Scientists Cut Greenland Ice Loss Estimate By Half

bonch writes "A new study on Greenland's and West Antarctica's rate of ice loss halves the estimate of ice loss. Published in the journal Nature Geoscience, the study takes into account a rebounding of the Earth's crust called glacial isostatic adjustment, a continuing rise of the crust after being smashed under the weight of the Ice Age. 'We have concluded that the Greenland and West Antarctica ice caps are melting at approximately half the speed originally predicted,' said researcher Bert Vermeeersen."

Comments

Ololololo

[Anonymous Coward]

These are some trolling scientists all right. How can they dare question the confirmed facts of AGW?

Re:Ololololo

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, that's some climatic revisionism right there. Next they will say climate holocaust will never happen or something.

Re:Ololololo

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, it will not happen overnight. We'll have a series of cases of revisionism instead.

Until, at last, when the ice age comes, someone at CRU will pick that last remaining "Time" issue with the global winter predictions, which are soooo out of fashion today, and wave it as proof.

That they were right all along.

Scientists, burn the whole bunch.

Re:Ololololo

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientists, burn the whole bunch.

That'll contribute to greenhouse gasses and help prove them correct. And then you'll feel bad for your vigilantastic actions.

Re:Ololololo

[sarhjinian]

The funny, or sad, thing is that people who want to discredit the whole theory will see things like this as "proof" that the whole theory is wrong and engage in the worst kind of TV-legal-drama-courtroom histrionics, failing to understand (or willfully ignoring) that this is how science works.

The refinement of theory isn't like Perry Mason.

Unfortunately, the latter makes better PR than the former.

Re:Ololololo

[lgw]

In science, when your hypothesis is falsified by the data being different from its predictions, you abandon it and look for a different model.

In religion, when the predictions of your dogma turn out to be wrong, you tell your critics that they just don't understand how your religion works, and really with a deeper understanding you were right all along.

Supporters of the notion that "AGW is a serious threat" keep sounding like the latter case to me. When the data is unexpected, the models are adjusted to explain that too, and the modelers keep believing. Creationists have really entertaining explanations for the fossil record - but it doesn't help your case if the explanations come after the data, as that's sort of the opposite of a prediction.

If your belief in AGW (or anything else!) is scientific and not religious, then you can both explain the belief at a qualitative level (quick: how does a greenhouse work?) and you can explain what new data would cause you to abandon your belief. In my experience, most people who consider themselves intellectuals have a religious faith in scientists (the intellectually lazy approach) instead of having scientific beliefs.

Re:Ololololo

[Coren22]

The problem I have with the people who believe in AGW is that mostly they fall more in the religious category, anyone who tries to present results different then there's or question the methods used is subjected to public ridicule, not listened to. This is religious reasoning, not scientific, listen to the people who disagree and adjust your methods, stop believing that everything you have done is exactly correct and I will listen to you too. There are many flaws in the methodology, from sensors placed within 10 feet of AC exhaust to sensors placed in the middle of a asphalt parking lot, these things skew the results and aren't taken into account.

Re:Ololololo

[PRMan]

Is it just me, or was there somebody that tried to recover planes that went down in Greenland known as the Lost Squadron and they were expecting the ice to be 10 feet thick or less (according to scientists' best estimates). When they got there, they found that the planes were 268 feet deep.

This was between 1942 and 1992. Over that 50 years the ice level went up over 5 feet per year. That's not melting. If you're trying to tell me (like the article is) that it's really the crust is going up instead of the ice level, you're full of crap.

And, creationists actually have some very good explanations for the fossil record. In some cases they are far better than their evolutionary counterparts.

Creationists have no trouble explaining why there are ocean fossils mixed with land fossils in the same areas in Kansas.

Creationists can explain why the amount of helium found in deep rock is not all gone already (notice that it's becoming rare quickly and will soon all be gone).

Creationists can explain why the fossils appear suddenly, in their modern-day forms with very few extinct species. Evolutionists actually have a hard time with that.

Never forget that evolutionists are also religious. Richard Dawkins is anti-God more than he is a scientist. And Richard Lewontin even admitted that evolutionists will believe any absurdity necessary "for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

Re:Ololololo

[sarhjinian]

It's not a matter of belief, it's a matter of refinement of the theory.

Scientists don't "believe" in the big bang or evolution, but they don't automatically revert back to Intelligent Design just because someone found out that, oh, I don't know, there's two extra types of quark or something.

I know that many "skeptics" desperately want to portray this as a black or white "religious" issue because it allows a convenient out. Of course they're adjusting the theory to fit the data because that's how science actually works.

Re:Ololololo

[dave420]

No, most of the people who believe in AGW are climate scientists. AGW is not measured by "sensors" in parking lots. I have no idea where you got that from.

Re:Ololololo

[Coren22]

So they don't actually use sensors to gather their data? Sounds more and more like religion then.

Re:Ololololo

[Coren22]

To show what I am talking about:

http://scottthong.wordpress.com/2007/07/04/ground-based-temperature-recording-stations-stupid-locations-for-measuring-global-warming/

Re:Ololololo

[gregrah]

Can you please provide citations for all of the above statements?

(This should be amusing...)

Re:Ololololo

[lgw]

Scientists certainly do "believe" in evolution (well, a few of them don't, I suppose) and that belief is justified by a great many successful predictions made by that theory (and not by others).

It's simply not the case that science is about adjusting the theory to fit the data (well, it happens, but it's not seen as good science). Newtons theories weren't "adjusted" by relativity, they were proven wrong. They were still useful, in fact very predictive in most cases, but nevertheless wrong.

Anyway, that whole discussion misses the point: as you say, it's not about black-or-white "right" or "wrong", its about how predictive is a hypothesis over the domain of interest. Thus far, to the extent that the climate modelers have deigned to make any predictions, the predictive value of those models has been crap. Call it "right" or "wrong", I don't care, but I call it "not sufficiently predictive to justify telling me what to do in my daily life"!

And what about you - sarhjinian - are your beliefs about AGW scientific or religious? Do you actually understand what you're arguing for, or are you just saying "I'm part of the 'in' crowd that believes in X, not one of those lossers with unfashionable beliefs".

Quick: how does a greenhouse work? Are we in an ice age right now? What's the only 10ky period of relatively stable climate in the past 400K years, per the accurate ice core data - is a stable climate norma? What's the obvious ~100ky cycle in that data? What's the highest historical level of CO2 (as a multiple of today's) since the oxygen catastrophe? How well did life on land do during that time?

Well, have you actually taght yourself about this stuff, or are you just fashionable?

Re:Ololololo

[Quirkz]

Never forget that evolutionists are also religious

It always frustrates me when people use linguistic fuzziness about the word "religious" to try to put two very different things on the same plane. Using the word religious to mean "takes a strong stand" and religious to mean "is operating on faith that is by definition disconnected from evidence" and then saying they're the same thing does not actually make them the same thing.

Evolutionists are working with a massive pile of documented stuff and trying to piece together their best interpretation of those facts. Yes, many of them believe very strongly that this process has led them to a reasonably accurate understanding of the issue. But you can't just say "that strong belief can be called religious and religious can be called believing in stuff from the bible, so it's all the same."

Re:Ololololo

[Bigjeff5]

I've got news for you bro, a thermometer is a sensor.

Re:Ololololo

[BergZ]

Speaking of predictions: I seem to recall that, over the years, Global Climate Change skeptics have predicted that an investigation into the practices of Climatologists would prove that Global Warming is a "hoax".
This year we have had 3 investigations: All of which failed to turn up any evidence of scientific malpractice.
It's interesting that the "skeptics" can't seem to explain the contradictions between their predictions and reality!

Re:Ololololo

[ehrichweiss]

I think the "theory" in question here is the sensationalism and alarmism attributed to this mess. I'd have FAR less problems believing the climatologists predictions if they would avoid the sensationalism that they've presented in the past few years. Let me list a few so you'll be aware what I'm talking about...

* Hurricanes will increase in frequency or strength, predicted specifically for 2009/2010.

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/hurricane/2007-07-29-more-hurricanes_N.htm
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/07/070730-hurricane-warming.html
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/HurricaneRita/story?id=1154125&page=1

Except they didn't. I can't find the link that compared the predicted versus actual numbers but there are far fewer hurricanes than previous years for 2009 and 2010 seems to be pretty low as well so far. *I* am predicting that the next prediction will be "global warming will cause a decreased frequency of hurricanes". And they never got stronger. That was, as usual, someone not understanding statistics.

* Himalayas will be devoid of ice by 2035. Yes, it was a "typo" but everyone wanted to believe it..

* Due to the Greenland glaciers, the ocean will rise 21 feet. Too bad it was recalculated closer to 7 inches.

* And now the Antarctic and Greenland melting is happening at about 1/2 the rate they thought.. ZOMG the world is gonna end. WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!! Or not.

I'm sure there are other examples but that's all I can think of right now without my caffeine..

If the climatologists would stop predicting anything other than facts and trends, they might get less egg on their faces and be considered to be at least somewhat respectable. As it stands they prefer to play the role of seer/doomsayer and as such I'm committed to shoot them down when they get out of hand.

Re:Ololololo

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem I have with the people who believe in AGW is that mostly they fall more in the religious category, anyone who tries to present results different then there's or question the methods used is subjected to public ridicule, not listened to... There are many flaws in the methodology, from sensors placed within 10 feet of AC exhaust to sensors placed in the middle of a asphalt parking lot, these things skew the results and aren't taken into account.

What makes you think they don't listen? With respect to station placement, much criticism has been leveled by Anthony Watts on surfacestation.org. With the help of volunteers Watts rated over 70% of the stations in the USA and found many to be poorly placed.

Scientists did listen. They investigated to see whether the poorly placed stations (As rated by Watts) reported more warming. They did not. The well placed stations reported more warming. See http://www.skepticalscience.com/On-the-reliability-of-the-US-Surface-Temperature-Record.html

Further, surface stations are not our only measure of the temperature. Satellite data shows a similar warming. Here is a fun site to play with: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1979/to:2010/offset:0.04/plot/uah/from:1979/to:2010/offset:0.025/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1979/to:2010/offset:-0.1

This allows you to plot various climate related data. The link above is a comparison between the UAH station data and two satellite data sets. They have an almost identical slope (you can select linear trend on each to see) You can also try comparing temps to CO2 or sun spot activity. Great fun.

Re:Ololololo

[infinite9]

In [religion], when your [interpretation] is falsified by the data being different from its predictions, you abandon it and look for a different [interpretation].

In [science], when the predictions of your dogma turn out to be wrong, you tell your critics that they just don't understand how [science] works, and really with a deeper understanding you were right all along.

Re:Ololololo

[Anonymous Coward]

If your belief in AGW (or anything else!) is scientific and not religious, then you can both explain the belief at a qualitative level (quick: how does a greenhouse work?)

The greenhouse effect does not work like a greenhouse. A greenhouse works by trapping warm air. The greenhouse effect works because greenhouse gasses are transparent to visible light but opaque to infrared radiation.

If you are skeptical that CO2 acts like a greenhouse - you should be. It doesn't. If you are skeptical that CO2 is a greenhouse gas - you shouldn't be. It is. We have taken measurements that show that greenhouse gasses are absorbing radiation from the surface.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Second-law-of-thermodynamics-greenhouse-theory.htm

Re:Ololololo

[mdwstmusik]

...This year we have had 3 investigations: All of which failed to turn up any evidence of scientific malpractice.
It's interesting that the "skeptics" can't seem to explain the contradictions between their predictions and reality!

fox guards hen house.

Re:Ololololo

[lgw]

Yes, you understand - most people don't even at this most basic level.

Re:Ololololo

[jbengt]

. . . its about how predictive is a hypothesis over the domain of interest. Thus far, to the extent that the climate modelers have deigned to make any predictions, the predictive value of those models has been crap

In this case, however, the proposed new estimate of current glacial loss is closer to that predicted by the climate models and the need to explain why the glaciers in Greenland are retreating faster than predicted might be averted.

Re:Ololololo

[locallyunscene]

Huh? I always thought religion worked like this: Man is fallible, God is infallible (and therefore always "correct") so believe what is written here because it is the Word of God.

Whereas science says nothing can be proven "correct", we can only get better at modeling the world, but here are our current models and the data that supports them.

Re:Ololololo

[riverat1]

A greenhouse works primarily by restricting air movement allowing the space it encloses to capture the heat from solar radiation instead of it just blowing away.

The greenhouse effect works by greenhouse gases and clouds capturing the infrared energy radiated from the surface of the Earth.

Two quite different things.

Re:Ololololo

[riverat1]

Of course you ignore the study that was done comparing well sited to poorly sited stations (as defined on surfacestations.org) that showed if anything the poorly sited stations introduce a slight cooling bias.

You can read it here [PDF].

Re:Ololololo

[riverat1]

If the ice sheet on Greenland were to completely melt sea level would rise over 23 feet. But that would take at least several centuries to happen. Current estimates for 2100 are around 3 feet of SLR. Of course that's subject to revision as we learn more.

Maybe the polar ice sheets are melting at half the rate originally thought but they're still melting and the melting has been accelerating. That is documented.

Re:Ololololo

[Superdad]

...was there somebody that tried to recover planes that went down in Greenland known as the Lost Squadron and they were expecting the ice to be 10 feet thick or less (according to scientists' best estimates). When they got there, they found that the planes were 268 feet deep.

This was between 1942 and 1992. .....

Umm, don't objects placed on the surface tend to 'sink' into ice caps ? Gear and huts built on the surface slowly descend into the ice as the years pass. So the P-38s sank down, as well as each years snow/ice deposit being layered on top of them. IIRC isn't the sink faster than the accertion of ice ?

Re:Ololololo

[lgw]

But how many people who are sure AGW is correct know even this much? It's mostly fashion, IMO.

Re:Ololololo

[riverat1]

You can be sure that the scientists who actually study climate know it. I'm not sure how much it matters for the general public.

Re:Ololololo

[lgw]

I'm not talking about the scientists at all. I'm talking about the typical Slashdotter who rails against irrational religious belief, yet his own belief in AGW is itself based on nothing but religious faith in scientists. If you don't personally understand why something is thought to be true, at least qualitatively, you do not have a scientific belief, and you ought not be chastising others for believing differently.

The same thing goes for evolution debates: if the only reason you believe in evolution is that "all the smart people do", you're every bit as bad, every bit as much a part of the problem, as people who believe in creationism because "all the wise men do".

First Greenland Trout!

[Anonymous Coward]

I am a fish!

Yeah right

[dimethylxanthine]

Tell them what they want to hear John!

Re:Yeah right

[somersault]

So this must be fake, but if they'd instead said it's accelerating faster, it would be true - right? Because that's what you want to hear.

Re:Yeah right

[PhilHibbs]

Nothing would please me more than to find out that, in fact, we aren't screwing up the planet after all and that future generations will be able to enjoy a stable climate and SUVs. Really, I hope that everything turns out just great. However, it still doesn't look like it, I think we will face some very tough times. I don't know whether this new data is correct or not, just like I don't know whether the old data was correct or not. But 164 gigatonnes of glacial ice melt per year still sounds like a lot to me, even if it is less than 362 gigatonnes, so I'm not going to become complacent just because it isn't quite as bad as we thought - note that the word "bad" is still in the situation.

Also, all this means is that Greenland and West Antarctica are contributing less than 1/4 of the annual rise in sea levels rather than accounting for more than half. I guess we have to keep looking to find where the rest of the rise is coming from. None of this evidence contradicts the rise in sea levels, which is going to displace millions of people.

Re:Yeah right

[e70838]

Their estimation is still better than a Microsoft progression bar.

Re:Yeah right

[DarenN]

1.1mm per year being the best available globally measured data? Outliers being 2mm? Worst case scenario being 4mm? That WILL displace people,eventually. 4mm per year means that in just under a century, sea levels will have risen a foot. This is the worst case scenario - it's more likely to be 150-200 years based on existing data (it's actually hard to measure exactly - between isostatic rebound, tidal variation, building, etc)

That's not going to chase anyone out of their homes. Flooding is more likely from heavy rainfall or really stupid building decisions such as building below the water level (New Orleans) or building on flood plains (everywhere else) than from sea level increases. Even the melting of ice causing sea level rises isn't a problem (work out 500Gt versus the amount of ice on Greenland alone), reduced salinity affecting currents is more likely to be a problem.

Re:Yeah right

[kainosnous]

...and much like the MS progress bar, the whole system will crash long before the bar reaches completion.

Re:Yeah right

[Crypto Gnome]

That's not going to chase anyone out of their homes.

Except for certain low-lying island nations in the pacific, but fsck'em why should we care?

Re:Yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

"But 164 gigatonnes of glacial ice melt per year still sounds like a lot to me" Divide the volume of ice by the area of the oceans... 163e9 gigatons ice*1e6 grams/gigaton / (4 * 3.14 * 6.371e8**2 earth area *.70 sea area/earth area) * 100 years/century = 4.5 cm per century. Also, if this is only the melt rate not counting the snowfall or ice accumulation rate which could cut this by any amount including making it negative (sea level fall), then one could expect the net contribution to sea level rise to be even smaller. Regardless of any other issue related to global warming, the idea that this is "big" in the actual impact scale is simply being stymied by large absolute numbers which is a red herring. The *variability* in tidal fluctuations dwarfs this "correction" by orders of magnitude.

Re:Yeah right

[Beyond_GoodandEvil]

Except for certain low-lying island nations in the pacific, but fsck'em why should we care?
You ask a salient point why should we care? No really, why should the other 6+ billion people living on the earth all freeze to death in the winter and bake in the summer, so a bunch of islander can continue to live somewhere a strong hurricane(or cyclone) could wipe out their entire community. But hey, you drive a Prius right?

Re:Yeah right

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Science corrects itself after finding new facts, no news at 11.

Besides, wether or not global warming is caused by humans isn't the important bit, the important bit is that we learn to understand the dynamics of our only place to live, Earth, and how to prepare for the future.
If global warming is real, it's important that we know what this will bring in the future, what the effects will be on the weather, the oceans, the wild life,...
And even if it's not actually warming, the science that goes into studying this will serve us in the future.

The fact is, we don't have a full understanding of the dynamics involved, all studies i've seen seem to indicate there is in fact global warming, and frankly, i don't care whom or what caused it, i want to know how we're preparing for the next day.

Re:Yeah right

[AmonTheMetalhead]

What's the effect of desalination of the oceans? That interests me more then the possibility that the Dutch will need bigger dams in the future.

Re:Yeah right

[somersault]

Even if it isn't us affecting the climate, we should still be aiming for efficient use of our finite resources.. I'd be much more pleased to find out that we'd cracked cold fusion and people were switching to electric SUVs.

Re:Yeah right

[indifferent children]

Also, all this means is that Greenland and West Antarctica are contributing less than 1/4 of the annual rise in sea levels rather than accounting for more than half. I guess we have to keep looking to find where the rest of the rise is coming from.

Unless a "rebounding crust" can also cause sea-level rise?

Re:Yeah right

[DarenN]

on sea level rise alone - a lot of Tuvalu is 1m above sea level. To cover it in water would require 250 years of 4mm per year, so it's not going to disappear overnight.

Bear in mind that 250 years ago there were an estimated 1.5m colonists in North America divided between British, Dutch and French colonies, the Prussians, the Holy Roman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire and others were fighting the Seven Years war, the British had just gained control of Canada by capturing Montreal from the French and beginning the end of the French and Indian war, the Marathas kingdom in India was fighting (and losing to) the Afghans to their North, and George III was raised to the British throne.
A quarter of a millenium is a long time :)

Re:Yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

It is the height of arrogance to think that we can control nature and prevent every death or Bad Thing from ever occurring. Yes, we can affect nature to some minor extent, but we certainly cannot command it!

People, animals, flora, fauna, bacteria, every living species has been dying ever since they've been living on this planet.

Now that humans have 'become self-aware' as it were, we're suddenly capable of never allowing a single person to ever be killed by a force of nature again? We can mould, shape, and terraform the earth's surface as we see fit? Rubbish.

Moreover, why do we suddenly find that desirable? How much of our resources would you spend to save these low-lying island nations? Would you expend 100% of earth's natural resources to save them? How much then, or how few? 90%? 80%? Where's the acceptable level of expenditure for you? When does it become wrong to consider saving them in terms of net cost to the earth and say 'sorry guys, bad luck... see you on the other side'.

Is that an offensive question to you? If it is, you're doing it wrong. Everything has a cost and a benefit. Them's the breaks.

It'll be sad if they lose their homes but that's nature. Are we affecting it? Maybe. Probably. Can we stop it and command nature? No. Can we slow it? Maybe, but their homes will go one day regardless. So will ours. In many billions of years the sun will expand to a massive giant which will swallow the earth whole before collapsing into a massive black hole. What about those poor low-lying nations then?

Nothing is permanent in this universe. Everything is temporary. Including us, including life. There's life and then there's death. That's the cycle of things. It might be better to get used to it now or you're going to be in for a real unhappy surprise in about 40 years.

Re:Yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

The irony is that from the very article posted:

"Beachhead erosion, coastal engineering, environmental mismanagement, overpopulation, deforestation, and deteriorating coral reefs are acting together and in conjunction with global warming to affect sea levels and cause damage to Tuvalu's underground water table. A 1989 United Nations report on the greenhouse effect stated that Tuvalu would completely disappear into the ocean in the twenty-first century, unless global warming was drastically diminished."

Out of 7 problems causing the island to sink and deteriorate, 1 is caused by someone off the island of Tuvalu. But of course, that one is the only one the OP is leading us to believe is relevant.

This is the sort of BS that makes global warming so unbelievable to the public to begin with.

Re:Yeah right

[DigitalSorceress]

Science corrects itself after finding new facts, no news at 11.

...THIS

Science is about postulating a hypothesis, then testing to see if you can disprove or refine it... If science were about coming up with an idea, and deciding, "yeah, that's the likely answer" and never testing / refining /disproving anything, then we'd still be believing that the sun goes 'round the Earth, and we'd still have no clue about the cause of disease or how basic physics worked. We'd never advance knowledge.

Seems to me that an adjustment of the measurement doesn't mean "OOPS, sorry folks there is no Global Warming", it means "Hey, we've realized we made an error in our estimates, here is the new data". In my mind, things like this could also mean, "hey, maybe we DO have a little longer before we cross the point of no return... maybe even long enough to do something about it" /P

Re:Yeah right

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Exactly, some people seem to not understand how science works, and this is very simular to evolution denial.

Re:Yeah right

[PhilHibbs]

Possibly. If a change in the shape of the earth's crust leads to a smaller ocean area, then deeper oceans are probably a consequence of that. It's also possible that a rebound-driven rise in the crust in one place leads to a lowering of the crust in another place. For instance, the UK is tilting - Scotland is rising but the south of England is sinking.

Re:Yeah right

[fadir]

Despite the pretty undisputable fact, that the western countries, first and foremost the U.S., are the main drivers of climate change (wether it being slow or fast doesn't really matter) and the "island nations" that will suffer most from it, without contributing any measurable amount to the causes - have you forgotten about the recent happenings on your own coast already? Do you really think that Katrina was a one time incident and will not happen again, ever?

