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Carbon dioxide does not cause catastrophic runaway global warming. It may cause approx. a degree or so of warming. Any more would require positive feedback and there is no evidence that is happening. We've measured the radiation in at all wavelengths and we've measured the radiation out at all wavelengths. The evidence for positive feedback is just not there.

This is false.

http://www.science20.com/news_account/greenhouse_gases_and_water_vapor_when_positive_feedback_is_a_bad_thing
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2010/2010JD014192.shtml
http://www.springerlink.com/content/m2054qq6126802g8/
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2008/2008GL035333.shtml
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2007JCLI2142.1
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2006/2005GL025505.shtml
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2005.../2005GL023624.shtml
http://www.springerlink.com/content/v164l177374p1445/

Let's just look at one abstract.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/310/5749/841

Climate models predict that the concentration of water vapor in the upper troposphere could double by the end of the century as a result of increases in greenhouse gases. Such moistening plays a key role in amplifying the rate at which the climate warms in response to anthropogenic activities, but has been difficult to detect because of deficiencies in conventional observing systems. We use satellite measurements to highlight a distinct radiative signature of upper tropospheric moistening over the period 1982 to 2004. The observed moistening is accurately captured by climate model simulations and lends further credence to model projections of future global warming.

The urban heat island effect is well compensated for. A recent study that used Anthony Watts surfacestations.org list of well and poorly sited weather stations found that poorly sited stations actually show slightly less warming compared to the well sited stations. (Menne 2010)

Other studies showing the urban heat island effect is not a significant factor affecting temperature trends:
Peterson 2003
Parker 2006
Jones et al 2008

The NASA page you cited discussed the causes and effects of the UHI effect but says nothing about its effect on global temperature trends.

I'm trying to figure out what you mean by a "warm oceanic cycle". While changes in currents and atmospheric effects can change the distribution of heat in the oceans which will effect adjacent land temperatures it doesn't change the total heat energy stored in the oceans. Over 99% of the heat energy in the Earth system, including the oceans comes from greenhouse warming. Without the buffering effect of the oceans absorbing over 90% of the enhanced greenhouse warming we would already have surface temperatures much higher than they are now.

I probably shouldn't be making any 20 year bets since I'm old enough that it's at best 50-50 whether I'll still be among the living in 2030.

Regarding climate models, they don't make any predictions. In order to make a realistic prediction they would have to know the inputs of things subject to natural variability ahead of time. Inputs such as insolation, CO2 levels and the timing of events like ENSO among other things. Instead they make projections based on various input scenarios. They are tested and validated by hindcasting using the actual observations of those inputs.

In 1988 James Hansen made projections based on three scenarios (A, B & C). Scenario B came out closest to reality and the projections based on it are reasonably close to the reality we observe today. Here is a discussion of that.

As far as falsification of greenhouse gas (mostly CO2) driven climate change one of the most straightforward predictions made by the theory is that the stratosphere will cool some because of it. This has been observed. If it hadn't it would call into question the theory. If the warming were being driven by increased insolation the stratosphere would be expected to warm.

Holy blap, what part of "crap" don't you understand?

A LaTeX document with lots of formulas doesn't automagically mean proper science, you know.

See this and this.
And thrown in for good measure: The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus

In the US, warm years have more snow storms that cold years. You can read all about US snow storms here: http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1558-8432/45/8/pdf/i1558-8432-45-8-1141.pdf Inhofe is usually wrong and this is just another example.

A detailed study was done of “the relationships of the storm frequencies to seasonal temperature and precipitation conditions” for the years “1901–2000 using data from 1222 stations across the United States.” The 2006 study, Temporal and Spatial Characteristics of Snowstorms in the Contiguous United States [PDF] (Chagnon et al., 2006) found we get more snow storms in warmer years:

Results for the November–December period showed that most of the United States had experienced 61%– 80% of the storms in warmer-than-normal years. Assessment of the January–February temperature conditions again showed that most of the United States had 71%–80% of their snowstorms in warmer-than-normal years. In the March–April season 61%–80% of all snowstorms in the central and southern United States had occurred in warmer-than-normal years. Thus, these comparative results reveal that a future with wetter and warmer winters, which is one outcome expected (National Assessment Synthesis Team 2001), will bring more snowstorms than in 1901–2000. Agee (1991) found that long-term warming trends in the United States were associated with increasing cyclonic activity in North America, further indicating that a warmer future climate will generate more winter storms.

