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At the same time there's an article in Nature indicating that the climate has varied a lot more than what we see in the reference model: http://www.nature.com/nature/j...

(OK, I haven't read the full article)

This is typical of the rag known as Nature that likes to call itself a journal. No self-respecting scientist would ever publish in it. Absolute garbage. The media loves it though, biologists get to pretend to be real scientists and the main stream media buys it.

No kidding. They actually published a hoax article from a couple of pranksters about the double helix form of DNA.

The magnetic monopoles in spin lattices are "quasiparticles". They aren't fundamental particles. They are basically simulations of monopoles on a crystal lattice. But these crystal patterns can still exist at a quantum scale, so they still act like particles.
This explains it if you understand enough physics. http://www.nature.com/nature/j...

Neither the summary nor TFA has a link to the actual paper. Insensitive clods, the both of 'em.

Pretty much everything you've said is wrong. Yes, the Delft experiment used filtering. No, the filtering doesn't do what you think it does. But more to the point, there have been many experiments prior to the Delft experiment that didn't use that sort of filtering and still got results consistent with entanglement. See e.g. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v409/n6822/abs/409791a0.html for an example.

Well Ray, that's a very nice paper. I hope you got a B, assuming it was Freshman English or the equivalent.

Your instructor really should teach you to get both the arguments in support of your position and against it, as people have been doing since the ancient Greeks, which is what I learned in Freshman English. http://www.bartleby.com/130/2.... Makes a much more persuasive argument (assuming your position holds up). Scientific articles, legal papers, newspaper editorials, and other serious writing is written in a particular style which has been developed over 2,000 years, and is generally accepted in all its variations today. If you don't understand it you won't be able to understand the arguments that are going on around you, much less write them.

You should also take at least a good social science course which will teach you the different kinds of scientific evidence and how to evaluate them, such as the difference between opinions and evidence, and the difference between association and causation. Any professor who has published a research paper in a major journal would know these things.

You should also learn to research the previous research and opinions before you write your own.

On gun control, I stick to the peer-reviewed scientific literature, and the honest answer (even from the anti-gun researchers) is that nobody has good research or good answers because Congress cut the funding.

http://www.nature.com/news/und...
Under the gun
A ban on advocacy and promotion of gun control is keeping US agencies from conducting research that is sorely needed to inform policy on firearms and prevent shootings.
27 March 2013
Nature 495, 409 (28 March 2013) doi:10.1038/495409a

The irony is that the gun lobby and its congressional allies might benefit from rigorous research. Would a robust study reveal that state laws allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons have resulted in more or fewer deaths? We don't know. Would the spiking homicide rate in Chicago, Illinois, be higher still if it were not for the cityâ(TM)s restrictive gun laws, or are those laws ineffective? We don't know. Does a limit on assault weapons reduce the overall rate of firearms injuries and deaths? We don't know.

http://www.nature.com/news/fir...
Firearms research: The gun fighter
There are almost as many firearms in the United States as there are citizens. Garen Wintemute is one of few people studying the consequences.
Meredith Wadman
Nature 496, 412â"415 (25 April 2013) doi:10.1038/496412a

Well Ray, that's a very nice paper. I hope you got a B, assuming it was Freshman English or the equivalent.

Your instructor really should teach you to get both the arguments in support of your position and against it, as people have been doing since the ancient Greeks, which is what I learned in Freshman English. http://www.bartleby.com/130/2.... Makes a much more persuasive argument (assuming your position holds up). Scientific articles, legal papers, newspaper editorials, and other serious writing is written in a particular style which has been developed over 2,000 years, and is generally accepted in all its variations today. If you don't understand it you won't be able to understand the arguments that are going on around you, much less write them.

You should also take at least a good social science course which will teach you the different kinds of scientific evidence and how to evaluate them, such as the difference between opinions and evidence, and the difference between association and causation. Any professor who has published a research paper in a major journal would know these things.

You should also learn to research the previous research and opinions before you write your own.

On gun control, I stick to the peer-reviewed scientific literature, and the honest answer (even from the anti-gun researchers) is that nobody has good research or good answers because Congress cut the funding.

http://www.nature.com/news/und...
Under the gun
A ban on advocacy and promotion of gun control is keeping US agencies from conducting research that is sorely needed to inform policy on firearms and prevent shootings.
27 March 2013
Nature 495, 409 (28 March 2013) doi:10.1038/495409a

The irony is that the gun lobby and its congressional allies might benefit from rigorous research. Would a robust study reveal that state laws allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons have resulted in more or fewer deaths? We don't know. Would the spiking homicide rate in Chicago, Illinois, be higher still if it were not for the cityâ(TM)s restrictive gun laws, or are those laws ineffective? We don't know. Does a limit on assault weapons reduce the overall rate of firearms injuries and deaths? We don't know.

http://www.nature.com/news/fir...
Firearms research: The gun fighter
There are almost as many firearms in the United States as there are citizens. Garen Wintemute is one of few people studying the consequences.
Meredith Wadman
Nature 496, 412â"415 (25 April 2013) doi:10.1038/496412a

I remember reading about this study this years ago, it shows that people with more bumper stickers are more likely to be involved in road rage incidents. The theory is, people who personalize their vehicle tend to view the vehicle as their own private space, even when on the public roads. Because they are in their own private space, they literally do feel that they own the road.
http://www.nature.com/news/200...

