I tried every way I know to get this flow chart down to a postable/readable size...but, I can't get it smaller than 300kb and still be legible.

The Stephen King Universe (less The Dark Tower)

(May have to fiddle with that link, it doesn't want to play nice)

This one

It happens frequently, and, it's easy to do, but...

I'm confused.

spode had this on fb the other day

Attachment 39345

http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/8190/...fectonphot.jpg

yeah, you're reading that right. plants prettymuch stop being able to photosynthesize at around Fahrenheit 100.

http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/7...creasesthi.gif
and that's a graph from a study titled "When can we expect extremely high surface temperatures?" predicting the rise of extreme temperatures worldwide.

see the bit where the midwest gets hot enough to kill crops more and more often, hotter and hotter, starting like... pretty damn soon?

after the recent heatwaves across the US, supposedly less than half of US corn is judged to be in "good" condition by the USDA and 22% is considered "bad", when just months ago, with record planting, the USDA predicted a record crop this year. The price of corn has risen 30% since June, after the same record temperatures hammered farms in South America.

At least, assuming this well-written and highly-recommended article is right. sounds pretty damn dire.

I think that article is three fifths true, makes two significant lapses, and is written poorly and more alarmist than necessary.

True: the planet is warming.
True: plants suffer a lot in heat and eventually stop photosynthesising (and soon die).
True: we need these plants.

Important lapse 1: the graph of photosynthesis and temperature, a key piece of the article, fails my epistemological tests.
All their other graphs are derived from the article you link to, are well labeled and show the sort of scattered data one expects. The photosynthesis/temperature graph is not well labeled (units for photosynthesis?), is never attributed to a source (and I followed the links to other Kos articles) and IMHO has data points that fit the required curve too damn neatly to be real. The kicker for me, though, is that it does not say which species of plant this is for - different species would have different levels of tolerance. For example, equatorial regions are covered in forests. There might be truth in this, but that graph is IMHO not up to it.


Important lapse 2: Now consider the other graph you have shown. It is not a forecast of average annual temperature, nor even the highest temperature expected each year. It is the T100. It is well explained here:

http://texasclimate.org/ClimateChang...8/Default.aspx

So those temperatures you are looking at on that graph are 99% likely higher than any you would actually experience even once each year.

Poorly written and alarmist? IMHO, yes. It jumps around from photosynthesis to human heatstroke, and throws various examples around in jumbled order, and I believe has misused one respectable graph and used one that is suspect.

That said, cereal crops are crucial to human civilisation, they are harmed by heatwaves, heatwaves are expected to become more common, this is bad. It's not quite as dire as that article makes it look.

Plants love CO2. Warming is about one degree. I'm sure we'll be fine.

I refer you, sir, to my post in your "Insult me" thread. :D

The research behind Ibby's article indicates that peak temperatures are expected to increase by more than average temperatures, and it is the peaks that mess things up for us.

Mine is not a righty position. Inherent in my statement is that warming is happening and likely to continue. (After the current pause.)

I just don't have the alarm that others have. For one thing, I notice there are both winners and losers in climate change and everyone is ignoring the winners for some dumb reason. Some places will become dust bowls, other places will become the new fertile territory. And this has already happened over and over again, even in recorded history.

I notice that climate scientists are not botanists. Problems with plants are now easily solved through genetic engineering (or the old slower style of genetic engineering where plants and animals are bred for traits). We need corn that can take an extra few degrees of summer heat -- and they say the price for that kind just went up 30%? Then we will have that corn, period. Any problem worth an additional third will suddenly have a lot of energy thrown at it, that's how markets tend to solve these things.

I mean, just imagine: the Sahara, largest desert in the world, was entirely fertile green grassland ONLY 6000 years ago. It was the "loser" in some round of climate change that happened just before mankind was taking notice and measuring shit and writing shit down. They figure its complete conversion to desert was ONLY 1100 years ago. But now, shortly* after this loss of fertile land, the planet has the capacity to feed 7 billion people.

We'll be fine.



*"shortly" in geologic time.

Look out, Canada. Here we come.

Many years ago, Chuck Norris lit a fart in the Sahara Forest.....

I totally agree that, as a species, this is neither our biggest nor most immediate problem.

But dammit, I don't want to have to move to Greenland. Shit, do you know how many boxes of books we own? And we just refinanced the house!

How 'bout these Venn Diagrams?

Mitt Romney strikes again..lol.

High school math/stats is clearly way above the romney campaign's level?

Love it!

From The Job Impact of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan

Link

Map of every tornado in the last 61 years.

Attachment 39513

And here's the hurricane map
http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/files/l.../allstorms.jpg

I used to have my hair just like that, the hurricane style.

It turns out the only safe place to live in the eastern USA is West Virginia.

maybe a tornado isn't so bad

I missed the Steve Miller one earlier. Love it Ibs.

Actually my current undisclosed location in the ADK mountains is pretty clear as well, maybe because noone is around to report?

If you want to see the huge full resolution tornado chart, it's here.

Canadian Homeland Security is really doing it's job.
It looks as if not a single tornado made it across the border into Canada

Where's the "like" button?

Aw, shit, man...It was here a minute ago.

Did you look behind the bong?

Six different fonts? That's terrible!

Nah, man, you just got to, like, really get into each font, as it is, like, in itself, maaannn.

Duuuuude.....

:sweat:

from here

Thank your congressman.

"it's Obama's fault":rolleyes:

Not a chart/graph, but I thought it was interesting. I had not, til now, thought on this issue in these terms. And that kinda surprises me, really.

Attachment 39918

The story, w/sources, here.

hm

didja read his methodology? Seems like the very definition of cherry picking. "didn't fit my definition, so I left it out".

lies, damn lies and one more... what was it?

Average deaths in a killing rampage when the killer has a gun: quite a few.

Average deaths in a killing rampage when the killer does not have a gun: fewer.



Source: my arse.

And how do we keep the killers from getting guns?

We'll outlaw guns.

Yeah, that's gotta work.

Since you're changing the argument, I take it you're conceding Zen's point?

"I based it on 10 shootings I found listed on some timeline somewhere. I honestly don’t even remember where. I presented the case studies in a blog post on the Silver Circle blog and I did the math myself."

Strong research there, I believe him.

Read further, Joe, when challenged, he did it over again and did it ... a little better.

Ok, I'll give it another try. Honestly I stopped at the point I posted.

Well, if you like, but I gave up pretty soon too.

CDC: Pretty Much Everyone Is Fat

Amazing the trend from 1985 to now.

Check out Jamie Oliver's TED Talk. I'm going to try to show it during our training week. He claims 10+% of our health care costs are linked to obesity.

:lol:

stole it! :D

I showed it to my kids yesterday, and they both started singing the song and doing kung foo. Good times.

"checking email"??? in 1974?!?!?! :lol:

yes.

zero percent.



come to think about it, what were you doing in 1974 when this hit the charts?

Probably crapping myself, maybe learning to walk.

I'm pretty sure there was no email checking involved.

Holy moolah!

From here ...

missed one ...