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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2015 10:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

From the New York Times. I'm still waiting to serve crow to mrgybe on this issue--he was wrong on every aspect:

Quote:
The moderate global warming that has already occurred as a result of human emissions has quadrupled the frequency of certain heat extremes since the Industrial Revolution, scientists reported Monday, and they warned that a failure to bring greenhouse gases under control could eventually lead to a 62-fold increase in such heat blasts.

The planetary warming has had a more moderate effect on intense rainstorms, the scientists said, driving up their frequency by 22 percent since the 19th century. Yet such heavy rains could more than double later this century if emissions continue at a high level, they said.

“People can argue that we had these kinds of extremes well before human influence on the climate — we had them centuries ago,” said Erich M. Fischer, lead author of a study published Monday by the journal Nature Climate Change. “And that’s correct. But the odds have changed, and we get more of them.”

The study by Dr. Fischer and his colleague Reto Knutti, of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is not the first to attribute large-scale changes in extreme weather to human influence on the climate. But it is among the first to forecast, on a global scale, how those extremes might change with continued global warming.
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coboardhead



Joined: 26 Oct 2009
Posts: 4303

PostPosted: Tue Apr 28, 2015 8:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

LHDR wrote:
I
Alas, we are all too fallible:

“The Holy Father is being misled by ‘experts’ at the United Nations who have proven unworthy of his trust,” Joseph Bast, the president of the Heartland Institute [Koch funded, naturally], said in an interview. “Though Pope Francis’ heart is surely in the right place, he would do his flock and the world a disservice by putting his moral authority behind the United Nations’ unscientific agenda on the climate.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/28/world/europe/pope-francis-steps-up-campaign-on-climate-change-to-conservatives-alarm.html?_r=0


So, I wonder what else the Catholic Church is wrong about!
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Apr 29, 2015 2:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

There are constructive voices on the right--just rarely on this forum. The Reason Foundation is straight libertarian, as a matter of theology, and obsessive about public employees and pensions. But they are often insightful about the advantages of harnessing market forces instead of regulatory approaches to address problems. This is from their recent newsletter e-mail:

Quote:
Reason Energy and Environment Newsletter

April 2015

Edited by Julian Morris


Realistic Reforms That Might Help Solve California's Water Problem

California is suffering one of the worst droughts in the state's history. As water tables tumble and reservoirs dry up, Governor Jerry Brown signed an executive order on April 18 requiring a 25% reduction in domestic potable water use, to be implemented through the water companies and utilities supplying municipalities, along with subsidies to convert 50 million square feet of lawns and turf to "drought tolerant landscapes." But as Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey has pointed out, there are better ways to manage water that would be more efficient, more equitable, and not necessitate rationing by government.

A major part of the problem is that, according to a study by researchers at UC Davis and UC Merced published last year, water users in California have been granted the right to consume about five times the amount of water available in a normal rainfall year. This over-allocation, combined with bureaucratic restrictions on water trading and conservation, has resulted in farmers on average paying far lower prices for water than would be the case if water rights were better defined and the market were more open.

As a result, California farmers have been incentivized to grow water-hungry crops, such as alfalfa, rather than sell their water to users who would value it more highly. Meanwhile, during droughts, farmers without sufficient water end up paying whatever they can afford to buy water from the few rights holders able to sell it - at a price that is likely far higher than if the market were more open.

Unfortunately, while some farmers have more water than they can use but aren't able to sell it, others are unable to obtain enough water at any price and will see their crops fail and trees die as a result - causing unnecessary suffering and imposing a burden on taxpayers through payments from the US Department of Agriculture's Disaster Assistance Program.

