Slashdot Mirror

17 years is too short? You were fine utilizing the trend between 1979-1997 when the results showed a warming trend. The 1946-1980 trend is also statistically insignificant. By your logic that means the "trend estimation is poor" and that therefore the "period is too short to estimate a statistically significant trend." Maybe you are having difficulty expressing yourself, but it appears as though your thinking is not being applied consistently. And I don't think you know what "statistically insignificant" means.

Just to be a bit pedantic, and to help explain what you are seeing, the warming didn't literally "stop" in 1997. 1998 is the third hottest year on record. But the temperature trend from 1997 evens out because of the slight cooling later on, showing no significant net warming.

The OLS method is useful in this case to show (you guessed it) a linear trend, but can be misleading when applied to non-linear data, ie: curves. I've adjusted the dates so the curve is easier for you to spot. Your posts above serve as a good example, showing why long term trends can't disprove claims of short term trends. At best you can try to argue that the long term trend shows that the 17 year pause is not that meaningful. But in this case the pause is almost as long as the recent warming period itself, and climate scientists themselves have said that a 17 year pause is meanigful (although some are now trying to change the goalposts.)

Anyways, if you still have doubts, take it up with Nature. If you are correct, they have made a big, amateur blunder. You should let them know.

The HADCRUT4 temperature trend from 1997 to 2014 is about 5 one-hundredths of a degree per decade. That figure is not statistically significant. My statement is accurate: according to the HADCRUT4 dataset, there has been no statistically significant warming in over 17 years. If I start one year later in 1998, the trend is less, at about 4 one-hundredths of a degree per decade. If measured from 2001, there's a cooling trend at (-0.01) deg/decade. Measuring from the last ten years also shows a slight cooling trend at (-0.02) deg/decade. You are spouting nonsense.

Maybe you should take your insightful analysis to the Journal Nature, and explain to them how there is no global warming "hiatus", and explain to them how they got it wrong. I'm sure they'd learn something from your technique: you measure the trend from 1997-2014 using data that starts at 1976. Insightful indeed.

The various datasets show no statistically significant warming for around 17 years. This estimate will vary, depending on the particular dataset you use and how you choose the start-date. The satellite record shows no significant warming for about 20 years for example. Global warming has indeed "paused", and nobody in the scientific community disputes that, nor do they understand why. All of the IPCC models predicted warming. That has not been happening. The Journal Nature writes: "Sixteen years into the mysterious ‘global-warming hiatus’, scientists are piecing together an explanation."

Scientists are trying to "piece together" an explanation? That doesn't sound like settled science to me. One obvious explanation is that the climate sensitivity estimates were way off. The latest estimates are much lower. That would mean no dangerous levels of global warming, which should be good news. You would think that environmentalists would overjoyed at the possibility that global warming may have been significantly over-estimated. But they are not. They don't even seem to be aware of the "pause" at all. It's almost like they want catastrophic global warming to be a reality.

lololololololololololololol "psychology today" lololololololololol

All right, what about this?

it disagrees with everybody else in the field in the last 100 years. ;)

That's what they told Einstein and Planck, I'm pretty sure.

It's not a relationship, it's a coincidence, and a false one at that. It could not hold for the "entire venus cloud region", because you can't compare it to Earth's atmosphere past 1 atm. The "full amount of available information" includes a lot of data about how Venus actually absorbs and radiates heat (see previous link), but you seem to be willing to ignore that entirely for no reason in particular. You're basing your theory on a single data point, ignoring the error bars on that, ignoring other measurements [3](pdf)(which seem to cluster closer to 350K at 1 atm), picking a random point inside the cloud layer, and crying foul on "mainstream" science. Even if there were a "relationship" it clearly does not hold true for any other body in the Solar system.

You don't have to claim that there is no greenhouse effect, the source you got this idea from already did. It's a novel way out of the climate crisis, but it has nothing to do with reality. You can't just handwave away absorption spectra or albedo, and mumbling about blackbodies does not a theory make. You need to be able to explain all other observations. "Everything we know about radiative transfer is fictional" is a non-starter.

It's not a relationship, it's a coincidence, and a false one at that. It could not hold for the "entire venus cloud region", because you can't compare it to Earth's atmosphere past 1 atm. The "full amount of available information" includes a lot of data about how Venus actually absorbs and radiates heat (see previous link), but you seem to be willing to ignore that entirely for no reason in particular. You're basing your theory on a single data point, ignoring the error bars on that, ignoring other measurements [3](pdf)(which seem to cluster closer to 350K at 1 atm), picking a random point inside the cloud layer, and crying foul on "mainstream" science. Even if there were a "relationship" it clearly does not hold true for any other body in the Solar system.

