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A Warming Planet Can Mean More Snow
Ponca City, We love you writes "NPR reports that with snow blanketing much of the country, the topic of global warming has become the butt of jokes; but for scientists who study the climate, there's no contradiction between a warming world and lots of snow. 'The fact that the oceans are warmer now than they were, say, 30 years ago means there's about on average 4 percent more water vapor lurking around over the oceans than there was... in the 1970s,' says Kevin Trenberth, a prominent climate scientist. 'So one of the consequences of a warming ocean near a coastline like the East Coast and Washington, DC, for instance, is that you can get dumped on with more snow partly as a consequence of global warming.' Increased snowfall also fits a pattern suggested by many climate models, in which rising temperatures increase the amount of atmospheric moisture, bringing more rain in warmer conditions and more snow in freezing temperatures."
One question for the warmers reading. Can the theory of AGW be falsified?
If it gets hotter it is because of Global Warming.
If a hurricane hits it is because of Global Warming.
If there is a drought anywhere it is because of Global Warming.
But if we get a blizzard it is bacause of Global Climate Change.
If it floods it is because of Global Warming/Climate Change.
If the North polar ice shrinks it is Global Warming.
Yet when the Antarctic ice grows it is Climate Change.
When the Northern ice returns it is nothing to see here, move along.
When Phil Jones says there has been no warming for fifteen years, it doesn't mean anything. In fact, to date only the Moonies at the Wash. Times and Fox News consider his statement worthy of repeating. (He said it to the BBC, btw, not known as a bastion of Deniers.)
So my question is this: For a theory to be Science it must be falsifiable; so what would it take for one of you True Believers to reconsider your theory?
Democrat delenda est
The East Coast gets a bit of a blizzard (I live in DC but am from Minnesota). People start saying, "Global warming?! HA!"
...
Meanwhile Sagar Island shrinks away from rising oceans.
Meanwhile a UAB professor claims ocean acidification is yet another measurable effect of climate change.
Meanwhile Eastern Antarctica (the steadfast 'unaffected' part of Antarctica) begins to show signs of melting (via NASA and U of TX).
Feel free to keep using your local area to prove/disprove climate change. One day the facts will pile up
My work here is dung.
Is this finding facts to fit theories, or theories to fit facts?
If this had been common knowledge a couple weeks ago, Vancouver could have properly prepared for this year's Olympic games.
That and rehearsing the torch ceremony. And putting proper walls on the luge track. And checked the Zambonis for proper maintenance.
But yeah, more snow earlier would have been nice.
Didn't make this argument when it didn't snow much last few years, did they?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
I remember hearing something about no warming for the past 15 years? Weird. How can something so easy to meassure have so many variables? Idiots...
Since a shortage of fresh water is our next big crisis, doesn't that mean that global warming is a good thing?
World is fucked. Oh well, time to jerk off.
yes because there is no way that a model that predicts weather over long periods of time years/decades can have periodic variances day to day. THey were saying the same here until I pointed out 2 weeks ago it was 60 then by the next weekend it was down to 10.
every anarchist is a baffled dictator. Benito_Mussolini
A non-warming planet can also mean more snow year-to-year. And anyway it doesn't say anything about human-caused warming since we know the planet has gone through many warming and cooling cycles naturally.
Dear Global Warming,
I looked out my window, and saw another 8 inches of snow. I just wanted to tell you that you are a liar, and I hate you.
Sincerely,
ronz0o
Phil Jones has pretty much admitted most of the data is BS and nobody knows what it really means.
It all seems such a moot point to me... Honestly no matter what humans do to save or destroy the earth, in 4-5 billion years the sun is going to engulf the earth.
Save the whales, save the tree's, save yourself.... Death is the inevitable outcome of life.
On a more cheerful note I am going back to playing the Wii and enjoy my time here!
I rather thought all slashdotters knew and appreciated this simple notion. The weather is all about water moving around in the air. More energy into the water means more water into the air. More water into the air means more weather... more storms, more hurricanes, more snow... and what's really interesting is a new distribution of water. We will see deserts turn to jungles and jungles into deserts. The geologic record shows this kind of thing happening a lot. Some people think changes like these killed the dinosaurs.
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
At least now we know why they were illegally denying FOI requests for their data.
UN climate body admits 'mistake' on Himalayan glaciers
How many more "mistakes", falsifications, and fabrications need to be exposed before this scam goes buh-bye?
You scientists are confusing me more and more each day with all these sayings. I'll adapt to whatever the environment we'll end up with. I might end up looking like a frog but I bet the girls are still sexy in their bumpy skins.
What does not constitute proof of global warming to these madmen?
an ill wind that blows no good
the best cable news team in America.
I am officially gone from
If it turns out to be "Climate Change" instead, and specifically "Global Cooling", that would indeed falsify Global Warming.
Also worth mentioning: Most of the actions we could take to reduce Global Warming are things we should be doing anyway. Fossil fuels won't last forever, and corn ethanol is actually taking food out of people's mouths.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
according to y'all, anything can be caused by gorebull warming
It's possible that warming caused by increasing CO2 concentrations could cause more snowfall. It's probably true that warming will increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. That's a reasonable assumption. Whether this leads to more snow or not is not nearly as certain.
The general circulation of the atmosphere can be described by three circulations in each hemisphere. The Hadley Cell is a thermally direct circulation and is the most equatorward cell in either hemisphere. The strongest of the cells is the Hadley Cell. Moving poleward, the Ferrel Cell is a thermally indirect circulation and is weaker than the Hadley Cell. And around the poles, the Polar Cell is a thermally direct circulation that is weaker than the Ferrel Cell. These cells aren't found by looking at the day to day weather but instead are planetary scale circulations that show up in long term means.
The tropics have a surplus of heat. That is to say, more radiation enters from the sun than is lost due to outgoing longwave radiation. The poles have a deficit of heat, meaning that more outgoing longwave radiation is lost to space than incoming shortwave radiation is received from the sun. To keep the system in balance, heat is transported poleward from the equator.
Observations and climate models indicate that the greatest warming will occur at the poles. This means that there will be less of a thermal gradient between the tropics and poles.
Mid-latitude cyclones are responsible for a substantial amount of snowfall in the United States and many heavy snow events. These cyclones exist in the atmosphere to transport thermal energy poleward and help to maintain the energy budget in the atmosphere.
If the thermal gradient between the tropics and the poles becomes weaker due to polar warming, this could result in fewer or weaker mid-latitude cyclones. Because mid-latitude cyclones are responsible for much of the snow in the United States and many of the heavy snow events, if they decrease in number or intensity, it may result in an overall decrease in snowfall.
This is conjecture and shouldn't be taken as fact. However, the point that the effects of warming are far more complex than just an increase in water vapor is correct. The effect on the general circulation of the atmosphere is very important and could easily negate any increase in snowfall caused by increasing water vapor concentrations.
The idea that there is more water vapor in the air is actually quite plausible to me (as a Global Warming denier), but suggesting that the warm water off the East Coast caused it is a joke. Both major storms came from the Southwest, to Midwest region of the US.
Global warming activists must have loved the Fall, when it was unusually warm, but now they are quickly looking for ways to twist the unusually cold and wintery winter into a Global Warming activity. The scientists making these claims really need to quit tossing out pieces of the puzzle when they make their grand claims.
I also have always found it amusing that the doom and gloom theories about the future of the Earth in 40-50 years when we are still unable to accurately predict the weather even a day in advance.
The best way to avoid suffering global upheaval is to quit worrying about "global warming" entirely, and vote down measures that are sold on the basis of "fixing" it, especially global taxes, carbon taxes, etc.
A guy I know ran with this today and was going on and on about it, going off about how climate-change advocates were such idiots and how this was a huge slap in the face for them, etc etc. He tried to sound really educated about it, talking laws of thermodynamics and saturation of 14.77 micron absorbtion and so on. I countered all his points but he wouldn't let up, of course selectively responding to the stuff I countered with and bringing up some new zany thing each time. I ran out of energy to deal with him, and was simply reminded of why I never really liked the guy.
It's unfortunate to let him have the last word, as of course all his fan-club will read the thread (I confess... this was on Facebook) and of course they will all just see it as a victory and continue to reinforce each others' delusion... but I really don't see how I could ever change his or any of their minds on the subject. My only real hope is that all these curmudgeons with their lazy conservative and antiquated views on things will eventually die off in time for the newer generation of educated youth to step in and hopefully turn things around in time.
To some extent I think the question of whether the globe is warming (or climate is changing, or whatever terminology comes next) is secondary.
Whether or not it's already happening in any measurable way today, I think we can all agree that it *could* happen in the future, so we (as a country, and a global society, and a species) need to be careful that it doesn't. To that end, studying human civilization's side effects on the biosphere seems obviously worthwhile.
I think the original batch of climate scientists were well-intentioned but did themselves (and us) a disservice by overplaying the initial data. They saw a potential problem in the future and tried to rally the public by saying "it's already happening!", but when that ended up not being very obviously provable, people started dismissing the entire concern. That, to me, is a huge mistake.
No one really knows what happens with Global Warming–the whole point is that we _don't_. What we do know, though, is that there are a lot of very important variables to Earth's climate that we're screwing with, and we have _no idea_ what we're doing. Heck, we might make our planet better for our species; it's not outside the realm of possibility. But just the uncertainty alone should give you pause.
