southern_cross

9 ms·

31.
by southern_cross 7y ago
> Was it possible back in 1880, to measure temperature up to the third digit in accuracy? No, not even close. You were probably lucky to get one-degree accuracy, if that. This is one of the first red flags that I noted when I started pay
32.
by southern_cross 7y ago
The flooding that is (was?) occurring in Miami was largely the result of a poorly designed rain-drain system, one which was installed with little to no back-flow prevention. This new system, which was put in place into allow rainwater to fl
33.
by southern_cross 7y ago
"The data are a mix of the CRUTEM4 land-surface air temperature dataset and the HadSST3 sea-surface temperature (SST) dataset. The HadCRUT4 data are neither interpolated nor variance adjusted." This is your typical half-truth (lie
34.
by southern_cross 7y ago
Yes, in the past I've been both a contractor myself and a contracting customer. And while I have seen newly built code bases thrown out for various reasons, from what I've seen that's not very common. AFAIK most of the code t
35.
by southern_cross 7y ago
Bear in mind that even the best offshore wind systems only produce about 65% of their rated output, on average. You have no real control over the when and how much and for how long of that, either.
36.
by southern_cross 7y ago
The "churn" thing may cut it the web world and such but not so much elsewhere. There's a local mega-corporation whose core code base is up to twenty years old now, and another whose is up to ten years old. Neither will probab
37.
by southern_cross 7y ago
I see that Scientific American is once again easily attaining its recently lowered journalistic standards. Of course, if you're paying attention you'll note that this article wasn't written by their own staff, but is in fact
38.
by southern_cross 7y ago
> These are exactly the same arguments that creationists offer against evolution. That's a rather bizarre association to make! I suggest that you refrain from making any further comments on the matter until you've done a little
39.
by southern_cross 7y ago
PDF link: http://www.tresamigasllc.com/docs/nclimate2921.pdf
40.
by southern_cross 7y ago
The NOAA study being referenced is the one linked to below, from what I can tell. I mentioned that it was probably full of bogus numbers and wishful thinking, like many other similar studies I've seen, and you responded to that, and I
41.
by southern_cross 7y ago
Our real problem with the use of gasoline isn't really how much of it we use but rather how we use it so inefficiently, which of course leads to more usage and related pollution than necessary. IIRC, gasoline vehicles are only 20% or s
42.
by southern_cross 7y ago
No, I think most of the folks spewing this stuff are mostly just functionally incompetent, a position which you might agree with yourself if you'd actually read any of their research and understood the "data" which they try t
43.
by southern_cross 7y ago
A carbon tax on gasoline is pretty much a non-starter, because gasoline prices have been much higher in the past than they are now but that didn't have much impact on demand, if reducing demand is your goal. (Otherwise it's just a
44.
by southern_cross 7y ago
> Catastrophic climate change. Which is probably just not going to happen, for the most part. The people pushing this stuff are generally just lying about it (lies of omission in many cases), and they should be ashamed of themselves. And
45.
by southern_cross 7y ago
Doing a full rewrite is often asking for trouble, though. Somebody out there on the internet maintains a list of companies which have pretty much put themselves out of business by doing full rewrites. Why is this? Because it turns out that
46.
by southern_cross 7y ago
This stuff was usually easily adjustable, so you could compensate for various irregularities. But some turntables had built-in strobe lights for aiding in adjustments, so if the line frequency was off then the strobe would be off and then y
47.
by southern_cross 7y ago
Yes, that was exactly the kind of thing I had in mind. Old-fashioned TVs depended on this, too, IIRC, and probably a lot of other stuff. (Newer TVs might still depend on it, for all I know. I haven't really looked into the matter.) As
48.
by southern_cross 7y ago
Bogus numbers: Wind and solar are always portrayed using "nameplate" capacity; their full theoretical capacity under ideal conditions, which rarely happens. (They generally have no control over this, either.) On the other hand, so
49.
by southern_cross 7y ago
> You dump carbon emissions into the air; nobody charges you (editing for clarity - I'm talking about breathing). And from your vehicle(s), and from your yard equipment, and from your fireplace, and probably from your heating system
50.
by southern_cross 7y ago
One of the things not mentioned here is that increasing use of wind and solar is forcing grid operators to make compromises in the traditional standards of how they run the grid. For example, IIRC the ability to maintain a rock-solid 60Hz p
51.
by southern_cross 7y ago
IIRC, something like 90% of a software engineer's career will be spent doing "maintenance" work - working on existing code bases, some of which may (eventually) be quite long in the tooth. So it's something that the youn
52.
by southern_cross 7y ago
I gave up on Science decades ago. I started reading more Nature instead thinking it might be better, but I've given up on it now, too. Some folks who have read Nature for far longer than I did will tell you that it has always been prob
53.
by southern_cross 7y ago
I don't think I've seen the particular study you reference, but if it's like most others that I have seen then it's probably mostly hogwash, based on bogus numbers and wishful thinking. BTW, the Oklahoma-to-Tennessee tra
54.
by southern_cross 7y ago
As time goes by there is going to be more and more "old" code out there, and generally that will either have to be maintained in its current state or converted to something newer. And to do that you're going to have folks who
55.
by southern_cross 7y ago
Recent research suggests that flood maps (at least in the US) now and always have understated flood-prone areas by a factor of something like 3x. So those 100-year and 500-year and such flood pronouncements may be equally off, too.
56.
by southern_cross 7y ago
It has been pointed out that tree rings respond mostly to changes in precipitation rather than temperature. If you can properly compensate for that, and for various other potentially confounding factors, then maybe you can derive some proxy
57.
by southern_cross 7y ago
See my comment(s) elsewhere in this thread.
58.
by southern_cross 7y ago
That's mighty big talk for someone who probably has done little to no due diligence on the data themselves. But I have, and here's just some of what I've found, specifically in reference to Berkeley Earth (BEST): 1. The initi
59.
by southern_cross 7y ago
Well, "nameplate" capacity is always the maximum theoretical output under ideal conditions, and how often does that happen? And with solar you have to deal with nighttime, so there goes fully half of it right off the bat! As to th
60.
by southern_cross 7y ago
I remember reading about some of the criminal charges that were being filed, and in one instance at least, someone was being charged for "criminal negligence" (or whatever) in the water testing that they did. But after reading abo

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