You don't have to claim that there is no greenhouse effect, the source you got this idea from already did. It's a novel way out of the climate crisis, but it has nothing to do with reality. You can't just handwave away absorption spectra or albedo, and mumbling about blackbodies does not a theory make. You need to be able to explain all other observations. "Everything we know about radiative transfer is fictional" is a non-starter.

FYI
"The researchers determined that one of the mummified individuals may belong to an ancestral group, or haplogroup, called I2, believed to have originated in Western Asia. "
http://www.nature.com/news/egy...

"Haplogroup I2 is the most common paternal lineage in former Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria and Sardinia, and a major lineage in most Slavic countries. Its maximum frequencies are observed in Bosnia (55%, including 71% in Bosnian Croats), Sardinia (39.5%), Croatia (38%), Serbia (33%), Montenegro (31%), Romania (28%), Moldova (24%), Macedonia (24%), Slovenia (22%), Bulgaria (22%), Belarus (18.5%), Hungary (18%), Slovakia (17.5%), Ukraine (13.5%), and Albania (13.5%). It is found at a frequency of 5 to 10% in Germanic countries."
http://www.eupedia.com/europe/...

You are misinformed. Here is an article from the journal Nature: "Sixteen years into the mysterious ‘global-warming hiatus’, scientists are piecing together an explanation." Scientists are trying to "piece together" an explanation as to why the climate model predictions have failed? This does not sound like settled science to me. Check the data-sets for yourself. It's a plain fact: global surface temperatures show no statistically significant global warming for the last 17 years.

Yes the CO2 levels increased. Yet the global average temperature did not rise as predicted by the AGW model.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/la...
http://www.nature.com/news/cli...

Lol. I said there was no global warming for the past 17 years and that scientists were trying to figure out why. The Nature article says: "Sixteen years into the mysterious ‘global-warming hiatus’, scientists are piecing together an explanation." That's direct, concrete evidence that backs up what I'm saying. I gave you a link where you can see the various data sets for yourself. I have no idea who hosts that app, but if you think they are using fake data, go download the datasets for yourself, or keep your head in the sand. I know for a fact they are accurate because I've checked, and besides nobody is disputing there has been no warming for 17 years anymore except global warming devotees who are in denial. If you dispute that no warming has taken place, maybe you should write to Nature and ask THEM why they say there has been a "hiatus" for 16 years (at the time). I don't need to "publish a paper" that shows climate sensitivity is much lower than the IPCC estimates. Others have already done this for me. If you were well informed on this subject, you would already know this and I wouldn't have to keep spoon feeding you information. I don't know what other thread you are talking about, but obviously I am talking about the IPCC climate models. They have failed to predict the 17 year pause, which explains why scientists must now "piece together an explanation", according to the science journal Nature. If you won't accept the journal Nature or the actual climate data, then there is nothing you will accept. That's religion, not science.

The Internet of **** Things, that is. Just a few days ago, it was science fiction. http://www.nature.com/nphys/jo...

Chernobyl releasing nearly 60 kg of Pu241 and 250 kg of Pu239-240. Despite being right next to a Pripyat with a population of 50k and 120k people total in what is now the exclusion zone, and evacuations taking some time to even start, the number of deaths is quite small, even if compared to Kaku's 200k out of NYC or Tokyo's population. Short of issuing plutonium filled inhalers and forcing the population to use them, getting a large part of that plutonium to all go into people's bodies is non-trivial.

The "pause" is real. In this nature article they characterize the pause as mysterious, and describe the various explanations scientists are piecing together to try to explain it. I find it interesting that they don't consider the simplest explanation - that the climate models grossly exaggerated "climate sensitivity", especially since the latest climate sensitivity estimates are much lower than the ones used in the models. (Climate sensitivity is the hypothesis that the earth is hyper-reactive to CO2, that a little extra heat from CO2 causes a major chain reaction, amplifying that heat by 3-4 times. Climate sensitivity is a key issue in the debate, at least among the scientifically literate.)

In 2009, Phil Jones suggested 15 years of no warming would be cause for concern. Judith Curry said more recently: "Climate model simulations find that the probability of a hiatus as long as 20 years is vanishingly small." At what point is this theory falsifiable? How long do we have to wait? 15 years? 20 years? 50 years? 100 years of no warming before we can say the global warming scare was grossly exaggerated?

If you are still not convinced that the "pause" is real, you can look at the datasets for yourself. Here's the HADCRUT 4 dataset, and here's the RSS dataset. You can play with the app and the various datasets, although it's not very granular.

This experiment was actually easy to reproduce. Unlike the global warming climate model. Besides even when the model does not hold, as it has for quite some time, people just prefer to ignore reality instead.

http://www.nature.com/news/cli...