The largest adjustement (the yellow line, 'SHAP minus MMTS') was based on 'Karl, T.R., and C.W. Williams, Jr., 1987: An approach to adjusting climatological time series for discontinuous inhomogeneities, J. Climate Appl. Meteor., 26, 1744-1763.' I found a pdf here: http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1520-0450/26/12/pdf/i1520-0450-26-12-1744.pdf

From that pdf, I can read that the methods used involved taking a station and looking at the stations around it to figure out whether or not the data should be adjusted. From the 'harry' text file that was leaked, we find this paragraph:

"Still a bit disturbed by the large number of cells marked as 'influenced' by a single station. IDL seems to use the inbuilt 'TRIGRID' function to interpolate the grid, so there's no way of getting the station count for a particular cell that way anyway. Not that it would mean much, since there is bound to be some kind of weighting (it's not clear what that weighting is, though, from the IDL website). So the figures in the station count files are really rather loose. What might be useful as a companion dataset would be the ACTUAL station counts. Counts for cells with stations actually INSIDE them. Of course, that might be rather sensitive information.."

Alright. I've read the methods. I've looked at the papers. I'm still not a climate scientist, and I'm still not an expert, but how the FUCK is that supposed to convince me that their results were reliable? Can a climate scientist come explain why I was wrong? How about a troll at least, shouting that I can't possibly be right since I haven't spent years in the field being inundated with assumptions?

You just posted a graph.One graph. And getting to the page that embedded that graph was circuitous-- it was not a matter of just chopping the url properly. No matter.

This plot shows that most of the discrepancy comes from the Station History Adjustment Program detailed in Karl and Williams 1987. I don't have a subscription to the Journal of Climate and Applied Meteorology though.

The problem is that stations were moved, often from city centers to airports. The corrections are an attempt to reconcile the microclimate of the first site with the microclimate of the second in order to produce a continuous climate record. This sort of datasplicing is what drove Ian Harris up the wall. Are you sure you want the raw data?

Simple statistical test: take a subset of the stations believed to have problems due to heat island effect. Remove them from the
record and check again for statistical significance. These isn't any.

This test is routinely done.

You can go a lot further to measure the UHI bias, eg here; see also the good discussion here.

UHI is a real effect, but the planet is warming. Remember over 70% of the planet is water, and the easiest set of temperatures to measure from space
are sea surface temperatures; non surface station temperatures will typically dominate.

I've already discussed this issue:

Surfacestations.org is saying that the surface temperature record is contaminated by the "urban heat island" effect-- that temperatures are only rising around cities because of economic growth. One example he shows is that exhaust vents have been placed closer and closer to the sensors over the years.

This is a superficially compelling argument, but it's also one that scientists have considered and rejected. One test is that the urban heat island effect should be less pronounced on windy days than calm days. That's because if this warming is just caused by local exhaust vents, wind should carry that heat away whereas calm weather won't. This doesn't happen: calm and windy days have the same warming trend. This conclusion is from an article published in Nature by Dr. Parker in 2004; here's a BBC article quoting it. Other studies have confirmed this result using different methods and data in 2003, 2006, and 2008.

NOAA recently published an answer to that specific website. They took the 70 stations that surfacestations.org designated "best" or "good" and created a time series based on them. Then they used all 1218 stations to create another time series. Both of those time series are plotted on page 3. They're practically identical.

Also, scientists don't have to blindly trust these sensors because surface temperature measurements are also confirmed by satellite measurements and proxies such as ice cores, boreholes, coral growth, tree rings, stalactites, fossil beds, ocean sediments and glacial deposits.

http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F2009JAMC1880.1&ct=1

http://jae.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/ejp002

... and many, many more. This stuff really isn't difficult to find unless you're covering your ears with your hands and singing 'I can't hear you. LA LA LA LA. I can't hear you.'

Lets assume you are correct. Who's to say a warmer earth is bad?

On the whole, a warmer earth may be better for humans than an earth colder by an equivalent amount. However, the problem is that global temperatures have been relatively stable for the last 10,000 years, and human civilization has adapted to that temperature range. Move too far out of it in either direction, too quickly, and there will be costs. People can't just easily shift their agricultural production or settlement patterns into neighboring countries.

