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#$%^ing Slashdot ate my comment.

Sahara goes north, getting smaller.

2/3 of the land stations report getting wetter, average precipitation goes steadily up in the last 20 years.

Natural effect of global warming is that there will be more precipitation in average: the air is hotter and can hold more water: that means that more water will come down in the form of precipitation.

Basic physics.

Every global warming yapper should do the simple exercise, go to

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/da...

and assess for themselves what is happening in the areas where people actually live.

In other news, temperature wise: on average there is actually increase in the number of comfortable days (-20C .... 32C) since 1958, again, in the areas whre people actually live.

>If you want people to take you seriously, stop using the language of fear and get your terminology correct.

Like using the actual fucking term?

https://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/...

Christ wept, man.

"Anomalies"? Really? Not "conflicting data"?

No. Please educate yourself: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/moni...

Anomalies vs. Temperature

In climate change studies, temperature anomalies are more important than absolute temperature. A temperature anomaly is the difference from an average, or baseline, temperature. The baseline temperature is typically computed by averaging 30 or more years of temperature data. A positive anomaly indicates the observed temperature was warmer than the baseline, while a negative anomaly indicates the observed temperature was cooler than the baseline.

It carried on a lot longer than that, according to LIVING HERE.

We can see the temperatures ourselves, moron. Two days. Three if you want to pretend that 28 F is some sort of barn-burning cold. Only four days that didn't go above 32.

It's only a few days after the bomb cyclone we've started actually approaching average temperatures.

Own-goal. March 3rd to March 7th is indeed a "few days" from bomb cyclone to average high temperature. Also, not something that supports your point.

So how do we have more melting that normal with below average tertmpetures?

You misspelled "temperatures." I'd let it slide, but you have a spelling fetish it seems. How do you have more melting? Something about greater snowpack, which you admit, and daytime temperatures routinely above freezing, which we can see for ourselves. But wait, it gets better, because for some reason you want to only talk about Denver.

You can dance around it all you like, but the fact is you and your scientifically, data starved ignorant friends are simply wrong about what is happening now, and you base your forecasts on this fundamentally mistaken view of the world... sad.

You're appearing to confuse Denver with the predicted flooding areas, and then the world.

You can't locate Denver on a map. SAD. The rest of us can. It's in one of those square states full of white.

You misspelled decreasing. Just like a climate alarmists to confuse weather for climate.

No, I really didn't.

Pretty telling that I am the only one providing real data while you try to spread fear and panic by totally ignoring what the weather is actually doing.

You can't click on a hyperlink to NWS temperatures? SAD.
You should try clicking on these links. But you won't. SAD.
You think that I have the sole responsibility to provide "real data" that is being published constantly yet you actively ignore? SAD.

I'll let you have the last response, since at this point everyone is onto your game of deception... everyone except for you it would seem.

You won't. You'll come back and post some nonsense, including that fact that "everyone" (except for every single reply to your post) agrees with your delusional position.

Eh, according to the NOAA, Colorado had one of the colder Februaries on record. Not the top 20, but in the top 30ish out of 125.

Other states had close to their coldest on record. Interestingly, the south east was experiencing record warm temperatures.

The shortest numbers are on the order of a thousand years and most are higher.

Less than that. The data from Mauna Kea showing seasonal CO2 fluctuations suggests that the levels respond with time constants on the order of months or even weeks if the production vs absorption rates can be changed. The 'thousands of years' figures are just used to panic the scientific illiterates.

There are large databases maintained by many federal agencies/organizations. These include NOAA, Census Bureau and NASA. Some provide FTP access, some provide an API, and some require going through a web interface -- and some provide all three. Some of these can easily result in downloads of many gigabytes, sometimes zipped up into one custom file for your request. Yet, not one that I've run across even requires registration, let alone paying anything.

So, why would the courts charge for access to public data that is much more central to the proper functioning of a society?