Keep on dreaming but don't expect any serious understanding or even help once it hits you one day. There are quite a few sane people left in all regions all over the world, including the U.S., otherwise I'd be very interested to see what you would do if (for whichever reason) your own country would suffer from an impact that threatens your whole country and/or many of its inhabitants. ... but I guess even then you would say something along the lines "Screw the people in Louisiana, I live in Texas!"

Selfish asshole!

Re:Yeah right

[KarrdeSW]

Maybe, but their homes will go one day regardless. So will ours. In many billions of years the sun will expand to a massive giant which will swallow the earth whole before collapsing into a massive black hole.

Sir, I would like the name of the contractor who constructed your home. Longevity like that is something I would love to invest in. Also, do they offer an option which will protect my home from said black hole?

Re:Yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

Tell that to the politicians who scare hippies into thinking the sky is burning.

Re:Yeah right

[DarenN]

It has been documented that the massive rise in the economic impact of hurricanes, particularly in the US, is not really any indicator that hurricane intensity is increasing. Instead, it is an indicator that there is more economic activity happening in areas that are in the path of hurricanes. For instance, the population of Florida has increased by 10 million in the last 30 years alone. The South Florida Metropolitan Area has increased from ~700,000 to just under 5 million in the last 60 years. More people == more stuff to break, which means a higher cost to repair/replace.

Also, the devestation caused by Katrina in New Orleans was more due to the dam bursting, flooding the city than to the high winds and heavy rainfall.

These are both due to human intervention, all right, yet not a result of climate change. I don't have the reference handy, but I have read that the severity of hurricanes in terms of frequency, wind speed or size (as in area affected) has not increased significantly on average.

That's not to say that climate change won't affect everyone - the increased rainfall in Europe and the drought in Russia are two examples of small weather system changes causing big ass problems. But hysteria doesn't help support your view. Let's keep it calm, rational, and focused

Re:Yeah right

[savanik]

What he meant by 'not going to chase anyone out of their homes' is that we're not going to see sudden, dramatic raises in sea levels. If you think that people aren't capable of adapting to changes in their environment over a period of a hundred years, then, well... I guess I should break out my buggy whip.

Re:Yeah right

[lgw]

In my mind, things like this could also mean, "hey, maybe we DO have a little longer before we cross the point of no return... maybe even long enough to do something about it"

Worrying about a "point of no return" is an irrational, alarmist belief. People who want power and enjoy controlling the lives of other love irrational, alarmist beliefs. Scientists, not so much.

Can humans affect the climate? Certainly - the only question is how many significant digits do you need before you see the effect. Can humans affect the climate long term? No - compared to normal long-term climate variation, anything we do will be lost in the noise (from memory, the amout of carbon involved in the long-term (rock) carbon cycle is 10^6 times the totall amount of carbon in all known fossil fuels).

Re:Yeah right

[Will.Woodhull]

Unless a "rebounding crust" can also cause sea-level rise?

You were not supposed to notice that.

More seriously, though, if post ice age rebound is significant enough that it needs to be included in these models, then these questions follow:

1. To what degree is this rebound making the glacial slopes of Antarctica and Greenland steeper, and thus contributing to the accelerated movement of ice into open ocean?
2. Is this a positive feedback process?
3. To what degree is this rebound lifting some continental shelves and thus directly contributing to the increase in sea level through displacement of volume from depth to shallower waters?

At most, the research suggests that the changes we face are less anthropogenic and thus more difficult to forestall than we might have hoped for. If the rise in sea levels is unavoidable, then we need to more stringently control the variables that we CAN influence, and plan on a warmer, possibly wetter, world anyway.

Question: I have yet to see any empirical science behind the idea that thermal expansion is a major contributor to the increase in sea level. Is this hypothetical guessing? Or have we really enough historical data on average deep ocean temperatures to support the conjecture?

Re:Yeah right

[hairyfeet]

Actually try ZERO, as the islanders were actually blowing up the reefs with dynamite to keep them from fucking up the bottoms of their fishing boats. Using that brain trust as an example of AGW? And people wonder why some of us smell bullshit?

Tuvalu is fucked for the same reason Easter Island was fucked, the islanders themselves destroyed it.

Re:Yeah right

[bhartman34]

The problem is the intersection of science and policy. Scientists have every reason to refine, adjust, and even abandon their ideas, when the evidence warrants it. Politicians don't have that same incentive. And as we've seen in the past, when you're beholden to the politicians for your funding,

Re:Yeah right

[pandaman9000]

China has a larger carbon footprint than the U.S.. We are no longer the dominant industrial force, or the biggest polluter. Go look up the citations yourself. I am not taking the time to bother with dipshits that believe electric cars pollute less, or that global warming is in effect due to emissions. Electricity is currently produced largely from coal, and has losses in transmission, losses in storage, and losses due to inefficiencies.

If you believe this crap is truly relevant and dire, go bitch at China. They are the 800 pound gorilla,

Re:Yeah right

[pandaman9000]

What AC said, what you said.

Re:Yeah right

[srussia]

Tuvalu is fucked for the same reason Easter Island was fucked, the islanders themselves destroyed it.

Not true. Tuvalu's greatest resource is the .tv TLD. It is unsinkable.

Re:Yeah right

[PhilHibbs]

Question: I have yet to see any empirical science behind the idea that thermal expansion is a major contributor to the increase in sea level. Is this hypothetical guessing? Or have we really enough historical data on average deep ocean temperatures to support the conjecture?

That's the first I've heard of that suggestion. I thought the rise was supposedly due to glacial and Antarctic melting.

Re:Yeah right

[fadir]

They have barely passed you -after you led the charts for decades. It will take them quite a while before they really catch up to you.

Apart from this: What's your point? "They suck so we can behave like idiots as well!" ?

Re:Yeah right

[oiron]

How much of the island would be a viable place to live for all those 250 years? How much rise would it take to make it unlivable?

Re:Yeah right

[Bigjeff5]

I've dreamed of mini-fusion engines ever since I read the first Foundation novel.

Of course, that was shot to shit two decades ago by nuclear power alarmists. It's funny that these alarmists seem to be the exact same people, no matter what the issue is.

Re:Yeah right

[Chris Burke]

Also, if this is only the melt rate not counting the snowfall or ice accumulation rate which could cut this by any amount including making it negative

It's the net rate, accounting for both accumulation and melting. So, no.

Re:Yeah right

[Wyatt Earp]

No, mini-fusion or any fusion outside of a fission-fusion atomic weapon was "shot to shit" by the inability of anyone to get fusion to work in a laboratory. The best nuclear scientists in the US, Europe, Japan and Soviet Union/Russia have been trying for decades.

You can blame the anti-nuke crowd for a lack of fission reactors and stagnation in that tech, but not for fusion.

Re:Yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

a lot of Tuvalu is 1m above sea level... 250 years ago there were an estimated 1.5m colonists in North America

I'm confused. Is that "1 million above sea level" or "1.5 meter colonists?" :P

Re:Yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I drive a Prius. I don't own a TV. I set my thermostat for an economical setting. I dare say, the majority of environmentalist(s) elitists do the same. Just the opposite, I'd say. In any case:

It simply DOES NOT MATTER. The industrial revolution is on it's way down. There WILL BE choices in home heating & transportation that will be adopted by the masses for economical reasons. The TROUBLE is, this new stuff is TOO expensive at the moment and there is NO infrastructure to implement. It will take a decade or two but 'environmental friendly' choices will be available as the choice will be economical, again. People vote and live by their POCKETBOOK and will not make choices because the ELITE say it is the right thing to do.

To mandate such choices by radical government spending and mandates (Obama) has turned the majority of the US off... and rightly so. You cannot TAX a country into prosperity and you cannot SPEND your way out of a depression. It's why the 1929 crash is 'Great' and lasted as long as it did.

The private sector shall (and should) reign. The fuel cell and electric transportation (or other) will be affordable IF and ONLY IF the populous have the funding. Raising taxes to combat a theory such as global climate change is simply ridiculous at this point. The private sector shall take care more efficiently and quicker than creating bureaucrats and entitlement programs.

Cheers

Re:Yeah right

[riverat1]

Your calculation presumes the rate of glacial ice melt is not increasing but it is. Also, thermal expansion is as big a factor in SLR as added water from glacial melt. As the oceans warm up the volume increases.

Re:Yeah right

[riverat1]

The thermal expansion of water is simple physics, measurable in a laboratory. The increase in temperatures of the oceans has been measured. It doesn't matter if it's deep or shallow water, it still expands when it's warmed.

Re:Yeah right

[Anonymous Coward]

Where else are they going to live?

Seriously, if 6 billion people want to pursue a course that deprives, I don't know how many, let's say 50 million people of their homes - surely the least those 6 billion, between them, can do is to come up with enough land and money to compensate the 50 million?

Which doesn't sound too bad, until you think - it's not just a few low-lying islands in the Pacific. It's also low-lying parts of major continents. New Orleans springs to mind for some reason; also the Netherlands, Bangladesh, large parts of Indonesia and the Philippines... within a century, you're looking at something like half a billion refugees.

Where exactly do you suggest we put them? And who's going to pay for that land?

Global warming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick! Change the name!

CLIMATE CHANGE!

Yeaaah! Then we'll be able to claim we're right, even when we're wrong! woo!

Re:Global warming?

[fiannaFailMan]

Quick! Change the name!

CLIMATE CHANGE!

Yeaaah! Then we'll be able to claim we're right, even when we're wrong! woo!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it actually the right wing and their petrochemical backers who popularized the phrase "climate change" to squeeze the words "global warming" out of the debate?

Re:Global warming?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doctor: You have only two weeks left to live.
You: Oh noes, I'm gonna die :-(
Doctor: Sorry, we checked again, you actually have four weeks to live.
You: Yay, I don't have cancer!
Doctor: Um, I didn't say that. You're still going to die in f—
You: I'M CURED!!!

Great news!

[Arancaytar]

This estimate change means climate change has once again been proven wrong! Right? Right?

(Hint: No.)

Re:Great news!

[Thanshin]

This estimate change means climate change has once again been proven wrong! Right? Right?

(Hint: No.)

No, it's just a change in one of the thousands of indicators. However that's only for the people who actually care for the science of climate change.

For the rest, this estimate will prove just about anything between the third coming of the messiah and the imminent destruction of the Earth by magnetic core spin reversal.

Re:Great news!

[captainpanic]

We all know from measurements that the north pole (and Greenland) was warmer than average - we know that from direct measurements.
We all know that the ice is still melting (but slower than we thought).

So, I conclude that all our books regarding heat transfer must be wrong ;-)

Re:Great news!

[maxwell demon]

No, but the ocean will rise slower than thought.
At least unless there's another currently neglected factor to offset this.

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, but the good news is the science is settled on anthropogenic climate change!
Just like it was settled when their claim was twice as large as it is now!
Just like it will be settled when tomorrow they claim that actually the planet is dying at 1% of the rate they first thought!
Just like it will be settled next week when they find that oops, the planet isn't really dying at all, this is a natural warming cycle just like has been happening for millions of years (but the planet is only 4000 years old, right AGW alarmists? ;) ), sorry about all that money you wasted on falsified climate reports that even alarmists don't believe anymore.

Re:Great news!

[TapeCutter]

"We all know that the ice is still melting (but slower than we thought)."

Given we know the rate of ocean rise with a high level of certainty. The interesting thing about this estimate is that it has flow on effects to other estimates, such that the amount of ocean rise due to thermal expansion could be higher than previously thought which could mean that the oceans thermal inertia is not as slow as we thought.

Re:Great news!

[maxwell demon]

Just like it will be settled when tomorrow they claim that actually the planet is dying at 1% of the rate they first thought!

No one claims the planet is dying. It may become quite uncomfortable for humans, though.

Re:Great news!

[interkin3tic]

For the rest, this estimate will prove just about anything between the third coming of the messiah and the imminent destruction of the Earth by magnetic core spin reversal.

Hey now! Some of us just believe one or the other, that this is a sign of Jesus' return, or that the Earth's magnetic core is going to stop. It's only a lunatic fringe of our organizations that believe ice loss means Jesus is coming to stop the Earth's magnetic core!

Re:Great news!

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Actually it just means that once again the new prediction for sea level rise falls outside of the 95% confidence interval reported in the IPCC reports. Again. Imagine the chances. They've made 3 predictions, all with 95% confidence intervals, and the new prediction falls out of all 3 of them (just like their next prediction fell outside the 95% range for their previous prediction, both for sea level rise and temperature, so actually we should square the 5%). So if their chances are accurately calculated, that they're this wrong should happen once in 10y * 1 / ( 5% * 5% * 5% ) = 80 000 years.

I'm not a global warming denialist, mind you ... this obviously means that for the next 80 000 years the IPCC will not make a single wrong prediction !

Actually this is really smart of those scientists. You see, once every 80 000 years they will make 3 sequential predictions, each wrong. It's like, really smart of them to do it right away, then they can be right for the next few dozen millenia ! Brilliant !

Re:Great news!

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Since when do we know that ? Sure we know what we see on a few coastlines (quite a few, granted). We do not, however, have anywhere near accurate 3d heatmaps of the ocean, so we have no clue at all what is causing the variations, since to say the least, the ocean is an interesting place when it comes to temperature variations (and not just temperature variations, there's acidity, salinity, and a dozen other things that all influence eachother).

Re:Great news!

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

No one claims the planet is dying. It may become quite uncomfortable for humans, though.

Actually, since the average temperature of the earth is 15 degrees celcius, and the optimum for humans (and animal life in general) is 21 degrees celcius, it will be more comfortable. Also, if history of civilization, specifically the period immediately preceding the little ice age, is considered, there will be a LOT more arable and livable land accessible to humans (Greenland, Siberia, Canada*, for one) with a 6 degree rise in temperature.

Even if, yes, a rise like this will mean moving a number of large cities. Also, the change will have winners and losers (generally the winners will be more northern or more southern, and the losers more situated around the equator, but that's at best a very inaccurate rule of thumb).

* yes, global warming will mean Canada will become a livable place, even when you're more than 10 km from the US border.

Also, we may not understand exactly what effect was responsible for creating the sahara, it appears to have been a global cooling. Perhaps (we don't know) global warming will reverse this.

Re:Great news!

[Psychotria]

The amount of ice is dependant on altitude. I am sure that the climatologists know this, but just because the rate of melt at sea level is increasing doesn't mean that the amount of melt at moderate or high altitude is as well. If the average global temperature increased then the average air pressure would decrease meaning that snow and ice at higher altitudes would increase (due to the freezing point of water being dependant on air pressure). Therefore there will be an increase in snow/ice as you move up in altitude. So, the rate of melt might even remain constant.

Re:Great news!

[Psychotria]

Correction: the average pressure would increase

Re:Great news!

[elbow_spur]

> We all know that the ice is still melting (but slower than we thought).
This year we are going to see a new record low for arctic sea ice --- surpassing even the dramatic 2007 decline.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png
What's really startling is that this year, both the NE and the NW passages are completely open. This animation tells the story
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/CT/animate.arctic.color.0.html
Typically, shipping through the NE passage relies on Russian icebreakers. Judging by the satellite photos, at this point the icebreakers aren't needed
Source: cryosphere today http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/

Re:Great news!

[drinkypoo]

Actually, since the average temperature of the earth is 15 degrees celcius, and the optimum for humans (and animal life in general) is 21 degrees celcius, it will be more comfortable. Also, if history of civilization, specifically the period immediately preceding the little ice age, is considered, there will be a LOT more arable and livable land accessible to humans (Greenland, Siberia, Canada*, for one) with a 6 degree rise in temperature.

You're forgetting that a lot of currently arable land becomes swamp in this context. Remember, if the ice melts the conveyor stops, then the jet stream stops (it's powered by the conveyor which is powered by the thermal differential of ice to ocean) and then we have localized weather. That means some areas get craploads of rain, and some areas get almost none. Areas that are desert become soupy. Areas that are farmland become swamp. Areas that are now scrub become eligible to become farmland once it's cleared. Areas that are now forest begin dying because the trees are no longer in the zone in which they thrive.

This is not going to be a party if it lasts long.

Re:Great news!

[Anachragnome]

"No, it's just a change in one of the thousands of indicators...."

After reading up on post-glacial rebound, it appears the conclusion that the ice is melting half as fast is completely backwards.

So, lets assume that a 1000m thick glacier melted down to 500m over the last 50 years, judging by elevation readings on the surface of the glacier. But now we add a rise of 250m of the underlying rock due to post-glacial rebound over that same 50 year period. That means the glacier actually thinned by 75%, not the 50% that was originally thought--this theory would indicate an INCREASE in melting, not a decrease.

Did I miss something, or is this just more climate policy/propoganda/nonsense?

Re:Great news!

[PopeRatzo]

Actually, since the average temperature of the earth is 15 degrees celcius, and the optimum for humans (and animal life in general) is 21 degrees celcius, it will be more comfortable.

You're talking about the average temperature on earth, not the average temperature on land, where people can live.

Though you may be considering moving to a floating city off of Antarctica, in which case I'll agree with anything you say as long as it keeps you from beating your saucepan with a wooden spoon every goddamn time any news story about climate shows up.

Re:Great news!

[TapeCutter]

Estimates for total sea level rise are from both tidal gauges and sattelites, the largest error bars for these mesurements I can find are +/-0.7mm/yr

There are two major components that contribute to the observed rise, thermal exapansion and melting ice. If the estimate for the molten ice component goes down then given the estimated rise in sea level has not changed the estimate for the thermal expansion component must go up, no?

I don't see why you need 3D thermal heat maps to calculate a simple percentage of the total rise in levels? Nor do I see why regional variations of temprature and chemistry need to be understood to measure a global average?

Re:Great news!

[ShakaUVM]

>>They've made 3 predictions, all with 95% confidence intervals, and the new prediction falls out of all 3 of them

That's why I especially like one prediction they did (in AR4, I think) that included no change in the predicted models for 10 years out within the error bars (which was something like +0C to +4C).

So even if there's no climate change, it verifies climate change.
But if there's +5C change, then, by golly, global warming has been falsified! The results didn't match prediction.

In all seriousness, though, I think there's a real paradox in what we consider falsification and verification in science if the above two statements are both true.

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, you missed something: the details of glacial/crust rebound.
They explained that all movement isn't just moving up - some is sideways, some is down.
what is happening is that N. America is rebounding up for the last 20,00 years and this
has actually pulled Greenland over/down.

Re:Great news!

[thomasw_lrd]

But of course climate change is still real. Unless of course you start adding in all the other falsified data, and start changing the models to account for all the new data that has been published in the last year and a half.

Re:Great news!

[maxwell demon]

Also, we may not understand exactly what effect was responsible for creating the sahara, it appears to have been a global cooling.

From what I've heard, the effect that created the Sahara was a change of global weather patterns caused by the rise of the Himalaya. Which wasn't caused by global cooling, but by plate tectonics.

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the people that suggested the 'accepted truths' were extremely alarmist and that using such hyperbole to get a point across would be incredibly damaging to future efforts at swaying hearts and minds towards making things better?

Do we get an apology for being called deniers?

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, since the average temperature of the earth is 15 degrees celcius, and the optimum for humans (and animal life in general) is 21 degrees celcius, it will be more comfortable.

And if I have one arm on fire, and one in the freezer on average I'm at a nice temperature. Average temperature is not important, usable land is.

Change is disruptive, big changes more so. Global warming (or cooling for that matter) will result in massive climate change and all the human suffering and misery that goes with it.

Re:Great news!

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Both Europe and America were filled with swamps before humans fixed it (in the late middle ages).

So what is the problem ? First, swamps won't recreate unless we screw up water management badly, and even then we can simply close them up again.

Re:Great news!

[shadowofwind]

magnetic core spin reversal.

Funny you should mention that. The first thing I thought of when I saw the headline was a Science paper from about 15 years ago about the rotation of the earth's core. The angular velocity they estimated differed from a previous estimate by more than a factor of 2, but they considered the two results to be in agreement because the spin was in the same direction. My thought at that time was that if results differ by that much, they're only a little better than noise, and rotation in the opposite direction would be within the same margin of error.

Re:Great news!

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

But the whole point of the second paragraph, curiously absent from your post, was that there is a warmer period in the history of civilization.

And it had a LOT more usable land than we have today. And, before you claim it, if the future is independant from the past, climate science itself does not have a basis either.

Change is disruptive ... newsflash ... you believe in evolution, right ? Does "Adapt or die" sound familiar ? It's just as valid for civilizations as it is for people, mice and bacteria.

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of the conveyor stopping is old an prediction that has been revised. As in no climate anybody believes that it will stop anymore (at least on time scales of 1000 of years).

Re:Great news!

[Thanshin]

I'm not a global warming denialist, mind you ... this obviously means that for the next 80 000 years the IPCC will not make a single wrong prediction !

You're not very strong at probability either. ;)

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's amazing how reading the article clears up questions of this sort. The short answer being that you're looking at too small of an area. The rising area is in North America and the sinking area is Greenland. North America rises and it pulls the crust towards itself causing Greenland to sink.

"These revealed, among other things, that southern Greenland is in fact subsiding, as the crust beneath it is pulled by the post-glacial rebound from northern America."

Re:Great news!

[Burnhard]

Remember, if the ice melts the conveyor stops, then the jet stream stops

Stop right there. I have visions of Prof Lindzen with his famous phrase, "on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference".

Re:Great news!

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Don't worry, Douglas Quaid will make sure Mars is inhabitable by then.

Re:Great news!

[AmonTheMetalhead]

95% confidence is based on the then available facts & science, nothing more, nothing less, god damn it, this sounds like all those nutjobs that keep saying evolution isn't real any time we learn something new about it.

Re:Great news!

[paeanblack]

If the average global temperature increased then the average air pressure would...

It would do nothing along the lines of what you are thinking. The atmosphere is not enclosed in a rigid container (external force), but held by gravity (body force).

The average pressure at sea level is the gravitational weight of the atmosphere divided by the surface area of the earth. The classical mass of the atmosphere is independent of average temperature.

Yes, local temperature changes cause local pressure changes. This does not mean global average temperature changes cause global average pressure changes.

Re:Great news!

[AkiraRoberts]

is disruptive ... newsflash ... you believe in evolution, right ? Does "Adapt or die" sound familiar ? It's just as valid for civilizations as it is for people, mice and bacteria.

Well the issue is, if it's adapt or die, a pretty fucking huge number of people will end up dying. Yes, with the earth being warmer, perhaps the net amount of usable land would increase. But if said usable land is in a different location than the current usable land there might be a few, you know, issues in picking up the entire agricultural infrastructure of the world and relocating it. Especially when you take into account things like national borders which countries tend to be a little touchy about.

So yeah, sure, we'll adapt, it won't be the end of humanity. But the transition is going to suck.

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's often overlooked that, while there are fringe lunatics on both ends of the spectrum shouting that anyone who doesn't agree with their highly polarised view is either a climate change nut or a climate change denier, there are plenty of us in the middle who don't care to jump to sentimental conclusions and just want some good, old fashioned facts to make up our minds. As it stands now I find it hard to believe the "scientific facts" that either side present, as both have proven their bias as well as a subset willing to fudge the numbers to bolster up their argument. I believe somewhere in the middle is a sensible discussion to be had about sustainability in the face of massive population growth, but we can't get the lunatics to stop shouting long enough to have said discussion. It's deeply depressing as someone who wants to do the right thing but is yet to be convinced about what the "right thing" actually is (I'm sure it involves reducing fossil fuel consumtion - that's obviously a good idea even if all the climate claims are false, but what else?)

