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Gov't Proposes "National Climate Service" For the US
Standing Bear writes "NPR reports that 140 years after the creation of the National Weather Service, the US government is proposing the creation of a similar service that will provide long-term projections of how climate will change. 'We are actually getting millions of requests a year already about: How should coastal cities plan for sea-level rise? How should various other agencies in the federal government or in state governments make plans for everything from roads to managing water supplies?' says NOAA Administrator Dr. Jane Lubchenco. 'And a lot of that is going to be changing as the climate changes.' Under the plan, the new NOAA Climate Service would incorporate some of the agency's existing laboratories and research programs, including the National Climatic Data Center, the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory and the National Weather Service's Historical Climate Network. Meanwhile, as plans for the new climate service shape up, NOAA launched a new Web site, climate.gov, designed to provide access to a wide range of climate information."
When will these people learn that their gig is up? It's time to come up with another get-rich-quick scheme!
Climate science is in its infancy, as anyone who has been really following the "Global Warming" debate knows. Certainly we know the globe is warming, but the greenhouse gas aspect of it is still very much up in the air.
Setting up a Climate Service today would be akin to setting up an Astrology Service. They would probably both give equally good advice.
I can give one long term prediction. The government will not be able to use "climate change" as an excuse for a orgy of tax rises.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
so, let's see the predictions from the national climate service.
(in a democratic administration)
Plan for warmer temperatures. higher sea levels, some deserts getting a lot of rain, some areas getting a lot less rain.
and we can change the climate to make things better
(in a republican adminstartion)
climate will be about the same, it will be hot during the summer, cold during the winter, floods will occur, droughts will occur.
and no-one can do much about it.
So the hunt for manbearpig continues?
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Based on the mercurial history of climate science over the past few decades, we might also need a National Climate Service Service to help us track changes in the climate of climate science research...?
Since climate science really is a science, it's going to have to make predictions. It's good to put consensus predictions on record and then see how good they are. I have enough faith in climate science to think that they will be quite good. Of course they will have big error bars, but that's unavoidable. Also, it's not uninformative. I think it will be important in 5 years to say: We've got a climate model that's made correct predictions for the last five years, so you should trust that model as a good guide to the future. It's not a perfect argument, but I think it will be more persuasive than what we can say now.
Release the source code of your data models that tell us that "ZOMG!!!! Teh oceans are going to go to e1even!!!!!!" and then we'll talk. Until then, it's all smoke and mirrors.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
There are already several organizations measuring climate and environmental conditions. So many, there are open file formats to support data sharing.
Part of the recent US budget includes $433 million to support similar science.
Who are you looking to for validation that Cap & Trade works? How do you measure that and trust the results?
If climate science has progressed far enough to provide results, and so much depends on a safe climate - both for progress and survival, someone needs to keep an eye on things.
What if the National Climate Service predicted earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, as well as space weather events, tidal flow, and provided the data for processing, taking the other open data from organizations studying extra-planetary events, animal vocalizations, and large-scale earth harmonics, and they all pointed to one, big thing?
I can say one thing - it would be fun to work on, and may hint at a return to the large, funded labs of the 1960's.
Science is repeatable, peer reviewable and changes as the truth becomes clearer. Science has never been about consensus, but has always been about pioneers seeking the truth. This leaves us with a quandary; Do we believe scientists who destroy data and refuse peer review, or do we attempt to gather our own data and find the truth. Currently the two barriers that will prevent us from finding the truth are those who believe that consensus is equivalent to scientific truth and the snow piled up so high in Washington D.C. that they are being forced to wait to open the office until after the blizzard of 2010 is cleared.
climate scientists disagree with you and (unlike astrologers) actually want to put their predictions on record because they have confidence in them. I say we let them.
I take it you haven't read the emails from East Anglia? Obfuscation, "hide the decline," discussion of how to destroy the careers of those who disagree with them, and subvert legal FOIA requests. Hardly the behavior of people who want to go on public record.
When scientific research is used as the basis of public policy decisions, that research should automatically be made available for public scrutiny, along with any associated monetary interests of the researchers. Then taxpayers can find out how badly they got screwed.
The dendro-proxies are kaput too. We're onto making fun of himalayan glaciers and the Day After Tomorrow warnings now. Next up: satellite thermal measurement calibration to .01 degree C at a range of 2,000 kilometers, and the incredible disappearing Midieval Warm Period.
If the 1800's continue to cool at the current rate, it will not be long before we're thankful of the role of AGW in staving off the impending ice age of 1940.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Well Phil Jones just threw most of the man made climate warming story under the bus.
