weather changes? I find it so arrogant that present day scientists, with so little data to work with, tell me what the past is, and what the next few hundred years will be.
    Hell, I could probably model climate trends over the next 20 years or so using nothing but monthly data for the past century or two and an ARMA process. It wouldn't be as good as what people who actually study climate and include meaningful right hand side variables in their models could do, but we have plenty of data. Using statistical techniques to forecast important information isn't "arrogant:" it would be arrogant to assume that we can make good decisions without doing so!

    As bleak as this winter has been, this song seems appropriate:
    Last edited by Sirshredalot; 01-30-2014 at 08:46 AM.

  21. #71
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    Quote Originally Posted by Sirshredalot View Post
    Hell, I could probably model climate trends over the next 20 years or so using nothing but monthly data for the past century or two and an ARMA process. It wouldn't be as good as what people who actually study climate and include meaningful right hand side variables in their models could do, but we have plenty of data. Using statistical techniques to forecast important information isn't "arrogant:" it would be arrogant to assume that we can make good decisions without doing so!

    As bleak as this winter has been, this song seems appropriate:
    Well, first of all, you don't have data from the "past century or two". Our national weather agency was established in 1869. Even then, the science of meteorology was quite basic and crude until the mid 20th century. It's not as though, in 1869, there was a headlong rush to record conditions across America, which, along with western Europe, was the most technologically advanced societies of that time. Hell, Powell just made his first runs down the Grand Canyon. Before that, almost the entire Southwest was a mysterious hole on most maps. And, I'm pretty sure, vast areas of North America were unexplored by white men for decades after, so I doubt we have accurate, consistent data from that time at all. Before? Non existent.
    It's not as though record keeping advanced in leaps and bounds from that starting point, either. In 1938, what most estimate to be a class five hurricane annihilated eastern Long Island in NY, and our weather service had no clue it was there until it hit, and we had a major station in NJ at the time! No, statistics didn't really start flowing in on a macro level, hell, worldwide until we put satellites up. Then the numbers got precise and reliable. But, when was that, the 70s, to start? So, 40 to 45 years of reliable historical data? Note how that's the time period that many point to when talking about polar ice melting. We have no clue what the poles were doing just forty years before. Hell, that really doesn't accelerate until maybe twenty years ago. 40 years? 20 years? Jezuz, talk about a small sample in the scheme of things. And some extrapolate out 100 years from now using that data? Hey, I'm no statistician, but, c'mon.

  22. #72
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    well, if it's musical epistemology, there's always this--

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w3CBdLfGqw

    as opposed to Ayn Rand epistemology--

    http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/epistemology.html

  23. #73
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    Quote Originally Posted by Benny Profane View Post
    Before that, almost the entire Southwest was a mysterious hole on most maps. And, I'm pretty sure, vast areas of North America were unexplored by white men for decades after, so I doubt we have accurate, consistent data from that time at all. Before? Non existent.
    Because, after all, if a white man wasn't there and wrote it down, there's pretty much no way to know anything at all.

  24. #74
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    ^ Let's throw a few #'s out just for fun.
    The time since the first homosapien appeared 4 million year+-.
    Number of thousand year flood, droughts, hurricanes, etc, during this time frame.

    4,000,000/1000=4000

    So the 100yr floods and storms and and the like, have happened 40,000 times since homosapiens have been around.

    If you follow all the doomsday logic mankind should never have been able to exist.

    Given enough time chicken little will always be right ( see meteorites and asteroids ).

  25. #75
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    Quote Originally Posted by Benny Profane View Post
    Well, first of all, you don't have data from the "past century or two". Our national weather agency was established in 1869. Even then, the science of meteorology was quite basic and crude until the mid 20th century. It's not as though, in 1869, there was a headlong rush to record conditions across America, which, along with western Europe, was the most technologically advanced societies of that time. Hell, Powell just made his first runs down the Grand Canyon. Before that, almost the entire Southwest was a mysterious hole on most maps. And, I'm pretty sure, vast areas of North America were unexplored by white men for decades after, so I doubt we have accurate, consistent data from that time at all. Before? Non existent.
    It's not as though record keeping advanced in leaps and bounds from that starting point, either. In 1938, what most estimate to be a class five hurricane annihilated eastern Long Island in NY, and our weather service had no clue it was there until it hit, and we had a major station in NJ at the time! No, statistics didn't really start flowing in on a macro level, hell, worldwide until we put satellites up. Then the numbers got precise and reliable. But, when was that, the 70s, to start? So, 40 to 45 years of reliable historical data? Note how that's the time period that many point to when talking about polar ice melting. We have no clue what the poles were doing just forty years before. Hell, that really doesn't accelerate until maybe twenty years ago. 40 years? 20 years? Jezuz, talk about a small sample in the scheme of things. And some extrapolate out 100 years from now using that data? Hey, I'm no statistician, but, c'mon.
    Actually, we have very good daily weather data records starting in around the 1660's in England, and since around 1710's in York Factory and Churchill (Hudsons Bay Company). The HBC data from the trading forts have been especially valuable as global climate changes are exacerbated in the arctic and sub-arctic regions.

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