patrick.net

stereotomy says

CO2 concentrations less than 200 ppm are nearly fatal to plants. During ice ages they get way too low to support plant life.

Yes, and this leads to a paradox. During the North American ice age, the continent was heavily populated with large herbivores like woolly mammoths, mastodons, rhinos, and horses. How did an ice environment support enough plants to feed all these giants?

Another mystery comes from the fossil of a dragonfly with a 4 foot wing span. Since insects breath through spiracles, they are size limited by how much oxygen they can infuse through what is essentially a tunnel to cells. So how could such a large insect exist? On a PBS "Eons" show, the lady explained that the atmosphere had twice as much oxygen at the time that could support that dragonfly and many other giant insects. If that is so, where did that oxygen go? It did not convert to CO2, since CO2 is so rare in today's atmosphere that if all the CO2 was broken down into carbon and oxygen, it would not release enough oxygen to to increase oxygen levels by even 1%. And if the atmosphere was 40% oxygen, imagine the epic forest fires, unless the plants of the era were very damp club mosses or very damp pithy structures.

HeadSet says

the fossil of a dragonfly with a 4 foot wing span

Can you imagine that hitting your windshield of getting stuck in your radiator or AC condenser?

WookieMan says

Who fucking cares? Let's just make shit more efficient.

Yes in the 80's it was all about fuel conservation to preserve energy for future generations. But the problem with that, it didn't divide people, or give the sensible people mental wedgies as they navigated the lies. As there were none, it was all based on science, facts and economics.

Global Warming Larping, turned out to be a great way to get bottom feeding Libtard morons, on board to okeydoke everything that Stupid dumb fuck Al Gore said in his Larpamentary.

NDrLoR says

HeadSet says

the fossil of a dragonfly with a 4 foot wing span

Can you imagine that hitting your windshield of getting stuck in your radiator or AC condenser?

I would be worried of it stealing my kids!

NDrLoR says

HeadSet says

the fossil of a dragonfly with a 4 foot wing span

Can you imagine that hitting your windshield of getting stuck in your radiator or AC condenser?

Today's dragonflies feast on mosquitos. I would be more worried about the mosquitos a 4 foot wingspan dragonfly would eat.

A conspiracy theory:

Plants can not use CO2 if its concentration falls below ca. 100 ppm in atmosphere, and they suffer even at somewhat higher levels. These lower levels were approached in recent geologic times (minimum of ca. 180 ppm). If plants die, all multi-cellular life will likely die.

May be plants and/or aliens farm us so we would increase CO2 levels in atmosphere???

Remember quote from Kurt Vonnegut:

“Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.”

Bd6r says

Plants can not use CO2 if its concentration falls below ca. 100 ppm in atmosphere,

Yes. Now notice how Venus and Mars have atmospheres that are nearly totally CO2. The young Earth was likely that way as well. Photosynthesis over the millions of years has pulled all that CO2 out and gave us the 20% Oxygen atmosphere. All that oil/coal/gas in the ground is composed of carbon that was once CO2 in the atmosphere.

HeadSet says

And if the atmosphere was 40% oxygen, imagine the epic forest fires,

I've seen 25% oxygen declared the level of fires till there's no damp fuel left to reach or the oxygen is burned back down. Not to mention, such concentrations of oxygen are harmful to life long term. It's past a point of diminishing returns for air breathing life and well into biologically overwhelming free radical territory.

Tenpoundbass says

My predictions that water would come from land and not from the sea has been far more correct than any Global Warming, Climate Change, Sea rise bullshit.
The ocean is peaked out at 30K feet deep. It just can't give any more. The pressure pumps the water back into the crust,

You are not even wrong.

HeadSet says

es, in the same way that a Creation Science type sees plenty of evidence that Noah's arc existed

Except, NOT in the same way at freaking ALL. There is no "because God/Al Gore/Greta Asperg says" in my worldview. I'm nothing if not an iconoclast, willing to attack even "my side's" own sacred cows toward the goal of removing BS. People who are actual allies always seem to mistake this as "being totally bought in to the other side's rhetoric" and double down on weak claims that work against our important common goals. The post concluding the girl who died of an aneurysm was 100% certainly caused by the covid vax is a fine example of this.

Automan Empire says

The post concluding the girl who died of an aneurysm was 100% certainly caused by the covid vax is a fine example of this.