AGW/CC has always been a lie and always will be a lie.
Before you reply to me think, "We've always been at war with East Asia."
This is about government control and "socializing" to that end. You're all sheep if you buy this horseshit after all this time and after all that's been revealed.
You're also pretty damn arrogant - and ignorant - if you think your Prius - or my Suburban - makes a whit of difference to this "climate."
Do all reasonable people have Saturday evening plans this weekend?
Perhaps they will provide an impartial assessment of the current state of climate science, rather than a pronouncement on global warming.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
is my bank account paying for more useless, pointless, farcical government programs ! For heavens sake, the weatherman can't predict the weather a week in advance, why on earth would I believe they can predict it for a century from now...
Read the article for yourselves. Do not take my or jvillain's word for it.
There is no bus involved, and Phil Jones says that yes, warming since 1950 is probably anthropogenic.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
So the lab facilities, and possibly the employees, would be competed for by two separate bureaucracies? I can't see how that would work smoothly.
Why can't they just throw some more money at the NOAA or NWS, telling them they need to take on some additional responsibilities?
are you a gay ninja?
CO2 takes thousands of years to leave the atmosphere, so we can consider it cumulative. Every bit of fossil fuel CO2 we've used since Watt built his steam engine has contributed to the progression of global warming: it's just that the increase in emissions substantially accelerated in the 20th century, and since the 1950s, our cumulative history has begin to catch up with us.
... is government and it's arrogance. No matter how many times they are wrong, they never give up the idea that they are automatically right because they were either elected or appointed by someone who was.
They're almost always wrong and they should never be embraced. Every Federal employee should be looked upon with suspicion. Always.
Government - at least in this country - was never meant to be a trough.
Anyone employed by the state is either ignorant or evil.
Let tom skilling do the job!!
Don't they realize that this is a slippery slope to actually admitting that global warming could be true?
Just look at the snow in Texas.
I'm a liberal and I don't believe in global warming.
Dear Dr. Jane,
Would you please produce a record of the millions of requests you have gotten. As you may know, there is a LOT OF INFLATED CLAIMS in this area and I would like to independently verify your statements without having to hack your servers.
Thank you for your prompt reply,
The Public Taxpayers
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
"Every bit of fossil fuel CO2 we've used since Watt built his steam engine has contributed to the progression of global warming" is likely true, but probably only in a pedantic sense (because emissions have gone up so fast, the impact of the decades prior to 1950 is tiny compared to those since).
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
scarcity of world butterflies if they plan to do long term weather predictions.
You better read that again. He admits that warming trends like this have happened in the past, that the earth is not currently warming, that the Medieval Warm Period did happen and so the hockey stick is dead, their data is suspect and the CO2 thing is a guess. He also basically cops to not really being climatologist.
I've just been having the same discussion with Andy Revkin who seems to be just as confused as you. Here is where the science is at: It is very likely that most of the recent warming is owing to greenhouse gas forcing as a result of our emissions. Look carefully at that statement. It does not mean that we hardly know if some of the warming comes as a result of our emissions. No, if we can say that it is very likely that most of the warming is owing to us, then it is doubtless that some of the warming comes from us. Nothing up in the air about that at all. Non-quantitative people like you or Revkin don't seem to grasp this. There is some small uncertainty about attributing more than half of the warming to us, but that is not the same as not knowing anything at all.
A climate service would be a very good thing since we can finally start to set some policies concerning tidal regions that will be affected by sea level rise. New nuclear power plants, in particular owing to their long planning horizon, need siting guidance that the NRC does not seem able to provide.
Your characterization of what he says won't stand up to people reading the interview, so i would suggest that they go ahead and do that.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I live in Argentina and we've had the "Servicio Meteorológico Nacional" (SMN) or National Meteorological Service since 1872, and if you check the forecast on TV or the radio, it most certainly comes from the SMN. Despite the blatant corruption in our country, the SMN is one of the most (if not the only) unbiased and trusted government source of information.
I get the pattern now: declare a crisis, spend like a drunken sailor, and blame it on Bush. Now I know what he meant by hope and change.
The Weather Service is in its infancy.... according to your reasoning it is already akin to an Astrology Service.
Just about any argument you pose for the weather service I can use for the climate prediction service.
These are both fluid dynamics problems - mankind will NEVER get out of infancy given the level of complexity and chaos involved. If we got the math down 100% we'd not be able to fully compute the problems.
The climate predictions have been largely accurate - much much higher than Astrology. Yes, there is a smaller dataset than weather; we may be no better in a 1000 years of data points than we are today. But we are better than random guessing or Astrology!
