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BEST Study Finds Temperature Changes Explained by GHG Emissions and Volcanoes

riverat1 writes "The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature studies latest release finds that land surface temperature changes since 1750 are nearly completely explained by increases in greenhouse gases and large volcanic eruptions. They also said that including solar forcing did not significantly improve the fit. Unlike the other major temperature records BEST used nearly all available temperature records instead of just a representative sample. Yet to come is an analysis that includes ocean temperatures."

83 of 355 comments (clear)

  1. Well that proves it by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Funny

    If we just plug up the volcanos, everything will be fine!

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
    1. Re:Well that proves it by TubeSteak · · Score: 4, Funny

      Does that work when you eat beans and shove the can up your ass as a plug?

      No, but it's cheaper than a potato gun and just as exciting when it goes off!

      --
      [Fuck Beta]
      o0t!
    2. Re:Well that proves it by Moses48 · · Score: 5, Informative

      The article shows a correlation between volcanoes and dips in climate. Also they attribute all climate rise to mostly CO2 and say that solar/urbanization/etc has not caused noticeable climate change. They attribute CO2 increase to both humans and volcanoes.

      See correlation here: http://berkeleyearth.org/volcanoes/ The theory is that the recent (1956+) rise is mostly AGW.

    3. Re:Well that proves it by buchner.johannes · · Score: 5, Informative

      If we just plug up the volcanos, everything will be fine!

      Humans emit 100 times more CO2 than volcanoes. The ash clouds of volcanoes typically cause a temporary cooling.

      --
      NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
    4. Re:Well that proves it by Genda · · Score: 3, Funny

      This story doesn't end with a monkey desperately trying to put the can back... does it?

    5. Re:Well that proves it by Genda · · Score: 4, Funny

      Replied to the wrong post?

      No, I think he's blaming Climate Change on the followers of "My Little Pony." Perhaps he knows something about magical Pony farts that we should all learn???

    6. Re:Well that proves it by meglon · · Score: 4, Informative

      It's all about the sulfur. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-do-volcanoes-affect-w&page=2

      Ok, maybe not all.. there's those large parasols women were using in the 1880's that did a little.

      --
      Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
    7. Re:Well that proves it by Tom+Womack · · Score: 5, Informative

      And human industry also emits significantly more SO2 than volcanoes; you don't get a Pinatubo every decade, and China alone emits two Pinatubos of SO2 annually.

    8. Re:Well that proves it by AliasMarlowe · · Score: 2

      This story doesn't end with a monkey desperately trying to put the can back... does it?

      That's no monkey!
      It's a Thetan desperately trying to avoid being in the volcano when it gets plugged...

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    9. Re:Well that proves it by feedayeen · · Score: 4, Informative

      Please cite a source on this. I would love to see if this is truly fact. My own research into the matter suggests not, but I am willing to be wrong. Where are you getting the figure "100 times more"? It is quite interesting that your number works out so exactly to 100.

      P.S. @Moderators - "Informative". Really?

      If you were any more obtuse, I'd be able to use you as a decent approximation for pi.

      https://www.google.com/search?client=opera&q=human+production+co2+volcano&sourceid=opera&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&channel=suggest

      First 5 links all agree with a number on the order of 100 time greater, I stopped bothering to look after that.

    10. Re:Well that proves it by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So let's have more climate treaties, more inconsistent taxation, and move more production to China !

      What does China/other developing economies use for energy for that production ?

      Almost exclusively coal, which is pretty much the worst method of producing energy, environmentally speaking. Also, transporting those produced goods to the west is not exactly environmentally friendly either.

    11. Re:Well that proves it by Randle_Revar · · Score: 3, Informative

      I know it is a joke, but cement manufacture has very high CO2 emissions. It is something like 5%-7% of global human carbon emissions.

    12. Re:Well that proves it by Atzanteol · · Score: 5, Informative

      I think you missed the point. The Koch brothers are typically anti-AGW in their funding. So this study that was in part funded by people who disagree with its conclusion should in fact be biased "the other way." Yet it is not. It could be that facts are difficult to find a bias in...

      --
      "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"

      - Charles Darwin
    13. Re:Well that proves it by jafac · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So what's your point?

      Yes - the stuff China is doing is bad. And by consuming their products, we enable them. And we are bad.

      As a civilization - we need to all stop figuratively flicking our cigarette butts out the window. And by "all", I mean "all". I know that that sounds pretty awful and totalitarian, and the implications are staggering. But if we don't consider that, and continue on our present course - don't kid yourselves - we're not going to "ride this out" or "cope and adapt". It's going to get pretty god damn ugly here in about 20-30 years. It's probably already too late.

      --

      These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
    14. Re:Well that proves it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      The USGS agrees: Human activities, responsible for a projected 35 billion metric tons (gigatons) of CO2 emissions in 2010, release an amount of CO2 that dwarfs the annual CO2 emissions of all the world’s degassing subaerial and submarine volcanoes.

      Allard, P., 1992, Global emissions of helium-3 by subaerial volcanism: Geophysical Research Letters, v. 19, n. 14, p. 1479-1481.

      Friedlingstein, P., Houghton, R. A., Marland, G., Hackler, J., Boden, T. A., Conway, T. J., Canadell, J. G., Raupach, M. R., Ciais, P., and Le Quéré, C., 2010, Update on CO2 emissions, Nat. Geosci., v. 3, n. 12, p. 811–812, doi:10.1038/ngeo1022.

      Gerlach, T.M., 2011, Volcanic versus anthropogenic carbon dioxide: Eos Trans. AGU, v. 92, n. 24, p. 201-202.

      Gerlach, T.M., 1991, Present-day CO2 emissions from volcanoes: Eos Trans. AGU, v. 72, n. 23, p. 249 and 254-255.

      Gerlach, T.M., McGee, K.A., Elias, T., Sutton, A.J., and Doukas, M.P., 2002, Carbon dioxide emission rate of Klauea Volcano: Implications for primary magma and the summit reservoir: Journal of Geophysical Research, v. 107, n. B9, p. ECV3-1 – ECV3-15, 2189, doi: 10.1029/2001JB000407.

      Marty, B., and I.N. Tolstikhin, 1998, CO2 fluxes from mid-ocean ridges, arcs and plumes: Chemical Geology, v. 145, p. 233-248.