It wasn't long ago we were told we were heading in to a new ice age.

Not really.

Climate cycles actually suggest we are (were) heading down that path. Wouldn't we WANT to warm the earth?

Over tens of thousands of years, we might head into another ice age. If you're so concerned about that, you should argue that we should save our fossil fuels for later, when we'll need them, instead of using them all up now, when we don't.

Ice age aside, wouldn't an increased crop growth durations help battle famine?

Depends on where you are. In the mid-latitudes, you tend to get small benefits for 1-2 degrees C warming. The tropics suffer. For more than 3 C of warming, everybody tends to suffer. On top of that, you have to account for the fact that precipitation patterns change, and many agricultural regions may suffer drought.

Lets study the impact

Uh, yeah, people have studied impacts.

rather than demand we do stuff that will destroy not just the developed worlds economy, but potentially starve millions when the industrial world can no longer afford to produce food and medicine on the current scale.

Nobody is interested in "destroying the economy". That's the conservative alarmist version of "the planet will burn up". Just ask economists, e.g. here.

Oh look. Another non-climate-scientist who thinks nearly all of the climate scientists are wrong about the climate.

If you don't think physicists should be criticizing climatologists, how about meteorologists? If not the meteorologists or physicists, just who is qualified to criticize them?

The problem is there isn't a climate 'scientist' that can produce a model he published in 1990 that accurately forecast today's climate. Things like number of hurricanes, mean global temperature, etc. I'm not talking about getting one or two things right - I'm talking about getting a majority of the metrics right.

Without verifiable predictions, it isn't science.

By the way, your choice of terminology shows you missed the boat. It's no longer 'Global Warming' - it's 'Global Change.' The new phrasing is a hedge from the climatologists acknowledging that they can't accurately forecast what's going to happen but whatever does happen, they'll claim they forecast it. London Broil? Check. London Freeze? Check. They've got models that cover both scenarios - they just don't know which one will play out.

Another non-climate-scientist who thinks nearly all of the climate scientists are wrong about the climate.

You're off there. In fact, in the article you linked to on the very same page, you see that he has published at least one paper in the field. Sure, his main field is physics, but how long does it actually take to become an expert in a field? By the time you're his age, you've had enough time to expand into a lot of areas.

Dyson seems well aware that the climate is, in fact, warming.

Did you actually spend any time figuring out what he does claim? Once again, in the first paragraph of the article you linked to, Dyson states his opinion "[Global warming] is a real problem, but it's nothing like as serious as people are led to believe. The idea that global warming is the most important problem facing the world is total nonsense and is doing a lot of harm."

Dyson's wrong to repeat the "global cooling" myth

He was actually there in the late 60s. I had a textbook that talked about global cooling, and gave possible solutions. Indeed, there is no reason to doubt that eventually we will enter into another ice age. The paper linked to in your link basically outlines the path scientists made from thinking in terms of ice ages, solar forcing, etc. to becoming aware of the consequences of human interaction on the global climate. It shows convincingly that in those days no one was worried about immediately entering into an ice age. However, it doesn't contradict, and in fact confirms, that there was a general consensus that we would eventually enter another ice age.

Basically you're a troll who didn't even read your own articles. And a slashdot editor. Wow, should that be a surprise?

The state should really increase the number of alligators that can be hunted each year. This document(PDF) says the FL alligator population was 1.5 million in 2005. Florida only allows 5500 to be harvested a year. Note that it also says 334 attacks and 14 fatalities.

Yeah, and it would reduce the population of the crocs' main competitors.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service designates it as Endangered, or in danger of extinction throughout all or a significant portion of its range. The primary threat to this animal comes from habitat loss.

There are over 1.5 million alligators in Florida. The species has not been on the endangered list since 1987. From the PDF at link you provided: "In 1987, the Fish and Wildlife Service pronounced the American alligator fully recovered and consequently removed the animal from the list of endangered species." The state of Florida allows 5500 to be harvested a year. It is clear that it is time to up the limit.

The state should really increase the number of alligators that can be hunted each year. This document(PDF) says the FL alligator population was 1.5 million in 2005. Florida only allows 5500 to be harvested a year. Note that it also says 334 attacks and 14 fatalities.

