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Successful predictions include surface warming and stratospheric cooling coincident with a rise in CO2 levels, and stronger warming effects at the poles. Are you under the misapprehension that producing fine-grained projections of global temperature is the only thing that climate scientists do?

The challenge I put forth asked for correctness of just 80% for any cited prediction

Studies usually already include their error margins. If a prediction comes in within its own error margin, that is a successful test. Surely you don't apply your own arbitrary standards to other physical sciences? As it happens, results within the error margins of prediction are true for Hansen et all (1988), linked previously, for Plass (1956), Arrhenius (linked previously), and most accurately by Sawyer (1972), who managed to get both the magnitude of increased emissions and the resulting temperature increase exactly correct. I apparently wasn't clear when I gave you the temperature predictions earlier for Sawyer, Plass, and Hansen. I assumed that you would be able to find a graph of global temperatures for the 20th Century. Here's a graph for you, which corroborates their findings. I hope it's not too much trouble to be able to look at my previous posts for the numbers.

Also, Arrhenius (1896) and Callendar (30s-40s) were confirmed in the mid-50s with CO2 and temperature measurements. You could also consider Plass and Kaplan (1952) to be confirmation of the previous work on the matter. Also, you will note that Hansen's spacial distribution of the temperature anomaly was very accurate. Looking at graphs in the 1995 IPCC report their prediction (p40) of the warming trend matches the observed warming through to the present quite well.

We see scary predictions published — even on Slashdot — about once a week.

If you're getting your scientific information from the popular press, you're probably being misinformed in some manner. In my experience newspaper articles are rarely peer reviewed, and I don't think I've seen very many cited, or that have citations. As it happens, I believe most of the articles on Slashdot are concerned with weather events and annual records.

does this mean, you admit, no predictions I seek have been made until "just recently"?

What you want isn't actually a test of the science in the way you think it is. Global climate models cannot be used to disprove AGW any more than epidemiological models can be used to disprove the germ theory of disease, and Kerbal Space Program is similarly not a test of relativity. Economists can construct models to show that rapid expansions of the monetary supply cause harmful inflation, and there is empirical evidence to support this idea. Constructing a model to predict the exact effects of the Fed's Quantitative Easing program would be something of a challenge. Failure to model something accurately means that your model is inaccurate, not that the theory is wrong. Are climate models inaccurate? Of course they are! Every model is inaccurate. All of science is inaccurate, it's inherent to empirical observation. The question is to what degree they are useful, and to begin to be able to answer that, I would suggest you start here or

Maybe it's total tree-hugging tinfoilism. Maybe not.

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2987024/pandoras_box_how_gm_mosquitos_could_have_caused_brazils_microcephaly_disaster.html

Submitter here. The summary isn't even the article I submitted. Here is my submission: submission. And here is the actual article I linked as the main article main article.

The title there is "Oceans running out of fish as undeclared catches add a third to official figures."

I will likely be downvoted, even though what I write is absolutely true.

Revolution was predicted at least 6 years ago, a result of public land policy changes made 50 years ago and yet nobody talks about it. In fact, if anybody brings it up, they are immediately dismissed as radical, or simply silly.

Starving people are dramatically more likely to revolt than well fed people. Somehow, mentioning this ridiculously obvious fact is universally dismissed.

After Chernobyl we heard the same predictions

I already said that "whether the estimate is correct or not, it will take decades" because of "the long latency period for some cancers. WHO said in 2005: "The total number of deaths already attributable to Chernobyl or expected in the future over the lifetime of emergency workers and local residents in the most contaminated areas is estimated to be about 4000." Again, the numbers do not matter, or that they only look at the "most contaminated areas" in their estimate. All I was saying was that it is too soon to talk about the death toll, because it will take decades of science to say anything meaningful. The OP argument was like "I locked up 10 people in an airtight room and they were all ok when I checked on them a minute later."

Chernobyl killed over 60

That's the most deceitful count of Chernobyl deaths I've ever heard. The lowest reasonable estimate is 9000 deaths, The extreme estimate is nearly a million deaths. 60 deaths is perhaps the first day death toll and excludes 99.9+% of the people who died as a result of the disaster.

http://www.theecologist.org/Ne...