The thing many people overlook (the global warming people especially) is that if you go back and look at ice core samples and prehistoric patterns of glaciation, the current weather patterns look eerily similar to what has happened before.
Specifically: initial warming leads to the melting of the permafrost, which leads to a massive release of CO2 into the atmosphere. This promotes runaway global warming -- which unfortunately means greater ocean temperatures and much more evaporation. This means more rain and more SNOW.
Additionally, it also tends to disrupt ocean currents and the rotation of heat from the equator to the poles (i.e. the vast majority of Europe is at Latitudes higher than Canada is -- and if it weren't for the warm ocean currents they would have equally frigid weather).
The basic problem is that if you get enough extended period of heavy snow, you may eventually get enough snowpack to resist melting well into the summer months. This is exacerbated by the fact that snow, being white, reflects a HUGE amount of light/heat back into space. In essence, due to snow fall, cold weather is somewhat self-perpetuating.
Eventually you reach a situation where the amount of extra snow that falls in the winter is too great in certain latitudes to EVER completely melt in the winter -- and then things start going down hill from there. Thanks to the fact that evaporation / refreezing and then remelting acts as a wonderful method for desalinization of seawater, you also end up playing merry havoc with the ocean currents as well (and end up with much more coastal ice formation as the freezing point of the fresh water run off is much higher than that of pure seawater). Eventually the currents supplying heat to the North Atlantic basically shut down altogether and things go to hell in a hand basket (i.e. hell freezes over!).
The point that most of the "global warming" alarmists miss is that data shows that in the past both average global temperatures *and* CO2 levels peaked at levels significantly HIGHER than they are right now -- immediately before the planet plunged into the next ice age.
People need to realize that ALL of recorded human history has occurred in the current warm interglacial period -- which is only the most recent one. Furthermore, they need to realize that these warm interglacials of 20K-25K years are the EXCEPTION not the rule -- with ice ages of 100K years or more being the norm (with the interglacial periods between them).
While the movie "The Day After Tomorrow" was largely pure BS, there were some grains of actual science behind it (albeit they sped up the time table of events by several orders of magnitude to make it exciting).
specious /spis/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [spee-shuhs] Show IPA
–adjective
1. apparently good or right though lacking real merit; superficially pleasing or plausible: specious arguments.
2. pleasing to the eye but deceptive.
3. Obsolete. pleasing to the eye; fair.
...under a layer of ice, did the wooly mamoths drive SUVs?
and even *if* the earth is warming, who are we to say that "right here and right now" is the "right" temperature for the earth?
The only measurable data that we have only goes back about 150 years, and even then its been manipulated as exposed by climategate. Temperature probes placed by asphault parking lots or by air conditioner vents have been scewing the data for years.
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
EVERYTHING can be rationalized as something that can happen with global warming.
Everything and anything, no matter how absurd that happens, can be used to substantiate rogue pseudo-theories like global warming, which are intentionally vague, and fail to make specific falsifiable predictions about what should happen and what should not happen and when.
If it were a real scientific theory, there would be no room for ad hoc explanations as events occur, that they somehow "further solidify" the proposition. If global warming were proper valid theory, these things would already have been predicted as things that would happen, as results of the theory.
Global warming can mean colder winters and less heat during summers.
Global warming can mean oceans freezing.
Global warming can mean an ice age.
Global warming can mean hell freezes.
Global warming can mean record low temperatures
Global warming can mean higher crime rates
Global warming can mean more sex
Global warming can mean higher unemployment
Global warming can mean more recessions
Global warming can mean more housing meltdowns
Global warming can mean higher gas prices
Global warming can mean more militant terrorists
Global warming can mean more wars
Global warming can mean nuclear proliferation
Global warming can mean more violence in schools
Global warming can mean pigs fly.
Global warming can mean earth spontaneously implodes.
Global warming can mean more blackholes
Global warming can mean more attention from extraterrestrials
Global warming can mean increased cockroach populations
Global warming can mean monkeys conquer humans for world domination
Climate Change is real... This climate is called WINTER. The next change we'll experience is called SPRING... Move along Folks, nothing to see here.
...that it only takes 4 idiots for a post to become (Score: 5, Insightful)
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
I read recently that the snow line (in the northern hemisphere) is moving south. It's a substantial claim. It's not undisputed.
If I'm not missing something, if there is more snow, there is more reflectivity of incoming light, meaning less heating of the lower atmosphere. I would still think this is a corrective measure by the earths atmosphere for warming.
It's bullshit that science is divided politically, with the left typically defending warming, and the right countering it.
Science is the search for facts, not the bending of data for political aims.
Disgusting...
The bigger question everyone fails to ask... Is all this crap we inject into the atmosphere good for us humans? Most likely not! So why not change for that reason alone, regardless if climate change is true or not.
Iraq billions
http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/climategate-30-year-timeline/
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
sremick, you hit the nail on the head, but I'm afraid your point is going to be drowned out by the noise.
It seems that some of these Slashdotter AGW deniers arguing about climate is a lot like them arguing about the best way to make love to a woman. A lot of heartfelt opinions but very little understanding or enlightenment. And most of their information comes from greasy websites full of whores. And hollering the loudest means you're the smartest.
It proves that knowing how to overclock a cpu does not require any understanding of science or the scientific method. That setting up an Apache server in your mom's basement does not require the ability to discern truth from lies or shit from shinola.
It looks like 2010 is going to be the year of climate ignorance on the desktop. Roger Bacon and Isaac Newton would weep.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Freedom is Slavery
War is Peace
if global warming leads to more snow in the short term / winter season due to increased moisture levels, then isn't it possible the ground albedo (solar reflectivity) will be increased enough to further reduce solar heating / trigger an ice age?
In a sick and twisted sort of way, I hold in my heart a secret hope that the increased snowfall will reflect more sunlight into space, causing a significant amount of global cooling.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
So where does El Niño fit into all of this? Doesn't El Niño better explain this current weather variation?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Hacked emails showing less than ethical behavior from prominent scientists. check
United Nations reports with future weather predictions based on he said she said data rather actual scientifically vetted data. check
A large number of recording stations being taken off line around the world in remote areas that tend to record lower temperatures (due to costs), but retaining stations in urban areas that are easily affect by the city heat island affect. check
Satelilte data that does not back up the "sky is falling" temperature predictions, but show a much slow temperature trend upwards. Check
Watching the Church of Global Warming froth at the mouth on the news at the audacity of mother nature for dumping record snows and low temperatures around the globe. Priceless
I could buy into global warming if it weren't for all the douche bag polititians using it as an excuse for a power grab and if the scientists would pull their collective heads out of their asses and conduct all the, you know science above the table in an organized manner. Until they do its all bullshit and hearsay.
One question for the libertarians reading. Can the theory of magical free markets be falsified?
If stocks go up, it is because of the free market.
If stocks go down, it is the free market correcting itself.
If wages stagnate for the majority while steadily increasing for an elite minority, it's because the free market works in mysterious ways.
But if we have a mortgage bubble, it's the government's fault for letting the federal reserve print all that extra money.
If people get what they want, the free market gave it to them.
If a government purchases something, it makes the free market cry.
Yet when someone's retirement portfolio gets set back a year or more, they simply were not shrewd with their investments. Hey, it's a free market!
When deregulation is consistently followed by exploitation and gross contempt for the public it is simply the market deriving value for its shareholders.
When there's a near complete meltdown followed by a recession, it is because true free markets have never really been tried because of liberal regulations.
So my question is this: For a theory to be Science it must be falsifiable; so what would it take for one of you True Believers to reconsider your theory?
... we have remarkably little snow this year. So far I hardly had to get out my snow shovel. For the bit of dustings we had I just use a broom and have the sun do the rest of the work. Keeping my fingers crossed it stays that way. In comparison the winter last year was brutal.
Go pedal your crazy elsewhere, Chicken Little.
With apoplogies, Bret!
It's fake, socialism doesn't work, gays aren't normal, the founders of America weren't atheists that hated religion, we didn't spontaneously evolve form ooze, and no matter how many times you spout your crap it won't come true.
I don't know about you unfortunately, but I expect to be able to have chemists tell me more about chemistry than a behavioural psychologist can - not everything in science is equal. An economist for instance may consider themselves a scientist. A petition is meaningless here - what would be meaningful is an argument convincing enough that climate scientists agree with it.
People can say they have found a cure for AIDS, won the Falklands War by advocating biological warfare, won a Nobel Prize, been elected to the British House of Lords or all kinds of things but unless experts in those areas agree with them their opinion is meaningless. You have been conned by a very audacious trick of professional confidence tricksters - that of pretending that others are pulling a trick themselves. It is a high paying profession now to fly around the world pretending that scientists are freezing their arses of in Antarctica to fabricate data when instead they could be fabricating at home where it is warm.
Believe the climate scientists, not the PR firms paid to tell you otherwise, and not people like Monckton and Plimer that say what sells instead of what is found.
that the AGW true believers aren't intentionally preventing contrary opinions from being put into peer reviewed journals.
Appeal to authority is a fallacy. If authority mattered the earth would still be the center of the universe. When the authority is preventing contrary opinions from being considered they are no longer an authority.
