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Cold Spring Linked To Dramatic Sea Ice Loss

hrvatska writes "An article at Weather Underground reports that researchers have linked large snowstorms and cold spring weather across Britain and large parts of Europe and North America to the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice. It is thought that the Arctic ice loss adds heat to the ocean and atmosphere, which shifts the position of the jet stream, allowing cold air from the Arctic to plunge much further south. Researchers expect that a warming Arctic ocean will drive more extreme weather in North America and Europe (abstract)."

422 comments

  1. Global warming by cyrano.mac · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yep. Global warming is freezing our asses off...

    1. Re:Global warming by lgw · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Creation "science" has an explanation for all the related scientific data these days, and every time e.g. a geologist discovers something new and interesting, hey, no problem, they can change their story and explain that too.

      Actual science predicts unusual measurements. Junk science says "hey, no problem, our model can explain that too".

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    2. Re:Global warming by Spy+Handler · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Publicly: The reason you're freezing your ass off is that unprecedented Arctic ice melting is shifting the cold air further south, all caused by man-made Climate Change.

      Privately: This cold weather is a travesty.

    3. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Cold" is warmer than "Really cold"

    4. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Science predicts. Definitely. Of course there is that other thing you need called a disprovable hypothesis.

      Just a thought. Why didn't any of the AGW models predict the last 5 years?
      I mean, if you want to laugh at faith-based belief systems, go ahead, but don't forget to include global warming in the mix. It's facts are as elusive as an creation theory.

    5. Re:Global warming by Joce640k · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They've been predicting this for as long as I can remember, and I'm quite old.

      North-West Europe is warmer than it ought to be. The reason is warm water currents coming up from the Equator. It's called the Gulf Stream.

      Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Europe#Gulf_Stream

      If anything disrupts the Gulf Stream, eg. extra ice melt at the North Pole, then Europe's climate will become what it ought to be for its latitude, ie. much colder..

      Science. It works.

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    6. Re:Global warming by techno-vampire · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Junk science says "hey, no problem, our model can explain that too".

      You mean like the way the AGW people suddenly realized that adding energy to the atmosphere meant more extreme weather, both hotter and colder, after we had some extra-cold winters? I can't say it's not reasonable, but I would have found it much more impressive if any of them had suggested this before it happened, rather than patching their theory to explain something that otherwise didn't fit.

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    7. Re:Global warming by gmclapp · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actual science predicts unusual measurements. Junk science says "hey, no problem, our model can explain that too".

      This couldn't be more incorrect. Actual science is a method of observation and has no business in speculation. Either your scientific model describes the behavior of the natural world or you need to change your model to more accurately describe it. It's an ongoing process.

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    8. Re:Global warming by Sique · · Score: 5, Insightful

      They actually did. The last five years were within their margins of error.

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    9. Re:Global warming by Sique · · Score: 5, Informative

      It was actually predicted. Continuous global warming will weaken or stop the Gulf stream, and the Gulfstream is responsible for the quite mild European winters. It could be that now the Gulf stream shows the first sign of weakening, leading to a longer, colder winter in Europe.

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    10. Re:Global warming by i+kan+reed · · Score: 5, Informative

      Let's see, here's an academic paper mentioning cooler winters as an artifact of global warming, dated from before I was born. And I'm more than old enough to be having this debate with you. What exactly wasn't predicted?

    11. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah, I see... this surely explains cold shit that happens in Texas right now...

    12. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, this is pretty much what everyone should've expected from the predictions. I guess ~0.05% isn't good enough for you?

    13. Re:Global warming by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      after we had some extra-cold winters

      Wait? What? If anything the winter was slightly less cool than the previous 5 years, compared to 3 years ago it was right down balmy.

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    14. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All that arctic ice loss must have happened over the last year.
      Because last spring was nice and warm.

    15. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What does the article have to do with creation science? Are you simply trying to connect people who keep an open mind about the cause of GW with creation science? If that is what you are trying to do then you are giving support to creation science.

    16. Re:Global warming by Bongo · · Score: 1

      But you don't know if your model correctly describes, if it can't predict.

      Otherwise I can describe to you tomorrow's lottery numbers, the day after tomorrow, and call it science.

    17. Re:Global warming by techno-vampire · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No. I'm not saying that there's no room for learning or adaptation, just pointing out that the AGW people have done exactly what the OP was complaining about. And, as I pointed out, this particular adjustment isn't in any way unreasonable. Of course, reading for comprehension isn't exactly something I'd expect from an AC.

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    18. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      FTFY :

      Science. It works.Bitches

    19. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah yes, here we go with the warming means colder again . . .until it doesn't. The next heat wave is loudly proclaimed as definite proof of AGW. Then we have record breaking cold and they say that too is evidence. What about mild weather. "Oh, yes, yes, definitely, definitely" Rainier weather? Drier weather? "Oh, yes, yes, definitely, definitely" Shine on~~~

    20. Re:Global warming by camperdave · · Score: 2

      Actual science predicts unusual measurements. Junk science says "hey, no problem, our model can explain that too".

      This couldn't be more incorrect. Actual science is a method of observation and has no business in speculation. Either your scientific model describes the behavior of the natural world or you need to change your model to more accurately describe it. It's an ongoing process.

      Wrong. The entire point of science is speculation and prediction. We need to know when to plant our crops, how much water and fertilizer to give them. We need to know when a pain can be ignored, and when we need to have an operation. We need to know what drugs to take, and how many nails are needed to build a safe rafter All of science's myriad observations, theories, models, dissertations, and experiments have but one purpose: prediction.

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    21. Re:Global warming by techno-vampire · · Score: 2

      European records of the Gulf Stream go back to about 1513 or so, during the Little Ice Age. Of course, we don't know how far north it went back then, so we don't know how much of an effect it did or didn't have on the climate. Not disagreeing with you, just making a comment you might find interesting.

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    22. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no that was 50%+/-

    23. Re:Global warming by techno-vampire · · Score: 1

      What I'm referring to is the fact that AFAIK, this idea only became part of AGW theory after the effect was observed. I respect the fact that the proponents are flexible enough to adapt to new data, but as I wrote before, I'd have been more impressed if they'd have thought of it earlier. (After all, having a prediction confirmed always looks better than an explanation of something you didn't think of.)

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    24. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not when you are telling me to pay a tax, to limit food supplies, and to change my lifestyle, when that had nothing to do with the theory. Open your eyes, take out the mote, listen and hear, see and record, become interested in the process of the human race, don't critize it because it's here. adapt to it. You will have to adapt to live when the foodstuffs are short because of the volcanoes are here also.

    25. Re:Global warming by techno-vampire · · Score: 1

      I wasn't referring to this year's winter, but to several earlier ones that were much colder than expected.

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    26. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not like they suddenly realized this. Heck there was even a bad movie made about global warming causing cold weather.

    27. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They didn't "suddenly realize" that. That was the prediction for a long, long, long time. It's just the popular press started picking up on that prediction and actually reporting the science a little more accurately once a bunch of idiots started saying "haw the world can't be getting hotter because it just snowed yesterday!"

      Your problem with climate change science stems entirely from your ignorance of climate change science.

    28. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why don't you look at the actual weather records? The Earth is heating up dramatically.

    29. Re:Global warming by gmclapp · · Score: 1

      The Oxford English Dictionary defines the scientific method as: "a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses."[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

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    30. Re:Global warming by i+kan+reed · · Score: 2

      Fine, when was it observed, exactly? I won't beat around the bush. Who raised that objection? When? What evidence do you have that anyone(actually studying the phenomenon) said otherwise? I'm not going to chase goalposts forever. How old does your prediction need to be? Remember that the mid 1970s were the beginning of serious study on AGW, and thus absurd requests are not going to be honored.