With what percentage of certainty do you think the healthy young woman who died shortly after the jab was caused by the jab?

Not expecting a cogent answer.

Onvacation says

Automan Empire says

The post concluding the girl who died of an aneurysm was 100% certainly caused by the covid vax is a fine example of this.

With what percentage of certainty do you think the healthy young woman who died shortly after the jab was caused by the jab?

Not expecting a cogent answer.

I laid it out pretty plainly upthread that there is no info to go on, other than what has been copypasted to 3 websites. Researching the woman herself doesn't yield any new covid-related information, and doesn't show anyone who knew her personally hanging on the question of whether the VAX caused it. It COULD have been ruptured by sequelae of the vax, it could have been completely independent. THERE IS NO FURTHER INFORMATION TO WORK TOWARD A DIFFERENTIAL ON THIS QUESTION. Therefore, I don't assign ANY percentage to it. Like many complex and uncertain issues, I imagine constellations of probabilities. Arbitrarily assigning a 0-100 precentage of certainty introduces bias to the consideration of the matter internally, and communicates a nonexistent level of certainty, and a suite of presuppositions freight on board, to anyone who hears such a number expressed.

Some people can't seem to live with any level of uncertainty. They'll settle on uncertain answers because the cognitive dissonance of feeling uncertain is to THEIR VALUES somehow less bad than the cognitive dissonance of realizing one has incorporated a falsehood as true, which has far reaching epistemic implications toward everything else one believes as "true."

SIDE NOTE TO PATRICK about the site. The quote function here is better than many websites. If possible, can you someday add bold, italic, and underline buttons, even just to drop HTML tags at the cursor, to make all modalities of emphasis as expedient as all caps in the heat of typing? Thanks.

Automan Empire says

If possible, can you someday add bold, italic, and underline buttons, even just to drop HTML tags at the cursor, to make all modalities of emphasis as expedient as all caps in the heat of typing? Thanks.

you know there is the ability to do this. Just XML.

<i>italics</i>
<u>underline</u>
<b>bold</b>

I also fucking hate XML if you regard this as a poor solution. XML is the stupidest, most cumbersome markup there is. When you close a tag, you MUST close the last tag you opened, so there's needless redundancy, and for some fucking stupid reason, 60 years ago (about when SGML was created) this was thought it's less likely to create errors, instead of more.

Automan Empire says

SIDE NOTE TO PATRICK about the site. The quote function here is better than many websites. If possible, can you someday add bold, italic, and underline buttons, even just to drop HTML tags at the cursor, to make all modalities of emphasis as expedient as all caps in the heat of typing? Thanks.

Thanks, I've had this on my list for a long time. I'll bump up its priority.

Of course CO2 is a greenhouse gas. People pump it into their green houses all-the-time!

Automan Empire says

I've seen 25% oxygen declared the level of fires till there's no damp fuel left to reach or the oxygen is burned back down. Not to mention, such concentrations of oxygen are harmful to life long term. It's past a point of diminishing returns for air breathing life and well into biologically overwhelming free radical territory.

35% Oxygen Atmosphere in the Carboniferous, largest flora ever recorded. Trees were often 100+ feet tall, some approaching 150 feet.

Thanks for the lignite, Stigmaria!

Fire played an extensive role in Carboniferous era ecosystems:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0031018294900051

... and the high prevalence of oxygen made large creatures (reptiles with inefficient lung systems) metabolism more viable. The decline in oxygen, which was rather sudden, is often suspected as one of the main reasons for the reduction for the mass extinction event following the end of the Pennsylvanian Epoch and the beginning of the Permian

The South Pole has just recorded the coldest season ever recorded.

Hence the brilliant south park episode with al gore and his imaginary manbearpig! These leftoids are dangerous morons

That wasn’t all ABC News thought would be going on by 2015 as predicted in its 2008 news special entitled Earth 2100. As Newsbusters’ Scott Witlock reports, the news department also claimed that by 2015 we’d be paying $9 per gallon for gasoline, that milk would cost $13 a gallon, and that many other parts of the US would be under water thanks to that “settled science.”

Thanks to Biden's cancelling the Keystone pipeline etc, I saw $6 gas on Sand Hill Road today.