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

What it does prove is that it isn't "settled science" -- which, by definition, means all factors are accounted for and there are no surprise findings such as this.

Re:Great news!

[IWannaBeAnAC]

My thought at that time was that if results differ by that much, they're only a little better than noise, and rotation in the opposite direction would be within the same margin of error.

Not necessarily, because there is no reason why the measurement error should be symmetrically distributed. To know that, you need to look instead at confidence intervals, or the entire distribution of the possible errors. Eg, if the measured outcome is 2 with a standard deviation of 4, with a skewed distribution those error bars don't have to be at 0 and 4, they could be at 1.5 and 5.5.

Re:Great news!

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Well the issue is, if it's adapt or die, a pretty fucking huge number of people will end up dying.

And the point is ? Sorry if the real world doesn't change to satisfy your sensibilities. It doesn't care. Nor (should) science.

Evolution :
1. Breed (preferably inaccurately and with lots of diseases and viruses involved, and other things that damage the DNA). Do not forget to include LOTS of random stupidity (because there is a tiny chance that something stupid turns out to be very smart instead)
2. Die off as a result of the mistakes committed at step 1. How many ? 99% at least, preferably more. You should show a "tendency" to kill off the "less fit" (anyone who produces, say 1%, less than the world champion), but no more than a tendency. In other words, make sure the killing is mostly (but not entirely) random.
3. Goto 1

Apply richly to humans, ideas, groups, countries, civilizations, ... Which part, exactly is unclear ?

If you wish to experience a real "fuck !" moment, check what happens if you attempt to sabotage step 2 by using things like social security and medicine (ie. you massively lower the chance of dying as a result of defective genes, or inability to produce sufficient food/security/... for yourself).

Re:Great news!

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Come on, read your own post. You're basically saying that climate science is a fantasy and doesn't have anything to say about the real world.

Of course those confidence intervals mean that according to the IPCC there is a 95% chance that the reaction of the real world will fall within the claimed range.

Re:Great news!

[AkiraRoberts]

The point is that I tend to view massive loss of life as a negative. Sure, killing off 99% of the world's population would, in the end, lead to a population that is "more fit." And yes, perhaps we need that sort of thing right now. And yes, the world, science and evolution care fuck all for my indvidual sensibilities. Be that as it may, I'd prefer to live in a time where 99% of humanity (and I have no illusions - I'll be in that 99%) wasn't experiencing natural selection in a very up close and personal fashion.

But from a completely detached and amoral (and not intending to use that word in a judgemental way) point of view, sure, you are totally correct.

Re:Great news!

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Look, if i make a study based on current data that predicts with 95% confidence level that event X will happen, then that confidence level is based on said data.

If later new data presents i have to revise my study to account for the new data, and the outcome might be different, even though based on the new study the confidence in the study itself on the new data has the same percentage.

Re:Great news!

[shadowofwind]

Yes. For brevity I didn't qualify my statement more carefully than saying it was 'my thought at that time'. I don't remember the details adequately now. There were no 'error bars' given on either of the two estimates, skewed or otherwise, to account for the disagreement though. And the disagreement between estimates was quite a bit more than a factor of 2, but I don't remember how much. My point was more that it was curious that the parent poster and I both thought of earth's core rotation in the same context, maybe having the same paper or similar.

Re:Great news!

[akboss]

And this year they said we would be lashed by massive hurricanes.....so when is this supposed to start?
Science is not exact when it comes to climate and weather.
All the computers said this year would be the worse for hurricanes and yet we have seen them but they obviously havent listened to the National Weather Service and come ashore with cat 4 winds.
So if the computer models they used are so off am I to believe that the computer models the climate experts use are 100% accurate? Personally I dont think so.

Re:Great news!

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

No, then you've falsely claimed a confidence interval. Let's compare here :

A scientist claims electrons have a charge of 1.2e (95% confidence interval).

This turns out to be a mistake in his measurement equipment. So if you look at his data, obviously this is a correct conclusion, he's just measured it wrong.

According to you, therefore, that claim will be correct. Was the original claim wrong or not ? Obviously is was wrong.

What is claimed by the ipcc is that their predictions will match what happens in the real world. Only they're giving out conflicting predictions ... whoops. That means, just like the electron example, that they're wrong. Simple.

Re:Great news!

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

If you don't have 3d thermal heat maps, you cannot accurately determinate the average temperature of the oceans.

Why ? Because they're not in thermodynamic equilibrium. So, strictly speaking, you cannot determinate the temperature without every part of it separately.

More reasonably, you could be horribly off the mark if you only measure the easily accessible parts. If you measure, for example, 90% of the ocean, and the 10% left out is the poles, ... you tell me what happens.

Re:Great news!

[MozeeToby]

I know several otherwise intelligent and informed people who were convince for a year or so that we were experiencing a runaway greenhouse effect and we would end up like Venus. There were articles about it in several major newspapers and websites, with many people prominently proclaiming that it was a possibility. The rhetoric has toned down considerably since then thank god, though it is still far too high for an argument of this importance. Just because it is embarrassing to those of use that support global warming research doesn't mean that it isn't true.

Re:Great news!

[AmonTheMetalhead]

In your example, the mistake in his measurement equipment is the new data that means the previous claim is invalid.
In other words, based on the data he had, his claim was valid, once new data is introduced (faulty equipment), the validity of his claim can change.

That's all i said basically.

Re:Great news!

[dtjohnson]

This year we are going to see a new record low for arctic sea ice --- surpassing even the dramatic 2007 decline.

No one can say with certainty what 'might' happen...but it can be said
what has already happened with arctic sea ice extent...and you are
wrong. Arctic sea ice extent this year is greater
than it was on the same date in 2007 AND 2008.

   

Re:Great news!

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

Truth does NOT depend on your observation of it. Why don't you step off a bridge, don't believe in gravity, and tell me what happens.

Because if one applies your theory to ipcc's claims, then they clearly cannot mean that temperatures will actually rise.

Look, either theory applies to the real world, in which case the ipcc lies, or theory doesn't apply to the real world, and the ipcc's claims have exactly the same value as the words of a drugged up hippie.

So which is it ? Is theory measured against the real world, or not ?

I hate people with double standards.

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, yes, the Cohagen Accord...

Re:Great news!

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Are you so dense that you can not comprehend simple english? Reread my posts, slowly.

Study 1 uses dataset A and has result X.
Study 2 uses dataset B (wich is A + new data) and has result Z

Based on dataset A, result X is correct, this does not mean that it's true.
Based on dataset B, result Z is correct, this does not mean that it's true.

Both can have the same confidence %, both can conflict, because they are NOT THE SAME.

Re:Great news!

[Chris Burke]

So even if there's no climate change, it verifies climate change.
But if there's +5C change, then, by golly, global warming has been falsified! The results didn't match prediction.

In all seriousness, though, I think there's a real paradox in what we consider falsification and verification in science if the above two statements are both true.

Yes, there's a problem with what you consider falsification. Falsification applies to theories, not to observations.

If the temperature rises 5C, it would falsify the theory by which we model and predict global warming. However, the observation of global warming would be stronger than ever. So, we'd have to change our theories.

It's similar to how experiment falsified the Caloric theory of heat because the result did not match predictions, but did not falsify the concept of heat. Observations that did not match Newton's Law of Gravity did not "falsify" the observation that gravity exists.

On the other hand, a temperature change of 0 degrees, that would validate the theory by which we model and predict global warming. However the observation would be of no global warming for that period. It would be correct to say "there was no global warming in this ten year period". Just remember that unlike a theory or model, this would not "falsify" the previous observations of warming.

Re:Great news!

[chrb]

Actually this is really smart of those scientists. You see, once every 80 000 years they will make 3 sequential predictions, each wrong. It's like, really smart of them to do it right away, then they can be right for the next few dozen millenia ! Brilliant !

You do realise it was scientists who released this new study, right?

Re:Great news!

[chrb]

The interesting thing about this estimate is that it has flow on effects to other estimates, such that the amount of ocean rise due to thermal expansion could be higher than previously thought which could mean that the oceans thermal inertia is not as slow as we thought.

The 2007 IPCC report did not include numbers for all ice sheet effects. It could be that acceleration of ice sheet flow is contributing a greater amount to the increase in sea level than previously thought.

Re:Great news!

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

I didn't know you were so anti-science. If that a scientific theory's claims that X is correct do not mean that they are true, that they apply to the real world.

I guess you don't believe in agw then ? (unless of course, those theories are true, because of the magical pixie dust) ...

Every theory, for obvious reasons, is based on a dataset.

I didn't think that there were 21st century Americans who didn't believe in science. Clearly I was wrong.

Re:Great news!

[blueg3]

I'm not a global warming denialist, mind you ... this obviously means that for the next 80 000 years the IPCC will not make a single wrong prediction !

You're not allowed to talk about statistics any more.

Re:Great news!

[GooberToo]

But it does, yet once again, invalidate all of the climate simulations. This is what, the fourth or fifth time the simulations have been completely invalidated in just the last five or six years? My memory isn't exact on this but I promise I'm not far off.

Remember, climate simulations are constantly tweaked with current data. The simulation is then continuously tweaked until it matches history. The simulation is then run beyond known data to make predictions. This means the simulations didn't predict yesterday accurately. Most importantly, don't forget these simulations are by in large what are used to predict doom and gloom for the world of tomorrow.

Global warming likely is happening but it doesn't change the fact that "science" is using a baseline of temperature readings with errors higher than the values required to predict global warming and simulations which have not once, ever been close to simulating reality, let alone making accurate predictions.

Its extremely unpopular on slashdot to say these things but even a good chunk of climatologists (~20%) and almost all meteorologists (~70+%) will tell you the current state of simulations are all but useless and are only good for fear mongering and generating the next round of funding. As a scientific tool, they are all but useless. That's not to say they will never be of value - so continued research is a good idea.

Which means, at the end of the day, we are left with a lot of speculation and little more. Anyone who says otherwise is likely up for funding or ignorantly pushing the party line.

Re:Great news!

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Fuck it, you're not worth my time, i can't make my post any clearer then it already is.

Re:Great news!

[radtea]

No, it's just a change in one of the thousands of indicators. However that's only for the people who actually care for the science of climate change.

One useful way of distinguishing people who care about the science from those who don't: people who don't care about the science reduce the entire debate to a single dimension of "better" or "worse". As soon as someone says that you know they aren't talking about and probably don't care about the science, which is multi-dimensional, non-linear, and does not remotely admit of such a single-valued figure of merit.

But the people who only care about the political power that the risks of climate change might give them are more than happy to immediately reduce the entire discussion to "worse" and "better", creating a nicely polarized debate that pits equally ignorant "warmists" against "denialists".

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

You just changing words to void using *wrong*. Previous IIPC reports are *wrong* by current reports. That or the current reports are also *wrong*.

Valid/invalid is just semantic bullshit.

Re:Great news!

[ScentCone]

Please do not disturb him with annoying distractions such as observations of actual ice.

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

No simpleton, it's just another example of human arrogance leading us to believe we can predict or even estimate something this complex. Slashdotters eat up this environmental "science" like candy, for some strange reason.

Re:Great news!

[BlueParrot]

Actually it just means that once again the new prediction for sea level rise falls outside of the 95% confidence interval reported in the IPCC reports. Again. Imagine the chances. They've made 3 predictions, all with 95% confidence intervals, and the new prediction falls out of all 3 of them (just like their next prediction fell outside the 95% range for their previous prediction, both for sea level rise and temperature, so actually we should square the 5%). So if their chances are accurately calculated, that they're this wrong should happen once in 10y * 1 / ( 5% * 5% * 5% ) = 80 000 years.

Nonsense. You just don't understand the difference between systematic and statistical errors, a concept introduced in high school physics classes. This error here was a systematic one. Confidence intervals and error bars only show statistical errors.

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

The average pressure at sea level is the gravitational weight of the atmosphere divided by the surface area of the earth.

True, but higher temperatures doesn't mean (among others) more H20 vaporized on the atmosphere, and then, a heavier atmosphere?

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're premise is wrong, the IPCC has made more than 3 predictions. If the IPCC were to publish 60 predictions with a 95% confidence then the expected outcome would be that 3 of them were false.

Whoever moded you insightful is a loon.

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans are social beings. Enjoy being killed off because you sound like an asshole.

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

But if the average temperature increases the atmoshpere will expand and the pressure at any given elevation will increase. That is because the amount of atmosphere above you would increase.

Re:Great news!

[Bigjeff5]

That's a terrible idea, Mars's core is solid and thus has no magnetic field.

Unless...

You aren't suggesting there is a secret mission to drop a million nukes Mars's core to re-heat, melt, and therefore re-generate the magnetic field are you?

I mean, it's crazy, but it just might work!

Re:Great news!

[ceoyoyo]

No, it represents a problem in what people understand to be the process of falsification in science.

If I come up with a model that predicts change between 0 and +4C in the next 10 years, and the actual measured change is +5, then yes indeed, my model has been falsified.

In terms of actual global warming, if my error bars are, say, -5 to +5 and the actual change falls within that range, then the hypothesis of global warming hasn't been falsified. Rather, my data has nothing to say about whether global warming is occurring or not (although it could probably be used to put some upper limits on the amount of warming). Contrary to popular belief, not finding a significant change is NOT evidence that there is no change.

A third possibility is that I actually power my study to produce actual negative results. Perhaps I collect data that has a 95% chance of observing any change > 2 degrees. If I don't see a significant change then I can conclude that the amount of global warming occurring is likely below that 2 degree threshold.

Yeah, science can be kind of tricky.

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

the science is settled according to Al Gore. oopsie!

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I just think it's good news. The slower the fuckage comes, the better.

Re:Great news!

[Bigjeff5]

You really need to brush up on what makes a claim valid or invalid.

A factual error (his measurement mistake) means the claim was never valid, even though it appeared to be valid at first.

It's not "valid until you find a problem", it's "valid or invalid". If it is valid, it cannot later become invalid. However, you can discover that it was never valid to begin with - it only appeared to be.

The IPCC's three invalid predictions were always invalid, observation bore that out. Were they valid, observation would have fallen within their predicted figures. Obviously they are missing something, which shows their claims were never valid to begin with.

I repeat, at no point were those particular claims ever valid. There was a point where they did appear to be valid, but it turns out they were based on insufficient data to come to a valid conclusion.

New data doesn't transform formerly valid claims into invalid claims, new data shows that previous claims were never valid to begin with.

Newtonian physics is a perfect example. Newtonian physics are invalid. This has been proven without a doubt. We now know that he was wrong. Does this make Newtonian physics useless? Does it mean we can never use Newtonian physics for anything practical again? No, of course not. Newton's equations are so close to correct that you only get meaningful errors when looking at extreme distances and timescales, and then only when your measuring instruments are extremely precise. He was wrong, but by so little it's no wonder it took us 300 years to discover it. As such, we still use Newtonian physics for practical real-world work, even though we know he got it wrong.

That's why scientists are looking for solutions to these problems - because they know they don't know the real truth.

Re:Great news!

[Bigjeff5]

Come on, that was a statistics joke and a jab at the IPCC at the same time!

Re:Great news!

[Bigjeff5]

I can't see how it's a dire thing that ice which has been thinning for the past 10,000 years continues to thin.

Is there evidence that it is actually thinning faster than it was a thousand years ago? Or are we just measuring it better?

Re:Great news!

[Bigjeff5]

That graph is pretty interesting, but you can see the big jump in sea ice in 2009, 2010 is just riding that trend down.

What I find interesting is 2010 has the highest sea ice in a decade for the month of April and the lowest for the month of June, then back to just third lowest for September.

The best conclusion you can draw from this, I think, is that there is a lot of variability in the sea ice extent from year to year, but it generally stays pretty close in the short term.

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone knows how to fight global warming... You just keep dropping a giant ice cube into the ocean every now and then. Thus solving the problem once and for all.

Re:Great news!

[Bigjeff5]

Also, every million years or so the Sahara holds two giant lakes that dwarf the combined volume of the Great Lakes, easily making them the top two lakes in the world. It becomes a lush, green paradise.

Re:Great news!

[Troed]

Given we know the rate of ocean rise with a high level of certainty.

Absolute bollocks.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/5067351/Rise-of-sea-levels-is-the-greatest-lie-ever-told.html

Re:Great news!

[Troed]

Nah. Sahara was a green savannah only a few thousand years ago. It was when it became a desert the spread out pockets of civilization had to move together in the Nile valley we got the Egyptian civilization.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091111115843.htm

Re:Great news!

[AK Marc]

I repeat, at no point were those particular claims ever valid. There was a point where they did appear to be valid, but it turns out they were based on insufficient data to come to a valid conclusion.

Based on your definitions of words, I'd assert that you are stating they were both invalid and true at the same time. "Based on the data we have, the answer is 10." If the data is invalid, then the claim is invalid but could still be based on a true theory. If the theory is correct, but the data is bad, then you'd assert it to be "invalid" but, being correct at the same time would make the theory "true" even if not useful since we can't input the correct data.

Much like Charles Babbage's calculating machine would have worked, was correct, but was never completed in his lifetime, thus his pursuit of it would be called by you to be "invalid" because it didn't work, but he was 100% correct at the same time. Invalidating the data doesn't invalidate the theory. It might case suspicion on it, but the two are essentially unrelated (except the theories are based on the data, usually).

Newtonian physics is a perfect example. Newtonian physics are invalid. This has been proven without a doubt.

Your assertion is invalid. Newtonian physics are 100% correct (as far as we know now) for when the two objects acting on each other are not moving relative to each other and the observer is not moving relative to them either. Also, they can be "transformed" into relativistic equations with correction factors, or by using the original equation, as stated, but with the addition of the assumption that mass and time are not constants. There has been an arbitrary decision to call equations so corrected "relativistic" and those not so corrected "newtonian." I assert that such refinements and arbitrary segregations do not invalidate the base equation. Relativity is a refinement of, not refutation of, Newtonian physics.

Re:Great news!

[regularstranger]

I'm actually disappointed that more people didn't quickly point this out. A hint to anyone who makes more than one prediction and expects ALL of them (the entire family) to have 95% confidence: the errors have to be adjusted accordingly. Bonferroni correction is one example of a method for this. But if I make 100 predictions with 100 95% intervals calculated independently, then the expectation is that 5 of the intervals will not contain their respective true value.

Re:Great news!

[treeves]

1.2e needs to have "error bars" (e.g. 1.2+/-0.1e) in order for it to be a confidence interval, so it's hard for me to judge your argument.

Re:Great news!

[codeshot]

The parent comment sounds like argumentum ad hominem to me. Can we get a true scientist around here please... And, no, the irony of my comment is not lost on me.

Re:Great news!

[ravenshrike]

Sooo, we need to figure out how to drop comets into the ocean while at the same time slowing them down enough to mitigate the effects of the ensuing tidal wave. Where exactly would we get rocket boosters that big?

Re:Great news!

[khayman80]

In this context, error bars aren't simple numbers; they're actually functions of the temporal smoothing applied. If for some reason you decide to smooth the GCM output and sensor data at only 10 years, the error bars will be large. That's why professional climatologists usually smooth data and model output using ~20 year averages.

More fundamentally, falsification requires proper understanding of the dynamical nature of GCMs. This proposed "falsification" is woefully misguided because modern GCMs are dynamical physical models. If GCMs were simply empirical fits to past temperatures (as many seem to think), it would be meaningful to test the model by discussing temperatures alone. But GCMs don't incorporate timeseries of past temperatures, instead they model the climate based on the physics of forcings such as solar output, volcanic activity, aerosols, and human emissions. In other words, scientists don't develop GCMs to predict global temperatures; instead, GCMs are used to constrain a number of parameters such as (for instance) the equilibrium climate sensitivity and the transient climate response to doubling CO2.

All IPCC scenarios explicitly define the forcings that serve as inputs to the GCMs, and the temperature increase is the output. Since physicists are interested in testing physics rather than trying in vain to predict economic activity which could change CO2 emissions, falsification of any parameter constrained by the IPCC GCM ensemble requires comparing the projected forcings to the actual forcings.

Re:Great news!

[euroq]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Nils-Axel Mörner saying that for the past 300 years, there has been no significant trend in the levels of the sea? That doesn't have anything to do with what would happen if Antarctica completely melted.

Re:Great news!

[ShakaUVM]

>>Falsification applies to theories, not to observations.

Theories generate predictions which are then tested.

For example, the Extremely Simple Theory of Everything might predict the existence of new particles. A physicist does the math, and figures out a way to generate these new particles (if they exist). He runs the experiment. If the results come back positive, it adds +1 verification points to the ESTOE. If it doesn't, it adds +1 falsification points to it.

The point is, if we do have a theory (AGW) and it results in certain predictions with a certain, very wide, error range, we can't run tests on it. (This is a key difference between climatology and hard sciences.) There's just one experiment running (Earth), and it takes a long time to results back. But the paradox that I mention is this: even if we have no global warming, the +0C result is within the band of error bars, so this counts as verification of the prediction. But a +5C change counts as invalidating the prediction. So we have less confidence in AGW than before. Even though, paradoxically, the world heated up faster than we thought, and we really do have AGW.

What you're talking about is the fact that if the-current-best-guess-AGW theory is falsified, people can always adjust it to account for the new data, and develop new predictions. But there's two major problems with this: one, we don't know if they'll be any more accurate (until another 10 or 20 years has gone by) and two, this means that AGW can never be falsified, and so it is not a scientific theory at all.

Re:Great news!

[ShakaUVM]

>>If for some reason you decide to smooth the GCM output and sensor data at only 10 years, the error bars will be large. That's why professional climatologists usually smooth data and model output using ~20 year averages.

If you'd like to engage in a gedankenexperiment, consider if predictions after 20 years had error bars from +0C to +10C. (Error bars themselves are fuzzy things, but I digress.) The same paradox applies to the notions of falsification and verification. No change verifies AGW, but a massive +20C change falsifies AGW (technically, the current-best-guess-AGW theory).

>This proposed "falsification" is woefully misguided because modern GCMs are dynamical physical models

They are models which create predictions which can either be verified or falsified. If you say verification and falsification don't apply, then climatology is not science. If you say that AGW can never be disproven by temperature data, then climatology is not a science. Alternatively, our notions of verification and falsification are flawed measures of "science".

This is philosophy of science type stuff, which I know you don't have much appetite for, Khayman. But the point of my original post above was to talk about the very paradox of verification and falsification in regards to climate science... which I think it seems you agree with. They are very problematic.

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but the mass of the atmosphere is _not_ constant. The average mass of the atmosphere includes the mass of the included water vapor. That can change.

Re:Great news!

[AmonTheMetalhead]

OMG, you've never seen Total Recall?

Re:Great news!

[jlehtira]

Actually it just means that once again the new prediction for sea level rise falls outside of the 95% confidence interval reported in the IPCC reports.

