Slashdot Mirror

What do you make of the consistent failure of the denialist community to come up with any explanation for the recent warming trend that wasn't trivially debunked ?

I can't speak for the denialist community, because I don't care who they are or what they believe. However, I can tell you what high-quality scientists like John Christy and Richard Lindzen tend to say.

First, they don't deny that CO2 has an affect on the atmospheric temperatures. You can discount anyone who denies that as ignorant (or possibly they have a new and fascinating hypothesis backed by data for how that could happen, but I haven't seen anyone like that. Up to now they're all ignorant). The main question is, "how much warming will be caused by CO2?"

Briefly, practically every scientist agrees that doubling CO2 in the atmosphere will cause a change in temperature of .7-.9 degrees. And that's not enough for anyone to worry about. Alarmist scientists say, "but there are feedbacks that will in addition cause temperature to rise 5-9 degrees with a doubling of CO2!" This hypothesis is that feedbacks will affect temperature far beyond what CO2 would do by itself, and is not well supported. Certainly the computer models that gave the worst predictions have been disproven by now.

Then there are scientists like John Christy, who goes around testing scientific claims, because that's what scientists do. When he heard claims that the global temperature was rising, he devised a secondary way to measure the temperature, to test that (essentially using satellites), which has more-or-less matched the terrestrial record. He's also gone to Africa to create temperature datasets to test claims such as "the snows of Kilimanjaro are melting due to climate change." He investigated claims of temperature rise in the California central valley and found that irrigation has caused a lot of it, not AGW. This makes alarmists look really bad.

So in the end it's not that "temperature is not rising" it's that "temperature rise is minimal enough to not worry about." Lindzen likes to show this graph, where the red line is the entire range of the global temperature anomaly.

Great. We will use the UAH version 5.6 since you do not trust the surface station record. (6.x is currently in beta and changing too often to make any predictions with). The data can be found here: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/pu... - see the "Globe" column. In the event that UAH5.6 is no longer available we will need to defer to the RSS satellite reconstruction. The data for rss can be found here: http://woodfortrees.org/data/r...

What's all this? Either it is or it's not. If it is, I'm sure it'll be all over the news. This isn't that hard. Let's not make it hard. Heard me laugh? Well you'd be right. I think this is the first time someone has used something from Alabama to prove their point. While I don't want to belittle them or anything, they aren't exactly known for being at the forefront. Woodfortrees.org? Now if I used a site like these I'd have a feeling it would be a conspiracy site or something.

I think I have an advantage in that you appear to get your science reporting from conspiracy websites. I could be wrong, but based on previous comments I believe it to be the case.

Ok, apparently I flew right over you like a 747 at altitude. Maybe Jim's article will enlighten you - http://www.giss.nasa.gov/resea... ? Here he admits the 1930s was warmer. While I'm sure if you read it you'll be like - eh? What's the big deal, this really was a big deal. Note that he was also wrong in his prediction about the 2000s.

Conspiracy web sites? That just doesn't even make sense why you would say that. This is to be expected in my case, I've been doing science, numbers and such for over 30 years. I have a feeling you're new to this. Look back, say over the past couple of hundred thousand years. Look back over the past 10,000 years. You'll understand why Man isn't responsible if you do. You'll understand how they're lying to you. Understand this isn't a 5 or 10 minute thing. You'll be looking at this stuff for a while.

Maybe you meant something like this, with those crazy Astronaughts and scientists?
http://dailycaller.com/2016/01...

I know, I know, pay no attention to them (there is no man behind the curtain), right?

Time will tell :)

Heh, certainly will. However understand that even if there is an increase, a year doesn't prove the point. Right now they're trying to explain away the previous 15 years. Often by questionable means, such as the sea is much warmer - gee, where have we heard that before? Ever deal with liars and confidence men? I've run across men that can make people so confident that they can convince everyone that they're an attractive woman. Men that can lie with such a straight face and no feeling that they can say anything. They'll think nothing about cleaning out your bank account if you you give them a chance.

Never the less, I think I should reiterate that I think things are warming up. It's not due to man and that's clear. Clear to me at least.

So what's the bet? That 2016 will be warmer than 2015, is that your assertion? I'd like to make it clear it's not mine. I'm betting 2016 will not be warmer than 2015.

Great. We will use the UAH version 5.6 since you do not trust the surface station record. (6.x is currently in beta and changing too often to make any predictions with). The data can be found here: http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/pu... - see the "Globe" column. In the event that UAH5.6 is no longer available we will need to defer to the RSS satellite reconstruction. The data for rss can be found here: http://woodfortrees.org/data/r...

You either have no clue what you're doing (one might say you drank too much of the cool aid) or I have a feeling you think you know something I don't.

I think I have an advantage in that you appear to get your science reporting from conspiracy websites. I could be wrong, but based on previous comments I believe it to be the case.

To me there's almost no question. The safe bet is 2016 will not be warmer than 2015.

Time will tell :)

UHA, (which uses the same satellite data) gets about 1.4K per decade since 1978

Those home and charter schools perform not because you're saving money on teachers, it's for two reasons. Fewer (or no) administrators putting ridiculous demands on the teachers that are there, and/or parents being intimately involved in their child's education. Children learn better when they see that learning is in important part of their parent's lives. Can't get much more important than Mom or Dad sitting with Junior every day doing the teaching.