      Sano, Y. and Williams, S.N., 1996, Fluxes of mantle and subducted carbon along convergent plate boundaries: Geophysical Research Letters, v. 23, n. 20, p. 2749-2752.

      Varekamp, J.C.R., Kreulen, R., Poorter, R.P.E., and Van Bergen, M.J., 1992, Carbon sources and arc volcanism, with implications for the carbon cycle: Terra Nova, v. 4, p. 363-373.

    15. Re:Well that proves it by BasilBrush · · Score: 2

      So if China is worse, that's an excuse for doing nothing?

      Actually China is investing more in renewables than the USA. Like the US, they come from a fossil fuelled history. But they're doing more to change than America.

  2. Re:Human Nature and Avocados by phantomfive · · Score: 4, Funny

    The question is: what is "human nature"?

    Your post, and you, just demonstrated this true answer.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  3. Typical bad summary by PostPhil · · Score: 5, Informative

    The summary makes it sound like volcanoes are the explanation for greenhouse gases, which is completely false. It doesn't say that at all. Actually, it's the opposite.

    RTFA and you learn (as quoted from the .PDF supplied by the article): "According to a new Berkely Earth study released today, the average temperature of Earth's land has risen by 1.5 C over the past 250 years. The good match between the new temperature record and historical carbon dioxide records suggests that the most straightforward explanation for this warming is human greenhouse gas emissions." (Emphasis mine.)

    The .PDF article explains that human CO2 contribution, volcanic activity, and ocean activity (e.g. Gulf Stream and El Nino) are the biggest contributors that are needed to match the graph of temperatures over time. But volcanoes follow the drops in temperature on the graph, not the rises in temperature. Contributions from solar activity exist but were determined to be negligible. They explain that CO2 doesn't prove to be responsible for the warming, but is by far the best contender. As stated by the scientific director, "To be considered seriously, any alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as does carbon dioxide." So denialists can't simply supply "common sense" alternatives: the alternatives must match the data at least as well (or better) than CO2.

    1. Re:Typical bad summary by B1oodAnge1 · · Score: 5, Informative

      I pretty sure no serious (by which I mean logically sound) skeptical arguments deny that CO2 contributes to warming.
      The actual controversy is over how we can expect the warming to be exacerbated or alleviated by feedback loops.
      "Alarmists" tend to claim runaway positive feedback loops will cause a dramatic rise in temperature in the near future, while "denialists" tend to argue that these positive feedback loops are counteracted by negative feedback loops that tend to keep the temperature within a reasonable range.

      --
      RUGBYRUGBYRUGBY
    2. Re:Typical bad summary by riverat1 · · Score: 2

      Maybe you're right. I should have made it more clear that volcanic eruptions were responsible for temporary dips in temperatures in their findings and they said nothing about volcanoes having anything to do with the increase in GHGs.

    3. Re:Typical bad summary by Dodgy+G33za · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Measurements on the great barrier reef have shown a temperature increase of 2 degrees since the 60's, and they are expecting another 2 by 2050, which is largely regarded as the temperature needed to kill it off. Already outside a reasonable range for the fauna that live in the area, which are migrating down the coast. If this were to happen over millennia the reef would probably migrate south, but at this rate of change it can't propagate quickly enough.

      See http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-01-18/warming-to-put-oceans-and-reefs-in-hot-water/4470104

      "Alarmists" are often climate scientists. "Denialists" seem frequently to be corporate funded loons with no expertise in the area. But even if both sides were equally populated by people of the same calibre I would still think it was worth trying to switch to alternatives ASAP to avoid the risk.

      Think about it - if someone said "do this, or there is a 50% chance your house will burn down" you would do 'this', even if 'this' was quite expensive. After all, most people do exactly 'this' when they buy home insurance, and the chance is way lower than 50%.

    4. Re:Typical bad summary by KeensMustard · · Score: 3, Insightful
      But responses to this very topic belie this statement:

      Here is a guy claiming that Global Warming doesn't exist: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3395415&cid=42645177

      Here is a guy claiming that it is real but probably a good thing, he can't wait for more of it: http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3395415&cid=42645015

      Read any denialist website and you'll soon see that they hold several contradictory assertions to be simultaneously true. Why then, would we accept that any of these assertions are true?

      So what is your definition of "logically sound"? It sounds like it's equivalent to "the most plausible at any given time that doesn't involve admitting that we must take action to mitigate climate change" Qualifying what is allowed to be real doesn't sound like accepting reality - reality is not negotiating with us for a mutually acceptable outcome.

      Oh, and one final thing. If you want to know whether or not feedbacks are negative, neutral or positive, read just about any denialist website. They'll tell you that in the climate record, there are instances where CO2 has lagged a climate change. What does this mean? What it really means is that climate sensitivity is positive. These people are disproving themselves and they don't even realise it. Ironic, no?

    5. Re:Typical bad summary by StripedCow · · Score: 3, Interesting

      while "denialists" tend to argue that these positive feedback loops are counteracted by negative feedback loops that tend to keep the temperature within a reasonable range.

      Well, then these "denialists" should come with a sound proof for that statement, I would say. The "alarmists" have done their work.

      --
      If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
    6. Re:Typical bad summary by minogully · · Score: 3, Interesting

      It's been a while now that I've been hoping for a slashdot poll on this subject. For example...

      My views on AGW are:
      1) It doesn't exist
      2) It does exist, but it's not caused by us so why get all worked up about it?
      3) It does exist, but I think that change is a good thing (or the change will be neutral)
      4) It does exist, and it's going to kill off millions of plant and animal species
      5) It does exist, and it's going to kill off millions of humans

      I'm guessing that it's a few loudspoken people on slashdot here who would choose 1-3, whereas the vast majority would choose 4-5.

  4. Re:Koch Brothers? by DiamondGeezer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The BEST study failed peer review at JGR Atmospheres but flew peer review at the inaugural issue of "Geoinformatics and Geostatistics" by an Indian publisher. The funding is irrelevant to the study except to people in denial of the massive fossil fuel funding of climate alarmism.

    --
    Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
  5. Predictions? by LordLucless · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Uh-huh, big whoop. We've had heaps of models that fit the historical data - that's the easy part. It's all there, you can tweak your model as you like until it fits the historicals just right. The value of a model isn't in how well it fits the historical data, but how well it predicts future data.

    So crank a prediction or two out of this puppy and get back to us in a decade.