True. Much easier for the brains and better for the popcorn industry than discussing about the actual paper: http://www.nature.com/articles...

That seems rather odd, because a big part of climatology at this point is nailing down just what will happen and the timing of when it will happen.

Yes, and it's no where near certain what will happen. Which is why there is still so much ongoing research.

there are no consequences predicted in climate models, that the millions of tons of CO2 aren't going to alter precipitation patterns and other aspects of regional and global climate?

Consequences from the computer climate models vary dramatically depending on the model. As for altering precipitation patterns and regional climate, the IPCC report estimated that the models are not accurate anything smaller than the continental scale (and in my view that is optimistic. For example, climate models can't predict what AGW will do to El Nino, but that is probably the largest determinant to climate over California). I'm not sure what you mean by 'global climate.'

Also, regarding models, there's this paper which Eunuchswear gets mad at me when I post, but he hasn't made a good scientific argument against it yet.

This is great timeing as it's not just the NYT that's discussing this. In the Febuary 18th issuse, Nature talks about an arxiv for biology called bioRxiv were biologist can post their pre-prints: http://www.nature.com/news/bio...

As a biologist frustrated with publication turnaround times, I took some time to encourage a collaborator to submit one of our manuscripts to bioRxiv this morning.

Oh right. This is a leap forward in AI. That's why they only needed a mere 1,202 CPUs and 176 GPUs.

Did they program this thing in a smart way? Yes.

But "hypothesise", "true AI", even "intuition"? Sod off. They threw brains, statistics and a shitload of CPUs against the problem, and like any computational problem, it disappeared.

You're just two months into the new year and you're already declaring yourself the winner?

I was the clear winner two months ago. Otherwise I wouldn't have made the bet. Do you know how I know this?

If there is such a thing as scientific proof

There is not. Proof is for alcohol and mathematics. I assume you are not a science teacher?

show it to me

Start with this one from 1896: http://articles.adsabs.harvard....914A/0000014.000.html

And read through to this one from last year http://www.nature.com/nature/j...

Yet somehow they increased how confident they are that they are right.

It's explained in the IPCC AR5. If you are curious you can look it up.

It would be obvious if the repeated results were from lensing since the signals would come from two different locations.

These signals have been detected with single-dish radio telescopes, which don't have very good resolution: they can only say where the burst came from to within a quarter-degree or so. So, if it was gravitational lensing, the bursts would come from different locations - but probably still too close to distinguish them with current measurements.

Also, there might be some clue in the signal if it was just a repeat of the same event.

One possibility: if you were seeing multiple lensed copies of the same event, you'd expect them (I think) to have the same spectrum. But the paper says that the repeated events they've seen "show a wide range of spectral shapes".

There seem to be a gigantic particle accelerator somewhere close to the center of the Milky Way:

http://www.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de/pressreleases/2016/6
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v531/n7592/full/nature16976.html

Excellent, you've read (and selectively quoted from) a couple of abstracts. Small steps.

You'll note that the papers do in fact confirm the claim of increasing temperature events, both days and nights. You point out that the rate of increase of warm extremes is less than the rate of increase of average temperatures, which would indicate the presence of a mitigating negative feedback (i.e. not simple enough to be 100% directly correlated to CO2) - yet they are still on the increase, and faster in more recent times. Is that what you intended to point out?

And yes, a "vague correlation" between increasing temperatures and "increased frequency of rainy days" is found. Because, you know, temperatures and heavy rainfall events are both observed to be increasing. As I claimed. And Allan & Soden 2008 makes it even more clear, right in the abstract:

These observations reveal a distinct link between rainfall extremes and temperature, with heavy rain events increasing during warm periods and decreasing during cold periods.

It then goes on to point out that, while this is predicted by our climate models, if anything they've been too conservative, because the warmer temperatures are amplifying rainfall extremes even more than expected.