Indeed. One of the most important factors in a child's education is the involvement of the parents or guardians. More so than the teachers, the curriculum or any fancy gadgets, it is the attention a parent places on the importance of education that encourages the student. This is not limited solely to Mom or Dad sitting with little Susie helping her with her fractions, but also the overall attitude that school is more than just a place to stick the kids for eight hours a day while the parents go to work.

And sending a kid to a charter school (or partaking in home schooling) is the ultimate example of this sort of attitude. The parents are openly investing in their child's future. These are the sort of parents who are more likely to stress the importance of an education to the child. Therefore, these are the students who are more receptive to receiving an education.

That is not to say that there are not many, many parents who place the same importance on schooling but still send their kids to a public school. But the types of parents who use schools as daycare for their kids are also not the sort who are going to bother with a charter school. Contrasting public schools to charter schools is therefore an inaccurate apple-to-orange comparison. It is -essentially - a comparison between a self-selected group of students who (thanks to parental involvement) want to do good in school versus students who may or may not care about their education. Like an early 20th century election poll that was unwittingly biased, the students sent to charter schools are a group who trend towards better schools for reasons other than the nature of the system itself. It says very little about the quality of the schools themselves. It is as likely most of those students would perform similarly in most public schools.

And - bringing it back to topic - charter schools are not immune to the gadget frenzy of public schools either. In fact, in my (admittedly limited) experience, they are more likely to throw electronics at the problem - thanks to a higher budget - with as little provable positive result to the teaching experience itself.

If the planet stopped heating 16 years ago, why did ten of the ten warmest years on record occur in the last 16 years?

And yet, the data is what the data is. Perhaps you should look at the actual data rather than filling your head with Left-wing blog posts and rhetorical questions in which I have zero interest.

Oh look, I found an interesting discussion about that very post from John Christy of UAH, posted on notorious denier Roger Pielke Jr's blog. The great thing about blogs as compared to scientific journals is that you get to choose your "pal review"! Who will notice if you mis–represent the original data, and use a flawed dataset?

One comment really nails it, and I can't link to it individually, so I'll just include it here:

The first thing I noticed when looking at Christy’s graph was that Hansen’s scenario B had been replotted to make it appear that it tracks scenario A very closely. It doesn’t, it never has. The graph on Real Climate uses the original data http://www.realclimate.org/images/Hansen

The next thing that was obvious was that the RSS and UAH temperature graph shows very little warming. I thought this issue was supposed to have been rectified after Spencer and Christy corrected the errors relating to orbital drift (meaning the temps were taken at progressively later times each day).

After making the corrections (version 5.2) the data now correlates with other global temperature records such as those of NASA and the CRU (remember when the skeptics always relied on the RSS / UAH temperature records, until it came to light that it was wrong).
Detail - http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/fu
Summary - http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_descrip
UAH Data - http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2l
RSS Data - http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2l
Comparison Data - http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temper
Hansen’s Data - http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988

It appears that Christy has chosen to use the old data in his comparison. In effect, what he’s done is to exaggerate the warming predicted in Hansen’s Scenario B (the one Hansen always said was most likely) and then downplay the true amount of warming that has occurred.

When the real data are used it becomes apparent how accurate Hansen’s scenario B projections have actually been – not exact but pretty close. Considering Jim’s 1988 projections were based on single inputs then this is quite impressive.

Oh look, I found an interesting discussion about that very post from John Christy of UAH, posted on notorious denier Roger Pielke Jr's blog. The great thing about blogs as compared to scientific journals is that you get to choose your "pal review"! Who will notice if you mis–represent the original data, and use a flawed dataset?

One comment really nails it, and I can't link to it individually, so I'll just include it here:

The first thing I noticed when looking at Christy’s graph was that Hansen’s scenario B had been replotted to make it appear that it tracks scenario A very closely. It doesn’t, it never has. The graph on Real Climate uses the original data http://www.realclimate.org/images/Hansen

The next thing that was obvious was that the RSS and UAH temperature graph shows very little warming. I thought this issue was supposed to have been rectified after Spencer and Christy corrected the errors relating to orbital drift (meaning the temps were taken at progressively later times each day).

After making the corrections (version 5.2) the data now correlates with other global temperature records such as those of NASA and the CRU (remember when the skeptics always relied on the RSS / UAH temperature records, until it came to light that it was wrong).
Detail - http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/fu
Summary - http://www.ssmi.com/msu/msu_data_descrip
UAH Data - http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2l
RSS Data - http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2l
Comparison Data - http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temper
Hansen’s Data - http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/1988/1988

It appears that Christy has chosen to use the old data in his comparison. In effect, what he’s done is to exaggerate the warming predicted in Hansen’s Scenario B (the one Hansen always said was most likely) and then downplay the true amount of warming that has occurred.

When the real data are used it becomes apparent how accurate Hansen’s scenario B projections have actually been – not exact but pretty close. Considering Jim’s 1988 projections were based on single inputs then this is quite impressive.

I just looked at the UAH undergraduate physics course requirements. Are you saying you never encountered vectors in eg. PH 301 Intermediate Mechanics (which claims to cover variational calculus) or in PH 305 Mathematical Methods in Physics (which claims to cover some E&M and vector calculus)? Or perhaps the requirements have since changed?