    31. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Winter is coming....

    32. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So uh... when Europe was having warmer weather during Winter and Spring a few years back, everyone said that Global Warming was the cause (and that it would never snow in Europe again, skiing would be extinct, etc. etc).

      So what was happening a few years ago? Global Cooling? Why is is that no matter what happens, it is always the effects of Global Warming (and no, "climate change" is a cop-out term used to paper over inaccurate predictions).

    33. Re:Global warming by dmatos · · Score: 2

      And in order to "test" a hypothesis, the hypothesis must predict a result. Then you carry out the experiment, and if the predicted result is the same as the expected result, your hypothesis has been tested and has passed the test.

      The prediction can be something as simple as:

      If I drop this cup, it will fall to the floor.

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    34. Re:Global warming by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This couldn't be more incorrect. Actual science is a method of observation and has no business in speculation. Either your scientific model describes the behavior of the natural world or you need to change your model to more accurately describe it. It's an ongoing process.

      Creation "science" describes the behavior of the natural world (at least at the shallow level I can be bothered to look at it). For any set of data, there are an unbounded set of hypotheses that describe that set of data. Merely being consistent with existing measurements is necessary, but not at all sufficient to be science, not storytelling.

      Science is about falsifiable predictions. Why is general relativity so certain? Because it predicted all sorts of crazy stuff, such as gravitation lensing, that wasn't known at the time it was published. Why is the Standard Model of particle physics still the standard, despite being so awkward and unloved? Because it keeps making accurate predictions, and more elegant theories don't.

      You can create a million different models to explain anything, but that's not very interesting, nor is such a model chosen at random likely to still be correct once more is known. But a model that accurately predicted new data? That's interesting.

      There are a million climate models now (well, a lot anyhow) - are any of them interesting? A model that made a specific, falsifiable prediction that none/few of the others did, and turned out to be right, that would be interesting indeed.

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    35. Re:Global warming by NatasRevol · · Score: 1

      Hmmm. Since when did the BBC start creating global climate models?

      It couldn't be that the 'news' people are just sounding alarms at extreme possibilities. Just like they do for everything else.

      Nah, not possible.

      Maybe try listening to the scientists and not the ones getting paid to attract eyeballs.

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    36. Re:Global warming by slackware+3.6 · · Score: 0

      What exactly are the margins of error. I can predict the world will get 50 deg hotter in 2 years and then say there is a 50 deg margin of error. And I would still be right.

    37. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would have found it much more impressive if any of them had suggested this before it happened,

      They did. Just because you didn't pay attention doesn't mean it didn't happen.

      rather than patching their theory to explain something that otherwise didn't fit.

      Einstein patched Newton's theories to explain something that otherwise didn't fit.

      I'm getting a little tired of people who obviously slept through their high school science classes and don't have even the most basic grasp on the Scientific Method acting like they're suddenly experts in Climatology.

    38. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "Everyone" except the actual scientists running the models.

      Just because someone said it, does not mean actual models said that.

      Maybe try paying attention next time around.

    39. Re:Global warming by slackware+3.6 · · Score: 1

      It is called the North West passage it was first navigated by Roald Amundsen in 1903–1906. Google it.

    40. Re:Global warming by KeensMustard · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What exactly are the margins of error.

      Why are you asking us? If you are ignorant of something, that is not our responsibility to correct. You are criticising the margins of error whilst simultaneously claiming to not know what they are. Hardly convincing.

    41. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And what we've been pointing out is that there were plenty of predictions. In fact, if you'd bothered to pay any real attention you'd understand that they've been saying it all along. A whole bunch of idiots heard the term "global warming" and just assumed that meant the weather would just keep getting warmer and warmer. No matter how much the scientific community attempted to educate people, they just couldn't get it through their skulls that a global rise in temperature does not automatically mean your local weather is going to be warmer. So they began referring to it as "climate change" in order to try and dispel some of the confusion among the general public.
      This was not a modification of theories to fit the observed data as you're claiming, rather it was a modification of terminology to try and correct a massive misunderstanding on the part of people like you.

    42. Re:Global warming by the+biologist · · Score: 1

      The 'computer models' are the 'theoretical models'. They are validated by comparisons to reality. The models (and the reality) are chaotic, so if you keep calculating a certain model it will diverge from reality in greater degrees. Gravity is a pretty good model, but on the scale of the solar system the effects are chaotic. Every calculation of the solar system has increasing uncertainty as you increase the time into the future you are calculating.

      The development of climate science has led progressively to more accurate predictions over time converging on a good answer, at specific future intervals for each calculation. Continuing a single calculation out into the indefinite future leads to increasing uncertainty. I have a hard time believing that you are honestly making this mistake.

    43. Re:Global warming by techno-vampire · · Score: 1

      Fine, when was it observed, exactly?

      IIRC, people started making fun of AGW when there were several extra-cold winters, sometime after 2000. Then, there was an addition to the theory handed down that explained that the extra energy caused more extreme weather, both hotter in the summer and colder in the winter. Yes, I agree that it's not fair to expect you to chase a constantly-changing goalpost, but that's not my intent. And, if you'll read my first post carefully, I'm not saying that the explanation's wrong, just that I'd have liked it better if it had been made (or at least emphasized) before it came true.

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    44. Re:Global warming by KeensMustard · · Score: 2, Interesting

      So uh... when Europe was having warmer weather during Winter and Spring a few years back, everyone [Citation needed] said that Global Warming was the cause [Citation needed] (and that it would never snow in Europe again, [Citation needed] skiing would be extinct, [Citation needed] etc. etc).

      Fill in the required information.

      So what was happening a few years ago? Global Cooling?

      You tell us. What did your model predict? How did these predictions align with actual outcomes?

      Why is is that no matter what happens, it is always the effects of Global Warming

      You are criticising climate models for being too accurate. What result were you expecting?

    45. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You are an idiot. There are lots of branches of science where you can't run 'proper' experiments, only look at what has happened in the past or is happening now. Astronomy, anthropology, any branch of evolutionary theory...

    46. Re:Global warming by camperdave · · Score: 1

      The Oxford English Dictionary defines the scientific method as: "a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses."[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method

      Very good. Now go look up hypothesis.

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    47. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      We should build multiple earth to test climate science. That climate scientists haven't undertaken that project yer is proof they don't want to test their theories.

    48. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      So the burden of proof is on the person who questions someone who makes a statement without any sources?

      I don't think things work like that.

    49. Re:Global warming by PRMan · · Score: 1

      You mean like the creationist (Russell Humphreys) who correctly predicted all the magnetic fields in the solar system?

      http://www.creationresearch.org/crsq/articles/21/21_3/21_3.html

      And the evolutionists who keep redoing their junk "dynamo" hypothesis to "explain that too".

      Q: How much magnetic field will Uranus have?

      Evolutionists: Zero, cause it's a gas planet and doesn't have enough metal for the dynamo effect.

      Creationist: Between 2 and 6 x 10^21.

      Big difference there. Guess who was right?

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    50. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Also in real sciences, the models become progressively more accurate over time and converge on a good answer.

      Almost all the time that is false. the error is cumulative. If the system is chaotic( which weather is thought to be), then those errors quickly become important.

    51. Re:Global warming by KeensMustard · · Score: 1
      The usefulness of a model can be determined by the accuracy of it's predictions. So for example, early climate models (pre 1980's) didn't make very accurate predictions. Neither does the baseline denialist model. If we distill denialist theory down to it's mathematical consequences, the climate of the earth would be similar to the climate on the moon. So in fact, this model is less accurate than guessing what the climate will do next.

