illconsidered | September 13, 2012Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger. The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedience of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences. We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now
Not originally spoken about climate change, but I don't think a better expression of today's reality could be found. Go to Peter Sinclair's piece "9/11, Climate Change and Why Facts Matter" to read a great article and at the same time see who said the above and when.
(Oops,…
illconsidered | September 12, 2012I honestly think that while belief in creationism is the antithesis of scientific thought, it is still possible to be a good scientist and a creationist at the same time. This is for two main reasons. Firstly, creationism is a term that covers a wide spectrum of beliefs, from literal 6000 year old earth bible thumping denial of evolution to a more nuanced kind of mysticism that believes somewhere beneath the deep layers of complex and wonderful natural processes exists an unexplainable and supernatural foundation.
There is no practical difference between investigating how deeply "God's"…
illconsidered | September 11, 2012The Bottleneck Years
Chapter 4
Table of Contents
Chapter 6
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 5
FabNet, May 18, 2055
I sat at the window watching Matt roll away in his electric chariot. When he was gone, I stared at the lake musing how different we were. We were identical and yet we weren't. Matt definitely had a unique way of looking at things.
It started when he was a teenager. He picked up a second hand 3-D printer for next to nothing at a yard sale. 3-D printers, or fabs, short for fabricators, were capable of building any desired object layer by layer out of plastic or ceramic goop. "They're not…
illconsidered | September 11, 2012There is a blogstorm raging these days for those of you with inadequate workplace supervision. Check here for the latest post from ground zero.
The synopsis is: scientist releases paper showing strong correlation between belief in conspiracy theories, free market ideology, anti-science attitudes and the rejection of climate science; climate skeptic blogger community sees conspiracy and scientific fraud. (To their credit, I have not yet seen the accusation of "socialist".)
I don't have much to say about it, I am as embarrassed for these folks as I am amused by the irony of it all. I should…
illconsidered | September 10, 2012Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
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Another Week of Climate Disruption News
Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
September 9, 2012
Chuckles, COP18+, CAT, Maldives
Subsidies, GFIs, Pricing Nature, Cook, Meteorologists
Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy
Melting Arctic, Methane, Geopolitics
Food: Crisis, Fisheries, Prices, Speculation, Food vs. Biofuel, GMOs, Production
Hurricanes, Monsoon, GHGs,…
illconsidered | September 10, 2012[Update: as pointed out in comments, this forecast is for a town called North Pole, Alaska, not the geographic north pole, or even the magnetic one...I must apologize for my haste and sloppiness. On the other hand, this incident has cleared up a number of long-standing structural engineering questions I have had about Santa's Workshop...]
I have never checked a site like Weather.com for the North pole before, so not really sure how much to trust this forecast. If it is accurate, we are looking at some pretty balmy weather up there for the next ten days and perhaps a late finish for the…
illconsidered | September 10, 2012Further to my mention of Ken Caldiera's recent Scientific American article "The Great Climate Experiment" the other day, I wanted to call attention to this passages as well:
the vast oceans resist change, but change they will. At no time in Earth’s past—with the possible exception of mass-extinction events—has ocean chemistry changed as much and as rapidly as scientists expect it to over the coming decades. When CO2 enters the oceans, it reacts with seawater to become carbonic acid. In high enough concentrations, this carbonic acid can cause the shells and skeletons of many marine organisms…
illconsidered | September 7, 2012(click here for a higher resolution image)
While thinking about the image above from EarthTrack.net a "sign this pettition" request from Avaaz.org landed in my mail box. (Fair warning, I have not checked this out very carefully. Please do say so in the comments if this issue is being misrepresented). Read below:
Climate change is accelerating, but there’s a massive ray of hope: clean energy is booming, producing nearly 20% of the world's electricity! Incredibly, the US and EU are threatening to stifle this breakthrough -- but together we can stop them.
In the last decade the Chinese…
illconsidered | September 6, 2012We have another climate metric to add to W/m^2 (climate forcing), GT/year (CO2 emissions), mm/year (sea level rise) and oC/decade (temperature change) and that would be m/day.
Meters per day is for tracking how quickly climatic zones will move as a result of man-made climate change and it is actually an astonishingly high number. David Appell at Quark Soup uses some rough numbers and comes up with a figure of 8 metres/day over the last 20 years. He bases this calculation on an article in the Scientific American (sounds like an oxymoron these days!) by Ken Caldiera who looks at the average…
illconsidered | September 6, 2012
August sea ice extent in the Arctic this year was 640,000 square kilometers below the previous record set in 2007. It is also already a record monthly low for any month, though that record will not last as it is going to be broken this September when the lowest extent of the year is normally reached. In less than the last two months, multi-year ice declined by 33% and the oldest ice (over 5 years) declined by 54% (and that ice ain't coming back). While the unusual Arctic Cyclone probably had a noticeable impact on the evolution of this year's (still deepening) record ice loss, it must be…
illconsidered | September 5, 2012The Bottleneck Years
Chapter 3
Table of Contents
Chapter 5
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 4
Matt, May 18. 2055
When I got home from CCU, Matt was over talking to dad. We sat around the kitchen table catching up. Jon had got the job with the Senator. Matt was predictably down on politicians.