In any case, those requirements are... lax, at least compared to my undergrad ones. Everyone, regardless of major, had to take multivariable calculus, linear algebra, DE's, prob stats, special relativity, a very basic introduction to quantum, mechanics, E&M, two physics labs, two general chem courses, two chem labs, and an intro CS course. (There were a few more, but those are the relevant ones here.) That fulfills almost all of the physics requirements listed on the page I linked, except for the upper level electives: wow. I wonder if I could have triple majored there and done less work.

Like the article says. Most of this data was already publicly available online:

• HadCRUT Data
• NASA Data
• UAH Data
• RSS Data
• NOAA Data

I took this data and plugged it into Cornell’s free data analysis software Eureka and it found a clear warming trend in the data. I'm not statistician, so I was just playing around, but I have yet to see anyone use this data to argue for anything but a warming trend (Note: I have seen skeptics use parts of this data to show short-term cooling trends). My favorite email attacking the results the software gave me was that I had "manipulated" the data by copying-and-pasting it into Excel.

I'm glad more data is being made publicly available, but, like someone else said, that just means it's time for the skeptics to move the goalposts again. Either put up a competing hypothesis that explains the data or shut up.

Bastardi hasn't given enough details to make a bet concrete enough for a bookie to accept. But just to be definite, let's say he's talking about MSU T2LT data, averaged over 12 month intervals. He predicts this will decrease between 0.1 and 0.2 degrees over the coming decade.

It so happens that we already have 30 years' worth of that data, and have been arguing about climate change for at least that long. Here are the chances that Bastardi would have won his bet, had he placed it any time between 1978 and 2000:

He would have won his bet 3% of the time (basically, only if he'd placed it in 1983.)
He would have bet too *high* 7% of the time (temperatures dropped by more than 0.2 degrees in a couple of years)
He would have bet too *low* 90% of the time (temperatures actually rose, or dropped by less than 0.1 degrees, 29 out of 32 years.)

This is a stunt bet which Bastardi is almost certain to lose. Even if you thought global warming was a myth, and believed change in temperature over 1 decade was *totally random*, it would be an idiotic bet because this measurement varies over a 1.0 degree range from year to year. Picking a decrease in the range 0.1-0.2 in this case is like betting that you'll roll a 5 on a pair of dice.

At this point, it should be clear that Bastardi's bet is not based on any scientific data, or even on savvy oddsmaking: it's just pure blind faith. SO. I will take the bet, and I will even offer 2-to-1 odds: I'll pay $100 if temperature change is inside his range; he'll pay me $50 if it's outside that range, either high or low.

I made nothing up. I am merely reiterating points of view I picked up elsewhere from well known sceptics such as Anthony Watt's, Monckton etc etc.

That could be related to why it looks like you made things up.

You'd do better to go to scientific as opposed to anti-scientific sources, on this subject and any other.

The IPCC did not make predictions about the temperature at the end of the decade. 10 years isn't long enough for the 0.1C per decade to emerge significantly above the noise and other influences.

Note though that this decade (2001-2010) so far is about 0.19C (give or take a few in the last decimal place dependin on whose temperature data set you use) warmer than the 90s.

0.19C according to the data set of the most skeptical of the teams that produces these temperature data sets, John Christy's of UAH.

Which is very strong warming in anyone's book.

Not only is your link to an article about the "debate" NOT about the recent debate, which was still occurring mere months ago...

You didn't cite any papers, so I had to guess what you were talking about. If you could show me some papers regarding this other debate that happened mere months ago, maybe this would be a more productive conversation.

the article actually supports the assertion I was making, and is nowhere near a "solution" to the problem to which I was referring. ... the article specifically mentions that "The newest satellite dataset correction doesn't reconcile differences between climate trends in the lower layer of the atmosphere..." which was one of the obvious problems with the models to which I referred. ... it states that the tropospheric warming observed would need to be 2.6 times greater than what was observed in order to support what the climate models predicted. ... You just linked to an article that clearly and unequivocally stated it was fundamentally flawed as recently as 2005... off in a major way by a factor of 260%. That's not a "tweak", that's a fundamental flaw.

Upon re-reading the press release, I didn't see a factor of 2.6 anywhere. They do mention a 26 year data span, but here's the most relevant quote I can find: "As a general rule, the climate models predict that the tropical troposphere should be warming 1.3 times faster than whatever the surface is doing. And it is only in the tropics that the surface and the troposphere don't seem to follow what the models forecast."

I only linked that press release in an attempt to see if this debate is what you were talking about. Since it's apparently not, I should really just wait for you to link the journal papers that are central to this other debate.

But just in case you're interested, this particular debate began with a 2004 paper by Douglass, Pearson and Singer. As usual, the first step in evaluating any scientific debate is to follow the citations in (for example) google scholar. Notice that a more recent paper (PDF) says: "Our results contradict a recent claim that all simulated temperature trends in the tropical troposphere and in tropical lapse rates are inconsistent with observations. This claim was based on use of older radiosonde and satellite datasets, and on two methodological errors: the neglect of observational trend uncertainties introduced by interannual climate variability, and application of an inappropriate statistical consistency test. "

There are useful lessons to be drawn from this debate. For instance, they suggest (along with other lines of evidence) that GCMs can't yet fully account for ENSO and other inter-annual oscillations, need improved moist convection and cloud parameterizations, etc. I caution people not to make regional climate predictions for precisely this reason: the GCMs aren't yet sophisticated enough. Global averages, however, are considerably more reliable and robust for the same reason that opinion polls with larger sample sizes have smaller error bars.

