Disqus - Latest Comments for Mondoman

Re: 5 of Mike O'Brien's Most Memorable Moments | Seattle Met

Mondoman — Mon, 18 Feb 2019 21:01:45 -0000

Mike seemed to prioritize the wants of tent-camping addicts/petty bike thieves/car prowlers over basics like keeping trash/needles/human waste off our sidewalks and parks.

Re: Delta's Mobile App Now Checks You in Automatically

Mondoman — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 00:57:08 -0000

Some of us (Silver Medallion) are restricted to confirmed free upgrades starting 24 hours before flight time, but can't upgrade if we're already checked in. That's the problem with auto-checkin.

Re: Delta's Mobile App Now Checks You in Automatically

Mondoman — Mon, 11 Jun 2018 00:53:14 -0000

At least for the Android version of the app, there doesn't seem to be an opt-out for this as of the June 2018 app update. It's terrible to not allow it to be turned off, since free Medallion upgrades need to be selected before checking in. This will just mean having to call Delta to get the upgrade to Comfort Plus.

I've avoided the auto-checking in recent months by using the desktop website, refusing to check in when logging in, then adjusting my seat given the free upgrades available and only checking in after that.

Re: As Seattle ‘head tax’ debate rages, Amazon eyes major expansion in nearby city

Mondoman — Thu, 17 May 2018 19:11:21 -0000

keep - even Seattle's self-selected "survey" last year had half of its respondents reporting living in the area for less than 5 years, and less than 12% indicated that too high/increased rent was what pushed them into homelessness.

The homeless advocacy groups like Share/Wheel and LIHI resist gathering accurate information on the homeless, presumably because it would show that the majority have drug addiction and/or mental health issues, and recently came from outside the area to Seattle.

Re: If Amazon puts HQ2 in D.C. area, employees leaving Seattle would feel some gain, but plenty of pain

Mondoman — Thu, 17 May 2018 18:44:41 -0000

If you need to win a lottery to get into a good school in DC, that doesn't seem like a "good school system"

Re: Safe Routes to Schools Activists Demand More Money from Murray Plan | Seattle Met

Mondoman — Wed, 03 Jun 2015 17:15:30 -0000

I had to laugh out loud at Josh's silly claim that "...Really, rather than meeting new development with a mitigation tax, new
growth could be viewed as beneficial to the city’s transportation goals...."

Unless you believe that all the new growth will be bought by absentee owners who won't actually come TO Seattle, Josh, that new growth will bring lots more traffic, including cars, buses, bikes, and so forth. It's only a benefit to the transportation goals if the people don't show up!

I'm pretty sure you're smart enough to realize that, so I have to conclude that you were intentionally telling a fib to try to fool us. Shame on you :)

Re: Google Engineers Explain Why They Stopped R&D in Renewable Energy

Mondoman — Sat, 22 Nov 2014 16:39:14 -0000

Biowatt, the German government has just decided to scrap its 2020 carbon-reduction commitments because they need to build coal plants (not just solar/wind) in order to replace the power from the nuclear plants they are shutting down. Doesn't seem like achieving a "desired goal" to me...

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Tue, 11 Nov 2014 04:45:00 -0000

It's right there in the IPCC report. Perhaps you should read it again? :)

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 20:07:27 -0000

Perhaps you should do some investigation as to the facts before assuming that most Republicans don't believe in climate change.
Don't forget that belief in anthropogenic climate change is a separate issue.

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 19:45:16 -0000

Whether it's a downtrend or just a drastic slowdown in the previous uptrend doesn't change the fact that the models didn't predict it and can't explain it. The key point is that it points out that the current models are not properly representing the climate system, and so cannot be relied upon to accurately predict surface air temperatures in 80 or 100 years' time.

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 19:41:13 -0000

I believe you've somewhat mischaracterized the situation:
"2.) The content of our atmosphere has changed slightly but
significantly over the past 100-300 years, such that the atmosphere now
lets in the same amount of light, but traps about 1% more heat inside. "
Presumably you are referring only to greenhouse gases such as CO2 and methane. However, other aspects of the atmosphere, such as the poorly-understood clouds, affect the earth's albedo, and it's my understanding that we don't have good global cloud records more than about 40 years old, much less 100-300.
"3.)
The dominant reason the atmospheric content has changed is
anthropogenic burning of carbon-based fuels, which cause the 'greenhouse
effect' listed in #2."
This conclusion is solely model-based, and since those models have already failed to predict or explain the recent 15-year drastic slowdown in surface temperature warming or the sudden rapid reduction of seasonal minimum Arctic sea ice extent and its partial rebound, they cannot be relied upon to provide the full representation of the climate system needed for attribution studies. Thus, we know that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for some warming -- whether it's closer to 10% or to 100% over the past 40 years is unknown.
"4.) The increased heat to the Earth's budget
interacts with the climate in many, complex ways, which are often poorly
understood and measured. However, the heat IS there, and that means
it's going to alter the planet's environment and climate in some way.
Many of the most likely ways (like sea level rise) are harmful or
uncomfortable for humans."
Sea level rise happens so slowly that it will only have significant consequences to our civilization in hundreds or thousands of years at the earliest. Thus, having increased energy go into the ocean rather than the atmosphere is a much less negative effect.

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 19:17:40 -0000

"what do we do NOW when talking to people who have already formed an
opinion that we scientists may not just simply be mistaken, but are
outright and intentionally LYING?"

More obvious self-policing by the climate science community would certainly be helpful. Outsiders look at climate science and ask questions such as:

1) Why was the scientist who emailed his colleagues to ask that they delete any copies of his earlier email in order to destroy evidence (as revealed by the Climategate emails) not sanctioned either formally or informally by his colleagues/community?

