AGW Supporters always ignore this question

[seedload]

Wow. This is so interesting that I had to continue my crazy postings that I can't seem to stop. I decided to look at temperature change velocity and acceleration vs co2 change velocity and acceleration because of the trend identified earlier in this thread. Could we find the cause of this trend looking at the data this way? This is what I got. Look at the third graph. That is insane! Can this be?



Temperature acceleration is actually trending DOWN. Temperatures are trying to go down both before 1945 and after 1963. But, between 1945 and 1963, the acceleration of temperature went way the F up. A clearly negative trend to temperature acceleration spiked up during that short period. In 1963, that spike up stopped and temperatures again started to try to go back down. How crazy is that. Totally unexpected.

For those who aren't getting it. Above ground nuclear testing began in 1945 and (for the most part) ended in 1963.

We had negative temperature acceleration before nuclear testing. We ended up with positive temperature acceleration post nuclear testing. That acceleration is now decreasing.

Anyone ever heard anything about this before? Am I totally off my rocker?

<EDIT> BTW, I was wrong in a previous thread about CO2 acceleration. I didn't zoom in on the fitted picture of it. I have now, and I was wrong.

[bcglorf]

Read Feith's War And Decision for a good insider's account. If anything, they overplanned. For instance, Jay Garner had reams and reams of planning on dealing with various humanitarian crises that never arose.

I'm sure Feith's opinion on the post-war planning will be entirely unbiased by the fact he was the one responsible for it. Read Galbraith's The End of Iraq for an insider's account by someone that actually cared about Iraq and knew something about it.

Feith's pre-war buddies had intelligence that Iraq's foreign ministry was trying to get hold of uranium and had contacts with Al-Qaeda. Feith himself failed to plan for the protection of Iraq's Foreign Ministry office from looters when taking over Baghdad, just like the National Museum. Facilities that were listed as part of Iraq's nuclear program by the IAEA were not planned to be protected either, and were emptied by unknown parties with forklifts and multiple semi trucks. We still have no idea what became of the machining equipment that was there, for all we know it's now in Iran as part of their program. Feith failed to plan for providing security in Kirkuk when taking it over. Unless his expectation that it's police force would just show up for work after the takeover can be called a plan. If he'd consulted anyone that knew the first thin about Iraq he'd have known the police force consisted of the men that forcibly relocated the Kurdish people from Kirkuk. They didn't show.

The list of such fundamental failures is endless, this is not simple hindsight is 20/20 stuff. Feith's plans didn't account for animosity between Kurdish, Shia and Sunni populations. And by and large failed to plan for any Iraqi government posts that might be abandoned by their staff after Saddam's fall. Feith can say he over-planned for post-war Iraq much like I can say I've overplanned for implementing world peace. After I try holding my breath, I've got another hundred different plans to try....

[KitemanSA]

Wind has a total capital cost of $2 to $4 a watt (nameplate rating) if you include backup. And you also have to pay for the fuel of the backup and the fuel infrastructure.
Costs are coming down. But they are no where near the costs of burning coal.

What do you make of this: Secret Energy Turbine?

I think that with one of these in most of the country you will be able to light up one/half of an incandecent bulb, some of the time. It would be cheaper (MUCH cheaper) to convert to compact flourecent.

[Diogenes]

Or we say that a military as large as ours is not necessary and can then pay off the entire national debt in 3 years and reduce taxes by 50% in the 4th year.

There Might be some merit in ideas along this direction, but I think your numbers are too wishful.

And the fiction of they were involved in 9/11 or "they hate our freedom" or nuclear weapons or spreading democracy are the mantras of the right. Perhaps you forgot how the Bush white house changed the propaganda about once a month for the 6 months before and after the invasion...

First day of the attack, everybody was thinking of Iraq being behind it. Not such a stretch. Subsequently we discover that Iraq had little involvement if any. Many people suggested that Taking Saddam out anyway would still send the message to others out there. The worry over nuclear weapons was very legitimate, and has been a legitimate concern now for 50 years. (with various countries, the latest being Iran.)

The Ministry of Oil was protected because it was the most important ministry to help Iraq become prosperous. WE didn't need it. The Iraqi's needed it. To us it's just a building with records and officials. To Iraq, it is a major source of their income.

Yes and the ministry of water or agriculture or police or nuclear energy or security or transportation or ... or ... or ... wouldn't help the Iraq people.

Okay, let's look at that. Ministry of water. What does it do? It oversees water projects. If the building is wiped out, does it affect water? Not really. The building is just a bunch of governmental officials and paperwork. Why protect that? How about protecting something that really matters like the source of the water? You know, like a Major dam?

