Stargate525

[quote name='Bill Phil']Define "greener" in this context, please.[/QUOTE] As in literally getting greener, becoming more lush, areas once were desert are now becoming scrubland. [url]http://www.pnas.org/content/112/39/12133.abstract[/url] And some general food for thought: [url]http://www.thegwpf.com/content/uploads/2015/10/benefits1.pdf[/url]

[quote name='KSK']If I make MY points in CAPITALS too, will people listen to ME? Anyhow - I presume you're also aware of the massive subsidies handed out to the fossil fuels industry too? If not, have a look at [URL="http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2015/07/economist-explains-19"]this[/URL] article in The Economist - which I'll hope you agree is hardly a bastion of left-leaning environmentalism. TL: DR "Fossil fuels are reaping support of $550 billion annually, according the International Energy Agency (IEA), an organisation that represents oil- and gas-consuming countries, more than four times those given for renewable energy."[/QUOTE] Interesting article, thanks! To be fair, the fossil fuels industry is about three times as big as the renewables market, so on a per MWhr basis you'd expect the one to be bigger. But yeah, definitely a discrepancy there.

[quote name='Elthy']Its a hard process, but it involves responsible people, not someone screaming "nothing is proved" while he drowns in the rising sea or dies in a riot caused by people fleeing from the hunger. The most powerfull force know to man is the free market, and renewable, clean energy is getting cheaper every day. I just hope they are cheaper than e.g. coal before its to late.[/QUOTE] Neither of which have happened yet, Africa's actually getting GREENER, and it's rained in the Atacama for the first time in reliable recorded history. And you are aware of the MASSIVE subsidies that are making renewables at all viable, right?

[quote name='Elthy']The one contributing to the problem is you, without those climate change deniers we wouldnt have to fight them and could simply start acting. As long as people like you still have influence thing like switching of a PC is completly pointless, since those people will build another coal powerplant to power their aircondition.[/QUOTE] God, that's a horrifying train of thought you've started on. Some facts for you: Coal use in the US peaked in 2007, and has been going down steadily since. Since 2002, we've actually LOST 115 coal plants. China builds that many more in two years. Japan has just put in an order for 43 coal plants (because Fukishima, we can't have nice things). So remind me, HOW is it this politically-powerless American's fault that you 'can't act' (despite the 115 shuttered plants that would disagree on the word can't)? And pray tell, Mr 'if it wasn't for those pesky -blanks-,' how are you going to stop China or India or Japan or the Middle East or Africa from building more plants than even COMPLETELY SHUTTING DOWN our grid wouldn't offset?

[quote name='andrewas']It's would be, if storage were the major problem. In most worlds, most chunks are passed through, or have some trees cut down, a few blocks taken from the surface or a mining tunnel passes through. A relative handful of chunks get huge excavations or large buildings. But storage is cheap, bandwidth isn't that expensive, and worldgen is surprisingly expensive.[/QUOTE] It's not the storage, it's the read time. As the world gets bigger, the time it takes the game to look up whether it has already generated said chunk increases.

[quote name='WedgeAntilles']Only the seed number, the locations of the players and their inventories, and any changes that have been made to the world.[/QUOTE] Unfortunately, Minecraft keeps firm data on any subsection of the world that has ever been loaded. It generates once, then stores the lot. That's why there are worlds that are several tens of gigabytes in size.

[quote name='ZetaX']No, it is not logarithmic (that simply makes no sense). A very naive one might give you sqrt(amount), but even that is probably off by a lot. And another reason why this is still a lot, even if we assume that sqrt: such things are relative to absolute 0. Thus even an increase by only 10% is an icnrease by about 30°.[/QUOTE] I said I didn't know the term (but I was thinking logarithmic). However, there HAS to be an upper bound, and if you're telling me that an increase from 6% to 7% of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause the same amount of heating that the increase from 0-1 or 99-100 will, I will laugh in your face. It's not linear. It CANT be linear. It makes no sense with everything I know about heat and energy (if you're welcome to cite sources proving it is, feel free). Either it's logarithmic (powerful initial impact with tapering effect), exponential (greater impact the more we add), or S curve (low effect on either end, with a powerful effect in the middle). Which is it, where on the curve are we, and is it beneficial to REMAIN on that portion of the curve?

[quote name='WedgeAntilles']Not done yet. Got more. It's been estimated that, if there was no CO2 in the Earth's atmosphere at all, it would be around 30 degrees colder than it is. Which leads to this: if CO2 levels have doubled since, say, the start of the Industrial Revolution, then before the start of the Industrial Revolution, the Earth should have been 15 degrees colder. It was not. (there was the Little Ice Age, but that didn't even come close.) And yes, I've read the standard response by alarmists: that the planet takes a long time to respond to changes in CO2 levels. That response makes the theory impossible to test. If it's untestable, it's bogus. Curious puzzle, isn't it? CO2 is keeping the Earth 30 degrees warmer. Yet double the CO2 didn't produce double the warming. I know the answer to this puzzle. Want to know it? I'll tell you. If you ask nicely.[/QUOTE] Minor point of order. That assumes that the relationship between CO2 and temperature is linear, when it's much more likely to be a logarithmic (?) relation. Not sure that's the right word, but basically the more you add, the less effect it has.

[quote name='justidutch']What exactly do you intend to do with this knowledge: being able to "hide things in images"? My mind immediately jumps to inserting malicious code; but I assume that is not your intention. What sort of interesting things can be done with this knowhow?[/QUOTE] Most people don't look for messages in image raw data, in my experience.