As we speak they prefer to clutch at straws rather than consider that the effect was caused by solar activity. Ah well.

> Unless it's election season.

Facebook's got that covered.

When you say "politically influenced sciences" you are showing you political bias. You couldn't even finish a complete sentence without substituting opinion for fact.

Climate Science is a part of the physical science. It is subject to all the formal and social controls that other physical sciences are subjected to.

Economics is a part of the Social Sciences. The standards there are generally lower then the physical sciences. There is already an ongoing debate about the acceptable standards for reproducibility, and big changes are in the works. Psychology is already starting a methodological change to address this problem.

Even by current practice Economics is in bad shape. This latest study shows just how pervasive the problem is. It's an intellectually corrupt discipline.

At some level it's not surprising that someone of your dishonest stripe would pick Economics, with it's lack of formal rigor, as a way of smearing actual science.

Go back to your flat earth bible camp and leave the adults to talk about facts.

In some sense it is not a surprise because his main work was on vibrating electromagnetic fields, and the natural modes of vibration of circular membranes is a very good way to practice the mathematics of vibrations.

Also, there is now a strategic security/economical/political dimension to the energy transition for Germany much like there is for the USA concerning Oil independence that has only been reinforced by the Ukraine crisis.

Two things:

1) The USA is a net exporter of petroleum products (we import some oil, but export more refined petroleum products than the oil we import makes) these days.

That's news to me.... a net oil exporter is somebody whose domestic production exceeds domestic consumption leaving a surplus to export. According to EIA statistics about 40% of the crude oil consumed in the USA in 2012 came from foreign sources:
http://www.eia.gov/energy_in_b...
According to this article the USA is on it's way to become a net gas exporter, it is already a net coal exporter but unlikely to be come a net crude oil exporter.
http://business.financialpost....

2) Increasing dependence on natural gas rather than coal by Germany makes them more vulnerable to things like the Ukraine situation.

They are planning to synthesize a natural gas substitute from hydrogen and CO2 scrubbed from the atmosphere or collected off of decomposing biomass. How is that increasing dependence on Russian gas? If this pans out, and P2G is currently getting massive amounts of research money, the Germans will even be able to recycle their existing natural gas infrastructure for storage of excess energy. They'd at the very least be able significantly reduce eliminate Russia's importance as a gas supplier. The best case scenario would of course be to eliminate reliance on Russian gas since it is a significant a strategic liability.

There's some thought that assortative mating of 'geeks' is one cause of the rise in autism rates. High IQs tend to correlate with a better than average ability for pattern matching and focus. Combine two people with those abilities and maybe you get kids who are laser focused on patterns all the time.

It's an interesting theory (I'm the father of an autistic son so I do a lot of reading on the subject) but there's not much more than circumstantial evidence behind it. But probably as much as evidence as "the kid will be an asshole" theory...

There was a link to a paper in phys.org's coverage yesterday. I read the coverage but I haven't had time to check the paper out.

The story:
m.phys.org/news/2014-06-evidence-higgs-boson-fermions.html

The paper:
http://www.nature.com/nphys/jo...

Actually, they did some research, had a press conference, other researchers pointed out potential problems with the conclusions, and they put some weasel words in the actual published paper. It doesn't matter; the way they went about this, and the weakness of their dust calibration, means that no one will really believe the cosmological interpretation of their results* until more data comes along. That may not take long, according to Nature News :

In addition, presentations given earlier this week at a cosmology conference in Moscow, based on observations from the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite add fresh evidence that what BICEP2 [observed] could be entirely due to a confounding effect of dust.

* That doesn't mean that lots of theorists won't publish papers showing, or purporting to show, or speculating, that this or that implication follows assuming the BICEP2 results are right. That's OK, that's what theorists do. It's mostly harmless, and occasionally leads to something useful even if the original results were wrong.

Here.

(What the article doesn't explain is why a science article needs a title involving an unnecessary metaphor and a colon: "Killing Two Birds with One Stone: Oral Tofacitinib Reverses Alopecia Universalis in a Patient with Plaque Psoriasis.")

Do you know how to use a search engine?

Are you aware of scholar.google.com?

It's really not hard to find papers like this or this.

And yes, the Matthias Troyer who co-authored the first paper is the same guy who conducted the performance study that the /. blurb references.

That D-Wave performs quantum annealing can be regarded as settled. The only question that remains is how useful this may be.

Eight years ago everybody (myself included) thought D-Wave was a scam or just crazy. As new facts emerge smart people (such as Matthias) adjust their judgment.

The machine is not faster than conventional machines at this point.

But Troyer et. al. actually confirmed that the D-Wave machine is performing quantum annealing as advertised.