SEALs also captured and held the Mukarayin Dam, 57 miles from Baghdad, for five days in April to prevent the dam's destruction by forces loyal to Saddam Hussein, which would have flooded much of Baghdad. With members of Poland's GROM assisting, the SEALs fast-roped from Pave Lows and first captured the dam, powerstation, and related buildings and then searched the dam for hidden explosives that may have been set before their arrival. There was no resistance nor were any charges found.

Or two?

Theissing is one of 230 sailors who make up the Navy’s newly formed Riverine Squadron One, which officially took control Thursday from U.S. Marines of the protection of the Haditha Dam and patrol missions on the surrounding waterways.

http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?sect ... chive=true

How about the ministry of agriculture? God only knows what would happen to US if OUR ministry of agriculture building got destroyed. Actually, Everybody knows. NOTHING! Farmers Farm despite the government, not because of it. H3ll, blowing it up would probably HELP Iraq. It's nothing but government bureaucrats.

As for the Police, they were the one's SHOOTING at us. By all means, we not only don't need to protect their building, we needed to knock it out ourselves!

Ministry of Transportation? Really? Why would the Iraqis need that? It's as probably useful to them as our's is to us, which means not very. Again, Government bureaucrats. Here in America we take care of our own transportation. We set a good example for the Iraqis.

What makes the Oil Ministry different? Contracts and obligations with other countries, evidence as to where the oil dollars went (to aid in recovery), Infrastructure inventories, detailed records on capacities and capabilities. Stuff you need to track down perps and track the wealth.

How about guarding KNOWN stockpiles of nuclear materials.

Where were THOSE at? You don't know? We didn't either.

So instead of protecting all the things the locals needed to survive we let them be destroyed and only over the last year were these functions really been re-established and it STILL is hit and miss for services.

As I pointed out earlier, all of those government "services" were things they didn't really need, or that they could do better for themselves.

Oil helps the cause, but it is not the cause of the cause. We aren't getting any oil from Iraq, and we spent far more money than we will ever get back in oil, and that's IF we ever get any oil from Iraq.

Then why did they pass a law saying that only thoes who were involved in the initial invasion could purchase oil rights or sell oil equipment? That MUST have helped the Iraqs rebuild the infrastructure right?

Spite. Those B@stards wouldn't help us, they deserved to suffer for it. As it turned out, we really didn't stick to that, and France is getting Iraqi oil.

Then why are they producing less now than BEFORE the invasion? Could it be possible that Shell and Exxon were dragging their feet so they could drive up prices...say a 2008 oil price spike??

I don't know. By now they ought to be producing more. You got me on that one.

No my friend, what we have witnessed is a very clever act by a man who may one day be called great. For the first time in History, a US President has actually done something that MIGHT someday bring peace to the middle east. Prior to this time, every US President simply sat on their @$$ and bemoaned the lack of peace in the Middle east. George Bush took action. Yes, it had a bunch of bumbles and stumbles in it, but no one before did ANYTHING that might actually have a chance of working.

Quite to the contrary friend. Bush's actions have strengthened the religious extremism by making it look like an active religious war. Bush was the best recruitment tool Al Qaeda ever got! He pumped money into countries that already dislike us by driving up oil prices and pulled out of the peace process with Isreal.

It looks like he DID strengthen religious extremism, but so did Thomas Jefferson when he attacked the Barbary Pirates. (The Crescent moon shape on American outhouse doors supposedly originates from the Jefferson era, to show contempt for the Muslim Pirates.) Yeah, the pirates sure got mad, but eventually they stopped bothering us or anyone else.



The peace process with Israel wasn't going anywhere due to the fact that one side is completely nuts.

The best way to reach peace in the middle east is to get off of oil! Only the constant flow of money allows the current dictators to remain in power...get off oil and get peace.

I agree.

If this thing unfolds the way it was planned, George W. Bush may be mentioned with Presidents like Jefferson, Washington and Lincoln. Not sure he deserves it because it wasn't his plan. At least he had the good sense and audacity to put it into action.

I think it is FAR more likely that he will be ranked alongside Nixon since he reduced the spread of democracy, reduced the standard of living for 10s of million, allowed the spread of nuclear arms (N. Korea), rolled back or reduced almost every environmental law on the books and encouraged religious bigotry inside the US.

