We just asked Chat GPT a question about forests and climate.
Specifically, we asked:
If all the world's forests burned, what effect would that have on global temperature?
Here's the answer we got:
Estimation of the Increase in CO₂:
Let’s assume that about 50% of the biomass carbon is released during a global forest fire:
- If global forests contain around 650 billion tons of carbon, then:
- 50% of that (325 billion tons) would be released into the atmosphere.
- This would increase atmospheric CO₂ by 325 billion tons (or 325,000 million tons).
[Hey, wait a minute. 325 billion tons of carbon do not equate to 325 billion tons of CO₂. The atomic weight of carbon is 12, the molecular mass of CO₂ is 44. So already CHAT GTP is out by a factor of 3.67]
Next:
Given that the atmosphere currently holds around 3,170 billion tons of CO₂, this would increase the total atmospheric CO₂ by about 10%.
[So, taking account of the above noted 3.67-fold error in estimating the amount of CO₂ that would be released on burning all the forests, it is evident that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration would increase not by 10% to around 460-480 ppm, but by 37% to 582 parts per million.]
So much for this so-called artificial intelligence that consumes so much electricity that it requires a nuclear power plant to operate. For now, we should regard such supposed intelligence with considerable scepticism while doing the best we can with the mere eighty or ninety billion neurons with their quadrillion or so interconnections that each of us is blessed with.
Checking the potential of AI further, we asked Gemini the same question we'd asked Chat GPT and got a more vague response -- but at least it made sense. Moreover, Gemini mentioned the negative impact of deforestation on global temperature through its effect on the amount of solar radiation reflected to outer space. Trees have a climate warming effect due to their high efficiency in absorbing solar radiation, up to 95% in the case of coniferous forests, whereas grassland, for example, absorbs only 80 to 85% of incoming solar radiation, the balance being reflected to outer space.
Writing in the Journal SCE, Demetris Koutsoyiannis of the Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering of the National Technical University of Athens assesses the relative importance of carbon dioxide and water vapour in the greenhouse effect.
His conclusion?
... that the contribution of carbon dioxide is 4% – 5%, whereas water and clouds contribute 87% – 95%.
That carbon dioxide has only a minor effect is confirmed by the hardly discernible effect on global temperature of the recent, more than one third increase in atmospheric CO₂ concentration from 300 to 420 parts per million.
That doesn't mean that we should not care about the effects of human activity on the composition of the air we breath. But it does mean that because The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, or The Guardian have been telling you for years that life on Earth will soon be Hell due to carbon emissions, does not mean that what they say is necessarily so.
Is Google using some mentally deficient AI to censor content?
Certainly the censorship seems mentally deficient. Here's the warning [Now removed] they are [were] giving anyone attempting to access this site:
Sensitive Content Warning
This blog may contain sensitive content. In general, Google does not review nor do we endorse the content of this or any blog. For more information about our content policies, please visit the Blogger Community Guildelines.
What does that even mean. Sensitive? sensitive! Is it now obscene, dishonest, or subversive to be "sensitive"?
Does Google's censor even know what the word "sensitive" means?
Isn't everyone alive "sensitive"? And what's wrong with that?
This apparent effort by Google to discourage readership is so inane, we have to assume it is either done by a poorly educated teenager employed as a censor at sub-minimum wage, or by a really dumb AI.
Which is it Google?
Not that we're expecting a reply, let alone an apology. Sadly Google is not as it once was. In the early days, when I wrote to Google expressing concern about Google caching all of my proprietary published data (I was at the time a publisher of scholarly journals) I had a polite and reassuring email from Sergey Brin. Now we're just pissed on without any means of effective response -- other than this comment which I suspect Google's current censorship regime is too dumb to understand. But let's see.
The Babylon Bee has put together the following list of startling similarities between Trump and Hitler to help you see the light:
1. Mein Kampf is German for The Art Of The Deal: Some people may try to tell you that's not the correct translation, but that's just revisionist history.
2. Both were called Hitler by their political opponents: Obviously not a coincidence.
Trump applied Walz's nasty comment on Musk more appropriately to Walz himself:
The western world has a population decline problem...
So
The elites claim that’s why we need mass immigration...
What is the idea?
‘I’m Not Amused’: Conservative Commentator Jordan Peterson Considering Defamation Suit Against Canadian PM Trudeau, Who Accused Him of Being Funded by Russian News Outlet RT. Gateway Pundit
The world has too many politicians seeking power by promising to save the world from disasters of their own imagining. Expensive, electric cars weighed down by half a ton of batteries and with a range barely half that of a gas-powered car are a consequence.
Yes, continuing to raise atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration may be unwise. But battery-electric cars are probably not the best way to eliminate the effect of carbon emissions by gas-powered motor vehicles.
Burning a litre of gasoline produces 2.3 kg of carbon dioxide. But carbon dioxide can be captured from the atmosphere and permanently sequestered underground for an estimated cost of 23 cents per kg. So why not add a Carbon Capture Charge of 53 cents to the price of a litre of gas and invest the proceeds in so-called direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide?
The answer to that question seems to be that governments headed by people like Justin Trudeau lack the either the expertise or the brains to govern well in a technological age.
Here is a link to Jordan Peterson's entertaining National Post article -- entertaining, that is, for those who enjoy black humor -- relating the efforts of the Ontario College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts to enforce its plan to re-educate the said Peterson, Canada's best known, indeed only publicly known, pyschologist. Ostensibly, the College's efforts to re-educate Dr. Peterson are aimed at preventing him in future from expressing publicly his opinion on such matters as Bill C-16, which, so Peterson suggests,"should have been entitled Legislation to Convince Vulnerable and Alienated Girls to have their Breasts Sliced Off.”
Naturally, it is annoying to those who advocate the mutilation of thirteen-year-olds to have a well known personality in their own field of specialization opposing their view and even suggesting that there is something, well, basically perverted about the whole idea. And indeed it must be doubly annoying to practitioners of a profession that sees itself as possessing the means to cure every kind of wrong think from seeing pink elephants to questioning the wit and wisdom of Justin Trudeau.
But what must really underlie the annoyance of the Ontario College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts is that almost no one has heard of them or gives a fig for what they think, whereas many millions throughout the World have heard of Jordan Peterson and actually know, and find of interest, what he has to say.
In a recent interview with Times Radio (United Kingdom), Markov worried out loud about the endgame of all this tension and escalation as the West keeps on poking the bear despite repeated warnings that these provocations will not go unpunished.
"You want to target your rocket missiles to Russian cities, to kill our people, and you, Great Britain, are going to do it. And you think we will keep silent?" Markov said.
In the event that Ukraine uses Shadow Storm missiles inside Russia, Moscow will have no choice but to launch tactical nuclear weapons on NATO airfields in Ukraine, as well as on British territory.
"You want to have war? Go ahead," he added.