In order to perform on the same level they used a highly optimized solver, not off-the-shelf optimizer software that the D-Wave machine outperforms handily.

"If we found a modern rabbit fossil in the precambrian tomorrow, and it wasn't obviously faked, then you're looking at a refutation of natural selection and evolution. That observation is completely excluded by the hypothesis."

No it wouldn't. It could indicate that just the rabbit population was seeded by aliens, or that the lineage of the modern rabbit is incorrect, or that some unknown physical process caused rapid fossilisation, or be a really fluky example of convergent evolution, or it could be the result of time travel. I'm more inclined to believe any of those than that the theory of evolution is wrong. And we have found a fair few fossils in odd places. This paper for instance:

http://www.nature.com/nature/j...

Did that finding falsify evolution? It was a fossil we weren't expecting to find where we did. What's your excuse for why that does not falsify evolution? Keep in mind that you must make your falsifiability criterion both necessary and sufficient to your own absurd standard. (Note: I'm a biologist, I'm point out how the parents logic is identical to that used by creationists)

The theory of global warming can (to the same extent that evolution is falsified by pre-cambrian rabbits) be falsified by showing that CO2 does not have the properties it is currently believed to have in regards to interacting with light. But no one observation would falsify either.

Before CO2 becomes a limiting factor, water and nitrogen come into play. We can fertilize (for a while, anyway), but swings in water availability will make the water part harder.

Even for areas which will become better suited will produce foods will make products that are less nutritious: A recent study published in Nature suggests that in addition to lower levels of iron and zinc, C3 crops produce less protein under increased CO2 conditions. http://www.nature.com/nature/j...

If it's a mental condition it's one with a strong genetic component.

“Obesity is one of the strongest genetically influenced traits that we have,” says O'Rahilly. Classic twin studies in the 1980s and 1990s, which relied on pairs of identical and fraternal twins, suggest that 40–70% of variation in body size is due to genetic factors.

Without so much as having clicked on the link, twin studies often note that twins do remarkably similar things, apparently even share similar mindsets. So either mindset is genetically predisposed or the genetic link is not the only link they share.

Mental health can be an issue, I know I put on ~5 kg over two years when dealing with depression, but fat-shaming has always struck me as a failure of theory of mind.

Could be age related changes. 5kg is not much. (Personally, gained three times as much in less than twice as many years and wasn't clinically diagnosed as depressed, just in a really shitty situation and ditto environment, with diet to match. Changed all of that and lost the fat.)

I don't disagree that shaming and handing out gym memberships don't really work. And there are indeed numerous tricks that do work, though they're not what people immediately think about when thinking of losing weight.

I don't dispute for a moment that any of them could lose weight if they tried hard enough. But some people have to try a heck of a lot harder than others.

You can change most all habits, it just takes time and, yes, willpower, but you can help yourself enormously by things like replacing the sweets bowl with a fruit bowl. Structure your environment, learn the right habits, like eating small amounts regularly so you don't go ravenous, and if you're going out for your monthly "Ima eat what I like!"-moment you just accept that you won't be losing weight today. That's a different mindset than "I excercised for all of five minutes now I can eat five candy bars!"

That is to say, I suspect the people with the most trouble are doing it wrong, like not trying at all, lying to themselves, or putting a lot of effort (and perhaps money) in the wrong thing. It's not about trying harder if the method doesn't work.

Obesity is a mental disability, most often an addiction to a wrong diet containing many addictive ingredients.

The way most people feed themselves is by stuffing enormous amounts of carbs, often a lot of them sugars in their face. Combine those with a little fat and all your body does is store fat and try and balance the glucose content of your blood. The carbs make your gut bacteria generate "happy hormones" that get in your blood, making you hungry and cranky if you don't get your fix, whether your body actually needs food or not.

The symptoms of this addiction are obesity and diabetes type 2. Please treat it as an addiction, not as a phyisical disability. If you do that, for example being taller than 6ft5 should be treated as a disability too and be given all benefits that should come with such a status. If being a size that's outside of what society will cater for is a reason to call people disabled.

Tall people can't help being tall, fat people in over 95% of the cases can help it if they kick the habit. If you treat obesity as a physical disability, you are insulting everyone with a physical disability for which there is no cure.

If it's a mental condition it's one with a strong genetic component.

“Obesity is one of the strongest genetically influenced traits that we have,” says O'Rahilly. Classic twin studies in the 1980s and 1990s, which relied on pairs of identical and fraternal twins, suggest that 40–70% of variation in body size is due to genetic factors.

Mental health can be an issue, I know I put on ~5 kg over two years when dealing with depression, but fat-shaming has always struck me as a failure of theory of mind.

