Climate change and wildfire in the Pacific Northwest

Discussion in 'Blazers OT Forum' started by Eastoff, Jul 22, 2014.

  1. Eastoff

    Eastoff But it was a beginning.

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    Anyone who denies climate change have thoughts on the subject of wildfires "the worst season in decades?"
     
  2. julius

    julius Global Moderator Staff Member Global Moderator

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    grumble grumble liberals grumble grumble Obama grumble grumble environmentalists grumble grumble.
     
  3. SlyPokerDog

    SlyPokerDog Woof! Staff Member Administrator

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    It's raining right now, global warming over!
     
  4. Eastoff

    Eastoff But it was a beginning.

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    SWEET!

    All jokes aside, these fires aren't hurting the "liberal" part of the state. But they are hurting the state of Oregon as a whole. We will all suffer as we have worse and worse fire seasons and other problems that come with a change in climate. But maybe climate change is a lie, and this is just some thirty or forty year cycle.
     
  5. oldguy

    oldguy Well-Known Member

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    I don't read all of the global warming, er, climate change threads. But, I don't think I've seen anyone deny that climate change is real.

    Personally, I believe that climate change has been occurring since the dawn of time. I'm not convinced that man is causing it.

    Go Blazers
     
  6. Denny Crane

    Denny Crane It's not even loaded! Staff Member Administrator

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  7. BlazerWookee

    BlazerWookee UNTILT THE DAMN PINWHEEL!

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  8. Eastoff

    Eastoff But it was a beginning.

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    The lightning is setting off dry brush. We had a very low rainfall in the winter. I know that fire management changed policy right near that peak.
     
  9. Further

    Further Guy

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    Good luck getting through to folks, but it won't work. A few weeks ago there was a similar thread about how May was the warmest one in recorded history globally. But the deniers have too much invested in their beliefs. They say facts aren't facts, research is bogus, and all ivestigators who have findings they don't agree with, are lying cheats. There is no discussion to be had when the other side has the wonderful argument of 'nah ahh, no way'. Good luck, but I'm out of this, they win.
     
    Last edited: Jul 22, 2014
  10. Eastoff

    Eastoff But it was a beginning.

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    My point was basically, It's not my home burning right now. It's not my cattle grazing land either. The places burning are Republican territory.
     
  11. Further

    Further Guy

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    Must be due to gay republicans
     
  12. Denny Crane

    Denny Crane It's not even loaded! Staff Member Administrator

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    The deniers have too much invested in govt. grants to admit the truth :)

    Funny thing happened in another thread. jlprk says something about me believing the Warren Commission report. The thing is, I've seen a 3D model of the scene with the path of the bullet clear and the damage done clear. It supports the lone gunman theory.

    Whoa. Me, believing a computer model?

    Well for starters, the model is incredibly simple compared to simulating or emulating millions of years of climate.

    Second, the model was superimposed on top of the actual Zapruder film, frame by frame and is clearly an exact model.

    I trust that they did the right math for the ballistics. It isn't hard and there's not a lot of variables like sunspots or volcanoes to muddle things up.

    Unlike climate models which don't superimpose on squat, don't predict the past or the present or the future. But it's all they have to say the sky is falling.

    Next.

    [video=youtube;PfSXkfV_mhA]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfSXkfV_mhA[/video]

    He hammers me all the time about models being good science. Then denies the single gunman.

    :lol:
     
  13. Further

    Further Guy

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    I don't know about JFK, it's fun to read about, but I have never really looked too far into it.

    But here is the deal with models, they are built to not have to deal with all the inputs. That's why so many have flaws. I understand this, I mean if you want to model how shiga toxin works, you use a ricin model. It is a totally different substance, but thought to act in a very similar way, on the same cellular pathways. Because of this, because we are dealing with unknowns, because models are used to simulate things that are too complex to accurately repeat, many will end up as dead ends, or at least not bare totally relevant results.

    However, and please don't get caught up on just my first paragraph, that's why so many models are used. There are models that are built to study each individual aspect and glean as much information as possible. So, there may be a bunch of models that concentrate on what happens to excess CO2 in an environment (taken up by the ocean, by plants, increases in air...), then a different bunch of models look at other pollutants, other models look at what happens to the pH of the ocean, other models look at marine life, other models look at UV ray penetration, etc. Although some of those models may be off by a bit, off by a lot, or totally wrong, when so damned many of those models are all pointing to the same results in total, you can start to build a grand model or scheme of how man made pollutants are affecting the world.

