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20th century patterns aren't "current trends". Current trends suggest constant or declining carbon emissions.

The data shows otherwise: http://www.energytrendsinsider.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Global-CO2.png

Your graph cuts off in 2010.

I notice you don't bother to cite any data supporting your claim of a trend of "constant or declining carbon emissions". Unless you have some data showing such a trend-- and a trend long enough to be meaningful-- I stand by my statement.

If you're quibbiling, Manabe and Wetherald's calculated climate sensitivity was 2.4, not 2.0. [...] (with your rounding of "2.4" down to "2" corrected)

I didn't round, that's what the paper says: "According to our estimate, a doubling of the CO2 content in the atmosphere has the effect of raising the temperature of the atmosphere (whose relative humidity is fixed) by about 2C". You really need to read the paper, instead of random blog posts.

I'd actually checked the number out of a textbook that I happen to have near my desk (Liou, An Introduction to Atmospheric Radiation, 1980, if it matters-- my usual go-to book on atmospheric light scattering) instead of digging up the original paper. But turns out it's not hard to dig up the paper, it is on the web several places, so it's easy enough to check: http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPhilo/ThermalEqu.pdf

And, how about that?-- you're almost right. "About 2C" is indeed what is says... in the abstract.

In the body of the paper, though, they give the calculated result to more than one figure. Table 4 and table 5 shows their calculated results. The increase from 300 to 600 gives an effect of 2.36C (for fixed relative humidity and "average cloudiness;" slightly higher for clear skies).

So, I withdraw my statement that you rounded their result down. In fact, it wasn't you: they did the rounding. Nevertheless: the number was 2.36 (but the parts after the decimal point are probably not significant.)

For what it's worth, their 1975 paper, calculating with a three-dimensional model instead of the 1967 2D model (which means that they have both oceans and continents, instead of an average of ocean and continent), came up with 2.39 degrees per doubling-- nearly the same.

I don't see much real information in the rest of your post, you're arguing your opinion and policy, and not significantly disputing facts. You're saying you don't like the models because you don't understand the feedbacks, but you're more or less ok with the results to the first significant figure, although to a second significant figure you prefer a number slightly on the lower side but still within the error bars, but you think that existing societal trends will reduce CO2 emissions anyway so the predicted warming will be lower than the highest value of the IPCC scenarios (which is what the IPCC also seems to thing: that is the high case.)

OK. I'm not sure that there's enough in that to bother arguing with.

I will, however, quibble with two points:

There is nothing "paradoxical" about it; irrational climate change deniers are largely a figment of your imagination.

No, irrational climate change deniers are certainly out there, and say all sorts of bizarre things. However, you have clearly shown that you are not an "irrational climate change denier," since you're arguing with numbers based on the real science. That is neither irrational, nor even being a "climate change denier" of any kind. There doesn't seem to be a quick category nam

One thing that we know quite well is that changes in solar output is not the cause of present-day warming.

There's more to it that a single measurement of output.

Sure, and GP also left out the incredible precision we can achieve these days... and lots of other supporting evidence. But it sounds like you still agree.

we can't measure solar output very well millions of years ago, or even for that matter hundreds of years ago.

Actually, we can, and it has been done, with as much accuracy as long-term temperature measurements.

Actually, we can't [directly], which is the distinction the GP appeared to be making. We are measuring a proxy, with a lot of very good reasons to believe the proxy is extremely accurate. Deniers are going to point this out and think they caught us in a lie, so let's just be upfront about it.

From the abstract:

A variety of observational proxies reflecting different aspects of
solar activity show similar features regarding periodic variability, trends and periods of very low solar
activity (so-called grand minima) which seem to be positively correlated with the emitted energy from
the Sun

One thing that we know quite well is that changes in solar output is not the cause of present-day warming.

There's more to it that a single measurement of output.

we can't measure solar output very well millions of years ago, or even for that matter hundreds of years ago.

Actually, we can, and it has been done, with as much accuracy as long-term temperature measurements.

Yes, Mann is one of the authors of that paper. Do you have better evidence, from better proxies, that contradicts it? The MWP event was indeed global in impact, but none of your links show that it was warmer than today, averaged globally.