    --
    Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
    1. Re:Predictions? by SomePgmr · · Score: 4, Informative

      The point of this was that it wouldn't use complex models where they tweak to fit expectations. Instead it plots atmospheric CO2 against global temperature, specifically accounting for denier favorites like urban heat islands, volcanoes, poor station condition, data selection bias, and transparency. All the data is available at the site so anyone can run the numbers themselves. According to them, and by the looks of their graphs, it's a shockingly close match.

      The conclusion is that the temperature rise is from human greenhouse emissions. As always, everyone is free to try to come up with more convincing evidence to the contrary.

    2. Re:Predictions? by riverat1 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Come on -- predict, and cast in concrete, the average tropospheric temperature from 2013 to 2018, with a low margin of error, and "lock it in".

      The problem with that is that climate scientists don't even try to predict temperatures on such a short time scale since natural variability can completely override any long term climate signal over less than around 20 years.

    3. Re:Predictions? by Dodgy+G33za · · Score: 2

      Hey, you have a model that says we are cycling towards a cliff, and are already gaining momentum. Prove to me that there is a cliff there before I think about putting on the breaks.

      How did you ever make it to adulthood.

    4. Re:Predictions? by jo_ham · · Score: 5, Informative

      Uh-huh, big whoop. We've had heaps of models that fit the historical data - that's the easy part. It's all there, you can tweak your model as you like until it fits the historicals just right. The value of a model isn't in how well it fits the historical data, but how well it predicts future data.

      So crank a prediction or two out of this puppy and get back to us in a decade.

      They don't have to wait for a decade, they can just crop out the last decade of data and ask the model minus 10 years of data to predict it. Since they already have the answer, they'll know if it fits.

      The is routinely done with large timescale models like the atmosphere and the ocean.

    5. Re:Predictions? by yndrd1984 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Instead, as each new bit of data comes in, they modify the "model" to better match the new data on a regular basis.

      But changing one's models to fit empirical data is the basic philosophy underpinning ... um ... that thing they're doing.

    6. Re:Predictions? by siddesu · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Except you have no theory to back your polynomial theoretically. Unlike you, the people who make climate models have a rather convincing theoretical backing for their polynomials.

    7. Re:Predictions? by amck · · Score: 5, Informative

      We already do something like this: IPCC projections. We do investigate previous projections to see how they worked / what they got wrong. Its a large part of what we do as scientists.

      And you can do it too: the early models are still available (eg I think the EdGCM model is based on the early GISS model); these days you can run what used to take a supercomputer on your PC and repeat the runs.

      But as climate scientists we're not in the business of playing "I told you so" with denialists. The 64 billion dollar question is : what will happen? we need to adapt and react to climate change, and knowing exactly whats happening is important: shrinking the error bars on those model runs translates to billions of dolllars of taxpayers money that needs / doesn't need to be spent : e.g. knowing the lengths of droughts, how much water needs to be stored. the scale of sea level rise, etc. This is why the climate models are important.

      --
      Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist
    8. Re:Predictions? by jcupitt65 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Exactly. Look at global temperature for the last 250 years plotted with CO2+volcanos and a simple fit:

      http://berkeleyearth.org/images/annual-with-forcing-small.png

      There's almost no modelling there, it's just plotting two sets of measurements together.

      If you think CO2 is not the cause, you need to find two things: another warming effect that fits the data at least as well as CO2 (and it has to be a huge warming effect that no one's noticed before), plus an equally large cooling effect to cancel out all the heat that we know the CO2 will have added to the atmosphere. This is possible, of course, but not very likely.

    9. Re:Predictions? by Vintermann · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Climate models are grounded in physics. The models have many parameters, but these are not free - their possible range is constrained by experimental data. A good model manages to reproduce past climate while staying as close to the best estimates of these parameters as possible (and most of them have already shown themselves good at predicting future climate, to some degree).

      predict, and cast in concrete, the average tropospheric temperature from 2013 to 2018, with a low margin of error, and "lock it in". Cancel most "global climate change" funding, conferences, papers etc. for the next five years. If the prediction holds five years from now, then it has creds, else it's back to starting over.

      You are in cloud-cuckoo land. Unfortunately, this idea that climate scientists should throw away all their work and "start over" isn't rare, nor is it your own.

      --
      xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
    10. Re:Predictions? by Rockoon · · Score: 2

      The problem with that is that climate scientists don't even try to predict temperatures on such a short time scale since natural variability can completely override any long term climate signal over less than around 20 years.

      So no falsifiable predictions from the climate scientists? Makes you wonder what sort of science they are practicing.

      --
      "His name was James Damore."
    11. Re:Predictions? by dbIII · · Score: 2, Insightful

      This crap again? Of course it's falsifiable. The models used today are different to those from a few years ago as more information is gathered. Those less precise models have been proved false and replaced with more correct ones - so it's already passed that test many times.

      Sorry kid, you are just going to have to think for yourself here instead of regurgitating bullshit from some denialist playbook written by a thinktank that put a low rent philosophy undergraduate student on as an intern. I'm sure you are far more capable of coming up with something that proves intelligence from your own mind instead of parroting this shit like an imbecile.

    12. Re:Predictions? by Stephan+Schulz · · Score: 2

      Why the natural logarithm? Do we have a hypothesis to explain why the overall forcing effect of CO2 follows the natural logarithm of atmospheric concentration? Why a linear combination with volcanic sulfate? [...]

      In the absence of sound theoretical answers to these questions, these are interesting but not compelling plots. The IPCC4 report (for example) goes into far more detail about our theoretical understanding of climate forcing from different components, and how projections are built up from this understanding that apply correctly in retrospect, leading to a more compelling argument for climate change.

      The fact that CO2 has a logarithmic relation to radiative forcing has been well understood since Svante Arrhenius in the late 19th century, and is also reported in the IPCC WG1 report. The base of the logarithm is irrelevant (as long as its >1), as that only translates into a constant scaling factor.

      --

      Stephan

    13. Re:Predictions? by jo_ham · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They don't have to wait for a decade, they can just crop out the last decade of data and ask the model minus 10 years of data to predict it.

      That only works if you never ever intend to run the model with different parameters, otherwise you just settle on the parameters that "fit" the existing data.. which continues to not be prediction.

      Not if you remove that data (that you have cropped out) from the original model. As far as the model is concerned, that data does not exist, and it not used to create the model parameters.