[Kossin et al] shows no significant trends in tropical storm intensity one way or another

Correction; while it says globally the trends are as yet uncertain (due mostly to insufficient early data in some areas), there are still definite increasing trends in better-observed areas (like the Atlantic). From the conclusion:

Given these limitations of the data, the question of whether hurricane intensity is globally trending upwards in a warming climate will likely remain a point of debate in the foreseeable future. Still, the very real and dangerous increases in recent Atlantic hurricane activity will no doubt continue to provide a heightened sense of purpose to research

This is confirmed by Elsner et al 2008, which further notes that the strongest hurricanes have been steadily getting even stronger, with wind speeds in these hurricanes observed to be increasing in all ocean basins, not just the Atlantic.

There are a few things which have a strong correlation with global warming, but most of it does not.

So now your objection is no longer "temperature/precipitation/etc events are not increasing" [since as shown earlier, they are], but "they aren't increasing as fast as CO2 and/or temperatures"? If so, I'm not sure why you think this is required - positive & negative feedbacks in the system will always mean rates of increase will vary all over the map. Nobody ever claimed that everything would neatly follow the CO2 or temperature graphs in lockstep, only that the trend for all these things is increasingly upwards. Which, recalling the topic at hand, is being very carefully noted by insurance actuaries.

I'm not sure if it's pay walled, but the actual article was in Nature Vol 314, 25 April 1985, page 676. They ruled out other explanations because of the amount of energy required and there was no sign it was atomic.

idiot... it is not science if there was never any experimentation.

Liar.

The report was delivered in stages, starting with Working Group I's report on the physical science basis, based on 9,200 peer-reviewed studies.[2][3]

moron... none of this has been tested at all... it is simply computational speculation

Liar.

The report was delivered in stages, starting with Working Group I's report on the physical science basis, based on 9,200 peer-reviewed studies.[2][3]

where are their successful predictions? there are none, zero. they can't predict shit

Liar:

The paper, published on Wednesday inthe journal Nature Geoscience, explores the performance of a climate forecast based on data up to 1996 by comparing it with the actual temperatures observed since. The results show that scientists accurately predicted the warming experienced in the past decade, relative to the decade to 1996, to within a few hundredths of a degree.

but yeah, dumbass, liquidate western civilization over it, you deserve it for being such sheep

Who needs to liquidate western civilization? Oh, right, the polluters and their denialist useful idiots like yourself. The world would certainly be a better place without illiterate, biased, useful idiot liars like yourself.

But getting cheap, clean energy is the opposite of "liquidating western civilization" unless one is a shill, a troll, and / or a complete fucking idiot.

that the software engineering is good says nothing about the science... fool

Maybe, if you're stupid. I guess you're stupid (stating the obvious).

"All models are wrong, some models are useful."

If being stupid were painful, you'd have died of the agony ages ago.

It's long been said that if stupidity were painful, the world would be a better place. You are evidence of that.

hooray now if you had only logged in we would know who to congratulate.

Also eggs have been around much longer than chickens.

The birds aren't the only ones hurting with the warmest winter on record people haven't needed to buy nearly as much gas and electric to heat their homes this year.

AND more importantly.
Temperature of egg incubation determines sex in Alligator mississippiensis
http://www.nature.com/nature/j...
This implies a lot of -- well you do the math
"temperatures less than or equal to 30 C producing all females, greater than or equal to 34 C yielding all males."

That is a lot of bull crock...

I read it as 'emacs vs. vim' kind of an argument.

The argument has been a bit more heated than that. For many decades humans, unlike all other known species, were thought to have an evolutionary tree without any branches. Over the last couple of decades it turns out that:

1) The human evolutionary tree had many, many, many branches.
2) Dwarfism in humans existed, i.e. the hobbits.
3) Archaic forms of humans existed until fairly recently, again the hobbits.
4) It turns out you can recover large amounts of DNA from ridiculously old samples and discover extinct species of humans without ever touching a shovel and scraping at dirt with a bricklayer's trowel.
5) Some of the diverse branches of the human evolutionary tree merged again when modern humans mated with archaic forms of human. Well know examples of this are Neanderthals, Denisovans plus at least a couple of other archaic species unknown from anything except DNA. Upwards of 20% of the DNA of the Neanderthal for example still exist in our genome.
6) There are a lot of surprises still left to discover, like Albert Perry's Y-chromasome which pre-dates the oldest know modern human fossil by 140000 years.

I really love it when things like this happen. Scientific communities tend to settle into a routine. They are like a bunch of people in a conference room who have dominant theories to explain much of the way things work and most of the work that still need doing is to extend and improve these theories and the oddballs with weird theories have been pushed into a corner and are being ignored. Then, just as people were settling into a routine under the fatherly guidance of the big names in the field, somebody opens the door and brings in a discovery like this or Svante Pääbo's discovery of Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in modern humans (Ian Tattersall has been eating crow on that score ever since) or my other recent favourite contribution to the human origins debate which is Eske Willerslev 's discovery of people that were genetically closely related to modern Europeans but who lived in Siberia. It turns out that these people contributed significantly to the groups that settled the Americas, meaning that Native Americans and Europeans are actually very closely connected by genetic bonds that stretch back way, way, way, way before Columbus (as in 24000 years ago)... so here we once again have the revenge of the scientific oddballs.