And another item: Google/Youtube to demonetize videos that point shit like this out.

https://patrick.net/post/1341771/2021-10-08-google-and-youtube-to-demonetize-climat

CONSENSUS!!

Fuck demonetization. Citing facts is a firing squad offense.

Patrick says

That wasn’t all ABC News thought would be going on by 2015 as predicted in its 2008 news special entitled Earth 2100. As Newsbusters’ Scott Witlock reports, the news department also claimed that by 2015 we’d be paying $9 per gallon for gasoline, that milk would cost $13 a gallon, and that many other parts of the US would be under water thanks to that “settled science.”

Thanks to Biden's cancelling the Keystone pipeline etc, I saw $6 gas on Sand Hill Road today.

Cancelling the pipeline does not stop the flow of oil. It is still transported by rail, like it always has been. Who cares if pipelines are more cost and environmentally friendly.

Oh, billionaire Warren Buffet does, as he owns the railroad. Also, a big democrat donor.

Environmentalists don't protest shipping oil by rail because they are not paid to.

They will pretend nothing happened and pick up where they left off once the next below average snow winter rolls in.

Tahoe got fucking pounded with snow so that Interstates 80 and 50 had to be closed for days and required chains for many more, and wine country has its rivers gushing from continuous rains.

They will pivot the same they did in the past when they cried globull warming, and then it got colder for a few years: they start talking about how the weather and climate is now so unpredictable and chaotic, and its all because of XYZ. Oddly, even though most people know that the weather has been chaotic and unpredictable their entire lives of many decades, they will lap it up due to recency bias.

"why climate change has placed us on the cliff of crisis: The recent unprecedented weather storms has made reservoirs so full they may catastrophically overflow. Dams are at their upper limits such that emergency overflow valves that are reserved for the utmost emergencies are now being opened by emergency workers, working overtime, scrambling to open them to avoid catastrophe. Experts agree that if the valves aren't opened in time, millions could die of thirst in the wake of a water system failure."

Shit like that^^

mell says

Remember when this winter started with good rains in.the west all these articles by climate "scientists" and globahomo agitprop "news" corporations about how this will be a dry winter for the drought stricken west despite initial rains.

No, I don't remember. It DOES match my own expectations having lived in the LA area for over 50 years. A wet fall, as in lots of rain before or around halloween, often DOES lead into a dryer than normal winter and spring.

mell says

Reservoirs should be full to the brim but I'm sure politicians made sure there is enough drainage and poor planning

This was talked about in the media over the last week. Snowpack in parts of the Sierras is 200% of normal for the date, which is GREAT NEWS for this spring and early summer's water needs. As for reservoirs and more importantly aquifers getting refilled and recharged, even with the current ratios of inflow/outflow after the insane rains, around half of reservoirs stand below their seasonal average to date, and fewer than half currently stand above 50% total capacity.

Rather than make up these weird narratives about what you think politicians are doing about water impoundment and inflow/outflow ratios, you can work with ACTUAL facts and data. Tell us if you find anything "wrong" with the way California's major reservoirs are being managed at present based upon these data. http://cdec.water.ca.gov/reportapp/javareports?name=RES&source=patrick.net

mell says

globull warming

It's "CLIMATE CHANGE" and you just don't know the difference between climate and weather.

Automan Empire says

mell says

Remember when this winter started with good rains in.the west all these articles by climate "scientists" and globahomo agitprop "news" corporations about how this will be a dry winter for the drought stricken west despite initial rains.

No, I don't remember. It DOES match my own expectations having lived in the LA area for over 50 years. A wet fall, as in lots of rain before or around halloween, often DOES lead into a dryer than normal winter and spring.

mell says

Reservoirs should be full to the brim but I'm sure politicians made sure there is enough drainage and poor planning

This was talked about in the media over the last week. Snowpack in parts of the Sierras is 200% of normal for the date, which is GREAT NEWS for this spring and early summer's water needs. As for reservoirs and more importantly aquifers getting refilled and recharged...

Sure, plenty of purposeful wrongs. CA politicians and politics only are to blame for the faux drought. Here's a good starter:

https://californiaglobe.com/articles/water-and-drought-deceit-more-dubious-policies-california-lawmakers-continue-to-perpetrate/?source=patrick.net

Stop believing the leftoid media propaganda and start believing your own senses and common sense. It's all about expanding political power and reducing civil liberties and God given rights. Nothing else.

mell says

Stop believing the leftoid media propaganda and start believing your own senses and common sense.