The hockey stick is a lie. It's been exposed. I find it hilarious that "Global Warming" believers were first whining about the term "Climate Change" being used and now they've fully embraced it. They will embrace whatever term is most socially acceptable. Nobody doubts that the climate changes. We have days, we have seasons. Why would things not shift on a larger time scale as well?
People ignorantly dump their time, effort and money into cults all the time while the people at the top get rich. The idiots at the bottom don't prove the lies at the top.
Work Safe Porn
It's snowing on DC. Then it's too hot at the Olympics and all the snow is melting. Now there's too much snow at the Olympics?...
There's global warming in DC! Everyone move to Vancouver where you'll be safe from global warming, because sometimes it's global cooling there and the two should cancel each other out.
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/moisture-holding-capacity-air-d_281.html
... where I live we have had really bad winters the past couple of years. This year the winter has been really good (warm with little snowstorms). Say what you will -- I'm not complaining.
The IPCC document has be shown to be a joke. Everytime an error is found in the IPCC Al Gore should get a hemorrhoid.
That said, take what's measurable, measure it. Take the data and vet it. Making scientific theory a cause-celebre can only bring trouble. And it has.
Phil Jones doesn't know where the weather stations are that were used or where his data went.
Arguments are generally derived from premises. It doesn't matter how many pages are written if they are based on a false premise then the entire argument is false.
It's amazing how many people still want to believe this nonsense because there are so many believers. 1 billion Muslims can't be wrong, right?
It's too bad they are base their views on the same lies. Whether 1 person or a thousand believe a lie, it's still a lie.
It's amazing how quickly "Climate Change" went from a derided term used by "deniers" to being the term of choice for the true believers.
Leprechauns paint the grass green. The grass is green. Therefore leprechauns exist.
Work Safe Porn
I wonder how the counter arguments would be if things were phrased "Climate change due to increase in ocean temperatures" It's not sound-bitey enough. I suppose the challenge for you would be to come up with a reasonable climate model that predicts independently of ocean temperature. Measuring the temperature of the ocean isn't the easiest thing in the world, but its a reasonable undertaking. What is hard is that we can't have a control group to experiment on. That should kill the whole thing, right? Right?
I'll tell you what a warming planet means:
- More/less heath
- More/less snow
- More/less rain
- Rising/lower sea waters
- More earthquakes
- More volcano eruptions
- More girls on slashdot
Yeah, I'm confused.
What I know is that:
We breathe oxygen/nitrogen and exhale CO2
Trees breathe CO2 and exhale oxygen
Plant more trees or avoid breathing.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
The "debate" doesn't exist, it's just PR firms and confidence tricksters making money by telling people what they want to hear.
The scandals here are as relevant as thinking that whatever a police photographer paid for lunch after taking a photo of a crime scene has any bearing on the murder they photographed.
If you think scientists are all evil tricksters then go talk to an old farmer or someone that has been involved with a ski resort for decades.
If anyone is stupid enough to trust Fox News they are probably too stupid to understand any scientific explanation posted.
If it gets hotter it is because of Global Warming.
The consistent and scientific standard you're looking for is if mean surface temperature decreases over time. Global Warming, by contrast, is indicated by a rising mean surface temperature over time.
AGW is more complicated, probably a topic to wait on for people who haven't digested the above, but essentially comes down to trying to doing accounting for different warming contributions based on related measurements. The closer the accounting is to adding up, the more credible AGW looks. The farther, less.
what would it take for one of you True Believers to reconsider your theory?
A complete investigation on the part of each individual is a rather time-consuming proposition, so a lot of us use heuristics. One of mine tends to be that opponents of AGW are often doing things like:
(a) making no distinction between individual weather events and climate
(b) confusing the term "Global Warming" with " monotonic temperature/ice thickness increase across every point of the globe
(c) asserting there exists some input or dynamic that accounts for most of the warming and implying that climate scientists supposedly have ignored it, when in fact it turns out that there exist climate scientists who have considered and done the accounting on said input or dynamic (see increased solar output)
Now, I'm not a true believer, so maybe my bar is lower than some others, but I'd say that if I can go 2-3 years where less than 10-20% of the AGW criticism I read has one of these features (or similar ones: the list I gave is hardly exhaustive), I might start to give the opposition as much credibility as the proponents.
Tweet, tweet.
Do you have a legitimate explanation for the following: from around 1200 AD to 1890 AD there was less than a .1 degree Celsius change (+/-) in the mean global temperature, followed by (as soon as industrialization took over every developing/developed nation) a .8 degree Celsius increase in the mean global temperature from 1900-2000. After nearly a millenium of virtually no change, it increases eightfold coincidentally when humans begin polluting the atmosphere?
I'll say it yet again... these "Scientist" don't have a fucking clue. I'm not saying we aren't warming the planet. Without a doubt, us digging up shit that's been buried for millions of years, burning it, and dumping it's byproducts into the atmosphere, simply HAS to be a bad thing. But for these supposed experts to pretend like they have a fucking clue what's really going on is ridiculous.
Reminds me of an old Persian (/Indian/Chinese/Turkish - it's one of those popular ones) story -
A villager goes to visit a wise man to gain wisdom. As he walks into the wise man's home, he sees him blowing into his cupped palms.
"Why are you blowing into your hands?", he asks.
"To warm them", comes the reply.
A little while later, the wise man's wife serves soup. The wise man blows into it.
"Why are you blowing into your soup?", the villager asks.
"To cool it", is the reply.
The villager finishes his soup and hurries to leave. When the wise man asks him why he won't stay, he says "I can't trust a man who blows both hot and cold."
The moral isn't that one can't trust scientists who claim global warming can have a local cooling effect. It is that, despite all indignant incredulity, the same cause can have different effects in different contexts and scales.
Karma fed to this user will be promptly burnt. Be warned; be wary.
I don't fucking care anymore. You can run around like chickens with your heads cut off and ruin all scientific debate. Not like there is a science that hasn't been completely poisoned by politics and greed at this point.
There are very few scientists that have the guts to say that they may not know something. I thought that was the point to science. They are all too afraid to lose that grant money or corporate sponsorship. Science isn't about a scientist's career. It is about finding the truth. Cooperate. Listen and address valid criticism. And can we stop with the poorly veiled Holocaust references. A "Climate Change denier" doesn't want to destroy the world or your family or Jewish people. Act your fucking age.
One final thought: stop pretending that environmentalism is altruistic. That's complete bullshit. Environmentalism is about the survival of humans, and honestly, that's the way it should be.
Reading these comments is making me lose hope for the climate and humanity. Everyday i feel myself becoming more and more against the current style of civilization and the internet that validates peoples idiocy. I, an anarcho/syndicalist/collectivist always used to make fun of my Anarchoprimitivist friends, but now im really starting to see their point. With technology comes great power, and as we all know with great power comes great responsibility, i think the human brain evolved wrong. It should have first learned to check it self before it wrecked itself, but instead it learned to build shit. Man i love B.C. bud.
When your "peers" appear to have been actively engaged in hiding their data from public scrutiny, actively engaged in quashing any dissenting papers from getting published (including threats to publishers), and have appeared to have outright lied about positions and movements of temp recording data, I'd say we need to ask "Who Watches the Watchers".
It makes absolutely no difference how scientists appear to have acted because their results can be objectively checked. If Greenpeace paid me to say that e=mc^2, it wouldn't change the correctness of the theory one bit.
If scientists falsified temperature data it would be trivially easy to check. The data is available from the national weather services to anyone willing to sign the agreements and pay the fees. Anyone can watch the watchers. Yet all we get are discussions of "appearances" and insinuations.
Now... this doesn't even address the insidious side effect of this behavior... that no new research in to theories which are counter to the current group think get funding.
There is absolutely no evidence that this is the case. In fact, if you read up the thread you'll find a petition that claims to represent 31,000 working (in other words, funded) scientists who run counter to the "group think." Can't have it both ways.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
People who study a lot and who often use their imaginations (like artists) are often the easiest to hypnotize (and the most susceptible to psychotic illness). One reason is that they get conditioned to focus tightly one one thing to the exclusion of others. Concentration and exclusion are fundamental to a hypnotic state. Another reason people who study a lot can be suggestible is that they are more prone to authority (look for approval from teachers , profs etc). Any good hypnotist knows their greatest asset is an authoritarian manner. Of course people can be intelligent in healthy ways but the people who fall into their intellectualism to the exclusion of other aspects of their psyche are lopsided ( a reason they are often neurotic).
Many people have absorbed warming theories uncritically because some authority (an academic or artist etc) told them it was "settled science" when it wasn't. Experts also offered up congested articles that were scientism more than science, and like art consumers who get bamboozled into accepting dung on a museum floor as art people went along with studies as long as they sounded scientific.
AGW is a perfect illustration of the naked emperor syndrome. Lots and lots of people have insisted the emperor was not naked when in fact he was. We live in an age of junk science where money/fame has more influence on individuals than a desire to know the truth.
what crap. a theory of everything and a theory of nothing. the tawdry spectacle of a collapsing belief system. the world is not warming and obama is not the messiah.