You must have watched a different movie than I did. I don't see any evidence that he reduced the spread of democracy. It appears to me that he spread it even further. How did he reduce the standard of living for 10s of millions? I don't get that at all. He didn't ALLOW (grant permission) nuclear arms in North Korea, but he didn't do enough to stop it. He DID however make certain that Iraq wasn't going to get them. As for environmental laws, I didn't pay attention to what he did, but if he did as you say, it doesn't seem to have had an adverse impact.

As for encouraging religious bigotry? What the h3ll are you talking about ?

I have no problem with using Gasoline. But why do we have to drill for it? With a 2 Trillion dollar investment (or the development of polywell??), renewable will be as cheap as coal and you can then use THAT power to synthesize gasoline out of atmospheric CO2 and it will be almost as cheap as drilling for it. Plus bio-diesel (not corn ethanol of course) is pretty close right now.

Then transport won't support dictators and won't contribute to any global warming without serious disruption.

Later

I like your thinking in this direction, but I think the details are tougher than you make them out to be. De funding Dictators is a great idea, but I think Global warming is totally made up phony baloney. Water vapor is the only significant green house gas, and it drives the whole system. Since water vapor is a negative feedback effect, it doesn't much matter about C02 or Methane.

[MSimon]

seedload,

I've sent your stuff to Anthony Watts. You might want to consider how you would write it up for publication.

If any thing comes of it I will be in touch.

Simon

[Diogenes]

MSimon, nice articles and links on your blog there. I don't agree with every aspect of the arguments posed in the articles, but it's not natural to always be in complete agreement - I agree with the overall interpretation.

Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite sci-fi authors. Nice to see him doing history/strategic analysis. In terms of historians, I suspect you're a Victor Davis Hanson reader too?

I'll stop here, as I vaguely recall someone posting several months ago (back when I lurked before joining) that new members shouldn't feed the MSimon

Who was it that said "If you agree with me 80% of the time, Vote for me! If you agree with me 100% time, you need a psychiatrist." ?

Or words to that effect.

[MSimon]

muslim-kicked-off-a-plane-im-palestinian-and-want-to-kill-all-jews

An Ohio man who became loud and disruptive aboard a flight from Miami to Detroit — at one point telling those around him he “wanted to kill all the Jews” — was removed from the airplane before takeoff and arrested late Wednesday.

The plane was taxiing when a flight attendant alerted the captain of a passenger “talking in a loud tone of voice and stating that he is Palestinian and that he wanted to kill all the Jews.”

As the flight attendant tried to give instructions before taking off, Asad, who was in seat 14-A, was loud once again. He was drinking a beer, apparently from the first class cabin where his daughter was seated.

At points Asad was speaking in a foreign language, thought to be Arabic.

[CaptainBeowulf]

Diogenes,

I think you're right that a lot of important things in Iraq were protected. However, a lot of important things were not. It's not so easy to hand-wave off the importance of government ministries. They contain the record of what's been done, when, and that's necessary. Take transportation, for example. A transport department/ministry has records of what types of bridges etc. were built, what designs they used, what annual inspections have shown in terms of how well structures are holding up under use. If all of that's destroyed the temporary occupier and succeeding government doesn't have any plan for infrastructure renewal, and stuff starts falling apart faster.

The real problem IMO was that there weren't enough troops. Shinseki and some other staff officers wanted a lot more, but Rumsfeld wanted a relatively small force. This was because he was a believer in the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), which said that you could do more with less because you now had rapid information sharing with computer networks and satellite communications. This was true, in part. A "digitized" army can beat a much larger "industrial age" army, as happened in Iraq in both 1991 and 2003. But protecting infrastructure and nipping an insurgency in the bud requires boots on the ground. Rumsfeld didn't make the distinction between the warfight and the occupation, I think Shinseki and others did, but they were unable to get their message across to him.

Incidentally, even digitization/RMA/Transformation doesn't always mean you can do more with less. Anyone interested should read Thomas K. Adam's book The Army After Next. In some cases people with IT knowledge had to be pulled out of combat roles to keep the tactical and operational theatre networks running. You need a whole new branch of personnel to manage that stuff.

(Adams also has a whole other argument that the drive for RMA and military "Transformation" in the different services was prompted by interservice rivalry as much as anything - not as much in agreement with that, but nonetheless it's an interesting book to read).

[alexjrgreen]

The peace process with Israel wasn't going anywhere due to the fact that one side is completely nuts.

Generations of humiliation and state-sponsored killing can do that to people.

[bcglorf]

What makes the Oil Ministry different? Contracts and obligations with other countries, evidence as to where the oil dollars went (to aid in recovery), Infrastructure inventories, detailed records on capacities and capabilities. Stuff you need to track down perps and track the wealth.

