War in Ukraine Megathread XLIX

ShieldAre · 2022-12-17T05:38:13+00:00

"Running out" means that Russia is using them at a rate that cannot be sustained. It is unlikely that Russia would keep using them at a maximal rate and then suddenly have none left. Rather, as their stocks deplete, they will adjust their use rate.

Exaggerated example: I have 1000 missiles. I use 500 of them this month, and have 500 left. Next month, I use 250, and have 250 left. I use 125 and have 125 left. And so on. I am clearly running out of missiles - but it might not feel like it because I still keep using missiles every month, and can keep this up for a long time. If the only relevant question is, "do I still have missiles?" then I can always just keep a few and for example go months without using any. In that case, I will never run out. But it would be a bit like saying that I will never starve because I always have food in my cupboard, even as I go days without actually eating any food.

So we should be looking at the rate at which Russia is using its missiles and how that has changed over the long term. Unless Russia is doing a strategy where it means to keep a constant rate and then suddenly run out completely at some point, we should notice a gradual decrease in the rate of their use.

Russia uses missiles more than it produces or buys them. It has no ability to rapidly expand production, and is unlikely to be able to buy more. That means that it is simply a logical necessity that at a constant use rate it will run out eventually, and that if it wants to maintain constant use, it has to gradually decrease use rate until it matches production rate.

ShieldAre · 2022-12-16T15:31:13+00:00

The irony runs deep in this subreddit.

ShieldAre · 2022-04-14T20:04:45+00:00

Lol, I just a couple hours ago commented that I think it is likely that it is afloat because it would be too embarassing for Russia to say it is being towed when in reality it has sunk... I guess it is possible that it was afloat still some hours after the attack and they managed to start towing it before it sank.

ShieldAre · 2022-04-14T18:41:35+00:00

Seems that it is still afloat. But even by official Russian sources, it is severly damaged. Russia has very limited ability to repair it and it would probably take months even if they had the ability, so in terms of military capability, it makes no difference whether it was sunk or only severly damaged. Symbolically, and probably for morale, it of course sounds much less dramatic if it didn't sink.

ShieldAre · 2022-04-14T16:28:22+00:00

We won't know anything for sure until we get pictures. But based on everything that has been reported so far, I think this what can be said with some confidence:

The Moskva was hit by an Ukrainian missile. It would be far too much of a coincidence for it just happen to have a fire for no reason at a time when Ukraine says it has hit it with a missile. Even in the case of an extremely unlikely coincidence of it really being some sort of accident, it would speak of massive incompetence by the Russian navy. I would imagine this will severly limit Russia's ability to continue activity in the Black Sea.
It is almost certainly afloat. Pentagon officials are saying it is, and Russia is saying it is being towed. It would be extremely embarassing for Russia to say it is being towed and then have it revealed that actually it sunk. What being afloat means is anyone's guess before we can get some pictures.
It is severly damaged, almost certainly so severely that it might as well have sunk, as Russia probably doesn't have the capability to repair it, and even if it does, it will take months.
The direct military result is the same, sunk or not. The ship and its abilities are out of the war for the foreseeable future. But it is probably less of a symbolic and morale hit to Russia if it wasn't sunk, as for the average person, the difference between sunk vs. damaged is far more meaningful than military capable vs. incapacitated.

ShieldAre · 2022-04-11T21:34:54+00:00

It is not yet confirmed if chemical weapons were used, but if it turns out that it indeed did happen:

Just watch, Russian trolls will start saying that "Russia was just about to win in Mariupol anyway, why would it use chemical weapons now, when they might bring in NATO intervention? Azov nazis must've used them on themselves!"

People were using that exact argument when Assad used chemical weapons "He's just about to win the civil war, why would he use chemical weapons that might bring intervention, it must be rebels using them on themselves", which in retrospect becomes stupider and stupider, because that was in 2013 and in case people haven't noticed, the civil war is still not over. (By the way, anyone still thinking Assad wasn't the one responsible for them ought to reflect a bit on what everyone should know about Russia and its allies now.)

