Re: Climate change and the Alberta Floods
 

Really? There are plenty of very large, high-grade deposits of various minerals around the world that are not being exploited. Why? Because the market doesn't need any more of the stuff. That is basic economics.

Re: Climate change and the Alberta Floods
 

Wind turbines may not be the solution and even taking out the climate change position the oil even with new techniques and new depoists found will not last forever. Wind turbines are not a viable alternative, but some alternative to oil and fossil fuels needs to be found and invested in.

Re: Climate change and the Alberta Floods
 

How do you go about calculating the average temperature of the entire planet?

Re: Climate change and the Alberta Floods
 

You take the temperature at lots of different places, add them up and divide by how many readings there were. That is called an average (arithmetic mean, actually, because there are other ways of assessing an average).

Re: Climate change and the Alberta Floods
 

I know what an average is. It just seems like an impossible task to get an accurate value for the entire planet. Like how many different readings? How many different places? How many times of day? Is the average for a specific time of day? Or averaged over the whole day? The earth is a big place.

The temperature at my house is usually different than downtown or at the airport at any point in time. Which one is used for the average? A city itself can effect the temperature. For gardeners, Calgary is a zone 4 compared to zone 3 for the area around the outside of the city. If you compare the average temperature today to 1940 I'm guessing it would be different in part because the city is 20 times bigger now. Is that sort of thing considered when choosing where to take the temperature? Probably...

But still, it doesn't seem like an easy task.

Re: Climate change and the Alberta Floods
 

Without wishing to be rude, I suspect that you don't know what an average is.

An average is one number that is meant to describe reasonably accurately what is happening with a much larger set of numbers. The measure of average most commonly used is the arithmetic mean. It is very often bollocks because it doesn't cope with outliers. I hate the slavish use of the CAGR with a passion. Modes and medians are often better indicators, as are trimmed means.

Re: Climate change and the Alberta Floods
 

You suspect wrong.

Re: Climate change and the Alberta Floods
 

Re: Climate change and the Alberta Floods
 

It wouldn't be the first time.

Re: Climate change and the Alberta Floods
 

For a primer, see here...

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_...ch1s1-3-2.html

The doc is 6 years old but the methods haven't changed much.

Re: Climate change and the Alberta Floods
 

:rofl:

Re: Climate change and the Alberta Floods
 

That's a completely irrelevant point. You can't explain away economic specialization and economies of scale by pointing to a totally different resource and saying no-one bothers with it. "Well, gee, no-one is going to bother pumping up all that oil because no-one bothers with pumping out the Pacific Ocean do they?"

There are 170 billion barrels of oil estimated to be in northern Alberta, that does mean that there is more incentive to figure out how to exploit it than if there was less of it.

Re: Climate change and the Alberta Floods
 

Not as good as my ancestors were most likely, because people in the modern world have adapted via economic specialization. So they're better at one thing but not as good generally, which was my point.

Re: Climate change and the Alberta Floods
 

Looks like Ontario and Quebec have been getting their gas from the west on the cheap. There's more money in oil.

http://business.financialpost.com/20..._lsa=88d9-fc2e

Re: Climate change and the Alberta Floods
 

It looks like 1998, 2005 and 2010 are the same essentially. There seems to have been a flattening of the curve over the last 15 years or so - what is that attributed to?