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So let me preface this by saying I am not trying to be facetious.

On what basis do we say "not warmer than today"? I know there is a lot of research that has been done demonstrating warming in the last several decades. Is there any research that has been done to determine optimum temperature?

Huge tracts of land in Canada and Russia are plagued by short growing seasons. Would a longer growing season in these regions allow us to grow more food to feed the (7 billion?) people of earth?

Or would cooling the earth make Africa better able to feed their own people?

Has anyone ever tried to quantify this?

Well, in the last two thousand years, we've had the Roman Warm Period, the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. So we've had some genuinely large variation.

How do we pick a specific mean temperature that doesn't tick off somebody, somewhere? Do we look to cool equatorial regions to lessen droughts? Or do we warm temperate regions to prolong the growing season? Who decides what the climate optimum is?

If we're going to make an engineering target, then we have to have a means to choose the proper end result.

Sure. Let's engineer it. Just tell me what the optimum global mean temperature is, and I'll get right on it.

(It's no more difficult than any of the other projects that I've been assigned. "Invent a machine that can do X. At a lower cost than a worker in China."

Oops. NASA isn't getting 6.3 Million in rent per year, they are saving 6.3 million in Maintenance costs per year. They are getting something like 16M/year in rent.

Yeah. That's a hardship.

"While this arrangement did not cause an economic loss to NASA or DLA-Energy, it did result in considerable savings for H211 and engendered a sense of unfairness and a perception of favoritism toward H211 and its owners. "

So nobody lost money. It sounds like Google found a way to save money (thus being good stewards of corporate cash).

In 2011 Google offered to pay a big chunk of restoration costs for the hanger, and NASA instead decided to sell or lease it. It was used for Star Trek in 2009, but other than that it seems to have sat empty.

So instead of an empty unused hanger, NASA is getting 6.3 million per year for the next 60 years.

I really don't see who is losing anything here.

Idiots. They should have used i and j.
Or better yet, give self-documenting variable names so as to create legible code.

Yep. If I can see farther than others, it's only because I stand on the shoulders of hobbits.

I've been programming/copying code since 1988.

I started with example code from, jeez, Turbo Pascal 4.0. Find an example. Modify it to fit my needs. I got to learn C on the job about two years later. I had some Microsoft C reference book. Lots of programming examples. Then x86 Assembler. By then I was lifting code out of one section of the project I was working on, and putting it somewhere else.

Then Unix kernel work on a trusted system. "Oh, look. That same privilege-checking routine is used in about a zillion places throughout the kernel. Why do I need to write something new and different, when we already have a routine that works? Oh yeah, I don't."

Somewhere along the way, Google became a thing. It made coding easier because you could simply search for what you were trying to accomplish. Chances are someone has done something similar. (Thanks guy who wrote FullDuplexSerial, and SPI interface routines for the Parallax Propeller...)

I'm not certain why Duke wants to punish these guys. They are figuring out how to get things done in a timely manner without reinventing the wheel over and over again.

The Prophet would be proud.

Or not. Depending on which faction you ask.

Even under the FAA's proposed new stricter definition, what these guys were flying was NOT a drone. It was a model aircraft.

Ãoe(1) capable of sustained flight in the atmosphere; (2) flown within visual line of sight of the person operating the aircraft; and (3) flown for hobby or recreational purposes.Ã

As a model aircraft, it is outside of FAA flight rules. (The FAA published suggested guidelines, but these do not carry any enforcement weight as they are only recommendations.)

Actually the sig is from a Star Wars:Expanded Universe novel. From Han Solo. I just thought it was fun.

Yep. Think tanks are often in it for the money. Nothing evil about money. I think both sides of the debate have their liars and their fools. (Not saying Bengtsson was either. He certainly has the CV to not be called out as a fool. I find it unsettling that so many on one side of the debate have jumped out to do so.)

Whether or not Bengtsson would have fit in at GWPF is unclear. We won't know. He wasn't really given the opportunity to find out.

Anti-climate?

How can one be anti-climate? Does the "Global Warming Policy Foundation" advocate for elimination of climate?

[sarcasm off]

From thegwpf.org "The Global Warming Policy Foundation is unique. We are an all-party and non-party think tank and a registered educational charity which, while open-minded on the contested science of global warming, is deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated."

As I understand (from a very short reading), GWPF believes that the climate is changing, but debates whether the cost of measures to mediate that change outweigh the cost to adapt to that change.

It would seem like they would be in need of qualified scientist (say a former director at the Max Planck Institute...?) to help them accurately quote facts.

A 10% increase in atmospheric CO2 does not equate to a 10% increase in temperature. Not by a long shot. According to the IPCC, a _DOUBLING_ of CO2 will lead to an increase in temperature of between 1.5 and 3 degrees. (With a lot of debate as to where this number lies. The IPCC itself has declined to issue a "best guess").

The current rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 is somewhere between 2-3 ppm/year. (http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/#mlo_growth) At this rate, (and even taking into account that there is acceleration in the rate), the 400ppm will double in somewhere around 130 years.

So even at the more extreme case (3 degrees per doubling of CO2), we are looking at 1 degree increase in temp every 43 years.

I'm not really certain that this equates to a "race" to get poultry to adapt. (Especially if it would just mean a slow migration of poultry farming to more northern areas.)

So you're saying that the Stradivarius is the single coil pickup of violins? (ie Fender Stratocaster)

(And you were expecting it to sound more Gibsony?)

And I'm an idiot. That was Eugene Levy.

Crap.

Now I'll go feel sad. And stupid.