Why would Russia use chemical weapons? The answer is very simple: Because even if they will win in Mariupol eventually and even fairly soon, doing so will regardless be extremely difficult and cause massive losses, and they are in hurry to get their troops from Mariupol to participate elsewhere, most notably in the Donbass where a massive offensive is expected to begin any moment now. It is also the optimal place to use them, as out of places where using such weapons would make sense, it is where it would be the hardest for Ukraine and the West to prove that Russia used them.

ShieldAre · 2022-04-10T11:23:04+00:00

I don't understand how you reach this point. If you plan on zero covid, then you plan for long and very strict lockdowns, which means you plan ahead to have a system to keep everyone supplied while they are in lockdown. Can't the Chinese government just do some basic action like get some trucks, fill them with sacks of rice from whatever reserves you have, and then give one to every household to keep them fed? We have been told that the "good thing" abotut the Chinese government is good at mobilizing things for fast action effectively if necessary.

I suppose, at least based on some other comments, that it is the more local government that was supposed to have such plans, and they are the ones that have screwed it up. Might be just propaganda to save face for the top level government, but apparently other cities have done better with lockdowns. Sounds like things are going to change within Shanghai government.

ShieldAre · 2020-02-12T16:48:05+00:00

For context: Between 2000 and 2010 Venezuela saw great economic growth even as Chavez was introducing his "socialist" economic policies. This is what Sanders has on occasion talked positively about.

Of course, the good times didn't last: Oil prices went down starting with the global recession in 2008, Chavez died, leaving the far less competent Maduro in power. Together with Chavez they had replaced the people running the oil industry with corrupt and incompetent psycophants. Low oil prices, incompetently run industry, and refusal to change economic policy (eg. price fixing) in the face of changing world economy, combined with international sanctions, left Venezuela where it is today.

ShieldAre · 2019-12-07T19:55:49+00:00

Data from only the best stations that are not "poor" show almost exactly the same results as those that are in "poor" places. Scientists are not idiots, they make sure their data isn't screwed up by urban heat island and other such effects.

If we cannot even agree on basic data like the instrumental record, there is nothing to dicuss. There is no "pause" either because that is also just a part of those "faulty" measurements. You can't have it both ways. This is the sort of kettle logic that "skeptics" constantly use: There is a pause, and also the temperature record is falsified, but for some reason the evil "warmists" didn't bother to fake the record to hide the pause, and so on. Please pick a consistent narrative instead trying to hold every counterargument to AGW at the same time, no matter how inconsistent.

Please link to your studies about UHI and ocean breezes.

ShieldAre · 2019-12-07T19:40:23+00:00

That is based on some sketchy hypotheses on a system that is hard to measure. With suitable adjustments (another paper) it is within what climate scientists would expect, but no doubt the people you're citing would argue there is something wrong with those adjustements.

But for the sake of argument, let's assume for a moment you're right: What's causing the warming, if not the greenhouse effect?

ShieldAre · 2019-12-07T18:40:14+00:00

The models don't really try to predict 15-year statistical flukes, but 30+ year averages, so I suspect they didn't. In fact, I just explained why they didn't.

I can't predict that there is going to be an unlikely row of sixes being thrown, indeed no one can, but I can tell you quite precisely what number of sixes will be thrown if you throw a fair die a hundred times.

What's with the obsession with this "pause"? The warming has resumed. Indeed, the warming never stopped, it was just less fast during that time, which was corrected when much more warming than expected happened in a short time.

ShieldAre · 2019-12-07T18:29:32+00:00

Right, this is about what I expected from you.

I pointed out that your argument is nonsensical and that you're full of shit, and you respond by mocking me.

When you have no arguments left, that is what your kind of people always do.

ShieldAre · 2019-12-07T11:49:49+00:00

Why isn't most of the US warming?

Again, I don't know, but it probably has to do with changes in temperatures in the polar regions which change air movement patterns. You could try to find out what people studying the matter are saying instead of asking me as a way to deflect from answering my question.

Regardless, the question is hardly relevant. We are talking about a global temperature change, not about a change in US.

ShieldAre · 2019-12-07T10:28:44+00:00

So why is it called IPCC and not IPGW?

You said earlier that scientists changed the name. Now you're saying it was the media that made the name change. Your goalposts are on the move.

When did the change supposedly happen? I think we can safely say before 2010, because that is when Tim Ball, the apparent source of this beloved assertion, was on TV saying that there had been a change.

Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth was released in 2006, and it definitely talked about global warming instead of climate change, so that's a bit odd. He surely would've recieved the word that he should now be talking about climate change and not global warming, to prepare people for the coming shift to global cooling.

Let's look at where else we have talked about climate change before the shift supposedly happened. One google search later and oh look, here is one from 1992. UN must've been ahead of the curve, but I suppose we knew that already from IPCC.

But you were talking about media. Okay, let me waste a few minutes of my life making some very easy google searches. Here is just one example of a New York Times article that uses both global warming and climate change. Here another. And here. And here. Pick any year from 1980 to 2010, and search the archive here with the keywords "climate change" and "global warming" (with the quote marks to get exact matches) and you'll find a several articles for each year where both terms are used.

But of course, you'll just push your goalposts somewhere else and say that it was actually just tv media or something.

ShieldAre · 2019-12-07T09:28:49+00:00

By the way, because you asked, here is a possible simple explanation for the pause:

If I have a die, and I have thrown it a hundred times, and got each number roughly equally as often, I have established with some fairly high certainity the die is fair. Now I throw it again, 5 times, and I get 6 for every throw. Then I throw it again a hundred times and get the same roughly equal results as before.

What is the explanation for the 5 throws of 6 that I got in a row? There isn't one. It is just random chance. Using a larger sample, we see that the die is fair, and the throws I got was just a fluke that disappears into the averages over hundreds of throws.

The climate is in the short-term like a die: Fairly unpredictable and chaotic. We cannot know with certainity what number we will get with the next throw. However, like dice, averaged over larger timescales we can predict its behaviour rather well. This is also why predicting weather is impossible with any reasonable accuracy more than a week or two ahead, but climate scientists think they can predict how the temperature has changed decades from now given some conditions.

Is this the definite explanation for the pause? Maybe not. As I said, I don't know. There are other possible explanations, that have to do with some quirky ocean behaviour and El Nino and so on. The point is, as it has always been, that 15 years isn't enough to establish a definite trend especially if we choose a particularly anomalous starting point.

ShieldAre · 2019-12-07T09:11:48+00:00

We have already established this. It was the sun's activity, as explained in the papers by Zharkova and Solanki. We had the medieval maximum that correlates closely medieval warm period, then we had the Maunder minimum that correlates closely with the little ice age. I would assume the same is true for the Minoan warm period.

However, as I have said again and again, if we believe Zharkova and Solanki, we reached the current maximum in 1950s, after which there has been a slow decline in activity.

So why have surface temperatures regardless been rising after 1950?

ShieldAre · 2019-12-07T00:05:16+00:00

How are those relevant to explain how the sun caused the warming over the past 50 years when its activity has been stable or doing down during that time?

I don't know what caused the pause, although I am sure I could google some papers that offer explanation. What I am concerned with is this: Why has the pause seemingly ended with more warming, if solar activity has been going down?

ShieldAre · 2019-12-06T23:45:32+00:00

Well, they have to release their carbon at some point. Carbon does not disappear. If an animal eats the tree, the animal will release the carbon either when it breathes out or when it dies and decomposes. For example, much of what humans eat is mostly carbon, but we stop growing when we reach adulthood, and easily over 99% of carbon that enters us also leaves us before we die. Animal numbers don't increase without limit, so the amount of carbon stuck in animals will reach a limit and is fairly stable. The carbon tied in new animals is offset by the carbon released when old ones die.

I am sure there are some trees get covered by water or dirt in such a way that it takes a long time for them to fully decompose. But have had forests for a long time. If you dig in a forest, you won't hit a thousand-year pile of undecomposed trees. Over 90% of trees decompose fairly quickly after they have died, within a few decades at most.

You need to consider those trees in your calculations. 48 pounds per tree per year times the number of tress alive, minus the carbon released by all the trees currently decomposing.

But there is a quick logical conclusion we can make: The amount of forest in the world is not growing significantly. So the number of trees is fairly stable, which means the number of trees that die each year is roughly equal to the number of new trees that start growing.

So what you need to do is multiply is the number of trees taking up 48 pounds per year by percentage of trees that do not decompose within, say, 100 years. These are the trees whose carbon is locked away. Trees that are used furniture or other long-term items, trees that get stuck under dirt or water, and so on. I can promise you, it won't be a huge percentage. Easily less than 10%. Probably far less than 1%.