I understand your statement that "they settled on more robust model evaluation techniques", but if so then they did so remarkably quickly, since this debate was still going on mere months ago, until troposphere warming data was updated to show observations that it was in fact warming as it should have been according to the models.

If you really did under

I do not have citations of all the relevant papers at hand, but for background about my statement: recently a major argument over greenhouse warming was occurring because tropospheric warming that would have to be taking place in order for the most commonly accepted greenhouse warming models to be even halfway predictive was not being observed. Later observation and analysis (to my own surprise) did indeed indicate such warming, but according to my best understanding it could only be reconciled with the greenhouse models if it were accompanied by a certain amount of cooling in the lower stratosphere. Which did seem to be happening.

This debate did happen, but you're implying it was pivotal for "for the most commonly accepted greenhouse warming models to be even halfway predictive". That's not true; as I just outlined, scientists have settled on more robust model evaluation techniques.

Of course they do not directly state that their findings contradict the warming models... that is a conclusion that does not have a proper place within the paper. Nevertheless, given the surrounding circumstances, I am free to make such an inference and I assert that it is reasonable given the circumstances. But I do not intend to try to prove it here.

You're certainly free to make that inference. But I don't think it's reasonable because you haven't addressed the fact that stratospheric warming can be due to many different causes. Also, other GCM validation techniques seem considerably more reliable than comparing small temperature trends in the stratosphere. Why should I believe that your measure is more robust (i.e. has more statistical "power" and has fewer type 1 and type 2 errors) than those I just listed?

It's too bad the Global Warming debate is being hijacked by politicians. Al Gore recently described the new climate bill out of the US Congress as 'helping to bring about global governance'

The problem with the folks not buying into this global warming crap isn't so much the science it's the new taxes and other restrictions of freedom it will impose combined with other countries smart enough not to get involved.

I think there is building evidence that the scientists that believe it is happening are wrong. No one can explain why global temperatures have flat-lined. The models aren't working. It seems some agencies are adjusting data to agree with their models, when in reality we aren't experiencing the warming we've been warned about. Here is an article that illustrates this problem.

The debate isn't over and the folks understand that, especially considering the burden that will be imposed on them if they go along with it.

You don't have to be computer scientist to use a computer. Likewise, folks know they don't have to be scientists to understand that it is very unlikely that we have the power to affect the climate of the earth. Additionally they are seeing the data and they are seeing that reality isn't agreeing with scientists models.

Satellite data is starting to show a bunch of negative numbers. The (false) notion that this planet is warming is starting to give way to reality , and the regular folks understand that.

Kevin

Global temperatures have dropped in the last decade

A guy named Bob Carter claimed that "warming stopped" in 1998 or something. I believe he was basing that on University of Alabama in Huntsville's analysis of troposphere data, which was later shown to contain a mathematical error. This was acknowledged, see here:
http://www.uah.edu/news/newsread.php?newsID=60

Anyway, the NCDC and GISS data (to name a few) show clear warming trends during the last decade. Basically the surface data always has but at one point some people thought that the troposphere data didn't match. That has since been resolved, but it doesn't stop people from repeating this malarkey.

I found a link to raw NOAA satellite data

There are a number of places where it has been graphed, just google "t2lt" or dump it in excel.
My big question is that I've seen NASA graphs that look far more damaging than what the raw data shows. This has been of concern to me as I do not understand why there is such a difference. In looking around, I found this article that discusses this point.

I'm very concerned that the whole global warming argument is really about money, not protecting the planet. Like the above article says, taking the temperature of the planet isn't rocket science.
I remain unconvinced, I would like to see what happens to global temperatures for the next couple of years.

If the climatologists are correct and we don't do anything, the consequences will be hard to bear.
If the climatologists are wrong and we act like they are right, the consequences will be hard to bear.

We have to this right...let's keep the debate going, it's very important.
Kevin

Satellite global temps

The planetary temperatures are either flat or cooling down. Since its been two weeks since the last sunspot, can anyone say "Little Ice Age"?

Univerisity of Alabama - Huntsville in Huntsville, AL; the birthplace of our space program and home to Redstone Arsenal / Marshall Space Flight Center (where I now work). I wanted to go to school for Aerospace Engineering. Once you start looking for the 'good schools', you really narrow down to just a couple, and this honestly is one of them. Purdue is another good one but huge, Embry-Riddle is good but they tend to focus more on flight and I liked space more. They offered me the best scholarship (I applied to all three), so I went. Really, Huntsville proper isn't that bad of a place, and honestly its a northern town in the south. The church I attend (Lutheran) has more people natively from the Midwest than from the south. I have coworkers from all over the US. I met my Wisconsinite wife ... in Huntsville, AL. We grew up 150 miles apart but it took living 750 miles from our parents to find each other. But venture far from Huntsville and you do get typical Alabama: there was a KKK demonstration last week in Decatur (20 miles away, granted, more protestors than demonstrators but still) and up through the 90's there were anti-black billboards in Cullman, AL (30 miles south, I am told, predates my existance) and there are places to this day where fellow students told me it isn't safe for a minority to be at night. You can't buy cigarettes till you are 19.

