Change of Climate
The writer can't be there this week, but this was the Westin Bali in Nusa Dua. December 3-14 the attached convention centre is site of the UN Climate Change Conference. It makes one want to be involved in Climate Science, at least for the week. The shop there sold a very skimpy swimsuit. The adjacent Sheraton and Melia Bali hotels are even more luxurious. Next we will see many other scientists concerned with climate.
Labels: Bali
posted by L. Riofrio at 9:02 PM
3 Comments:
They should hold the conference somewhere else like Fresno, Baghdad, Pyongyang or Cour d'Alene and see how many concerned "scientists" show up.
Or better yet, they can practice what they preach (to everyone else) and hold a teleconference instead!
But then they won't be able to go to international resorts on someone else's dime...
Nice view, but no skimpy suit pic! c'mon we see the space suit but no bikini!?
"... December 3-14 the attached convention centre is site of the UN Climate Change Conference. It makes one want to be involved in Climate Science, at least for the week. The shop there sold a very skimpy swimsuit. ..."
Seeing more skimpy bikini's are one good thing about global warming, anyway.
Apart from sea level rise and increasing areas of desert (which can be negated by increasing sea wall defenses, and by pumping desalinated water into deserts), the main problem of global warming is instabilities caused by warm ocean. Hurricanes can only form where the ocean temperature exceeds 27 C, and from memory the empirical formula for the relative number of hurricanes per unit area of ocean at temperature T is
(T - 27)^2.3
So the number of hurricanes produced in warm oceans increases as a very sensitive function of the water temperature. This is due to the role played by water evaporating from the hot ocean, in causing the formation of hurricanes. This is the big problem. People will just have to build stronger homes if the live near the hurricane belts. Reinforced concrete survives 100 miles per hour winds where wood frame buildings get blown away.
The concern about sea level rises is not really a problem, because much of Holland is below sea level. You just build up your sea defences to enable you to survive storms and spring tides. Global warming is slow enough that this can be done.
One thing I agree with Lubos Motl on is that using global warming as an excuse to tax everyone for taking aircraft flights and taxing big businesses so they raise their prices, is the way to damage the rate of economic and thus technological progress.
According to the sidebar on Dr Motl's site (as of 14 December 2007, the figures keep getting worse):
"Since 02/16/2005, the Kyoto Protocol has cost about $424,090,956,138 and reduced the temperature in 2050 roughly by 0.0043979782 °C. Every day, we buy -0.000005 Celsius degrees for one half of the LHC collider. JunkScience."
If that figure is correct (they seem to be reliable, see the evidence for them at this link), i.e. if we in Europe and the west (apart from the more sensible USA) have been spending $424 billion on higher taxes just to get 0.0044 C fall in temperature, then that is the biggest confidence trick ever, a real living example of the Goebbels/Hitler dictum that "the mass of the people will more easily fall prey to a big lie than a small one".
It is a total waste of money, money that could be better spent on the war against disease, space exploration, particle physics experiments, and education. Britain has been doing more than its share for global warming, and it's already starting to show in tax commitments. We have to get a grip. This global warming fashion is really a storm in a teacup. The hockey curve graph is true, and it's mainly due to water vapor and CO_2 from burning oil, coal, and gas, but it neglects all the far bigger temperature changes that have occurred in the history of this planet.
It's fashionable because it's all hyped and sold with emotions about a few polar bears who have to put up with more swimming when the ice melts under them.
The people who are coming up with the global warming hype don't have a solution that really works. It's just like Marxism. Marxism was supposed to be a cure for the perils of dictatorial democracy, the power of the majority over the minority. But it ended up just morphing into a new form of dictatorship which was even more oppressive and cruel in many ways. Yes, there is a problem of global warming, but the solution that these politicians are proposing is totally useless, money wasting, hype and trash. It's such a waste of money for nothing in return to tax people for taking holiday flights due to the CO_2 emitted (especially as this has NO DAMN EFFECT ON THE BIG POLLUTERS WHO CAN AFFORD THE TAXES, but causes hardship on those who can't then afford holidays), that it's a really cynical, lying, fraud.
It's like those rich confidence tricksters who go around collecting money for charity and steal all the money in "administrative expenses". When they are criticised, they then claim the person criticising them is against giving money to charity, when in fact it's the opposite.
The global warming fanatics should shut up until they have a real solution to the problem, or they should be honest enough to admit that there isn't a feasible, cost-effective real world solution (short of invading China, America and Russia and banning them from burning fossil fuels). If they admit this truth, then they can start spending money on increasing sea wall defenses, building hurricane shelters or stronger building regulations for hurricane zones, and dredging up sand to pile on isolated islands to stop them disappearing as sea levels rise.
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