I ask with some hesitancy, but you seem so sure of yourself... What data are you basing this on? I actually did a bit of googling, and for every pollutant I can think of, every source I can locate indicates the US produced more of it this year than in 1970. Occam's Razor tells me to look to the simplest explanation: that you, a random slashdot poster, are talking out your ass. But I'm trying to keep an open mind, so if you've got some evidence for your extraordinary claims, let's have it.

Sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, lead, mercury, radioactive waste of fixed radioactivity per unit mass, PBCs, dioxin, nitrates in drinking water, noise pollution, etc. Overall, air and water quality is far better now than it was in 1970. For example, Lake Erie used to be mostly dead. Houston was far worse than it is now. Denver used to be pretty nasty due to the high levels of smog. Lot of particularly nasty chemicals are simply no longer used (PCBs, dioxin). No towns dump raw sewage any more. Similar improvements in European urban areas. For example, here's a record of atmospheric lead from Sweden. They note that the peak for atmospheric lead was in 1970, that half the deposited lead came before the industrial revolution, and that current lead levels in air are declining to their medieval era levels.

As for your theory that the Earth has an infinite amount of everything...

You're putting words in my mouth. We just need to keep in mind that demand isn't infinite either.

Global dimming specifically measures the reduction in the amount of sunlight that reaches the surface of the Earth because of atmospheric aerosols. It has only been measured for fifty or so years and does not take into account the reduction in surface irradiance that has occurred because of natural or man-made causes in the the nearly two hundred years prior to when record keeping started. Aerosol Optical Depth as well as 'plain old' Optical Depth, are measures of the transparency of an optical medium -like the atmosphere- at optical wavelengths and have a greater effect on dim, point-sources, of light -such as stars- than they do on brighter extended sources of light -the Moon and the Sun- since small aerosol particles in the atmosphere have a greater tendency to scatter the light -which reduces the apparent brightness and increases the extinction- of point sources. If the atmosphere was truly 'clean', then the only phenomenon that an observer would have to contend with is 'Rayliegh Scattering'. A short article over at 'Sky and Telescope's" site, ties it all together. The reduction in atmospheric transparency since the Middle Ages due to man-made pollution has, by some estimates, reduced the brightness of the stars in the night sky by as much as twenty-five percent. There was an article published last year -that may have been mentioned here on \.- that discussed this very situation. Unfortunately, it escapes both my memory and that of Google.

I think this entire article is a load of attention seeking BS, and I will not believe a word of it until I see a proper peer-reviewed research paper in a medical journal that debunks stretching.

Geeze. I've noticed a certain hyper-skepticism among Slashdotters. Please note that the New York Times is not known for trumping up pseudoscience with no support in the literature.

Others have responded that the article is not "debunking stretching", just pointing out problems with certain kinds of stretching. And at least one other poster gave references, some of whom involved people interviewed for TFA. More specifically with respect to the studies mentioned in TFA:

The article cites Duane Knudson, a kinesiology professor at CSU. Peer reviewed research paper.

The article mentions a Las Vegas stretching study. Peer reviewed research paper.

The article mentions Malachy McHugh, a researcher in NYC. Peer reviewed research paper.

The article mentions a collegiate volleyball study. Peer reviewed research paper.

And so on.

There is absolutely no evidence that stretching before exercise weakens muscles (note I used the exact same phrase as the title) so long as you don't over do it.

if you haven't actually read any peer-reviewed articles about it?! You do know about scholar.google.com, right? It's not that hard to check on the people interviewed in the NYTimes article. There are many papers on the subject. Yes, there is still work to be done to answer all the questions, but your ridiculous statement that there is absolutely no evidence that stretching (static) before exercise weakens muscles just shows that you haven't bothered to read about it.