Can global warming create more snow? I believe it can. Really, in a nutshell, global warming = more energy in the system. That's it. Personally I believe the planet is getting warmer. Note I said "Believe", not know.
Here's my issue. This issue has been politicized by people on both sides, although primarily the left from where I sit. It has been turned into a religion by people like Al Gore. There has been a lot of talk by idiot politicos who have made statements that no snow in 2005 was proof of AGW. Then this year the record snow is proof of AGW. Both statements are complete shit; a single season of extreme weather means fuck-all. There is proof of the MWP. There is not proof of the MWP being a global phenomenon, however, there is also no proof that it isn't. If AGW actually exists, then why the fucking with the data? Why the need to include non-reviewed and non-substantiated data in government reports? If the science is sound it should stand on it's own without augmentation.
You know who really pisses me off? Al "the debate is over" Gore. Al "we use 10 times the energy as the average family but buy carbon credits" Gore. Al "Fly around the planet in a privet jet but you need to drive a Prius at all time" Gore. Well, really? Fuck you Al. The science is not settled and you're a fucking hypocrite. AGW is a theory, just as relativity is a theory; there is a lot of evidence to support it, but it's still not complete. And I don't want to get started on the ponzi scheme that is carbon credits. Either producing excess CO2 is bad or it's not; buying someone else's allotment (that they probably weren't gong to use any way) is a crock. The excess energy you are using is still making more CO2 than necessary. Please explain why George Fucking Bush lives in a seriously eco-friendly house and you live in an energy wasting mansion with all the shit that comes out of your mouth?
When "scientists" and politicians say the science is settled about something as complex as global weather systems my bullshit meter pegs at eleven. The climate models need a lot more work. The accuracy of collected data is in some cases questionable. This doesn't mean that all the data is bad, but the theory cannot be presented as settled and complete at this point.
My over all point is that the politicians need to shut the hell up, because then know about as much about climate change as they do about finance: not very fucking much.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5576670191369613647&hl=en#
"What? So because there have been changes in the climate in the past, then dumping half the carbon ever stored in oil and coal over millions of years back into the air in the space of a couple of hundred won't change it? Some people are so determined to believe something, that there will never ever be enough evidence to convince them otherwise. I wonder if you're one of them? Ever seen a credible peer-reviewed paper that disproves CO2-driven climate change to weigh up against the hundreds that support it? All during this thread the "Skeptics" drag their tired little objections in, probably gleaned from some right wing radio show. How many skeptics actually have taken the time to tead the IPCC report? http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.htm The tempature is going up, the ppm of CO2 is going up, the sea level is going up. As it is patently true, temperature changes occur based on forcings, the nibbling arguments don't change the main point. They're characteristic of a political movement that has no defense, only offense. My own feeling is that they feel that their wasteful lifestyles based on cheap, high density energy fuel are threatened and this is a knee-jerk survival response, trying to prove that it isn't happening when, in truth, it is. With a collection of vague positions on the subject they attempt to refute the scientific facts with hearsay, typos, 'conspiracy' theories, mistakes, and phony 'news' reports that in the end only serve to tarnish the reputation of those who persist in the folly. Some scientists have models that suggest that even if we were able to limit our CO2 to 350 ppm, the delays in the system and the effects of climate change cannot be stopped. Who do you choose as your expert on Climate? Rush Limberger or The American Geophysical Union? What will you say to your great grandchildren who ask.. "you mean, the scientists TOLD you it was going to happen and you doubted them?"
Please have respect for people with different abilities, especially children.
So one of the consequences of a warming ocean near a coastline like the East Coast and Washington, DC, for instance, is that you can get dumped on with more snow partly as a consequence of global warming
Like last week? That came from the West.
The game.
World is fine. Time to jerk off anyway.
I don't know about you unfortunately, but I expect to be able to have chemists tell me more about chemistry than a behavioural psychologist can - not everything in science is equal. An economist for instance may consider themselves a scientist.
I am curious what degree you think the climate "scientists" have, and how it applies to what they are doing (statistics.)
"His name was James Damore."
"As a chess grand master, what's your view on this country's war strategy?"
"Send in the clergy! They can move diagonally!"
What if we did everything environmentalists want, polluted less, rode our bikes more, bought from local farms, conserved energy, and it all turned out that global warming was never really happening. We would have made a healthier planet for nothing. If we dont do anything and its wrong, we are still stuck with unhealthy habits, but at least we arent dead right? Now what if its right? we do the enviromental things, and cool! we stopped it! we dont do anything.....we die. do you really want to take the risk?
I already commented in this topic, but the parent really got to the heart of the matter: climatology is not some black box that you can look inside solely by having a PhD in it -- that would make it indistinguishable from a pseudoscience. After all, you can always claim someone can't judge your little cult because they haven't achieved a high enough level...
REAL science opens itself up for review. REAL science is, in principle, understandable by anyone intelligent enough to understand another science. If you expect others to believe your claims just because you're the top dogs of your field, you're not doing science.
(And frankly, we do make people get way too much of the wrong kind of experience to become a surgeon, and we pay for it in health care costs and losing business to foreign countries who can show the same results for less money.)
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
unless it can be plausibly argued that it is a consequence of Global Warming. Then Weather is Climate just fine.
global warming is a non-issue. if it's happening AND if the effects turn out to be bad it can easily be fixed. just set off a few nukes or launch some dust into orbit on a rocket and we'll have a nice bit of cooling. btw how much GW can be attributed to all those nuclear arms treaties.
what we should worry about is global cooling, which has happened many times in the past.
a decent ice age and we're pretty much bleeped.
Climate change is an ongoing fact of life since our planet was founded. The fact that climate change is debatable is a rather idiotic sign of our times. That being said, the current snow fall in america is most likely due to el nino. Like the mid nineties. From my memory, we also had more snow in the seventies in the northeast than we have had this winter. I remember 4' in front of my house as a kid in '77 CLIMATE CHANGE WILL OCCUR. WE MAY AFFECT IT, BUT THE EARTH IS NOT A MUSEUM AND THE ONLY CONSTANT IN LIFE IS CHANGE.
A detailed study was done of “the relationships of the storm frequencies to seasonal temperature and precipitation conditions” for the years “1901–2000 using data from 1222 stations across the United States.” The 2006 study, Temporal and Spatial Characteristics of Snowstorms in the Contiguous United States [PDF] (Chagnon et al., 2006) found we get more snow storms in warmer years:
Results for the November–December period showed that most of the United States had experienced 61%– 80% of the storms in warmer-than-normal years. Assessment of the January–February temperature conditions again showed that most of the United States had 71%–80% of their snowstorms in warmer-than-normal years. In the March–April season 61%–80% of all snowstorms in the central and southern United States had occurred in warmer-than-normal years. Thus, these comparative results reveal that a future with wetter and warmer winters, which is one outcome expected (National Assessment Synthesis Team 2001), will bring more snowstorms than in 1901–2000. Agee (1991) found that long-term warming trends in the United States were associated with increasing cyclonic activity in North America, further indicating that a warmer future climate will generate more winter storms.
Where does all the money go from both side of the equation?
I would bet that the same guy is making money on both sides.
I also remember many of the same scientists claiming global cooling in the 1970s and how we were going to have another ice age.
Our scientific community needs to be given money to perform science and not based on their results.
from around 1200 AD to 1890 AD there was less than a .1 degree Celsius change (+/-) in the mean global temperature as measured by proxies that incorrectly "record" todays temperatures
There. Fixed that for you.
"His name was James Damore."
More snow is good. Living in Alaska I appreciate skiing and other snow sports a lot.
And I don't mind shoveling it or driving in it either.
Maybe the out of towners will complain less and drive better too.
Aaaaaaaaaaallllllllll Goooooooooooooorrrrrrrrrre!!1!11!ELEVENTYONE!!1!11!
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
The reason why the oceans are rising is because we simply have too much human ballast on the land. The oceans need to continue to rise, that way, we can shed the ballast and float back up. And by shed, I mean, WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!
If a ball falls down it is because of gravity.
If it bounces back up it is because of gravity.
If comet flies into the solar system it is because of gravity.
If the comet slingshots around jupiter and permanently exits the solar system it is because of gravity.
If the tide rises it is because of gravity.
If the tide recedes it is because of gravity.
See how easy it is to gloss over the details and make something perfectly normal seem contradictory?
No, because none of those items were contradictory. A ball bounces up and down and eventually stops. A comet orbits around a central body until it meets an object that disrupts the orbit. Once you know tides are caused by the pull of a single object which circles the earth, it's pretty damn obvious tides will rise and fall with regularity approximating the rotation of said object.
Even glossing over the details the fundamental reason shines through. When you claim that any climatic action is proof of a theory yet you can predict nothing then I would say you have not found that shining reason yet, and you need to keep looking before saying you are 100% sure of what you know.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Mark Twain, I'll fuckup: "knowledge should be a light post to be used by a traveler to illuminate their journey, but is also used by a drunkard exiting a tavern".
The real question is are you "using knowledge as a guide" or "something to keep you from falling on your face" or "something to relieve yourself on"? It probably answers more than dawkins and the rest.....