      This has been done with ocean temperatures and other climate models.

      It's not as simple as fitting the line then hiding the last 5 data points and saying "oh look, the points are on the line".

    14. Re:Predictions? by riverat1 · · Score: 2

      Of course they are falsifiable, just not on the short time scale you would prefer that they be. So far the temperature predictions of climate models have been reasonably accurate. Every year there is an update of model-data comparisons that shows this. There should be a new one that includes 2012 data within a month.

  6. Not credible by bradley13 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yep, "peer reviewed". This is apparently volume 1, issue 1 of a new series of journals started by an Indian publisher that decided to simultaneously launch 53 new journals. In order to fill them, they took pretty much anything that anyone wanted to publish.

    Taking a larger set of stations would seem to mean that this study includes stations that other studies eliminated as poor-quality. For example, stations with siting issues, stations that have moved over time between rural/urban locations, stations suffering UHI in unknown amounts.

    Given the need to work in corrections for all of these quality issues, and given a pre-stated conclusion, it is very easy to make the corrections in a way that supports your desired conclusion.

    In short: not credible.

    --
    Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
    1. Re:Not credible by Namarrgon · · Score: 2

      So, you have no specific critiques of their methods? I see only a vague assumption that a larger set of data in one aspect of the study "would seem to mean" the whole study is worthless. You've clearly decided to ignore their conclusions without even bothering to read the paper, let alone understanding their methods.

      I find even SciTechnol's peer review to be more credible than yours.

      --
      Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
    2. Re:Not credible by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Informative
      They're planning on submitting it to a journal, but haven't yet. From the link:

      The Berkeley Earth team is making these preliminary results public, together with the analysis programs and data set in order to invite additional scrutiny as part of the peer review process.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    3. Re:Not credible by silentcoder · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Scientists use a subset of temperature stations to exclude bad ones, denialists cry: "They ignored the other stations because it didn't fit their desired outcome".

      Scientists use all available data. Denialists cry: "They didn't exclude the bad ones, so the results are unreliable".

      Science cannot win against politics and that is all denial is - politics, it has no scientific basis or support, no evidence whatsoever in it's favour, all it has is a very large, well-funded and heavily-subsidized incumbent industry that is quite desperate to prevent the rise of any competition - especially competition that is far more efficient and cheaper to consumers over the medium term.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  7. Spark notes by a_n_d_e_r_s · · Score: 5, Informative

    1. Temperarature rise for the last 250 years of 1.5 degree C is entirely because of increased CO2 emissions.
    2. Vulcanic activity can seriously lower the earths temperature and affects the curve with downward spikes.

    No other activity shows any significant colleration towards earth temperature. They have checked against solar flares and other activites and all they compared against has had no impact. CO2 rise looks to be the major cause behind it all.

    Basically they are saying: Critics of AGW are wrong.

    The data will be fully available on their webplacce form 30 july with abilities for visitors to test the data themselves and to toy with how the temperature rise has affected their local temperature.

    --
    Just saying it like it are.
    1. Re:Spark notes by SteveAstro · · Score: 3, Interesting

      This same research has been rejected by every other climate and atmospheric research journal, by the peer review process.
      Key researchers are omitted from the paper - like Judith Curry, who I suspect will have something to say, since she was a key member of the BEST project.
      Go figure.

  8. Re:Koch Brothers? by gargleblast · · Score: 5, Informative

    Isnt this the group that was funded by the Koch brothers and hand picked with denialist?

    Muller was rather more of a skeptic than a denialist.

    I'm not aware of David and Charle's Koch specific opinions on the BEST results, but in the denialist blogosphere, Muller and BEST went from white knights to treacherous scum overnight. Compare Anthony Watt's comments before the announcements:

    I have no certainty nor expectations in the results. Like them, I have no idea whether it will show more warming, about the same, no change, or cooling in the land surface temperature record they are analyzing ... I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong. I’m taking this bold step because the method has promise. So let’s not pay attention to the little yippers who want to tear it down before they even see the results.

    and after:

    And still, he hasn’t published anything and his papers have not passed peer review, but the political apparatchik wants to showcase the incomplete and rushed, non quality controlled, error riddled BEST science as if it were factual enough to kill off “denialism” worldwide. That’s political desperation in my opinion.

  9. Re:Koch Brothers? by Rogerborg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Nice one, screaming "denialist!" based on a misleading summary of an an article that's gung ho in favour of anthropogenic climate change (or whatever we're calling global warming this week). A better example of greenwashed "thinking" I could not hope to find.

    --
    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  10. Re:Funded by Koch brothers and Getty family ... by Endovior · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So... what do you think we should do about it? We need some form of energy to keep running society. The default option is coal. You can try playing around with wind and solar, sure. I say 'play around' because the fact that you can't make money on them is an indicator of the deeper issue: they aren't efficient enough to actually run society. As such, attempts to use them wind up eating up a bunch of money and resources, and not meeting the actual needs of society, and so we fall back on the default option, coal. Geography permitting, you can use hydroelectric and geothermal, but it doesn't always permit. Also, even when it does, some people get pissy about dams 'destroying natural habitats' and similar bull; result being that the plants don't get built, and so we fall back on the default option, coal. Nuclear would be the best option; we know how to build efficient Thorium reactors, and we can put them anywhere, and we know how to keep them safe, and we know how to properly dispose of the spent fuel... but it's like there's some switch inside people's heads that makes them turn into frothing idiots when nuclear power gets mentioned, and so we can't actually build nuclear plants, nor places to safely store the spent fuel, and so we fall back on the default option, coal. When enough people fall back on coal, price fluctuations get it competing with natural gas and such, but it's basically the same thing; more burnt hydrocarbons, more CO2 in the atmosphere. If that was actually something you cared about minimizing, you'd get behind energy sources that actually produce the way we need them to produce, instead of producing the way you'd like them to produce.

  11. Re:Koch Brothers? by sumdumass · · Score: 2

    Actually, it would be the first place they would go. If they belived their views were correct and the science showed it, you couldn't reject it easily.

  12. No one does anything for nothing by erroneus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Every major industrial force on the planet will continue as they are so long as their quartlerly reports show 'growth.' It's a system we can't change or undo. The major industrial forces will not allow it to change. They can't see or don't believe in a future that exists beyond the next year. When was the last time you heard "5 year plan"? And they are playing chicken with the future of humanity whether they realize it or not. Whoever hesitates or turns back will 'lose' as market forces will crush anyone into insignificance who isn't pushing forward.