There is this thing that is sometimes done in the public sector called LONG TERM planning - and I would rather they asked experts than flipped a coin or asked an astrologist (either of which may be better than asking the politician to "guess.") The expert educated opinion is better than the alternatives - that alone is reason enough! How can such an anti-science position get mod 5 Insightful?? on slashdot?
I've not seen the climate predictions go wrong yet; sure there are some typos and over simplifications but that isn't the field, its just a small sample of a larger field. Easy to say computers suck by looking at e-machines running windows ME... The main temp chart included a RANGE and we've been within range the whole time - the simple stuff for the slow people has been too optimistic or too dire depending on context and source but the science covers a broad range which STILL is specific enough to be quite useful.
I've been following Global Warming not the so-called debate. If you think that silly idiocy going on the last 10 years is debate, then you are a waste of time - go get educated and come back when you have something constructive to say. Don't educate yourself, I don't think you can do that yet... get expert help.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
What FOOLS ... what folly. Your tax-payer dollars down the drain!
Next, we will have Dir. of Homeland Security, Janet Planet, ridding the Air Force Boing Laser Aircraft to target citizen of Harlem for evaporation.
...by saying the opposite of what you just said.
Did you actually read the article?
No, he does not say those things at all. Read the article again, carefully.
Did you know slashdot mod points are traded in real time in yahoo groups? It doesn't matter whether or not a comment is any good. It's a scratch my back mentality. And I bet this comment remains without mod points. Meanwhile, a climate change agency would be a fantastic idea, but the majority of americans (the dumb ones) believe global warming to be a liberal lie. So.... good luck getting it going.
http://wwww.zerospeaks.com
Creating a separate service for climate prediction is like saying we need a separate FBI to work on predicting future crimes. Just let the National Weather Service work on climate (hello, weather!) prediction. Come to think of it, why isn't the NWS working on this already??
But these people are: http://www.realclimate.net/
All this rhetoric and allegory is laughable.
Planetary Science: Ask the people to say why Mercury is colder than Venus.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I really could care who "feels" there data is correct or not. I have yet to see any real science in a lot of things for a lot of time. Seems like all science is adulterated by politics and groups who want the control anymore. This is why we no longer have much innovation any longer. Let treat this like the ant and the grasshopper. Let me be the grasshopper who could care less, and you can be the ant spending yourself into oblivion regarding knee jerk, "consensus driven" science. Let me be the one who starves to death and goes by the wayside if you are correct. But I want to contribute not one thin dime to this obvious power grab. Think the "oil cartel meanies" are putting out false data? So what - make money by investing in them instead of trying to jam down failed greenie weanie projects that are not money makers (See economics in Spain home of the economically failed greenie weanie industry). Then when the world comes to an end you can claim your spot in style.
This is a truly sweet link. Thanks for it. This was not a friendly interview.
Maxume's comment notwithstanding, he is truly throwing AGW under the bus. "Warming since 1950" includes the periods 1950-1995 (some warming) and 1995-present (he admits no warming at all). Admits doubt about local nature of Midieval Warm Period. Admits measurement challenges and sensitivity of instruments.
His response to the Yamal question was particularly interesting. Rather than respond to the question he referred to the Briffa paper here. Look closely and you'll find that the maximum number of trees is about 77. Even if a tree were equivalent to a NIST calibrated platinum thermocouple, 75 trees is not enough measurement points in that vast area. Demotes interpretation of Yamal data from "proved science" to "I believe it's sound".
And then the killer quote:
N - When scientists say "the debate on climate change is over", what exactly do they mean - and what don't they mean?
It would be supposition on my behalf to know whether all scientists who say the debate is over are saying that for the same reason. I don't believe the vast majority of climate scientists think this. This is not my view. There is still much that needs to be undertaken to reduce uncertainties, not just for the future, but for the instrumental (and especially the palaeoclimatic) past as well.
There you go. Phil Jones doesn't think the debate on climate change is over - even for the instrumental measurements and especially for the palaeoclimatic. And then there's the "independent review" mentioned several times:
T - Where do you draw the line on the handling of data? What is at odds with acceptable scientific practice? Do you accept that you crossed the line?
This is a matter for the independent review.
That's shorthand for "I can't talk about that." There are several of these. And then a sweet, sweet close:
W - Finally, a personal question: Do you expect to return as director of the Climatic Research Unit? What is next for you?
This question is not for me to answer.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
There's a company in Dublin, New Hampshire that's been doing this for over 100 years.
