Never talk about old Sol and the "impact" of all that energy streaming at as from 93 million miles away. This year in particular we see the result of intense solar flares on the weather, with two extraordinary hurricanes hitting the east coast. This isn't a coincidence, there's a lot of research and very real corollary evidence that solar activity directly influences weather on Earth. And why shouldn't it? All summer long ham radio operators have been enjoying and cursing band conditions for long distance communications. Enjoying because the stratosphere has been supercharged with solar particles (which explains why the northern lights have been seen in New Mexico), but also not able to use it when the solar flares hit and stir up the atmosphere like a wind causing waves on the ocean.
But if this is actually an existential crisis, then why not nuclear? We've (meaning they, but we as a species) wasted 40 years and trillions of dollars attempting to make windmills and solar panels work. We've hyped up dead-end tech like tidal, knowing that there's no way we can build turbines that can handle the forces. We're tearing down hydro plants because fish populations aren't meeting some arbitrary number. We could have added a half dozen nuclear plants to match or exceed the "nameplate capacity" of all the renewable installations and had excess power, even before adding natural gas peaking plants, which have largely replaced coal. Thanks, Al.
Worst of all, we're pretending that solar energy that isn't converted into electricity is somehow wasted, or unused. Brother, I got news for you: all that sunshine hitting the desert creates very complex weather and without it the Earth gets cold in a few days. It isn't wasted.
But you know what is wasted? All that money scarring the deserts and converting productive farm land into solar farms. All that silicon, copper, silver and aluminum. The steel used for building out distribution lines to the massive wind farms in Nebraska. And all this digital ink spilled by me instead of enjoying my morning coffee.
It is bizarre that they pay so little attention to the most obvious driver of Earth's climate. I read that the modelers acknowledge a rough 11 year solar cycle and include it in the models in some minor way.
But I'm with you. If you're not measuring the thing that showers us with energy and taking it into consideration, you're missing something major.
And I agree. We've wasted decades not advancing nuclear energy. We'd better move in that direction quick. And unleash fossil fuels in the meantime.
Now get back to that coffee! And thanks for commenting.
Nope. Or plants. They're just moving knobs around aimlessly. I don't want them to stop trying to figure things out, but please quit lying to us, would ya?
Projection models are guesses. The best they can be, scientifically, are hypotheses. And a hypothesis is the start of the scientific method, not the conclusion of it.
So, do your projection to formulate a hypothesis ... and then get to the real work of testing your hypothesis in the real world, with all of the rigor and effort and intelligence required of the process!
Never talk about old Sol and the "impact" of all that energy streaming at as from 93 million miles away. This year in particular we see the result of intense solar flares on the weather, with two extraordinary hurricanes hitting the east coast. This isn't a coincidence, there's a lot of research and very real corollary evidence that solar activity directly influences weather on Earth. And why shouldn't it? All summer long ham radio operators have been enjoying and cursing band conditions for long distance communications. Enjoying because the stratosphere has been supercharged with solar particles (which explains why the northern lights have been seen in New Mexico), but also not able to use it when the solar flares hit and stir up the atmosphere like a wind causing waves on the ocean.
But if this is actually an existential crisis, then why not nuclear? We've (meaning they, but we as a species) wasted 40 years and trillions of dollars attempting to make windmills and solar panels work. We've hyped up dead-end tech like tidal, knowing that there's no way we can build turbines that can handle the forces. We're tearing down hydro plants because fish populations aren't meeting some arbitrary number. We could have added a half dozen nuclear plants to match or exceed the "nameplate capacity" of all the renewable installations and had excess power, even before adding natural gas peaking plants, which have largely replaced coal. Thanks, Al.
Worst of all, we're pretending that solar energy that isn't converted into electricity is somehow wasted, or unused. Brother, I got news for you: all that sunshine hitting the desert creates very complex weather and without it the Earth gets cold in a few days. It isn't wasted.
But you know what is wasted? All that money scarring the deserts and converting productive farm land into solar farms. All that silicon, copper, silver and aluminum. The steel used for building out distribution lines to the massive wind farms in Nebraska. And all this digital ink spilled by me instead of enjoying my morning coffee.
It is bizarre that they pay so little attention to the most obvious driver of Earth's climate. I read that the modelers acknowledge a rough 11 year solar cycle and include it in the models in some minor way.
But I'm with you. If you're not measuring the thing that showers us with energy and taking it into consideration, you're missing something major.
And I agree. We've wasted decades not advancing nuclear energy. We'd better move in that direction quick. And unleash fossil fuels in the meantime.
Now get back to that coffee! And thanks for commenting.
They don’t even know how clouds work???
Nope. Or plants. They're just moving knobs around aimlessly. I don't want them to stop trying to figure things out, but please quit lying to us, would ya?
https://www.earth.com/news/plants-absorb-31-more-co2-than-previously-estimated/
Projection models are guesses. The best they can be, scientifically, are hypotheses. And a hypothesis is the start of the scientific method, not the conclusion of it.
So, do your projection to formulate a hypothesis ... and then get to the real work of testing your hypothesis in the real world, with all of the rigor and effort and intelligence required of the process!
Precisely!