The global warming models have error bars

The error bars weren't wide enough.

Given that normal (one-pane) glas has a transmittance of about 90% that would mean there was basically no reflection or absorption left and nearly all light would have to pass undisturbed. Quite some claim which I cannot find justified by the paper where the closest thing to glass I can find is Silicion Nitride (which apparently starts with only 80% transmittance) and even for that they only show a 6% increase and only postulate that 10% (for silicon nitride) might be theoretically possible.

Obviously another case of journalists hyping science results (without even switching on their own brain).

I seem to remember a publication in Nature from 2013. Seems the Germans already did something comparable a few years ago. Over 20m distance that is.

Astronomers have found ways to get around atmospheric interference. Amateur or pro-amateur astronomers used lucky imaging. They use a high-speed CCD to catch multiple images of a particular target and keep the ones that are in focus (or even just the bits of image that have a high level of sharpness). Then they can combine these together to make a perfect picture.

With the larger telescopes, they have adaptive optics to compensate for the refraction caused by air turbulence. They fire off a laser into the scape to determine the light distortion. They then adjust the direction of all those dozens of smaller mirrors to keep the image in focus.That allows ground based telescopes to rival the Hubble telescope.

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

surely you can imagine a hypothetical non-human person, even under whatever subjective definition you subscribe to?

No, I can't.

suppose we do determine that dolphins are "intelligent enough" ... would that not make them persons?

No. It would make them sentient dolphins, not "non-human people".

you'll have to show a difference in quality rather than quantity of differences

Easy peasy!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee_genome_project

The primary difference is that humans have one fewer pair of chromosomes than do other great apes. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes and other great apes have 24 pairs of chromosomes. ... There are nine other major chromosomal differences between chimpanzees and humans: chromosome segment inversions on human chromosomes 1, 4, 5, 9, 12, 15, 16, 17, and 18.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v463/n7280/full/nature08700.html

we show that they differ radically in sequence structure and gene content, indicating rapid evolution during the past 6âmillion years. The chimpanzee MSY contains twice as many massive palindromes as the human MSY, yet it has lost large fractions of the MSY protein-coding genes and gene families present in the last common ancestor.

You can't boil the argument down without agreeing on what the argument is about.

That's for sure... :)

Given that the paper is in fact open access: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2... ...

Why not link that in the summary instead of Gizmag's nonsense article ?

Also I'm confused. The paper says the lens thickness is 200nm. So where did the "1 billionth of a metre" come into it? From the paper: "a large size 200-nm-thick GO thin film is prepared on a glass substrate".

To address your question they show focused spots in wavelengths from the VIS-NIR (400-1000nm ish). The focus performance is pretty much constant throughout.

200nm thick graphene oxide lens

Highly efficient and ultra-broadband graphene oxide ultrathin lenses with three-dimensional subwavelength focusing

Sorry, but the length guide is *not* sufficient.

While it's more specific than sequence homology predicts, it's less specific than the laser focus it's portrayed as having.

I understand the need to portray it as being as close to perfect as possible to preserve funding (and the research *should* be funded!), right now, the best method we have of ensuring that off-target mutations do not occur is via post-sequencing.

See these papers regarding "Dammit, I missed!":

New Sequencing Methods Reveal Off-Target Effects of CRISPR/Cas9
https://www.genomeweb.com/sequ...

Unbiased detection of off-target cleavage by CRISPR-Cas9 and TALENs using integrase-defective lentiviral vectors
http://www.nature.com/nbt/jour...

Analysis of off-target effects of CRISPR/Cas-derived RNA-guided endonucleases and nickases
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

CRISPR-Cas9 Specificity: Taming Off-target Mutagenesis
http://www.genecopoeia.com/res...

Digenome-seq: genome-wide profiling of CRISPR-Cas9 off-target effects in human cells
http://www.nature.com/nmeth/jo...

Quantifying on- and off-target genome editing
http://www.cell.com/trends/bio...

CRISPR/Cas9 Guide
https://www.addgene.org/CRISPR...
Salient quote: "The randomness of NHEJ-mediated DSB repair has important practical implications, because a population of cells expressing Cas9 and a gRNA will result in a diverse array of mutations (for more information, jump to Plan Your Experiment). In most cases, NHEJ gives rise to small InDels in the target DNA which result in in-frame amino acid deletions, insertions, or frameshift mutations leading to premature stop codons within the open reading frame (ORF) of the targeted gene. Ideally, the end result is a loss-of-function mutation within the targeted gene; however, the “strength” of the knock-out phenotype for a given mutant cell is ultimately determined by the amount of residual gene function."