Figure it out for yourself.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Bus? He isn't saying anything substantially different from what the climate science community says.
mt
Every time the federal government creates a new agency, it's an opportunity for other agencies to get rid of their dead wood by transferring them. Happened with the department of education, the department of energy, and the department of homeland security.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Alaska convened several working groups to discuss the implications of climate change in their state. Why, because they have been experiencing problems that affect the health, safety, and welfare of the citizens of the state. The Alaska Climate Change Strategy (http://www.climatechange.alaska.gov/) outlines some of the changes they are experiencing. The lack of sea ice has threatened nine villages because of shore erosion. The villages are in the process of being relocated.
They are also reviewing design standards for new roads and bridges in certain areas of the state because of the loss of permafrost.
NOAA spokesperson on government funded NPR proposes the creation of NCS. NOAA is 7,000 of DOCs 150,000 within the 2,500,000 civil employee Federal Government, almost 2% of the entire US workforce. Average wage of Federal employees climbs past $70k, plus bennies, plus pension, plus union immunities.
This smells like another attempt to get politicians or eco-opportunists into "the climate business".Remember, they almost pulled it off. It was really disappointing and scary to me that there are some out there who wold pull any kind of stunt and use any tactic to support using allegedly "settled science" to achieve very questionable political goals. Once again, don't get your science from Politicians, celebrities or lawyers. Examine why you believe what you do. Honest skepticism is healthy. To those who call skeptics "deniers" (like holocaust deniers), please keep your religion to yourself.True scientists are skeptical, as they should be.
over the past ten years, the "climatologists" (not real scientists) have wasted billions of dollars saying "climate change will cause drought", then "climate change will cause stronger storms, then "climate change will cause flooding"...depending on what the global weather at the time seemed to be doing. Thus exposing their basic methodology of cooking the books to conform to what answers they wanted, including taking a 25 year period and extrapolating into the future to get the "hockey stick". They when planet earth went off the hockey stick, "where is the heat going?" the "climatologists" were wailing, and now the public is awakened to their scam.
We don't need a government organ devoted to spewing unscientific nonsense to support the agenda of Al Gore and his ilk. We don't need to continue the funding of utterly useless and bogus "climate models" that have nothing to do with what the sun-driven climate of this planet (and all the other planets, as real scientists have noted).
The real purpose of climatology as practised has to do with channeling of trillions of dollars of wealth through the World Bank in "cap and trade" fraud, and the pumping up of carbon emission derivatives for the money cartels such as Goldman Sachs.
Is it so rational to ignore the views of the vast majority of climatologists on climate change?
Perhaps not, but it might might be a good idea to consider the views of climatologists with some skepticism, for the same reasons you would the views of petroleum geologists. There are those on both sides of the issue that have a vested interest in convincing policymakers of a certain conclusion.
Makers of AntiVirus software have NEVER overstated the impact of a given computer virus right? Climatologists ought to be almost as trustworthy right?
Were we reading the same article? Did you open the posted URLs (hatefully not linked)?
I know you don't want to believe it. It goes against a lot of your established, posted and quoted opinions. But here Phil Jones is admitting Doubt - not just about small things, but about the very premises on which Climate Change Alarmism is based. When asked about dendro-proxy data he defers to the Briffa paper that cites at most 77 trees and chooses trees based on how well they match the desired conclusion. He doesn't disparage it but the implication to read the data is clear, and he's distancing himself from the conclusion in that way. A year ago his response might have been much different.
He confirms warming, and denies that the science is settled on the cause. He may has well said "we live in an interglacial age" and the jury is out on what humans are doing to impact climate. This is so far at odds with his published opinion that "throwing AGW under the bus" is an appropriate description.
I know moderation is going to be harsh in this thread, and one particular admin is going to run rampant with her unlimited mod points. I don't care. I'm not going to let her stifle discussion.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Professor Richard Alley recently gave a presentation called "The Biggest Control Knob: Carbon Dioxide in Earth’s Climate History," in which he makes the case that climate models simply don't work right unless you incorporate CO2.
The key point he makes is that there is a record dating back over 400 million years that provides proof that climate is sensitive to CO2. Doubling CO2 adds 3 degrees C to global temperature.
There are multiple lines of evidence to support climate sensitivity, and additional research is filling in what gaps might have been missing, and further strengthening the argument.
"For every right, an equal responsibility..."
We've always been at war with Eastasia
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I am of the opinion that this whole argument is a red herring and really only a small part of the big picture. There is no point in arguing about Climate Change because the real issue should be referred to as "TOXIC GAS BUILDUP" We live in a closed system. Any waste we produce doesn't go away. Carbon Dioxide is only one of many chemicals which are toxic to humans which we human are producing in ever increasing amounts. Just looking at Carbon takes our eye off the ball for the bigger problem. And gives the Climate deniers something to pretend isn't true. Go up into the hills above most major cities and look down on the brown sludge floating in the air and water and tell me we don't need to change the way we do business in a big way and soon. Anything else is a distraction. Wake up. Come out of your Mothers basement and look at the state of the world around you. Humans can't live on Sludge the way Cockroaches can and no amount of pretending will allow them to.