    They don't "lead" the markets let alone control them. With such short vision, how can they? The market is still in the hands of the consumer... sheeple consumers mostly. If anyone has been paying attention to the increase in guns and ammo and especially the market effect the government's billions in ammunition purchases, then it should be pretty clear. This gun control talk and scarcity of supply isn't only causing a rise in prices, it's causing a rise in interest. People who had no interest in buying guns and ammo are now interested.

    Consumers can shape the next quarter. And the quarters to follow. Keep buying green. Keep buying things that do as little harm as possible. *I* don't make a difference. *You* don't make a difference. But *we* do. Talk to people, but don't argue or preach. Short, simple statements and move on. They won't think you're a crazy person if you don't come off that way.

    If you're thinking about moving, I would consider moving away from major weather areas... you know, like the coasts, or places where mountains have significant impact. That's what all this climate change is about anyway--the weather, the redistribution of water, the content of the air and what it does with the sun's energy. Take up a hobby like gardening. It could be useful. (Just don't grow things indoors too much... UV lamps attact cops.)

  13. So you're complaining about the science part? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Global Climate Change (which I believe in) proponents should publish a model, with a margin of error, and STOP CHANGING IT and agree that they will go away and start over if they are wrong, Instead, as each new bit of data comes in, they modify the "model" to better match the new data on a regular basis. Come on -- predict, and cast in concrete, the average tropospheric temperature from 2013 to 2018, with a low margin of error, and "lock it in". Cancel most "global climate change" funding, conferences, papers etc. for the next five years. If the prediction holds five years from now, then it has creds, else it's back to starting over.

    Faith is cast in concrete and chiseled in stone. Science is more of a wiki page.

  14. Re:Funded by Koch brothers and Getty family ... by Dodgy+G33za · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Actually I seem to recall that gas produces far less CO2 for energy produced that coal or oil. The thing is though, that we should take this as an opportunity to move to clean energy because it is better all round. No pollution, no digging dirty great holes in the ground (and I am in Australia, we are famous for the size of our holes in the ground). Sure it will be more expensive in the short term, but maybe that reflects the TRUE cost of energy, and you can bet your bottom dollar that it will plummet in price if the world made a commitment to full conversion. As a side benefit there would be huge investment into energy storage which should finally give us flying cars.

    There was a recent study on how green energy could provide all of our energy needs in Green:tech http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/how-about-99.9-percent-renewables.

    Incidentally I was in Saudi Arabia in December and while I was there the king announced a US$25 billion program of investment in solar PV. He must know something we don't...

  15. Re:Funded by Koch brothers and Getty family ... by Dodgy+G33za · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I fail to see how a crappy Murdoch rag could be responsible for global warming.

    Despite what you say, many people DO deny global warming, and just like the creationists they change their arguments when they are on a loser. Perhaps you would care to postulate as to why thousands of experts in their field are wrong, and posit an alternative theory as to why the CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere is not following the laws of thermodynamics and heating us up like a frog on a barbie.

    What I don't get is how a fair proportion of posters on this site, who must be mostly tech savvy, can leave their thinking shoes in the cupboard. Maybe it is because it is a predominately US site and you seem to be more right wing than Hitler over there. I don't think many of you get that Obama is actually right of centre compared with the free world, and your country is run as a corpocracy with your politicians doing the bidding of their sponsors rather than their electorates.

  16. Re:Funded by Koch brothers and Getty family ... by Stephan+Schulz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What do you mean "deny climate change"? People don't general deny it; people deny the attribution.

    Actually, the progression is "there is no warming", "there is some warming, but it's natural", "there is some warming, its anthropogenic, but it's good", "there is some warming, its anthropogenic, it's bad, but there is nothing we can do", "there is some warming, its anthropogenic, it's bad, but it's to expensive to do something", and then back to "there was some warming, but it has stopped". Different deniers are not always in sync - some cling to "there is no warming" when others have already reached the "its to expensive" stage.

    --

    Stephan

  17. Re:Human Nature and Avocados by Palamos · · Score: 2

    There is no single answer to this question because it will depend upon local circumstance. Human nature in times of plenty may well tend towards communism, in times of mild to medium stress it may tend towards capitalism and in times of extreme stress it may be mixed with some giving up personal hope and going for the greater good and others going for a more selfish agenda. There is also no single human nature as we're all different and we change throughout our lifetime. It would be possible to construct an average human nature but this may not apply to anyone, just as on average people have less than two arms but has anyone got exactly the average, probably not. In terms of avocados, I prefer Hass, more flavour.

  18. Deny all you want... by Genda · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Australia still burned down in December. We've had more fires, worse droughts, bigger storms, worse heat waves, more floods and unheard of winter storms all predicted by climate change models. At what point do you finally concede? When the planet is the twin of Venus? Physical reality first, ideology second. You can nit pick all day long, but y'all are picking nits. You're complaining about issues that impact the 5th or 6th places after the decimal point in the analysis results, while ignoring the whole numbers. That would indicate y'all are less deniers and more in denial. Sorry that climate change is messing with your "Atlas Shrugged" world view but we need to come up with smarter answers. By the way, if the Germans make solar work, then from this day forward, we all get to call bull shit on those folks who've been stone walling renewables, just because Chevron can't figure out a way to create an artificial sun shortage to jack up prices.

    1. Re:Deny all you want... by LordLucless · · Score: 2

      Australia burns down every December. We always have fires, droughts, storms, heatwaves and floods, and most of them caused far less damage than comparable events in the past. Sorry to disappoint your shrill alarmism, but every storm, flood, tsunami or volcanic eruption (yes, I've seen tectonic events blamed on climate change) isn't a point in favour of AGW - not unless you can show how they significantly differ in degree or quantity from previous events. Climate change science has predicted everything from a heat-scorched planet where the dams will never be full again (Hi Flannery!), to another ice age, and everything in between. It's easy to fulfil a single prophecy when you can pull it out of a basket of a thousand false ones. Sorry that that messes with your liberal guilt, humanity-is-the-scourge-of-the-earth self-flagellating philosophy, but the world isn't ending today, Chicken Little.

