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Two Google Engineers Say Renewables Can't Cure Climate Change 652

_Sharp'r_ writes Two Stanford PhDs, Ross Koningstein and David Fork, worked for Google on the RE<C project to figure out how to make renewables cheaper than coal and solve climate change. After four years of study they gave up, determining "Renewable energy technologies simply won't work; we need a fundamentally different approach." As a result, is nuclear going to be acknowledged as the future of energy production?

Comment Re:Problem? (Score 1) 186

In fact, let me expand further on that Iteritive part, as it refers both to the process of refining the models, but also to the models themselves.
and better explains how you ( Curunir_wolf ) are wrong.

Again referecing the quoted text:

Climate models, however, cannot predict the timing and intensity of La Niña and El Niño, natural cycles that greatly affect global temperature in the short-term by dictating the amount of heat available at the ocean surface.
By failing to account for these and other factors, the CMIP5 collection of climate models erroneously simulate more warming of Earth's surface than would be expected.
When the input into the climate models is adjusted to take into consideration both the warming and cooling influences on the climate that actually occurred, the models demonstrate remarkable agreement with the observed surface warming in the last 16 years.

That last statement is the important part.
The models themselves are iteritive. That means starting at say the year 1900 the model simulates a period of time, lets say one year. Its given a starting condition and then spits out an end state after one year. That end state then becomes the starting condition for the next iteration for the next simulated year. And so on down the road.

This leads to to a Garbage In, Garbage Out situation. Which is where that article about the mismatch and overestimation between models and observations caused by things like El Nino comes in. Because those events arent predictable they werent well represented in the models that paper examined. This led to a mismatch in the starting conditions the model would use and actual observations, resulting in an expectation that would deviant from observations, and that deviation would grow over time as more events occured. Basically we're talking a compounding error over time (or how 0.0005 arc seconds of angle deviation in a line produces no discernible deviation over very short distances, but stretched out to a few light years, and the deviation becomes quite significant).

And thats what those articles in skeptical science were showing: that when initial starting conditions for runs of the model covering periods of time immediately after such unpredictable events in the real world were adjusted to account for such events, ie include them in the starting conditions for the next run, the model's predictions were brought in line with observations.

But like I said.
You didnt bother to read the articles.
So you missed that part.

Comment Re:Problem? (Score 1) 186

No, because its not true, for all the reasons i just stated int he other post. ie, you linked to something based on the title without understanding what it was saying, and without realizing that the provided links already addressed what you tried to say and accomplish.

and yes, there very much IS a correlation between temps and CO2. therefore, your assertion cannot be acknoledged, and to state otherwise at this point is to blatantly lie.
ie, you are lying. and you are a crackpot.

Comment Re:Problem? (Score 1) 186

the statement "the models do match the observations" is factual in nature. that is, it is falsiable. it is either true, or it is not.

I said it is. and provided evidence for that.
its not a proganda site, but even if it were, it wouldnt matter.
Factual or falsifiable statements stand or fall on their own on the basis of evidence.

And you failed to provide any evidence that the models do not match the observations.
What you did, was to link without understanding. All you did was cherry pick one paper published in Nature, out of the dozens they have, that sounded like it confirmed your beliefs based on the title. Which is what a lot of deniers did, without undestanding what the paper is actualyl saying. That paper is about one data set, specifically the HadCRUT4 set. One of the major factors in that papers conclusions is El Nino/La Nina events that have both amplified and dampened temperatures in relation to expectations.

If you'd even bvothered to read the provided links you'd have seen that they actually deal specifically with the data set that that paper is about. And they talk about that dataset's relation to both models and actual observations. in other words, i already addressed your concerns, but you dont know that because you didnt bother to actually read before linking something that you dont understand. So you didnt see statements that address the issues raised in that paper, such as:

Climate models, however, cannot predict the timing and intensity of La Niña and El Niño, natural cycles that greatly affect global temperature in the short-term by dictating the amount of heat available at the ocean surface.
By failing to account for these and other factors, the CMIP5 collection of climate models erroneously simulate more warming of Earth's surface than would be expected.
When the input into the climate models is adjusted to take into consideration both the warming and cooling influences on the climate that actually occurred, the models demonstrate remarkable agreement with the observed surface warming in the last 16 years.