P.S.: And you know as well as I do that the 'P' in "CRISPR" stands for "Palindromic".

Sorry, but the length guide is *not* sufficient.

While it's more specific than sequence homology predicts, it's less specific than the laser focus it's portrayed as having.

I understand the need to portray it as being as close to perfect as possible to preserve funding (and the research *should* be funded!), right now, the best method we have of ensuring that off-target mutations do not occur is via post-sequencing.

See these papers regarding "Dammit, I missed!":

New Sequencing Methods Reveal Off-Target Effects of CRISPR/Cas9
https://www.genomeweb.com/sequ...

Unbiased detection of off-target cleavage by CRISPR-Cas9 and TALENs using integrase-defective lentiviral vectors
http://www.nature.com/nbt/jour...

Analysis of off-target effects of CRISPR/Cas-derived RNA-guided endonucleases and nickases
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

CRISPR-Cas9 Specificity: Taming Off-target Mutagenesis
http://www.genecopoeia.com/res...

Digenome-seq: genome-wide profiling of CRISPR-Cas9 off-target effects in human cells
http://www.nature.com/nmeth/jo...

Quantifying on- and off-target genome editing
http://www.cell.com/trends/bio...

CRISPR/Cas9 Guide
https://www.addgene.org/CRISPR...
Salient quote: "The randomness of NHEJ-mediated DSB repair has important practical implications, because a population of cells expressing Cas9 and a gRNA will result in a diverse array of mutations (for more information, jump to Plan Your Experiment). In most cases, NHEJ gives rise to small InDels in the target DNA which result in in-frame amino acid deletions, insertions, or frameshift mutations leading to premature stop codons within the open reading frame (ORF) of the targeted gene. Ideally, the end result is a loss-of-function mutation within the targeted gene; however, the “strength” of the knock-out phenotype for a given mutant cell is ultimately determined by the amount of residual gene function."

P.S.: And you know as well as I do that the 'P' in "CRISPR" stands for "Palindromic".

only eat at certain times of the day based op when you wake up and when you go to bed.

Um, whut? No. That's some astrology level of bullshit there.

And yet, there's actual, peer-reviewed science that backs it up. In Nature, even. And it works in mice, too. Eat earlier in your active cycle, when your activities will use the circulating fats and sugars, and your salvage systems won't store them away.

"My definition of evidence is any data-point that indicates indicates you better have a good explanation"

Ok, but for me that definition leaves too much room for mischief.

It's a simple term. If you have any reason to believe something, you have evidence. It may not be strong evidence, but it is (by definition) evidence.

I'm not gonna gonna bother dancing around it for ten pages in case it turns out to be bullshit.

"the consultant [nature.com] who ran the software has used it to get a a previous researcher from the same University for faking evidence with copied images in the past"

Yes, and it found this too: "the 2013 Food and Nutrition Sciences paper was retracted, with a citation of “self-plagiarism”. However, the journal noted that the results were still valid and that it considered the issues an “honest error” -- Nature.com

Read the links at the bottom of the article.

In December of '13 this exact computer researcher (Enrico Bucci) used this exact method to completely discredit a researcher who is only related to the GM team in that they worked at the same University. It was bad enough there was a police investigation of the guy:
http://www.nature.com/news/ima...
It's just gotten worse for poor Alfredo Fusco since then:
http://retractionwatch.com/201...

But even with those results it doesn't change the fact that the software isn't enough to go on by itself because it produces way too many false positives to be able to rely on its results alone.

"A good explanation should be fairly trivial for the article's authors to come up with (you aren't supposed to trash all the data you use to write a paper just because it's been published), if they are actually innocent"

If you read the link to La Rebublica in Nature: "according to the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, Infascelli said that there is no substance to these allegations, and that an expert that he consulted about the papers had ruled out the possibility of data manipulation" (Nature.com), it appears the rector's investigating committee has consulted an expert on images and the expert said there was no evidence of any problems. Nature seems to have confused things a bit and its in fact the committee that's consulted the expert.

What I'd like to know, and what Nature doesn't tell us, is the content of the leak to the press: "details of the confidential findings of the investigation committee — composed of scientists in and outside of Naples — were leaked to the Italian press" (Nature.com).

Senator Cattaneo hired the guy who destroyed Alfredo Fusco. This piece has a much longer (and much more hostile to Infascelli) write-up:
http://www.biofortified.org/20...

Maybe the University also hired the same guy, to look into the same thing, at the same time. He would be the logical go-to-guy for all involved.

