The Jaw-Dropping Stats from Hurricane Irma

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I drive a huge van for Scuba Diving. It's a Transit 350 XLT and it only gets 14.6 mpg. It's clearly not a great car to take to the grocery store.....

I remember you posting about his when you bought it. I was interested as we were buying a new panel van for work. The new Transit is popular here too.

Maybe you can answer a question for me? Why do vehicles in the US have such huge idiotic engines in them? The Transit 350 here has a 2.0 diesel engine. This is the new generation Euro 6 engine with very low NOx emissions. (Some controversy between real driving and test conditions like the VW diesel fraud).

OK so I guess yours is auto? Pretty much all ours are shift. Auto is available as an option.

The European model does something like 25mpg (US gals) in automatic option (30 in shift). It's top speed is about 90mph. Last time I drove in the US everyone drove like real slow, real real slow. I guess you still do?

Why the huge stupid engine? Surely as well as the waste of fuel it is more expensive to service and maintain? You need more lube and so on. Plus it is heavy so cuts the payload and spoils the handling as too much weight over the front axle? Must be more to manufacture so more expensive too?

Just curious.
 
The new Transit is popular here too.
This is not a Transit Connect but a full size 1-ton van.
Why the huge stupid engine?
Towing. My engine is a 3.6 l gas. I chose to go with gas because I simply hate noise. My Deisel Sprinter got close to 20 mpg but it was indeed noisy. I would have preferred a standard, but there were none on the lot.
 
Of course, there are other periods of time of increasing and decreasing co2 levels prior to both homo sapien existing and prior to industrialization.
Like the Jurassic. About 10F hotter (no permanent ice), 7 times the CO2 and the O2 was @26%. The earth enjoyed the most varied and largest biota of its existence and we would have been damned uncomfortable.
 
Relationships are complex and depend on a huge number of variables. Whether a hurricane forms, for example can depend on the strength of winds at higher altitudes. Very few relationships are linear in the long term. Money earning compound interest is not linear. As another one if a lot of valcanos go off the PPCO2 may go up but the haze and clouds blocking the sun can lead to cooling as can an asteroid strike. Looking at prehistoric times is not necessarily relevant to now.

The idea that we do not have perfect knowledge is irrelevant to making decisions. There is much about cancer that we do not know. My daughter in law starts chemo tomorrow. We do not know if it will work. We do know she has a 75% chance with the chemo and essentially 0% without it. All decisions about complex systems are that way. You get the best data you can and make the best decision you can at that time. As new data comes in you may modify your decision. If she waited for perfect knowledge of cancer she would be long dead.
 
Hrmmm ok @chrisch lets try something different. These debates/arguments never go well or change anyone's minds which is why I sometimes successfully try to avoid them.

Yup. Me too. This one got a bit interesting.

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Mine to you is in regard to inaccurate modeling. Earlier you said I'm persistently saying that but it isn't true. Do you have any response to the link I posted of the data analysis of the models or would you prefer to provide a model that has been producing accurate predictions?

This is kinda the basis of my entire skepticism of our understanding of anthropogenic climate change. If the "science is settled" or it's really as cut and dry as presented we should have some very nice accurate models.

Why do you think the models are inaccurate? The models are just fine and the science is settled. What I think you are trying to say (and I don't want to second guess you so I try to avoid doing this for that reason) is that the predictions do not follow an exact path. This is not inaccuracy. These doesn't mean the models are inaccurate.

When you model a complex system with multiple feedbacks and many internal feedbacks you cannot easily create a perfect model. It is not accuracy that is the problem it is the correlations between the data and the interrelation of diverse data. Almost certainly some of the early models for things like this - the environment or the economy - were beyond the ability of the computers they ran on at the time.

So with such modelling you just have to accept that the predictions are not going to be cast iron guarantees of the future. Chaos theory was developed to scientifically explain this and is pretty much on the money. Any model will have a degree of tolerance therefore. This is not inaccuracy, it's just a reflection of the model's limitations.

If you really really want to find every little deviation and extrapolate that out to a great thesis that the model is flawed it is possible to do so. This is true of all complex modelling. (My background is data analysis). this is the technique used by the climate change denial industry to constantly undermine what are - in reality - the best efforts of many scientists who just want to find the truth. But like all humans there are good and bad and for sure there have been instances of spin and dishonesty on both sides. the current models are state of the art. I really think if you wait for better it will be too late.