It's like the courts really haven't gotten beyond the notion of paper archives with costly human workers digging through dusty file cabinets to retrieve the data and copy it onto dead trees. That's a little scary since these are the same organizations that are our last resort for civil and criminal justice.

Reasons why many don't care: 1. The US and EU are not Bangladesh. Catastrophic sea level rise would be a lot more catastrophic for people in 3rd world countries. 2. People living in 1st world countries aren't sympathetic to the fact that 3rd world countries didn't yet get their own Industrial Revolution. It's more like *shrug* "too bad" 3. A large number of people live in places that haven't suffered at a lick due to climate change (at least not that they can recognize) and in many cases will be better off. Greenland appears they will benefit quite a bit more than they will suffer, for example. 4. Multilateral carbon trading treaties started in failure, continued to fail, and are still failures. CO2 is over 400PPM and most folks recognize that *technology* not UN treaties are the solution. Otherwise you get the Paris accord result: even the people who designed the treaty hate the terms because they get fuel taxes shoved down their prole/plebeian/UN-enlightented throats by some infuriating elitist asshole who signed the treaty for them and get a little pissed off about it. Also, my personal favorite is "What about the fact that the Earth was at 3000PPM of CO2 150 years ago?" I've yet to see an honest/serious answer to that one besides "Dinosaurs must have needed less oxygen" (bullshit) or "Well, that'd still mean a lot of sea level rise." (probably not bullshit) and of course the most common abusive/insulting head-explosion of a far-left "environmentalist" (who probably has 3 kids, several cars, and thinks they are green because one car is a Prius and they just installed a NEST thermostat - now it's time to judge everyone else!)

Those interested should also look at http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/, the Web site for the Climate Prediction Center. This has predictions of rainfall and temperatures in the short-term, medium-term, next month, and next three months. It also has links to drought maps, both the subject "United States Drought Monitor" and maps predicting the evolution of droughts for the current month and the next three months.

This graph from the report is particularly scary: https://www.arctic.noaa.gov/Po...

OK, here you go: between 1993 and 2014, global sea level rose 2.4 inches according to NOAA.

This amounts to a background increase of 1/8 inch per year and is mostly due to the ocean's thermal expansion.

So AGW stands for anthropogenic global warming. It means the (average) warming of the (whole) globe due to human activity. The Mechanism is the expected increase in greenhouse gasses, and therefore the increase in the greenhouse effect.

So if greenhouse gasses were decreasing, that would falsify AGW.

They have been measured to be increasing.

If the greenhouse effect were decreasing, that would falsify AGW.

It has been measured to be increasing.

If the temperature of the planet were decreasing, that would falsify AGW.
br
It has been measured to be increasing

WTF are you smoking?

Ok, 9 inches since 1880.

Sea level rise since 1880

And this from the tide gauge near Charleston, SC shows an average rate of 3.25 mm/year +/0 0.19 mm. That's 1.07 feet/100 years:

Relative Sea Level Trend - 8665530 Charleston, South Carolina

If you look at data for Fort Denison in Sydney for example, they show a rise of around 0.25 feet over 100 years.

If you look at that graph even more closely, you'll find something pretty interesting.- the sea level is pretty stable up until 1950 or so, where it takes a large rise and then remains fairly stable thereafter (draw your own fit line from 1860 to 1950, then from 1950 to 2010).

So since 1950 there has hardly been a rise at all, at peaks a 50 *mm* increase - that is just 0.003 feet!

Just how is that much sea level rise supposed to result in any flooding above and beyond the huge variance that is tidal levels?

In any coastal city I have seen it would take feet of sea level rise, at least, to cause any real long term worry for a city and then only during larger storm events (which has not changed due to global warming, despite what people would have you believe).

WRONG!