Actually the latest IPCC report contains a very conservative estimate for the melting of Greenland ice sheet. This is because that melting is (and was) not known well enough to make good estimates. Likewise for Antarctica. More specifically, the 2007 report contains numbers for melting between 1993 and 2003.

The linked article talks about 230 GT of ice annually from Greenland and 132 GT from west Antarctica. This rate is supposedly from the last two years (2008-2010 presumably), and adds to 3 mm / year sea level rise. Halving that means 1.5 mm / year from these two sources. The IPCC report contains the number of 0.42 mm from these sources combined.

The IPCC prediction is a bit on the low side (only 30-50 cm per century) because of this. They're underestimating, and they know it and say so. Of course there are newer bigger numbers for melting for both Greenland and Antarctica, but as these numbers vary this much between studies, IPCC shouldn't (and doesn't) include them in their great scenarios.

Just a reminder - sea level rise does not need ice sheet melting. A good sea level rise can come from thermal expansion alone. The IPCC report for policymakers says that less than 10% of observed sea level rise is thought to result from Greenland melting.

Re:Great news!

[Troed]

True, and it's got nothing to do with what would happen if the Himalayas decided to suddenly disappear as well, which is about as likely.

The GP claimed we know sea level rise with extreme certainty. We don't. Photos and sea level markers at docks are excellent observational proof over models - and Mörner is the sea level expert whom the IPCC wish would just stay quiet.

Re:Great news!

[jandersen]

Actually it just means that once again the new prediction for sea level rise falls outside of the 95% confidence interval reported in the IPCC reports

And?

In science we are not concerned with "being right" and "winning discussions" - we just want to get closer to the objective truth. All scientists know that they are wrong to some degree; it is a common misconception that science is "The Truth". Science is a method, and what is more, it is a method for discovering falsehoods, which is why a scientific theory must be falsifiable. Because a theory is, basically, only a suggested explanation for why we make the observations we do.

So, when we hear that the fine-structure constant may not be constant, all physicists feel delighted: here we have something new and unexpected. And when a climate scientist sees that the rate of melting in Greenland is lower than he thought, s/he goes back to the model and tries to figure out where it is wrong. Which is why the new data are not hidden away, but published despite the fact that all climate deniers are going to pounce on them and claim that "It Is All A Lie".

Now, all of this is probably also an explanation why climate deniers have any public following - most people believe that science works in the same way as politics and religion, that you start out with your preconceived opinion, which you call "The Truth", and then you try to twist your observations and your logic around until everything fits, even if it requires the amputation of heels and toes. And that also explains why there is a conflict.

The really bizarre thing is that while people are willing to do the most horrible things to logic and facts in order to avoid accepting reality in one area, they have no problem accepting even the wildest, scientific speculations. I mean, if one can accept without hesitation that particles are waves (not actually an observed fact, but an interpretation that is consistent with observations, which is slightly different), then one should have no problems accepting that humans have caused the present climate change. The logic in both cases is impeccable, the observations are sound; if you believe in one part of science, then you have no good reason to disbelieve another on such a fundamental level as what the climate deniers do.

Re:Great news!

[TapeCutter]

Dr. Morner was awarded "Deceiver of the year" by the Swedish skeptics society for organizing university courses that teach his bizzare theories about dowsing. When James Randi offered him a million dollars to demonstrate dowsing under controlled conditions he refused.

Like just about every other source you have thrown at me over the years Morner is a fruit loop with zero credibility and even less evidence. When are you going to learn the art of skepticisim?

Re:Great news!

[TapeCutter]

Observed Sea level rise, Morner is not an expert at anything except woo-woo physics.

Re:Great news!

[TapeCutter]

Have you actually read what I posted? Here's what I wrote just in case you missed it the second time..."There are two major components that contribute to the observed rise, thermal exapansion and melting ice. If the estimate for the molten ice component goes down then given the estimated rise in sea level has not changed the estimate for the thermal expansion component must go up, no?"

Why do I need to know the temprature of the ocean to make that statement?

Re:Great news!

[Troed]

I'm sorry, can you please explain to our readers what dowsing has to do with sea levels?

Mörner has actual observational records (photographs, sea level markers at docks etc) that disprove modelled sea level records*.

Where I'm from (Sweden, same as Mörner) you try to disprove the message, not the messenger. You should try it.

*) http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/03/19/despite-popular-opinion-and-calls-to-action-the-maldives-is-not-being-overrun-by-sea-level-rise/

Re:Great news!

[Psychotria]

This

Re:Great news!

[Anonymous Coward]

Alternatively it may just prove we don't know squat except that the climate is changing. There are forces which impact the climate we don't yet understand yet or know of. More study and data are necessary before running around like chicken little and proclaiming the sky is falling. Algor and the IPCC need a big fat pile of SHUT UP.

Algor and the IPCC remind me of newguy with a certification that comes into my organization and loudly proclaims he knows everything, but really doesn't.

Re:Great news!

[Ao_42]

Don't get too excited until you see AR5. The IPCC community knew at the time of AR4 that the ice loss estimates were frankly crap, since they didn't include any ice sheet dynamics and were just completely simplified estimates. I attended a meeting recently for the IPCC physical sciences working group on the cryosphere, and there has been major progress since the last AR, so much so that it is getting its own chapter in AR5. Unfortunately, by the time any piece of science makes it into the IPCC it is already a few years old. Fortunately, if you read some of the current research you will have a sneak-peak into what is likely going to be included in AR5. Go to http://nsidc.org/ and look at "Publications" if you are interested in a sampling of the latest research.

Re:Great news!

[riverat1]

Sea level rise has been measured quite accurately since at least the 1980s from satellite measurements.

Re:Great news!

[riverat1]

Actually higher atmospheric humidity produces a less dense atmosphere since an H20 molecule is lighter than the N2 and O2 molecules that make up the bulk of the atmosphere.

Re:Great news!

[riverat1]

Ever since we started measuring sea level with satellites (in the 1980s I believe) we have measured SLR extremely accurately.

Re:Great news!

[riverat1]

But the total volume of ice in the Arctic is lower than it was in 2007 & 2008. Volume is probably more important in the long run than extent since the thickness of the ice is an indicator of how long it's likely to last.

Re:Great news!

[riverat1]

No, the ocean rises at the rate it rises. We have very accurate measurements of sea level rise from satellites. The two primary contributors to SLR are thermal expansion and glacial ice melt. This just changes the proportions between the two.

Re:Great news!

[riverat1]

The current North Atlantic hurricane season is only about half over. So far there have been 9 named tropical storms, 3 hurricanes and 2 major hurricanes. The 1950 to 2000 average was 9.6 named storms, 5.9 hurricanes and 2.3 major hurricanes. Based on that it's likely that this will be an above average year.

Re:Great news!

[Troed]

1992, and no, it's not extremely accurate (look at the calibration).

http://sealevel.colorado.edu/

Re:Great news!

[maxwell demon]

No, the ocean rises at the rate it rises.

Tautologies are tautological.

(Note: I understand what you wanted to say, so no clarification needed.)

Re:Great news!

[riverat1]

:)

Not really!

[sd4f]

I think it just means that in reality, science hasn't got all the right answers, all of the time, and science should be treated, as it was always intended, with a grain of salt.

Re:Not really!

[Anonymous Coward]

It means that science is not to be confused with religion and changes in estimates of anything should be studied and understood and not used as a pretext to dismiss science itself as unreliable. If you prefer 'stability' over the truth then you either need religion or counselling. Or both.

Re:Not really!

[interkin3tic]

science should be treated, as it was always intended, with a grain of salt.

Are we talking "grain of salt" as in "not taking it so seriously" or "understanding that some changes to scientific theory and predictions are bound to occur."

Not taking science seriously, such as thinking maybe the law of gravity won't really apply this time so you can jump off that building, or not really caring whether or not global warming is occurring is dangerous and fairly illogical. Understanding that scientific theories often change with new facts, but that those changes don't mean the whole thing is bunk, that's good.

Re:Not really!

[EdZ]

More that the phrase "scientific consensus" is a load of balls, science doesn't work that way. There is no 'consensus', just an as-yet-undisproven theory that most accurately explains the current observations and makes testable predictions. That most scientists will accept that this theory as 'correct' is a byproduct of the theory being accurate, not the other way round. Questioning whether a theory is correct (i.e. attempting to find observations that do not correlate with the theory's predictions) is the very way science advances, and not 'denying the consensus' or somesuch sillyness. That there are people who blindly ignore evidence in their attempt to smear a theory with inconvenient predictions muddies the waters, and results in our current state where anyone who so much as questions any data or theory on anthropogenic climate change is an "anti-science global warming denier", and the slightest correction to data is "proof of the gubernment conspiracy", with BOTH of these being a detriment to actual climate science.

Re:Not really!

[Anonymous Coward]

science should be treated, as it was always intended, with a grain of salt.

Are we talking "grain of salt" as in "not taking it so seriously" or "understanding that some changes to scientific theory and predictions are bound to occur."

Not taking science seriously, such as thinking maybe the law of gravity won't really apply this time so you can jump off that building, or not really caring whether or not global warming is occurring is dangerous and fairly illogical. Understanding that scientific theories often change with new facts, but that those changes don't mean the whole thing is bunk, that's good.

No, he probably means skepticism.

As in, don't label skeptics as "deniers" because they don't bow down to the received wisdom of the day.

Re:Not really!

[PopeRatzo]

Are we talking "grain of salt" as in "not taking it so seriously" or "understanding that some changes to scientific theory and predictions are bound to occur."

No, we're talking "letting climate scientists do their work without turning every single datapoint into a cudgel with which to pound lumps on your political enemy.

Especially if your expertise in climate science consists of learning to compile a Linux kernel.

Have you noticed that nearly everyone with a lick of sense has learned to completely stay away from commenting on Slashdot climate stories? (and yes, I know I don't have a lick of sense. My mom used to tell me that on a daily basis.)

Re:Not really!

[Crypto Gnome]

Seriously folks!

One minute you're talking about

a grain of salt

and next minute you're talking about

pound lumps

This Mish-mash of units-of-measurements rivals the days when NASA was bombarding Mars (as it happens, unexpectedly).

Re:Not really!

[Tom]

I think it just means that in reality, science hasn't got all the right answers, all of the time, and science should be treated, as it was always intended, with a grain of salt.

I don't think you understand what science is.

This paper is science. There is not the slightest reason to disbelief in science even the tiniest bit because one prediction has been replaced by a better prediction - because that is exactly what science is all about. Science is a highly successful method of getting ever closer to whatever the "right answer" may be, by falsification, replacement, improvement.

That real revolution in thinking has not yet made it into our ape brains. We enjoy the successes it has given us, from technology to medicine to psychology, diplomacy, social sciences, practically everything around you except sunday church and friday flirting is heavily influenced by science. But few of us have made scientific thinking our home. When was the last time you stopped yourself in a fight with your girlfriend to re-examine the facts and try to actively falsify your hypothesis about her reasons?

Our ape brains want to verify, we feel more secure if we think we are right. Science wants to falsify, to show that the model is wrong, in as much detail as possible, so we can make up a new one that is better.
Or in less individual and more social terms: Religion starts by postulating a few facts, and then killing everyone who disagrees. Science starts by postulating a few axioms, and then trying as hard as possible to show that they're wrong. On those that survive, we build more theories, again trying hard to show they're wrong.
For geeks: Science is like crypto. An untested cipher is considered weak until enough time has passed and enough people have tried breaking it that everyone else accepts that "we" as a hole don't - at least yet - know a way to do it, so for the moment it's a good cipher.

So to bring it all full circle: This is an improvement of the climate change models, and disproves them in the same way that finding a good attack on RSA breaks cryptography. It doesn't, breaking ciphers is an important part of cryptography.

Re:Not really!

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, scientific changes usually do mean that the whole thing is bunk, especially if the changes are of any real significance. For example, once the earth was proven to be round without the shadow of a doubt, people could no longer (and they never really could in the first place) truthfully consider the earth to be flat. I've got a news flash for you: geologists have long known that the earth has natural cycles of global warming and cooling. Take that, and the added hype that flawed science and corrupted politics added to the issue, and hopefully you're not so biased that none of that matters anyway. The idea that mankind can change the natural cycle in a big enough way to cause cataclysm is just stupid. But even if the climates did change as much as you said, wouldn't that be the fastest, most effective way of accomplishing the redistribution of wealth so many of us are stupid enough to want?

Humans have survived as long as we have on this planet. It's time we realize we're not so stupid that a mere ice age or prolonged heat wave could kill us. We'll learn and adapt, especially to natural things like global warming.

Re:Not really!

[twelveinchbrain]

The biggest difference between the the law of gravity and climate change science is that the former has an extremely strong record of prediction. Just about every time the law of gravity is tested (in situations where Newtonian physics applies), its predictions are correct. Climate change predictions are very often found to be incorrect, and by large margins. While this is a credit to science that such errors are publicized and corrected, one should acknowledge that basing global public policy on the strength of these predictions is a gamble.

Re:Not really!

[locallyunscene]

What do you mean "science doesn't work that way"? Peer review is a vital part of science. You can't prove a theory 'correct', but that is not a claimed goal anyway. Scientific consensus on a theory just tells you that a given theory matches the data provided up to that time. The longer a theory stands the more data is accumulated that either supports or data com,es out that the theory needs to be revised.

In the case of TFA they revised how fast Greenlandic ice is melting, but it is still melting at non-trivial rates. The data still supports the theory for global warming.

"Deniers" are generally called that because they forgo the peer review process claiming conspiracy, and/or repeat frankly debunked claims.

Re:Not really!

[dylan_-]

Religion starts by postulating a few facts, and then killing everyone who disagrees.

So, being so scientifically minded, when was the last time you tried to prove that particular belief wrong?

Re:Not really!

[oiron]

That there are people who blindly ignore evidence in their attempt to smear a theory with inconvenient predictions muddies the waters, and results in our current state where anyone who so much as questions any data or theory on anthropogenic climate change is an "anti-science global warming denier", and the slightest correction to data is "proof of the gubernment conspiracy", with BOTH of these being a detriment to actual climate science.

Those who raise new questions (like this study) are skeptics who advance the scientific method. Those who keep bringing up the same old "but they believed in global cooling in the 1970s" crock are deniers. There's a difference.

Re:Not really!

[astar]

Many things in some areas and occasions should be taken serious, but often the sane response is some chuckles.

Looking at your jumping off a building example, using the usual science, there is some probability that jumping off the building will turn out to be quite safe. Using the conventional cosmology, the probability is such that the universe is not really old enough for there ever to have been an actualization. Depending on your biases, chuckling at the expense of science might seem quite reasonable in this case and many others.

In terms of global warming, I took the supposed effects of the science claims (read that carefully) and put considerable money for me into screwing over Copenhagen. There was even the claim that I did a "little bit of good". So I sort of took "global warming" as politics and economics seriously. At that level of abstraction, the "global warming" science is pretty much irrelevant.. But I bet you are still unhappy with me. :-)

Re:Not really!

[Tom]

So, being so scientifically minded, when was the last time you tried to prove that particular belief wrong?

Not tried too hard, I must agree, due to overwhelming evidence to the contrary, but so far I've yet to find one religion that has not killed for its believes.

Happily waiting for the exception case. Please provide. ;-)

Re:Not really!

[dylan_-]

but so far I've yet to find one religion that has not killed for its believes.

And I've yet to find one scientific advance that's not been used in warfare...but that doesn't mean that the point of science is war.

No, to test your theory you should look to see if the introduction of religion into an area increases or decreases the amount of conflict in that area. Your theory is that it increases it, but you don't seem to have checked this at all. Not very scientific of you.

Re:Not really!

[symbolset]

Well let's hope that the next improvement isn't as big as this one or they'll have done away with the melting entirely.

Re:Not really!

[Anonymous Coward]

When was the last time you stopped yourself in a fight with your girlfriend to re-examine the facts and try to actively falsify your hypothesis about her reasons?

Tried that a few times. Did not tighten the confidence interval about her reasons much, but it made the fight worse with a 100% repeatability.

Re:Not really!

[vitaflo]

I think it just means that in reality, science hasn't got all the right answers, all of the time, and science should be treated, as it was always intended, with a grain of salt.

Unfortunately, with that grain of salt, the ice melted faster.

Re:Not really!

[Quirkz]

Are we talking "grain of salt" as in "not taking it so seriously" or "understanding that some changes to scientific theory and predictions are bound to occur."

I also wonder, by comparison, what we're supposed to take everything else with? A grain of salt for science would mean a bucket of ocean water, minimum, for anything else. Right?

I encourage the spirit of scientific skepticism, but only if we keep our skepticism of non-science in proper perspective.

Re:Not really!

[mea37]

Interesting. The religious killings you speak against are, of course, an expression of bigotry. Yet in your statement I find a bit of irony. Rarely do I hear someone speak of a classification of people as though it were a single individual, except that such speech is itself an expression of bigotry.

Re:Not really!

[Bigjeff5]

Consensus is a little different than peer review.

Scientific consensus is one of the biggest roadblocks to advancement. In order to make a major theoretical leap in science you must commit career suicide. Hopefully indisputable proof is found within your lifetime, so you can be vindicated and enjoy a pleasant career. Many times this is not the case.

I'm not talking about the natural resistance to an unproven theory which should always be there. I'm talking about a dogmatic adherence to tradition that begins to change not when the evidence is interesting enough to be worth exploring, but when the evidence is so abundant it simply cannot be ignored any further.

This happens every single time, where some scientist is relegated to the realm of quackery and must suffer for decades until he can come up with so much evidence that he can no longer be ignored.

It really puts a lie to the idea that most scientists are objective and open minded and only seek the truth. The truth is most scientists only care about their own pet research, and will do everything in their power to discredit and marginalize any theory or data or individual that may threaten their work.

Re:Not really!

[scamper_22]

I don't think you understand what 'belief' is.

Scientists get all worked up like religious people do trying to defend their system.

Maybe this will help.

'Bad Muslims' do all kinds of bad things around the world like killing people for drawing a cartoon or bombing innocent people... all in the name of religion.
Then we have to sit around hearing people say...
"That is not true Islam. True Islam is peaceful. These terrorists and backwards people just aren't practicing Islam correctly."

Now let's transpose that with the scientific community and global warming.

People who believe in science do all kinds of bad things like wanting more state control over everyone's lives, increasing taxes, funneling money to their causes... all in the name of science.
Then we sit around hearing people like you say...

"That is not true science. True science is objective. True science is all about learning new facts and verifying and applying the scientific method"

In both cases. Great... whatever the purity of your idea is... wonderful. If the people stayed a hole writing papers, no one would care what you do. What we actually about is what the followers of your idea do.

Like it or not, the second scientists decided to get involved in politics, they subject themselves to the same problems that everything else does.
Introducing science into politics and policy is not going to purify politics.
Just like introducing religion into politics is not going to purify politics.

Politics infects and worsens both science and religion.

Unfortunately, I fear science is about to lose a whole lot of credibility... and it really is more like a religion than many would care to admit. Science is no long about powerless people writing and discovering truths.

Modern science as a religion is a way of life impacting public policy, how to educate children, what kind of foods we should eat... all very tempting ways to exert control.
Once again just like religion.

But that's not true science! I know... and Iran and Saudi Arabia don't practice true Islam either.
But that don't matter when you're being stoned for wearing inappropriate clothing or being taxes for driving a car so the government can spend more money.

Re:Not really!

[Tom]

Scientists get all worked up like religious people do trying to defend their system.

True. Science is also a worldview. As such, there is no claim to "truth". But you can measure the success of world views. As I personally see it, practically everything anyone of us in the western world today is using during his day was created thanks to the progress of science. Even the fact that we have enough food to feed us all is thanks to agricultural progress.

I don't see any religion that can offer up even a single percentage point on, for example, the "easing suffering" scale. We have examples of infections or plagues and can directly compare the effects of religious prayers and scientific medicine.

People who believe in science do all kinds of bad things like wanting more state control over everyone's lives, increasing taxes, funneling money to their causes... all in the name of science.

Really? Where? Last I checked, your "in the name of science" actually translates to "we estimate great suffering for all of mankind, unless something happens to stop this and these things". The "in the name of science" part of it all is that the "estimate" was arrived at using the scientific method. Which, like it or not, has been proven time and time again to be the most accurate method of making guesses about the physical world that we humans have found so far.

Like it or not, the second scientists decided to get involved in politics, they subject themselves to the same problems that everything else does.

Which they knew. You apparently missed a decade or two of discussions within the scientific community about whether or not this should become a political thing or remain purely scientific. But at the end of days, scientists are also humans, and many of them care about their neighbours, their children or humanity at large. The decision to get involved in politics was made because otherwise nobody would've listened. Lobbyist voices are much louder than the voice of reason in our halls of power.

and it really is more like a religion than many would care to admit.

Ten years ago, I would have agreed. And yes I know that "science" is taught in theology classes as being a religion. That doesn't make it true. Right now, in my current phase of development, I agree strongly with James Frazer in that we humans have three different methods of dealing with reality - the magical, the religious and the scientific. You really need to read the book to grasp the differentiation in full, I could not possibly sum it up in a few sentences when the shortened version runs to almost a thousand pages (the full version is twelve volumes).

Modern science as a religion is a way of life impacting public policy, how to educate children, what kind of foods we should eat... all very tempting ways to exert control.
Once again just like religion.

But that's not true science! I know... and Iran and Saudi Arabia don't practice true Islam either.
But that don't matter when you're being stoned for wearing inappropriate clothing or being taxes for driving a car so the government can spend more money.

Wooah, hold your horses. You are throwing a lot of things into one there.

Science isn't impacting public policy, but scientific results and advice certainly do. Why not? When you plan a holiday trip, you also get some numbers on how long the flight will be before you schedule things, don't you? So when politicians plan, say, the energy strategy for the next decade or three, isn't it a smart idea to ask a few of the people that, you know, research those topics for a living about their opinion?

No, that is not "true science", that is applied science. Planes don't fly by pure math, either. They fly because some engineer has taken the scientific knowledge on aerody

Re:Not really!

[Tom]

Finding actual numbers doesn't reduce the credibility of a claim, it strengthens it. That's the part non-scientific people don't understand.

It's like you dimly remembering that I owe you money, and you think it's $10. Then you find the note and it turns out it's only $5. That does not mean if you find another note there is suddenly no debt anymore. ;-)

Re:Not really!

[Tom]

And I've yet to find one scientific advance that's not been used in warfare...but that doesn't mean that the point of science is war.

Good response. However, the same is true for religion. And for practically everything else mankind has ever come up with, we always find a way to use everything we know in war. So the question should be valid if this really tells us something about the nature of science, or only about the nature of war.

No, to test your theory you should look to see if the introduction of religion into an area increases or decreases the amount of conflict in that area. Your theory is that it increases it, but you don't seem to have checked this at all. Not very scientific of you.

As a matter of fact, I have done some checking on this, albeight of a different kind. I can not remember the source right now, however, so feel free to doubt me all you want. Some analysis does quickly reveal, however, that a surprisingly large number of wars - past and present - have a strong correlation with religion. Very often the line of conflict is drawn between people of different religions, no other attribute (not even nationality) is as consistently present. Now this may be a coincidence - as in the recent US wars where largely christian americans attacked mostly islamic Afghanistan and Iraq - but the correlation is too strong to be only an accident.