If you're thin it's convenient to assume that it's just a matter of your willpower, you eat healthy because you're disciplined, you eat less because you're responsible. But it's also possible that fatty sugary food is just that much more appealing to other people, that hunger is a much stronger force, that their metabolism is slower so they gain fat much more easily.

I don't dispute for a moment that any of them could lose weight if they tried hard enough. But some people have to try a heck of a lot harder than others.

As explained in the link in my previous post (did you even read it?), if you take a set of data that fluctuates noisily but has an long-term upwards trend, you truncate it carefully so that the beginning of your truncated subset falls near a high point in the random fluctuations, and you use that to deny the upwards trend, then you are using a trick called "cherry-picking". You can argue you're presenting "simply facts", but it's dishonest. Watt's also dishonest is failing to declare a rather blatant conflict of interest.

Also, your own post contains contradictions. You're saying "...OBSERVED warming trend is significantly less than the IPCC 1990 PREDICTED..." (implying there is still a warming trend), and then you're saying "it has leveled off". Only one of them can be true, and it's the first one. There is still a warming trend, and yes, it's lower than the low-end 1990 predictions. Scientists have been debating over why that is for a while now. Heat getting trapped in the depths of the pacific ocean seems to be gaining traction as the most prevalent hypothesis, which is worrisome because once this finite heat reservoir is saturated, the heating will pick up with a vengeance. More info here, here, here and here (the 3 first links are all discussing the study in the 4th; I'll let you pick which source you like best).

As explained in the link in my previous post (did you even read it?), if you take a set of data that fluctuates noisily but has an long-term upwards trend, you truncate it carefully so that the beginning of your truncated subset falls near a high point in the random fluctuations, and you use that to deny the upwards trend, then you are using a trick called "cherry-picking". You can argue you're presenting "simply facts", but it's dishonest. Watt's also dishonest is failing to declare a rather blatant conflict of interest.

Also, your own post contains contradictions. You're saying "...OBSERVED warming trend is significantly less than the IPCC 1990 PREDICTED..." (implying there is still a warming trend), and then you're saying "it has leveled off". Only one of them can be true, and it's the first one. There is still a warming trend, and yes, it's lower than the low-end 1990 predictions. Scientists have been debating over why that is for a while now. Heat getting trapped in the depths of the pacific ocean seems to be gaining traction as the most prevalent hypothesis, which is worrisome because once this finite heat reservoir is saturated, the heating will pick up with a vengeance. More info here, here, here and here (the 3 first links are all discussing the study in the 4th; I'll let you pick which source you like best).

I agree, we should stick to the science. Here you go:

• The peer-reviewed Journal "Nature Climate Change" includes and references thousands of scientific papers on the subject.
• The IPCC's 1,500-page "Physical Science Basis" report cites hundreds of references and is authored by hundreds of experts. It clearly states what we know, don't know, and how we know it. It reviews its past predictions, notes where its models have errored, and takes into account an incredible wealth and scope of scientific observations over 150 years.
• The IPCC also makes all of its data and models available for review. So you can see for yourself.
• The US Government also recently updated its regularly scheduled report written by over 300 experts.
• The USGS has a Climate Model Browser that lets you try out all the different simulated predictions for Global Warming. You'll notice the specifics vary widely, but they all predict dramatic temperature rises.
• The NOAA has a National Climate Data Center where you can watch the temperature trends. Here's a visualization based on the data.
• The United States Defense department has several reports on the risks posed by Global Warming (see here, here, here, and here).
• The Center for Coastal Resources Management (CCRM) has produced some excellent reports on sea level rise due to Climate Change to inform local communities like Norfolk VA, where flooding is already a major issue, what to expect in the near future due to Global Warming.
• You can also watch the sea levels rise at the NOAA's Sea-Level Trends website.
• If you don't trust the government, then I recommend The Berkely Earth Project. It was funded by the liberal's favorite bad guys, the Koch Brothers, but its results were so compelling that the lead Climatologist, Richard A. Muller, wrote a piece for the New York Times announcing he was no longer a skeptic.
• Of course, it's always good to have a contrarian viewpoint in the mix, and for that, I recommend AGW skeptic Judith Curry, who presents valid challenges to the consensus with her strong scientific background. I don't find her convincing, but her challenges make for good food for thought.

If you dispute this science, then I recommend publishing your own peer-reviewed papers, your own models, and your own alternative hypotheses in the scientific journals. I see a lot of skeptics nit-picking the science, but not many actually taking the effort to publish in the scientific forums.

I eagerly await one of the skeptics out there to please post an equally substantive list of references to "balance" my citations, so everyone can review and compare them.