I will give them one thing though. Property taxes are abysmally low compared to WI. I pay $450 a year on a house valued at $155,000 (4 bedroom, 1850sqft on 1/3 acre in the suburbs ... would be hard pressed to get a house that cheap up north) ... and the cost of living is cheap. Except for dairy products of course :P but yea. We do miss WI.

Go packers! :)

but the school is the University of Alabama in Huntsville. w00t!

You'd have to prove:

*Human activity doesn't produce gases like CO2 and SO2 *Those gases have a radically different absorption spectra than science currently understands *The sun doesn't actually provide energy for the Earth

etc.

Tell me, does one have to prove a single one of those items, or all from the list? If the latter, I'm really worried about the "etc." part, because that looks like a ripe opportunity for one to shove goalposts around. If the former, consider this little tidbit and the devastating consequences for the models which forecast so much doom. There's no question in my mind that humans pollute, and that some of that pollution might impact the climate in addition to the air quality. But how much? On what scale? You seem reasonably well-informed on this issue, so I'm sure you know when you focus on CO2 that CO2 is a marginal greenhouse gas, contributing very little to the overall warming of the planet. And while we're talking about CO2, how much has it risen in New York City? Or any small town in Iowa? Or central Canada? You won't be able to tell me that, because CO2 records are maintained for only one place on the planet ... the side of a volcano in Hawaii!

Anthropogenic global warming is based on basic physical facts like those. Of course, if the only thing you know about the issue is what you're hearing from the deniers, you'd naturally think that scientists sit around and say "damn, we're making a fortune off the global warming industry, what else can we assert is responsible?" Which is pretty fuckin' stupid when you think about it. Climatology isn't exactly making people rich. Al Gore still makes a lot more off his political connections than on the royalties off Inconvenient Truth. Of course, there's a fortune to be made denying anthropogenic climate change, but don't let that fact get in the way of your ignorance.

How much money was spent on Climatology thirty years ago? Back in the seventies, a number of states in the U.S. were closing down their state climatology departments. How much is being spent on it now? How about those "carbon offset credits" ... where does the money go that is spent on those? Someone is making a profit there. How much money has been flooding into environmental groups because of the heightened awareness of global warming and the need to do something about it (2005 IRS 990 filings: Greenpeace: $15,636,026, Sierra Club: $85,183,485, World Wildlife Fund: $120,910,695)? You're following the dollars on one side of the argument, but blind to the other. I have no doubt that money from oil companies is interfering with the scientific and public discussion of this subject ... but but how much of a hit will environmental and other activist groups take if the biggest environmental danger of the 21st century turns out to be a bust? You can't tell me they don't have a financial incentive to lie and cheat just like the oil companies do.

Hell, let's see them investigate. I've never heard of a global warming "skeptic" (to use the charitable term) who didn't spend all his or her time mouthing off in the press about how it's all a conspiracy and "help, help, I'm being repressed" and approximately zero time in the lab or in the field, actually recording data and making observations.

Remember this link? And it isn't a charitable term, it's an accurate term, without the idiotic associations that come with "denier".

Why is that? Because, like creationism, global warming denial is a movement that can only survive commensurate with its ability to convince ignorant laypersons like yourself. The reason they spend all their time mouthing off and none actually doing sc

You'd have to prove:

*Human activity doesn't produce gases like CO2 and SO2 *Those gases have a radically different absorption spectra than science currently understands *The sun doesn't actually provide energy for the Earth

etc.

Tell me, does one have to prove a single one of those items, or all from the list? If the latter, I'm really worried about the "etc." part, because that looks like a ripe opportunity for one to shove goalposts around. If the former, consider this little tidbit and the devastating consequences for the models which forecast so much doom. There's no question in my mind that humans pollute, and that some of that pollution might impact the climate in addition to the air quality. But how much? On what scale? You seem reasonably well-informed on this issue, so I'm sure you know when you focus on CO2 that CO2 is a marginal greenhouse gas, contributing very little to the overall warming of the planet. And while we're talking about CO2, how much has it risen in New York City? Or any small town in Iowa? Or central Canada? You won't be able to tell me that, because CO2 records are maintained for only one place on the planet ... the side of a volcano in Hawaii!

Anthropogenic global warming is based on basic physical facts like those. Of course, if the only thing you know about the issue is what you're hearing from the deniers, you'd naturally think that scientists sit around and say "damn, we're making a fortune off the global warming industry, what else can we assert is responsible?" Which is pretty fuckin' stupid when you think about it. Climatology isn't exactly making people rich. Al Gore still makes a lot more off his political connections than on the royalties off Inconvenient Truth. Of course, there's a fortune to be made denying anthropogenic climate change, but don't let that fact get in the way of your ignorance.

How much money was spent on Climatology thirty years ago? Back in the seventies, a number of states in the U.S. were closing down their state climatology departments. How much is being spent on it now? How about those "carbon offset credits" ... where does the money go that is spent on those? Someone is making a profit there. How much money has been flooding into environmental groups because of the heightened awareness of global warming and the need to do something about it (2005 IRS 990 filings: Greenpeace: $15,636,026, Sierra Club: $85,183,485, World Wildlife Fund: $120,910,695)? You're following the dollars on one side of the argument, but blind to the other. I have no doubt that money from oil companies is interfering with the scientific and public discussion of this subject ... but but how much of a hit will environmental and other activist groups take if the biggest environmental danger of the 21st century turns out to be a bust? You can't tell me they don't have a financial incentive to lie and cheat just like the oil companies do.

