hurricanes

Or a lawyer for advice, hence the stupid warning labels.

Of course no one blames you for the economic disaster that unfolds in cases 1 thru 4. The gulf oil spill was much of the #3 above, with a big economic penalty that was much larger than the region.

r s

Read the history. The 1872 conferences of the International Workingmen's As sociation defines the split. Bakunin characterised Marx's ideas as authorit arian, and argued that if a Marxist party came to power its leaders would e nd up as bad as the ruling class they had fought.

The Soviet Union confirmed his prophecy rather too well.

You understand wrong, and your "better references" reflect self-serving Sov iet propaganda.

Basically, the Soviet Union described themselves as socialist in an effort legitimise an undemocratic regime established by a coup d'etat in 1917. The democratic socialist tradition always rejected the idea that "the leading role" of the communist party justified a one-party state.

Marx claimed that capitalism would inevitably collapse, leaving the way ope n for a form of socialism that had no place for any find of market-based di stribution of resources. He had a lot of good ideas but that wasn't one of them.

The US is stuck in a "dark age" of oligarchic capitalism, with a political system that is regrettably open to influence from people with lots of money , but fixing that need simple democratic principles.

Setting tighter bounds on election spending would probably do the trick, an d adopting proportional representation would also help - since the current "single-winner" electoral system leaves you stuck with two ruling parties, neither of whom represents anything like a majority of the electorate.

Germany and Sweden use proportional representation.

Australia has a single-winner system for the lower house of parliament, but with a singe transferable vote, which means that you can express a prefere nce for a minority party and a progressively lesser preferences for other c andidates, including representatives of the two big parties that are going to win most of the seats - I'm going to have to vote next week (voting here is compulsory) in a safe right-wing seat, which means I can get to express my preferences, but won't - in fact - influence the outcome.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Over a sea surface that is warmer than 26C.

But there's nowhere near enough of either present where hurricanes form to influence their formation.

Wrong. You have to concentrate on the CO2 that their oratory - and their policies - inject into the atmosphere of the planet as a whole, which does influence the sea-surface temperatures in the (progressively expanding) hurricane formation zones.

You just failed physics 101.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

0130814

be

You can't. The CO2 diffuses away through the fabric much too rapidly.

els,

Actually it won't help feed poor people. Plants are pretty much always wate r-limited rather than CO2 limited, and the fossil record makes it plain tha t plants adapt to higher CO2 levels by having fewer stomata in their leaves , so that they can get the same amount of CO2 while losing less water.

Anthropogenic global warming will produce more rain, but there's no guarant ee that the rain will fall where it will do poor people any good. At the mo ment the current effect of the anthropogenic global warming we've had so fa r has been more frequent droughts and more frequent floods, neither of whic h help.

You've been told this before, but since it wasn't spoon-fed into your gulli ble mind in a package of denialist propaganda, the information didn't take root.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Asking a lawyer for an opinion is a little different. When asked, an attorney will always give two or more possible interpretations, analysis, or outcomes. That's because if he chose the best and gave only one, and it didn't quite work, it would be very easy to blame him for the failure. However, with two or more possible interpretations, it remains for the client to make the decision as to which approach is best. If it fails, the attorney could then suggest that one of the other choices would have been better. Since he had warned the client, the failure was obviously due to the clients decision, not his advice. I use this method when I don't have a clue what to do next. Instead of offering my best guess(tm), I present the available options, hope for the best, and then go on vacation so that I'm not around to pick up the pieces if something goes wrong.

That's also different. My simplified analysis doesn't scale well with large disasters. In effect, the US government acts as a safety net, covering the costs of the wide spread damage. Much as I detest the system, it has to be that way or there would be no high risk ventures.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

There's an old joke about the guy who put out an ad for a one-armed economist. When a (two-armed) candidate showed up, he asked "Why did you specify a one-armed economist?" The other replied, "I get so sick of being told on one hand this, on the other hand, that."

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
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Super PACs are all the news here, of course, when the people with the money own the media and people in charge, it's a long road for grass roots to deal with.

What good is voting if the two people you're presented are two sides of the same poisonous coin? Voting on the selection process would be handy, but guess which party is going to do that (neither!).

That's a nice way to do it -- there's a small movement at the county/state level to introduce transferable voting, which exists in a few places, but nowhere broad IIRC.

In the two different counties that I've voted in, my vote didn't matter, so what do I care?

I seem to recall .au's turnout is pretty paltry (at least, among countries with compulsion). Go figure.

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk. 
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com

Well, then it's serendipitous that I suggested rain water management! This could be as simple as sloped roof panels with drain pipes buried into the ground; earth would act as a P-trap, blocking air exchange. Or you could use proper P-traps, long as they don't get clogged of course.