That was not a counterargument, there was no argument in the first place to counter! I honestly don't see people arguing what he does. Except for the latter part, I would have considered it strange if humans hadn't at least visited America before the paleo-Indians (or how you call them) arrived. They had too much time to fail to not do so. (I hope you catch my drift.)

gee you think Krugman or someone on his staff doesn't know this?

or hey, maybe one of the editors in the NYT newsroom might have remembered something they ran last week?

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfor...

look at the carbon emission trajectories. it is not pretty for China.

http://www.nature.com/nclimate...

(old link, 2013 version is even worse for them)

The internet is full of disinformation and lies, just as well! Quite a bit of internet information is free...a ton of it is free for a reason, it is untrue.

I agree. However, by the same token the internet is also full of information that is true, that is being suppressed and/or information that is not available through official channels. There is a reason why most if not all governments maintain control of mass media and countries such as China actively try to filter the internet. Looking for information online is like panning for gold- its a lot of work picking through the mud, most of the time you get useless dirt, but the occasional gold nuggets make it worthwhile.

Searching the internet on Google is not a replacement for historians doing extensive research, having that research reviewed, then publishing.

You assume that the historians and the whole review mechanism are incorruptible, free from coercion (*cough*research grants*cough*), free from bias, subject to rigid scientific scrutiny and do not have their own personal agenda to push.

As in all things, even historians get it wrong . I feel that there is no substitute for doing your own critical thinking rather than relying on the work of others simply because of the label they bear.

Maybe, but remember nature has over 10,000 peer reviewers the volunteer. So is may be the peer reviewers that eat crow.
You can not have a peer review peer review.

http://www.nature.com/authors/...

"journals themselves are always chest-thumping about how everything they publish is infallible because it was peer-reviewed, "
name one.

natures policy:
http://www.nature.com/authors/...

It isn't perfect, no one says its perfect, and people are involved, so tere will be mistakes. The fact that people make mistakes(intentional (fraud) or unintentional(bias)) is the foundation for the scientific method.

Should DNA sequencers contain hashes of the DNA of virulent organisms so they can call the NSA/CIA/SAS/UN/boy scouts when they are being used for possible bioweapon related work? (Hopefully they don't rain hellfires on the CDC.)

Some people have indeed suggested that both DNA synthesizers (which write the sequence) and DNA sequencers (which read it) should have such safeguards:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pu...

At least some companies that synthesize custom DNA commercially already have pathogen sequence screening in place, but this doesn't seem to be universal or necessarily effective. A few years ago The Guardian had a (small, defective) fragment of the smallpox virus genome synthesized without setting off any alarms, and wrote a rather hyped-up article about it:

http://www.nature.com/news/200...

Practically, this sort of thing is always going to be hard to police, much like the situation with 3D weapon printing - e.g., a terrorist could always use older technology that lacks the safeguards. On the other hand, assembling a dangerous microorganism from the genome up is hardly the most cost-effective way of causing mayhem - you'd need a proper, well-equipped lab and a terrorist cell of trained scientists to carry out your evil schemes.

The summary misses an important point, while at the same time mentioning it: " Climate models haven't explained this seeming contradiction to anyone's satisfaction" The entire idea of AGW is based on climate models, yet these models have repeatedly failed to actually explain certain, specific observed phenomena. This leads people to question basing policy that will cost a large amount of money and freedom on those models. When you want to give bureaucrats authority to determine what I can and cannot do based on models which have with significant frequency failed to predict real-world phenomena, I am going to question the wisdom of such actions.

Note that there are multiple models, which do vary in their predictions. The Canadian CCCMA models are not too good, for instance. The rest of the models are relatively similar, just a bit different in their slope. They make lots of predictions of other variables, as part of the whole process. For instance:

The IPCC Third Assessment Report predicted 1.9 millimetres per year average sea level rise for 1993-2008; actual satellite measurements gave 3.4. (Note that the argument that the models always overestimate is wrong)

All the models accurately forecasted the subsequent global cooling of about 0.5 C after the eruption of Mr. Pinatubo, and the recovery to a warming trend.

The IPCC AR4 climate models underestimated the area of sea-ice melt 2007-2009 by about 40%. (Again, note that the argument that the models always overestimate is wrong)

It's often observed that Hansen's 1988 predictions (the Model T of climate models) overestimated warming, but that's largely because the production of CO2 slowed down to 10% or so less than he predicted.

Meanwhile, we only need one model to be right. In 2000 a group from England tweaked a model's responses to greenhouse gas and sulphate forcing to fit the warming through 1996, and at this point (still a short time to evaluate a model) it's doing pretty well http://www.nature.com/nature/j..., predicting a quarter degree C increase for the average 2003-2012 compared to the average for 1987-196, which is just about perfect.