U.S. Code, Title 15, Ch. 7, see. 272 clearly states it is 1 / 2.2062234

If you read Refinement for the Values of the Yard and the Pound from the National Bureau of Standards it mentions the following

The 1894 amendment, based on a recent determination of the British Imperial pound, gave the ratio as:

1 pound (avoirdupois) = 1 / 2.2062234 kilogram

which results in the approximate relation:
        1 pound (avoirdupois) = 0.453 592.4277 kilogram

Cyclone energy isn't increasing. Tornadoes are trending down. And the temperature record only shows an increasing trend after heavy editing and "adjusting". The data doesn't support your claims or conclusions, but the models do. So which do you trust - data or models?

Yes

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/impa...

It's a lie or at least bad math to say that accumulated cyclone energy has been trending downward for 30 years. It's rather flat overall for the last 30 years, and has decreased over the last 10 years due to natural variation:

https://www.skepticalscience.c...

I know the deniosphere loves to try to fit declining curves against this short-term spiky but long-term flat graph, but this technical number is not that important and the only one that doesn't show a clear upward trend. Hurricane frequency is steadily increasing:

https://phys.org/news/2013-03-...

Also hurricane intensity and power dissipation are sharply increasing:

https://www.skepticalscience.c...

These numbers are more practically relevant than accumulated cyclone energy, and you can see it where the rubber hits the road: in the clear upward trend in storm & flood damage costs, even against our improving preparedness:

https://phys.org/news/2017-11-...

Also while strong tornadoes are decreasing and tornado energy is flat, tornado count is steadily increasing:

https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc...

I'm telling the truth. The study in question is titled, "Extratropical Northern Hemisphere Tree Ring Temperature Reconstruction." You can listen to Mann's roundabout way to justify the cherry picking here: In His Own Words. You can download the tree ring data from NOAA here: Extratropical Northern Hemisphere Tree Ring Temperature Reconstruction. It even comes with the divergent temperature calculated for you. I can even show you how to process the temperature data from the GHCN Daily here: GHCN. It's really rather easy, and if you bothered to figure out the temperature for the US yourself you'd be just as confused as to why Mann's red line is so far off. You can stick your head in the sand, and call me a lier, but it won't change the facts.

I'm telling the truth. The study in question is titled, "Extratropical Northern Hemisphere Tree Ring Temperature Reconstruction." You can listen to Mann's roundabout way to justify the cherry picking here: In His Own Words. You can download the tree ring data from NOAA here: Extratropical Northern Hemisphere Tree Ring Temperature Reconstruction. It even comes with the divergent temperature calculated for you. I can even show you how to process the temperature data from the GHCN Daily here: GHCN. It's really rather easy, and if you bothered to figure out the temperature for the US yourself you'd be just as confused as to why Mann's red line is so far off. You can stick your head in the sand, and call me a lier, but it won't change the facts.

If you examine crude oil pumped straight from the ground you'll find the fossilized single-cell plants that produced the oil - algae and related diatoms. The slow, natural processes involving pressure and heat that convert this natural vegetable oil from everything between natural gas to heavy crude just contaminates the feedstock with nasties from the ground (arsenic, cadmium, etc) and makes processing into usable products more expensive and environmentally polluting. So your idea has great merit.

Under the Carter administration, as a result of the politicalization of middle-east oil and the subsequent embargo and US oil crisis, a program was initiated to do just what you propose - the massive, large-scale biological production of oil using algae. This program was called the Aquatic Species Program..

The program started by identifying and isolating strains of algae that were the most efficient oil producers, then setting up a pilot-scale plant. The challenges were that these strains of algae were easily taken over by more dominant, less efficient strains, so open-air ponds were problematic. More elaborate infrastructure to isolate the algae while exposure to sunlight have been proposed and tested on a small scale by others.

The most problematic aspect of this program was that it was political in nature. As soon as the Saudis/OPEC called off the oil embargo all political will to spend money on such a scheme evaporated, along with the Carter administration's energy independence initiatives. Reagan began dismantling and de-funding Carter's programs almost immediately upon entering office.