Even worse than the restrictions on water trading imposed on agricultural users is the zero price paid for most "environmental" uses, which now account for about half of California's water use. When the price of a good is set at zero, demand is unconstrained. As Reason Foundation's Shikha Dalmia explains, "environmentalists ... have forced the state to abandon critical water-storage reservoir projects to avoid disruption of wildlife and ecosystems [and] divert 4.4 million acre-feet of water every year - enough to supply the same number of families - to restore water runs such as the San Joaquin River, allowing passage of salmon and other fish, among other environmental ends. Without paying a dime, environmentalists have taken control of nearly half of California's water."

So, what to do? Ron Bailey suggests three realistic reforms that could dramatically improve the situation:

"First, allow water banking. Under current regulations, holders of water rights cannot pump and store water underground during wet years that such entrepreneurs could make up shortfalls by selling later during dry years.

Second, streamline water transfer approvals. Every transfer transaction must now be lengthily evaluated every year by regulators, even though the new transactions are largely the same as the already-approved old transactions.

And third, establish dedicated water courts staffed with experienced judges to speed rights and allocation decisions and prevent forum shopping by plaintiffs' lawyers."

While these reforms would not address all the problems of the current system, they would likely yield far higher returns than Gov. Brown's top-down demand management approach.
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isobars



Joined: 12 Dec 1999
Posts: 20935

PostPosted: Wed Apr 29, 2015 6:45 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

coboardhead wrote:
So, I wonder what else the Catholic Church is wrong about!


My going to hell just because I'm not Catholic. (Don't bother denying that one; it's been beaten to death.)

Eating meat on Fridays (fish flesh is meat anyway). (Yeah, I know the church caved on that one, but only because it was being so blatantly ignored.)

Banning birth control. (Any moment not spent in sexual intercourse prevents conception. Even Catholics gotta work, eat, windsurf, etc.) Besides, many people simply can't afford another kid.

The obvious: effectively ignoring child abuse and just relocating the abuser.

If I knew more about it (or any other religion), I'm sure it would be easy to poke endless holes in any of them; that's why they use the word, holey so much, isn't it? It's a basic flaw in virtually any regimented institution. Fortunately, the Catholic Church is voluntary, even though many of its leaders and followers would deny that; even my Methodist minister tried that one on me ... once. UNfortunately, this is a bad time to be a Catholic, considering the genocide being waged against its practicioners by millions of extremists our cowardly president won't even call by name.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Wed Apr 29, 2015 10:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Occasionally Mike Fick is right.
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mrgybe



Joined: 01 Jul 2008
Posts: 5180

PostPosted: Wed Apr 29, 2015 10:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Congratulations Coboardhead. You managed to elicit some ignorant anti-Catholic commentary in a Global Cooling thread. Mission accomplished.
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Thu Apr 30, 2015 10:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Oh really, the Catholic bishops--and those in other countries--didn't cover up the child abuse that happened in their parishes? Too busy trying to block funding for birth control?
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techno900



Joined: 28 Mar 2001
Posts: 4161

PostPosted: Thu Apr 30, 2015 2:44 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mac,

Regarding your Calif. water story - It looks like management sucks, who is responsible? Fire their butts.

Self imposed crisis?
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Thu Apr 30, 2015 3:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Wrong. The California water story is constrained by perhaps a dozen different laws that do things that might have made sense in their time--in some cases over 100 years ago--but now constrain management decisions. I agree with much of what was suggested by the Reason foundation, particularly water marketing. We have to increase the cost of water to reflect its true cost and the cost of alternatives. But that will hurt agriculture. To be reasonable, those changes have to be gradual--they need to be phased in. At the moment, putting a fairer price on water is prevented by Constitutional Amendments proposed by anti-tax organizations.

Before the current take-over of the Republican party by know nothings who are unwilling to compromise, change would have been possible.

I am pretty sure that legislative changes will happen. But it is a little like making sausage...
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mac



Joined: 07 Mar 1999
Posts: 17742
Location: Berkeley, California

PostPosted: Mon May 18, 2015 12:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm sure that junk science can come up with a lying explanation:

http://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-study-shows-antarctica-s-larsen-b-ice-shelf-nearing-its-final-act
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