      --
      Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
    2. Re:Deny all you want... by Genda · · Score: 3, Informative

      The event in Australia broke more records than you could possible shake a stick at. Go here for just the briefest scientific review of the incident. Here's a quote: "A relatively small change in the average temperature can easily double the frequency of extreme heat events. Australia has warmed steadily since the 1940s, and the probability of extreme heat has now increased almost five-fold compared with 50 years ago." What part of this do you not get. Globally, spring comes 3 weeks earlier than 50 years ago. The clear and unmistakable results of climate change measure in the ten of thousands of unique individual events and phenomena. Taken as a body of evidence you'd have a better chance of arguing against evolution (and the body of evidence doesn't stop ideologues from doing that either.) Why is it that I'm yelling "Hey, dummy your arse is burning!" and instead of putting it out and thanking me for saving your life, you choose instead get insulting and indignant.

      I'm point at trends, when data point after data point in one direction you get a trend. The system is incredibly complex, melting in the arctic messes with the haline cycle (and recent changes in the Gulf Stream suggest global current changes may be imminent.) These changes would have profound effects on global climate particularly cutting warm currents to the extreme latitudes causing dramatically colder winters. So there are a number of possible outcomes, when you perturb a system as complex as global weather, it's like throwing dice, many possible things can happen because there are many competing feedback loops and we still can't produce predictive models with the subtlety to give us long term predictions of complex chaotic systems.

      That said, we can look at more general possibilities and compare them against what has already happened, in other words if I create a model starting in 1850 and successfully predict general large scale climate features and event up until now, I have a reasonable probability of predicting some of the large scale events coming. As for pulling out a single anything, that's crap no single data point informs you of anything. Again, the only thing that matters are trends, and we have those, we have a whole bunch of trends.

      And I wish for the love of Jebus you guys could have one of these conversation without blowing all kinds personal FUD, you can stick your presumptions where the sun don't shine. You haven't the foggiest idea what my political opinions are but its clear that if your as good at guessing politics as you are about noticing its getting hotter every year that it explains why you can't seem to make a cogent observation about physical reality. In the flagellating department I believe its better to give than to receive. Guilt is what nice people do to assuage their consciences for being irresponsible or committing unkind acts. I don't practice either, therefore no guilt. I never said the world was ending, not today or a week from Tuesday or in a thousand years. Humanity is extincting about a 1000 species a day now. Most are insects and various invertebrates. Still, in your and my lifetime, we'll see the last of all the big mammals in Africa, most in Asia, and nearly half of the world's rain forest will go away. The impact of the change we're perpetrating on the environment will come back to haunt us because our biology is intimately tied to the global biology... nature of ecosystems. Every human being is a river of biota, moving through us every moment are ten times as many cells without a human genome as with. Plow the ecosphere under and we're committing slow motion suicide. Life has ben here nearly 4 billion years and suffered far worse than us, it will get along fine without us. We're an apex predator, we'll be one of the first things to go. Or, we'll pull our collective heads out of our rear ends and design a global technology that supports human advance without turning the world into a toilet. Why is that

  19. [citation needed] by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Seriously, this study is saying exactly the opposite - the sun has no effect, it's all CO2, and that CO2 comes from human activity and volcanic activity.

  20. Re:Funded by Koch brothers and Getty family ... by Vintermann · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually I seem to recall that gas produces far less CO2 for energy produced that coal or oil.

    It does, but there's still a huge problem with natural gas. The reason it hasn't passed yet, is the expansion of what was previously called unconventional gas - natural gas extracted by fracking. While the groundwater issues related to fracking has gained much attention, and are serious enough, what's worse in the long run is that a lot of the gas from such operations escapes directly into the atmosphere. Since methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and fracking is itself energy-intensive (we spend a lot of natural gas to get at a little more natural gas), some studies have estimated it as on level with coal for the climate.

    --
    xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
  21. Re:Koch Brothers? by Joce640k · · Score: 3, Informative

    The sun's output is easy to measure.

    Given that, you'd think there'd be some solid evidence to back up your claim...but noooo.

    --
    No sig today...
  22. Re:Koch Brothers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    First Phase
    The Lee and Juliet Folger Fund ($20,000)
    William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation ($100,000)
    Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (created by Bill Gates) ($100,000)
    Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation ($150,000)
    The Ann & Gordon Getty Foundation ($50,000)
    We also received funding from a number of private individuals, totaling $14,500 as of June 2011.

    Second Phase
    William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation ($100,000)
    The Ann & Gordon Getty Foundation ($50,000)
    Anonymous Foundation ($250,000)

    So the two single largest specific funders are Koch related and an unnamed group.

    Your bad! LMAO

  23. Re:Funded by Koch brothers and Getty family ... by CAIMLAS · · Score: 2

    OK, so just stick with the "it's too expensive" rebuttal.

    What do you do about global warming if it's too expensive to 'fix'? Honest question. No, I'm not saying "just ignore it", I'm saying: come up with a real goddamn solution, or at least a path which is tenable without punishing first adopters or shoving government totalitarian enforcement down peoples' throats. (No, it isn't worth living or saving the planet if we all live as eco-slaves.)

    --
    ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
  24. Re:Koch Brothers? by Rockoon · · Score: 2

    He asked a question, a legitimate one at that.

    The question "Isnt this the group that was funded by the Koch brothers and hand picked with denialist?" is not legitimate because yes, it is a group funded by the koch brothers but no, its not that other charged shit about denialists.

    The fact that you think its a 'legitimate' question in the form that its in just proves that you have been greenwashed too. You really don't see the problem with it, do you?

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  25. Re:[citation needed] by pod · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This study says A, that study says B.

    Seriously, there are literally hundreds of climate models littering the back issues of science journals. Coming up with data and a model that fits some historical context is one thing, but we're still no closer to knowing what 10, 50 or 100 years from now will look like. When was the last time someone showed you the famous Al Gore hockey stick graph, without hastily and profusely making excuses about it?

    --
    "Hot lesbian witches! It's fucking genius!"
  26. Re:Funded by Koch brothers and Getty family ... by Stephan+Schulz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    OK, so just stick with the "it's too expensive" rebuttal.

    What do you do about global warming if it's too expensive to 'fix'? Honest question. No, I'm not saying "just ignore it", I'm saying: come up with a real goddamn solution, or at least a path which is tenable without punishing first adopters or shoving government totalitarian enforcement down peoples' throats. (No, it isn't worth living or saving the planet if we all live as eco-slaves.)

