Science Forums: JohnB - Viewing Profile - Science Forums

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Justin, the PBS doesn't "deny" anything. The bottom line here is that it is a subsidy scheme, some products and drugs are subsidised and some are not. This is no different from any other subsidy scheme. Thinking about it, you could consider a lot of our system as a subsidy scheme. We are basically saying that we will subsidise your medical costs.

Wednesday morning I was short of breath (had been for a few days) and decided to see the Dr. So I phoned and got a 10.45 appontment. A full checkup, with blood workup and lung function, ECG, blah blah came to about $160. After paying the bill I went to the Medicare office and go the refund of about $140. So you could say that I was subsidised to the tune of $140 for that visit. Does thinking of it like a subsidy scheme make it more understandable?

And as to freedoms etc, exactly what freedoms does your system give you that our system doesn't give me? If you think that you will have to give up freedoms to have a UHC system then you must think you have more freedoms than I do. What are they?

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Young whippersnappers! Using thorium to reanimate dead threads. Back in my day it only took an assistant named Igor and a really good thunderstorm.

You've stepped into the lions den with this one. This is a area of great contention.

But going back to basics we know that for a doubling of CO2, and everything else being equal, then temps should rise by about 1.1 degrees. The IPCC estimates the rise using climate models to be somewhere between 2.4 and 4 degrees due to water vapour enhancment. The amplification of warming by water vapour is a main leg of AGW theory, however it has not been demonstrated in the lab or by any real world experiment to exist. WV is a much more powerful GHG than CO2 and logically if the world is warmer then there should be more WV and therefore the warming should be amplified.

However, as you rightly point out, more WV means more clouds and depending on type, clouds can have a tremendous cooling effect. Watch the temps drop on a sunny day when a cloud passes in front of the Sun.

AGW standard theory also requires that clouds be feedbacks of temperature and never a forcing. This is disputed in the literature by a number of climatologists, but mostly by Dr Roy Spencer who does the UAH satellite temperature series. Put simply, the sats show us that warmer years tend to have slightly less cloud coverage than cooler years so the question being argued is this "Is there less cloud because it is warmer or is it warmer because there is less cloud?" If the standard theory is correct then the first is the case and clouds are a feedback, if the standard theory is incorrect then clouds can be a forcing in their own right and the second part is correct.

Messing the whole question up is the fact that clouds most certainly are a feedback effect from temperature, but can they also be a feedback effect from another factor besides temperature and therefore become a temperature forcing?

This is probably the least well understood part of the climate system and the quantities we are dealing with are quite small. The energy figures themselves are large, but the change in the budget is less than 1% since 1850. For example a change (drop) in average annual cloud cover of less than 1% between 1850 and 2000 is quite enough to allow the extra energy into the system to explain all warming since 1850. Since we have been putting CO2 into the atmosphere since 1850 and therefore must have caused some rise in temps this cannot be the only answer, but it is a reason why we sceptics are sceptical of climatologys claims of confidence in their attribution.

I hope that the above has helped a bit, but this is a very complex area of climate.

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Since dinos died out some 65 million years ago, how do you propose to "directly measure" their methane production?

I would also point out that one of their basic assumptions is quite possibly incorrect.

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The last I heard the jury was still out as to the flexibility of the saurapod neck. The most recent views I'm aware of are that unlike earlier thought (and depictions in movies like Jurassic Park) the larger saurapods did not raise their heads much at all, but browsed on lower fodder by sweeping their head and neck from side to side. The head stayed roughly at shoulder height and while this is still perhaps 20 feet or so is not enough for "high tree foliage".

Apparently it's a matter of blood pressure.

But I don't think that the article was intended to be taken seriously.

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The best description I've ever read is this: "English is not a language that borrows from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, hits them over the head and riffles their pockets for loose grammar".

I have no idea who said it, but it is so true.