All of this hand wringing over whether AGW is real or not is pointless. Humans (and all other animals, by extension) are driven by incentives and punishment. One really bad + long medieval age where state and church conspired to make life miserable for the masses and democracy becomes the golden ideal in Europe. As a race, we tend not to react until the danger is real and present (in your face). How many of us would have been happy with a war on terror at the cost of hundreds of billions before 9/11? 3000 people died (which is a damn shame) before it became a national priority. Yet...an order of magnitude more die in road accidents every year and no one pushes for a 1-trillion dollar bill to fix that. Why -- because it doesnt really punish us enough statistically to consider alternatives. More importantly, it doesnt hurt the powerful enough. If 9/11 had occurred in bum-fuck Missouri, how many would have been on the war-against-terror bandwagon? They materially hurt the richest pocketbooks in the world and the response was immediate.
A couple of centigrades here or there and a few extra hurricanes or snowstorms are not enough to move humanity to change their primary energy source. Most people simply do not have the resources to care about that. They are fucking busy trying to stay alive and above the proverbial water. The punishment (or incentive) has to be significant enough to cover the cost of that migration. Mark my words --- people will have to start dying verifiably due to climate change AND the powers to be will have to be materially impacted by the same before anything meaningful will happen. How many millions die in genocides and famines and epidemics in poor nations? How many of us are moved to do anything substantial about that? Compare that to how many we "think" are going to die in the next 10-20 years due to AGW. Fire + Ass = Run...otherwise it is watch the show, sympathize, analyze, repeat the platitudes, and move on.
So the only way AGW will have any serious push behind it is when the richest in the world are materially impacted. If a statistical fluke led to paralyzing storms in NY, London, Berlin, and Shanghai at once for several years, I will bet my ass that AGW will suddenly become real and mainstream - science be damned.
The bigger question everyone fails to ask... Is all this crap we inject into the atmosphere good for us humans? Most likely not! So why not change for that reason alone, regardless if climate change is true or not.
No-one is saying we should not reduce pollution. That is obvious since as you say, it's not healthy for anyone.
The question is what is C02? Under normal conditions this is not really a pollutant, since animals breathe it out and trees use it to live.
Then the question is, is this non-polllutant a pollutant just by virtue of there being too much of it? That is the real debate, around which trillions of dollars flows (from both sides).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe Vancouver can host the winter olympics then!
"NPR reports that with snow blanketing much of the country, the topic of global warming has become the butt of jokes; but for scientists who study the climate, there's no contradiction between a warming world and lots of snow."
The above statement is wrong. The IPCC's latest report said exactly the opposite of this statement. The computer models showed a global decrease in precipitation due to the warming of the earth's atmosphere, not an increase. An increase in global humidity would cause increased cloud cover at lower altitudes, which has been proven years ago causes a decrease in surface temperature due to the refection effect.
I read the report. If you take the IPCC to be the default standard for climate change, then you have to believe that there has not been an increase in snow coverage. The white stuff you see coming down outside is actually just common "Albino Brain Chiggers". They are harmless. Put some tin foil on your head and they will stay out of your ears. Also, they are caused by global warming.
Nothing to see here.
How many people have posted here claiming that ocean acidification is proof of AGW? I am a chemist, and the only thing that ocean acidification proves is that there is a higher level of CO2 in the atmosphere. But this discounts the warming: if anything the ocean should be less acidic since warm water is less soluble to CO2.
Proof of global warming I will accept:
Build a climate model that can take data from the 1900s and predict the climate of the 1950s (this has not been done). If that model predicts climate change, I will believe it. But sadly, our current climate models are as speculative as stock market models, and we all know how well those worked.
There is a difference between the potential disappearance of Northern sea ice near the North Pole and fleeting and temporary growth in seasonal sea ice around Antarctica. In the former case, the sea ice has remained intact for hundreds of thousands of years, while in the case of the latter, the sea ice disappears every year. And before you assert that Antarctic land ice has been growing, I would point out to you that the parts of Antarctica that may have had snow growth are mountainous. In the lower regions, the land ice is disappearing.
Your comment demonstrates possibly willful ignorance of the detailed complexity of physical systems. The apparent growth of opinions such as yours demonstrates a dangerous decay in the level of intellectual rigor in our society. You should be ashamed of yourself.
This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
Been watching computer geeks argue about stuff they have no real expertise in for 30 years. Lots of heat and passion, but in the end, that's all there is. This is yet another /. post designed to generate site traffic. Let it rest, get back to writing code, where you can truly change the world for the better.
Winters like this (and the last) are more like the winters 30 years ago - we usually had snow from mid October through late March, with much more snow than now ...
Back then, climate models predicted that a human-made climate change was causing a new ice age ...
When we had no "real" winter for several years, global warming was causing the non-existent winter.
Now, global warming is causing "extreme" winters (which still have quite a way to go until they're back to what winter was in the 70s) because there is more moisture in the air. Yet, droughts don't suffer the same fate of too much moisture in the air ... WTF?
D@mn, scientists have learned a lot from politicians, namely that people's memory hardly ever extends beyond 1-2 years back (if that far).
When we get more snow, more of the earth will have white color, and reflect more sun, cause global cooling. So the snow is a way for earth to defend itself against global warming. Humans has no big influence in the big puzzle, where the sun is the main cause of global warming.
Some scientists says, that if all roofs +/- 30 degrees from equator was painted white, we would reflect so much sunlight that global temperature would go down by some degreess. Not parts of a degree, but way more.
When all this is said, it is more or less a fact that we will have a new small ice-age around 2035 when the sun activity will be at its lowest for a few hundred years.
Doesn't seem that way.
In fact, 1934 was colder than 1932 or 1936.
1. It snowed 3 inches in South Alabama this weekend less than 50 miles from the Gulf of Mexico.
2. Temperature has more to do with the SUN -- our source of HEAT.
3. Volcano eruptions go up, temperatures go down. Volcano eruptions don't happen, temperatures go up.
4. Scientists are refusing to release their raw data on climate change.
5. "Global Warming" is a buzzword to get funding from the NSF.
6. If you have to use the word "believe" in a scientific discussion, you shouldn't be talking about it.
If you don't know what I'm talking about, go look it up. Do some research on your own.
-- The TekWiz
I'm not sure about Global Climate Change/Warming, but from what I can tell people seem to be taking what cable news told them (Super Hurricanes till the end of time) and seeming to think that an official organization IPCC (thirty-two national academies of different countries) or a number of other organizations. If somebody can link to an seemingly official/reputable site that did make a wild claim and prove me wrong go for it. Also, would anybody explain to me why scientists seem to have a consensus on it. Alternatively what other evidence besides net rise of temperature + higher Co2 levels= global climate change is there for Global Climate change?
Could you give me an excerpt from an E-mail that clearly demonstrates the conspiracy to hide data in the IPCC. I've heard a lot of insinuation but never any direct quotes.
... ridiculous climate change arguments that somehow manage to pass the peer-review process.
Nothing has done more to promote the use of Nuclear energy, which can help reduce the dependence on oil and gas -- which is a real problem especially with the increasing consumption in China & Asia.
The Anti-intellectual is the easiest to stir up into a fervour, simply state that something threatens their rut and they will ignore all facts and all common sense in their mad crusade to destroy whatever they have perceived as a threat.
Oddly enough, you accuse Scientists of fear mongering when the media driving the anti-intellectual movement uses the exact same method and gets away with it.
The ages old "X will raise taxes" is the most widely used anti-climate change argument, also the most transparent and entirely based on fear mongering. Yet the somnabulant public tends to buy this like it's going out of fashion. Remember, most of this centuries tragedies were caused by one person saying that another group was destroying their livelihood, it's a big lie that never gets questioned.
Does mentioning the Big lie, count as Godwins Law?
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
On one hand we have thousands of climatologists from dozens of countries armed with super computers and the resources of government. They tell us we have a problem. Arguing against them are a bunch of people, most of whom are not climatologists or even scientists, who do not have super computers or any data of their own. They argue that there is a worldwide conspiracy to falsify data. Thousands of scientists from Europe, Asia, Australasia and the Americas all working in harmony to defraud the world, to drive up taxes and bring down civilisation - all led by the anti-christ Al Gore. Think about who you are siding with and why you believe in what you believe.
Like I lamented. Who can I trust?
"I don't know which lie to believe." -- Fox Mulder
It's easier to be a misanthrope. For me [1] GW is true and lots of people get fucked over: hell yes! or [2] it's all been mass hysteria and nothing happens: oh well, hey, is Last Guardian out yet?
Will you please stop complaining of downmodding and "censorship"? It's ridiculous.
The idea that global warming will lead to increased crop yields is a dangerous fallacy. Increasing temperatures increases the evaporation rate so crops require more water. http://ezinearticles.com/?Smile-White-Pro-Review&id=3346984
See, I'm kinda tired of the bitchy lil whiners in the NE US complaining about getting less snow that I saw in MN on *Halloween* one year... Get a grip! "Snowmagedon" my ass..
But..
I find it odd that my dad's science teacher in 1950s Chicago told him we'd see an ice age that could start in 2010, including snow in FL, and here we are, snow in FL... But it's due to "Global Warming"...
2 things strike me odd about this...
1. A science teacher in 1950s Chicago was better able to predict FL weather in 2010 than the local weather "expert" was 5 days before the snow..