Solar PV in the 70's was an expensive side-show with future potential, at best. What was immediately available at that time and somewhat economical was solar thermal. In a bizarre and sad twist of fate, the solar thermal panels that once sat atop the United States White House now reside in a museum in China.

Sequestering CO2 probably won't get much serious attention from the US government until the 'politics' of global warming get personal - i.e. when sea levels rise by a few meters, which would put much of Washington DC under water. The Lincoln Memorial is currently 4 meters above sea level. The White House is approximately 15 meters above sea level. The ground level of Trump Tower in NY is at 18 meters above sea level. Currently.

Source: https://maps.ngdc.noaa.gov/vie...

Yes, the equipment can be made autonomous even! Saildrones are at work right now

However, the equipment that you refer to would only be useful for nearshore mapping. Larger arrays are necessary for greater ranges and acceptable beam widths/resolution. Then you have the sound speed uncertainty problem to deal with, so profiling the water column is necessary.

One must consider the data products ... if you are making a map of shallow spots to avoid, perhaps a tiny transducer is OK?

"weather over radio facts" ??!!!
Have we already forgotten about radiofax ?!!!

Shhh, don't tell Scotland.

Here is a page with a map of current distribution of wild Atlantic Salmon.

https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov...

In the US they've been reduced to eight rivers in Maine, but the situation is different in many places.

I'm not sure where you're trying to go with all this - I hadn't mentioned the greenhouse effect, nor did the "prior poster".

Yes, climate scientists are aware that the great majority of trapped warmth is from water, and the effect of CO2 is relatively small. But even tiny effects add up over time when the equilibrium is altered, and we're observing exactly that. The calculated decrease in radiative transfer from the IR blocked by all the extra CO2 agrees very well with these observations - and no other potential cause comes close.

The evidence shows that the localised RWP, MWP, and LIA events were triggered by factors other than CO2 - like fluctuations in solar irradiance and vulcanism.

I'm not sure where you're trying to go with all this - I hadn't mentioned the greenhouse effect, nor did the "prior poster".

Yes, climate scientists are aware that the great majority of trapped warmth is from water, and the effect of CO2 is relatively small. But even tiny effects add up over time when the equilibrium is altered, and we're observing exactly that. The calculated decrease in radiative transfer from the IR blocked by all the extra CO2 agrees very well with these observations - and no other potential cause comes close.

The evidence shows that the localised RWP, MWP, and LIA events were triggered by factors other than CO2 - like fluctuations in solar irradiance and vulcanism.

Well I don't turn on the tv. Listening to them will just confuse you. I only look at the computer models. The NOAA projections always seemed to be extremely reliable. Sites I used this time to monitor it: https://www.cyclocane.com/spag... - Was excellent trying to predict slight changes. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graph... - The official track. Very reliable https://www.wunderground.com/h... - Shows five of the most reliable computer models. Does not show ECMWF https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.g... - live satellite view of movement. http://www.intellicast.com/Loc... - for local radar Of course you got to know your area. Flood areas is extremely important to know. Know how much wind the structure you are staying in can handle, the side of the storm you are on is very important. South side is lot weaker. North side very powerful. Basically just use common sense.

Well I don't turn on the tv. Listening to them will just confuse you. I only look at the computer models. The NOAA projections always seemed to be extremely reliable. Sites I used this time to monitor it: https://www.cyclocane.com/spag... - Was excellent trying to predict slight changes. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graph... - The official track. Very reliable https://www.wunderground.com/h... - Shows five of the most reliable computer models. Does not show ECMWF https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.g... - live satellite view of movement. http://www.intellicast.com/Loc... - for local radar Of course you got to know your area. Flood areas is extremely important to know. Know how much wind the structure you are staying in can handle, the side of the storm you are on is very important. South side is lot weaker. North side very powerful. Basically just use common sense.

and the temperatures have dropped dramatically since then.

What?
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/...
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc...
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/0...
http://www.climatecentral.org/...
https://www.co2.earth/global-w...