Of your cited links, the first two are for the same paper, which notes glacial fluctations globally at that time, advancing and retreating, but does not address global average temperatures in any way.

The third link (second paper) actually says ocean temperatures have been cooling for 10,000 years, but reversed this trend 150 years ago. And specifically it says MWP ocean temperatures matched those ~60 years ago (i.e. cooler than today):

[Indo-Pacific temperatures] are within error of modern (~1950 CE) values between 900 and 1200 CE during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and are colder by 0.75 +/- 0.35C between 1550 and 1850 CE during the Little Ice Age (LIA), followed by nonmonotonic warming in the past 150 years

The final link is to a bunch of extrapolation and speculation, but the cited paper examines southern South America temperatures specifically, and while the paper finds some relatively warm temperatures there (compared to 1901–1995 averaged temperatures, not today's) it makes no claims about global temperatures, and certainly doesn't claim that they were higher than today. Like many "skeptical" sites the link confuses "current warm period" with "the last few years", yet you'll find nearly all papers define that baseline as the average of 20th century temperatures; around 0.5 degrees C cooler than today's temperatures.

Discrimination against (and abuse/marginalization/humiliation of) men has long been considered socially acceptable, and I'd go so far as to say that it has even been encouraged. Men will destroy other men to obtain the favor of women and many women use this behavioral tendency to control men. It's been going on since before almost everyone reading Slashdot was born. Here's one article on the subject; it's an excellent read which I will only excerpt a tiny part of.

"White Feather" Feminism: The Recalcitrant Progeny of Radical Suffragist and Conservative Pro-War Britain

"It was in this atmosphere that Admiral Charles Penrose Fitzgerald organized a group of thirty women to help “convince” the men of Britain to join in the fight against the German enemy. It was the tactical objective of this group to shame civilian men into joining the armed services. This aim was to be accomplished by public humiliation -- the women handing out white feathers to any man who did not wear a uniform. “The Order of the White Feather” and their recruiting methods quickly spread across Britain. Women of all backgrounds contributed their influence to the war effort (Gullace, "White Feathers" 178). The zeal and the scope of this gendered phenomenon was paralleled only by the contemporaneous movement for suffrage -- a movement which, right before the war, had reached a radical pitch. It is in the radical nature of “The White Feather Brigade” -- the confrontational method which was employed by these women toward men -- that a tactical tie is evidenced between the pro-suffrage and pro-enlistment movements. It is in the motives and movements of Emmeline Pankhurst that an ideological connection is discovered between the feminine pro-war demonstration of the “White Feather Girls” and the Suffragists."

The two are closely correlated in the Antartic. Feel free to show non-model datasets that would support the GP claim, and detail what is meant with "the ice sheet" [singular?].

http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPol/EnviroPhilo/MassBalance.pdf

Grace.

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/20100108_Is_Antarctica_Melting.html

The two are closely correlated in the Antartic. Feel free to show non-model datasets that would support the GP claim, and detail what is meant with "the ice sheet" [singular?].

http://ruby.fgcu.edu/courses/twimberley/EnviroPol/EnviroPhilo/MassBalance.pdf

"Cities and islands are not flooding. The Maldives had a sea level fall in the 1970s followed by stasis since. Tuvalu's sea levels have remained stable during that time."

Yes, there are plenty of places where sea level is falling. Want something more dramatic? The area around Hudson's Bay is experiencing quite rapid sea level fall, and that has been the case for thousands of years (you can see the stranded beaches along the coast for many kilometres inland). Why? Because the land is rising faster than the global sea level is, and the mechanism in this case is the removal of the weight of the glaciers that used to exist around Hudson's Bay. This sort of effect is true of all sorts of places in the world: the land moves up and down due to local and regional tectonics. All you've discovered is that if you cherry pick appropriate places, you can find contrary examples to the global trend. It's the same thing for glacier advance and retreat. But if you look at the average trend, it's flagrantly obvious which way sea level is going: up.