      Early (pre computer age) models were more accurate than guessing, so ranking by accuracy

      GCM Models > Non GCM Models > Early paper based Models > Single Dimensional (Black Body Radiation) calculation > Guessing > Distilled Denialist model.

      Which raises the question - why would we even glance twice at the least accurate model of all?

    52. Re:Global warming by KeensMustard · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Which I guess is you asking: "Will I need to provide proof of my assertion that climate models did not predict the last 5 years of climate activity" And my answer is - yes you will.

    53. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, they predicted everything with a 100% margin of error. That's what they did. And everyone took them seriously.

    54. Re:Global warming by DarkOx · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Except that in the context of climate, one, two, five, and even 10 years out are not exactly the distant future. Climate scientists tell us even a couple degrees makes a big difference, and then have margins of error that big even on very short time scales.

      Quite honestly if they can't do better than that it means the models are two immature to be useful for anything other than the development of improved models. Nothing wrong with...you have to start some place. Still if you expect anyone to make more than the feel good "green" policy decision and actually get popular support for actions that will amount to something they need to find better models.

      I am not denying things are changing. We can all see that. Looking at the facts we do know like the real magnitude in terms of tons of carbon we are pushing forward in the cycle give us good reason to think outcomes will be different than in the past. You can't ask someone to sacrifice their livelihood or given up their on opportunities to stop something you really don't know the effects of; its not right to so; and in practice they won't listen.

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    55. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fine, when was it observed, exactly?

      IIRC, people started making fun of AGW when there were several extra-cold winters, sometime after 2000. Then, there was an addition to the theory handed down that explained that the extra energy caused more extreme weather, both hotter in the summer and colder in the winter.

      So, you're talking about coverage in the popular press, then, and complaining that the popular press 'added' details to a scientific theory in 2000 that the academic community had been discussing in 1970.

    56. Re:Global warming by RMingin · · Score: 1

      Unless it gets one degree cooler instead.

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      T: "Still makes me more clever than you."

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    57. Re:Global warming by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 4, Informative

      While frozen in the ice and getting transported there by the currents over the course of years. Convincing, mate, convincing.

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    58. Re:Global warming by Stephan+Schulz · · Score: 1

      The Oxford English Dictionary defines the scientific method as: "a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses."[3]

      The part you are looking for is "the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses". You test a hypothesis by comparing the predictions it makes with actual observations. If the observations match the predictions, the hypothesis is confirmed. If not, it's refuted and either rejected or, more often, modified to fit the new observation. Rinse, lather, repeat. After a few hundred years you can compute where a shell will land, or which treatment will enhance survival of cholera infections, or how to design a 3GHz microprocessor, or even how the climate will develop under certain external forcings.

      --

      Stephan

    59. Re:Global warming by lgw · · Score: 1

      I look at it from a different direction - why support spending trillions until there's a quite well established model that has thoroughly proven itself, to the level of general relativity and evolution.

      Mostly toda0, however,y I'd like to see a solid explanation of existing data: why is there a quite distinct 100k climate cycle. What normally drives temperature and CO2 up, quite rapidly, every 100k years? What draws it down again? What's the mechanism?

      A good hypothesis is rarely made by blindly modeling historical data without proposing a (relatively) simple underlying mechanic from which the existing data can be explained and predictions made. I haven't been able to find any such model for the 100K cycles, but I find them fascinating. The approach based on solar activity cycles didn't stand up, sadly, so nothing yet.

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    60. Re:Global warming by Xaedalus · · Score: 2

      I wonder if the blowback is coming because people expect Science (as opposed to science) to always work upon demand without variation, just like all the wondrous inventions and improvements that It has brought us... and when Science starts behaving like science, people lose faith because it's no longer working on demand.

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    61. Re:Global warming by nedlohs · · Score: 1

      So just to make sure, your claim is that extra cold winters sometimes after 2000 causes changes to the theory to be handed down and sent back in time 20 years to be published?

    62. Re:Global warming by KeensMustard · · Score: 1

      I look at it from a different direction - why support spending trillions until there's a quite well established model that has thoroughly proven itself, to the level of general relativity and evolution.

      Yes indeed. Since mitigation is already costing more than we are spending on prevention, why would we continue to invest trillions in technologies we know are biting us in the arse, knowing that they will continue to cause more and more suffering into the future based merely on the assertions of a tiny minority whose only argument centres on their own ignorance ? From a risk management perspective, this is absurd, like the relying on a shaman, or the world community going to a tarot card reader

      Mostly toda0, however,y I'd like to see a solid explanation of existing data: why is there a quite distinct 100k climate cycle. What normally drives temperature and CO2 up, quite rapidly, every 100k years? What draws it down again? What's the mechanism?

      I'm surprised that you are so open about your ignorance of the data and theory - but nevertheless such honesty is refreshing. Might I suggest that next time, you use google to apprise yourself of the basics of a topic before stepping into a forum to discuss it.

      A good hypothesis is rarely made by blindly modeling historical data without proposing a (relatively) simple underlying mechanic from which the existing data can be explained and predictions made. I haven't been able to find any such model for the 100K cycles, but I find them fascinating.

      Personally, I'm skeptical about those approaches as well, which might explain why I'm skeptical about your use of it!

    63. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you're putting a point across, facts help.

      I own 500 aircraft. Don't dare ask me for evidence though, find that shit out for yourself, bitch.

    64. Re:Global warming by techno-vampire · · Score: 1

      No. The first time most people saw those claims was after the bad winters. In fact, I don't remember any mention at the time that the idea had been published decades earlier. That doesn't mean, of course, that it wasn't mentioned, just that I don't remember any mention. And please, stop putting words in my mouth; it's unsanitary.

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    65. Re:Global warming by lgw · · Score: 1

      Yes indeed. Since mitigation is already costing more than we are spending on prevention, why would we continue to invest trillions in technologies we know are biting us in the arse, knowing that they will continue to cause more and more suffering into the future based merely on the assertions of a tiny minority whose only argument centres on their own ignorance ? From a risk management perspective, this is absurd, like the relying on a shaman, or the world community going to a tarot card reader

      I'm sorry I don't share your religion. Feel free to continue calling me an ignorant sinner - I'm sure used to that from other directions, but don't confuse the strength of your personal belief with a good scientific model. More importantly, even good science often backs up political scams and cash-grabs.

      I'm surprised that you are so open about your ignorance of the data and theory - but nevertheless such honesty is refreshing. Might I suggest that next time, you use google to apprise yourself of the basics of a topic before stepping into a forum to discuss it.

      ... he says, with no data to back up his position. The only mechanism I've seen proposed for this cycle is the solar one, which while clearly part of it all isjust as clearly too much of a stretch to be the whole story.

      At the 100 My scale the cycles are well understood, as is their scale (which is vast - the amount of carbon in the atmosphere + ocean + fossil fuels is a rounding error compared to the carbon in the rock/weathering cycle). At the 100 ky scale? Not so much. The regularity of the cycle is really a mystery - other than orbits, little in the natural world is that regular.

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    66. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you look you'll find papers predicting pretty much every possible kind of weather as a result of global warming. Except perhaps for rains of sharks with frickin lasers on their heads but I'm not 100% certain.

      Two years ago we basically had no winter, and GW people yelled until they were red in the face that it was definite and conclusive proof that GW is happening. Today we're having a quite severe winter and again... it's proof that GW is happening. One year ago we had a usual, not too weak, not too strong winter - and guess what, every time a few cm of snow fell it was "proof of GW in action, as GW causes climate to become colder", when few days later, those few cm thawed - "OMG, IT'S GW CAUSING HEAT WAVES, HAND OVER THE KEYS TO YOUR CAR!!!"