Hell, let's see them investigate. I've never heard of a global warming "skeptic" (to use the charitable term) who didn't spend all his or her time mouthing off in the press about how it's all a conspiracy and "help, help, I'm being repressed" and approximately zero time in the lab or in the field, actually recording data and making observations.

Remember this link? And it isn't a charitable term, it's an accurate term, without the idiotic associations that come with "denier".

Why is that? Because, like creationism, global warming denial is a movement that can only survive commensurate with its ability to convince ignorant laypersons like yourself. The reason they spend all their time mouthing off and none actually doing sc

But what if all those climate models have the same flaw?

About those models, what do you have to say about this? It seems to me that if all the models have been predicting that cirrus will trap heat leading to a positive feedback, but the actual measurements show the exact opposite, that at the very least the models have a big flaw, and at the worst this might be an indication of a bias in the construction of those models. Fudged data.

Huntsville is a northern city transplanted in the south.

Read what the AC said in this post. I'd write everything he said but I'm lazy. I'm an engineer, I work on Redstone Arsenal here in Huntsville, AL. Housing is cheap. Taxes are cheap. Utilities are cheap. While I was in college (I went to UAH) I was paying $350 a month for a 1-bedroom apartment. My wife and I just purchased a brand new brick home for $80 a square foot. Other homes in town, new, brick are going for $51 by reputable builders. My utilities bill is averaging $150 a month, including getting the lawn started (lots of water) and kids. Summers are freaking hot, being from Wisconsin, but the air conditioning is good and the house is well-insulated. Get a DirecTV so you can watch "real" sports :)

Huntsville has more PhD's per square mile than anywhere in the world, except Silcon Valley. Second biggest research park in the US, fourth in the world. Tons of R&D goes on here, both NASA and all aspects of Defense, biotech, etc. Benefits for most companies that I've seen are exceptional and educations (masters, PhD's) are admired. Most companies will put you through school if you want them.

I don't have easy access to the original sources, plus any idiot can print a book hating on anyone.

If you have access to Google you have access to the Quran.

You got to head hunt if you want the pick of the litter without too much training. You can contract them out or you can have a recruiter on staff.

Also, it seems that many people going to college for computer science/engineering aren't even learning the basics -- what colleges have you recent graduates gone to that have taught you real consulting skills, business sense and responsibility?

UAH did a pretty good job. Last two semesters are spent on a large scale engineering projects. The first semester is 4 people to a team, the second semester is a 10-12 person IPT (integrated product team) project for AMRDEC, a government customer. When I went through it we were designing a guided bullet, we did the conceptual design, modeling and simulation, and actually handed them a finished product (just a mechanical prototype). We went through all the stages of development, PDR, CDR, etc. Good school, highly recommend it to anyone pursuing MAE/AE.

(by the way I am 1 in a million ... I actually want to get back to the midwest someday... my wife and I miss it. But not today. Got to finish my masters/PhD)

like how many motorized couches have there been in geek history?
burning man
mit
alabama-huntsville

I went to a public college http://www.uah.edu/ and besides 2 classes (Physics 101 and Chemistry 101) I never had more than 30 people in my classes. Even in packed classes there are seats near the front. Use them.

And a telephone with only an earpiece is called a radio.

Thanks for making my point.

I see money freely given to people who have no right to be in college.

*shrug* where I went to school, unless you were not caucasian (ie: if you were a minority you got a minority scholarship) school scholarships were based pretty squarely on ACT/GPA scores. Few minor exceptions, living trusts and such for certain students of certain criteria and "financial status" loans.

I don't believe that education at most ABET-accredited colleges is better than in the past. I interview graduates constantly and I'm not sure what kids are learning.

Well as an aero... that, 2 engineering electives and humanities/social sciences. Honestly I believe - and interviews have confirmed this belief - employers I have talked with want moldable employees with good general backgrounds. Especially in fields like mechanical and aerospace engineering. Theres so many ways to take it, you can't possibly cover all the ins and outs in 4 years. So you get 1-2 semesters of background material and derivations in a bunch of different subjects, half of which you will never touch again. Right now I do missile modeling and simulation in C++. I took one C++ class in college - actually I didn't, I tested out of it the first week of classes. What courses do I use in my day-to-day work? Physics, statics and dynamics. Touch on Aerodynamics from time to time. The rest of it was a wash. Might I use it someday? Sure. I'm glad I did learn it. But that's the point, I have a good base to work off of if I want to jump ship and say, start working in the alt.space community or build bridges or something. I'm a lump of clay that can be re-molded and re-defined. How else can you explain college costs going up, but graduate aptitude going down?

I don't know. Tuition hasn't gone up that much since I've started school (6 years now); it has kept pace with inflation. I don't really pay attention to other people, I just work hard myself :) I'm still in grad school.

It is easy to point out the one or two frauds that exist, and then draw conclusions from your own personal experiance. But the system works (I know ... I live in it)

Its called peer review. You do work. You publish to a credible journal (emphasis on credible). Editors read your submission and assuming you haven't done something stupid (depending on the journal - some excellent journals will deny good papers) your paper will probably get past them. If you f*ed up, you get caught - someone reads your paper and discovers you did it wrong, gravity vector pointing in the wrong direction for instance, the results were too good, etc.