    I don't think that it's too expensive to do anything. Significant expense is coming down anyways - in the form of direct effects of climate change, of increasing fossil fuel prices, and of social unrest. We can opt to handle the expense in a controlled, gradual manner, or we can wait until the midwestern corn belt turns into a dust bowl again, New Orleans vanishes behind a massive sea wall, and refugees from Bangladesh destabilise India. A simple way of changing to a less carbon-intensive economy is to introduce a gradually and reliably increasing tax on carbon emission - e.g. collected internally for fossil fuel at the point of production or importation, and at the border for products coming from states that do not have a similar policy. This can be done in a revenue-neutral way, by lowering existing taxes, or by distributing the income to the population similar to e.g. Alberta's so-called Prosperity Bonus. Even if you follow the Stern Review, the suggested tax rate of US$ 30 per ton of carbon amounts to less than 10 cent per gallon - noticeable, but hardly debilitating.

    --

    Stephan

  27. Re:Sounds reasonable, but... by bdeclerc · · Score: 3, Informative

    I still wonder about those graphs that show CO2 lagging temperature by 800 years during past global warming events.

    You still wonder about something that has been *explained* umpteen times, I can image not being interested enough to look stuff up, but please don't involve yourself in a debate if your knowledge is 20 years out of date... (I'm sorry to come over all agressive, but I've this exact argument trotted out for over a decade.)

    Long-term climate change (tens to hundreds of thousands of years) is influenced by changes in the orbit of the moon (google Milankovitch if you want).

    Slight change in orbit --> causes slight warming --> causes CO2 release --> causes more warming ---> switches between ice-ages & intermediate periods.

    The delta-T between the "change in orbit" and the "CO2 release" was about 800 years, which accounts for the lag.

    The current change is *different* becuase the CO2 release is not caused by changes in orbit, but by man burning millions of years of stored carbon in a few centuries.

    So we're skipping the first bit that ook 800 years, and going almost instantaneously to the "more warming" bit... which is why we are now seeing faster warming of the planet than was ever seen in the climatological records, going back hundreds of thousands of years (and probably much, much longer, but the farther back we go, the harder it becomes to measure how fast temperature changes actually happened).

  28. Re:Koch Brothers? by interkin3tic · · Score: 2

    Jesus, I hope not. If denialists are coming up with "Yeah, it's real" then the truth must be "OH DEAR GOD IT'S FAR WORSE THAN WE EXPECTED."

    Maybe all the honest researchers already realized it's hopeless, quit, short sold their houses to go out in a haze of cocaine and hookers before the earth burns up.

  29. Re:[citation needed] by mcgrew · · Score: 4, Informative

    the sun has no effect

    Ever wonder why it's so hot in Australia right now? Not only is it summer there, but Earth's orbit is at perihelion, closest to the sun on January 3. In 20,000 years or so, the northern hemisphere will be summer at perihelion. That's why the south pole is colder than the north pole; it's farther away from the sun in winter than the north pole is in its winter.

    There are other cycles, such as the wobble of the Earth's axis.

    Of course, there is the 100,000 year problem and other problems. "Various explanations for this discrepancy have been proposed, including frequency modulation[12] or various feedbacks (from carbon dioxide, cosmic rays, or from ice sheet dynamics)."

    The carbon feedback is what we're seeing now; the sun's affects only change on huge, slow time scales (except the seasons and axis wobble, of course).

    Everything I know about it is from wikipedia; I'm no expert. You should read the wiki articles, they're very informative.

  30. Re:[citation needed] by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    One could also point out that the temperature changes predicted by the "scientific consensus" at the UN's IPCC had both predictions and 95% intervals. Guess what ?

    Those predictions were wrong, we're outside of the 95% confidence intervals for both IPCC FAR and the first AR. Depending on the month we are either at the very bottom, or below, the 95% interval for the second AR. Futher studies did not stop the alarmism, but apparently the IPCC got the message and stopped including predictions in their most recent assessment report, an act that would draw accusations of outright fraud for any group of scientists, except of course in this case.

    What do we do with theories that make predictions and those predictions turn out to be wrong ? Oh wait, this is a climate study, never mind. We have long since decided what to do. Also, if we base policy, like the Kyoto protocol, on predictions that are now known to be wrong, then we repeal it, right ? Nope. You see, more recent results "prove" that we were right in the first prediction. That those results are more recent results, of course, imply that there is much, much less data to test their correctness ... an exercise nobody felt was even necessary. (but don't worry, there is more irrelevant data to test them against. The only -valid- way to test predictions, of course, is to test them against measurements that were unknown at the time of the study, otherwise everybody will simply completely overfit the data, leading to invalid results ... but in climate studies, this is not done)

    How do they actually arrive at those 95% predictions ? Well, the method is as follows. You take existing studies, which are extremely non-linear models with between thousands and millions of free and fixed variables (like values for cloud cover, temperature, wind speed, forcing, ... for every square kilometer on the earth). You take one of the fixed variables (temperature), massively average it across the globe within one study, and you ... and I'm not kidding here ... average it across the different studies.

    Why anyone bothers arguing that this is even remotely correct ... is beyond me. The excuse for doing this is that they do not have the resources to do better. Which is sad, really, but that does not excuse using known catastrophically wrong models because they're the best ones that fit in your desk calculator.

    You might think they try to figure out what makes all these studies different, decide on what's best, physically the most plausible, ... that sort of thing. Then one might decide what is the best method, and run that. You'd be wrong, they ... average them.

    The problem is that by selecting the studies you average, it is possible to arrive at any result, assuming there are enough insane studies (and this article illustrates, no problems there).

    I have even played with one model myself, and of course it confirmed what I thought in the first place : adding a random factor centered around 0 to the windspeed at t=0 (which does not alter the energy balance of the earth, so it should have zero effect) ... changed the prediction by massive amounts. I got the result that it would cool by 35 degrees with one random seed, others gave 5 or 2 or whatever results. The answer "well, you have to pick it well". Right ... that, it turns out, is nothing more than accepted practice, and I got that from 3 different phd students working on it. What ... the ... fuck ... ?

    The "scientific consensus" is essentially hand-picked by a number of scientists, who can get any result they want, and therefore the only thing the IPCC predictions illustrate, is what the IPCC wants it to be. And nothing more.

    It should be treated as such.