    67. Re:Global warming by RightwingNutjob · · Score: 1, Interesting

      To my semi-trained eye, it looks like if you stare at the data long enough, you can convince yourself there's an upward trend in temps, you stare at it a little longer, you can convince yourself that there's some longish timescale periodicity too, all within the error bars. Looks like a bunch of noise to me, and I look for weak signals in noise for a living, so I do know what I'm talking about to a certain extent. That said, I do remember people predicting about 10 years ago that melted ice caps can act as a negative feedback mechanism for high latitude temperatures, and thus, global warming->longer/colder winters at high latitudes.

    68. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You seem to harbor the misunderstanding that "AGW theory" is fully documented in pop media and anything that wasn't being repeated on tabloid headlines wasn't understood.

      Everyone who studies climate and weather has a gut instinct that as you add energy you get more turbulent behavior. The problem isn't what researchers believed, it was the choice of "global warming" as a term that stupid pundits somehow imagined as pleasant tropical beaches and fruity drinks.

    69. Re:Global warming by Aonghus142000 · · Score: 1

      It's known as a non-falsifiable hypothesis, something that belongs to the realm of faith, not science.

    70. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Margins of error are 10-15%.

      For completely accurate predictions in climate modeling, the margin would be less than one half of a percent.

    71. Re:Global warming by stridebird · · Score: 1

      Creationist: Between 2 and 6 x 10^21.

      what is that even? Is that an ark building dimension or what?

    72. Re:Global warming by Aardpig · · Score: 1

      Ssh, you're making him look like an ignoramus.

      --
      Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
    73. Re:Global warming by budgenator · · Score: 1, Insightful

      So the scientists are postulating that our spring is cold because the arctic Sea Ice is greatly diminished; then they publish a scary looking picture show lots of open water, but wait, that picture is from August 2012, going to the Danish Meterological Institute's site we see how bad it was infact august, september and november had dramatic reductions in Arctic sea-ice sea ice extend, yet it is now spring, a cold spring it seems, and what do we see, Arctic Sea-ice extent is at several time higher than it has been in the last 7 years, so what does it look like today well the National Snow and Ice Center says it looks like This!

      So if a lack of Arctic ice cause cold spring weather, then I should be unpacking my bathing suit!

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    74. Re:Global warming by budgenator · · Score: 1

      Obviously your not a climatologist, because they'll never admit that climate is chaotic, and therefore unpredictable due to sensitive dependence on intial conditions and all that. Even worst it would mean that reducing CO2 wouldn't even get us back to where we started.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    75. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So the scientists are postulating that our spring is cold because the arctic Sea Ice is greatly diminished; then they publish a scary looking picture show lots of open water, but wait, that picture is from August 2012, going to the Danish Meterological Institute's site we see

      Fortunately, we have Jesus, and no evidence is needed to know that he is real.

    76. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Any science teacher worth their salt expects a because tagged onto that 'hypothesis'. WHY WHY WHY!

    77. Re:Global warming by MaskedSlacker · · Score: 2

      TFA has nothing to do with the Gulf Stream. It's the JET STREAM, a completely different phenomenon.

    78. Re:Global warming by pitchpipe · · Score: 1

      Creation "science" has an explanation ...

      Really Slashdot?! A post calling climate science 'Creation "science"' gets modded +4, Interesting? I am fucking disappointed. I get that it is no longer 'news for nerds', but if any of you fucking 'nerds' modded this up, drop the label 'nerd'.

      --
      Look where all this talking got us, baby.
    79. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This was, like, the plot of a major blockbuster movie well before most people were even aware of the idea, and the idea certainly predates that (as another poster pointed out with this)

    80. Re:Global warming by CAIMLAS · · Score: 1

      Yeah. I gotta love the rationale on this one. It's absurd:

      It is thought that the Arctic ice loss adds heat to the ocean and atmosphere

      Oh, really? You mean that's not a disprovable hypothesis, based solely on understanding of the conservation of energy?

      Guess what: you put ice in a container (like, oh, a glass, a cold cellar, or the atmosphere), and it will cool off that container, absorbing heat (you know, a form of energy) for the purposes of the physical conversion back to water. This is why days in the 60+s still feel colder during the winter than a 60 degree day after, say, another 60 degree day during the summer. The ground, and the snow/ice on top of it, is melting and taking all the heat from the air.

      --
      ~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
    81. Re:Global warming by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

      Let me explain something for you:

      GCM Models (expect global warming) > Non GCM Models (expect global warming) > Early paper based Models (expect global warming) > Single Dimensional (Black Body Radiation) calculation (expect global warming) > Guessing (yeah, whatever) > Distilled Denialist model (no global waming)

      The single dimensional model has proven itself in way more harsh conditions than General Relativity, and is one of the most trusted models in science (may be the more trusted model in physics - I really don't know enough to be sure). It only has some huge error bars, that make it useless for simulating regional climate.

      Oh, and it puts antropogenic global warming as a certainty.

    82. Re:Global warming by jewens · · Score: 1

      Without knowing how wide the margin of error is the fact that they were within them is meaningless. My model predicts average global temperatures will drop by 1.27 degrees celsius over the next 5 years (+/- 23.97 degrees). There, I just disproved AGW.

      --
      That group of bovine standing over there appears quite portentous. That's right it's an ominous cow herd.
    83. Re:Global warming by lgw · · Score: 3, Insightful

      But you're focusing on the non-interesting questions. How much warming would we expect without man? How much longer until glaciation resumes (we are in the Quaternary Ice Age after all)? What normally brings both temps and CO2 levels down every 100k years? Why didn't that happen 10k years ago? How powerful is that mechanism? How significant is man's contribution to normal warming? Does that mean we get warmer? Trigger the cooling mechanism earlier? Delay the return of the glaciers, or hasten that? Heck, do we want it to be warmer, or cooler, since stable is an illusion?

      Lots of interesting questions, don't you agree? A good, scientific climate model would have answers to all of those, and be making unexpected predictions. Getting warmer, with the ice melting and resultant changes? That's expected, even without AGW, and not useful to pick a better theory than the rest.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    84. Re:Global warming by fearofcarpet · · Score: 1

      So the burden of proof is on the person who questions someone who makes a statement without any sources?

      I don't think things work like that.

      You're a witch!

      --
      Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
    85. Re:Global warming by fearofcarpet · · Score: 1

      Junk science says "hey, no problem, our model can explain that too". You mean like the way the AGW people suddenly realized that adding energy to the atmosphere meant more extreme weather, both hotter and colder, after we had some extra-cold winters? I can't say it's not reasonable, but I would have found it much more impressive if any of them had suggested this before it happened, rather than patching their theory to explain something that otherwise didn't fit.

      Svante Arrhenius correctly predicted the greenhouse effect by empirical observation in the 19th Century, and he was not alone. In the 1970's climate models were already predicting catastrophic shifts in weather, which were increasingly being validated by ice core samples, etc. About that time, people with no business wading into a scientific debate (e.g., oil companies) starting muddying the waters and throwing around baseless accusations like "junk science." And now people with no scientific background whatsoever attack details of climate modelling that they don't understand.

      Let me reiterate; the mechanistic underpinnings of global climate change have been known since the 19th Century. What we are arguing about now is the ability of incredibly complex models to make hyper-accurate predictions in an unfathomably complex system. Does anyone care that the Standard Model of physics has no idea what gravity is? I mean, if they can't understand something as simple as gravity, and are continually refining their models to account for new observations, should we not dismiss all of theoretical physics as "junk science?"

      What fascinates me about the ignorant people who fall for this type of FUD is how little they care about any other field of science. Where are all the skeptics pushing back against the Higgs Boson research coming out of CERN? How about the debate that surrounded RNA silencing? Why don't I read articles in the popular press about the validity of Landauer approximation with respect to single-molecule (ballistic) contacts? How about the formation of charge-transfer states at donor/acceptor interfaces in excitonic solar cells? I'm sure Rush Limbaugh has an opinion about that debate, which is currently raging in the scientific literature.