By all means be sceptical about things but sometime you simply have to act on the best information available. The best information available says we have to act. The most likely outcome of not doing so is far worse than any financial or other downside to acting. The opportunities from renewable energy are also clear to see and hardly a big deal to achieve.

As I have said repeatedly if the infinitesimal possibility that the model is flawed is true then all you have lost is the tiny benefit of short term use of fossil fuel (at the expense of taking it away from the next generation). If the model is right - only 50% right - then the cost of burning fossil fuel for another 10 years is beyond our ability to pay.
 
This is not a Transit Connect but a full size 1-ton van.

Towing. My engine is a 3.6 l gas. I chose to go with gas because I simply hate noise. My Deisel Sprinter got close to 20 mpg but it was indeed noisy. I would have preferred a standard, but there were none on the lot.

Sure the 350 - same as our panel van.

The European 2.0 diesel van tows 2750Kg.

The Merc is noisy (well the old ones). You cannot buy a petrol van here.

3.6L is awesome: that would be a 10 tonne truck engine. Crazy.
 
That overly simplistic relationship of "increase co2 increase temp" isn't accurate or at least is incomplete.
It's a simplification, sure, but it's true. It was first postulated by the (great) Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius more than a hundred years ago, and no-one have since been able to falsify that hypothesis. Quite to the contrary, it has been supported by data to the extent that it's been a scientific theory (as in "theory of gravity", "theory of evolution" or "theory of relativity", not as in a TV crime show cop saying "I have a theory") for several decades now.
 
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My Deisel Sprinter got close to 20 mpg but it was indeed noisy.
Current modern diesels here in Europe aren't much more noisy than gasoline engines with similar performance.

Either your experience is with obsolete technology, or you 'murricans are receiving the short end of the stick when you buy diesels.
 
Why do you think the models are inaccurate?

Back around 2000ish when ipcc climate modeling first started getting some mainstream attention (or at least when I started paying attention) and of course Gore helped bring them to prominence with his movie, the dire predictions of the models never came to fruition.

Since then, to my knowledge the methodology of generating these models hasn't changed. They make the model based upon historic data. They then test the model against historic data to determine if it is accurate.

I understand why this is how they do it, unlike with other disciplines where you can carry out experiments in the short term waiting 10-20 years to get feedback on the accuracy of your model is clearly sub-optimal.

But the way science is supposed to work is you test your understanding by making future predictions. And this is where the models to my knowledge continue to fail.

And when I say fail, I don't mean they aren't perfect. I don't expect them to be perfect, but they are not even close. At least the model predictions that were made in the past and we've now can look back at and see.

Further, if you watch that video link you can see analysis done on the models and see the propagation of error over time. Roughly paraphrasing the main point of the video is that all the models allow the propagation of large amounts of error over time so the further out the prediction the more error has been introduced.

Also, I get the complexity of global climate and making models of such a complex system. But this is precisely why the overselling "the science is settled" type rhetoric doesn't help the cause but actually generates distrust.

I seriously doubt you can find prominent physicist that will announce the science is settled when it comes to gravity. And yet we can so accurately model the celestial mechanics of our solar system that we can launch probes with planned trajectories that intercept planets years in the future.

Perhaps planetary climate modeling is far more complex than gravity, but then lets not get over zealous and make statements like the science is settled and call someone a denier when they are skeptical. After all, all "climate deniers", "global warming skeptics" aren't people that think we faked the moon landing, the earth is flat and the universe is 6k years old.

(My background is data analysis).

Then I would enjoy your feedback at that video especially.

By all means be sceptical about things but sometime you simply have to act on the best information available.

Sure, and this is kinda where these discussions eventually end up.

And I agree, it's better to be proactive. The unfortunate thing here is that now is when the politics gets injected into the matter when you start trying to decide what is sensible based upon our confidence in our predictions.

We don't all feel the same regarding what measures are "sensible".

It's a simplification, sure, but it's true. It was first postulated by the (great) Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius more than a hundred years ago, and no-one have since been able to falsify that hypothesis. Quite to the contrary, it has been supported by data to the extent that it's been a scientific theory (as in "theory of gravity", "theory of evolution" or "theory of relativity", not as in a TV crime show cop saying "I have a theory") for several decades now.

Sure, "all things being equal more co2 will have a greenhouse effect". That's the big if or premise though, the all things being equal part. Clearly, on the global scale there are many other dynamics and feedback that are involved. Otherwise how would you explain 4000ppm in prehistoric times with glaciation?
 

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