For example the UAH Propulsion Research Center gets over a million a year from NASA and other government/corporate sources for research work. Results get published and reviewed. That research keeps a lot of students in grad school and gets a lot of work done for NASA. (Hint: grad students work cheaper than professional engineers). Not to mention there are few private citizens/small companies that truly want to innovate propulsion. Including the new space startups. They are mostly re-hashing old ideas.

I do research for UAH - same principles apply. I've published two papers (only one citation available online at the moment) and have spoken at two conferences attended by my peers. I also publish reports to the army - since they are the primary customer. People can attend those conferences and pay attention to speakers to review their results, and read papers in journals to critique their analysis. If they have further questions you generally have contact information on the paper (at least in my field).

That's the way the system works. And it works pretty well, except when you fake results in a controversial topic of study. Then you become a hot topic.

-everphilski-

Check your sources on that .5 degree C rise in 1 yr. The mosst reputable sources in the USA (Global Hydrology and Climate Center, University of Alabama - Huntsville, USA) if not the world says something different.

http://uahnews.uah.edu/read.asp?newsID=574

"Previously, the long-term (December 1978 through July 2005) climate trend in the UAH satellite dataset showed average global warming at the rate of about 0.88 C (about 1.58 degrees Fahrenheit) per century. The new trend, which includes the extra warming in the tropics, shows average global warming at the rate of about 1.23 C (about 2.21 degrees Fahrenheit) per century. " NOTE THAT THE WARMING RATE IS PER CENTURY (100 YRS) NOT PER YEAR (365 days).

You can also look at http://www.junkscience.com/MSU_Temps/Warming_Glanc e.htm which references the Global Hydrology and Climate Center, University of Alabama - Huntsville, USA among others.

You kid, but yea, the University of Alabama in Huntsville (the UA he speaks of is in Tuscaloosa) is actually an excellent engineering school. Huntsville is the home of one of the 2nd largest research park in the US (fourth in the world), huge missile and space access R&D occurs here (Marshall space flight center, Army Aviation & Missile Command, Strategic Missile Command, Redstone Arsenal [where I work]) ... we're #4 on the hit list if nuclear war ever breaks out... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntsville,_Alabama

-everphilski-

Superconductivity was discovered by Kamerling Onnes in Leiden in 1911. 1987 was an impressive year in superconductivity research because the first material which became superconducting above liquid nitrogen's (as opposed to the much more expensive liquid helium) boiling point was discovered. Of course, this discovery was not made in some IBM research lab, but here at The University of Alabama in Huntsville.

True story.
I used to be a resident advisor at UAH. One morning I woke up and tried to log on to Everquest. No workie. That's OK I thought, maybe an unscheduled patch... so I went to check some other stuff. It didn't work. AIM didn't work. This is all sounding a little fishy so I check my voicemail and sure enough, a bunch of my friends note that every game, filesharing and otherwise service is down, with exception of POP3 email and WWW. Couldn't even IMAP or FTP off-campus.
I brought this to the attention to the housing director, who knew nothing of any plans to alter the network. I knew one of the higher-ups in the network ladder, I talked to him but he was out of the loop. He set up a meeting with the appropriate people. I got there, along with the head of the housing department. Remember, we were represening a bunch of very pissed off college kids living on-campus. The guy blew us off, saying "school is about education" and "If my daughter lived on campus I wouldn't want her playing video games and downloading music." I countered by saying some of us come from thousands of miles away, and this is home, and we need to relax on the weekends when we aren't studying.
Long story short, we ran a petition drive, appealed to the president of the university, and after a few weeks of hard work and lobbying got ports back on a case-by-case basis, but they put in a load-balancing system and metered the filesharing ports to the point of being unusable.
From talking with colleagues from other schools, this seems to be a typical mindset of a University administrator. Good luck, Dell. It sounds like a good idea, but I think it will be a hard sale to make.
-everphilski-

The easier, more exotic, load delivery mechanisms can be used only if the load is little. I thought no less than someone spreading all their value over many small successive launches than risk one heavy/expensive launch. It also appears that the cost of launching heavier objects into space will increase exponentially by weight! There is much development on laser-launch systems. I was looking for the earlier Slashdot article on laser technology, yet this webpage is just an independent collection of information regarding alternatives and does show some URLs for laser content.I don't see any shark stickers, so its troll safe.

Lightcraft Technologies, Inc. is a commercial venture.
Adrew V. Pakhomov appears to profess on the subject, and a host of a symposium.

I can now proudly say that my school's internet connection is literally slower than a snail (10Mbps).

NASA has done research into making construction materials from moon dust and rock. See here.

... but my university has a collection of Linux machines that you can SSH into for various uses, including development tasks. Any "decent" university (no offense intended), I think, would have a similar configuration.

I will skip a lot of details and just say that people in Huntsville, Alabama are PARANOID about the weather for good reason. (I know that is an oxymoron but it will have to do) They forced the NOAA (US Weather Service) to put up a lot of facilities that they did not want because of this. The facilities include weather research etc.

For those who think that they lack for scientists who really study the weather see the UAH News Reports etc. In their study of "Global Warming" they found little or no data to support this claimed occurance and have reported so. They do not lack for the best data Science can provide as they are associated with NASA in Huntsville as well.