[quote name='Dre4dW0rm']The game is out of BETA now, so the erratic and random rules don't apply anymore. [/QUOTE] In name only. I'm still pretty convinced that the only reason they decided to go with 1.0 was because their sales figures were dropping.

So you're saying that the climate RIGHT NOW is the equivalent of having lost a leg. How? We've had worse droughts, floods, rain, lack of rain, heat waves, cold waves... pretty much EVERYTHING at points in the past.

With the big difference being that the leg's coming off tomorrow. Maybe. Because the expert said that yesterday, too.

Make up. Your mind. Can it be stopped, or can't it?

Then if it's already too late, WHY spend untold billions of dollars attempting to wreck industrializing nations and hamstringing first world nations by trying to quit fossil fuels at a stupid rate for half-baked alternative power sources that can't meet our demands? And if we don't have control of anything, I assume you mean in both directions. In which case, we couldn't have done it! Make up your mind!

Repent, unbeliever, the end is nigh! :rollseyes: I also love how convincing the whole world won't change anything. So, is it too late (making the repent unbeliever thing even more apropos), or do we not have power over the climate after all? I'll take that bet if you take a counter-bet; that when the climate swings back downwards of its own accord, not a single climate expert will apologize or face repercussions over the billions wasted on their word that CO2 is the devil.

damn, was hoping I edited fast enough. I realized my mistake a few seconds after posting it, and have edited.

Correlation doesn't prove causation, you're right. And despite the increased co2, it doesn't warm to warming period levels any faster than it cooled except right here near the very end of the chart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

Give me ONE source which gives climate data from earlier than 1AD to a temperature resolution of less than a degree while simultaneously having time resolution of less than a decade. Please. I haven't found it. Yup. I don't have a right to not be offended. And I've got much thicker skin than to worry about being called a coward.

We're taking a fifty or sixty year sample size of temperatures, rises of global temperatures which usually uptick less than the error margin of the instruments, and proclaiming it's end of the world. -Despite having no effing clue how rapid or gradual pre-civilized climate shifts occurred. -Despite having no effing clue how to accurately measure or predict flora changes to increased CO2 emissions on a global scale. -Despite these same groups of experts quite firmly stated not fifty years ago that there would be global cooling. (I checked the provided links, and traced back the papers' sources; they're all as legit as any global warming article printed today). -Despite the public consensus and support of climate change policy and science continually sliding. -Despite the fact that the IPCC has missed not one, not two, but FIVE of their predictions of future temperatures. -Despite the fact that all current temperature measurements that show warming are adjusted, and the organizations producing the figures refuse to disclose HOW they are adjusted. -Despite the continuing increase in CO2 emissions, We have had no significant warming in the past decade. -Despite this being the ONLY KNOWN time in human history that warmer temperatures have been heralded as a bad thing, and that a warmer planet is largely beneficial for us. I can respect that you believe it's happening. What I CAN'T respect is refusing to acknowledge the valid concerns and evidence of the other side and deflecting it with 'there is no debate.' You're refusing to take the field on something that SHOULD, by your own admission, be as simple as explaining why the world is round. Coward.

[citation needed] Especially since volcanism is measured by amount of physical stuff ejected, and not gasses. The most scientific numbers on those amounts are 'a whole lot.' Actually the VEI goes up to 8. A 7 happened in 1815, which dumped enough gasses and ejecta into the atmosphere to drop the global temperature by half a degree Celsius for a decade. I find it interesting that the study of that volcanic eruption showed: -Massive increases in all greenhouse gasses for 1815-1820. -A surprisingly rapid drop to pre-eruption levels. -A net cooling effect on the climate, despite the massive amounts of greenhouse gasses (offset by the particulate matter, I know, but still). So if your assertion that we're much more deadly to the climate than volcanoes, why has the global temperature increased by such a comparatively small amount (.8C over the last 200 years.)? And why is our planet capable of handling these massive events which dump poisonous toxins, but not CO2 (which can vary at the surface by several hundred ppm based on time of day, winds, and proximity to TREES) being dispersed over a longer period of time? If we're actually LESS dangerous than volcanoes, then there is empirical evidence our planet can survive worse with no long-term repercussions. Actually, saying that the scientific community is deliberately covering up the fact that CO2 isnt causing global warning is a conspiracy theory. No one is asserting malice in this thread. We're asserting INCOMPETENCE.

*ahemahem* The total atmosphere is 5.15x10^15 tonnes in size. Your 'really that's quite a lot' is .00077% of the atmosphere. If the atmosphere is a football field, the amount of CO2 in the air accounts for a strip about 3.5 centimeters wide. Your CO2 output there is adding less than a THIRD of a MILLIMETER to that amount. And I'm supposed to believe that THAT is going to upset the balance of the climate so much that we're all going to die? Bull.

Hydroelectric. Geothermal. Tidal. Considering we have Yellowstone I'm surprised the US doesn't experiment more with geothermal energies. Its not like we're going to run out of planetary core heat any time soon, after all.

Did I miss a step? @.@ Creating chemical energy (burning the coal) to turn it into thermal energy (heat of fire) to transfer that thermal energy into something else (make steam) to turn it into mechanical energy (spin turbine) to turn it into electrical energy (alternator for power). Unless you want to count the water containers heating up, but eh. And I vaguely recall there being something with helium-3 being used in such a way that it produces electric charge directly. Or am I misremembering?

I get that. But we're currently creating chemical energy to turn it into thermal energy to transfer that thermal energy into something else to turn it into mechanical energy to turn it into electrical energy, and losing along every step. You're telling me there's not a better way? I don't believe you.