2. Is it possible scientists and science teachers in the 1950s were just less politically motivated to preach the gospel according to special interests?
I'm not a climate change denier.. However, I do question all the "Chicken Little" behavior and fatalistic predictions of doom, and claims that CO2 *production* is more at fault than the crap big ag-business dumps into the rivers that kills CO2 filtering life in the gulfs/oceans.. or more at fault than all the agent orange the US sprays over central and south america because there *may* be some funny plants down there, and lil timmy may smoke a joint if we don't kill everything green down there...
Cars and power plants are easy scapegoats.. almost everyone has a car.. and everyone can be guilted about not turning a light off.. Not everyone has a feedlot in their back yard...
Whether or not it's already happening in any measurable way today, I think we can all agree that it *could* happen in the future, so we (as a country, and a global society, and a species) need to be careful that it doesn't.
Accept the lord or yee shall suffer the fate of eternal hellfire.
The problem is that being "careful that it doesn't" means halting industry in its tracks; not a very popular proposition in the current economy (or any economy).
You're also asking humanity to plan for something which *may* be 50 years out, something people have shown themselves to be very poor at doing.
This isn't "Oh look, an asteroid headed straight for us" it's "If we don't drop everything and kill millions of people, billions will die... maybe in 50-100 years".
climate change, why is it that the most prominent public figure (Al Gore) urging action goes out of his way to alienate a large portion of the US population (the conservatives) with his movie, "An Inconvenient Truth? Throughout the movie he portrays conservatives as ignorant dopes.
It seems to me that he should be trying to educate rather than alienate. And, then to further reinforce the fact that he really has no interest in educating, he refuses to debate the subject. And, then to further prove how much he believes in global warming he lives in a large home that consumes more energy and produces more CO2 than he should.
Sorry folks, until the climate change crowd comes up with someone who can explain things clearly and reasonably without alienating folks, and who walks the talk, there will be the belief that global warming is just another scam to be used by folks like Al Gore to increase his wealth or by politicians to collect more taxes and control the population.
To the global warming cult: get your ducks in a row before you begin the conversion.
Unlike keeping on using this FINITE resource which will guarantee world stability.
Gee, you denialists are something.
Climate science is a broad subject that incorporates a number of fields. For instance meteorology, geology and physical oceanography among others. But the core climate scientists who write the GCMs are physicists who study radiative transfer and expand their knowledge base into those other fields to capture the information they offer. Physics is a very statistically oriented field.
The Palin brigade is in force today. I wonder how much $ Exxon Mobil is spending to keep the astroturfing. It's probably quite cheap.
One question for the multipliters reading. Can the theory of Multiplication be falsified?
Twenty is four times five.
Twenty is two times ten.
Twenty is one times twenty.
When Phil Jones says twenty is not six times five, it doesn't mean anything. In fact, to date only the Moonies at the Wash. Times and Fox News consider his statement worthy of repeating. (He said it to the BBC, btw, not known as a bastion of Deniers.)
So my question is this: When will you learn that Science takes hard work, a lot of study, and lots of math (not meth) to understand. If you want to be a climatologist you should learn physics and chemistry and mathematics (lots of math!).
When you do study enough, you will start to get a grasp on the facts. Faith does not, repeat *NOT*, get into it. You can believe as much as you wish that your car will work, if it's broken it will not. You can believe as much as you wish that CO2 does not absorb infrared radiation, but it does.
Global warming is a simple fact. But it takes hard work to understand the details of some simple facts. If you think it's just a question of belief then obviously you aren't doing enough study to understand the simple facts.
fine, just so long as it's not any of US?
no need to confuse 'religion' with being a spiritual being. our soul purpose here is to care for one another. failing that, we're simply passing through (excess baggage) being distracted/consumed by the guaranteed to fail illusionary trappings of man'kind'. & recently (about a 1000 years ago) it was determined that hoarding & excess by a few, resulted in a variety of negative consequences for all.
you may choose to call this possibly terminal mess 'weather issues' if it makes you feel better.
'shake, rattle & roll' seems more accurate. maybe hell's bell's?
Climate science is a broad subject that incorporates a number of fields. For instance meteorology, geology and physical oceanography among others.
The person I was responding to was trying to trash the petition on the grounds that the signers were not specifically Climate Scientists. He disagrees that a geologist is an expert on climate. He disagrees that an oceanographer is an expert on climate.
The most important discipline required to be an expert on climate is that of statistics, and this is the big point that everyone seems to keep missing. The most qualified people on the planet to take the raw data (collected by those meteorologists, geoligists, oceanographers, biologists, chemists, and so on) and form conclusions are statisticians. Expert samplers.
"His name was James Damore."
Now explain the record-breaking colder temps being experienced across the country. Is that due to extra atmospheric moisture, too?
But at least the "pro global warming" ones can spell.
"As for the physics itself, I worked out quite a good deal, and it was sensible. It was worked out and verified by other people later. I decided, though, that I had so many parameters that I had to adjust - too much "phenomenological adjustment of constants" to make everything fit - that I couldn't be sure it was very useful."
Richard P. Feynman
At the moment i hold the same position as Feynman had about his physics, regarding AGW. It does make sense, but i think that the eevidence is not entirely convincing. You Know the claims(we are all doomed) are quiet extraordinary.
People are willing to "sacrifice" in the name of terrorism because it didn't cost them any money that they could feel. Their compliance and acceptance was sold as "patriotism." People don't understand terrorism, but they think they do. "They hate our freedom!" Yeah... the public was told a bunch of nonsense and they believed it.
Climate change has been called "global warming." People think it means something it doesn't. ("It's so cold! Who says this is global warming?") People simply don't understand it, but there are enough people wearing ties making arguments for and against it that they don't have to decide on a side to take on the issue -- it's political now. They can vote and go home thinking they have done their part.
We truly live in "Idiocracy."
I posted a comment before along the lines of, regardless of the weather the global warming is caused by man side will claim they are right. In other words, if it cools it will be because they helped guide us to that direction, if it warms it proves they are right and we aren't listening.
So if it snows and there are no hurricanes its proof that mans effect on the environment is obvious.
So if it does not snow and there are many hurricanes its we told you so
So if hot magma boils all the laser wielding sharks thereby depriving pirates of their pets making ninjas feel sorry for them we told you so.
You cannot win an argument with a zealot.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
You need to be a moron to not see this coming, in the end we'll end up in mini ice age, how else would you explain all that ice, .. during the age of the dinosaur it was a lot warmer and they had an ice age didn't they? Why would it be any different now, .. and in 2012 we get a solar boost, because the suns quiet period is ending by then. So there will be even more heat and so more water will vapor, .. and we'll get even more snow..
Let's get some simple facts out on the table. The Earth's climate IS changing. It has been changing since it was created (long before humans infested it). The Earth's climate will continue to change up until the "day" it ceases to be (astronomers tell us that in a few billion years the Sun will swallow the Earth; now THAT is real global warming). There is NOTHING humans can do to STOP climate change. NOTHING (even "modifying" the non-anthropomorphic climate change is CHANGING the climate).
Now, if the REAL issue is the "anthropomorphic" in anthropomorphic climate change (or anthropomorphic global warming if you prefer) that then please deal with it honestly. Get rid of the people and there's no more anthropomorphic ANYTHING.
The proponents of ACC (or AGW) typically point out how terrible things have become since the industrial age began and use of fossil fuels began in earnest. Well folks, we've added about 5 billion people to the world population since then. What if we got rid of those extra 5 billion people?
In the 1970's there were a number of studies done to determine ecologically sustainable populations. At the time the numbers for the US were about 110 to 120 million. We've pretty much busted that into 200 million pieces. The US is now a bit over 300 million and heading up. Imagine the impact (or lack thereof) on the ecology and climate if the population was only 5 milllion as in the beginning of the 1800s. Now repeat that exercise for the rest of the world.
The only real answer is to quit having kids. Quit providing incentives for having them (instead of providing tax breaks to parents they should have to pay more taxes to make up for the "force multiplier" effect of their "bundle(s) of joy"). Provide health care only to the level that was in effect at the beginning of the 1800s (no antibiotics, no immunzations) and let the populations die off.
Yeh. Not very palatable or likely. But IF the problem is the with "anthropomorphic" part of climate change (or global warming) then deal honestly with the "anthropomorphic" part of it. Otherwise, trying to stop non-anthropomorphic climate change (or global warming) is an irrational fools errand (or a big time money maker if you get in on the "carbon tax" gravy train).
In the US, warm years have more snow storms that cold years. You can read all about US snow storms here: http://ams.allenpress.com/archive/1558-8432/45/8/pdf/i1558-8432-45-8-1141.pdf Inhofe is usually wrong and this is just another example.
That's not what he's been saying at all. ""The science still holds up" though, he adds. A follow-up study2 verified the original conclusions for the Chinese data for the period 1954–1983, showing that the precise location of weather stations was unimportant. "They are trying to pick out minor things in the data and blow them out of all proportion," says Jones of his critics." http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100215/full/news.2010.71.html "But Jones is adamant that this doesn't actually change the conclusion of the analysis. In a subsequent paper, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in 2008, Jones verified the original conclusions for the Chinese data for the period 1954–1983, showing that the precise location of weather stations was unimportant to the outcome." http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/16/hacked-climate-science-emails-climate-change
A Warming Planet Can Mean More Snow
Yes, and adding water to things makes them more dry.