When you go back in history, it becomes more than just a correlation.

Of cause, as with all correlations, you have to ask which way the causality runs. Do people fight each other because they have different religions? Or do they have different religions because they fight each other? That is the part where indeed I have no scientific evidence whatsoever and simply assume that the second option, given what general impression I have about how societies and history work, strikes me as highly unlikely.

Re:Not really!

[Tom]

Interesting. The religious killings you speak against are, of course, an expression of bigotry.

Really? Is it?

To follow the argument of Hitchens that it is only thanks to the taming of religion by modern society that we do not have crusades, witch burnings, inquisitions and other large-scale religious killings, not to mention all the variations of small-scale killings (death penalty for "crimes" against the faith).

In the west. Always remember that. For the majority of humanity today, religious killings are pretty much a perfectly normal thing still.

Re:Not really!

[dylan_-]

Some analysis does quickly reveal, however, that a surprisingly large number of wars - past and present - have a strong correlation with religion. Very often the line of conflict is drawn between people of different religions, no other attribute (not even nationality) is as consistently present.

You seem to have lost track of the point here: the idea wasn't to convince me you were right. The idea was that you would attempt to prove yourself wrong (and if you failed, then you were right). Remember?

Instead, it looks as though you've made a decision and then gone out to find evidence to support it, which (surprise, surprise!) you found. You're simply not following the scientific methodology you originally claimed was good.

[Now, although this is beside the point: whether or not religion promotes or reduces violence...the evidence I've found is conflicting. Christianity certainly reduced inter-tribal conflict in Europe as it became established. However, you could claim that this simply opened up the possibility of large scale warfare for a net increase in violence. On the third hand, you could argue that this would actually arise from any united civilization. On the fourth hand, the actual civilizations we have to study were religious. In short, it's complicated, and simply claiming one side or the other as fact is wrong.]

Re:Not really!

[Tom]

You seem to have lost track of the point here: the idea wasn't to convince me you were right. The idea was that you would attempt to prove yourself wrong (and if you failed, then you were right). Remember?

As a matter of fact, the point was that "science should be taken with a grain of salt, because it seems to correct itself every now and then". And my point was that this is exactly why science is trustworthy, because it constantly tries to improve itself.

You're simply not following the scientific methodology you originally claimed was good.

Not on /., true. I don't consider /. a peer-review journal, I consider it an exchange of ideas and opinions.

On the fourth hand, the actual civilizations we have to study were religious. In short, it's complicated, and simply claiming one side or the other as fact is wrong.

The 4th is actually the main point. We don't have any non-religious societies as a control group. Since we don't, there is no way to test the hypothesis. For example, it could be that (like the example for Europe you mention) once Islam has converted or killed everyone else (I'm not trying to be aggressive, this is actually the official agenda of Islam) then humanity would be peaceful. Given that the Iran/Iraq wars showed that they're just as happy killing each other over minor differences within the same religion, I do doubt it.

Religion certainly is a reason both for war and for peace. It's been used in both directions. During historic times, that was probably not too much of a problem, since people had enough other reasons to kill or love each other, so it levelled out. With the progress in civilisation, however, we find more and more reasons to cooperate, and less and less reasons to kill each other. I think it is obvious from history. Just take the crimes that carry the death penalty and look through history. In very old times (religious and tribal rule), you could be killed for working on the wrong day, eating the wrong food, looking at the wrong woman - for things that we don't even consider crimes at all today. As we became more civilized, the list of death-penalty-crimes grows ever shorter. First it shrinks to actual crimes (e.g. crimes against people, instead of crimes against ideas). Then it shrinks to violent crimes. Right now, in most parts of the civilized world, the list is either empty or contains murder and high treason during war.

Religion has been tamed by civilization, and forced to adapt. Often against its will. Just look at how the catholic church handled the recent child abuse cases - not exactly the response of someone eager to fix something they accept as a brutal, revealing mistake in the system, was it? But outside pressure forced them in, just like outside pressure forced the Mormons to accept the basics of the US consitution (Utah wouldn't have been allowed to join otherwise) and tempered many more excesses.

However, religion still has a massive influence even in the most segregated countries. Which means we still don't have a control group, and all we can do is speculate. Which means we can not be truly scientific, because there is no way to test our hypothesis. Which means we are back at opinions, and we can try to find supporting evidence for those, and that's what we have.

Re:Not really!

[riverat1]

So far my religion hasn't killed for its beliefs. Of course I'm the only member.

Re:Not really!

[symbolset]

When the current correction is half of the prior measurement certain questions naturally arise about the quality of prior measurements. That does naturally lead to questions about the quality of current measurements, and perhaps about the humans conducting and evaluating the prior and current measurements. If the people are the same and the story has changed, one would expect some explanation of the delta.

Re:Not really!

[scamper_22]

I used rather tame example of science mixing with politics so as to not give an extreme example...

yet... since you seem to want one...

Nazis pursued very cruel acts in the name of science. So much of what we now know today in science could really only have been figured out by such evil acts. Things like how the human body reacts to extreme temperatures, water... All the name of science.

Let's not even get into the whole genetic purification in the early part of the 20th century.. sterilizing people with inferior genes.

Residential schools with respect to the Native Indians thinking their parents were not fit and thus removing them and placing them into state schools were they could be schooled factually. ... ...

I'm an engineer. I understand the scientific method. I trust it. Yet, I don't give any leeway to scientists and other people who claim the mantle of science. A scientist is just an honest as a religious person, a politician... whatever belief system they claim to follow... it is never pure when there are other motives/power at hand.

That is the main point.
Think about that for a second. It's not about what the pure philosophy says... but what the people do.
And unless you're going to sit there with a straight face and tell me the scientists are pure of heart and mind... we should always treat the results of science (done by regular people) with extreme suspicion... and any attempts to use it for policy and power with even greater suspicion.

Treating scientists like saints is like people treating priests like saints... works out great... but some of them might end up molesting you.
People do not follow their 'code'. Be it the bible or the scientific method.

So hopefully you are wise enough to see the nature of man... including scientists.
No group will ever be pure.

If you think scientists are pure... well then I'll wait around for Christians' Jesus to return in his purity to lead us :P

Re:Not really!

[zsau]

Or in less individual and more social terms: Religion starts by postulating a few facts, and then killing everyone who disagrees. Science starts by postulating a few axioms, and then trying as hard as possible to show that they're wrong

This is not true at all. Science starts by looking at evidence, coming up with an explanation for it, and then trying to disprove all other contemporary explanations. When some brand new PhD comes around with evidence that (apparently) disproves your explanation, you reformulate your explanation so that it keeps the main essence of your idea, but money and young people go to the shiny new idea and you retire or die, taking your ideas with you. Wish, rinse, repeat. On occasion, people do accept a radically different theory but this is less common than you might think and I'm a cynical person.

Science approximates an accurate description of the physical world over enough time, using money and egotism as its motivations. It doesn't at all work by having scientist try to prove themselves wrong; they're always trying to prove someone else wrong.

And you know, that's the crucial thing, because religion works in exactly the same way. In religion, people looked at evidence (e.g. we are here, society works better when we follow these rules[1]), came up with an explanation for it (e.g. God exists), and then try to disprove all other explanations (e.g. subjective experience can't exist without god[2]). When some brand new evidence comes up that (apparently) disproves your explanation, you reformulate your explanation so that it keeps the main essence of your idea. Because there will always be aspects to human experience that defy accessible scientific explanations, and because exactly the same procedures are operative in religion and science, just with different time frames, science will never completely oust religion, not even in the most advanced societies.

The really interesting bit, is that religion and science operate in the same way, precisely because science is an offshoot of western Christianity. That doesn't make Western Christianity true any more than it makes any scientific theory true, but it does mean that religion doesn't work by "postulating a few facts, and then killing everyone who disagrees". Otherwise, why aren't you dead?

Instead of regurigating uneducated bigotry, I suggest you learn a thing or two about the history and philosophy of science and religion.

[1]: The "society" and "we" in question here aren't our own except inasmuch as the contemporary mainstream liberal "live-and-let-live" philosophy can be described as a "religion". I'm not saying society works better when we kill all gay people or censor dissenters or whatever other criticism of contemporary or historical religious practices you want to name.
[2]: I am not putting forth this argument as my own or judging it in any way. Feel free to critque or complement it, but beware that it in doing so you are not engaging me or my point.

Re:Not really!

[dylan_-]

Not on /., true. I don't consider /. a peer-review journal, I consider it an exchange of ideas and opinions.

Oh, ok. Why save it for formal occasions? I test all my ideas that way. Still, if you don't then I can hardly accuse you of being inconsistent.

I'm afraid I don't have time to give a detailed response to your post. I think you're wrong about Islam and I could equally well rephrase part of your post as "Civilization has been tamed by religion and forced to adapt"

But I'm on my travels at the moment; off to see the Pope on Thursday. So I'm afraid I can't continue the conversation. Still, now you can disregard everything I've said as completely biased, so that's OK. :-)

Re:Not really!

[Tom]

Oh, ok. Why save it for formal occasions?

Because formal means following a process, which is the right thing to do if you want to have reliable, repeatable results. But is it the right thing to do when you're looking to blow off some steam, get some new ideas into your head, bounce yours off others just to see what happens, and relax a little from all the rest?

"Civilization has been tamed by religion and forced to adapt"

That's an interesting challenge. There could even be some truth in it. However given the known history of mankind - and the studies towards specifically religion in that - well, I don't have complete knowledge of every paper every written or every study ever done, but from what I have read, religion's influence has been largely a destructive one. Not entirely, but then again, as they say here in Germany when they want to point out that by looking hard enough you can find something good in every evil: "Hitler built the Autobahn".

Which is true. What it leaves out is that he didn't build it for the people to drive on, but for the tanks (it's one of the reasons Blitzkrieg became possible).

in b4 1000 replies

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay AGW threads!

Scientists

[Hognoxious]

Scientists are wrong again, just like they were about magnets.

Re:Scientists

[Thanshin]

Scientists are wrong again, just like they were about magnets.

Just as wrong as they were about every single thing except those they've not yet been proven wrong about.

The method's kind of based on being provable wrong so, everything's going as planned. Nothing to see here unless you know how to interpret the new data.

i.e.: The news are, on themselves, useless but as a heads up for the result that will come shortly.

Re:Scientists

[Anonymous Coward]

... and Phlogiston.
Don't forget Phlogiston!

Re:Scientists

[Crypto Gnome]

Scientists are always wrong.

That is, until one of them gets it right.

Re:Scientists

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't have superpowers like Captain Obvious does.

Re:Scientists

[DriedClexler]

"We have not answered every question you have. Each answer led to more questions. But perhaps now we are confused at a more sophisticated level, and about more important things."

Re:Scientists

[Anonymous Coward]

All science is wrong. Some science is useful.

Re:Scientists

[Anonymous Coward]

What a wonderful phase! Who coined this phrase?

This proves global warming!

[TheNarrator]

The ice caps are increasing. That's because the gulf stream current is slowing down because of global warming!! If the ice caps were melting that would also prove global warming too. When are you going to face up to the facts global warming deniers! Can't you see! Falsifiability is for republicans and oil executives.

Re:This proves global warming!

[zarzu]

actually falsifiability as a criterion of demarcation is for people stuck in the first half of the 20th century. philosophy of science has progressed after popper, you know.

Re:This proves global warming!

[Anonymous Coward]

global warming, i can buy that, theres been ups and down in temperature numerous times in history. Most "deniers" simply raise questions regarding the supposed cause(s) of this one.

Re:This proves global warming!

[maxwell demon]

The ice caps are increasing.

No. They are just decreasing less fast than previously thought.

Re:This proves global warming!

[Moridineas]

It's not even so black and white as you seem to think. Some are increasing, some are decreasing. On the net? Good question, and one I don't know. It seems from recent advances (eg this article) there is still disagreement amongst scientists.

Re:This proves global warming!

[trickyD1ck]

These days the criterion for a scientific theory is whether it makes one feel good.

Re:This proves global warming!

[TapeCutter]

"The ice caps are increasing."

That particular hypothisis has been falsified to death, it now requires a blind faith in the hypothisis afterlife to believe it.

What "republicans and oil executives" need to falsify is this - Snowfall above 3000 meters in greenland is increasing as predicted by climate models. This has nothing to do with the gulf stream (which is not significantly slowing down), it's due to increased water vapour which in turn is due to a positive feedback from global warming. Overall the extra snowfall at high altitudes does not make up for the extra loss at low altitudes, the extra snowfall may even speed up the loss of glaciers by making them top heavy.

Re:This proves global warming!

[Anonymous Coward]

Some ice sheets are increasing in area but I think the consensus is that all the major ice sheets are losing mass. This includes Arctic sea ice and the Antarctic, Greenland, and Alaskan ice sheets. This new study may have an impact on how fast the rate of melting has been increasing, but it doesn't look like it shows they are not melting.

Re:This proves global warming!

[WCMI92]

Actually they are increasing, in the south pole.

IMHO, suddenly admitting that they were off, not by a tad, but by FIFTY PERCENT, does sort of throw a LOT of doubt into what the Algore worshippers call "settled science" doesn't it?

Or is man made global warming the new religion of the 21st century, and the Goreacle and his prophets are right even when wrong?

Re:This proves global warming!

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how much of the current panic stems merely from the fact that the tools we have to measure these things have improved drastically in the last century. I can't help but wonder how people would have reacted if the tools were capable enough to predict the Little Ice Age - we'd have predictions of the end of the world, mass migrations to the Sahara and the like. In the main, humans adapt, and the Earth is resilient enough to outlast an upstart species, in the past we've just got on with responding to changing conditions but now we can, for the first time, divert our attention to worrying about them (and whether we can reverse them - not even whether we should, which IMO is a much more important question, but whether we can). Meanwhile I agree that we need to cut the use of fossil fuel, and that sustainable energy sources are important, I even recycle and am careful about what I purchase and the impact it has on the planet and on my fellow man, but I think there are perfectly valid reasons for doing all of the above that don't depend on a belief that mankind is driving climate change rather than being along for the ride. I wouldn't say I'm a "denier", I'm just interested in the science and the facts, but I'd probably be labelled a denier because I'm not out there screaming about how mankind is destroying the planet (just as the other side would probably call me a communist or liberal because I'm not driving everywhere in an SUV and care about my impact on the planet).

Re:This proves global warming!

[AmonTheMetalhead]

And that's pointless, if there is global warming we should be planning on how we can either mitigate the problem, or otherwise get through it without starving, or whatever.

Re:This proves global warming!

[riverat1]

Nope. Sea ice around the Antarctic continent has increased somewhat but the ice sheet on the continent is still losing ice. The net is negative.

Science at work folks

[BlueParrot]

Some bright researchers managed to refine a previous model and come up with better and more accurate predictions. You may want to note how, contrary to some "skeptics" beliefs this wasn't suppressed or refused publication or any other such shenanigans. In the word of a famous person "When I'm proven wrong I change my opinion, what do you do ?".

Re:Science at work folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, man, really true words. Like that would have happened without the scandals that shook the field and removed a lot of the clout of the "redefine peer-review" gang.

Re:Science at work folks

[Rockoon]

Some bright researchers managed to refine a previous model and come up with better and more accurate predictions. You may want to note how, contrary to some "skeptics" beliefs this wasn't suppressed or refused publication or any other such shenanigans.

It is now a known fact that at least one journal (Climate Research), when publishing papers that the "top dog" climate scientists didn't like, then faced retribution from those same "top dogs" who conspired to then boycott said publication (to not publish in it, or even cite any publications in it) to manipulate its editorial staff. This came to light less than a year ago when communications between those "top dogs", which were lifted from the University of East Anglia's servers, contained emails documenting their conspiracy against this publication.

It should come as no surprise that more dissenting papers are being published now than were before, as those conspiring "top dogs" have lost much of their influence.

Re:Science at work folks

[Anonymous Coward]

"When I'm proven wrong I change my opinion, what do you do?".

Cry conspiracy! And if you prove me wrong again, that's part of the conspiracy too. I can't lose! Beat that, science.

Re:Science at work folks

[jcupitt65]

It is now a known fact [snip] emails documenting their conspiracy against this publication.

They've been cleared of this allegation. From the linked wiki article:

The panel found that they did not subvert the peer review process to censor criticism as alleged, and that the key data needed to reproduce their findings was freely available to any "competent" researcher.

Re:Science at work folks

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems from your quote, the panel's opinion is they did not succeed, not that they didn't try.

So, they're failures in more ways than one.

Re:Science at work folks

[Vintermann]

It is now a known fact that at least one journal (Climate Research), when publishing papers that the "top dog" climate scientists didn't like, then faced retribution from those same "top dogs" who conspired to then boycott said publication (to not publish in it, or even cite any publications in it) to manipulate its editorial staff.

That says very little unless you also say why they did it. If they suddenly started arguing for UFO abductions in the editorials, for instance, I think we all would agree that wanting to distance yourself from them would be a reasonable thing to do.

You imply, without stating outright, that the paper CR published that climate scientists didn't like was perfectly honest, good science. It was not. The reaction wasn't some secret scheme to manipulate the staff as you suggest, it was a highly public boycott campaign. Contributors were leaving it in droves. Even the climate scientist Hans von Storch, up to that time a darling of the climate denial movement for his bitter feud with Michael Mann, resigned in protest from his position as the board's chief editor because of that paper.

Re:Science at work folks

[Eunuchswear]

It is now a known fact that at least one journal (Climate Research), when publishing papers that the "top dog" climate scientists didn't like, then faced retribution from those same "top dogs" who conspired to then boycott said publication (to not publish in it, or even cite any publications in it) to manipulate its editorial staff.

What crap. Been reading Cato.org much recently? http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11022

Try http://climateprogress.org/2010/01/05/cato-institute-patrick-michaels-falsehood-stolen-emails-climategate-michael-mann-peer-review/ and follow the links, notably to the statement of the Editor-in-chief of "Climate Research", here: http://coast.gkss.de/staff/storch/CR-problem/cr.2003.htm

"Climate Research" was indeed manipulated, but but the "skeptics", not the "warmists". One editor slipped in some crap papers (which have since been comprehensively demolished). When the other editors complained and requested that an editorial explaining what happened be printed the "skeptic" refused, so the other editors resigned.

Re:Science at work folks

[Rockoon]

There is no doubt that they conspired to manipulate the journal Climate Research. Its right there in the emails in plain cant-be-taken-out-of-context English. What you are citing is that they were cleared of wrong-doing by the very university (UEA = University of East Anglia) that was hacked to attain these emails and plays host the the CRU.

I realize that the many acronym's are confusing and that you thought the UEA was most-likely independent of the CRU.. but its not.

Re:Science at work folks

[Yvanhoe]

That's why there is a culture clash when they have to work with politicians. By changing opinions, scientists increase their credibility, by doing he same, politicians lose it. Expect fights.

Re:Science at work folks

[Rockoon]

That says very little unless you also say why they did it.

Does it actually matter why? There was an organized conspiracy against a scientific journal that was intended to manipulate its editorial board, with financial harm used as the weapon.

The message the scientists sent to the journals was very clear.. "we have the power to hurt you".. its one thing if they conspired not to cite the paper they disagreed with.. its another to conspire to not cite any paper published by the journal if it prints even one that they disagree with.

Re:Science at work folks

[Rockoon]

What crap. Been reading Cato.org much recently? http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=11022

Never read anything there before, and apparently you didnt either since the article you are linking to is anything but recent: A version of this article appeared in the DC Examiner on December 2, 2009.

Re:Science at work folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, the journal itself doesn't have a divine right to publish papers from the top researchers. If the editorial board make extremely poor decisions, why should scientists feel obliged to publish there? Why should the scientists be associated with half-baked drivel such as the paper in question?

Re:Science at work folks

[ShakaUVM]

Some bright researchers managed to refine a previous model and come up with better and more accurate predictions. You may want to note how, contrary to some "skeptics" beliefs this wasn't suppressed or refused publication or any other such shenanigans. In the word of a famous person "When I'm proven wrong I change my opinion, what do you do ?".

An honest skeptic would look at the Greenland melt data and say that there wasn't enough evidence. An honest Al Gore would have looked at the Greenland melt and put large error bars around his predictions. Dishonest people on either side refuse any results that disagree with their presumptions.

I recall watching CSPAN and seeing climatologists talking about how the Greenland melt rate would be 10 times greater than we'd expected, because of the wet pancake effect or something. I'm not an AGW skeptic, though I *am* critical of idiots like that, that claim more evidence than there is. He's up there scaring senators, and... he's wrong. (Or probably is - the Greenland melt is an active area of research.) I'm also critical of people like Sarah Palin who think that human beings can't possibly, ever, affect the climate.

Unfortunately, it seems most people are dishonest dogmatists for one side or another.

Re:Science at work folks

[Vintermann]

Does it actually matter why? There was an organized conspiracy against a scientific journal that was intended to manipulate its editorial board, with financial harm used as the weapon.

Did you read what I wrote at all?

Conspiracies by definition are secret. This was a broad and highly public boycott campaign of a journal that had published a paper that should never have passed peer review (according to most of the people who did peer review for that journal!).

Re:Science at work folks

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

There is no such thing as a PUBLIC conspiracy.

A publicly know boycott is obviously not a conspiracy.

Boycotting journals for publishing crappy papers is exactly the right thing to do. That is how scientists guard the quality of journals. There is no other way (that I know of).

Re:Science at work folks

[argStyopa]

All very well and good. It's how things are supposed to work in science. I'm delighted that the models are being refined.

Of course, one might also note that shrill histrionics, cries of impending certain doom, and politically motivated proto-religious hyperbole aren't necessarily "science at work".

Re:Science at work folks

[Rockoon]

Conspiracies by definition are secret.

1. a planning and acting together secretly, esp. for an unlawful or harmful purpose, such as murder or treason
2. the plan agreed on; plot
3. the group taking part in such a plan
4. a combining or working together: the conspiracy of events

Only one of these requires secrecy.

I realize that an active defender of these scientists behavior doesnt like the word being used, but you cannot deny that it is being used correctly and does apply to these scientists.

I question your motives. Can I presume that you have a strong opinion about the veracity of the AGW theory? Me, not so much either way. I do however have a strong opinion about the corruption of the peer review process that permeates more than this field (its much worse in the Pharmaceutical journals) and simply will not tolerate or give-a-pass to conspiracies that interfere with what is supposed to be a forthright process.

The fact that the Journal published some shit at the behest of one of its opinionated editors is of less concern. If the choice is between Opinionated Editors and Manipulated Editors, I choose opinionated.

Re:Science at work folks

[Sycraft-fu]

Ya that is something that really bothers me about the climate change argument. Seems like a large about of people aren't arguing it as a science, they are arguing it as a religion. What I mean is you are demanded to believe all of it, everything, including all the policy recommendations, without question. If you don't, you are shouted down as being an idiot, uneducated, a denialist, and all sorts of things.

Well, that isn't science. Science isn't about unquestioning acceptance of dogma, especially when you are talking things far beyond the theory itself (like what must be done as a result of the theory). That makes me really question the motives of the people pushing it. I don't necessarily mean the people doing the research, but the people pushing it on the Internet and so on. It seems to me that they probably aren't the educated, enlightened people they want to pretend but rather people who have grabbed on to a belief, for whatever reason, and now demand everyone think like them.