"Claims that nuclear power is a 'low carbon' energy source fall apart under scrutiny, writes Keith Barnham. Far from coming in at six grams of CO2 per unit of electricity for Hinkley C, as the Climate Change Committee believes, the true figure is probably well above 50 grams - breaching the CCC's recommended limit for new sources of power generation beyond 2030." http://www.theecologist.org/Ne...

Nuclear is clean until it isn't. For reference: The state of nuclear technology in the UK.

Israel is not leaving it to chance, so they targeted water supply directly: http://www.theecologist.org/Ne... . Sewage system is also being destroyed, probably in hope of spreading diseases.

This is why we should go 100% solar and not use electricity at night.

Damn. I can't find the link -- maybe this?

I remember reading an article maybe 5 years ago about how in Europe (Germany?) they were providing subsidies for solar power. During an audit, they discovered one company providing (and billing for) generating solar power at night.

How? Easy: diesel generators.

... or another form of power is a sin.

I cannot find the right words to say how much this offends me. There are plenty of other places to get carbon that does not mean driving up the cost of food for everyone else, especially in poorer countries, like what has happened with corn/maize.

--
BMO

Meh, we just plant more beets or cane.
There's no shortage of sugar in the world, so its not like you are taking food out of people's mouth.

Further, US style high-surgar diets being exported to poor countries is very harmful.

In these countries, traditional healthy diets, made up of grains, beans, vegetables, fresh fruit and animal products are being replaced by more processed and junk foods high in saturated fats, salt and sugar.

Batteries may turn out to be the best use for excess sugar, since the alternative would be eating it.

African and Indian agricultural workers maintain that the Foundation's philanthropy is environmentally toxic , and undermines vital agricultural development that respects local conditions.

This one grabbed my eye, but the article is full of them; I checked the link, and there's no mention of the Melinda Gates Foundation..

Diana Ravich comments on the Gates Foundation's proposed education reforms:

I am also puzzled by the Gates Foundation’s persistent funding of groups that want to privatize public education. I am puzzled by their funding of “astroturf” groups of young teachers who insist that they don’t want any job protections, don’t want to be rewarded for their experience (of which they have little) or for any additional degrees, and certainly don’t want to be represented by a collective bargaining unit.

So she's a teacher who is suspicious of young teachers who don't want to be in unions, and want to be rewarded for performance instead of how long they have been teachers / how many degrees they have?
That's understandable for an elderly teacher with degrees, who is in a powerful union and has many job protections, but there's really no substance to the blog article other than "Gates doesn't know about education".

I also spotted some fear mongering about the initiative to start a "Green Revolution" in Africa (i.e. to bring its farming on par with other places in the word, to reproduce the massive productivity increase it brought in Asia). They talk about affecting the lifestyle of poor farmers, and the risk of genetic patents, but that's a bit narrow-sighted when you're just talking about bringing African agriculture up to standard.

They talk about his investments in blind trusts to sustain the fund, and the way the fund is used to try and lead the way for public money, as if those are bad things. They talk about the use of GlaxoSmithKline to deliver vaccines, reminding us that GSK was recently involved in some scandal, but ignore that drugs and vaccines are what GSK does, and obviously if you want to ramp up production of malaria vaccines you're going to need to involve big pharmaceutical companies.

The whole article seems a bit desperate really.. I'm not sure if it's just a laundry list of vague associations or if it's trying to make some point. Is it questioning Gates' motives? If it is it doesn't make it explicit, it just makes ambiguous jabs.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/275db4d0-6cdf-11df-91c8-00144feab49a.html

There was a surge of subsidy-driven spending in Spain’s photovoltaic sector, with €23bn invested since 2002 – a quarter of that in 2008 alone. The annual cost of subsidies for all renewables reached €5bn last year and could hit €6.3bn this year.

http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_round_up/465409/spanish_nighttime_solar_energy_fraud_unlikely_in_uk.html

Spanish newspaper El Mundo found that between November and January, 4500 megawatt hours (MWh) of solar energy were sold to the electricity grid between midnight and seven in the morning. It has been suggested that some plants in the regions of Castilla-La-Mancha, Canarias and Andalucía have been using diesel generators connected to their solar panel arrays to illegally benefit from government subsidies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_policy_of_Brazil

Most of the electricity in China are generated by coal, so your One True Worker-Friendly factory (assuming existance) there is likely using that. And we all know coal mining is oh so human right-friendly.