More sunlight means more darkness.
More gravity causes things to float off into space.
etc. etc.
What a load of shite!
s/Anthropomorphic/Anthropogenic/g
Pissed off + morning = brainfart
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Galileo again. He wasn't in the minority. The CHURCH knew that the earth was round (Aristotle in 380BC had calculated its diameter as a sphere, and he wasn't the first). What Galileo got done for was writing it in Italian where the plebes could read it, rather than Latin where the scholars would read it but knew that there was a "greater truth" in the bible.
And Plimer is no Galileo.
The thing that is really worrying is not so much global warming, but global climate CHANGE. Some bits get dryer, some wetter. Some hotter, some colder. And this is a bigger problem then people who life in cities realize.
A simple thing as making hay, depends on there not being rain while the cut grass dries out. It is HUGELY important to feed our enormous cattle herds. And since hay takes a whole to dry and ONE hour of rain can soak it, there is a very fine balance going on.
Neither can the farmer just wait a few extra days because if left to long, the nutrition decreases. If he does not have enough food (not just in bulk but in nutritional value) then he needs to buy extra food, where is this coming from? It might have to driven in from hundreds if not thousands of miles away, and you now got TWO areas of theplanet being used to feed the same herd, all because of ONE rainy day. Next time you have a rainy fall and are complaining, think about those who have to harvest. It might be annoying to have to was your car a lot more, but it upsets the agriculture that has created western civilization.
Has anyone here ever wondered just why civilization is western? We are not the oldest race, and there is no biological difference, so why are black people still living in stone age times while we put a man on the moon? Because Africa's climate sucks donkey balls. A european farmer could for hundreds of years more or less count on reaping what he sows. In Africa, this is not the case, drought is near constant and there is nothing that an African farmer can do about it. And to see the effect a famine has on society, check the potato famin.
We don't think about our food in the west because we take it for granted that it just arrives in the shops everyday. Nature to us is just the stuff that soaks us or gives us a nice tan, but to the farmer we all depend on, it is the controller of his entire process. And if it changes, our food production has to change and we might not like the results.
The price in potatoes in Holland has been entirely depended on the amount of rain. To much and it can't be harvested, to little and it doesn't grow. Yes, crops have rotted away in the ground in recent years, no it did NOT lead to famine because we could import food at "slightly" higher prices, but what effect does that have on the rest of the world? Poor nations whose harvest also failed now find the prices to be even higher.
Global climate change is to big a risk to take changes. People who worry about the icecaps melting and tidal surges just like drama. Far worse will be an upset in our food production. If petrol prices rice, the economy chokes, now imagine the price of bread being doubled. You can ride a bike, you can telecommute, but there is little saving on food.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Global climate change, means having to park your SUV. People don't want to do that, so they don't.
When will they be convinced? Look at tobacco, you still got people denying that smoking causes health problems. You can show them their lungs full of tar, and they just don't want to see it.
It is not for nothing that every single so called skeptic (real skeptics are horrified by them) has a direct connection to oil or another reason to not want to have to change. Same as all the people who doubt smoking is bad, are smokers or work for the tobacco industry. Gosh, what a suprise!
And you can easily debunk any so called skeptic because he hammers on global warming, while the real issue is GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE.
But they keep saying man can't have an effect on nature, even when you can see that the outside temp is warmer in cities and rain cloud patterns affected by build up areas. But man has no effect... none so blind as those that don't want to see, especially if they have their income depend on it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Earth climate is not a simple x=y+1 formula like most want to believe ( or can understand, since most people are stupid ) and is horrendously complex.
Not going to get into the 'man made' part of this discussion, ( or even if it IS warming or not.. ) but large scale warming can cause strange weather patterns since it means there is more stored energy in the atmosphere and moisture to dish out.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
So you've either failed at reading comprehension or turned me into a straw man for your personal entertainment - I didn't even mention people in those feilds I'm supposed to be trashing.
I also disagree with your rather bizzare assertion about it only being statistics - if you don't know what the numbers mean then it's really just a numerological wank that feels good but does nothing useful. The statistics mean nothing unless they describe the systems at work to those that understand the systems.
Sunny winter days are depressing.
Everyone knows it snows most (and with the heaviest moisture density) on relatively warm days in the north. Then the sub-zero F cold front comes through for one of those sunny snow diamond postcard shots that'll freeze your frackin' ass off.
People who don't know that are just ignorant of higher latitude weather. Case closed.
*facepalm*
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Here's a thought, even if the world temperature IS rising, thermometers have only existed since the 1500's, mercury since 1724, and the Fahrenheit scale itself has gone through something like a half dozen revisions. You are assuming that instruments from 100 years ago ACROSS THE FRIGGING PLANET are all calibrated and accurate, because YES since global warming is a game of single degrees, ACCURACY COUNTS!!!!!! If everyone's thermometer was 1 degree off (or more!), how the flying fuck do you know, well, anything about the last hundred years in temperature? You're assuming equal scales and a very high level of precision in tools that were still primitive by our own standard today. This alone does not even take into account the further issue that different Fahrenheit scales would cause even more chaos in the results when converted to celsius and kelvin, making the different scales completely indistinguishable, and using a scale based on a much more accurate hypothesis of quantifiable heat. If your data is shit, your results are even less useful
ABSOLUTE JUNK SCIENCE. Oh, I errored. This IS science to a coke snorting anti-American freak like Obama Bin Biden.
Even worse is that there are more blow-hard, tree hugging Allie-Gores who can con billions out of your pockets with this. Remember what Obama said. I'm paraphrasing; Any disaster is a good as we can use it to our advantage.
Now, have the climatic models being used to suggest runaway warming taken into account the significant albedo effects? You paint an increasing land mass on average per year white with snow and you will suddenly reject a lot more insol (incoming solar radiation)back to space. Also, cloud cover rejection. If the total amount of insol being "trapped" on the earth declines, it declines. Regardless of what horrible thing we're doing to the planet. Wet (not frozen)ground, with no cloud cover, generally increases absorption, but if water vapor increases and stays elevated you'll just get more clouds. And thereby dampen greenhouse effects due to insol rejection. In fact, I wrote a lovely PC app called INSOL that was a tool to graph out predicted absorbtion based on changing incoming solar radiation, albedo changes, etc. Soooo many variables.
The science on this, as far as I know, isn't "done". I worked in Climatology as a lead programmer building visualization tools and prediction tools for 5 years, and a room full of climatologists never agreed. On anything.
So, many of them would suggest that rising water vapor levels would ultimately mean ocean levels dropping due to increasing amounts of water being stored in the atmosphere, in lakes, in glaciers, in places bone dry but used to have lakes (Death Valley), in frozen deserts (dry part of Antarctica).
Our observations thus far tell us that, so far, the poles are melting and there's no report on significantly increased polar snowfall.
Now for Good News Bad News:
The Good News is that pollution particulates reject more energy to space
The Bad News is that pollution makes us sick and also enhances greenhouse effect and retention
The Good News is that pollution increases precipitation
The Bad News is that pollution increases precipitation
The Good News is that some pollution helps build Ozone
The Bad News is that other pollution attacks the Ozone, and ground level Ozone creation is useless and unhealthy
The Good News is that runaway warming might be false
The Bad News is that runaway warming might be either true, or we may be facing the much worse problem of runaway cooling
I refuse to buy into runaway warming, but I will absolutely buy into climate change. Climate change is always a given, but it's the RATE of regional change that will hurt us. The Amazon turns into a desert in 50 years vs a 1000 is a big difference. Regions ALWAYS change (Death Valley was a lake remember?), but now they are changing much quicker in observable, undeniable ways with terrible consequences.
The faster a regional climate changes, the greater the "inconvenience". Stacking our chips on the doom prediction of runaway warming is a tough prediction to prove. Proving regional disaster due to massive deforestation, pollution, and massive emptying of underground lakes and oceans (Mexico City) is a piece of cake.
This comes from a leftist, socialists, progressive, news source and should be ignored. It's BIASED the WRONG way!
For the facts, fair and balanced, get your news from Fox News!
Why can't we just all agree that poisoning our lungs is bad and start working from there?
There is no science for this myth of global warming and just calling it a new name doesn't make it right either. There is no way to take the data and say what the Earth's normal temperature should be. The only climate change we have is called SEASONS and every year it can be different. There Earth drifts a little bit closer to the Sun, a lot of volcanic activity, massive forest fires all of these have happened in the past affecting the climate and the Earth did pretty well to recover. For all of you so called global warming "scientists" out there drinking the blue cool aid and getting 10 seconds of fame on some news shows you are idiots now and forever more.
Reality doesn't care whether or not you believe in it, and yet it still exists.
"what sells instead of what is found" is precisely what is wrong with "climate science". Amatuerishly incomplete equations munged though oversized game machines with faked or highly selective, agreeable extracts from noisy data, chosen only by team members or their ego-, ecogroupies that yield pre-selected or otherwise agreeable results. Refusing to post their data or "We lost it" after they have explicitly conspired to destroy data to "save it" from more agnostic hands. Anti-scientific syncophants and outright frauds.