Re:Science at work folks

[MartinSchou]

An honest Al Gore would have

And an honest commentator would have put (WARNING: POLITICIAN!) behind the name.

Re:Science at work folks

[Anynomous Coward]

Cleared ?
By who ?
Whitewashed by a corrupt civil servant is more like it.

Re:Science at work folks

[Eunuchswear]

What are you trying to say?

That December 2, 2009 is not recent? This is all about events that took place in 2003.

What's your point?

Re:Science at work folks

[Eunuchswear]

So, if you're so keen on conspiracy, why not comment on the conspiracy to get Soon and Baliunas, 2003, published in "Climate Research"? You know, the paper that corrupted peer review by being published in a reviewed journal without peer review?

The fact that the Journal published some shit at the behest of one of its opinionated editors is of less concern. If the choice is between Opinionated Editors and Manipulated Editors, I choose opinionated.

So what is it? Sacrosanct peer review or "opinionated" editors?

You claim "I question your motives. Can I presume that you have a strong opinion about the veracity of the AGW theory? Me, not so much either way."

You lie.

Re:Science at work folks

[tbannist]

Seriously? You're complaining that a bunch of scientists publically terminated their relationships with a journal that allowed a rogue editor to publish un-reviewed nonsense? That's you're smoking gun?

It's not only not sinister that they did so, it was their duty to do so. When a journal tarnishes it's reputation, it gets dropped by any self-respecting scientist. You don't cite unreliable sources in your work, and you don't publish to unreliable publishers. They did exactly what they're supposed to do in this position, the problem is you are only looking at one half of the story. The poor, poor, journal that the mean scientists picked on by refusing to include in their scientist games, huh?

Re:Science at work folks

[jmac_the_man]

The panel found that they did not subvert the peer review process to censor criticism as alleged, and that the key data needed to reproduce their findings was freely available to any "competent" researcher.

The allegation, of course, is that the scientists were redefining "competent researcher" to mean "researcher that agrees with them." So the panel didn't really clear them of the allegation. Maybe it cleared them of something else, but not what people were actually complaining about.

Re:Science at work folks

[Anonymous Coward]

The numbers are generally biased due to locally expanding cities, and the scientists are biased due to funding sources. Note that the PI on this study is A. NOT a climatologist, nor was the study published in a climatology magazine, and B. from the Netherlands, an area outside of the direct influence of US and British climate circles. Since this is a Geosciences journal, it draws frm many more fields than just climatology, so there is less chance of having the editorial process being corrupted by a few scientists from a sub-branch of that science, ie Climatology.

Re:Science at work folks

[Anynomous Coward]

That's why the UEA paid the head of the clear^H^H^H^H^Hwhitewashing panel 40k quid.

Re:Science at work folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again science has been shown to be wrong.

Re:Science at work folks

[huckamania]

This is such a lame argument. If the paper is sooooo baaadd, let it be published and then any one finding fault can reference it and refute it. That is the way of science.

The paper in question was merely an analysis of multiple temperature proxies and argued for -*GASP*- the existence of the Medieval Warm Period as a global phenomenon. Something which is now again and was previously rather uncontroversial. It was the AGWers who had redefined the MWP as a regional or hemispheric temperature increase, when not deleting any trace of it, without really justifying their actions. The raw data that Soon and Baliunas analyzed poked a big hole in the AGW line, but it is difficult to argue against raw data.

Re:Science at work folks

[GameboyRMH]

Well I'm glad you think so.

Now, if TEH GREAT AGW CONSPIRACY still fails to unravel, I hope you won't claim the Illuminati are now behind it since the secret international cabal of top climate scientists lost their power in "climategate."

Re:Science at work folks

[oiron]

You really should read a little into the damn thing, and not just right-wing blogs...

In early 2003, the small journal Climate Research published a paper by climate change “skeptics” Willie Soon and Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, which challenged the established view that the late twentieth century saw anomalously high temperatures. The paper didn’t present original research; instead, it was a literature review. Soon and Baliunas examined a wide range of “proxy records” for past temperatures, based on studies of ice cores, corals, tree rings, and other sources. They concluded that few of the records showed anything particularly unusual about twentieth century temperatures, especially when compared with the so-called “Medieval Warm Period” a thousand years ago.

Soon and Baliunas had specifically sent their paper to one Chris de Freitas at Climate Research, an editor known for opposing curbs on carbon dioxide emissions. He in turn sent the paper out for review and then accepted it for publication. That’s when the controversy began.

Soon mainstream climate scientists fought back. Thirteen authored a devastating critique of the work in the American Geophysical Union publication Eos. After seeing the critique, Climate Research editor-in-chief Hans von Storch decided he had to make changes in the journal’s editorial process. But when journal colleagues refused to go along, von Storch announced his resignation.

Several other Climate Research editors subsequently resigned over the Soon and Baliunas paper. Even journal publisher Otto Kinne eventually admitted that the paper suffered from serious flaws, basically agreeing with its critics. But by that point in time, Inhofe had already devoted a Senate hearing to trumpeting the new study. However dubious, it made a massive splash.

(source here, all emphasis mine).

I realize that you confused context with right wing punditry, but it's not.

Re:Science at work folks

[huckamania]

The paper was peer reviewed. How else could these 'scientists' have known about it and fought it against publication if it wasn't? These 'scientists' didn't like the results. They really, really didn't like their own research being used against them. They probably thought that the researchers got to pick their reviewers because that's how they roll.

This whole argument is really about restoring the Medieval Warm Period. Mann completely removed it from his proxy reconstructions and others have put forth the argument that it was regional or hemispheric. The study in question showed that the MWP signature appears in multiple sets of data. More recent studies have shown that it did exist and was a global phenomenon.

You would think that the burden of proof is on the side that overturns established theory. The MWP was in previous IPCC reports and was not considered controversial.

Re:Science at work folks

[jcupitt65]

They mean that the data was widely available from many sources and anyone could download it. The "competent" means selecting and combining data from among the various sources takes a degree of skill and knowledge.

From http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/jul/07/climategate-scientists-main-points:

One of the most common allegations made against the CRU scientists was that they blocked access to raw data, drawn from weather stations around the world, and adjusted that data to falsely show a pattern of global warming. There were also complaints that they failed to release on demand the computer code they wrote to analyse the data. Without such information, how could sceptics check the CRU's calculations?

The panel showed that it was relatively straightforward to reproduce the CRU analysis without needing to ask Jones and his colleagues for anything.

They used data from public databanks and wrote their own computer code, which they say could be repeated by any "competent researcher". The results were similar to those of the CRU.

Re:Science at work folks

[bware]

This is such a lame argument. If the paper is sooooo baaadd, let it be published and then any one finding fault can reference it and refute it. That is the way of science.

No, it isn't. If journals published every baaadd paper that came their way, they'd go out of business in newsprint costs. Decisions have to be made. Peer review, like it or hate it, is the accepted method of figuring out what gets published.

You want to publish your baaadd idea, or your good idea, you have to get it through peer review. That is the way of science. Any working scientist could tell you that.

You can argue whether peer review is the best method for deciding what gets published, but that's a different /. story. I'd argue that it's the worst possible method, except for every other method that's been tried.

Re:Science at work folks

[tbannist]

Well it was reviewed, and the 4 recommendations that it be rejected based on egregious errors in methodology were ignored and it was published anyway.

"These scientists" didn't fight the publication, they didn't find out about the paper until after it had been published. In fact, at first they had planned to simply to let it pass. It wasn't until the Bush Administration attempted to force the use of the paper in EPA reports against the wishes of the authors of those very same reports that they decided they had to take action to correct the record.

You know what they did? They wrote a report enumerating all the problems with the paper and presented it to the editorial board. The chief editor, von Storch, a moderate sceptic of Global Warming then wrote an editorial admitting the paper should never have been published. The publisher refused to print the retraction and half the editorial board, including the chief editor resigned in protest. After the mass resignation the publisher relented and retracted the paper.

So, in the end, a climate sceptic forced the retraction of the paper, one who did not have any dealings with the CRU other than reading their complaint and had in fact opposed them previously.
It just doesn't look at all like "suppressing dissent", however, it does look a lot like correcting an error.

Re:Science at work folks

[Quirkz]

You know what? I'd be 100% in favor of making that a requirement any time a politician is allowed to speak. I don't want to get my facts from politicians any more than I want to get my groceries from a garbage truck.

Re:Science at work folks

[Anonymous Coward]

Backing up claims with a far left source is like letting Barry Bonds perform his own steriods tests.

Re:Science at work folks

[mdwstmusik]

Ah yes, the AWG religion...

* God=Gaia (Earth's Climate)
* Prophets=Climate Scientists
* Priests=Democratic Politicians
* Prophecy Fulfillment=Any Natural Event Will Suffice
* Oracles=Climate Models, Magic 8 Ball, Broken Clock
* Gospel=All "Peer Reviewed" Scientific Papers, or Random Blogs that support, or can be manipulated to support, prophecy
* Sins=Gluttony, Greed, Sloth
* Divine Retribution=Everlasting Destruction, Fire and Brimstone
* Basic Tenant=Man Is Sinful
* Heretic="Believer" who questions any portion of Prophecy or Gospel
* Infidel="Non-Believer" a.k.a (Ignorant Redneck, Republican, Big Oil Puppet...)

Re:Science at work folks

[DriedClexler]

If it were just about that, then I agree there's nothing sinister. However, Michael Mann also asked for a *complete* blacklisting of the journal -- not just "Don't submit articles there", but "Don't ever cite anything from it, even good articles from before this scandal."

At that point, he was going beyond "Maintain the integrity of journals" and into "Let politics determine who you cite." Not cool. Not as bad as skeptics portray him, but still not cool.

Re:Science at work folks

[AK Marc]

That's both sides. I got into a disagreement with one person where I revealed I believe the Earth is warming. He then went into a tirade about how emissions trading is a communist plot of the New World Order. Apparently thinking that the earth is warming is the same as not only stating that the warming was caused by man, but that I also endorsed every crackpot idea any politician anywhere ever said with regards to global warming.

Re:Science at work folks

[TheSync]

Seems like a large about of people aren't arguing it as a science, they are arguing it as a religion. What I mean is you are demanded to believe all of it, everything, including all the policy recommendations, without question.

It is really four different issues:

1) Detecting anthropogenic global warming (AGW) - likely provable (probably already proven) by science
2) Predicting effects due to AGW - likely predictable by science with large error bars
3) Predicting the effects of anthropogenic behavior changes on AGW effects (if we cut CO2/methane emissions by x, we get y result) - possibly predictable by science with even larger error bars
4) Predicting which government policies are likely to actually reduce AGW effects - unlikely to be precise because it multiplies global political science x economics x #3. Not likely greater than chance to result in benefits>costs policies.

Re:Science at work folks

[Bigjeff5]

I only read the first paragraph; I skimmed the rest of it and won't bother with it since it's obviously just conspiracy theory nonsense.

Anyway, the famous Hockey Stick graph is from a study that was simply a conglomeration of previous studies with no original research. In scientific circles they call this secondary research (primary research is done by the people actually pulling the ice cores and recording the sensor data), but apparently csicop.org considers it a "literature review".

I assume, then, that they discount the centerpiece to the AGW theory for the exact same reason, right? No? Oh, well then it sounds like biased bullshit to me.

Re:Science at work folks

[Anonymous Coward]

skeptics have always said the estimates were exaggerated.
in 1990, in 2000, and now in 2010. What happened to the 5cm sea rise by 2000? Anyone who questions is labelled a heretic, and now anyone who doesn't bow down to their openness is also a heretic, what do you do?

if police booked you for speeding at 200km/h and dragged you thru court before saying well actually it was only 100km/h would you be congratulating them for their honesty?

Re:Science at work folks

[Vintermann]

No, look again. Definitions 2 and 3 refer back to 1 ("the plan agreed upon", "such a plan"). You can't reasonably claim to have meant 4 when you're talked about a conspiracy against someone.

I question YOUR motives, since you apparently aren't able to read such a simple definition if it would mean that you were embarrassed. But yes, I'm motivated to criticize bullshit spouted by AGW denialists. I have children, I'd like them to be alive and well in a non-mad max world in fifty years.

Re:Science at work folks

[huckamania]

You might want to check your facts. From wikipedia...

"The Soon and Baliunas paper had been sent to four reviewers during publication, none of whom recommended rejecting it."

The big question is how a handful of climate researchers managed to hide the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. I'm not talking about methods, those are easily understood and refuted. No, I'm talking about how all the other climate researchers allowed them to do it. They signed off on the previous IPCC reports that clearly show the MWP and LIA, then they signed off on the latest IPCC that removed them.

At this point, it is a matter of trust and climate scientists have lost that trust. They can continue to wage their losing PR war or they can return to doing real science.

Re:Science at work folks

[Eunuchswear]

So for you the fact that a "far left source" provides a link to the website of the actual person involved in the incident means that we should ignore his side of the story?

Re:Science at work folks

[jmac_the_man]

Two paragraphs later, in the same article, it says,

To repeat, rather than reproduce, the CRU findings would require the CRU code and the list of weather stations it used to source the raw data. Such requests were made under freedom of information laws. The panel criticised the CRU response as "unhelpful and defensive".

Part of the criticism was that the CRU used the WRONG stations, because some of the possible stations gave bad data. To confirm/deny this, it would be necessary to have their full list of data. Their computer code also made adjustments which could have been wrong, and we all know how important it is to have as many eyes as possible looking at the source code to an important program, right? Instead of sharing their results, and their source code, and whatever else with scientists who think they have a better idea, they were "unhelpful and defensive." Then, when they were legally required to give the data to the scientists because the scientists are also taxpayers who paid for the research in the first place, they conspired to erase parts of it. And if they were erasing their data rather than disclosing it, their data was not "freely available." Sorry.

And then the article closes by quoting the report, which says

We note that much of the challenge to CRU's work has not always followed the conventional scientific method of checking and seeking to falsify conclusions or offering alternative hypotheses for peer review and publication.

No matter how competent (real definition) you are, you can't check or seek to falsify the conclusions of an experiment without access to the data from that experiment. Even if you could, you can't publish it if there is a successful conspiracy against letting you publish things because the scientists who ran the original experiment have declared you incompetent because you disagree with them.

Re:Science at work folks

[tbannist]

Maybe, but Fred Pierce at the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/feb/02/hacked-climate-emails-flaws-peer-review) says the reviewers rejected it, and if you read the cited article from Wikipedia you might have noticed that Clare Goodess wrote this:

"The review process had apparently been correct, but a fundamentally flawed paper had been published. These flaws are described in an extended rebuttal to both Soon and Baliunas (2003) and Soon et al. (2003) published by Mike Mann and 11 other eminent climate scientists in July (Mann et al., 2003). Hans von Storch and I were also aware of three earlier Climate Research papers about which people had raised concerns over the review process. In all these cases, de Freitas had had editorial responsibility."

It appears that de Freitas was able to conceal the fact that the reviewers recommended rejecting the paper until some time after Goodess wrote that article in 2003.

Re:Science at work folks

[Anonymous Coward]

In addition, A.G. is a prudent and patient BUSINESS man with millions of dollars to gain with adoption of his radical environmentalist agenda.

Re:Science at work folks

[riverat1]

The journal Climate Research printed a flawed paper that should have never passed peer review without major revisions. Then the publisher refused to retract the paper. If I were a scientist why would I want to associate myself in any way with a journal that would do such a thing?

Re:Science at work folks

[riverat1]

Two specific criticisms of the paper is that it conflated precipitation proxies with temperature proxies and that regional temperature changes were taken as global temperature changes. Those are the sorts of errors that peer review should catch and eliminate but an editor with an agenda got it through anyway.

Re:Science at work folks

[DriedClexler]

Because papers from before then still have scientific merit and may helpfully inform future papers.

That's what my point was; it's one thing to stop submitting to it because it has become a trash journal. It's quite another to "punish" valid articles it's published in the past.

West Antarctica

[josgeluk]

How can there be a "West Antarctica"?

Re:West Antarctica

[hldn]

same as there is a western hemisphere. it's arbitrary.

Re:West Antarctica

[MichaelSmith]

What would you call the western side of Antarctica?

Re:West Antarctica

[Rockoon]

What would you call the western side of Antarctica?

Down there, West = East.

West is towards the setting sun, and when its doing that whole "setting" thing down there, it revolves many times around the entire 360 degrees of horizon. East is towards the rising sun, and when its doing that whole "rising" thing down there, it also revolves many times around the entire 360 degrees of horizon.

So I guess I would call the west side of Antarctica the end result of a disastrously rapid continental drift that somehow managed to not kill me.

Re:West Antarctica

[Anonymous Coward]

North Antarctica?

Re:West Antarctica

[tepples]

Down there, West = East.

Does not the Prime Meridian extend all the way to the South Pole?

Re:West Antarctica

[MBGMorden]

Exactly. I don't even see how this was an issue. The globe is spherical - East and West are directions. Calling Asia the "East" and the Americas the "West" was just an arbitrary distinction made by an imaginary line - the Prime Meridian as you indicate.

Re:West Antarctica

[riverat1]

It is rather arbitrary. West Antarctica is considered to be the part of the continent that faces the Pacific Ocean including the Antarctic Peninsula. East Antarctica is the part that faces the Indian Ocean. They are divided by the Transantarctic Mountains.

In other words...

[Anonymous Coward]

"After ten years of study, we have determined that our prediction of the end of the world within five years may have underestimated the time remaining..."

Typo

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume you mean Bert Vermeersen (http://www.beta-ambassadeursnetwerk.nl/?pid=26&paspoort=135)?

I would have thought it was worse

[GrumblyStuff]

TFA says Greenland is subsiding due to mass moving to North America. I was thinking that due to the melting, the crust would be rising and thus hiding the apparent ice loss.

Very interesting...

I don't get the logic behind this

[Athrac]

If they previously didn't consider the rising of the crust, but now they are considering it, then my logic says that the estimates for melting rate should have increased. Ok, it says in TFA that in some places the ground is actually subsiding, but it seems weird that this would happen in more places than rising of the ground.

ppr crisis/evacuation mode raised by exponents

[Anonymous Coward]

all the speculation/lying in the universe does not effect the real time assessments/outcomes. see you on the other side of it?

meanwhile (still hard to believe WE allow all this crap for even 1 day/hour longer); the corepirate nazi illuminati is always hunting that patch of red on almost everyones' neck. if they cannot find yours (greed, fear ego etc...) then you can go starve. that's their (slippery/slimy) 'platform' now. see also: (we came from monkeys but 'they' didn't), &/or; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder

never a better time to consult with/trust in our creators. the lights are coming up rapidly all over now. see you there?

greed, fear & ego (in any order) are unprecedented evile's primary weapons. those, along with deception & coercion, helps most of us remain (unwittingly?) dependent on its' life0cidal hired goons' agenda. most of our dwindling resources are being squandered on the 'wars', & continuation of the billionerrors stock markup FraUD/pyramid schemes. nobody ever mentions the real long term costs of those debacles in both life & any notion of prosperity for us, or our children. not to mention the abuse of the consciences of those of us who still have one, & the terminal damage to our atmosphere (see also: manufactured 'weather', hot etc...). see you on the other side of it? the lights are coming up all over now. the fairytail is winding down now. let your conscience be your guide. you can be more helpful than you might have imagined. we now have some choices. meanwhile; don't forget to get a little more oxygen on your brain, & look up in the sky from time to time, starting early in the day. there's lots going on up there.

"The current rate of extinction is around 10 to 100 times the usual background level, and has been elevated above the background level since the Pleistocene. The current extinction rate is more rapid than in any other extinction event in earth history, and 50% of species could be extinct by the end of this century. While the role of humans is unclear in the longer-term extinction pattern, it is clear that factors such as deforestation, habitat destruction, hunting, the introduction of non-native species, pollution and climate change have reduced biodiversity profoundly.' (wiki)

"I think the bottom line is, what kind of a world do you want to leave for your children," Andrew Smith, a professor in the Arizona State University School of Life Sciences, said in a telephone interview. "How impoverished we would be if we lost 25 percent of the world's mammals," said Smith, one of more than 100 co-authors of the report. "Within our lifetime hundreds of species could be lost as a result of our own actions, a frightening sign of what is happening to the ecosystems where they live," added Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN director general. "We must now set clear targets for the future to reverse this trend to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out many of our closest relatives."--

"The wealth of the universe is for me. Every thing is explicable and practical for me .... I am defeated all the time; yet to victory I am born." --emerson

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 10,000 years ago) it was determined that hoarding & excess by a few, resulted in negative consequences for all.

consult with/trust in your creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?

"If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land." )one does not need to agree whois in charge to grasp the notion that there may be some assistance available to us(

boeing, boeing, gone.

Global warming is sooo late 20th century...

[flyingfsck]

It is time for the global cooling crowd to make a comeback and breathe some fresh air into the stale old climate debate.

Re:Global warming is sooo late 20th century...

[arndawg]

Yeah if this debate could cool off, maybe the world would be a chiller place.

Study Proudly..

[Anonymous Coward]

sponsored by B.P.

Missing the point...

[petaflop]

OK, so people are trying to argue that this paper supports one view or another in a trivial manner. I don't think it's that simple.

I can't even being to interpret what this means without a lot more reading. I'm not even sure I know all the questions that need to be asked. But here's a couple which occur to me immediately...

1. This is a new method of measuring ice loss, and from what I can tell is rather hard to interpret given the interacting phenomena. There are long established methods which are far simpler - most obviously measuring the speed of ice flow. Does this new paper bring ice loss estimates into line with estimates from traditional methods, or does it contradict the estimates from traditional methods?

2. Even ignoring that question, ice loss contributes to sea level rise, which is also being observed. If less sea level rise can be attributed to ice loss, does that therefore mean that more must be attributed to thermal expansion, thus increasing estimates the rate at which the earth is absorbing and storing energy? (I think the answer to this one is that the ice-loss contribution is minimal and so the change is also minimal, but it needs checking.)

Re:Missing the point...

[Yvanhoe]

1. speed of ice flows give you the mount of ice that leaves the system. You also need to register the amount that enters it. It is expected to see ice flows in Groenland, the question it to know if the ice is renewed through snow/rain.

2. How do you measure sea levels ? It is also a very hard matter when you want to reach a centimeter or millimeter precision. Shores erode, oceanic beds move tectonically. Satellites can measure the distance between the gravitation center of Earth and the sea's surface but it ignores if a rise is caused by a rise of the crust or a rise of the water. What most people are interested in is the measure of "lands lost to the sea" but the multiplicity of factors makes it hard to use such a measure to infer the ice losses of Groenland and Antarctica.

Re:Missing the point...

[riverat1]

Replying to both petaflop & Yvanhoe.

1. Since the launch of the Grace satellites in 2002 there has been a simpler way of measuring ice loss by measuring changes in gravity over those areas.

2. Since the launch of the TOPEX/Poseidon satellites in 1992 sea level has been measured very precisely. It's just a matter of attributing how much change each input is causing. (Among the inputs I count thermal expansion, glacial melt, and crustal topography changes.)

W00t!