I've repeatedly told Jane/Lonny Eachus that true skeptics might wonder how Dr. Christy and Dr. Spencer also claimed agreement before satellite adjustments:

1997: "There isn't a problem with the measurements that we can find," Spencer explained. "In fact, balloon measurements of the temperature in the same regions of the atmosphere we measure from space are in excellent agreement with the satellite results." Dr. Christy explained further, "In particular, we've examined these two 'breaks' claimed by Hurrell and Trenberth. Even in these disputed intervals, we find excellent agreement between the two independent, direct atmospheric temperature measurements from balloons and satellites."

So Christy and Spencer claimed "excellent agreement" between their modeled satellite temperatures and balloons. Then other scientists found several mistakes in their model:

Hurrell and Trenberth 1997 found that UAH merged different satellite records incorrectly, which resulted in a spurious cooling trend.

Wentz and Schabel 1998 found that UAH didn't account for orbital decay of the satellites, which resulted in a spurious cooling trend.

Fu et al. 2004 found that stratospheric cooling had contaminated the UAH analysis, which resulted in a spurious cooling trend.

Mears and Wentz 2005 found that UAH didn't account for drifts in the time of measurement each day, which resulted in a spurious cooling trend.

After grudgingly fixing all these errors, Christy and Spencer might have deigned to explain why they claimed that their previously incorrect modeled satellite temperatures were in "excellent agreement" with balloon data. Instead, they appear to have (correctly) assumed that their unskeptical supporters won't notice or care if they repeat exactly the same claim with their new and differently modeled satellite temperatures.

A true skeptic might wonder how that's possible, but Jane/Lonny Eachus probably won't address this issue with anything but misdirection and baseless insinuations.

I've repeatedly told Jane/Lonny Eachus that true skeptics might wonder how Dr. Christy and Dr. Spencer also claimed agreement before satellite adjustments:

1997: "There isn't a problem with the measurements that we can find," Spencer explained. "In fact, balloon measurements of the temperature in the same regions of the atmosphere we measure from space are in excellent agreement with the satellite results." Dr. Christy explained further, "In particular, we've examined these two 'breaks' claimed by Hurrell and Trenberth. Even in these disputed intervals, we find excellent agreement between the two independent, direct atmospheric temperature measurements from balloons and satellites."

So Christy and Spencer claimed "excellent agreement" between their modeled satellite temperatures and balloons. Then other scientists found several mistakes in their model:

Hurrell and Trenberth 1997 found that UAH merged different satellite records incorrectly, which resulted in a spurious cooling trend.

Wentz and Schabel 1998 found that UAH didn't account for orbital decay of the satellites, which resulted in a spurious cooling trend.

Fu et al. 2004 found that stratospheric cooling had contaminated the UAH analysis, which resulted in a spurious cooling trend.

Mears and Wentz 2005 found that UAH didn't account for drifts in the time of measurement each day, which resulted in a spurious cooling trend.

After grudgingly fixing all these errors, Christy and Spencer might have deigned to explain why they claimed that their previously incorrect modeled satellite temperatures were in "excellent agreement" with balloon data. Instead, they appear to have (correctly) assumed that their unskeptical supporters won't notice or care if they repeat exactly the same claim with their new and differently modeled satellite temperatures.

A true skeptic might wonder how that's possible, but Jane/Lonny Eachus probably won't address this issue with anything but misdirection and baseless insinuations.

I've repeatedly told Jane/Lonny Eachus that true skeptics might wonder how Dr. Christy and Dr. Spencer also claimed agreement before satellite adjustments:

1997: "There isn't a problem with the measurements that we can find," Spencer explained. "In fact, balloon measurements of the temperature in the same regions of the atmosphere we measure from space are in excellent agreement with the satellite results." Dr. Christy explained further, "In particular, we've examined these two 'breaks' claimed by Hurrell and Trenberth. Even in these disputed intervals, we find excellent agreement between the two independent, direct atmospheric temperature measurements from balloons and satellites."

So Christy and Spencer claimed "excellent agreement" between their modeled satellite temperatures and balloons. Then other scientists found several mistakes in their model:

Hurrell and Trenberth 1997 found that UAH merged different satellite records incorrectly, which resulted in a spurious cooling trend.

Wentz and Schabel 1998 found that UAH didn't account for orbital decay of the satellites, which resulted in a spurious cooling trend.

Fu et al. 2004 found that stratospheric cooling had contaminated the UAH analysis, which resulted in a spurious cooling trend.

Mears and Wentz 2005 found that UAH didn't account for drifts in the time of measurement each day, which resulted in a spurious cooling trend.

After grudgingly fixing all these errors, Christy and Spencer might have deigned to explain why they claimed that their previously incorrect modeled satellite temperatures were in "excellent agreement" with balloon data. Instead, they appear to have (correctly) assumed that their unskeptical supporters won't notice or care if they repeat exactly the same claim with their new and differently modeled satellite temperatures.