I am. I provided a link to regularly updated info about ALL of California's major reservoirs and asked people to show what's wrong THERE with the way reservoirs are getting managed.

You came back with an advertorial/propaganda piece masquerating as a news article that cherry picks a few metrics to make a particular point.

Building more reservoirs would be helpful, but you seem to be missing the point that even in the wettest years, we can't fill the ones we have. Even if we DID fill all the above-ground reservoirs to capacity (and it's not a simple matter of "let less out"), this doesn't show the whole water picture. This doesn't show underground aquifer volume. It also suggests all non-impounded water is wasted when released for "environmental" purposes. It doesn't mention that these "environmental" purposes have monetary outcomes of their own. Preventing fisheries from collapsing, millions of dollars of fishing and processing industry and food for millions. Preventing recreational lakes and rivers from running low to dry during the summer peak use season. Millions in tourism and recreation businesses at stake, plus sheer enjoyment of the best places our state has to offer. Preventing rivers running within a mile of millions of residents from becoming stagnant smelly trickles. Preventing river deltas and estuaries and near-shore water tables from brackish and salt water intrusion, again with millions of dollars in fishery, recreation and tourism, and escalating water deionization or well abandonment and replacement.

How many of these things, if any, have you specifically factored in to your estimation of how well California manages water resources? Again, given current actual reservoir stats, what would you do differently than this, why, and what outcome would you expect and in what time frame?

Automan Empire says

Building more reservoirs would be helpful, but you seem to be missing the point that even in the wettest years, we can't fill the ones we have.

On my drive through the central valley recently, I saw several signs from farmers pleading that more reservoirs be built, and that we don't dump rainwater into the ocean.

Automan Empire says

mell says

Stop believing the leftoid media propaganda and start believing your own senses and common sense.

I am. I provided a link to regularly updated info about ALL of California's major reservoirs and asked people to show what's wrong THERE with the way reservoirs are getting managed.

You came back with an advertorial/propaganda piece masquerating as a news article that cherry picks a few metrics to make a particular point.

Building more reservoirs would be helpful, but you seem to be missing the point that even in the wettest years, we can't fill the ones we have. Even if we DID fill all the above-ground reservoirs to capacity (and it's not a simple matter of "let less out"), this doesn't show the whole water picture. This doesn't show underground aquifer volume. It also suggests all non-impounded water is wasted when released for "environmental" purposes. It doesn't men...

Wouldn't even know where to begin. Def build more reservoirs, weather is unpredictable and to expect similar rainfall each year is asinine but more like deliberate mismanagement. Nothing to do with climate change or globull warming, it's always been the weather. 2nd move to non potable water sources for toilets and showers etc. Don't give me the complexity or cost argument, we have built everything via private enterprise that's technically possible, many cities in Europe use that system, and we spend more money on transgender bathrooms and illegals every year. Politicians are simply not interested in admitting there is no water crisis and never has been, for their own self interest. The reason private enterprise hasn't tackled this is because they would never make money after the moron governors and municipalities are done with their "regulations". And then come the ambulance chasers because a kid drank out of the toilet. Lowest common denominator, typical leftoid playbook. Maximizes crisis and political power.

I heard about the story about fish and the rainwater going out to sea.

Someone sued the state over a little fish called a topsmelt, that they had to divert water down the river and less to the valley so the topsmelt would thrive.

Nobody eats them or fishes for topsmelt as far as I know.

clambo says

I heard about the story about fish and the rainwater going out to sea.

Someone sued the state over a little fish called a topsmelt, that they had to divert water down the river and less to the valley so the topsmelt would thrive.

Nobody eats them or fishes for topsmelt as far as I know.

Yep the smelt scandal

clambo says

Nobody eats them or fishes for topsmelt as far as I know.

Aren't they what spotted owls eat?

Do they need to have a DIRECT human benefit to care when human activity causes their populations to crash? Smelt are an ocean schooling fish, and have an important place low in the marine food chain. The problem humans are causing for smelt is, we remove so much of the natural flow of rivers that it affects the salinity of entire bays and estuaries, impacting the niche they've evolved to thrive within over thousands of years in 3 human generations of large scale dam building.

