There's no precise formula or baseline. But it is at least a decadal average, so we won't officially pass it for five years, more if temperatures decrease from El Nino. But we're certainly on the way thereâ"you can only pass it by having periods above 1.5.

Decades ago, before global warming became obvious, it was clear that there would be a day of peak oil. At that point, whoever had the most reserves in the ground would win the planet because oil was vital, and whoever had the last drops for their war machine would win. So it was best to let others extract their reserves while holding on to your own.

Now that it's clear that burning even a fraction of the reserves we know about will alter life as we know it, it's a race to see who can extract their reserves the fastest because there'll always be enough oil for the war machine, but whoever hasn't extract their oil will be left with nothing.

The problem is that it's a game of chicken combined with Russian roulette. Whoever stops extracting too early misses out on all the money, but if too much oil is burned, someone will pay a heavy price. Like all gamblers, the rich and their political puppets think they'll be the ones to win and not pay the price. And if history is any lesson, the rich will probably win, and the poor will suffer...

I just ask Bill what he's doing about systematic racism in policing. He's stopped calling... And Ted from the firefighters union gets asked about convict firefighters. If there's an actual person on the other end of the line or standing at your door, engaging them with real issues is much more effective at making them go away than chasing them off your lawn. Their supervisor doesn't want their bubble burst, or else they might realize they're being exploited.

The problem with this is that there is no tracking of reasons for citation, like +1,-1 here. If you get a junk paper published, it will often be highly cited, all saying you're an idiot... Some fields in the social sciences use a "for/against" style in their citations, but the h-index does not capture those. A lot of very highly cited papers are also "method" papers. If ASTM/IEEE standards had an h-index, it would be huge and meaningless. And then there's the issue of missing citations (very convenient when one research group 'forgets' to cite their 'rival' group), incorrect citations, etc.

7.5e12*1e6g*334J/g = 2.5e21J, or 2.5 ZJ... But yes, since over those 26 years, the earth has absorbed about 350ZJ of excess energy, that's 0.7% of the total AGW, which, given that current models have total ice melt at ~4%, with the Antarctic Ice Shelves seeing the least impact, that seems about right for a quick check.

Hmm, I clock it at 7.5 exagrams? 7.5*1e12*1e6=7.5e18. The original paper has 7500 Gt, or 7500*1e9*1e6=7.5e18g.

-1, Confused?

That's not true. e.g., Teslas do not have spare wheels or jacks and are widely sold in California.

As an engineer, this is not really true. Science is about observing the world. Engineering is about changing it. Engineers are not scientists and don't use the scientific method for most of their work. I'm a research engineer, so I use the scientific method to develop engineering methods, but that's pretty niche. Yes, engineers take the basics of science and build on that, but in most fields, as much as scientists would love to claim that every other discipline is just applied science (as Wikipedia does), "applied science" really means two things: "How do I make the theory work in the real world?" and "How do I describe the real world using the theory?" For example, applied mathematics is about implementing numerical methods to solve fancy math with tractable calculations or about looking at a problem and describing it with math. It is the same with statistics and physics, so you end up with many "assume a spherical cow" type solutions. This is most clear in chemistry, where applied chemists often focus on a problem to determine what chemistry is taking place, while chemical engineering is more about making as much of something as possible... There's been almost no new actual science in the last century in civil engineering. This is not true in fields like electronic engineering, where quantum effects are "new."

The analogy I like to use is simple optimization. Science develops a theory of a function and a slope. Applied science tries to work out the slope of some actual function. Engineering asks what the maximum for the function is and tries to make a step up the slope.

So yes, there is some sense in which engineers test scientific theories, in that if the theory says the slope goes up this way, but you find it doesn't, you're going to question the theory, but this is not the goal of engineering.

As a side note: Engineers are also not technicians, as shows like the Big Bang Theory and lots of SciFi shows like to promote...

Because all investments have a risk?

Why worry about earthquakes when most of the land is in a FEMA flood zone, that's been underwaterbfor days at least once in the last two decades, and that's before any impacts from sea level rise, since most of the land is only a few feet above MSL...

This story from just yesterday couldn't have anything to do with this. That would be a coincidence.

The general term is "biochar". Lots of groups are looking at using it in concrete. Generally, in concrete, it is used as a replacement for fly ash since it is finer than the sand fraction. Depending on the source, it can have some pozzolanic effect, improving the strength of the concrete. However, different sources also have different levels of other minerals and metals, which impact the pH. Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) is very sensitive to pH, and so is the steel reinforcement in most concrete applications, so there is some concern for longevity. Despite this, because of the significant life-cycle GHG reductions and the (thankfully) rapid decline in fly ash sources, the concrete industry will probably move quite rapidly to using these materials as soon as standards allow them to. Because of the very limited availability of individual sources, my guess is that most of the material will be mixed and graded so that the biochar with the best properties is reserved for high-strength applications, and the rest is just used as a filler.

Not that anyone's steering this ship but anyway... What is needed is a pre-posting filter that looks at the content and past posts across the site. If the content looks like it will get modded to -1 with a high probability, then forbid posting it as AC. If posting logged in, warn the user that if this post is modded to -1, they will have their karma set to the minimum possible number. If users have poor karma, start their posts with a -1/-2 karma bonus.