      Perhaps we don't drag every little detail of scientific research into the mainstream of debate because such complex issues should be left to people with decades of training and experience. It is simply impossible for a layman to seriously debate climate science because they have no fundamental understanding of how science works, what scientific debate looks like, how models of complex systems are validated and, importantly, have no idea that they are picking the same type of knits that surrounded the scientific debates that lead to all important discoveries throughout history. The very process of scientific discovery is rooted in the ability to undermine existing hypothesis with new observations until a consensus is reached. And there will always be dissenting opinions and data. The Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2011 is a microcosm of this phenomenon.

      --
      Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
    86. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, French wines will actually become better. What's the problem?

    87. Re:Global warming by Big+Electric+Cat · · Score: 1

      One of the oddities of this debate is that whenever something happens in weather and scientists point out it may be climate change related, this sort of objection comes up - 'you're using ANYTHING as evidence of global warming!' 'They're saying it's cold out because of global warming heh heh!'

      Things like this aren't used as evidence of global warming, in the same way that measurements of plant respiration aren't used as evidence that the sun came up this morning. The evidence of global warming is, by and large:

      a) we understand the physics of what's going on here, and we have since the 19th century;
      b) we measure the planet's temperature and it's getting warmer; and
      c) we can't come up with another explanation for b) that makes any sense.

      There are other things, of course, but that's pretty much sufficient.

      Unusual weather events are sometimes pointed at as 'evidence' in the sense of "if you people won't understand the science or just trust the scientific community, maybe that BIG HURRICANE over there will convince you", but in the scientific sense, they're of virtually no importance as "evidence global warming is happening." What events like this serve as evidence for (and most of what climate models are used to sort out) are the exact ways in which global warming will affect weather and climate - a much more difficult question, and one that undoubtedly still needs lots of work on the details, as anyone involved will admit. Knowing the planet is retaining more heat from the sun than it would with a different atmosphere is easy; figuring out how that's going to affect precipitation in Pennsylvania in March is more difficult.

      To analogize, I'm virtually certain that the denialists on Slashdot will manage to misunderstand something in this post; but predicting exactly what that something will be is far beyond my capabilities.

    88. Re:Global warming by Alioth · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They did. Over ten years ago there were articles on how global warming could result in northern Europe getting colder.

    89. Re:Global warming by MtViewGuy · · Score: 1

      The melting Arctic Ocean ice could actually cause a "mini Ice Age" because with much cooler ocean temperatures especially in the Atlantic, that may cause the Gulf Stream to be much less effective, which may affect the weather in the _entire_ Northern Hemisphere.

    90. Re:Global warming by gmclapp · · Score: 1

      We are discussing the definition of science. Not the definition of hypothesis. Case in point.

      --
      Common Sense (+1)
    91. Re:Global warming by tbannist · · Score: 1

      So, you're complaining that the news media didn't start telling their audience about something until after something similar happened and made the information relevant to their audience?

      And if they actually did tell people before it happened, you weren't interested enough to pay attention back then.

      --
      Fanatically anti-fanatical
    92. Re:Global warming by nedlohs · · Score: 1

      I didn't put words in your mouth you said:

      Then [sometime after 2000], there was an addition to the theory handed down that explained that the extra energy caused more extreme weather, both hotter in the summer and colder in the winter

      Note that is not saying you didn't hear about it until after 2000. It is not saying that most people didn't see those claims until after the bad winters. That is clearly saying the theory was added to to include an explanation of observed cold winters in the 2000s.

      You posted that in a thread that has a reference to a publication from the 1983 a few posts back that contains "Scenarios for Europe in a warmer world, such as may result from increased atmospheric carbon dioxide levels ... Increased temperature variability combined with a general cooling during winter over north and northwestern Europe suggests a greater frequency of severe winters" in the abstract.

      And it's not a passing reference, it's the paper you responded to with "this idea only became part of AGW theory after the effect was observed". You are claiming that a paper published in 1983 was written to explain something observed "sometimes after 2000". Other than time travel how am I supposed to understand that claim?

    93. Re:Global warming by camperdave · · Score: 1

      Nice try, but the formulation of a hypothesis is the starting point of all science. Without it, all you have is a meaningless log of data. In fact, without it, you wouldn't even know what to measure.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    94. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "You are criticising climate models for being too accurate. What result were you expecting?"

      The climate models *aren't* accurate, they (notice the plural there) predict practically every possible outcome and then you apply a post-hoc rationalization to say that Global Warming has happened no matter what the actual weather is because there is one model (with all the other incorrect models conveniently ignored) that accurately predicts the weather to within some margin of error.

      Penn & Teller did a card trick at the beach where they hid large copies of all 52 cards in a deck around the beach. They would have someone pick a card out of an ordinary deck and then "magically" make the bigger matching card appear elsewhere on the beach. The trick was, of course, that no matter what card you picked, they had already setup the answer. That's exactly what these climate "models" are about.

    95. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So when there's no ice to melt the Gulf Stream will flow as normal ?

    96. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why are Creation Scientists better than Climate Scientists?

      Creation Scientists believe the last 6000 years existed. The dinosaurs never existed.

      Climate Scientists believe there was no climate before 1960. Those hundreds of millions of years without any polar caps at all never happened.

    97. Re:Global warming by gmclapp · · Score: 1

      The starting point is the recognition of a problem and the need for a solution. The hypothesis, a prediction of a solution, is a vital part of the process. But, the scientific method is exactly that: a method of identifying a solution to the problem. You develop an experiment to determine what it is you need to measure, again not the hypothesis. Your argument seems to suggest that you don't properly understand the parts of this method, and by extension misunderstand the method as a whole.

      --
      Common Sense (+1)
    98. Re:Global warming by tbannist · · Score: 1

      I understand this may be news to you, but those questions all have answers already. Quick answers:

      1) Around -0.05C per century
      2) Originally it was thought to be 1,000 years off, but newer research indicates it's probably at least 17,000 years away (possibly more than 50,000 years away).
      3) Milankovitch cycles
      4) We were only 1,000 years into the Interglacial period which means we were still near the peak of the Milkankovitch cycle's warming effect
      5) It's difficult to say without a valid scale.
      6) Not sure what you mean about contribution to "normal warming". The current warming is about 105% manmade (natural effects would be cooling us, instead of warming us).
      7) We are getting warmer, even during this air temperature ENSO-related lull, the oceans have continued absorbing the additional solar energy trapped by the greenhouse effect
      8) Probably not, since the major cooling mechanisms appears to be carbon sequestration and orbital changes
      9) If the original estimate of 1,000 years was correct we would certainly be delaying the effect (the additional carbon we've put in the air won't be sufficiently sequestered by natural forces 1,000 years from now to return to pre-industrial levels). 17,000 years is probably to far away that todays actions will have virtually no direct affect on those temperatures.
      10) About the same or slightly warmer would probably be ideal. But the rate of change is also very important, increase the temperature too quickly and species can't adapt and die off. We may not be dependant on many species, but it would be a global disaster if rice, grain, and corn production dropped substancially.

      Getting warmer, with the ice melting and resultant changes? That's expected, even without AGW, and not useful to pick a better theory than the rest.

      Actually, that's the opposite of what should be happening without AGW. The world should be cooling, not warming.

      --
      Fanatically anti-fanatical
    99. Re:Global warming by Troed · · Score: 1

      If the above hypothesis is true, we should be able to measure that Gulf Stream disruption.