I learned a lot from these people including insights that are pretty deep. If you will remember the "Acid Rain" threat a few years ago that has disappeared from discussion. Well that was pointed out to me to be the product mostly of TREES going terminal (forrest life cycle issue). There was some industrial and man affect which was very local. I saw the acidity maps! On Global Warming there are several points that render any claim of man's efforts here to be suspect. The scientists at UAH are not agreed with the Global Warming claims.

It would appear though that the claim that all Climate Scientists agree with the Global Warming ideas is just not so. There are a lot who think otherwise.

Basically, there are two types of laser rocketry, as defined by fuel: air-burning, as used by Dr. Leik Myrabo and has been seen on tv; and soild fuel (usally a dense metal) burning, as being developed by Dr. Andrew Pakhomov at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The problem with the Myrabo method is that the laser is tuned be absorbed by the air, and thus is inefficent over long distances. Ablative laser propulsion doesn't have this problem. It is however still very much theoretical: I've seen their first fight model; it's 3/4 of a cm tall...

More info on Dr. Pakhomov: pakhomov.uah.edu

Simon ;)

Some terrestrial bugs make catalase to degrade peroxides, so no.

It's Staphyloccus aureus that made the bubbles on your skin when Mom treated your scrapes with H2O2. BTW, it's totally ineffective at killing Staph and casues more damage to your, already, injured tissues.

Catalase Test

Catalase: The Enzyme

There are serious theoretical reasons to believe magnetism AND tidal interactions are a factor. Related articles here, here (postscript) and here (postscript). (Can't read postscript? Get ghostscript, or read the text versions.

• Google Search
• 1998 Article
• 1999 Article
• 2001 USA Today Article
• 2002 NYTimes Article

Any paraticular reason you seem to be so angry about this? Sheesh.

I might ask the same question of you. I'm not angry about it, I don't think, and I apologize for putting words into your mouth, but it did seem as though you were evincing skepticism due to the purported lack of contrary opinion in the peer-reviewed press, rather than due to any actual positive argument.

But there are respected scientists arguing the counter case, including John Christy most prominently.

This morning I was typing in a long post on my /. journal (which I use as a blog) about the Hoytether article at space.com. It had lots of great stuff, with links to physicist and Hard Science Fiction writer Dr. Robert L. Forward (who introducted me to the tether concept) and to Tether's Unlimited (the company that Robert Hoyt and Robert Forward started to commercialize it).

Hell I even wrote about listening to Bob Forward (Dr. Forward to you, heh heh) tell me the story of how he found a kilt-making company in Scotland that still had old-fashioned weaving machines which could be modified to create the tethers. In fact I went so far as to link to a eulogy I wrote about Bob when he died. It was a great post! It had everything!

But then /. ate it when I clicked 'Preview' and the back-button gave me an empty form. It was time to go to work so I said screw it; I can write it again when I come home. Yeah right. Like I would still want to post it after somebody else gets a dumber version on the /. front page!

It's like I was never meant to blog it...

I'm a junior at the University of Alabama (Huntsville) majoring in computer engineering.

At my university, like a lot of others, CPE is in the same department as Electrical engineering. The computer-centric stuff we learn is C++, OS programming (semaphores, posix, messages, sockets, shared memory), Motorola 68k, MIPS R2000, Networking, architecture, digital logic, microprocessors (I also took a java CS course for an elective). We also get a goodly amount of EE courses like circuits and transistors, measurement, etc. We're also required to take 2 courses of CS and can take more for electives.

For non science stuff, we have to take 18 (semester) hours worth of math, 21 worth of humanities, physics, chemistry, and general engineering courses (about 25 hours worth).

IMHO, at UAH, computer engineers may not know as much coding as cs students, but we know far more about the hardware side, and have a much broader background (here CS students largely just learn programming and math). One downside I see is that we only are required to learn one high-level language (assembly doesn't count), and don't learn any database stuff, html, or IT.

You know, I hate this conception that all engineers are EE/CPE types. Sure. I'm in aerospace, which may not be a growth industry but certainly isn't one in much danger of stuff being outsourced. American companies still have the edge in experience, know-how, and institutional momentum. While Dan Goldin did his dead-level best to kill NASA, it's not quite dead yet, and between the public and private sectors there's a lot of need for know-how. Of course, the fun thing about aerospace is that, unlike the computer world, the new hires are treated like dirt for a reason--we really don't know crap. We learn a lot of basic conceptions in school, but there's so much OJT that it's not funny. I worked for my current employer for almost three years before graduation, and I'm still way behind on the power curve. It always amuses me, though, to watch people hit the big trends in technological fields. I'd tell a kid coming into school these days to major in civil engineering. We're going to need a lot of those folks soon, and they might as well get in while the getting's good.

Maybe I'm biased since I have degrees in math & physics from a prominent Alabama university specializing in cutting-edge materials science and optics and am currently working on third generation spacecraft... oh, did I mention while living in "Alabamer" and hailing from "Tennduhsee"? And you critics of "Alabamer" are from where exactly? Perhaps that state where even New Yorkers won't live, New Jersey? Or that bastion of good government, Taxachusettes? What exactly have *you* done to advance the human race lately besides post ill-conceived comments to slashdot and burn your karma getting your ever-witty observations modded up to "funny"? Special bonus: +2 to your self-assumed intelligent self if you can actually figure out the source of my nick.