Yes, I know... CNN is liberal fake news and NASA has also been infiltrated by liberals, as has been the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration... or any scientific organization for that matter.

It's happening automatically. The more man tries to "control" what he doesn't understand (let alone has the power and ability to significantly influence), the more we waste what resources we have.

Precisely...

"Annual agriculture is all about living through our concepts... our idea we've imposed on reality & when reality doesn't behave according to our idea, what do we do? We input... we can never input enough to make our false concept correct." @RestorationAgD http://bit.ly/1GnbtAA

It's happening automatically. The more man tries to "control" what he doesn't understand (let alone has the power and ability to significantly influence), the more we waste what resources we have.

I couldn't disagree more. From the NIST budget request summary:

This budget request is consistent with the administration’s priorities to redirect domestic discretionary resources to rebuild the military and make critical investments in the nation’s security, and keep the nation on a responsible fiscal path.

Funding for discretionary programs is being reduced to allocate more funding for the military and "national security", which I suspect refers largely to the President's idea of border security. That makes it fair game to discuss defense and border security when commenting on the proposed shutdown of the WWV stations.

While we can debate a reasonable level of defense spending, let's use NATO's 2% of GDP standard. US defense spending is around 3.6% of GDP, and President Trump's requested FY 2019 budget increases DOD spending by 13% over 2017 levels. Proposed military spending is outpacing GDP growth. At the same time, President Trump is requesting a long list of reforms and spending cuts.

In fairness, it's necessary to understand the context of proposed cuts. For example, NOAA is proposing to cut VORTEX-SE, which is a project that studies tornadoes in the Southeast US. Taken out of context, one might think NOAA isn't prioritizing the improvement of tornado warnings. In reality, VORTEX-SE was supposed to collect high quality in-situ data for a few events each spring over the span of 2-3 years and fund a number of related research projects, many of which use the data collected during the field campaign. Most field campaigns such as the original VORTEX (1994-5) and VORTEX2 (2009-10) have been just as short in duration. VORTEX-SE has run longer and wasn't cut in FY 2018 because Congress never passed the relevant appropriations bill and kept funding basically at FY 2017 levels in the continuing resolutions. Context is important to understand proposed cuts, such as if a program has already achieved its goals.

I looked for justification for the proposed cutting of WWV stations and I couldn't find anything that explains why these stations are being targeted for shutdown. Absent any good context for why funding cuts for these stations is requested, it's fair to assume it would be a casualty of the President's overall budget goals. For that reason, it's certainly fair game to criticize our excessive defense spending.

Wow! I guess all the tomato hothouses here in the Oxnard, CA area are stupid for upping their CO2 levels to > 1000 PPM! Who knew that growth of plants plateaus at 500 PPM - someone better tell NOAA!

The 500 PPM value came from a story about wheat and rice, and did mention it is different for different plants (corn is even lower). The article appeared to be focusing more on the large cash crops.

Wow! I guess all the tomato hothouses here in the Oxnard, CA area are stupid for upping their CO2 levels to > 1000 PPM! Who knew that growth of plants plateaus at 500 PPM - someone better tell NOAA!

When the ocean heats up and stores more CO2, it gets more acidic, and shells get weaker for many sea creatures. That can lead to extinctions at the bottom of the food chain, and those can quickly propagate through the rest of the ecosystem.

While ocean acidification is happening now, and already taking it's toll on calcifers.

In 2013, the IPCC estimated the current rate of sea level rise as 3.2 mm/year. If we assume that rate, we get 48 mm in the next 15 years, or about 1.9 inches. But that's an underestimate, because sea level rise is accelerating. It has increased substantially in the last 20 years, and that 2013 number is already out of date. The current rate is estimated at 3.4 mm/year. That gives 51 mm or 2 inches. But of course it's still accelerating, so the actual rise over the next 15 years will be a bit more than that.