Relevant quote:
My own interference with this great question, while sanctioned by many eminent names, has been also an object of varied and ingenious attack. On this point I will only say that when angry feeling escapes from behind the intellect, where it may be useful as an urging force, and places itself athwart the intellect, it is liable to produce all manner of delusions. Thus my censors, for the most part, have levelled their remarks against positions which were never assumed, and against claims which were never made.
- John Tyndall, 1881
http://transcribingtyndall.wordpress.com/2008/08/
Phil is talking like climate scientists talk. There is nothing remotely unusual in any of it. Your problem is you don't know how to spin it when you have actual scientist talk in front of you. Sorry to confuse you so badly.
mt
Making energy more expensive will slow down the world economy. For us in the West, that's a recession at worst - annoying, but our governments and way of life will survive.
For India, that's hundreds of millions of people getting out of subsistence farming more slowly. Given the choice, they'll choose to improve their lives this generation rather than next, and they DO get a vote.
Same for China, with the added risk of a revolt if their economy stops growing. The only reason the average Chinese peasant puts up with their abusive government is the possibility that industrialization will improve their lives - if their economy stalls, someone will pick up one of those Little Red Books they have lying around, and think "say... this might just work again, you know?"
India and China will industrialize as efficiently as they can, because their people will demand it.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
and we can change the climate to make things better
That is what makes me suspicious of what some might call "gorebots"--those that assume not only the problem exists the way they see it, but that the solution is to try and "undo" it.
I think there is enough scientific evidence to suggest the climare is changing, that the world is slowly warming up, and even that human actvity involving the release of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases has affected climate.
What I am VERY concerned about is that there is so much certainty that the problem is acutually reversible simply by doing less of what they think caused the problem, and so little attention is being given to actually adapting to what might actually be too late to change.
Perhaps we could spend less time and money setting up elabourate carbon counting and trading schemes and start looking at REAL efficiency and conservation efforts (not just those that directly involve carbon emissions), investing in infrastructure to protect costal communities that we are fairly certain are vulnerable to rising sea levels, and so on.
It sounds like this national climate service specifically includes this as part of its proposed mandate, so that somewhat promising.
An organization cannot "agree", "disagree" or hold any other opinion. What you mean is that some people claim to speak on behalf of some other people, who most likely have not been unanimous or even individually asked.
These fine organizations you mention are either government organizations or are there to lobby the government. What a surprise that they should "agree" with the government, with the likely effect of some taxpayer money sent their way!
You see, "science" in the name does not make a political representation organization any less political. People who head these organizations are usually third-rate as scientists, and real scientists hardly ever bother to attend meetings, vote, or even join "scientific" organizations that claim to represent them -- they have real work to do.
I believe the climate is changing, as it always has and thank goodness we're on the upstroke of an interglacial age - the crop growing region is moving toward the arable land, which is good for feeding our teeming billions. Another 5C and most of Russia and Canada become farmland instead of permafrost. I would say that this would make much of southern California uninhabitable, but that would be redundant. The first three settlements there were never heard from again - it's a desert made habitable with water resources that are desertifying millions of square miles of external lands.
On whether humans are impacting this process I might admit that we have had some barely measureable impact, though I wouldn't claim to know it for sure. Most especially I would not claim that were a bad thing
But on whether anything ill will come of that, I have much doubt. Most especially whether the ill will outweigh the good is a serious question. Whether we need to do anything about seas that rise mere millimeters a year I would seriously debate. We have much more important issues to discuss from colonization of Mars and the Asteroid belt, beginning the work on interstellar travel, to observing and preparing to defend against the inevitable world-crushing asteroid - to preserve Man against real known threats. To worry about how much it will cost the remote descendants of some residents of the Phillipines to move their huts further from an encroaching sea is absurd. If they don't want to get wet they should move inland at a stately 4 meters per year and they will without intervention as the water comes up. To crush the world economy on the speculation that Global Climate Change might escape to infinity based on the available evidence? That's madness.
And about the "Science" of "Scientists" who won't show their work, I have outright disbelief. We might as well subscribe to the opinions of Kevin Trudeau. What have they got that he hasn't got, and more importantly, what do they not want you to know?