But the main point is, if your argument is that models need to be perfectly accurate about everything, you're wrong. The idea is that competing models can be evaluated on which one does a better job. And there is no climate model without an AGW term which predicts anything at all with any accuracy at all. For any honest scientist, that means you've got to adopt AGW as your hypothesis. You can certainly spend your spare time trying to formulate a climate model with no AGW which performs at all, but until you do that's in the same boat as perpetual motion, time travel, and faster than light travel. Period.

Most reasonable folks don't believe all the doomsday is impending scenarios because many have already been proven wrong

Oh, really? Name three. Please provide citations of peer reviewed scientific research, not whatever bullshit you read in the popular press.

Don't worry, I'll wait.

I know you're just trying to build a straw man, but I'll bite anyway.

First is this paper, which finds Inspecting commonly used parameterizations for subgrid-fluxes, we find that some of them obey the Second Law of thermodynamics, and some do not. The conforming approaches are the Smagorinsky momentum diffusion, phase changes, and sedimentation fluxes for hydrometeors. Conventional turbulent heat flux parameterizations do not conform with the Second Law.

Next shows that prevalent climate models (CCSM3) cannot accurately model the climate observations influenced by Atlantic sea currents, Hence, although there is some potential climate predictability in CCSM3, it is not realistic.

Finally, a big nail in the coffin is this paper published in Nature, which demonstrates that "semi-arid ecosystems in the Southern Hemisphere may be largely responsible for changes in global concentrations of atmospheric CO2." The authors find links between the land CO2 sink in these semi-arid ecosystems "are currently missing from many major climate models." In addition, they find that land sinks for CO2 are keeping up with the increase in CO2 emissions, thus modeled projections of exponential increases of CO2 in the future are likely exaggerated.

I'm not saying you don't have a point, but Wikipedia's accuracy is actually close to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Anything people do will have errors, whether due to malice or incompetence. And even if it doesn't initially, accuracy is a moving target, and errors in science and medicine will accumulate over time as our knowledge itself evolves. In my experience, statements such as yours are often used by the intellectually lazy to dismiss Wikipedia as evidence that their worldview is out of touch with reality, so a little bit less hyperbole would be advantageous for intelligent discourse. Sure, people will try to push their agendas. They will be frustrated by bona fide editors as well as people trying to push an opposite agenda, and the end result comes out quite OK compared to other sources of information.

While I agree Wikipedia generally comes out OK, the real danger, IMHO, is from its edibility. People view it at a point in time and thus the quality and accuracy of the information varies depending on the last edit. Couple that with a perception that Wikipedia is an authoritative source and you have a situation where someone can get bad information while believing it to be accurate. In fairness, that is not a Wikipedia unique issue but rather a problem with how people view internet information; where the are small islands of knowledge floating in giant seas of crap. Wikipedia is good as a general reference and a starting point for information but what you find needs to be verified by independent sources; especially if you are relying on it for health related issues. Of course, that is true for dead tree sources as well.

I'm not saying you don't have a point, but Wikipedia's accuracy is actually close to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Anything people do will have errors, whether due to malice or incompetence. And even if it doesn't initially, accuracy is a moving target, and errors in science and medicine will accumulate over time as our knowledge itself evolves. In my experience, statements such as yours are often used by the intellectually lazy to dismiss Wikipedia as evidence that their worldview is out of touch with reality, so a little bit less hyperbole would be advantageous for intelligent discourse. Sure, people will try to push their agendas. They will be frustrated by bona fide editors as well as people trying to push an opposite agenda, and the end result comes out quite OK compared to other sources of information.

Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica - published by Nature, not Anonymous Coward.

Given the fact that the OP says "She can't breathe on her own," I assume that she is still in the hospital and they are not asking for a home based solution. Researchers are attempting to replicate the fMRI results using EEG, but for now it is still hospital based. http://www.nature.com/news/neu...

How did the Vikings settle Greenland?

By longboat, I believe.

Hilarious.

Was it because a once frozen ocean stayed ice free so that they could make regular trips?

I think Eric the Red's exile was the primary factor that set the timing.

That's disingenuous. The colonies failed once the ocean froze over again.

Tell me about the last 6 years.

In Greenland? It's been losing Ice Sheet Mass, because of increased glacial flow outstripping increased precipitation. Recent findings suggest that the ice sheet is much more vulnerable to ocean warming that previously thought.

When you say something like observed conditions, how much of the earths history do those "observed" conditions cover.

It depends on context. Can you point out which time I said "something like observed conditions" that you are referring to? Sometimes observations of ice go back nearly a million years, by ice core histories. Some Ice observations go back to 1978, the satellite histories.

I didn't say you did, was waiting for it. Our recent observations amount to jack in the long history of the earth. The Vostok ice core, which actually does a good job of matching up with observed conditions means more to me than 30 years of satellite images.