Even if rain gathered and evaporated from this structure (rather than draining it through), I've got to bet it'll be damned close to 100% humidity inside -- if nothing else, moisture from the ground will keep things humid. Yes, there's a constant outward flow due to the CO2 input in the center, but this will be fairly weak at moderate distances, and probably very moist from the scrubbers and stuff (there's a new "clean coal" plant south of here, the plumes of water vapor are distinctive).

There's still the matter of what the power plant is using, air (probably air drawn from the atmosphere above) and water (rain water could supplement its needs, but cooling towers or a river will still be required for sheer dissipation capacity). As for fuel, how about... a couple miles of conveyor belt to the nearest train tracks (or an automated train line the whole way, or build it right next to a coal mine?).

As for feeding people, if foodstuffs are produced, that would certainly be advantageous, but even if not, a pure energy crop (oil or biomass) could offset all that goddamned corn we're wasting here.

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk. 
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com

Perhaps, but none of the outcomes are good. The whole point of getting a lawyer's opinion is to understand the down side.

You miss the point. What's the economic downside of the AGW sky falling scenario.

1. Predict nothing and nothing happens, no one notices.
2. Predict nothing and the planet warms by .5C. Nothing happens.
3. Predict disaster and nothing happens. Billions in economic losses across the entire planet. Millions starve. Lefties predict more of the same. We get more of the same.
4. Predict disaster and the planet warms.5C. Nothing happens. Billions in economic losses across the entire planet. Millions starve. Lefties happy.

So far, it seems we're selecting what's behind curtain #3.

, s

Which is why you probably need to go for root-and-branch electoral reform, including proportional representation - the people with money will resist t hat even more vigorously, but it's probably where you ought to be going.

ng

Proportional representation tends to give you four or five parties who get enough votes to cross the - usually 5% - threshold to have representatives in the legislature. None of them is going to represent your views exactly, but one of them may come close.

You then - almost inevitably - end up with coalition governments implement a compromise policy that isn't what any of the parties promised to implemen t if they got elected. Since the process of hammering out the compromise po licy tends to get rid of silly ideas put up because they were easy to sell, rather than desirable in practice, this is probably a good thing. It certa inly works out that way in the Netherlands and Germany.

t

e e

You still had to put up with the governments who were elected.

s

Australia's turnout is listed there as 81%, the US at 48%. One wonders wher e they got their Australian figures

htm

lists the turnout for the last election - in 2010 - as 93% of the registere d electors which was lower than usual, reflecting the fact that the Labor v oters were being asked to vote for Julia Gillard, who had just tossed out t he more popular Kevin Rudd who was - and is - a better politician (which is why he's now back in charge of the Labor Party) but a rather poorer prime minister.

Maybe the wikipedia figures included me (and other expatriates) as non-vote rs - in principle I could voted when I was living in the Netherlands, but i n practice I couldn't get myself onto the electoral register anywhere where it was worth voting, since my parents electorate was in an even safer righ t-wing seat that one one I'm in now.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

That's not the way it works. In fact most of the reports on climate change emphasise that changing weather patterns are going to be good news for a wh ole lot of places. Oddly enough, nobody much lives in any of these places a t the moment, so this goods news doesn't get much media attention.

Not really. The doctor is telling you directly about what is going to happe n to you. The climate change experts are publishing huge highly technical r eports on what might - and probably will - happen to the earth as a whole, and the newspapers are cherry-picking these reports for stuff that will att ract the public's attention.

Bad news is a lot more attention-getting than good news.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

Your scheme for improving growth rates in green-houses by adding extra CO2 to the air has been implemented in lots of places.

It's a capital-intensive form of agriculture, and won't help to feed poor people, though it does help supply tasteless tomatoes to the well-off in the Netherlands and in the places to which they export their green-house grown plants.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

The scary part, if ice is really melting in places, it can effect the thermohaline circulation of the ocean. If that changes, big changes occur.

Greg

"Global Warming and Capitalism: As the Ice Melts, the Land Rush Begins" "Arctic Ice Melts Create New Land Rush"

I didn't mention anything about the results or predictions of AGW research. I mentioned that government funding for new research seems to favor projects involving the detrimental effects, rather than the beneficial. If there is any mention of beneficial effects in such research, it's usually a footnote mixed in with the usual doom and disaster predictions.

Looks like the 5th report of the IPCC has been leaked a bit early: Looks like I have my homework assignment for the next few weeks. Got any pointers to a leaked draft copy?