Here's your spoon-fed google search with links to a few abstracts for your edification.

http://www.acsm-msse.org/pt/re/msse/abstract.00005768-200403000-00004.htm;jsessionid=JJgJGzgYVCy4qyLKzfW21kXYSGvYP3tWmM2WDyC6Nr1nvvvH7ykd!-1853705402!181195629!8091!-1

http://eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=ED448119 [PDF]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9368275

http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abridged/325/7362/468

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119251161/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

http://www.cjsportsmed.com/pt/re/cjsm/abstract.00042752-200409000-00004.htm;jsessionid=JJgpcrQvSRyyCn1CG2XnW4WS6vzdsmrXnhG43kmLDT1CyhhCknr9!1600976923!181195628!8091!-1

http://apt.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1519%2F1533-4287(2001)015%5B0098%3AAEOSAN%5D2.0.CO%3B2

In 1965 and through the 1970s and early 80s, virtually all scientists were Not discussing global warming. They were discussing Global Cooling.

I'm sorry, but the scientific literature disproves your claim. If you don't believe me, go look for yourself at the papers published back then. Web of Knowledge will find them for you. Or just read this paper, written by a group of scientists who got fed up with claim and did a full literature review from 1965-1979. See, in particular, Figure 1. During that period, there was only one year in which cooling papers than warming papers were published (1971), and more warming papers than cooling papers were published in every year after 1971.

In another comment you respond,

I read the article, but I was also ALIVE at that time.

That's nice. Did you read scientific journals back then? Or go to climate conferences? Somehow I doubt it.

The mainstream media isn't the scientific community, and neither was Carl Sagan. Yes, back then some scientists did think that cooling was going to win out. Most of them didn't. The fact is, throughout the 1970s and certainly into the 80s, the scientific community — as measured by the papers they published on the subject — was definitely projecting warming more than cooling.

I agree that a lot of chaos work produced not much more than chaos. But sometimes a paper can tell you what results to discard out of hand and that in itself is a contribution. From his seminal 1963 paper,

When our results concerning the instability of nonperiodic flow are applied to the atmosphere, which is ostensibly non-periodic, they indicate that that prediction of the distant sufficiently distant future is impossible by any method, unless the present conditions are known exactly.

Santa Clara County, California used to have a weather modification program. It's Silicon Valley now, but it used to be a prime agricultural area; it has great topsoil. But it doesn't get quite enough rain.

So, for about thirty years, when rain clouds were passing over but it wasn't raining, the call went out to all the silver-iodide stations to start up their generators. These were basically oil burners that put out a smoke column with silver iodide in it.

It helped a little, enough to be statistically significant, but it wasn't spectacular. Beijing is putting in about 100x the effort to cover about 1/10 the area of the Santa Clare Valley effort, so they might get a useful effect.

However, the PhD atmospheric scientist I know who was working on aircraft contrails and climate change interactions seemed to mostly concentrate on the heat and humidity of engine exhaust combined with whether the ambient conditions are saturated and whether a line drawn from the engine exhaust conditions to ambient conditions passes through a critical supersaturation point. This is backed up by papers such as this AMS paper.

And this is the point. The global mean reletive humididty isn't staying constant!.

On the contrary, it has stayed largely constant. As I said, there are some small higher-order variations, such as those alluded to on the RealClimate essay and discussed in more detail here. (They find, actually, that if anything, the water vapor feedback is being overestimated, not underestimated.)

This is were the models are wrong when it comes to the sun.

For the last time, even if the global mean humidity were not constant, that still would have nothing to do with the Sun. The global mean relative humidty depends only on temperature, not on solar input. The Sun has nothing to do with whether or not the global mean humidity stays constant, except insofar as it influences the temperature of the Earth.

If you want to claim that models of relative humidity are wrong, then you can do so if you think you can defend that position. But if they are wrong, then they are wrong no matter whether the temperature is being forced primarily by CO2 or the Sun or anything else, because evaporation rates depend on the temperature, not on what is forcing the temperature.

Sure there are vaiables. And the sun has an efect on two that you just mentioned.

If you mean temperature and pressure, then certainly the Sun has an effect on those. I am not arguing otherwise. I am saying that climate models correctly take the Sun's influence into account. You have claimed otherwise, insisting that climate models do not take the evaporation due to the Sun into account. This is manifestly false: climate models take into account how the Sun influences thermodynamics variables, and how thermodynamics variables influence evaporation.

There is no special term in the equations for how "the Sun" influences evaporation that is being left out. There is no special term in the equations for how "CO2" influences evaporation that is being left in. There is only an equation which says how temperature and pressure influence evaporation, as well as equations for how a given amount of radiative forcing (from any source) influences temperature and pressure.