After a while Dad got visibly tired. "I'm sorry boys, but my getup-and-go got up and went." He pushed himself to his feet and headed slowly down the hall to the bedroom.
Matt watched him go and asked sotto voce, "Does he do that often?"
"What's that?"
"Just conk out like that. It's only seven thirty."
I looked…
illconsidered | September 5, 2012His attitude might more resemble this below (very funny)!
(seen at P3)
I always say that living well is about choosing when to laugh and when to cry...
illconsidered | September 4, 2012Most of you will have heard by now of Mitt Romney's convention chuckle at the expense of the global biosphere, of which you and your family are of a part:
"President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family."
(Full text is here)
Bill McKibben's tweet in response is pretty perfect: "On some other planet, apparently". Planet3.0 has a lengthier and very good exposition on what underlies the success of such a mockery.
My only thought on what Dan has written is that all us concerned individuals in the greater blogosphere…
illconsidered | September 3, 2012Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
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Another Week of Climate Disruption News
Information is not Knowledge...Knowledge is notWisdom
September 2, 2012
Chuckles, COP18+, PIF, AMS, Wadham, Maldives EU-Aus ETS, GCF, Cook, Meteorologists
Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy
Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica
Food Crisis, Fisheries, Prices, Food vs. Biofuel, Land Grabs, GMO Labelling,…
illconsidered | August 31, 2012As Eli Rabbet is noting, Anthony Watts is really unraveling, even further than we noted here a couple of days ago. So, I just have to post the video below, picked up from Denial Depot. I swear, I am NOT calling Watts Hitler, not even a Nazi, it is just pretty funny!
illconsidered | August 30, 2012The Bottleneck Years
Chapter 2
Table of Contents
Chapter 4
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 3
Electronic Democracy, May 11, 2055
As I walked to CCU, I thought about what Jon was getting into. It was just like him to breeze in, drop a zinger and split before anyone could reply sensibly.
When I was growing up, I instinctively avoided politics. I knew the broad outline of our political history, only because it was unavoidable. A lot of what had happened in North America revolved around energy.
Dad lived through the oil crunch and sometimes he tried to explain to us what life was like before. He grew up…
illconsidered | August 28, 2012Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
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Another Week of Climate Disruption News
Information Overloadis Pattern Recognition
August 26, 2012
Chuckles, COP18+, Overshoot Day, The Critical Decade, GCF, Thermodynamics, Cook
Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy
Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica
Food Crisis, Fisheries, Prices, Food vs. Biofuel, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Production
Hurricanes,…
illconsidered | August 27, 2012So as I warned about some weeks ago, almost all of the record lows are already broken in the arctic sea ice front. Neven seems to have the best discussions going, but he is on holiday for the next couple of weeks. You can see almost all (all?) of the scientific surveys of the various ice metrics in this single page jam packed with graphs here. It's a fantastic resource with links to all the original data sources. I found it at Neven's, not sure if he created it but many thanks are owed to whomever it was.
And we still have as much as 4 weeks of likely declines remaining! A truly stunning…
illconsidered | August 22, 2012The Bottleneck Years
Chapter 1
Table of Contents
Chapter 3
by H.E. Taylor
Chapter 2
Externalities, May 11, 2055
When I got downstairs, Jon was sitting in one of the big deep chairs in the rec room, the bottle of wine on a low table in front of him. "I have an idea I want to bounce off you," he said, gesturing at the wine.
"Okay, but first I have to tell you something."
When he is not pushing some political theory, Jon is inclined to be judgemental, especially when it comes to Matt, but he surprised me by laughing when I told him why the marriage was off.
"I warned him his prick would get him…
illconsidered | August 20, 2012Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
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Another Week of Climate Disruption News
Sipping from the Internet Firehose...
August 19, 2012
Chuckles, G20, Ocean Health Index, CSIRO, BEST, Bottom Line, Cook
Fukushima Note, Fukushima News
Melting Arctic, Greenland, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica
Food Crisis, Fisheries, Food Prices, Food vs. Biofuel, GMOs, GMO Labelling, Food Production
Hurricanes, Monsoon, GHGs,…