But call me a denier if you want. Labelling and ad-hominem seems to be the message of your political party.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Sorry to confuse you so badly.
Unless you're Maxume's alt, why the apology?
About your derision: it's beneath my contempt. If this is all you have you've wasted your time.
Apparently the way "climate scientists talk" is so divorced from reality that it's a language unto itself. A thing is what it is. Words mean things. Did you think I chose "symbolset" accidentally? That would be a bad guess.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Has there been a time in recent memory when the given reasons for tax rises matched the way the money was spent? I thought that trend died in the 1950's.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This is some quality work. It's nicely done. I would say what kind of work but I don't want to take away from the beauty of it.
But somebody here appreciates the fine line you're cutting. Well done!
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I am noticing in many of the posts here a distinct lack of intellectual rigour. A friend of mine is an engineering professor, and he notices this amongst his students too. Specifically, many of his students have an attitude where they feel they can question any scientific theory. Fine you might say. After all, isn't it good to be skeptical? Well yes, perhaps. But when he asks these students specifically why they doubt a particular theory, they can't make a logical argument to support their position. They just say it doesn't intuitively seem right. It is almost as if they don't really comprehend the reasons for their opinions. And this is amongst elite engineering students.
If I could venture my own opinion on this, I think that relativistic values (and I don't mean Einstein) have seeped into much of our educational system, and by extension to society at large. This relativistic world is a place where there is no real truth, where all opinions are relative to the self and are essentially given equal value. In such a world, taken to its extreme, there are no facts, only opinions. Everything is relative.
On the left, we see university professors pontificating from institutions founded on Greek principles of Truth and Freedom of Inquiry that these Greek principles are merely just another cultural view in their relativistic universe. And from the right, we see religious leaders cavalierly rejecting the search for Truth through rational inquiry and observation, preferring to create their own "Truth" as revealed in the bible. What both of these extremes are forgetting is that this country was founded on Greek principles of Truth and Freedom of Inquiry, that in the founders' minds, the Greeks were a primary inspiration. Separation of Church and State; Science; Universities where Truth is the primary virtue; the ideals of Justice; a three class society, in which the Middle Class (the Polis) forms the backbone of society; Democracy. These were ALL Greek values and ideals. And has been these Greek ideals that have made our country great.
If you don't believe this, I suggest you read some Greek literature. Plato. Aristotle. Aristophanes. Sophocles. In Greek literature you will find commentary on many of the most important issues our society faces. The Greeks even wrote about cultural relativism. I believe we are sorely in need of a rediscovery of Greek wisdom.
And here is my main point. I believe that many in our society are abandoning the Greek values that have made our civilization great. Values such as searching for Truth for Truth's sake through rational inquiry and logic. Skills such as rigorous logic applied in rational debate. In our modern technological society it often seems that Truth should only be pursued for material gain, for profit and not simply because it is noble to pursue the truth. Thus it is easy for business executives to ignore inconvenient facts if those facts might interfere with profit margins. And it is easy for religious followers to adopt truths that make them feel more comfortable with their chosen worldview. After all, if all Truth is relative, then why not pick an easy and comfortable Truth.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
who, by the way, tried to publish papers on their claims, but failed to pass peer-review on them
This is especially rich given the revealed suppression of publications and heretical papers in the climategate emails. Are there no depths you will not plumb to fit your theory? This is not science.
I can't even believe you still dare to bang this drum. Have you no pride?
Help stamp out iliturcy.
We're going to take tax payer money to create a body that creates "long term projections".
Okay, we've had assorted loonies out on the corner for centuries preaching the end of the world.
Now we want to nationalize them?
Don't we have BETTER things to be spending our money on?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
We in the U.S. have decided that separation of church and state is a good idea.
I wonder how long until we decide that separation of science and state is also a good idea.
This sounds like it will be an office of propaganda, not a scientific establishment.
--
Toro
The publications were published, the "heretical papers" were published. So your claim fails at the first hurdle.
Working this "first Hurdle" meme pretty hard, are you? Hurdling is for people who can't run.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
CO2 takes thousands of years to leave the atmosphere
You're off by orders of magnitude. Estimates from 7 up to about 50 years would be more in line with current state of science.
it's in my head
Just because the climate is changing doesn't mean it is caused by carbon.
Even if it is caused by carbon that doesn't mean we are producing an amount of carbon significant enough to be behind the climate change.
Even if carbon causes climate change and we are producing significant amounts of carbon doesn't mean that mandating lower carbon emissions will have any impact on the carbon output of the world, in fact I can almost guarantee that if we mandate lower carbon emissions all we will do is provide opportunity for other countries to slowly extract all of our capital goods and set up shop there.
