Oh, then Channel 4 Meterologist chimes in: http://www.todaystmj4.com/bloggers/briangotter/8872172.html
May I remind you, your job is to tell us the weather, not diagnose engineering flaws. That being said, kindly stop prepetuating this stupid notion that Global Warming will cause us all to die because the Earth will simply cave in upon itself.
Cities /= the rest of the world. This is exactly the problem with you Granola crunchers, you take a small bit of data and think it covers the entire world.
Actually, is it beyond cavil? Sure we’re pumping out a lot of heat, but how does it compare with the warming from all the fauna that we’ve killed? Those huge herds of buffalo and wildebeest and aurochs and antelope and mammoth that no longer travel the plains and the tundra and the savannah farting methane. The huge schools of fish that no longer roam the over-fished seas. The huge flocks of birds we’ve shot. All the forest fires that no longer rage uncontrolled. I’m not sure this is answerable, mind.
While the thought that the steel would be impacted by global warming is indicative of an idiot in action, it’s known that bridges, rail lines, and other steel structures need to be designed with proper expansion joints and fittings. It’s possible at least that expansion joint problems under a record heat could have contributed to bridge weakness. By saying “possible”, I mean “not unheard of in the engineering world”, rather than “is a likely cause.” I have known railroad trestle failures to be blamed on a combination of excess heat and other factors, for instance.
True. The rest of the world is merely surrounding the cities.
So you’re arguing that the heat vanishes, in violation of the laws of thermodynamics? There’s a Nobel prize in your future if you can show this.
And what’s with the “granola crunchers” remark? If it’s an insult, take it to the Pit, please. If it’s not, what does it have to do with the topic at hand?
Sailboat
Of course, and I do take temperature expansion and stresses into account but to go off on such a tangent and blame a bridge collapse to global warming.
Rather than debate the engineering (unless you’d like to), I’d much rather talk about that kind of perpetuation of crap. Someone who isn’t qualified comes up with a silly little hypothesis and it snowballs into what it has become today.
No, I’m saying that when you measure in a city or metropolitan area, you’re greatly discounting the majority of the Earth itself. Just because cities are heating up doesn’t mean the world is.
Its like if you told me to take measurements of the depth of the sea and I went to 1000 pinpoints and tested the measure. Now obviously I can average those out and say the depth of the sea is increasing/decreasing but you’re not accurately measuring anything of value.
And you’re unable to answer simple questions.
I prefer my malady.
You’re new here – when you quote a block of text like that, you’re supposed to include a link to, or at least a citation to, its source.
I’d rather not talk about it. Generally speaking I consider very few blog “cites” posted on the SDMB to be accurate enough to be worth debating over. Bloggers, who very often expound at length about things they have zero practical experience with, are very adept and picking and choosing the “cites” they want so they can make whatever point they dreamed up while serving people their Frappucino. Regardless of the issue and the slant, the reliance of folks on the SDMB to basically point to a blog and use it as the basis for a “debate” is something that should have been brutally stamped out a long time ago.
For instance, note that the first “cite” of the blog you linked to was to another blog “cite” by a meteorologist, who uses his obviously extensive structural engineering knowledge to give his opinion on the bridge collapse. In the absence of any first-hand or experiential data, of course. The next “cite” is a semi-anonymous post on the blog of a “journalist and songwriter”, by some other guy named Richard Cushing, whose background is:
The third “cite” is speculation from afar from a UK structural engineer, whose “cite” is worth about as much as my post above - meaning, not very damn much. The fourth “cite” was the councilwoman you quoted, and the fifth “cite” was the guys brother.
In short, it’s like 98% of the blog “cites” I see on the SDMB, and no, I’m not going to bother to debate its speculation.
Your question has already been answered, well before you asked me.
If you can’t understand the answer to your question, either the question wasn’t that simple or you simply don’t want to accept the answer.
Either way, my question remains. Why the correlation between Republicanism and Global Warming denial?
Even people like, say, my brother who would deny Creationism until his last breath will clutch at any straws when it comes to global warming. He’s not stupid. There’s a strong impetus in the clutching, but I don’t get it.
Fair enough. Although scientifically, it would seem more exact to simply state that we are 90% confident of this prediction rather than use a word like “proven,” wouldn’t you say?
There’s a reason I insist on the distinction.
One of my jobs is to make bid/no bid decisions on certain contracting opportunities. We may face an opportunity in which we believe we have, say, a 30% chance of winning, and if we win, we would get revenue of $50 million and a profit of $4 million.
How much B&P (bid & proposal) money should I allocate to that effort?
Greatly oversimplifying, certainly no more than $1.2 million, right? I have a 30% chance of getting $4 million; I shouldn’t pay more than $1.2 million for that chance. (In practice then answer is far less for many reasons irrelevant to this discussion).
The same approach, though, must go here.
No, not “whatever we can”. There are some measures that are too expensive to undertake.
If the potential loss is, say, 10$ billion, and there is a 90% likelihood of it happening, then we should not spend more than $9 billion fixing it.
. . .
I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way, Bricker.
I meant to edit that to say “Global Warming skepticism” since “denial” seems to beg the question.
And since I used my brother as an example, I’ll also say that he wasn’t skeptical about Iraq (and still isn’t). He is deeply religious, not skeptical about God. He’s not someone who requires 100% proof for everything, so why this?
The Ozone Hole is continuing to grow. The largest hole over Antarctica was in 2006.
But the AP reported it had shrunk in 2002?
If your going to stump for progressive and/or environmentalist causes, you have to acknowledge your financial disadvantages from day one. The Forces of Darkness will always be better funded, that’s a given. Deal.
Not really.
I asked you, “What does ‘proven’ mean?”
The consensus in this thread is that it means, “90% confidence.” Do you accept that? Do you contend it’s something different? Do you contend that it’s incontrovertible that human activity causes global warming, or do you accept that the answer is we have a 90% confidence that human activity causes global warming. Your previous answers do not make this clear to me.
My theory is as follows: Republicans tend to be more business-friendly. Democrats tend to be more environmentally friendly. That is to say, in considering a policy question that pits business interests against the environment, Republicans will generally select the side that gives greater importance to business interests, and Democrats the side that gives greater importance to keeping the enviroment safe.
Now, speaking personally: I certainly don’t deny global warming exists. I question how much of it is caused by human activity, and, of the portion that is, how much we can reasonably change.
Accepting that the 90% figure is correct, it provides a baseline for that calculus. We could certainly solve the problem of human-generated cliamte change by killing off all but, say, 20,000 human beings. But that would be a high price to pay – too high for the benefit realized.
So my position is: we should undertake whatever measures make economic sense, given the best data available to us right now. If we are 90% confident of this data, and we are facing a trillion dollar loss, then we should be prepared to take a hit of 900 billion dollars. But we should not take a three trillion dollar hit to solve the problem.
Oh, well then.
Sorry. Since you’ve explained so well why it doesn’t work this way, I guess I have no reasonable argumenrt left.
Hey! Wait a second! You didn’t explain it at all.
You just made an unsupported assertion that it doesn’t work this way.