A true skeptic might wonder how that's possible, but Jane/Lonny Eachus probably won't address this issue with anything but misdirection and baseless insinuations.

My definition of evidence is any data-point that indicates indicates you better have a good explanation.

In this case it is possible their software is fucked-up, but a) at least some of their data is based the study authors submitting photos that humans couldn't tell apart either, and b) the consultant who ran the software has used it to get a a previous researcher from the same University for faking evidence with copied images in the past.

A good explanation should be fairly trivial for the article's authors to come up with (you aren't supposed to trash all the data you use to write a paper just because it's been published), if they are actually innocent.

Humans don't work like that. Same person has different contexts in which they are evil and saintlike. Some people end up in professions that make them evil.

I read somewhere that the sexual harassment investigation was instigated by a fellow facility member at Berkeley. The head of some women's group who actively sought out students to make a complaint against Marcy. Yet another case of political correctness gone insane.

"The 15 April 2011 complaint, the first in the documents, involves a witness report from someone who described Marcy rubbing the bare shoulder of a female undergraduate student"

"On 18 March 2014, someone writing from outside Berkeley .. asked Oldham whether the university was doing all it could to address allegations involving sexual harassment of students by a faculty member" ref

“There is a concern that protecting the campus may be a higher priority than addressing the problems” ref

Power-generation system vulnerability and adaptation to changes in climate and water resources

I'm not referring to either of these arguments by Hawking, which are both very old. I'm referring to his most recent response to the firewall paradox from several months ago, which has often been snarkily summed up as "there are no black holes", but can more accurately be summed up as "only apparent horizons exist, not true event horizons, and by implication, not singularities either". All infalling matter, even that which built the black hole itself, is held on the apparent horizon, which is a metastable state that slowly decays with time as the black hole boils off. The implication is that there is no singularity because nothing moves past the apparent horizon.

First of all n0w4k, congratulations to you and your team on your work at Groningen.
Every day, there's a lot of tech news, but this is what i consider truly nextgen science. It stands out.

Second, i clicked the link. I expected to find something insightful to read, but apparently its paywalled.
http://www.nature.com/nchem/jo...
This paywall is something i do not understand. So my first question now is, who descided this to be paywalled, and why? Where does the PDF money go?

You'd be surprised how many don't think about these things in their rush to publish and get publicity (funding) for their work. The scientific world is full to overflowing with bullshit. I note with interest it's now thought that eating an egg for breakfast won't give me heart problems. Fantastic news.

Of course people like you sneered at Lehrer's Decline Effect and let's not even mention the recent study showing that fewer than half of peer-reviewed psychology studies published in reputable journals could be replicated.

The absolutely most basic skill you apparently need to learn is how to think for yourself.

Until there is research indicating otherwise I would not believe humans could either draw enough energy out of the wind, nor install enough solar panels to change the climate one bit.

This study concludes that large solar farms will cause a localized cooling effect.

No. Astrology, even if you are the biggest skeptic, makes testable predictions all the time.

Do you see what I did there?

Taken the first step of a testable hypothesis.

So let's take the theory of Astrology. It's based on the hypothesis that the position of the Stars at your moment of birth determines your personality, and furthermore your life is predetermined by those stars and planets.

So first off, what is the physical mechanism of the stars on your personality? Right away, we have a problem. But that can all be ignored for the moment, if we like.

So now the first test that we can do something about. Finding people born at the exact or very similar time. A study of these folks should show virtually identical personalities, and as long as they followed the same horoscopes every day, there should be remarkable parallels in their lives.

I'd love to see the experiment performed. Given all the people I've met and know, I have an idea how it would turn out. I suspect not many astrologists would want that one performed.

Now on to climate.

We start off with a very simple hypothesis. That gases in a a gaseous mixture will retain more or less energy based on the particular gases and their concentration.

Repeated testing shows this to be as close to a fact as any scientist would ever claim, and any rational non-scientist would consider it to be absolutely true.

So the basic concept has been proven.

Next is the question of scaling. The experiment takes several forms. There are non-earth planetary experiments that might serve to use as an experiment.

Venus is anomalously hot, or would be except that it's atmosphere is around 97 percent CO2. And with a surface temperature of around 730K, why would that happen? The sulight heats the land, the CO2 stores much of the energy given off by the warmed land's infrared radiation, and the result is that at 730K, a sort of equilibrium is reached as the energy escaping is at the same rate as the energy coming in.

Here's a description should you care to look:>p> http://ircamera.as.arizona.edu...