Oh, there's McIntyre over at Climate Audit, showing Boulton likely ghost writing Muir's words on a Word document, and then Boulton connected with East Anglia and IPCC (apologists: "not...formally") by his own CV description or inflating his resume. The supposed climate friends are so bent, that *they can't even pretend long enough* to walk a straight line for an official investigation. This climate "carp" never stops.
The problem with saying that AGW theory calls for more snow is that it calls for increases in precipitation (and for increases in droughts, WTF?). However, the snow that the East Coast got this year is not an increase in precipitation, at least not in the area where I live. In the area where I live, we usually get quite a bit of rain/freezing rain this time of year. This year we got snow. The standard conversion of snow to rain is 10 inches of snow to one inch of rain. I have been unable to find an exact listing of how much snow we have had over January and February so far, however, we have had a total of just over 70 inches of snow since last July. We have had almost no rain this January or February (less than 1/2 inch), but our average rainfall for January and February is 6 inches, which means we are less than one inch above average precipitation levels for January and February (we had somewhere between 4 and 12 inches before the start of the new year). Over the last ten years we have had two or more years with drought concerns in the early to mid spring due to extremely low precipitation levels over the winter.
All of that means that precipitation levels appear to be within normal for this area, but the proportion that is snow is higher. This article says that precipitation levels (including snowfall) will be higher due to AGW.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
The obvious contradiction in the above statement is the claim that rising temperatures put more moisture in the air which becomes snow in freezing temperatures.
How much water the atmosphere holds is indeed dependent on temperature. Warmer atmosphere actually means LESS rain (not to mention no snow) because the air holds more water. It is when the atmosphere COOLS that water or snow precipitates out. So heavy rains and snow are a sign of a cooling atmosphere.
And rain and snow aside, the simple fact that temperatures this winter are sharply down, to the point of killing corals and manatees in Florida, tells you which way the trend is going.
That's one of the most insightful posts on this "thread" ...
The basic problem now is trust.
Plausable answers can be provided to any given weather phenominon, with regard to climate change. The problem is the British research group were lying - distorting and hiding data. You can be as plausable as you like; if people don't trust you, it just doesn't matter.
Troll... Flamebait... Redundant...
So, anybody that disagrees or argues against Global Warning doctrine is automatically to be modded down?
You moderators do realize that this is exactly the complaint that has been leveled by "deniers" everywhere. Proponents actively attempt to silence anyone who questions data, methods, or conclusions. Has climate change become that much a boogeyman of the new millenium?
Vindication!
For several years, when people have pointed out that record snows are 'proof' that global climate change is NOT happening, I've mentioned that snow requires moisture and moisture requires warmth. The more warmth you have, the more moisture you have in the air and the more snow you can have when that moisture moves into an area where it is cold enough to get snow.
Oddly enough, in my area, after back to back seasons of heavy snow, including one record breaking season and one season where it was an inch short of the previous record, we have had a warm winter with minimal snow. For some reason the people that were using the record snows as 'proof' that global climate change is NOT happening are not talking about about what could be considered counter proof.
People really need to take a hard look at what they consider to be proof of their positions, no matter what position they take with regards to global climate change. And they also need to remember that it is NOT a binary man-made/not-man-made setup.
It seems that Global Warming has a model to predict pretty much anything.
The different models together predict pretty much everything, often contradictory, so whenever anything happens you just trot out the appropriate predictive model to prove Global Warming is right.
And hope people forget you used a contradictory model six months ago to explain something else.
If oceans getting warm means continents getting more snow, then the warming is not global but parcial, "oceanic" you might say.
When there are money to be made from denying the reality, somebody will be there claiming the egg is a perfect cube.
It's doesn't really matter if the climate is warming or not, it matters that somebody makes money from burning fossil fuels and they will advocate against the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and somebody makes money from creating "green" technologies and they will advocate pro the reduction of greenhouse gas emission.
Laudele lor desigur m-ar mahni peste masura.
The last winters (those that we personally remember) all were unnaturally warm. And this one was just a normal winter, by pre-1900 standards. ;)
Makes sense to me, provided we find out why this one is different.
Anyway. It’s ridiculous to think that a single winter (one local data point) could prove a huge long-term data set wrong.
Even the whole discussion is irrelevant and hence stupid. Let’s use logic for a second: ;) ;)
Assumption 1: Green house gasses keep the heat inside the atmosphere. = Is proven in my book, because I know my share of physics.
Assumption 2: We blow billions of tons of that stuff into the atmosphere. = Also proven to me, if the power plants, cars, cows, etc. really exist.
Conclusion 1: Our billions of tons of green house gasses must have a heating effect bigger than zero. = Assumption 1 + Assumption 2
Assumption 3: Those gasses are released globally, and spread globally anyway. = Laws of thermodynamics.
Assumption 4: “Global warming” is defined as “Earth getting warmer globally“. = Is it not?
Conclusion 2: Since we have a heating effect bigger than zero, and that effect is global, we have “global warming” of earth by humans. = Conclusion 1 + Assumption 3 + Assumption 4.
Q.E.D.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
>News to me, I have heard otherwise.
Your ignorance isn't a source of fact. Please learn this. It makes you look stupid if you argue that your own ignorance is a source of information.
There. Fixed that for you.
[Citation needed]
Best part of cold-weather snow? It's very dry & fluffy, very easy to shovel.
Shovel? Forget that. Got an electric leaf blower? Works great on dry snow, just mind the extension cord plugs. Never tried it with a gas-powered leaf blower - I imagine it would get hot pretty quickly and heat the blown air too much.
- T
people are going to say "It's so cold this winter-- global warming is bull." Now we're told "weather is not climate," but weren't they saying the exact opposite in the recent past? California wildfires? The summer's too hot because of global warming. Hurricane Katrina? Global warming is causing more and bigger hurricanes. No snow in the Alps? It's too warm because of global warming. For more than two years now I've been hearing ridiculous stories that catastrophic climate change is just around the corner. This need to overzealously sell AGW does a disservice to the science, and any serious attempt to address climate change is going to suffer for it. The number of skeptics are increasing because of stupid shit like this.
Anyone remember the global cooling scare a few decades back? Good times.
A scientist has a vested interest in his results being accepted.
An engineer has a vested interested (I can be sued!) that the answer is actually correct.
That's the difference here.
Think about it. Please.
Ok, you lefties already KNOW THE ANSWER.
And so do you on the right.
One of you may be wrong, and the other needs to learn a LOT of science.
I have to say, you are both amusing, but only very very occasionally. Mostly you are incredibly embarrassing examples of humans.
Quit being so polarized, and start speaking politely to each other.
I hate sigs, and refuse to have one.
> The IPCC document is something like 2400 pages and so far there has only been one error found.
That is nonsense on stilts. There have certainly been many dozens of errors "found". Maybe you mean "publicized in national papers", in which case there were - whst? - four recently? At least four. More if you count sub-parts, like the claims about glaciers were wrong in many specific aspects, not just one. The errors I can think of off the top of my head:
(1) Himalayan glaciers could be gone by 2030
(2) there's been a rising cost of disasters due to more CO2
(3) 40% of amazon forest could be destroyed by warming
(4) 55% of Holland is below sea level.
The fundamental problem is that there is no defined process by which errors found in the IPCC reports can be reported, collected, and fixed. So if I find a problem, there's nothing for me to *do* with that information such that it would show up in anyone's tally of how many errors have been found. Bunches of people have been finding bunches of errors but it wasn't until after the tide turned with climategate that this became newsworthy. Now newspapers are willing to write stories critical of the IPCC. But still, when somebody say there's only been one error found they mean "...that I've heard of. This week. And am willing to admit to."
I play Nerd-Folk!
This sort of effect was predicted two decades ago at least ; get over it.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
"Global Warming" is theft of personal wealth on a global scale. The science is in and it's known to be a fraud.
When man can start controlling solar flares and sunspots which generate solar wind which determines the amount of energetic particles that reach Earth from cosmic rays then we can really start fouling up the natural order of things.
I would love to cast Al Gore into a sunspot and see what happens. Probably much more prosperity and happiness on Earth.
Is there GW?
> Yes
Is there long term GW?
> I don't know. At least not on the scale of 1-3 centuries.
Is there longer term GW.
> Yes. Our neighborhood glacier left 9,000 years ago.
Is the GW caused by human activity?
> Irrelevant.
Our society is fragile, and for much of the world, climate change is not good news. It doesn't matter whether the cause is the orbit of the earth, the precession of the Earth, the increase of CO2, Decreased forestation in the tropics, increased forestation at temperate and arctic latitudes.
We *don't* understand water very well. We *don't* understand clouds very well.
We'd better learn how to control our climate.
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
Nobody understands the system. Thats why your wrong.
If anyone understood the system, they'd be able to explain why its not warming right now. Nobody can, tho. We think we know how much energy gets in, and we think we know how much energy leaves, and based on the imbalance its supposed to be getting warmer.. but its not getting warmer.
"His name was James Damore."
However it is warmer. You have been fed bullshit. Believe the published and peer reviewed papers and not cocaine ravaged shock jocks that want to make it political.
Mod parent up.
Signed, Statistics Grad Student
These opinions are my own and not necessarily
the opinions of God or any other supreme being.