And once the models were changed, they found that it was greater of an effect then expected.

The models were not changed. Nor was the way they treat the Sun changed. Both are correct, despite your claims that they incorrectly treat the Sun's influence on relative humidity.

What was changed was the data fed into the models (solar irradiance).

Adn don't give me the they say only 30% bull.

They say only 30%. Just because the facts disagree with your ideas doesn't make them bull.

I'm not exactly sure why it is so hard for you to except change here? And even if you don't except it, Why are you trying so hard to stop others from exploring it?

Hey, jackass, I told you about five messages ago that changes in the Sun's intensity contribute to global warming. They just contribute a small amount. The issue has been explored. It doesn't agree with your preconceived notions. Deal with it.

The national accademy of science and many independent experts have stated the hocky stick is wrong.

As I just told you, the NAS said that the hockey stick's shape is correct, but that Mann underestimated the size of the error bars. See this report. They state, "The basic conclusion of Mann et al. (1998, 1999) was that the late 20th century warmth in the Northern Hemisphere was unprecedented during at least the last 1,000 years. This conclusion has subsequently been supported by an array of evidence that includes [...] Based on the analyses presented in the original papers by Mann et al. and this newer suppor

The scientific method involves the following basic facets:

        * Observation. A constant feature of scientific inquiry.

        * Description. Information must be reliable, i.e., replicable (repeatable) as well as valid (relevant to the inquiry).

        * Prediction. Information must be valid for observations past, present, and future of given phenomena, i.e., purported "one shot" phenomena do not give rise to the capability to predict, nor to the ability to repeat an experiment.

        * Control. Actively and fairly sampling the range of possible occurrences, whenever possible and proper, as opposed to the passive acceptance of opportunistic data, is the best way to control or counterbalance the risk of empirical bias.

        * Falsifiability, or the elimination of plausible alternatives. This is a gradual process that requires repeated experiments by multiple researchers who must be able to replicate results in order to corroborate them. This requirement, one of the most frequently contended, leads to the following: All hypotheses and theories are in principle subject to disproof. Thus, there is a point at which there might be a consensus about a particular hypothesis or theory, yet it must in principle remain tentative. As a body of knowledge grows and a particular hypothesis or theory repeatedly brings predictable results, confidence in the hypothesis or theory increases .

Geezer Wrote:
CFCs are not found in the stratosphere any where on the planet, they're simply too heavy

That's flat-out wrong. For measurements of CFC (NOT Cl) in the statosphere see:
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1987P&SS...35..657B
http://umpgal.gsfc.nasa.gov/www_root/homepage/uars -science/CFC.html
for two easy examples.

Also see
http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~cairns/teaching/le cture16/node2.html
http://www.thespacerace.com/glossary/index.php?ter m=290
http://amsglossary.allenpress.com/glossary/search? id=homosphere1
where we read that the atmosphere is well-mixd below 100 km. (Stratosphere starts around 12 km).

My Dad worked on creating "custom fog" for the Navy. He studied propagation, e.g. this civilian paper. Then he developed a method of modifying droplet size distribution in fogs over the ocean. The end product (details classified) allows ships to create a fog bank on demand over large bodies of water (within 1 or 2 hours) that blocks enemy frequencies, but has "holes" for friendly scanner frequencies. The details include taking temperature/humidity/droplet profiles by altitude of the atmosphere over the target area.

Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future.

When our results concerning the instability of nonperiodic flow are applied to the atmosphere, which is ostensibly nonperiodic, they indicate that predictions of the sufficiently distant future is impossible by any method, unless the present conditions are known exactly. In view of the incompleteness of weather observations, precise very-long range forecasting would seem to be non-existent.

There are a couple of feedbacks from water vapour, there's the reflection via cloudcover, and there's radiated heat trapped by the water vapour. There are all sorts of factors involved in that using a lot of complex issues to do with cloud formation that I can't say I understand. There has been a lot of work on modelling, but I don't think it's all that well understood yet all things considered. Certainly the models (with forcings) have a resulting equilibrium state, and most that I've seen end up warmer but I don't think it's a settled question. Try this random reference on the subject.

Jedidiah.

this report:

...male fetuses appear to involute fewer overproduced cortical neurons than females, this gender difference could explain in part the boys' greater functional impairments from early brain damage.