Do Flora and Fauna records bear out periods warmer and colder than now?

Certainly colder. Warmer is uncertain globally within the past couple or few million years. Central Greenland regionally has probably been warming in the past few hundred years, judging from Ice cores.

Warmer too, for instance forests growing faster in northern climes in the past and plant life that can't grow there right now existing in the past.

Is global warming a theory due to the fact that it has facets that fly against observations?

No. Global warming is what happens when you warm the globe. It's not a theory.

Anthropogenic Global Warming is a theory.

How did the Vikings settle Greenland?

By longboat, I believe.

Was it because a once frozen ocean stayed ice free so that they could make regular trips?

I think Eric the Red's exile was the primary factor that set the timing.

Tell me about the last 6 years.

In Greenland? It's been losing Ice Sheet Mass, because of increased glacial flow outstripping increased precipitation. Recent findings suggest that the ice sheet is much more vulnerable to ocean warming that previously thought.

When you say something like observed conditions, how much of the earths history do those "observed" conditions cover.

It depends on context. Can you point out which time I said "something like observed conditions" that you are referring to? Sometimes observations of ice go back nearly a million years, by ice core histories. Some Ice observations go back to 1978, the satellite histories.

Do Flora and Fauna records bear out periods warmer and colder than now?

Certainly colder. Warmer is uncertain globally within the past couple or few million years. Central Greenland regionally has probably been warming in the past few hundred years, judging from Ice cores.

Is global warming a theory due to the fact that it has facets that fly against observations?

No. Global warming is what happens when you warm the globe. It's not a theory. The relevant theories are probably optics and thermodynamics. There are no observations that suggest the globe isn't currently warming. Energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere measurements, and sea level measurements are probably the most irrefutable signs that the globe is warming, as a globe. But surface temperature measurements are also strongly indicative.

See http://www.nature.com/news/201... - this article discusses using brain scans to communicate with patients originally thought to be "vegetative". http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04... is a more recent article on this topic.

Yes, and even though I'm speculating here, I'd say that it is also quite likely that the particles would simply be excreted by us and our food. In fact, if that were the case, one would expect the particles to become less prevalent as you move higher up the food chain and even then mostly in the contents of the digestive tract of the animals (which most people avoid eating. I know I do).

I'm not saying that the particles couldn't be dangerous at all, or that dumping plastics into the ocean isn't terrible, just that when it comes to 'small stuff that could be bad for your health' there is a difference between sand, heavy metal ions, asbestos and algae. Alarmist 'plastic is bad, mmkay' isn't going to do us a service.

Related subject matter:
http://www.nature.com/news/201...

It is already known that new microbes evolved which can consume plastic and disintegrate it

While it is known that scientists have found microbes in landfill sites and plastic floatsam in the sea that can consume / digest plastics, it is still an unknown whether those microbes could break down the many types of toxin that are embedded inside the plastics, such as phthalates, or merely pass the toxins intact, on to the next higher level organism on the food chain

http://www.nature.com/news/201...

If you're interested in the science of Anthropogenic Global Warming, I suggest you read the science, not blog posts. I've read both WattsUp and SkepticalScience, and they are both very poorly written and lack rigorousness. If you are reading these two blogs, you are reading the work of bias amateurs.

Here's what you should be reading:

• the peer-reviewed Journal "Nature Climate Change," which includes and references thousands of scientific papers on the subject.
• he IPCC's 1,500-page "Physical Science Basis" report, clearly states what we know, don't know, and how we know it. It reviews its past predictions, notes where its models have errored, and takes into account an incredible wealth and scope of scientific observations over 150 years. I highly recommend downloading this 0.5 GIG report and at least skimming it. I consider it the model of good science.
• The IPCC also makes all of its data and models available for review. So you can see for yourself. Take this data and give it to a machine-learning algorithm. The science of AGW is actually shockingly simple.
• The US Government also recently updated it regularly scheduled report written by over 300 experts.
• If you don't trust the government, then I recommend The Berkely Earth Project. It was funded by the liberal's favorite bad guys, the Koch Brothers, but its results were so compelling that the lead Climatologist, Richard A. Muller, wrote a piece for the New York Times announcing he no longer a skeptic.
• Of course, it's always good to have a contrarian viewpoint in the mix, and for that, I recommend AGW skeptic Judith Curry, who presents valid challenges to the consensus with her strong scientific background. I don't find her convincing, but her challenges make for good food for thought.

Science, published peer-reviewed science, not blogs, is where we should keep this discussion.

Mod parent up, and see Detection of Earth-like planets around nearby stars using a petal-shaped occulter (probably pay-walled), or Starshades (simple explanation) for further details.