[rHBa]

So we're NOT all going to die? To celebrate I'm going out back to burn that pile of old tyres :-)

Happy, happy, joy, joy...

Re:W00t!

[AmonTheMetalhead]

We are all going to die. It's the only thing we know for sure.

Re:W00t!

[Bigjeff5]

98% of people die at some point in their lives.

I'm getting into the coffin business.

Linux is for fags

[Anonymous Coward]

I fucked your mom.

Re:Great news! - typical FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

See this is typical climate change stuff..

It says "thousands of indicators" and people think "oh no!" but there are not thousands of indicators at all... It's pretty much all made up, speculation and FUD.

Re:Great news! - typical FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG I'm so citing you in my next paper to Nature.

Conveyor

[overshoot]

Looks like I can reset my clock on the anticipated shutdown of the Atlantic Conveyor.

Less fresh water in the North Atlantic means the thermohaline convection effect will be keeping Europe warm and wet for a while longer. In the short term, that's good. In another sense, though, I suspect it's not so good: it's going to take something dramatic to move climate change out of the "we'll worry about that when we don't have anything more important" category.

Re:Conveyor

[bill_mcgonigle]

Do we have any fossil evidence about the current from before the last ice age? Just thought of that now in the context of this article about us still coming out of the last one.

Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

I no longer believe you, when you say that you would be "pleased" to hear that global warming isn't that big of a deal. If that were true, why are such stories buried and alarmist stories repeated even if based on incorrect data?

About 10 years ago, I also believed in global warming, however I stopped doing so. How is such a thing possible?
1. Climate Change
I had my first doubts about global warming, when they introduced the term climate change“ which the added claim that climate change“ may not just cause warming in some regions, but may actually cause cooling in others. So all of the sudden climate change“ may cause everything: Hot, cold, stormy, dry, wet, etc.
2. The first decade of the 21st century
If the “hockeystick” were correct, we should have experienced a record-breaking hot climate in every year or at least most years between 2000 and 2010, but that just didn't happen. Some people say that 2009 was the hottest year on the record and hotter than 1998, but even if that's true it does not really support the supposed runaway warming-scenario - at all. Now when from the 10 years following 1998 9 have been cooler and one has been warmer, that may show that the climate may be a little warmer than usual (after all 1998 has been the warmest on the record and 2009 may have broken that record), but it points more to a relatively steady climate that may be little bit too hot, but not at all to some runaway climate shift.
3. Alarmism
What also disturbs me a lot is the alarmism. The warm periods, no matter when we talk about humans (medieval warm period, little ice age, etc.) or life in general were always the better periods (where “better” means of course that more life can be sustained by the earth)
So the horror-scenarios don't make that much sense and are blown way out of proportion.
4. The “experts” opinion
It is always said that the “scientific consensus” is clear about global warming. Well, science is not a popularity contest and is also not democratic. The “scientific consensus” also said that therapy and short prison sentences would reduce crime, but crime rates in the US quadrupled in the 1960s. The “scientific consensus” said that big government will reduce poverty, yet the higher the taxes are and the more incentives is given to the poor to have large families, the more poverty there is. And of course the “experts” also worried about “global cooling” in the 1970s.
The experts have a pretty bad track record, especially when it comes to politically sensitive things.
5. Socialism
Socialism has always been marketed as rule by the scientists and experts. Everybody shall lose their “bourgeous” human rights like right to property and freedom of association (freedom of association is racist anyway, right?) and submit to “expert rule” because the experts know it all and know it better than us rednecks. Well, not only have the “experts” been very often wrong, the centralized rule from above by the experts has proven to be a bigger disaster than any global warming scenario. (Yes, you read that correctly.)
Russia has always been a traditional food exporter and was turned into country where millions starve by the “experts”. And famine and widespread starvation has been the hallmark of socialism almost everywhere it has been tried: China, Cambodia, many african countries, etc.
The “experts” seem to be able to turn a fertile country into a desert not only much faster than global warming, but also repeatedly and in the real word (not just in a computer simulation). Warming may force a change of crops and maybe even a reduction in yield (that's a big “may” - far more likely is that it increases yields because warmer was usually better in the past) but there is no land on earth that cannot be utterly ruined by the advice of an “expert”.
When the “experts” want to create

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Let me classify your statements with regards to the science (not the politics or the economics) of global warming:

1. Irrelevant.
2. Wrong.
3. Irrelevant and unsubstantiated.
4. Irrelevant and wrong.
5. Frankly embarrassing.
6. Irrelevant.
7. Boo hoo. Irrelevant.
8. Irrelevant.
9. Wrong.
10. Wrong.

To sum up, you are wrong.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[lorenlal]

Foul on both of you. I see no citations in either case. I'd love for this to be an honest debate or discussion. In fact, GP even states desire for good honest debate, but I see nothing in the post to back up the various "facts."

As for parent... The Irrelevant replies I'll agree with because the associated points don't deal with facts. Observations and feelings don't count for much in a discussion talking about a lack of facts. As for the "wrong" entries, I'd love to see counter-examples. I'll certainly grant that in a 10 point post, it's hard to come up with enough sources.

I'll attempt to contribute something useful now:
Point #2, or the Hockey stick, considers more than just the last 10-15 years... To see the "stick" you have to look at the last 1000 years. Assuming measurements are proper, there is a noted effect in the last 100 years... Unfortunately, this does depend heavily on "proxy" indicators. There is a good size error field, which certainly contributes to the debate. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3569604.stm
Point #4 may be mostly irrelevant, but I'd like to know why it's also wrong. The Global Cooling idea is certainly ingrained in the doubters, and it certainly does call into question what the research is indicating.
Point #5 does have an example in the Aral Sea. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=reclaiming-the-aral-sea&sc=rss

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[GreatBunzinni]

I am curious. How exactly do you associate anthropological climate change to "socialism" and then "socialism" to the loss of both freedom of association and the right to private property? Do you base your allegations on facts or solely on scare mongering?

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[CitizenPlusPlus]

Shikes!! Wouldn't it be terrible if we made a happy and healthy world for everyone for no dosh gone good reason!

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish more people would understand what you've come to understand. While we need to be good stewards of our planet, the arrogance of some thinking we can permanently change the climate is totally absurd.

The Earth survived natural events such as Krakatoa, and dozens of other similar events. Now that the climate clowns are proclaiming CO2 to be a toxic gas,any thinking person should realize the fraud of AGW.

One should also consider the high priest of climate change Al Gore, has made millions spewing his crap. And, he does so hopping around in a private jet, leaving a large "carbon footprint". I'd be pleased to leave my size 13 footprint on his lying butt.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Hylandr]

Here's a citation:

Global warming will exist., so long as there is money to be made.

- Dan.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[mark99]

Less would have been more.

I agree with your title and your first few points were good, but then when you started ranting about socialism and conspiracy I got bored. I am pretty sceptical about global warming on the whole, but I find it best to ignore passionate claims by either side.

Passion is for bed, and not really suitable for making scientific judgements.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[ect5150]

Not to speak for the OP, but I think he means Socialism in general is a bigger threat to most individuals than global warming.

That said, I actually went out and looked up the temperature data for the past century not too long ago. There is certainly a general increase in global temperatures, but it was only roughly 1 degrees worth over 100 years. Now, I'm not so much of an expert to claim if that is enough to change everyone's life-style or not, but the general trend is there. Now, is it the fault of human beings? I would have thought there would have been a larger correlation with the population or seeing where the increases started with modern levels of pollution, but those didn't line up. So, I'm not entirely certain (yet - I'll hold judgment until I look at it more) than it was us that caused all of it.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Where did you copy and paste this from?

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

The population of china is "bored" by socialism too. Except the 60 million who perished during Mao's "great leap forward" who are too dead to be bored.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[sycodon]

It's very simple actually.

Humans are warming the world so we must stop it. To stop it, we must control their actions, which requires more government control. The actions they want to control involve what cars you can drive, the size and location of homes you can live in, etc, etc, (Really, no one needs examples how the enviro-whackos want to control our lives...want to have a BBQ in CA? Good Luck.).

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

I no longer believe you, when you say that you would be "pleased" to hear that global warming isn't that big of a deal. If that were true, why are such stories buried and alarmist stories repeated even if based on incorrect data?

About 10 years ago, I also believed in global warming, however I stopped doing so. How is such a thing possible?
1. Climate Change

The change to climate change simply reflects that the Earth is a complicated system and global warming doesn't simply mean everyplace
gets uniformly warmer.

2. The first decade of the 21st century
If the “hockeystick” were correct, we should have experienced a record-breaking hot climate in every year or at least most years between 2000 and 2010, but that just didn't happen.

There are natural fluctuations superimposed on an overall warming. Is this really so hard to understand?

3. Alarmism
What also disturbs me a lot is the alarmism. The warm periods, no matter when we talk about humans (medieval warm period, little ice age, etc.) or life in general were always the better periods (where “better” means of course that more life can be sustained by the earth)
So the horror-scenarios don't make that much sense and are blown way out of proportion.

The last 10,000 years were spent with less then 1 degree change in the global temperature. Before that was a glacial period that was about
6 degrees cooler? So projections of an increase of 2 or 4 or more degrees are a very big change, one which hasn't been seen in historical
times.

4. The “experts” opinion

Just jabbering. What does this have to do with science.

5. Socialism

More jabbering. Oddly enough, the main proposals to combat global warming are much more libertarian then socialism. The suggest
estimating the total amount of carbon that can be emitted and then creating a market for this carbon. Private property rights aren't the
hallmark of socialism. In any case, as a thought experiment, just pretend global warming is real and see how your favorite political
system would address it.

6. Conspiracy!

You are correct it is not a conspiracy.

7. Constant ad hominem attacks

Look in the mirror and read your post to yourself. See if you can spot an ad hominem attacks.

8. Lies
Oh, and of course the lies. When Al Gore shows a poor little ice bear no longer finding any ice he did that with the knowledge that the ice bear population is on a record high. When the British global warming institute gets it email-server hacked and revealed that they would rather destroy their raw data than release it to the public it really speaks for itself.

Current polar bear population is irrelevant if in 100 years their hunting range disappears. The files data was lost well before the email hack,
this was a known issue. If the original records, rather then the copies are found, will you suddenly become a believer?

9. Missing predictions and polls

Actually you are incorrect. You do not understand the difference between weather and climate. More over you don't understand chaos.

10. Peak Oil

Peak Coal.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[chrb]

I had my first doubts about global warming, when they introduced the term climate change“

The general public/media did not understand that "global warming" refered to the global mean temperature. This meant it was possible for some regions to cool whilst others warmed. Despite this, the myth grew that Any cooling disproves global warming. The change in terminology was a response to this confusion amongst the public, and wouldn't have been necessary if everyone understood "mean warming" actually meant.

If the “hockeystick” were correct, we should have experienced a record-breaking hot climate in every year or at least most years between 2000 and 2010

Incorrect. As already pointed out, some regions of the world may still cool despite the global mean increasing. (Incidentally, "the Hockey stick has been proven wrong" is a myth.

The warm periods, no matter when we talk about humans (medieval warm period, little ice age, etc.) or life in general were always the better periods

Climate myths: It's been far warmer in the past, what's the big deal?
Climate myths: Higher CO2 levels will boost plant growth and food production

Well, science is not a popularity contest and is also not democratic.

So we should always ignore the opinion of the majority of scientists if it disagrees with our personal opinion?

Socialism

... has nothing to do with global warming. (Unless you believe it's all a conspiracy)

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[astar]

I confess I did not read all the OP or RTFA. But the category "expert" is interesting. Here is a thought: experts are experts because they can and do successfully predict future outcomes. This sort of thing is a hallmark of science, even if you do not have a field where you know how to do nice math. For a non-science, that has lots of experts and lots of math, consider the usual talking heads doing economic predictions. Or, for something personal, but not on today's front page, I think of McNamara and his whiz kids and their system analysis approach.

The word "professionalism" comes to mind. There is lots of history and theory around the concept. The usual criticism is that if you are a professional, then your praxis is positivism. Hah, see McNamara. And, of course, we might wonder if a particular class of professionals have any real science behind them, as is required by the usual theory on professionalism.

It is fun that, say, for software engineering, the usual official notice of professionalism, state licensing, is resisted by the practitioners and some, like the ACM, make arguments that there is not enough real "science" to put together a stable licensing knowledge requirement.

Anyway, OP, if you are fine with wrapping all the post content into one world view, okay, but take care if you claim that the view is predictive.:-)

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[benhattman]

I didn't bother to read most of your drivel, but you should at least firm up your first argument.

The climate is complex. Which means that it is entirely possible for the global climate to warm, while a given local climate becomes cooler or drier or wetter. The term climate change is just an attempt at framing the discussion so people stop wasting time with the argument "I don't know about this global warming, last weekend the high was only 75F".

A real world example is that while much of the US was mired in record heat waves this summer, my hometown in the pacific northwest had high temperatures above 70F for less than 60 days, and highs above 80F for probably fewer than 20 days. The PNW is a drizzly climate, but even the locals got pretty punchy. If I were like most people and assumed the entire world were just the same as my own corner, I could conclude from this summer that global temperatures had cooled nearly 10F on average since 2009!

I understand the sentiment that political framing of scientific questions is fraught ground, but in my country people like to scream at each other until the loudest voice is deemed right. So, some people are trying the approach of screaming about global warming because they think the future state of humanity might depend on it. You can belittle those people if you like, but at least they're arguing over something that might matter rather than how many blocks away from a site of murder you can/should build a mosque.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[pandaman9000]

Who measured temperatures over 500 years ago, or is this speculation using extrapolated data? If no one actually, physically MEASURED the temperatures, and logged them, then feel free to have your statement invalidated by default. Science cannot accurately note temperatures from 500 years ago without actual measurements. Stop watching Discovery Channel. You apparently are taking postulated scenarios derived from collected data as direct observation.

The truth is that we have absolutely no real guarantee as to what ANY of the prehistoric creatures that walked the earth looked like, or what temperature they walked in. Sure, we can postulate real close to the mark, but that is going to be it.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Quirkz]

6, 7, and 8 - really? You think those only apply to one side? Conspiracy, ad-hominem attacks, and lies have filled both sides of this discussion from the beginning. I find these things really frustrating, because it has greatly muddied the waters of what should have been a more straightforward and less strident discussion.

I find it contradictory that you can claim you're open minded about the subject, but you're incapable of seeing any of those things on your side of the argument because they're very clearly there.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

How dare you look up data and attempt to form a reasonable conclusion based on your own research. What are you, some kind of fancy-pants expert or something?!

Alarmist! Skeptic! Denier! Quick, the crowd wants to know which one you are so you can be pigeon-holed and given the appropriate praise and condemnation... hurry up!

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[llManDrakell]

I had my first doubts about global warming, when they introduced the term climate change“

The general public/media did not understand that "global warming" refered to the global mean temperature. This meant it was possible for some regions to cool whilst others warmed. Despite this, the myth grew that Any cooling disproves global warming. The change in terminology was a response to this confusion amongst the public, and wouldn't have been necessary if everyone understood "mean warming" actually meant.

I think this is also a misunderstanding in terms that people think are used interchangeably. "Global Warming" is solely related to the change in global temperature. Whereas "Climate Change" is related to long term changes in weather phenomenon. Global warming is not climate change - global warming causes climate change.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[oiron]

Point 4: Pretty much because no such there was never any such theory seriously debated among scientists.

And point 5 is really about overproduction and thinking that we're oh-so-smarter than nature; whether capitalist or otherwise. To frame it as a Socialist Plot is just being specious and moving the debate from science to politics (again).

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[LingNoi]

Could you explain why points 9 and 10 are "wrong" or did you mean "I disagree". If so, why not state why?

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Bigjeff5]

Point #2, or the Hockey stick, considers more than just the last 10-15 years... To see the "stick" you have to look at the last 1000 years. Assuming measurements are proper, there is a noted effect in the last 100 years... Unfortunately, this does depend heavily on "proxy" indicators. There is a good size error field, which certainly contributes to the debate. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3569604.stm [bbc.co.uk]

First, the Hockey Stick graph is only based on about 500 years data. Second it is based on to very different data collection techniques - tree ring data for temperatures older than about 150 years, and direct measurements for the most recent 150 years. Why not use tree ring data all the way to the present to keep the data consistent? I'm not surprised that a more precise measuring method shows more drastic results for the last 150 years.

If you go back 1000 years you see things a little more clearly. If you go back 20,000 years the picture is entirely different. We're still at an average temperature for a warm period. We are not now even close to the hottest it has ever been since the last ice age.

Here is an excellent graph showing the last 20,000 year temperature history of the earth via ice cores from Greenland. It doesn't mean the hockey-stick is false - in fact that same website is talking about the dangers of climate change and has many of the other traditional AGW graphs to support that point.

In any case I have no doubt that AGW is at least true in part. The question is, what's the real damage? Is it actually something to be concerned about? Or is it within the Earth's normal range of climates? These are the questions that are only being speculated about, and there is no data at all to support the dire predictions of AGW alarmists.

Just look at the GoM spill - it's the largest in US history, predicted to be the greatest environmental disaster we have ever seen, yet five months in and it has caused a tiny fraction of the damage the much smaller Valdez spill caused.

That is what alarmist predictions get you - not much.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[HeckRuler]

At first it seemed odd, but after I thought about it, your post really is quite insightful. It's posts like your which make me believe more strongly in global warming and what we're going to have to do to fight it. I'd hoped that we could simply show people the upcoming consequences and, you know, things would change. But if there's more people like you out there, it's going to be an uphill battle.

1. "I don't understand climate change". A few degrees difference over the course of a century isn't really that big of deal all by itself. Even if it's hotter then it ever was before. But small changes can have big effects on systems like the climate. So, just as a layman's example, if the jet stream decides it's always going to come out of Canada rather then up from Mexico (or simply shift it's preference), then Omaha is going to go from having schizophrenic weather to having really shitty cold weather most of the time. And there will be only 2 wheat harvests instead of three. Likewise, if the jet steam decides to fluctuate over California, they can kiss their constant 70 degrees goodbye.

2. "It should be more noticeable". Well it's measurable, it's just not as pronounced as you describe. If it were that bad, then humanity would probably be fucked no matter what we do. It may indeed be like a runaway train, but it's more like a train that's supposed to be standing still, but Lou forgot to put on the brakes, and we've noticed that it's starting to roll downhill.

3. "Alarmism". This one I'll agree with. Humanity has a really bad tendency to preach doom and gloom. Fear sells I guess. I highly doubt the tales of apocalypse that some people are spreading. (also, the little ice age wasn't a warm period)

4. "I don't trust experts". Ok... so the experts are wrong because

• Science isn't a democracy.
• Some sociologists didn't fix all the problems back in the 60's, so scientists are wrong today...
• Science argued for big government. (really? REALLY?)
• Ah, and some people were wrong about global cooling in the 70's.

... sure.

5. "SOCIALISM!!!"
. . . Global warming is a myth... Because of socialism? Ok, let's just dive in and take a look see.
Ah, "Socialism has always been marketed as rule by the scientists and experts", Yes, well, I'm starting to see the connection now. I believe you may be mistaken though. That right there would be more of a technocracy. Socialism is more like the collective peter taking from selective paul, but paul not whining like a little bitch because he still drives around in a Mercedes, but now he can't afford two.

6. "Stop calling me a conspiracy nutcase!" I think this probably stems from you saying things like in #5. That the scientists want to put you under their fascist boot of socialism.

7. "And stop calling me names!" Sorry, but it appears that you have some fallacies in your logic. Like, saying that all scientists are wrong because sociologists tried something in the 60's. That's just silly. It doesn't put you in good light.

8."I don't believe anything you say". Really? You're bitching about the polar bear video? It's marketing dude. As for "climategae", it really wasn't as grievous as the talking heads made it out to be.

9. "I don't like polls". Yeah, me either. It's sort of a distraction, but it's what journalists do. But those models do exist, and they ARE forecasting the weather. And the answer is going to be a percentage chance.
"I still don't understand the reason why they cannot predict the average temperature next year." Try to grok the butterfly effect. Then realize we live in a probabilistic universe. So we can't see into the future, we can only give you the odds.

10. "I don't like peak oil either". You really don't think the economy is ever going to come back? Hell, even if it doesn't, we're still going to hit peak oil. You should realize that we hit peak oil for the

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[LingNoi]

The parent makes in interesting point however. If the famous hockey stick graph is to be accepted as fact then why isn't every year a record heat wave?

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Bigjeff5]

From one of your newscientist.com links:

First of all, it is worth bearing in mind that any data on global temperatures before about 150 years ago is an estimate, a reconstruction based on second-hand evidence such as ice cores and isotopic ratios. The evidence becomes sparser the further back we look, and its interpretation often involves a set of assumptions. In other words, a fair amount of guesswork.

This seems to call into question the Hockey Stick graph, which is based largely on tree ring data except for the last 150 years.

Frankly, I would question any study that attempts to correlate data of two differing precisions without having data for both for the entire study as a matter of course, and I'm surprised so many people swallow it whole without question. Furthermore, statistics have never been proof in science. They can show you patterns and help you develop hypothesis and point you in a direction to look, but they prove nothing by themselves.

The real scientists, I'm sure, are doing exactly that. But that's not the bullshit we get in the media. I'm not interested in arguing your points, I was simply making my own point about the nature of the things we see and hear about climate change. It's a political hot-button and a potential gold mine. Climate scientists have a long way to go with regards to doing real science and getting real answers; most of what we see is just conjecture based on correlative data (to be fair, it's often strongly correlated). That is useless for developing policy, but it's how we tend to do everything.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[narcolepticjim]

Past Decade Warmest on Record, NASA Data Shows

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[lorenlal]

Excellent. Thank you for the source on 4, and for the solid retort on 5.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

...
5. Socialism
Socialism has always been marketed as rule by the scientists and experts. Everybody shall lose their “bourgeous” human rights like right to property and freedom of association (freedom of association is racist anyway, right?) and submit to “expert rule” because the experts know it all and know it better than us rednecks. Well, not only have the “experts” been very often wrong, the centralized rule from above by the experts has proven to be a bigger disaster than any global warming scenario. (Yes, you read that correctly.)
Russia has always been a traditional food exporter and was turned into country where millions starve by the “experts”. And famine and widespread starvation has been the hallmark of socialism almost everywhere it has been tried: China, Cambodia, many african countries, etc.

Ah, so you're not only pig-ignorant about science, you are also a political ignoramus. The average American (and you seem well below) knows fuck-all about socialism.

Just because a government *calls* itself socialist doesn't mean a thing. The USSR also called itself 'democratic' - and so does the USA.

Both wrong.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[loshwomp]

Really, no one needs examples how the enviro-whackos want to control our lives...want to have a BBQ in CA?

Okay, I'm in CA (assuming that means California) and I have no idea what you're talking about. We have barbecues all the time. So what ARE you talking about?

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[phantomfive]

Here's one debate, check it out. It's between two PhDs, one of which was a lead IPCC report author, the other one wrote a highly-used textbook in his field, and over 180 papers.

Here is another one, which is notable because the 'pro' and 'con' sides agree on most of the facts.