      It hasn't happened. It's thus not supporting that hypothesis.

      http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8589512.stm

    100. Re:Global warming by lgw · · Score: 1

      If you believe in Milankovich cycles, then all this climate change stuff is due to orbital precession (and/or solar activity cycles, depending on the believer), and nothing to do with man. But then, that theory hasn't held up very well.

      Sure, plenty of people have ready answers to these questions, but theories making accurate predictions? Not so much.

      BTW, there's no real threat to mankind in the next few centuries, other than the economic cost of moving cities slowly, in any scenario. We need such a small fraction of land per person to grow crops, compared to 100 years ago, that it's just not a problem - even if you make the unlikely assumption there won't be GM corn for whatever the climate turns out to be.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    101. Re:Global warming by fuzznutz · · Score: 1

      Since mitigation is already costing more than we are spending on prevention

      Citation? And make sure you offer some proof of actual AGW mitigation, not costs due to active weather phenomena. AGW religious zealots always want to point out that there's a huge difference when pointing to observations.

    102. Re:Global warming by mvdwege · · Score: 1

      Continuing to believe in a theory if the facts don't fit is called faith, not science.

      As it so happens, more extreme local minima has been part of the accepted explanation of climate change for some time already, and the explanations seem to fit the data, so patching the theory to accept this is science, not faith.

      --
      "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
    103. Re:Global warming by tbannist · · Score: 1

      If you believe in Milankovich cycles, then all this climate change stuff is due to orbital precession (and/or solar activity cycles, depending on the believer), and nothing to do with man.

      Logically that's not true, the existence of one factor does not preclude the existance of others.

      In particular, Milankovitch cycles should have a small cooling effect, but the effect of human activity is about ten times greater and a warming effect.

      --
      Fanatically anti-fanatical
    104. Re:Global warming by Tamerlin · · Score: 1

      The AGW models predicted exactly what we've been seeing. And if you can't even use the correct "its" homonym for this situation, you aren't credible. The AGW facts are observationally supported, measured, and the models have been tested and continue to gain accuracy. The only thing that they've been getting wrong is underestimating the sheer stupidity of people and the power of faith-based propaganda to influence the weak-minded.

    105. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep. Global warming is freezing our asses off...

      "The Dow can't be up! All MY stocks are down!"

      *smack*

    106. Re:Global warming by camperdave · · Score: 1

      What is the ``scientific method''?

      The scientific method is the best way yet discovered for winnowing the truth from lies and delusion. The simple version looks something like this:

      1. Observe some aspect of the universe.
      2. Invent a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed.
      3. Use the hypothesis to make predictions.
      4. Test those predictions by experiments or further observations and modify the hypothesis in the light of your results.
      5. Repeat steps 3 and 4 until there are no discrepancies between theory and experiment and/or observation.

      http://physics.ucr.edu/~wudka/Physics7/Notes_www/node6.html

      Your posts ("Actual science is a method of observation and has no business in speculation.", "We are discussing the definition of science. Not the definition of hypothesis.") seem to suggest that you do not consider the formulation of a hypothesis to be a part of the scientific method. That is incorrect. Formulating hypotheses is at the core of science, and you cannot have science without it.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    107. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Those hundreds of millions of years without any polar caps or people at all never happened.

      FTFY.

      Protip: nobody is worried that we'll "kill the planet" -- that just sounds better than being worried that we'll "kill all the people."

    108. Re:Global warming by Mashiki · · Score: 1

      Okay and? When I was a kid(20+ years ago), those winters were even colder then a few years ago. I easily remember the temperatures hitting -30C for weeks on end.

      --
      Om, nomnomnom...
    109. Re:Global warming by lsatenstein · · Score: 1

      They actually did. The last five years were within their margins of error.

      ===
      Do you remember your physics courses and the old story about the number of calories to convert water to ice? Converting humidity to snow must mean that you take heat out so that the snow forms, and then we need to dispose of the warmth. Ergo, the ice caps receive part of that warmth.

      At least, that is what I conjecture. I also think that much of global warming is caused by deforestation. Trees are great for acting as wind-brakes. Trees may be stopping warm air from moving towards the polar caps. They also must help with cooling via evaporation from the leaves.
      (As an aside, my community is planting a few hundred trees to counter the hotspots).
       

      --
      Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
    110. Re:Global warming by Gen_Music · · Score: 1

      No, it's known as the gulf stream, a warm water current that travels from the equator up the east coast around Florida then across the ocean to Europe and into the British channel bringing mild weather as it warms the air. Polar icecaps melting brings lots of cold water down into that stream, and if we cut it off successfully, like the weather here in the UK suggests, it could become very much like the Aleutian Island that make up Southwest Alaska, but without the tectonic activity.

    111. Re:Global warming by Gen_Music · · Score: 1

      Exactly, science is not telepathy. It tells us what should happen based on what we know, but we are human and live on earth so if we dont account for everything then it will be wrong.

      Simple example. Your car is on a hill with the handbrake on. It should not more. But if the road was covered in black ice and you did not know...

      If you don't know every variable you cannot predict perfectly. If a random eruption happens it can throw off climate readings for centuries due to the ash in the atmosphere. They have to account for that as if the readings are off next year and outside of their margin of error they are likely to have funding pulled somewhere down the line.

    112. Re:Global warming by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

      Dude, we are talking about the Amundsen expedition here. Pretty sure the gulf stream is not following the northwest passage...

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    113. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      FTFY :

      Science. It works.Bitches

      EG Piltdown man? Science only works if you are allowed to question it.

    114. Re:Global warming by gmclapp · · Score: 1

      By your own definition the hypothesis is a method by which your observations are tested and made increasingly accurate. I don't dispute that predictions can be, and are often a tool used in the scientific method. I dispute that the goal of this method is to make these speculations. The goal is not to make predictions. The goal is to describe the universe. Even your quoted method explicitly states that.

      --
      Common Sense (+1)
    115. Re:Global warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So... science is more like mathematics, and Science is more like Religion?

    116. Re:Global warming by agrisea · · Score: 1

      My 3 cents:
      1993, weather predictions are pretty much accurate, 1, 3, 7, 14 days, whatever, works.
      2003, daily forecasts would help if people looked outside a window though generally accurate and long range forecasts are broken.
      2013, same day forecasts are broken and long range, pfft.

      A couple things I have observed, which seem fairly important.
      #1) The Arctic Jet is missing. In years past, there was a physical circle of water vapor orbiting at 10 to 15 North Latitude and when a finger broke off, the area that finger went to would get REALLY cold. http://squall.sfsu.edu/scripts/nhemjetstream_model.html If you look at the images right now (build animation for 20 days, every 6 hours), you would see really strange things. Like a finger of the Northern Jet going up and through the arctic circle. Which brings me to
      #2) The Tropical Jet, maybe it is also called the Gulf stream, is merging every so often with the Northern Jet. You can see it on the animation site I linked but if you also view the water vapor page, (which my site has had for quite some time: http://agrisea.net/weather/wv.html), you can see where all the stuff is going.

      If you are in to agriculture, get your own monitoring equipment so you know what is happening for your locations. The rest of you, hold on, it is going to be bumpy.

      --
      Agrisea Tsunami - Epyc Servers... https://agrisea.net/products
    117. Re:Global warming by dave87656 · · Score: 1

      I live in Germany and they've been talking about the fact that the shift in the jet stream will makes our weather colder for many years now. This is nothing new. What might be new is what is causing the shift in the jet stream.

    118. Re:Global warming by KeensMustard · · Score: 1

      So uh... when Europe was having warmer weather during Winter and Spring a few years back, everyone [Citation needed] said that Global Warming was the cause [Citation needed] (and that it would never snow in Europe again, [Citation needed] skiing would be extinct, [Citation needed] etc. etc).