Seems like the Foreign Ministry would've been a good place to track down perps too, it was unguarded. Facilities from Iraq's nuclear program were left unguarded. Long enough that looters, insurgents or other agents, we really don't know, were able to clean them out using fork lifts and semi trailers for pity sake.

I am thoroughly approving that Bush's removing Saddam was still a huge improvement over Clinton's policy. That doesn't free the Bush admin from their complete failures in post war planning. Surely to heavens the commander and chief should've at least taken the time to understand the divide between Sunni and Shia within Iraq, apparently even that bar was too high. Even ignorant of that, surely one must have known that giving the administration of the post-war country over to someone with no experience in the country and only two weeks notice was a bad plan. It still happened. There is just no defending that level of folly.

The soldiers on the ground and their commanders were amazing professionals. Unfortunately the priorities and goals sent to them might as well have come from a magic 8-ball.

[Diogenes]

The peace process with Israel wasn't going anywhere due to the fact that one side is completely nuts.

Generations of humiliation and state-sponsored killing can do that to people.

This is true. You'd think the Palestinians would stop selecting such people to represent them.

[MSimon]

The peace process with Israel wasn't going anywhere due to the fact that one side is completely nuts.

Generations of humiliation and state-sponsored killing can do that to people.

Generations of reading the Koran (i.e. - kill the Jews) is what did it. I posted a link above. I guess I'm going to have to single it out.

Watch this space for updates.

http://www.middle-east-info.org/gateway ... /index.htm

Hamas Charter, article 7, (Palestine Center, Aug 9, 2003): “The prophet, prayer and peace be upon him, said: The time will not come until Muslims will fight the Jews (and kill them); until the Jews hide behind rocks and trees, which will cry: O Muslim! there is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!"

[alexjrgreen]

Water vapor is the only significant green house gas, and it drives the whole system. Since water vapor is a negative feedback effect, it doesn't much matter about C02 or Methane.

Methane really does cause warming - a previous breakdown of the permafrost and the methane clathrates in the ocean raised global temperatures by 8C for about 500 years.

And just in case you think that's unlikely:

Methane bubbling from Siberian thaw lakes as a positive feedback to climate warming

Methane release 'looks stronger'

[Diogenes]

Diogenes,

I think you're right that a lot of important things in Iraq were protected. However, a lot of important things were not. It's not so easy to hand-wave off the importance of government ministries. They contain the record of what's been done, when, and that's necessary. Take transportation, for example. A transport department/ministry has records of what types of bridges etc. were built, what designs they used, what annual inspections have shown in terms of how well structures are holding up under use. If all of that's destroyed the temporary occupier and succeeding government doesn't have any plan for infrastructure renewal, and stuff starts falling apart faster.

My point, (which I guess I could have made clearer) is that these ministries were not of immediate concern. Nothing they did was of immediately necessity nor irreplaceable. Tedious? Yes, Impossible? No. The records in the Oil Ministry however, were potentially extremely valuable and irreplaceable. People in the field prioritized their usage of Military personnel. I think they picked the most important targets and I don't fault them for not being able to cover them all.

The real problem IMO was that there weren't enough troops. Shinseki and some other staff officers wanted a lot more, but Rumsfeld wanted a relatively small force. This was because he was a believer in the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), which said that you could do more with less because you now had rapid information sharing with computer networks and satellite communications. This was true, in part. A "digitized" army can beat a much larger "industrial age" army, as happened in Iraq in both 1991 and 2003. But protecting infrastructure and nipping an insurgency in the bud requires boots on the ground. Rumsfeld didn't make the distinction between the warfight and the occupation, I think Shinseki and others did, but they were unable to get their message across to him.

No argument from me on this point.

[seedload]

seedload,

I've sent your stuff to Anthony Watts. You might want to consider how you would write it up for publication.

If any thing comes of it I will be in touch.

Simon

Actually, I sent the same stuff to a prominent climate scientist/skeptic. He thinks that I am just seeing the cooling period in the data.

what you have done is simply to quantify the lack of significant warming between the 1940's and the 1960's. This has traditionally been blamed on aerosol pollution before the clean air act was put into effect. I suspect that the aerosol pollution from nuclear weapons tests was very small when compared to that from industry.

The response makes me wonder whether he looked at it too deeply. I don't think he got that the acceleration of temperature change was actually increasing during this period.

As for a writeup, I am not sure this is ready for prime time. I am not that statistically savy. This depends a lot on the fitting algorithm used because it is the fitted data that shows that trend. I just called lowess() in R which I don't know anything about but seems to be commonly used. I really need someone who is more savy in these matters to help out.

regards