This one is shorter, but very sharp, and each side wins some points. If you don't have the time to watch the longer ones above, watch this one.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, just read your link, "Climate myths: it's been far warmer in the past, what's the big deal". Fail! It basically boils down to: even if it has been warm in the past, it doesn't mean the current warming is not worrying. Huh? Your link totally fails to show that warmth in the past was catastrophic, so I'd say exactly the opposite point stands: the fact that it has been warm in the past MEANS the current warming is NOT worrying. Of course besides pointing to bad consequences in the historic record, where as said the article just fails, it might also make a few substantiated predictions as to measurable quantities in the (near) future, or postulate a model which would predict observable consequences in a specific (proximate) time frame. But no, of course the article also fails there; it's not alone on this regard, tho, since that's the weakest part of climate change thought, having the ability to make verifiable/falsifiable PREDICTIONS.
So your effort falls short: if that's the best you can come up, then your argument is simply "be afraid, be veeery afraid!".

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[sycodon]

http://articles.latimes.com/1990-10-12/local/me-2017_1_barbecue-lighter-fluid-clean-air-pollution

While lighter fluid is not a ban on BBQs...just wait.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[loshwomp]

While lighter fluid is not a ban on BBQs...just wait.

Okay, I'm waiting. Your reference is nearly 20 years old. How much longer to I have to wait?

So anyway, that's the best you've got? A 20-year-old ban on lighter fluid in one local area (AQMD)? If we're going to cherry pick extreme examples to make points, I could find almost ANYONE driving a Hummer, and they're still doing it today.

Lighter fluid is idiotic and unnecessary anyway, so I'm happy to have fewer hydrocarbons (combusted or otherwise) polluting my air.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny you should mention that. You want to stop people from driving Hummers.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Raenex]

The real scientists, I'm sure, are doing exactly that. But that's not the bullshit we get in the media.

I think you would find David Holland's Bias and Concealment In the IPCC Process: The "Hockey-Stick" Affair and Its Implications" interesting reading.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[nuonguy]

Nice post. I don't know why you have to go AC.

You believed in global warming but now you believe something else. Still a believer. You're not informed. You're not a skeptic, you're a believer.

There are people in the GW camp who are alarmists and conspiracy nuts, but you're not different from them.

I got bored with you 'citing' the 'experts' without showing any example. You watch too much fox news. You're post nicely models the fox news style of alarmism, blaming the 'experts' or whatever bogeyman you need at the time.

Speaking of fox news, the people who are vilifying 'socialism' are the echo chamber for the fox news and tea party crowd. Whatever skepticism I had with socialism has not been affirmed or contradicted by the crowd that calls Obama a muslim and a socialist. I lost more respect for your post when you started using 'socialist' as a label.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't really understand the slashdot comments. Clearly you meant this as a criticism of the original "Why I no longer believe..." post, where he claimed it was warmer in the past, but here it looks as if you a critical of this response.

But your criticism is unfounded. It has been warmer and cooler in the past, we have temperature proxies that can be used to infer this. Proxies like deuterated fraction of water in ice, help you to infer a temperature at which ice formed and so on. Do a little reading. Ignorance shouldn't be a badge of honor.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[Indiana Joe]

Here's a citation: Global warming will exist., so long as there is money to be made. - Dan.

You have it backwards. Global warming will not exist, until money can be made off of it.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[mR.bRiGhTsId3]

There was an intriguing website I can't remember the address to that basically said it is a game-theoretic dominating strategy for a Socialist to proselytize AGW. The reasoning was that Socialists desire government control of the economy. If AGW exists then our children don't die off and massive government regulation of the economy is introduced. If AGW doesn't exist then massive government regulation of the economy is introduced.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[md65536]

tl;dr but after point 2 it sounds like what you're saying is that you don't believe in the concept of predicting inexact outcomes, or that predictions are only "believable" if they are highly precise and accurate. If the next few years are hot will you switch to believing in global warming again?

If you only have beliefs about the past, then you'll (potentially) be right more than most people will, but it'll be too late for you to do anything about your present.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[mataap]

1. Climate Change I had my first doubts about global warming, when they introduced the term climate change“ which the added claim that climate change“ may not just cause warming in some regions, but may actually cause cooling in others. So all of the sudden climate change“ may cause everything: Hot, cold, stormy, dry, wet, etc.

Why is this a problem for you? Some parts of the world may indeed show a reduced 30 year (e.g.) average temperature, but that doesn't mean that the global 30 year mean won't increase.

Global warming is not necessarily global uniform warming. Global change is not necessarily global uniform change.

I'm sure someone can come up with a Star Trek style analogy for this. Anyone?

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[LingNoi]

The article is completely based upon the research of a Dr. Hansen so I looked him up. Dr. Hansen who is more then just a scientist, he is a political activist and suggest you read up on him.

Here's what other people say about him from wikipedia, so you can run off their to check your facts..

Physicist Freeman Dyson is critical of Hansen's climate-change activism. "The person who is really responsible for this overestimate of global warming is Jim Hansen. He consistently exaggerates all the dangers... Hansen has turned his science into ideology.”

Also this one from the new york times.

After Hansen's arrest in West Virginia, New York Times columnist Andrew Revkin wrote: "Dr. Hansen has pushed far beyond the boundaries of the conventional role of scientists, particularly government scientists, in the environmental policy debate."

So basically your article comes down to do I trust a scientist that is known to exaggerate his figures and blow things out of proportion?

My response is no. If he's running around protesting, claiming people are censoring reports and constantly getting involved in politics then he isn't really doing science and other scientists agree. It's a consensus!

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[riverat1]

9 is wrong because it misunderstands how the GCM's (General Circulation Models or Global Climate Models, take your pick) work. The don't predict what the temperature will be in 100 years, they just predict what the 30 year average trend line will look like at that time. Natural variability means some years will be below the line and some years will be above but they will average out to something near the prediction.

10 is wrong because petroleum is only one source of fossil fuel CO2. Coal and natural gas plus land use changes are other major factors in human CO2 emissions. The CO2 inputs to climate models are based on various plausible hypothetical scenarios because scientists can't know what will actually happen ahead of time.

Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming

[riverat1]

If the famous hockey stick graph is to be accepted as fact then why isn't every year a record heat wave?

Natural variability.

So I guess there is no Noodly One

[tepples]

It is time for the global cooling crowd to make a comeback

Pastafarianism holds that global warming is kept in check by the cooling effect of pirates. Yet the mass piracy perpetrated through the original Napster and its progeny (Gnutella, Kazaa, eDonkey, BitTorrent, etc.) has failed to halt global warming.

Re:So I guess there is no Noodly One

[domatic]

And the US Navy interdicting Somali ones can't bode well for this hurricane season......

Re:So I guess there is no Noodly One

[funwithBSD]

Don't worry, the IRS is staffing up to make up the difference.

Rain, too

[overshoot]

Snowfall above 3000 meters in greenland is increasing as predicted by climate models. This has nothing to do with the gulf stream (which is not significantly slowing down), it's due to increased water vapour which in turn is due to a positive feedback from global warming. Overall the extra snowfall at high altitudes does not make up for the extra loss at low altitudes, the extra snowfall may even speed up the loss of glaciers by making them top heavy.

And: the increased precipitation, snow and rain, is further diluting the surface salinity in the North Atlantic. When it gets low enough, the Gulf Stream stops its current pattern of flowing north evaporating as it goes until it's salty enough to dive to the bottom and return deep. Much change occurs worldwide, but most immediately Europe gets colder and dryer.

That's going to be very hard to ignore, and IMHO will most likely be the turning point in public and policy-making consciousness of climate change. The question is, when?

Re:Rain, too

[Anonymous Coward]

even if the livable space on earth becomes 45% fireball and 45% ice, and we are huddled on the remaining 10%, we still won't see policy change until

A) science can prove that man is the root cause

B) additionally prove that man can cause a reversal, that is predictable and measurable.

I think the climate change community is done for.

The focus should have remained on pollution and how man creates it, and how it poisons the air we breath, the fish we eat, the water we drink.

I'm apolitical, and my friends are mostly lefties. I would say more then 65% really don't give a shit about whether the earth heats up or cools down. This is mother earth we're talking about. She _will_ heat up and cool down. There will be awesome displays of nature that will take life.

But I can guarantee that ALL OF THEM care about what they breath, drink and eat.

The question is, when? (will climate science invoke real change)

The answer is never.

Re:Rain, too

[Anynomous Coward]

As if a pot of lukewarm water put on a hot stove would acquire a layer of floating ice because the added energy from the hot stove would force a heat engine to run in reverse and cool said pot.
Have you got more perpetua mobilia whence this came from ?

Re:Rain, too

[AmonTheMetalhead]

Knowing the greed of humanity? When it's too late.

Re:Rain, too

[Anonymous Coward]

Snowfall above 3000 meters in greenland is increasing as predicted by climate models. This has nothing to do with the gulf stream (which is not significantly slowing down), it's due to increased water vapour which in turn is due to a positive feedback from global warming. Overall the extra snowfall at high altitudes does not make up for the extra loss at low altitudes, the extra snowfall may even speed up the loss of glaciers by making them top heavy.

And: the increased precipitation, snow and rain, is further diluting the surface salinity in the North Atlantic. When it gets low enough, the Gulf Stream stops its current pattern of flowing north evaporating as it goes until it's salty enough to dive to the bottom and return deep. Much change occurs worldwide, but most immediately Europe gets colder and dryer.

That's going to be very hard to ignore, and IMHO will most likely be the turning point in public and policy-making consciousness of climate change. The question is, when?

It'll get colder and drier? Count me in. All I've been hearing is that it's to blame for more rainfall and an increase in temperature.

Can we please get some proper science with proper conversation and real models being drawn up without politics and fanaticism in the Global Warming/Climate Change religion please? Ah yes, I suppose that would be utopian.

Re:Rain, too

[analyst-cz]

The short answer is "too late". The long answer I do not know, obviously ;-P

Re:Great news! (not)

[aggles]

>This year we are going to see a new record low for arctic sea ice --- surpassing even the dramatic 2007 decline. http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.recent.arctic.png

Another source, the Arctic News, differs with your conclusion. See link here: http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png and the main site at http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/

It is still bad. This year will be the runner-up, not the new record low for arctic sea ice. Perhaps, as before, the moisture in the arctic air will swirl down and result in a good snow year for the northeast US ski areas.

Jackson

[Anonymous Coward]

Having scanned through the mentioned research article a couple of days ago and knowing a bit about this subject, I must say that the article is quite wrong in its summary of the results. First, glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA) is a very well-known but poorly-constrained problem in such estimates. All previous estimates do take into account GIA, but how they take it into account is another matter. Different ways of modelling GIA yields different results.

In fact, if you think about it, not taking into account GIA will imply that we are measuring this uplift as an increase in ice mass, which means that the estimates without correcting for GIA should show less instead of more ice loss. Hence, a contradiction.

What the new article has to offer is a semi-empirical method of modelling GIA. It is certainly insightful and novel, but this does not mean that its estimates are necessarily more accurate than previous numbers. What this research is effectively arguing, though, is that previous analyses have over estimated the effect of GIA.

Nature has a better news article written about it, but it might be behind a paywall: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n9/full/ngeo946.html.

Re:Great news! - typical FUD

[AmonTheMetalhead]

People not grasping the complexity of our world make me sad

I'm no math wiz...

[Rooked_One]

but isn't half of "a lot" still "a lot"? :S

Re:I'm no math wiz...

[Bigjeff5]

It sounds like a lot, but Greenland is fucking huge. Cutting the rate of melt in half is a very big deal, especially since it does not in any way take into account the rate of growth (glaciers grow and shrink every year with the seasons, this should be obvious).

It's quite possible that the halving of the melt rate puts Greenland's ice into a stable or even growing condition. It basically makes using Greenland as an example of the negative effects of climate change impossible until those questions are resolved.

In other words, more study is needed.

Re:I'm no math wiz...

[Rooked_One]

Nelson - "Say global warming is a myth"

Milhouse - "Its a myth! Its a myth! Further study is needed!"

**Punch**

Nelson - "That's for selling out your beliefs!"

I just had to! :)

Not a great indicator of global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Greenland was once green. It was discovered by Eric the Red who founded a viking colony there. Later on it got cold and covered with ice.
BTW Eric the Red's son, Leif Ericson, went west and discovered America. . He also founded a cattle ranch near Tucson called the High Chaparal. His brother was Cameron Mitchell who went on to command SG1 on its last few missions before the government closed down the stargate program.

Re:Not a great indicator of global warming

[Hellsbells]

Yes, and according to maps and text from the middle ages, the North Pole was also a green paradise since this was the place where the Garden of Eden was located.

Apparently there was also an island of virgins located somewhere near Greenland !

Hopefully, it will not matter (OT-ish)

[KiwiCanuck]

The wold population should start declining soon. Most developed countries have declining birth rates. Japan & Russia lead the way. China has it's one child per couple policy. Population growth in North America is due to immigration. I believe this is the same case in Europe. At some point we will hit a population maximum, then start to decline. I think the best marker for the environment is new species vs extinction of old species. If we start seeing a decline in species in non-human area, then I would be worried. Until then, I'd guess that planet would be able to adjust and maintain the dynamic equilibrium. Don't forget that all it would take is one pandemic to wipe out a significant portion of the human population (thanks in part to cheap air travel). Bacteria & viruses adapt, just like we (and our immune) do.

Science!

[DarthVain]

"....and what also melts?"

"Cheese?"
"small stones!"
"toasters!"
"witches"

"That's right! Witches. Now who doesn't like Witches?"

"Water?"
"DUCKS!"
"Jesus?"

"Correct! Jesus hates witches... and what happens when messiah returns?"

"Frogs?"
"Mice?"
"The Destruction of Earth!"

"Very good, the destruction of earth! Now what does the earth do now?"

"Rotates around the sun?"
"Hosts Life?"
"Spins?"

"Yes it spins! Therefore when it is destroyed, it will stop spinning. What is created by spinning?"

"Centrifugal force?"
"large rats?"
"Magnetism!"

"Correct, it creates magnetism, which must cause the destruction of earth due to its stopping by Jesus because he hates witches. Quid Pro Quo."

"Applause!"

Re:Science!

[tsm_sf]

Who are you who are so wise in the ways of science?

Re:Wololo......

[pandaman9000]

The theory IS wrong. I know you want it to be correct. It isn't. We have supposedly been having some kind of catastrophic climate change for quite a while now, yet somehow nothing much has changed at all. Icebergs and frozen things melt in one area, and things freeze in others. In over 30 years of paying attention, I cannot find a shift in temperatures anywhere that is consistent globally, or falling outside of variances.

Correction: Nevermind, we were looking at Iceland

[mathmatt]

Nevermind, the original estimates were correct. Somebody bumped the globe and were looking at Iceland this morning.

No, but it proves we don't know everything

[SuperKendall]

This estimate change means climate change has once again been proven wrong! Right? Right?

Of course not. But such a major correction shows that we have a long way to go before we REALLY understand climate science well enough to predict anything long term, or say exactly what is causing changes we observe.

It does indicate you should take anything any climate scientist tells you is "absolute truth" with a huge grain of salt.

I mean, you aren't claiming that no other studies on which the theory of global warming is based are without uncovered error at all of at least this magnitude... Right? Right?

Climate science will be a science when they can actually predict something that will happen instead of predicting what has already happened (oh, but with just a few holes in the results that you should ignore). So far they are nowhere close to that state.

Re:Great news! The UK gets craploads of rain NOW !

[Anonymous Coward]

and then we have localized weather. That means some areas get craploads of rain, and some areas get almost none.

Erm, isn't that how it is now? I mean here in the UK we rota of weather like this: rain, rain, cloudy sky, rain, cloudy sky, rain, cloudy sky and rain, rain and very occasionally when the gods look upon us.... sunshine! As opposed to our EU friends in places like Spain who have Scorchio weather ... Bueno estente !!!

The 'sensors in parking lots' data supports AGW

[Joce640k]

Those sensors made old temperatures look warmer then they really were. Old temperature data had to be adjusted downwards to compensate, making modern readings higher by comparison.

(Yes, they've moved them...and these days they measure temperatures via satellite, not manually-read thermometers)

Re:The 'sensors in parking lots' data supports AGW

[Bigjeff5]

See GP's post.

Re:The 'sensors in parking lots' data supports AGW

[emarkp]

No, they haven't moved them. Fully 90% of surface sensors are badly sited. That's the point of http://www.surfacestations.org/, to document the quality of the sensors.

Satellites take temperature measurements as well, but they have other issues. Well-sited surface sensors would be the best data we can get, and yet we don't even make the effort to site them properly.

Which makes me suspect a lot of the AGW scare. Another being what happens when they have no data and just make stuff up.

Re:The 'sensors in parking lots' data supports AGW

[riverat1]

Read this (PDF)before you take surfacestations.org as gospel.

Re:The 'sensors in parking lots' data supports AGW

[emarkp]

Yes, I've read that paper, but Menne appears to not be an honest broker. Not only did he use the data that Watts stopped updating publicly (to avoid ad hoc analysis) but he apparently deliberately excluded Watts from the article process.

The fact that I saw a false premise in the first paragraph of the paper (reviewing it again just now) didn't improve my opinion of Menne et al.

I believe the "adjustment" process is fatally flawed (hence my "make stuff up" link in my prior post). Smearing the data around doesn't make it better (side note: my background includes physics simulations of rigorously tested data, so I have at least some experience with data quality like this), and when there simply isn't any data, fiddling with the gaussian isn't going to make the data appear.

On top of all this, NOAA and NCDC appear to have colluded to hammer out talking points regarding Watts' "Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?"

Climate scientists simply cannot be trusted until all data and methodology are public and can be replicated by statisticians outside of the field.

Re:The 'sensors in parking lots' data supports AGW

[riverat1]

Menne tried to get Watts involved but he didn't respond in a timely manner then Watts accused Menne of excluding him.

What is this false premise you speak of?

The vast majority of the data and methodology is available to the public. This page points to a bunch of them. But I guess maybe you're lazy and want it handed to you on a silver platter.

Why don't you take up a collection to pay professional statisticians? The grants climate scientists get don't include funds to pay for that. Most climate scientists are fair statisticians anyway since statistics underlies the majority of their work.

Um, oil is running out

[Joce640k]

Future generations won't have SUVs no matter what happens with AGW.

Why not start making the move away from them before we guzzle the last drops of one of our most precious resources in the most stupid way possible (ie. burn it and turn it into greenhouse gas just so you can commute to work in a truck).

Re:Um, oil is running out

[Wyatt Earp]

No, easy to get and cheap rock oil is running out. There are gigatons of petroleum in shale, sand and a buttload of coal dust and natural gas that can be made into diesel.

"Oil" is not running out, one way to get it is.

Re:Um, oil is running out

[riverat1]

The question is "Is it worth the cost to get it?".

cool story bro!

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet hairyfeet is such a ding-dong that he doesn't even see the irony in his choice of anecdote.


ah, well, gotta learn terraforming somehwere...

Wow

[Safety Cap]

You can take that theory of electricity with a grain of salt when you stick a metal fork in an outlet,

My Theory of Climate

[sycodon]

It will get warmer.

Then, it will get colder.

Repeat.

My Theory is infallible.

Trust us, we're scientists

[Anonymous Coward]

You people out there who don't believe in AGM are idiots. We keep telling you that the earth is warming, and it's all your fault. But you just keep on living and driving cars, both of which must end immediately. We, of coarse, will keep living and driving our cars, but that's because we have to be around to tell you how bad you are. Ignore the fact that our predictions are wrong, just take our word for it that the earth is warming, it's all your fault, and kill yourself and everyone else, except us. kthxbye

Don't shoot the messenger

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20015596-10391695.html

confidence intervals exclude systematic error

[Colin Smith]

which they clearly have in spades . they need to go back to school .

I'm not dead yet!

[drainbramage]

Really, I'm feeling better.

Check for yourself

[thethibs]

This is something anyone on Slashdot should be able to do. First, go get the GISP2 ice core data at

ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/greenland/summit/gisp2/isotopes/gisp2_temp_accum_alley2000.txt

Pull the data into Excel or R or your favourite tool and plot the most recent 10,000 years (period since the end of the last ice age). You'll find it easier to interpret if you convert the age to years AD and BC and normalize the temperatures to make them relative to current.

You'll see that the Mann Hockey Stick is right where it's supposed to be. What's surprising is how tiny it is (said the actress to the bishop).

What I find most interesting is that, since 8000BC, it's only been as cold as it is now three times, and for each time only 200 or so years. So is it going to get warmer? Yeah, that's a safe bet if we don't get an ice age first. It's going to get a lot warmer before it gets to what's been normal and comfortable for most of modern human history.

Does Mann demand an explanation? No--there's nothing exceptional about the current trend--it doesn't require an exceptional explanation. It's just the climate being the climate.

The next thing I did was superimpose the rise and fall of the great human cultures in both the Old World and the Americas, with a focus on equatorial civilizations. With a couple of exceptions, they all get their start during warming periods. A few, the Hittites, both Romes, Islam, see their fortunes literally rise and fall with temperature.

But don't take my word for it. It's an hour's work to see for yourself.

Re:Check for yourself

[Anonymous Coward]

The next thing I did was superimpose the rise and fall of the great human cultures in both the Old World and the Americas, with a focus on equatorial civilizations. With a couple of exceptions, they all get their start during warming periods. A few, the Hittites, both Romes, Islam, see their fortunes literally rise and fall with temperature.

These periods even have names - and were undisputed before the current crop of CAGW-proponents started to claim it's always been really really cold until now and that we'd soon burn in hell if we didn't immediately stop all technical progress.

http://friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/FOS%20Essay/HoloceneOptimumTemperature.jpg

Global warming denialists and religion....

[jotaeleemeese]

I went through many of the posts here, it was very interesting to see how in the denialist camp you see so many trying to frame understanding of global climate change as a matter of belief.

This is understandable, since they are so short of arguments they want to move the debate to their home turf, where they feel comfortable.

It is frankly mind boggling how any single adjustment of the main thesis is immediately proclaimed as proof that everything is a sham with a straight face.

So Greenland is melting very fast, but twice as slow as previously thought, this is seen by the denialists as a get out of jail proof.

That people don't understand time scales is frankly astonishing: there are several people talking about 250 or 500 years being a long time, failing miserably to realize that this kind of natural events normally develop in a matter of thousands, tens or thousands normally, years. So if a glacier that has been in place for time immemorial melts in 5000 instead of 250 years it is still bad news.

The short term vision of some people is terrifying....

Global Warming IS ...

[Anonymous Coward]

GW as well as CC is just like Richard Gere and Gerbils ...

http://www.dailyhaha.com/_pics/large_mouse_eater.htm

Re:Global HOAX ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick! Change the name!

CLIMATE CHANGE!

Yeaaah! Then we'll be able to claim we're right, even when we're wrong! woo!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it actually the right wing and their petrochemical backers who popularized the phrase "climate change" to squeeze the words "global warming" out of the debate?

EXACTLY !!!

It is ALL a political scam.

Re:Great news! (not)

[riverat1]

When talking about Arctic sea ice it's important to distinguish whether you are talking about ice extent (the area it covers) or ice volume. As far as 2010, it's not clear if ice extent will be lower than 2007 but ice volume is already below 2007 because multi-year ice has been disappearing year after year. We already have a record low for ice volume.