Apparently you've never visited my doctors. Definitive predictions and absolute confidence are not their style. More like vague guesses, confused muddle, and more tests may show something. The closest approximation of a direct and confident opinion was when I wanted to leave the hospital after seriously failing a treadmill test. The doctor was so accustomed to delivering a vague prognosis, that he had two of his associates drop into my room and offer the same vague opinion. Three times muddle still equals muddle.

The media is doing your cause a favor. The best way to lose an audience is to bury them in technobabble, which is exactly what will happen if they publish the technical details. Best to let the media decide what's best for the GUM (great unwashed masses). Those with interest and a clue can find and read the originals.

Good news does not sell newspapers and magazines. Well, there's one exception, USA Today. It specializes in emphasizing the good news. If the 5th IPCC report is full of doom and disaster, USA Today will find the tiny footnote mentioning that todays frozen wastes may eventually be habitable, and publish it as headline news.

Not so irrelevant. It explains why it's easier and safer to predict doom and disaster, than to predict improvement or a neutral outcome.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

You worry about burning corn for energy, but you're willing to burn coal? Coal is a hydrocarbon that can be "cracked" just like crude oil. Theoretically, with proper processing, it can be made edible:

1,000 kg of coal is equivalent to 7,000 food calories. If it can be done, you could live on 1/2 kg of processed coal per day.

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

In a free market economy, the government doesn't have to worry about benefi cial effects - entrepreneurs can be relied on to exploit them without any g overnment encouragement. The free market will ignore detrimental effects, a nd even act in ways that makes them worse if they can make money out of suc h actions, if the government doesn't regulate that kind of anti-social beha viour, so the government has every reason to concentrate it's research mone y on finding out areas where it may have to step in.

None. Why not ask the Hew York Times? They managed to get one.

It depends on what you've got wrong with you. I got a new aortic valve a fe w years ago, and the doctors who were talking to me delivered a very clear prognosis - if I didn't get the new valve promptly, I'd soon be too sick to survive the operation. They'd been keeping an eye - actually ultra-sound s cans - on the valve for some six or seven years before I needed the operati on.

I've done a treadmill test. Most people seriously fail them because they've got one or more blocked coronary arteries, and working out which of the ar teries is creating the problem takes a cine-angiogram, where they stick a c atheter into your femoral artery at the top of your thigh, and push it up t hrough the aorta into your heart, and squirt radio-opaque dye into the hear t to see which coronary artery or arteries is blocked.

It seems to have a 0.07% mortality rate

When I worked in ultrasound from 1976-79 the comment was that if you were s ick enough to qualify for angiography, there was a risk that your heart was in such bad shape that the angiography could provoke a fatal heart attack.

Doctors don't like explaining that the test which is going to tell them exa ctly what they can do for you might kill you, even if it's only one chance in 1400.

English language science journalism is mostly rubbish. Living in the Nether lands for 19 years got us used to Dutch science journalism. I cam mostly fi nd at least one technical error in any English language science newspaper r eport - there's one one the first page of the New York Times report that yo u quoted, though it is corrected on the second page - but it took me about ten years to find one in a Dutch newspaper science report, largely because Dutch science journalists tend to have university degrees in the subjects t hey write about, and let the scientists read their pieces before they get p ublished.

I agree that the original data is essentially inaccessible to non-experts, but I don't think that English language science journalists are doing anybo dy any kind of favour - for a start many of them publish denialist propagan da as if it were science-based.

It's an explanation of why it's easier and safer to predict doom and disast er in a very different environment from the one in question.

As you admit, tales of doom and disaster sell newspapers, which is an entir ely different motivation from avoiding malpractice suits.

--
Bill Sloman, Sydney

perhaps all the tornadoes and wildfires scared them off?

--
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Don't get carried away. Corn is a crappy source of fuel energy, but a good source of food.

Vice versa for coal.

But Obama and his nutcases are going to "bankrupt" the coal companies.

Which I will delight in. Weather predictions for this winter...

...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
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I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Ah but I didn't say "adding CO2 to air", I said "make the air CO2"! It'll be mixed along the edges, where it reaches atmosphere, since the gradient is needed for plants to evolve, but if any evolve to survive in the center, they'll be substantially different from the plants that were started with.

Let's see... triple CO2... that's about 0.1%? Still breathable (indoors easily reaches that). Good yields though.

Cool, a graph! So that shows what normal plants do. Point being, breed plants that have an altogether different curve, which might be gaussian: near zero (or even negative, i.e., dying) at atmospheric concentrations, massive (hopefully, 10-100 times higher?) at 1-10% CO2 (~20% of course is the limit for burning something in air, balance being N2 and 1% Ar), and probably toxic at saturation (O2 is still required, after all).

Tim

--
Deep Friar: a very philosophical monk. 
Website: http://seventransistorlabs.com