What you are pushing for when you say we should lower carbon emissions is a lower quality of life for everyone on the planet (including the poorest). You are claiming that it is a good thing to reduce production and use less energy. The standard of proof should be exceptionally high for a claim like this.
Back in the stone age people drank clean water, breathed clean air, ate organic, free range food and they even got plenty of exercise - yet virtually no one lived past thirty. Yeah, some of that is due to advancements in culture and science, but the vast majority of it is production and energy.
Telling me that 97% of scientists agree that something is true is not the same thing as providing the evidence. Especially when the conclusion is so important to many political organizations.
A lot of you out here seem to think that government funded science is automatically conflict-of-interest-free yet private studies are always to be doubted. What you fail to realize is that politicians choose which fields of government science get funding. Some of these politicians want more power, and any piece of science that justifies expanding their power will probably get funding.
Ah yes true. In trying to be somewhat brief I was instead unclear. My point is that the harm being done to the planet by CO2 as discussed by "Climate Change" is only a small part of the problem. We need to stop getting bogged down in whether Humans are causing Climate change and start seriously looking at how Humans are making a mess of the only planet which we have available to us. Anything else is just short term thinking.
I don't post here under any other accounts.
(I did at one point create an Abe Simpson (or something similar) account so that I could post stuff like Maaatloooocck and seeeeeeeeeeex, but I never used it before I lost track of the password)
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Great, yet another federal bureaucracy. Guess what, there are plenty of professional consultants who will help with city planning, etc. Using private industry will be a lot cheaper than building another monstrous federal bureaucracy. The services will be paid for by those who use them, rather than by everyone, whether or not they are needed.
AGW had made no, none, zero long-term predictions that have been correct. Increased hurricanes? Wrong, at historical lows. Continued decrease in arctic ice? Wrong, increasing for 2-1/2 years now. Continued increase in global temperature? Wrong, decreasing trend since 1998. Rapid sea level rise? Wrong - increasing at the same rate it has done for hundreds of years. And on and on...
At the moment, AGW fanboys are saying that anything and everything is proof that they are right - hot weather, cold weather, heavy snow, you name it. The problem is, they have predicted none of these - it's all after the fact, and hence worthless. Given false assumptions, you can prove anything at all.
But, sure, have them make public predictions - put them on record. Also generate control sets (randomly generated predictions). If the AGW predictions exceed the random predictions by a substantial margin, over the course of several years, then and only then should anyone pay any attention to them.
None of this, however, is any justification for the government to establish yet another public agency.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Mismoderated - posting to undo
Yeah, only since 1865...
Moron.
Extra snow is pretty consistent with warming: http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1427 The atmosphere holds more moisture at the same relative humidity in a warmer world so precipitation events can end up stronger than usual. Snow is just one form of precipitation.
30,000 scientists? Really? http://www.youtube.com/user/greenman3610#p/a/u/2/Py2XVILHUjQ
No, not really.
Oh dear.
Agreed. However, mitigating pollution is something completely different from minimizing carbon output. If we really care about the environment, we need to stop talking about our carbon use immediately. There's nothing stopping a modern carbon based power plant from outputting clean CO2 - the same as us humans - while we take care of the real pollutants that today might be let out in the environment (heavy metals etc).
it's in my head
Already released. http://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/modelE/ and released YEARS ago. Yet still people say "release the source code oenonee!!!". So given they already have, and you still haven't noticed, what benefit has been gained by releasing the code?
Clean burning wood heating is a mature technology. Over on the east coast of the Atlantic, at 60 deg North latitude, local governments subsidise by a small amount the changeover from old-fashioned stoves to new, clean burning ones. The "clean" comes from either an afterburning chamber or a catalyst chamber. The result is more heat and less polluting gases. I still have my old fireplace, but installed an air-to-air heat pump which works fine. If and when I replace the wood heating system it will be by a small automatic pellets burner, also using clean burning technology. Oh, and logging in this country takes out less biomass from the forests than the annual regrowth.
No to see here. Move along.
Everytime the summer is hot or a storm hits the coast it is blamed on anthropogenic global warming (AGW). But when it gets cold, suddenly "wheather is not climate". When the satellites are showing no warming for the last 10 years we are told that "there is inter-decadal variability".
If we ignore the science (greenhouse fingerprint, solar forcing, ...) and just have a look at popular beliefs: Just 40 years ago the "discussion" was tilted the other way and we were anticipating the beginning of the next ice age.
