Interesting graphs and charts department

[Lamplighter]

This little article interested me because we're probably going to get a new car in the next year.
That will set off our family tradition of hand-me-down cars to various family members.
I thought the cost calculator which is also linked below was interesting and seemed useful...

LA Times
Dan Turner
10/5/12

Does $5 gas = buy a hybrid or electric car? A cost/benefit analysis

The U.S. Department of Energy's Alternative Fuels Data Center
has an interesting tool on its website for comparing the costs of fuel and
ownership of nearly every motor vehicle sold in the U.S.
I compared my neighbor's Leaf to seven other popular 2012 gas-powered models,
including the hybrid Toyota Prius, given current local electricity prices and
figuring the average current price of gas at $4.75 a gallon.
<snip>

VEHICLE COST CALCULATOR

This tool uses basic information about your driving habits to calculate total cost of ownership
and emissions for makes and models of most vehicles, including alternative fuel
and advanced technology vehicles.
<snip>

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Lamplighter

This little article interested me because we're probably going to get a new car in the next year.
That will set off our family tradition of hand-me-down cars to various family members.
--snip

hand me downs like this?

In 2009, Lewis and Rotjan surveyed the entire hermit crab population on Carrie Bow Cay. Many crabs were living in shells that were a tight fit or had one too many holes. As they grow, hermit crabs must move into larger shells, so they are always on the lookout for a more spacious dwelling. And an undamaged shell is preferable to a broken one, even if the shells are the same size. Knowing this, the researchers decided to dramatically change the available hermit crab real estate on Carrie Bow Cay. They placed 20 beautifully intact shells that were a little too big for most hermit crabs at various spots around the island and watched what happened.

When a lone crab encountered one of the beautiful new shells, it immediately inspected the shelter with its legs and antennae and scooted out of its current home to try on the new shelter for size. If the new shell was a good fit, the crab claimed it. Classic hermit crab behavior. But if the new shell was too big, the crab did not scuttle away disappointed—instead, it stood by its discovery for anywhere between 15 minutes and 8 hours, waiting. This was unusual. Eventually other crabs showed up, each one trying on the shell. If the shell was also too big for the newcomers, they hung around too, sometimes forming groups as large as 20. The crabs did not gather in a random arrangement, however. Rather, they clamped onto one another in a conga line stretching from the largest to smallest animal—a behavior the biologists dubbed "piggybacking."

Only one thing could break up the chain of crabs: a Goldilocks hermit crab for whom the shell introduced by Lewis and Rotjan was just right. As soon as such a crab claimed its new home, all the crabs in queue swiftly exchanged shells in sequence. The largest crab at the front of the line seized the Goldilocks crab's abandoned shell. The second largest crab stole into the first's old shell. And so on.

[Lamplighter]

V, that's really interesting... and it is like our family

One of my G-sons is driving a Subaru (>120k miles) that started with my wife, and over to our daughter.
Another G-son and a G-daughter are driving cars that started family life with their mom and her S.O.

But it wasn't a matter of size, but of opportunity and need.

[BigV]

It's about Goldilocks, "just right", not only about size. :-)

[xoxoxoBruce]

The vehicle cost calculater make too many assumptions that are out of whack.

[Happy Monkey]

[Gravdigr]

How I view that chart:

[Happy Monkey]

Climate change skeptics sometimes say that temperatures are actually decreasing. They do this by picking a small span of years where there was a downward trend, while ignoring the long term upward trend. When there's a new record high, they start saying that temperatures are actually decreasing since that new date.

[Undertoad]

I saw that post and I am bothered by it. What are all his data points?

Here's the graph at Wikipedia's global warming page, which is similar but more understandable:



Annual mean, that seems like a sensible way to go, since that's all four seasons. Dude's got like twenty data points every 5 years, what is that data?

So... why did he start his graph in 1973? When you look at the annual mean on Wikipedia's graph, 1973 is the end of a three-decade period of no warming, and the beginning of three decades of great warming.

He has cropped the data to fit his narrative, doing exactly what he's accusing the skeptics of doing but on like a century scale rather than a decade scale.

Am I wrong? Tell me where. And how far out should the graph go before we understand what's happening?

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

I saw that post and I am bothered by it. What are all his data points?

Here's the source.

So... why did he start his graph in 1973? When you look at the annual mean on Wikipedia's graph, 1973 is the end of a three-decade period of no warming, and the beginning of three decades of great warming.

He has cropped the data to fit his narrative, doing exactly what he's accusing the skeptics of doing but on like a century scale rather than a decade scale.

Am I wrong? Tell me where.

I don't see any starting point on Wikipedia's graph that whould have changed the narrative much, should they have cropped it differently. A line would still go up. Maybe a curve would fit better if they'd started it in 1940, but the curve would still go up.

I searched for "global warming 1973" on Google, and one skeptic also picked 1973 to do his analysis. His reasoning was:

Originally Posted by Roy Spencer

I will restrict the analysis to 1973 and later since (1) this is the primary period of warming allegedly due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions; (2) the period having the largest number of monitoring sites has been since 1973; and (3) a relatively short 37-year record maximizes the number of continuously operating stations, avoiding the need to handle transitions as older stations stop operating and newer ones are added.

Perhaps similar reasons were chosen for the 1973 cutoff on the original graph as well.

And how far out should the graph go before we understand what's happening?

As far as possible, I suppose, depending on the type of data being included.

[Undertoad]

A line would still go up, just wouldn't look so pretty and convincing.

I like this 1973 notion because, maybe that's it; there has been warming on a geological scale -- since glaciers covered NY State in 20,000 B.C. -- and man-made causes may have accelerated it post 1973.

It has always bothered me that the warming on some graphs goes back to 1830. Mankind wasn't doing anything much at that point. There were only 1B people on the earth, as opposed to the 7B today, and those 1B were still mostly digging in the dirt.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

It has always bothered me that the warming on some graphs goes back to 1830. Mankind wasn't doing anything much at that point. There were only 1B people on the earth, as opposed to the 7B today, and those 1B were still mostly digging in the dirt.

Something to do with the industrial revolution, maybe?

[Undertoad]

I don't believe that man's contribution began when the only way to get carbon out of the ground was having child labor drag it out from filthy mines. It was a revolution to have trains cross a few countries and to power ships by steam, but to have enough activity to change the environment of the entire planet surely took longer.

[Gravdigr]

I was awed by the sheer number of data points.

[BigV]

I think you are pretty awed already, but I don't want to make a point of it.