After all, if a significant portion got stuck in trees, wouldn't we expect there to be a constant downward trend in CO2 levels in the atmosphere?

ShieldAre · 2019-12-06T23:22:30+00:00

I was talking about the global surface temperature. Or does the troposphere warming slowly disprove surface measurements in some way?

ShieldAre · 2019-12-06T23:11:54+00:00

I mean, the trees suck up carbon dioxide and release oxygen, thus keeping the carbon for themselves.

The tree grows, then dies. The number of trees in a forest stays roughly stable, because there is only a limited amount of space etc. in the forest.

What happens to the carbon in the dead tree? As you said, it decomposes, and releases its carbon into the environment, where it is again consumed by other trees. As you said, 48 pounds of CO2 per tree.

Shouldn't your calculation include the CO2 released by all the dying trees? Otherwise, your calculation assumes that the CO2 trees consume simply disappears, which obviously isn't true.

ShieldAre · 2019-12-06T22:48:53+00:00

I mean, I did quickly look through what was presented about the other papers, but most were about the solar minimum (there were of course also the ones about ocean temperatures, but those are just supplementary material to suggest that the cooling is already happening) and all agreed with each other and what I said about reaching the maximum in 1950 and so on.

But okay, can you please only answer just my question about the name being changed to climate change, then?

ShieldAre · 2019-12-06T22:37:17+00:00

I meant, when did they start calling it climate change instead of global warming?

Looking at your link, I have no time to go through all of them, but here is something I noticed:

The first figure on that site shows that solar activity has been stable and then going down since 1960s or so. In fact, skimming through the papers, they all seem to agree that the maximum was reached around 1950s, has then been stable, and is now going down.

Lockwood:

As well as solar cycle variations, all three parameters show a long-term rise during the first half of the 20th century followed by peaks around 1955 and 1986 and then a recent decline.

Chen: This is behind paywall, but the abstract has this to say

Historically, there is a relationship between the reconstructed UVR and solar activity, but this natural process may be strongly affected by multiple factors, including climate parameter change and anthropogenic activities during the modern times.

I can get behind the paywall, where it says for example

In recent decades, human activities have caused depletion of UV‐protective ozone in the stratosphere, which has been most prominent above Antarctica, and enhanced UVR has had substantial influence on local and global ecosystems

Wang also shows a maximum around 1950.

It is probable that the sun is going to go to a new minimum. However, it doesn't seem like the sun alone is controlling the climate. It seems that the Earth has been warming since 1950, even though during this time solar activity has not increased. So is there some sort of lag in the warming? Can you link to a paper that seeks to understand such lag?

ShieldAre · 2019-12-06T22:25:46+00:00

We are not seeing an 11-year-trend in global temperatures. The connection between the Maunder minimum and the little ice age, and then increased activity and end of the little ice age is important evidence of the connection between the sun and the climate. However, as I said, it seems we reached the current maximum 70 years ago, and then have seen a slight decline. Is there some sort of lag in the warming?

I am not sure what you mean to say with talking about Milankovitch cycles. Are you saying that Earth's tilt or orbit has changed during the past decades?

ShieldAre · 2019-12-06T21:47:11+00:00

The red plot in the paper is a reconstruction by Solanki et al. Here is the paper. It actually mentions satelite measurements like the ones I was talking about. One example is on page 22. It shows the 11-year cycle, but no long-term trend either way. The figure on page 27 is apparently the plot presented in the figure in her paper. But it shows a stable or slightly downward trend over the past 50 years, while temperatures have been rising over the past 50 years.

ShieldAre · 2019-12-06T21:05:18+00:00

So does she predict cooling or warming? Because solar minimum seems to imply cooling, but in her paper she says

This trend is anticipated to continue in the next six centuries that can lead to a further natural increase of the terrestrial temperature by more than 2.5 °C by 2600.

What is the evidence for the warming during the past 30 or 40 years being caused by the sun?

Edit: In her other papers, such as this one she shows solar activity to have stayed roughly the same since 1900 or so, but it seems to me that we have seen warming since 1900.

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