2) Why are prominent paleoclimate reconstruction researchers not formally or informally sanctioned for not archiving or sharing the detailed observations underlying their published work (e.g. Dr. Thompson and ice core data)?

3) Why do paleoclimate reconstruction researchers not collaborate with statisticians and use justified and tested statistical techniques rather than ad-hoc, untested procedures, often incompletely described (e.g. Dr. Mann)?

Any of these situations in biomedical research would quickly result in sanction, loss of community respect, or worse. In fact, there's even a subfield (biostatistics) to make sure that the statistics used in biomedical work are appropriate and tested -- why not in climate science?

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 18:53:38 -0000

Come now, no need to cultivate straw beings :)
Go read the main posts at some place like judithcurry.com (not the commenters).

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 18:50:33 -0000

What exactly ARE "the basic principles of climate change are more agreed upon within the
community of those who study them"?
From what I can tell, they're pretty unexceptional and not very relevant to public policy: Earth land surface temps have been gradually warming over the last century. Human-caused activities are increasing the percentage of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (especially CO2) at a rate that we will have doubled the pre-industrial concentration near the end of this century. CO2 and other greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere because of their physical properties.
Exactly how much warming, how fast, and other knock-on effects on global ice, precipitation, storms, etc seem pretty clearly NOT currently agreed upon.

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 18:42:00 -0000

You note of the IPCC that "They're VERY explicit as to how likely they believe they are to be right." That's important of course, but it's informed opinion, not scientific calculation. When numbers like "95% certainty" get publicized, people naturally assume that they're the results of scientific calculations, thus give them more weight than they are due, and don't think of alternate possibilities such as groupthink.

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 18:38:06 -0000

Errr, the recent 97% Cook et al paper turned out to be invalid because of severe methodological flaws. I'm not aware of any study that surveyed 95% of people who study land ice in polar regions about any conclusions (a very small number of scientists in any case), nor any survey of attribution researchers (again, a very small number of scientists).
In any case, the model-based attribution studies have big flaws, as described above.
Sea levels have been rising for at least centuries without civilization-endangering ill effects, and none are predicted for at least the next century AFAIK.

So, bottom line: we DO have overall agreement that we've got more energy accumulating in the climate system, and not much agreement on any drastic consequences as a result over the next hundred years.

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 18:29:00 -0000

If you look at the IPCC reports, the degree of confidence (e.g. 95%) is purely an informed guesstimate by the IPCC authors, not an actual statistical calculation.

The human influence attribution analysis is based solely on the models, which have already proved unable to predict or account for the 15-year drastic slowdown in surface temperature increases, even with increased CO2 concentrations, and have proved unable to predict or account for the rapid decrease in seasonal minimum Arctic sea ice extent and its partial recovery over the last decade or so.

Thus, claims that the models implement all relevant factors/processes correctly would seem to be disproved. Similarly, the above attribution analyses, which also depend on the models implementing correctly all relevant factors/processes, would seem to now be unsupported.

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 18:10:12 -0000

Just as allegations of broad conspiracy among scientists are far-fetched, it's important to remember that scientists haven't been working in individual bubbles without knowledge of each others' work. Thus, groupthink is a real hazard, as happened with the many decades of ridicule and dismissal of the fundamental role of Helicobacter pylori infection in causing stomach ulcers.

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 18:05:20 -0000

Reythia, from what I've read, the "consensus" is so general that most skeptics would sign on to it as well, whereas the claims for drastic, immediate societal action rest on much shakier conclusions.
My understanding of the "consensus" is that on average, surface temperatures have been rising during the past century, that human-caused activities are increasing the concentrations of greenhouse gases (chiefly CO2) in the atmosphere, and that this tends to warm the earth's climate because of the gases' properties.
The calls for immediate societal action, on the other hand, presuppose certain climate sensitivity values and the correctness of 100-year predictions of GCMs not validated on future data (i.e. data not known at the time of the model's creation).

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 17:55:34 -0000

Errr, I've only heard the environmental zealots try to smear their political opponents with shameful terms like "denier".

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 17:51:27 -0000

Perhaps a better way to look at it is to consider that the current GCMs did not predict either the rapid melting of summer Arctic ice (and partial recovery in the past two seasons), or the 15-year drastic slowdown in the rate of surface temperature rise (in the face of a large increase in atmospheric CO2), and as yet climate science has no accepted explanation for either.
In addition, the climate models seem to predict substantially higher climate sensitivity to CO2 (i.e. faster warming) than do other approaches based on real-world measurements.
Given that, how can we have high confidence that these same climate models' predictions of surface temperatures a hundred or more years from now are accurate, and not overstated by a few degrees Centigrade?

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 17:42:26 -0000

Rather than analogous to foreseeing the future WWII, it's instead analogous to the anti-nuclear weapons protesters of the Cold War era, who vastly overestimated the chances of a nuclear war and so wasted much effort on misguided demands for immediate change.

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 17:35:35 -0000

kazoo, hysteria also seems often present in the anti-science campaign against so-called Genetically Modified Organisms.

For example, it constantly amazes me that people are perfectly happy to eat foods generated by exposing seeds to massive doses of radiation, or foods which have had their entire genomes hybridized with those from another species, somehow calling those "natural", while forsaking foods with tiny, well-understood changes in their DNA.

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 17:29:37 -0000

And yet it's often true in climate science. This is another indicator of how immature the field is.

Re: Striving for a

Mondoman — Sat, 08 Nov 2014 17:27:33 -0000

Come on, Gopher! There's no need to cheapen this discussion by using the term "denier" (with its association of Holocaust denial) for your political opponents. The English language has plenty of alternate epithets to offer -- perhaps "dissident", "contrarian", "refusenik", or even "idiot"?