Due to the influx of testosterone early in development male fetuses often suffer damage to their brains. Specifically in the corpus callosum because the development of that region of the brain (which is the communications link between right and left hemispheres) coincides with the assertion of gender. This is manifested later during childhood by boys having poorer fine-motor control than girls of the same age. This early brain-damage may account for the statistically higher incidents of mental impairment in boys.

For all the insults their brains suffer early in life due to testosterone, the boys reap a larger brain with more brain-cells. Just as a person who repeatedly breaks their bones gets a heavier and stronger bone for their trouble... only the "strong" brain-cells survive and the brain is adapted to survive brain-damage better. While female's brains have not had to suffer as many insults. From the same article:

...any disease that causes neuronal loss could be expected to lead to more severe functional deficits in women due to their loss of more dendritic connections per neuron lost.

It would appear then, that it is much harder to grow up to be an intelligent man. But, if you survive to do so... your brain will probably be very resilient. A woman, however, is much more likely to grow up to be intelligent but her brain has not suffered and recovered from the brain-damage that a boy's would have so she is therefore less-well equiped to recover from brain diseases late in life.

It could be that men with more neurons but fewer processes (the neurological kind not the CPU kind) have deeper cognitive ability over a narrower set of subjects and women who have fewer neurons over more processes have broader cognitive ability spread more shallowly across their faculties.

This feminine congruity can be seen as a benefit reaped from not having areas of their brains fried by testosterone. The masculine depth of focus can be seen as compensation for having lost breadth of cognitive ability. Both sexes suffer physical and mental ailments for the virtue of posessing their morphological differences. Brain morphology is just one area of difference. Field research has shown that women and men may have major anatomical differences of unknown functional nature.

In a sentence: Men and Women are Different.

I stumbled across this and thought it was rather interesting. The article mentions a study by Richard Lindzen that was published in the March 2001 edition of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. That study can be found here.

I looked over the actual study but must admit that most of it is to technical for me. So, I will just have to trust the article that it isn't leading me astray.

It basically is summerized that the earth may be able to open up a "vent" that can release enough heat back into space to counter any effect that increased greenhouse gases may cause. High cirrus clouds are able to trap radiation and keep it from going back into space, thus heating the earth. When the temperature rises, the "vent" opens up and lets enough radiation back into space to cool it back down.

I'm sorry but you are incorrect. The UHI effect has been studied and does not appear to have any significant impact on the temperature metrics. See for instance the following papers that have recently appeared in peer reviewed journals:

Peterson, T.C., Assessment of urban versus rural in situ surface temperatures in the contiguous United States: No difference found, Journal of Climate, 16, 2941-2959, 2003.

Parker, D.E., Large-Scale Warming is not Urban, Nature 432, 290, doi:10.1038/432290a, 2004.

Regards
Luke

Yes, I have seen those studies too. Cooking meat at high temp and grilling can create changes in the meat.

Even those studies may be flawed if they didn't check for toxins in the fish or animal meat.
These organochlorines do NOT decompose and accumulate in the breast area.

It explains everything. The plastics and pesticide industry are very corrupt just like cigarette industry.

Nobody writes papers of the sort "global warming, yes or no?" in scientific journals. They write papers like, um, these. (result of a search for papers with abstract including the words "climate change" in J. Clim. in 2003-2004)

Despite what you hear on Slashdot comments and in the press, very large and imminent anthropogenic climate change is not controversial within the relevant sciences. The question for the public to consider is only whether Michael Crichton and the Wall Street Journal editorial page know more about this subject than the membership of AGU and AMS and AAAS and NAS and pretty much every similar group worldwide.

This is cool. Beyond being used to understand the current climate change that is happening, obscure weather phenom could be modeled on a larger scale for a longer time.

Perfect example would be an article out of the latest AMS Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society Earth Interactions that discusses plane contrails. It seems that the lack of air traffic after 9/11 allowed the meteorlogist to work on a long held theory that plane contrails affect weather. Only problem was that the dataset was only over three days, which was just a small time sample.

Using a system such as this, those weather conditions could be recreated over a longer period of time and the results could be realized. Too cool.

We've even run into situation where a journal refuses to put their journal online.

What I'm getting at is that I think it's premature that print publishing is going the way of the dodo. :)