Chances are your Proudly American-made Patriotic Local Product's production involves petroleum, with high chance being imported from paragons of freedom such as Russia, Iran and Venezuela, or bought from God-fearing, Mohammet-loving kings of Arabia.

And the Coltan mine, which produce the tantalum used in your recent worker-friendly phone, was operated by the most peace-loving nations of the world since the fall of Rome.

Those clever Spaniards have already mastered solar power without the sun.

ftfy, the German mentioned in the blog was the language of the Swiss news report about an article in the Spanish paper El Mundo.

If you are unhappy about all the nations mentioned just read this

But corporates are all about short term profits. Fuck the future!

Nothing else could explain their rapacious, irreversible, indefensible despoliation of our air, sea, freshwater (and in USA), forests,, environment, health, food, and economies.

NO. There is a very good reason they are asking this question. In Europe (Spain in particular(Spanish)) diesel power has been passed off as renewable energy. The company get's to both sell dirty power AND collect on renewable energy subsidies. What's worse, nobody in the upper management or local politics has yet been prosecuted for the massive fraud - halls of power protecting their own it would appear.

So the question the environmentalists are calling it right. If this happens IN Europe, what can we expect when it's over in Africa unless there are strict transparent controls put in place? One thing is certain: There will always be Companies that will do almost anything to make a buck - we need to ask and address how the system can be abused before we invest public funds into it.

The environmentalists are right to ask the question, there are antecedents. In Europe (Spain in particular(Spanish)) there have already have cases of diesel power being passed off as renewable energy - they got caught only because they were arrogant enough to pass it off as solar energy... at night. If they had not been so greedy we would still be non the wiser, and the company get's to both sell dirty power AND collect on renewable energy subsidies. What's worse, nobody in the upper management or local politics has yet been prosecuted - halls of power protecting their own it would appear.

So the question the environmentalists are calling it right. If this happens IN Europe, what can we expect when it's over in Africa unless there are strict transparent controls put in place? One thing is certain: There will always be Companies that will do almost anything to make a buck - we need to ask and address how the system can be abused before we invest public funds into it.

you have zero voice in any corporation, no matter whether you work for it or not.

Isn't that why God created Shareholders?
And CEOs do get fired.

We are heading into an interesting phase of history where more wealth and commodities are held by corporations instead of the state and the church. But I think the last five years have taught everyone that giants of industry can and (inevitably) do crumble, slower because of obsolescence or outstripping resources, or faster when resulting from wrong decisions. They then turn to the governments for reparation, since governments normally can't crumble, unless it's from the right decisions.

I know this is not the best place to say good things about Bill Gates, but ask yourself if anything else can change the world better and faster than the efficiency and financial resources of industry, mixed with the philanthropy of good government. Wealth has to come from somewhere, just as it has to go somewhere. It's worth taking note when it goes to the right places, even if it didn't seem like it at the time.

I got here one European product, it contains 2-bromo-2-nitropropane-1,3-diol, it also seems that they cannot call it soap, it is designated washing cream (creme lavante).

While looking at some more products in my bathroom and searching for names, I came across this little tidbit.

The Economist is brought to you buy the same people who think labor unions are evil, privatization always works (they never mention it only works for the rich), and the WTO/IMF/WorldBank unholy triad deserves to enslave poor countries with massive loans OK'd by bribed leaders.

If you want the facts, read
The Ecologist

Here is the decent overview article.
Here is the article on deep ocean microbes.
Here is the article on killer lakes.

Here are some other links about issues with nano-tech http://www.theecologist.org/searchResults.html?arc hiveOnly=1&searchString=nanotechnology&Search=Sear ch and here is a one that talk abouts issues with brain implants to boost intelligence.

Here are some other links about issues with nano-tech http://www.theecologist.org/searchResults.html?arc hiveOnly=1&searchString=nanotechnology&Search=Sear ch and here is a one that talk abouts issues with brain implants to boost intelligence.

1.Insert foot into mouth
2. Repeat