Measuring global sea level change is very tricky because of the land changing elevation too, and as a result there are arguments about exactly what rate the rise is (1-2mm/yr), but it is very clear that it is rising, and there are plenty of places in the world where the rise since the 19th century has had a significant effect on human habitation, and where the continued rise at that rate is expected to make a greater impact in the future.

"What will it take? Perhaps you should spend time cracking a book on science instead of believing every alarmist prediction of the end of the world."

It's not the end of the world. But I'm sure that's not much consolation to people living in, say, Holland.

It would be nice to have some citations to your other claims.

Three moves equals one fire, according to Ben Franklin. Then again, people used to joke that "IBM" stood for "I've been moved," so this may not be a new thing for Big Blue. Mumbai and Minneapolis are interchangeable, if people are just production/consumption units.

only a handful of people wanted to allow women to vote?

if you dont count all the women......

Many women were opponents of universal sufferage. Tarbell's attitude was not at all uncommon, to the extent that there was an active anti-sufferage women's movement. Google on "women opposed sufferage" to find out more.

Sadly, it probably needs to be said that I am fully in favour of women's sufferage, although blackly amused by the claims that it would usher in an era of peaceful prosperity, rather than the bloodiest century in human history. And if anyone thinks women were generally opposed to war in the 20th century, google "women white feather britain" before you post...

Archimedes didn't even like the idea of irrational numbers. Pi isn't even algebraic for Athena's sake.

Anyway, to throw in something positive with my empty criticism -- this looks like a potentially helpful site. And if you Lunix weirdos want to complain about the Microsoft focus, well, you have vi so write your own.

Here's a list of the sites that were blocked by default that I had to unblock manually:

• Florida Gulf Coast University www.fgcu.edu
• NoodleTools.com www.noodletools.com (I can understand this one a little, though in this case "noodle" means "brain")
• Access Atlanta www.accessatlanta.com
• Inclusive Scouting www.inclusivescouting.com
• Yale University's Law Web www.yale.edu/lawweb
• Scentiments.com www.scentiments.com
• Pasadena Public Library LibraryTeens LibraryTeens
• Pepperdine's Graduate school faculty pages gsep.pepperdine.edu
• Scouting for all www.scoutingforall.com

People who back such laws as this and oppose the recent ruling concerning the "under God" portion of the "Pledge of Allegience" are at odds with America's diverse morality and (non)spirituality. To include a reference to God in the Pledge begs the question "Which God?" or "Whose?". Likewise when legislating morality the question becomes "Whose morals?".

Because nearly every commercial filtering system is protected by "trade secrets" it becomes impossible to expect and answer to the above questions, and illegal to discover them on your own.

Are expected to purchase software that controls our childrens access to information without knowing what it's really doing? Absolutely, and if this law is upheld it'd be illegal to choose otherwise.

Don't entirely know what it blocks and doesn't. Don't know why. Blocking software companies won't tell us. Illegal to find out. Illegal to not install. Likely illegal to circumvent.

Orwellian. Yep.

As an aside:

"Protecting children" is a convenient way to get government to move, and it's a red herring. No American politician is going to come out and say "I'm anti-children" or "I think children should look at porn and the taxpayers should foot the bill.". Evoking "protecting children" is just a carrot (or whip if you'd rather) for people who have an agenda to wave in front of legislators.

"Protecting children" also sells tires, and Volvos, and antibacterial soap, and milk, and private schools, and cell phones, and guns...

-dameron

When you take CS you're saying you want to be a scientist. It will come with all the subjects you'd expect from science, including some tough math, physics, etc.

When you take [MC]IS you're saying you want to be a businessperson. Similarly, it will come with subjects relevant to business, like marketing, accounting, finance, etc.

I think generally MIS and CIS are extremely close and schools tend to name them depending on their focus, or perhaps just arbitrarily.

At most institutions, you'll be in a different school based on your choice between [MC]IS vs CS so it's also worth checking out how well your schools of Business and Sciences are run, how praised the professors are, etc. For example, at my university, our College of Business is by far the best run and most popular college of the several colleges we have. Also, the Business colleges tend to be a little bit more tied into the business community at smaller schools, so if you plan to get a local job later and you like networking, you might want to go that route.