    You can nitpick and find models in that which are flawed, you can find models that show irrelevant information, and you can even find some models that disagree with the overriding theme or outcomes from the bulk of the models. You tend to harp on those few, the problems with the outliers, and give an overabundance of credence to the models that run contrary to the general outcomes of the models. But, we are talking about thousands of models, some highlighting small things, others more grandiose, that mostly seem to agree with two main points 1) the climate is affected by certain pollutants, and 2) mankind is responsible for a large portion of those pollutants.

    If you don't believe in the efficacy of models, then you really don't believe in modern science. Because almost all of science is currently built off of models. The stuff that is simply observable has mostly been observed, models, be they biological, chemical or computer based are at the heart of science. It's a way to break down the information into bite-sized doses. One model looks at how sunlight refracts off of one gas, another models might look at how it reacts off of a different one, and a third model might look how refraction works in different gaseous combinations. If you are throwing out modeling, then fine, I understand where you are. If you are only throwing out modeling having to do with climate changes, then that's something different. You keep bringing up climate models as having too many variables, but that's not how they work, there are almost no models that look at the tens of thousands of inputs. There are models that look at a handful. Then there are papers that bring those many models together to build a coherent overview of the subject.
     
  14. Denny Crane

    Denny Crane It's not even loaded! Staff Member Administrator

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    See you are talking about models where you can control the environment. Put cells in a petri dish, add poison, watch them die. You can pretty much tell what killed them.

    The atmosphere isn't anything you can control when looking hard for cause of warming. It's not like we're just adding CO2. We're cutting down trees at the same time (or trees cut down 50 years ago are now affecting things). More people are being born in the equatorial regions of our hemisphere. We've had dams like Hoover in place for a century and diverting all that water from the Colorado River might have some effect on where water/rain falls.

    And on and on and on.

    Complex models don't even necessarily obey the laws of physics. If the result isn't what the programmer wants, he'll tweak the software to produce the desired result. And there's no saying which way is right, since neither one is right.

    Note: I didn't say I'd throw out modeling, but I would look at them with a skeptical eye toward whether they're just outputting bullshit.
     
  15. Denny Crane

    Denny Crane It's not even loaded! Staff Member Administrator

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    These models are being used to forecast the future. Temperature in the year 2100, and so on.

    [​IMG]

    You have to question why they're not all 100% aligned if the science is so settled. And you have to question why they're just so wrong in their predictions to date.
     
  16. Further

    Further Guy

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    That's why models are so damned important, because there are so many variables. So you build a model that only accounts for a few inputs, a different model accounts for a few different ones, and so on. Pretty soon, you have a thousand models, each only accounting for a few inputs. This way, you can start to build a better idea on whole of how the environment is reacting. There is no need to look at how cutting down trees affects every model, as long as we have a host of models that are centered around how cutting down trees affect specific actions, such as 02, CO2 and soil erosion. THen, if we do enough studies about just cutting down trees, then we can boil it down to a few variables that are more easily carried over to other models, for example we may learn that trees hold onto X amount of carbon, that amount can then be easily used in other models. Break down the overall work into small bits that can be analyzed, then once the information is gleaned, we can build better more accurate future models.
     
  17. Denny Crane

    Denny Crane It's not even loaded! Staff Member Administrator

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    Some things you just can't model.

    In the auto industry, they model cars.

    Then they go out and crash real ones to see how safe they are.

    It would be cheaper to just crash model ones in software. But they don't.

    The models aren't good enough, and cars and car crashes are a tiny fraction of the complexity of the atmosphere over millions of years.
     
  18. Further

    Further Guy

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    I think they are wrong because the models are not reality. I understand this, but that does not meant that they aren't showing relevant information. One thing that is currently being looked at is that the ocean takes in more co2 than previously thought, so this meants that the results will take longer to show. However, it also means that the pH of the ocean will continue to change a little quicker than had been predicted leading to many of the things that we are seeing today with the dying coral reefs.

    These models aren't right, but that doesn't mean they are all wrong, it just means that there are chunks that are unaccounted for or only partially accounted for. But still enough has been happening from the global temp rising, to ocean pH changing to show that even if these models are off, they are still on the right track.
     
  19. Further

    Further Guy

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    But they learn a shitload from the models. They change bumpers, airbag positions, all sorts of stuff like that based on the efficacy of the models. But models will never exactly replicate the real world, they simply give evidence as to how the real world will react, so that smart people can learn from those lessens. You know, build a better car.
     
  20. Denny Crane

    Denny Crane It's not even loaded! Staff Member Administrator

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    What I think is the UAH (blue) and RSS (red) lines are reality and the rest are fantasy.

    They're not being used to understand things better. They're being used to urge people to take action because of the dire results they (incredibly inaccurately) forecast.

    So I ask, why on earth would you bank on the models as reason to go spend $trillions of dollars tilting at windmills and ruining peoples' standard of living in the process?
     

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