That's the global average rate, but it isn't the same everywhere. It's faster in some places and slower in others. On most of the US east coast sea level is rising faster than the global average, and on the gulf coast it's rising even faster. So a lot of the coastal US will get bigger increases than that.

no additional conduit will be submerged if the average ocean depth increases 45mm more.

You just made that up. Maybe you should talk to the people who've actually looked at the data.

waves are higher than 45mm! tides are more than 45mm

Totally irrelevant. We're talking about buried cables. The water table doesn't go up and down with every wave that hits the beach.

So you're declaring all those decades of satellite and tidal gauge data from the entire globe to be "blown out of proportion", because you personally didn't notice the mean sea level rising 2.5 mm every year where you live.

And hey, maybe it isn't rising in Seattle. That's perfectly possible since the sea isn't uniformly flat, and levels change in different places based on a whole bunch of factors. Except no - you're just wrong. It actually has risen over 8 cm in that 40 years, and you simply didn't notice.

Just in case anyone would like some actual data, NOAA has data for a great many tide gauges accessible on the internet. Here's a l;ink to the chart of roughly 150 years worth of data for the gauge at the battery in New York City. https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.... They've even done a linear fit to the data -- 11 inches a century. About 25% of apparent Sea Level Rise at The Battery is thought to be due to the site sinking a few inches a century. The rest is actual SLR.

Anyway, feel free to examine the data. See if you can eyeball any post 1950 acceleration in sea level rise (I can't. I doubt even a Slashdot editor can). You may want to check other NOAA gauges to confirm that The Battery isn't some sort of weird anomaly. For sites elsewhere on the planet, try the Permanent Service for Mean Sea Level.http://www.psmsl.org (You may have to do your own data fit).

My conclusion. Engineers in New York City and Seattle probably aren't building unprotected critical communication infrastructure 3 or 6 or even 12 inches above high water. MIami? Who the hell knows? We're talking Florida here. Recommended reading: Anything by Carl Hiaasen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

including more intensive hurricanes and tornadoes

Funny that isn't the conclusion from NOAA.

In summary, neither our model projections for the 21st century nor our analyses of trends in Atlantic hurricane and tropical storm counts over the past 120+ yr support the notion that greenhouse gas-induced warming leads to large increases in either tropical storm or overall hurricane numbers in the Atlantic. While one of our modeling studies projects a large (~100%) increase in Atlantic category 4-5 hurricanes over the 21st century, we estimate that such an increase would not be detectable until the latter half of the century, and we still have only low confidence that such an increase will occur in the Atlantic basin, based on an updated survey of subsequent modeling studies by our and other groups.

Therefore, we conclude that despite statistical correlations between SST and Atlantic hurricane activity in recent decades, it is premature to conclude that human activity–and particularly greenhouse warming–has already caused a detectable change in Atlantic hurricane activity. (“Detectable” here means the change is large enough to be distinguishable from the variability due to natural causes.) However, human activity may have already caused some some changes that are not yet detectable due to the small magnitude of the changes or observation limitations, or are not yet confidently modeled (e.g., aerosol effects on regional climate).

But hey, what does NOAA know about climate science.

"Monitor key parts of the earth's climate system"

Maybe it's just me, but this sounds more like a job for NOAA.

Very slow storms can cause devastation by increased rainfall, as Harvey did, but because hurricane damage increases exponentially with wind speed:
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/t... ...faster storms get increasingly dangerous more quickly with the extra wind speed that the leading quarter gets from hurricane speed added to ground speed than any "savings" from decreased time to pass by. The great New York hurricane of 1938 was only a Category 2 when it struck Long Island, but was moving unusually fast because of being squeezed between two adjacent weather systems that shot it forward like a watermelon seed. The summed wind velocity at the point of landfall made it as destructive as a Category 5.