      Fill in the required information.

      You aren't able to provide a citation?

      So what was happening a few years ago? Global Cooling?

      You tell us. What did your model predict? How did these predictions align with actual outcomes?

      You aren't able to detail what your model predicted? Why not? Is it a secret?

      "You are criticising climate models for being too accurate. What result were you expecting?"

      The climate models *aren't* accurate, they (notice the plural there) predict practically every possible outcome and then you apply a post-hoc rationalization to say that Global Warming has happened no matter what the actual weather is because there is one model (with all the other incorrect models conveniently ignored) that accurately predicts the weather to within some margin of error.

      This being the case, you will be able to identify the model which said that the NAC (North Atlantic Current) will strengthen and cite the journal in which these results were published.

  2. how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by alen · · Score: 1, Interesting

    and earlier times

    if you believe in global warming then the current cold temperatures are a return to normalcy and nothing to be alarmed about. up until the early 1900's when we had "normal" weather and temperatures NYC was so bitter cold that the rivers would freeze enough that people were able to walk from brooklyn to queens

    1. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Global warming phenomina are a one-way function, obviously.

    2. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Ummm... you can walk from Brooklyn to Queens in the summertime without too much trouble...

    3. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by alen · · Score: 2, Informative

      not over the water you can't

    4. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by interkin3tic · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So, do you think 1. Carbon doesn't absorb heat 2. Carbon in the atmosphere can't, for some reason, insulate the earth, trapping more heat 3. Combustion engines do not put out carbon 4. Burning of fossil fuels aren't significantly increasing carbon levels in the atmosphere 5. The carbon is getting taken out of the atmosphere at an increased level that corresponds to our increase in emissions or 6. That God or some higher power won't let the world change or 7. That using logic is a waste of time?

      Honestly, I can't see many alternative hypotheses here that aren't ignoring reality. All arguments against it seem to be centered around "Nuh UH! It's NOT warming!" but I haven't really heard much talk about how that could not be the case. Carbon absorbs more heat and we're increasing the carbon doesn't seem to be under dispute. Being skeptical is good, but you don't get to reject hypotheses if you have no other way to explain the data.

    5. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Queensboro Bridge wasn't completed until 1909, numbnuts.

    6. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Queensboro Bridge connects Queens and Manhattan, not Queens and Brooklyn, "numbnuts".

    7. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by khallow · · Score: 1

      All arguments against it seem to be centered around "Nuh UH! It's NOT warming!" but I haven't really heard much talk about how that could not be the case. Carbon absorbs more heat and we're increasing the carbon doesn't seem to be under dispute. Being skeptical is good, but you don't get to reject hypotheses if you have no other way to explain the data.

      I find it a bit contradictory to pontificate about "explaining the data" when you don't actually mention any evidence other than rising carbon dioxide levels.

      There's also the matter of the degree of effect. There is huge uncertainty in how global temperature changes as a result of changing concentrations of carbon dioxide. It's because there are important dynamics in Earth's climate, such as clouds and "extreme" weather, that can heat or cool in addition to the radiation blocking effects of carbon dioxide itself.

    8. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by nimbius · · Score: 2

      if you understand the science of climate change

      FTFY.

      --
      Good people go to bed earlier.
    9. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IF global warming will cost money or convenience to stop then global warming is FALSE and must be DENIED.

      Only problem with this is that the costs are already showing up in peoples insurances., and within my life time I expect insurance companies will no longer cover certain parts of the world, ie coastal regions of the US prone to hurricanes, inland areas prone to tornados, european area prone to flooding events etc.

      Insurance companies are a business, and they will see these areas represent a risk not worth taking well before most people are willing to start walking/cycling/using public transport .

    10. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Charliemopps · · Score: 3, Informative

      Ok, I'm not saying that Global warming isn't happening, but you're just so off base I've got to correct you.

      1. Everything absorbs heat (well almost everything)
      2. There is no carbon in the atmosphere. It's Carbon dioxide, a GAS. One's an element, the others not. Christ. CO2 absorbs radiation from the sun and then re-radiates it in all directions. So heat that was at one time moving linearly, is now diffuse and goes in all directions. Radiation that traveled down to the earths surface and was then reflected back my ice, snow, water, or whatever, would normally have an unimpeded path back to space. But when it hits the atmosphere, the atmosphere again diffuses the radiation. Some gasses can absorb more than others. The majority of our atmosphere is made up of mostly Nitrogen followed by oxygen. They do not absorb a lot of radiation. By far, the fast majority of greenhouse effect is generated by water vapor (70% or more) followed by CO2. CO2 accounts for less than 0.04% of the atmosphere.
      3. Combustion engines do produce carbon, it's deposited on valves, cylinders, exhaust pipes... lucky for us ITS NOT A GAS.
      4. They don't, so lets pretend for a second you know what CO2 is, and understand that burning fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide and not carbon. That's fine... but the fact of the matter is burning fossil fuels doesn't significantly increase CO2 in the atmosphere. Even diehard global warming supporting scientists wouldn't say that. They'd argue that the modest increase our activity is creating is dangerous. But futhermore, CO2 isn't the biggest problem. Water vapor is. The soot from Coal burning power plants, factories and poorly maintained car exhausts are an even bigger problem. Soot gets into the atmosphere and gives water droplets something to cling to... they increase water vapor in the atmosphere. But scientists don't want the issue to get swept under the rug, after all, CO2 is still a problem if not quite as bad. So lets get of all fossil fuels they say.
      5. God damn it learn what carbon is!
      6. If there was a God, he'd have stuck you dead by now.
      7. What in your entire previous six points had anything to do with logic? You don't even know what CARBON is, how the greenhouse effect works, and you're trying to school someone on their stupidity in regards to both?

    11. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Joce640k · · Score: 1

      There's also the matter of the degree of effect. There is huge uncertainty in how global temperature changes as a result of changing concentrations of carbon dioxide. It's because there are important dynamics in Earth's climate, such as clouds and "extreme" weather, that can heat or cool in addition to the radiation blocking effects of carbon dioxide itself.

      So.... extra CO2 is OK because the Earth might have some extreme weather up its sleeve to correct for man's emissions?

      Question: Isn't "extreme weather" bad/harmful?

      --
      No sig today...
    12. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How did this garbage get moderated 'interesting'?

      1. Brooklyn and Queens are connected BY LAND.

      2. The "current cold temperatures" as you put it, are seasonal and geographically restricted. Globally, temperatures are warmer than ever (and sea ice is at an all time low) in recorded history.

    13. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by bdwebb · · Score: 1

      The point seems to be that even though we know these things about carbon and its increased absorption rates of heat, popular opinion and most Global Warming "scientists" declare that this will lead to a warming trend globally. Many studies indicate that the exact opposite of what the article describes will happen and the article seems to be grasping at straws to tie it into the 'warming' debate.

      Ultimately we are certainly impacting our climate in ways that it would not be impacted were we either not here or not as efficient at producing carbon. In the grand scheme of things, however, the climate changes all the time (hence the more scientific and respected term 'Climate Change' as opposed to Global Warming) and what needs to be understood is whether or not the impact we have on the climate's historic cycles of change is significant enough to cause those changes to happen sooner or later. From what I have seen and read, there is a consensus that there is an impact but even real scientists argue about whether or not the Earth or its' climate really give a damn.

      Uneducated or uninformed people call Climate Change science 'Global Warming' and attempt to link anything counter-intuitive (as in this article) in some way to their argument so that they are not wrong. Other uneducated/uninformed people say Global Warming is a farce because of trends like the one this article is examining. Ultimately, people need to stop being obsessed with spewing out whatever retarded opinion Al Gore or his detractors have like it is fact and do some research themselves. Everyone is so certain that they are correct but what we need is informed people to come together from both sides of the Climate Change debate and figure out the science behind it so that we can understand the impact we have and how climate shifts occur, be it as a result of our actions or simple natural processes.