You missed another Nature article ( http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncli... ) that partially address the concerns in the one you linked, and is about better addressing El Nino/La Nina events.

You also didnt see this handy GIF, which clearly illustrates the situation, and that the models are still within the expected envelope: http://skepticalscience.com//p...

That paper you linked wasnt an indictment of global warming or the models.
It was a climate scientist saying to his fellows "hey guys, we under/overestimated a few things, this is what we need to tweak in the models, especially in regards to El Nino/La Nina".

This isnt a definititive process, it is an iteritive one. And as time goes on, the tweaks get smaller and smaller, and the conformance between observations and expectations gets closer and closer. But some things cannot be accurately predicted yet, specifically El Nino and La Nina events which have a very large impact on observations and carry a significant impact on global weather and climate. It appeared for a bit that an El Nino was building for this year, though it never materialized, which would have dramatically altered global observations, making various places hotter, cooler, wetter, or drier than normal. These events cause short term spikes (higher highs, lower lows) in observations, but are not themselves invalidations of either observations or models.

Comment Re:I just don't understand (Score 2) 1128

The bigger issue is that particular departments history of racial discrimination.
At this point, and in that context, Brown/Wilson doesnt even matter.
It was simply the straw that broke the camel's for that town, where they decided they'd had enough

They still need to ahve that discussion.
They need to resolve that department's problem with discrimination.
or else this is all going to happen all over again in the future.

Comment Re: Pathetic (Score 2) 1128

the prosecutor failed to recuse himself even though he has a definite history of siding with police and being lax in regards to charging or investigating them. you cant really say he did his level best to preserve the ideals of justice. he slow walked the entire process, didnt explain things in court for the record, there were leaks to the press from his office, all damning and prejudicial to the proceedings...

I'd be content to accept the official desicion if there werent so many problems with this particular Grand Jury proceeding.

and the physical evidence may seem to point towards it being justified, but that also doesnt excuse the fact this particular police department has a history of racial abuse, and that they reacted extremely poorly to the protests, putting further racial animus on display, caught on camera by the press. this incident was simply the tipping point for this town.

unfortuantely that whole discussion has been lost int he noise over Brown/Wilson, and rather than having the discussion they need to have, its going to go on the back burner. and erupt again further down the road.

Comment Re:Google doesn't have a monopoly on ANYTHING. (Score 1) 334

1- It is clear that you are completely ignorant of the definitions of the words "socialist", "communist", and "Soviet".
--

2- It isn't the US that broke Germany's back. It was Russia. And Hitler's own obsession with it. We dont teach it in our history books nearly as well as we should. And people like you are poorer for it. There is no doubt that we contributed much of the technological might to the fight to counter the German's own (and even then we found just how far ahead of us they really were after the war).

But the numbers, the sheer numbers of attrition, both allied and axis, were provided by the Russians.
88% of all German casulaties were on the Russian Front.

The Western Front was nothing comapred to the Russian Front. There's a reason being "sent to the Russian Front" was considered a death sentence and used as a threat within Germany. On the Russian Front fighting was "between 400 German and Soviet divisions on the Eastern Front for four years. The front itself spanned 1,600 km. In the meantime, the fighting on the Western Front involved 15-20 divisions at most." ( http://www.globalresearch.ca/w... )

It as the Battle of Kursk that turned the tide of the war when a German advance was stopped for the first time before achieving its objectives, in one of the largest battles in human history. The Soviets incurred more 250,000 killed and 600,000 wounded. The Germans suffered 200,00 total casulaties, both fatal and wounded. One million casualties, in a single battle.

Total Russian casualties for the war would be between 20 and 30 MILLION, far larger than any other country except China (10-20 million), and comprising nearly half of all casualties in the European theater.

Keep in mind only a small portion of Germany's military might made life very difficult for all of the western allies (US, UK, France, etc), while the bulk of Germany's army was fighting Russia. If Hitler hadn't tried to take Russia, if he hadn't broken his own treaty with them, nothing the US did would have mattered. It was Russia that removed the German Army's will and capability to fight. It was Russia that absorbed the bulk of Hitlers might and eventually, slowly, beat him back.
It was Russia that won WWII.
--

3- You are troll:

You dont know basic facts.
You substitute your own bigoted opinions for facts.
You pass those opinions off as facts.
You then denigrate people who point that out.

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