  31. Why even bother involving this study ? by OeLeWaPpErKe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ok, and how do you talk your way out of this one. Since 1990 there have been various studies on the climate. The scientific consensus in 1990 was that the temperatures on earth would rise by 0.2 degrees per decade. The scientific consensus on climate in 2000 was that it would rise by 0.18 degrees per decade. The scientific consensus in 2005 was that it would rise 0.23 degrees per decade.

    The reality ? http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=global+climate+studies+last+20+years

    Now we can go through the motions if you like, but looking at that graph, is it so hard to believe that we're below every 95% certainty interval for temperature prediction made at least 5 years ago (5 years, because there was an IPCC assessment report in 2007).

    Can you just remind me, because I seem to have trouble remembering my philosophy of science class. What does one do with theories whose predictions (which means measurements made AFTER publication) provide completely wrong ? And, given that climate theory has failed the only test that matters for science, accurate predictions, can you please explain to me why anyone believes it ? Please note that saying "others know better than you" is wrong, as made obvious by these "95% certain" predictions the "others" you speak of made.

    1. Re:Why even bother involving this study ? by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 2

      "Temperatures have gone from -0.25 to 0.25 since 1980."

      Here is a classic case of cherry-picking your data in order to try to prove your point.

      You are comparing the low temperature from one year to the high temperature of another. Also, look at the years chosen: if you choose instead 1998 to present, you end up with (roughly) 0.4 to 0.3, or a change of -0.4.

      I'm not arguing with you about AGW. I'm just saying that the evidence you have used to support your point is almost laughably weak.

  32. Re:Koch Brothers? by berashith · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I agree with this exactly. The problem I have is the frequency that anyone who raises a question is labeled as a denier. There are a lot of good points that get glossed over because the points are being addressed to a non-existent group identity with a large helping of name calling. There are many different beliefs that dont swear by AGW, and some of which are loony tune deniers, and some are pointing out scientific questioning.

    I like to read through all of these comments, replacing "denialist" or "denier" with "poo-poo head", then again with "person" . The arguments can be vastly different this way.

  33. A newly invented journal to get past peer review. by cluge · · Score: 2

    AH BEST. The original paper was rejected by the journal JGR Atmospheres but finally they have passed "peer review". The BRAND NEW heretofore unheard of Journal Geoinformatics and Geostatistics will now feature the BEST paper. Yes ladies and gentlemen, issue 1 volume 1 will have this study as its centrepiece.

    In other earth shattering news - NOAA has discovered that the further away from the structures you put the thermometer, the recorded night time temperatures are colder. This is known as the "theory of duh" in physics circles, but required experimental verification by climate scientists.

    There is still much science to be done and much politics to extricate from climate science

    --
    "Science is about ego as much as it is about discovery and truth " - I said it, so sue me.
  34. So now what? by Tokolosh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    You can argue all you want about whether global warming is real or not, and if so, man-made or not. But those who believe it is real (and I am cautiously one of those) deploy a long array of data, scientific studies, models, peer-reviews and global consensus.

    BUT, when it comes to deciding what action is needed, if any, then the solutions are based on nothing at all. Where are the scientific studies that prove that renewables, carbon capture and storage, fossil fuel phase-out or carbon taxation, etc. leave us globally with a better standard of living? There are other alternatives, but the hysterics only promote the ones that inflict maximum misery by returning us to caves. And the unintended consequences are rarely evaluated.

    As Hippocrates would have it regarding a sick patient, "First, do no harm". I believe that doing nothing is the best strategy.

    --
    Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
  35. Re:Koch Brothers? by funwithBSD · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, there are.

    Mars Ice Caps have been recorded since Newton's time by many early scientists, and of course current probes and high resolution telescopes.
    Certainly longer than Earths, and better sizing data as we could see the entire extent of the planet and the icecaps, something we on Earth have only been able to do in the last half of the century with satellites.

    And guess what? They are shrinking. No human input. And no volcanic activity, either.

    So there is your control, and it is behaving the same way as the "experiment"
     

    --
    Never answer an anonymous letter. - Yogi Berra
  36. Re:Koch Brothers? by DiamondGeezer · · Score: 2

    Of course, the answer could not be "the quality of the science is not related to the source of funding"

    --
    Tubby or not tubby. Fat is the question
  37. Re:Koch Brothers? by interkin3tic · · Score: 2

    There was at least a double negative in there, and possibly sarcasm, so I'm confused about which direction you were going with it. Source of funding doesn't necessarily prevent a scientist from being honest, but in this case to be safe and given the character of the Kochs, one should assume that Koch funded studies will be lies supporting the Kochs.

  38. Re:[citation needed] by samkass · · Score: 2

    This study says A, that study says B.

    Seriously, there are literally hundreds of climate models littering the back issues of science journals. Coming up with data and a model that fits some historical context is one thing, but we're still no closer to knowing what 10, 50 or 100 years from now will look like. When was the last time someone showed you the famous Al Gore hockey stick graph, without hastily and profusely making excuses about it?

    Ah, so we've moved from "global warming doesn't exist", right through "global warming isn't caused by humans", and now we're at "who knows what will happen in the future with global warming". I guess that's progress.

    --
    E pluribus unum
  39. Re:Koch Brothers? by MrHanky · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Almost everyone of those who "raise questions" just regurgitate stuff they've sucked up on internet messageboards, frequently debunked falsehoods that are still recirculated ad nauseam just because those people (look, I called them people, not denialists!) don't really care about facts. I notice that you don't mention any one of those "good points" you pretend to refer to, glossing over them yourself while blaming your strawman of the very same.

  40. Re:Koch Brothers? by MrHanky · · Score: 2

    Oh wow, you must be a wannabe journalist to feign neutrality like that. "Both sides of the issue." Right. When one side is right and the other side is wrong, you can't expect the right side to stop mentioning facts out of fairness to those who should stop stating falsehoods. Also, your comment is still void of empirical fact. Once again, you obscure the issues you pretend to raise. You may not have declared your position on AGW, but you have proven yourself to be a dishonest prick who will accuse others of doing the things you're doing yourself in the process.

  41. Re:[citation needed] by mcgrew · · Score: 2

    The reason there's record breaking temperatures there in recent years is Anthropogenic Global Warming

    Yes, that's a carbon feedback, as I said. You can't pump millions of tons of previously sequestered carbon into the atmosphere and expect there to be no effects.