Per Dr. Phil Jones:
* Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
* There has been no global warming since 1995
* Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html##ixzz0fWNe9VeK
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
"Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get." — Robert A. Heinlein
Per Dr. Phil Jones:
* Data for vital 'hockey stick graph' has gone missing
* There has been no global warming since 1995
* Warming periods have happened before - but NOT due to man-made changes
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html##ixzz0fWNe9VeK
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Given how accurate the 5 day *weather* forecasts have been, I fear that the climate service will be about as accurate
as Dick Cheney shooting lawye... er, quail with a shotgun.
Here's a question on climate that anyone with a *good* clock can independently verify- why has the earth not slowed down in rotation? More specifically, the loss of glaciation over land (that is, non-floating) is supposed to be "tremendous". Using the figures published by the IPCC, if you do the calculation of the change in Izz (the moment of angular momentum of the Earth as it turns on it's axis, as a whole, as those glaciers melt down into equilibrium ocean), you see that it's on the order of a fraction of a part per million. That sounds tiny, but it's not- it's 2.6 seconds per month per PPM _every month_, so it's 2.6 seconds the first month, 5.2 seconds the second month, 7.8 seconds the third month, etc.
So, why is it that the earth spin rate / tidal drag equations from 30 years ago continue to predict the actual spin rate of the planet to parts-per-trillion accuracy? Something is clearly wrong when a simple measurement with a quality clock no better than Harrison could have built in 1761 can show that the Earth spin rate is simply not following what it must given the claimed rates of melting.
Why not take a cue from one of the most clever Anonymous Cowards of the world? Challenge yourself to read and enjoy this interview with Professor Jones from East Anglia University! Phil Jones is without any doubt one of the most preeminent figures of the climate debate. The words of Phil Jones are an implied centerpiece of the GW discussion above. His latest words may also prove to be equally influential. However, I will leave it to you to decide how they affect the debate.
1. Professor Jones conceded the possibility that the world was warmer in medieval times than now – suggesting global warming may not be a man-made phenomenon.
2. And he said that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1250872/Climategate-U-turn-Astonishment-scientist-centre-global-warming-email-row-admits-data-organised.html?ITO=1490#ixzz0fWMcbgPU
Enjoy!
First we have the NWS, a service that predicts ten days ahead, but often (usually, where I live) can't get the prediction correct within a reasonable margin eight hours into the future, because what they do is astonishingly difficult; many things are not yet understood, and some things that are understood are so complex, so under-sampled, so skeletally simulated, that it's often not much more than hand-waving.
To this, we (apparently) want to add a service that deals with climate predictions... a domain where the global warming alarmists have amply demonstrated that forming even one hypothesis that gives rise to working laws (meaning, predictions that don't turn out to be falsifiable) is so difficult as to be beyond our present abilities.
Well, on the plus side, because the problem (predicting climate) appears to be impenetrably difficult, the agency should be able to continually increase its budget for computers and programmers. Maybe it'll grow so large we can no longer afford to mire our military in a war in the Middle East and bankrupt ourselves for the next half-century to secure access to the last big reservoir of the polluting, nonrenewable energy source of the 20th century. (that last bit was quoted almost verbatim from Tim Kreider, a very funny and cynical fellow.) Consequently we will have to actually focus on other sources of energy.
Oh, wait. We couldn't afford to engage in those wars anyway -- we borrowed that money from China. Your kids will be paying it back. Or perhaps learning to speak Chinese.
Yeah, hey. A climate agency. After all, what could it hurt? It's not like decisions taken on wrong, incomplete, or outright fabricated information might cause problems, is it?
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
A National Climate Service for the rest of US.
I like toast!
http://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
Any pilot can tell you that when dew-point meets temperature, clouds form... theres nothing mysterious about it.
Under the newly enacted PayGo, Congress must raise taxes or cut something else. Or is this merely an Executive Branch decision not subject to PayGo? I understand they're combining some existing stuff but "NOAA also plans to create new positions for six regional climate service directors." Who will pay for the six new directors? Jus' asking.
astrology.govbr/> creationism.govbr/>
All the nuts need somewhere to go.
So many examples of fail here.
1) I thought you were saying that lots of scientists were disagreeing with AGW. Therefore isn't this your proof that this is science?
2) Where are the facts for your position?
3) Simple example, Aristotle measured the diameter of the SPHERICAL earth in 390BC. He wasn't the first and he wasn't the last
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7026317.ece
“The temperature records cannot be relied on as indicators of global change,” said John Christy, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, a former lead author on the IPCC.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Ever looked at a precipitation map of Antarctica? Most of the continent is a desert.
Good point, it doesn't usually snow in a desert. Think it has something to do with moisture. In Tibet, where it gets really cold and there's moisture during the winter, it can snow a lot.