Nowhere does it state that CFC-11 is a greenhouse gas

Because most people realize CFCs are a powerful greenhouse gas. Oh, and because you posted a Wiki link, here's one right back for you, and here's the important quote you should take from it:

the atmospheric impacts of CFCs are not limited to its role as an active ozone reducer. This anthropogenic compound is also a greenhouse gas, with a much higher potential to enhance the greenhouse effect than CO2.

Emphasis added. Don't blame your ignorance on others.

That's just amazingly petty.

The article is amazingly petty. Oh, look at me overcomplicate this thing, it's so complicated. Everyone has jargon and special skills in the thousands. Why don't they call the left and right side of a boat the left and right side? Port and starboard? We don't steer off the side any more, and either side can be the port side. Now multiply me whining about that by twenty and see if it makes an interesting article.

Exactly.

The NOAA actually does monitor this. It's just another government duplication

https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/...

Wrong. NOAA monitors the same variables but though different mechanisms. They use what looks like fixed land based sites and measurements from ocean vessels.

NASA's monitoring involved sampling from Aircraft and satellite measurements. Not only are you measuring CO2 in areas the NOAA can't (different parts of the atmosphere... different parts of the globe), and providing different kinds of data they cant, but you're also providing an independent check on the NOAA data.

Why would a Climate Monitoring System be under NASA and not NOAA?

I would think that NASA's only role in this should be launching and maintaining the satellites. The Science and Climate Monitoring itself should be under NOAA control.

NOAA does. This is just more government waste.
https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/...

The Global Monitoring Division of NOAA/Earth System Research Laboratory has measured carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases for several decades at a globally distributed network of air sampling sites

Exactly.

The NOAA actually does monitor this. It's just another government duplication

https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/...

Somebody did, but then they looked at the isotope ratios and discovered yet another way to demonstrate that burning fossil fuels is the cause of increased CO2.

Look at the longer trend, and you'll see no evidence of volcanic eruptions interfering with the data.

https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/...

https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/...

Look at the longer trend, and you'll see no evidence of volcanic eruptions interfering with the data.

https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/...

https://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/...

https://slashdot.org/~Xylantiel confessed:

I'm a little suspicious of the claim that this is being "interpreted in a new way", and it generally sounds like the reporter is more interested in manufacturing controversy for a catchy story than actually figuring out what is going on. The NOAA release says that SpaceX has a license already, so that's not "new". I'm wondering if, in a previous launch, they violated some "conditions" that nobody on either side wants to talk about specifically. Another option would be that there was something special about this launch that fell on the wrong side of the "conditions" of SpaceX's license. But the reporter apparently couldn't be bothered to actually report the story, they just made up something vague and inflammatory that isn't even consistent with their own primary sources.

Brzzt.

The NOAA statement you link to is virtually content-free. That's a fact.

The only thing that seems to have changed is the addition of payload cameras for the Falcon Heavy test launch to showcase Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster and its spacesuited dummy driver, with the Earth as its background. That video has gone pandemic, and, in the process, has immensely boosted both SpaceX's and Elon Musk's own credibility and reputation around the globe, without in any way endangering the USA's national security.

Were I conspiracy-inclined, I'd point to the fact that Musk's resignation from Trump's Economic Advisory Council started a stampede for the exits by other members of that body that resulted in it being disbanded - after having met a grand total of one time - and that sequence of events put a major dent in POTUS 45's claim to have "all the best people" advising him.

Then I'd note that among Donald Trump's signal personality traits is holding very public grudges (and prosecuting them in ludicrously petty ways) over insignificant perceived slights. I'd probably also mention that NOAA, counter-intuitively, is an agency of the Commerce Department - and that Wilbur Ross, the current Secretary of that department, has demonstrated himself to be among the very most shameless presidential sycophants in a Cabinet stuffed to bursting with unabashed toadies and lickspittles.

But I'm not much into conspiracy-mongering, so I'll just add my voice to those who have characterized this bit of bureaucratic thuggery as standard-issue government overreach, tip my hat to the Streisand Effect, and say, "Let's see what happens next time, shall we ... ?"