By the way, did you know that thanks to water impoundment at higher latitudes, human activity has actually sped up the rotation of the earth?

Humans have achieved near god level power to manipulate the planet, affecting every living thing in the biosphere. In practice, humans have been rather shitty Gods in our stewardship of Eden.

Also, I couldn't find a match to "topsmelt lawsuit" aside from the City of San Diego being allowed to proceed with a lawsuit with Monsanto over PCB disposal that contaminated San Diego Bay fish species in a serious and long term way. Another externalized cost borne by generations of people who didn't profit from the shitty short-term decisions, courtesy of Laissez-Faire Capitalism.

I dunno. I read a book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist" maybe 15 years ago. The author Lomborg makes very good arguments that the environment has actually been getting much better for decades now, pretty much our whole lives.

Patrick says

he author Lomborg makes very good arguments that the environment has actually been getting much better

I'd be interested to hear if they're actual benefits from an environmental point of view, or industrialist-fellating excuses for continuing to externalize costs? A common "shitty" environmental claim runs, "There's more forest in the US than 100 years ago" True because mechanized agriculture has made small subsistence farms obsolete to revert to wildlands, but clearcutting natural old growth forests and replacing them with monocrops of commercially favorable species is not equivalent forest land to what stood 100 years ago. Hence the endangerment of the Spotted Owl that industry-fellaters joke about, because of the widespread actual destruction of its old growth habitat.

I'm all for protecting the environment, but again, we have landed on Mars, been to the moon (some may dispute that), built EVs, autopilots, quantum computing, but we can't build mechanically separated septic systems to save a shit ton of drinking water, nor have we built sufficient, possibly portable (sure Elon has some ideas) reservoirs, that tech is stuck in the stone ages. Instead we punish the citizens with lo-flo shit, sky high water costs and carbon tax. Nothing to do with politicians, got it. I'd also like to see the Thorium reactor getting done by us instead of China beating everyone to it

mell says

nor have we built sufficient, possibly portable (sure Eln has some ideas) reservoirs,

Americans currently use the ENTIRE flow of the Colorado River. We grudgingly dole out just enough to Mexico to meet old treaties. A planned pulse flow allowed the Colorado River to flow all the way to the sea ONE TIME in 2014, a sight residents hadn't seen for literally decades. There's literally not enough water falling on its entire watershed to keep Lake Powell full and the mighty Colorado flowing all the way to the ocean.

California's rivers are approaching this too, hence the suits over what people dismiss as trivial things like the smelt. Humans are already taking so much water out of rivers all down the coast that it affects the salinity of large coastal features like bays and estuaries, and is causing seawater intrusion into coastal freshwater aquifers also feeding human demand.

Capturing storm pulses using more reservoirs isn't the solution. The problem is, if we doubled our capacity by stacking new reservoirs in the major river systems, there isn't enough water coming in to get and keep them full at this point, to meet human demand for fresh water all the way between rainy seasons.

Earth could be a utopia for thousands of generations to come with population numbers stable in the millions. Instead we're gonna rat-utopia our way into an almost unfixable oblivion in another 1-3 generations, sadly. That's one reason I elected not to have children myself.

Automan Empire says

Earth could be a utopia for thousands of generations to come with population numbers stable in the millions. Instead we're gonna rat-utopia our way into an almost unfixable oblivion in another 1-3 generations, sadly. That's one reason I elected not to have children myself.

And vote for Biden?

I think I agree with Automan Empire.

A vast population doesn’t improve anything, and I keep seeing too much development and crowding in the places where I liked to live.

Lately I’m visiting in Baja California Sur Mexico and I got fed up with the bottles that my girlfriend threw in the trash, and if she had girlfriends over they generated 20 beer bottles or more.

I located a recycling place on the road to Cabo San Lucas, driving was a pain in the ass but I felt good that even after New Years we have generated only one kitchen sized trash can, and a big bin full of bottles.
The key is to rinse the beer bottles out or they stink.

I suggested to the girl that she started a little business and go to the expats and recycle their bottles and cans for a small fee, $10/week. The Canadians might not go for it as they are famously cheapskates, so maybe I am nuts.

Her reaction was funny; “Why are you thinking of ways for me to work?”