Mars on the other hand, has shown some other interesting matters on Greenhouse and other warming effects Early Mars might have been warmed by a combination of CO2, and interestingly enough H2 The H2 would hav ebeen contributed byvolcanic outgassing of CH4, which would have degraded to CO2 and H2, allowing early Mars to be fairly warm, even taking the dimmer sun at the time into account. Today, after most of Mar's atmosphere is gone, while CO2 is the main component of the atmosphere, it is in too small amount to contribute to any warming, and th planet is pretty cold.

http://www.nature.com/ngeo/jou...

So we have that confirming evidence from experiments in assessing extraterrestrial planets.

So now we have an effect that has been proven on other planets as well as earth.

Now there are many experiments that have been performed, and they also do not refute the theory that the so called 'Greenhouse gases" act to retain heat.

Measurements bear it out as well. The "evidence "against it includes cherry picking for any anomalous data, then introducing a false dilemma by saying an anomaly kills the entire concept. Also eliminating years of data to claim that no warming has occurred, or my favorite, claiming weather is climate.

If that were true, I was outside today in shorts and a T-Shirt in the Northeast of the US. waddya think? I'll just claim it is anomalous weather for Christmas, and not claim "So much for So much for Global warning"

See what I did there?

Well. That is what I was thinking too. But in TFA they reference a couple of occurrences which appear to already be known:

lights just prior to earthquakes

and

[...] the reported tendency for compass needles to dance around.

So, it sounds like electrical activity is something that is sometimes known to happen just prior to an earthquake.

Weird that now there is all of a sudden an "aha!" moment.

We're talking security here, so it is beneficial to look at it from Alice's and Bob's point of view. They can only relax when they use a QKD system with a complete security proof which guarantees security. If they use a system with a flawed security proof (what we show in the paper) they can never be secure. No matter how many blinding-detectors they apply and Guidos they hire, they can not be really sure that the system is attacked. In essence, we are back to the good old classical security picture which is a giant cat-and-mouse game.

Then, why would they use QKD in the first place? Either switch back to classical security measures, or choose a QKD system with a complete security proof. Our paper does list a system that has all the good properties of the Franson interferometer, but with a valid security proof. Read more here: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2...

You probably read the paper from Makarov: http://www.nature.com/nphoton/...

Our attack is performed on a different system, but our level of control is much higher (and also works with near 100% efficiency) than in Makarov's paper.

Measuring the optical power is not a solution to this attack. Sure, it'll detect it, but the attacker would just adapt. Instead, fix the actual flaw at hand, the incorrect security proof.

No but a blackbody absorbs more than something green or brown.

This study found that covering deserts with solar farms would reduce the absorbed heat enough to create regional cooling. Plants are darker in color than dry dirt, usually, but like solar panels they also convert incoming radiant energy into a different form. They're far less efficient at this than PV panels are, though, so it's unclear whether their reduced efficiency but lighter color results in more or less heat absorption.

One interesting thing to note about the study's conclusion about deserts, though, is that arguably the "know-nothings" complaining about solar panels "sucking up the sun" are right, in the sense that the solar energy they convert to electricity is not converted to heat, which can result in cooling. It's possible that they've even noticed this effect directly, since the town is surrounded on three sides by large solar farms.

It's a known quantity.

Right. . . It is not like there are tons of new discoveries every day , right? Sorry, but your assertion is absurd. Knowing how CRISPR, itself, works in no way reduces the risk when we use it on all the stuff (you know, life on planet Earth) we barely understand.

How about we perform an experiment. . .you and I both get into fully automated cars. I allow you to randomly change binary bits of my car's programming (much like natural mutation). You allow me to randomly change source code functions, configuration values, etc. . . of your car (much like the genetic script kiddie activities you are asserting are complete harmless). Let's see who lives longest. . . : )

It's a known quantity.

Right. . . It is not like there are tons of new discoveries every day , right? Sorry, but your assertion is absurd. Knowing how CRISPR, itself, works in no way reduces the risk when we use it on all the stuff (you know, life on planet Earth) we barely understand.

How about we perform an experiment. . .you and I both get into fully automated cars. I allow you to randomly change binary bits of my car's programming (much like natural mutation). You allow me to randomly change source code functions, configuration values, etc. . . of your car (much like the genetic script kiddie activities you are asserting are complete harmless). Let's see who lives longest. . . : )

There's a world of difference between a classical system like you describe and quantum annealing.

At any rate, entanglement on the chip has been demonstrated, and outside experts comparing different models to characterize the chip, also came to the conclusion that it indeed performs quantum annealing.

At this point this question can be regarded as settled.

The only open, remaining question is how useful quantum annealing will be in practice.

As to Feynman, his original proposal of a quantum simulator is much closer to adiabatic quantum computing, i.e. D-Wave, then the gate model that took hold after Deutsch's seminal paper.