      IMO, 'alen' to whom you responded actually presents a more compelling argument than you do because of the simple fact that he is exploring alternatives. Your argument is more along the Ancient Aliens line of reasoning - i.e. something remotely resembling an insect (or a rocket ship) is carved in stone thousands of years ago, therefore Aliens..DUH! Just because elevated levels of carbon are present in the atmosphere (which inevitably raises heat to some degree) doesn't mean that the entire Earth's climate is or will be impacted significantly enough to change things drastically. You are assuming WAY too much.

    14. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by khallow · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Only problem with this is that the costs are already showing up in peoples insurances.

      Ever hear of moral hazard? The US federal government has millions of dollars for disaster relief from floods, but can't find thousands of dollars for disaster prevention. They are effectively paying the world to build in the US's flood-prone areas. Insurance companies won't touch that.

    15. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by jeffmeden · · Score: 5, Informative

      not over the water you can't

      Exactly. There is no water between Brooklyn and Queens (they are both on Long Island). I LOLed.

    16. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bridges? ...or did you mean ON the water?

    17. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by NatasRevol · · Score: 1

      Depends on your time frame.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    18. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Kingkaid · · Score: 1

      So, do you think 1. Carbon doesn't absorb heat 2. Carbon in the atmosphere can't, for some reason, insulate the earth, trapping more heat 3. Combustion engines do not put out carbon 4. Burning of fossil fuels aren't significantly increasing carbon levels in the atmosphere 5. The carbon is getting taken out of the atmosphere at an increased level that corresponds to our increase in emissions or 6. That God or some higher power won't let the world change or 7. That using logic is a waste of time? Honestly, I can't see many alternative hypotheses here that aren't ignoring reality. All arguments against it seem to be centered around "Nuh UH! It's NOT warming!" but I haven't really heard much talk about how that could not be the case. Carbon absorbs more heat and we're increasing the carbon doesn't seem to be under dispute. Being skeptical is good, but you don't get to reject hypotheses if you have no other way to explain the data.

      Carbon is inert and just sits there... think of charcoal of graphite. Carbon monoxide, but mostly carbon dioxide is likely what you're talking about. It is important to know the distinction. Why are you worried about carbon (or carbon dioxide)... really? Look at the data and while it has increased with temperatures, so have other things. CO2 is easy to deal with. Methane in the air absorbed 16x more heat then carbon dioxide and isn't absorbed as easily by the environment. Know your science before trying to make a point :P

    19. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you just "imagined" away half of the guy's post? Is that how you dismiss all empirical evidence? LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU SO YOU DON'T EXIST!

      Sounds fairly typical coming from one obviously untrained in high school science.

    20. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by alen · · Score: 0

      not arguing that CO2 causes warming or that the earth is warming. i'm almost 40 and the climate is warmer in the north east then when i was a kid. warmer than 100
      years ago. lots of evidence for that.

      what i'm arguing is what is the normal temp supposed to be. if the 21st century is warmer than normal than a cold march is just going back to normal. 100 years ago this was a normal March, maybe a bit colder. the earth used to have some bitter cold weather in the winter time before global warming

      after 30 years of world ending climate theories i don't trust them anymore.
      no matter what the weather is any given year it seems to be abnormal or end of the world. even if its colder than the year before.

    21. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You know what the C in CO2 stands for, right?

    22. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just because elevated levels of carbon are present in the atmosphere (which inevitably raises heat to some degree) doesn't mean that the entire Earth's climate is or will be impacted significantly enough to change things drastically. You are assuming WAY too much.

      LOL. Thermodynamic called. It's going to kick your ass. Really, really fucking hard.

    23. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unless you're going from Greenpoint to LIC and don't have time to go around Newton/Maspeth Creek.

    24. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by almechist · · Score: 1

      posting to undo moderation mistake, sorry for the unintended downmod, however temporary

    25. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by msmonroe · · Score: 1

      The people that are in denial of this are beyond the reach of reasoning. Either fear or political, religious factors are driving the inability to change these peoples point of view. It's been the hardest thing to realize that some people are irrational and will not change their points of view. This is the same reason that people bought houses that were too expensive, supposedly they didn't read the fine print or didn't bother to check if the payments made sense until their payments doubled or tippled and then it was too late. I suspect this is the same thing. There will be people who will be in denial and then there will be people who will need to take care of the situation while the first group of people act like children.

    26. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Many studies indicate that the exact opposite of what the article describes will happen and the article seems to be grasping at straws to tie it into the 'warming' debate.

      What utter bullshit. There isn't one valid study that hasn't shown a global temperature increase over the last century that we've been pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.

    27. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by camperdave · · Score: 1

      Sorry to strike down the majority of your points, but there is carbon in the atmosphere. It's called soot (as you go on to point out later in your rant). Also, read the book of Jonah. God has compassion on the ignorant.

      --
      When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
    28. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by interkin3tic · · Score: 1
      There's also the facts that carbon dioxide absorbs heat, combustion engines put out carbon dioxide, and there is a lot of combustion going on. A hypothesis needs to be consistent with those facts, climate change is the only hypothesis that I've heard that can do that. What's contradictory about that?

      It's because there are important dynamics in Earth's climate, such as clouds and "extreme" weather, that can heat or cool in addition to the radiation blocking effects of carbon dioxide itself.

      Seems to me that the only way to "cool" that doesn't involve climate change (ice caps melting) is to have more solar energy reflected. Radiation blocking by CO2 or increased cloud cover sounds like it could do that, though I'm curious as to why this isn't mentioned more often if it's supported by evidence. I'll look into it when I have more time.

      Either way, that sounds at least on the surface like a reasonable alternative hypothesis, thank you.

    29. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      There is no carbon in the atmosphere. It's Carbon dioxide, a GAS.

      Ah, that explains why my car hasn't been shooting diamonds out of it's tailpipe. I thought it was broken. If you'll excuse me, I have to apologize to my girlfriend for proposing with a bag of car exhaust rather than a ring, so I won't be able to read the rest of your no doubt lovely and insightful post.

    30. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is no carbon in the atmosphere. It's Carbon dioxide, a GAS. One's an element, the others not. Christ.

      Go Christ yourself. Carbon dioxide is a gas that contains carbon. If the atmosphere contains carbon dioxide, it contains carbon. The atmosphere contains carbon in many forms, including life based things like bacteria, pollen, diatoms, etc. However, the #1 form of carbon in the atmosphere is CO2.

      So lets get of all fossil fuels they say.

      Stop lying. You know no scientist ever said that, ever. Christ.

    31. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Captain+Hook · · Score: 1

      CO2 is easy to deal with. Methane in the air absorbed 16x more heat then carbon dioxide and isn't absorbed as easily by the environment. Know your science before trying to make a point

      Methane does absorb more heat than CO2, I thought it was 21 times as much as CO2 but I can't be bothered to go look it up.

      However, Methane is quickly broken down in the atmosphere chemically and by UV and only lasts about a decade, the released C bonds with O2 to form CO2 and the H bonds with O2 to form water, CO2 is thought to last about 20-200 years.

      So its the opposite of the quote above, Methane is far more of a short term problem than CO2 is.

      --
      These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
    32. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by HexaByte · · Score: 1

      How does this jive with the Jurassic Period when there was warmth everywhere, but so little CO2 because of all the lush, tropical vegetation that created an oxygen rich atmosphere for all of that evolution to take place in?

      --
      HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
    33. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by khallow · · Score: 1

      So.... extra CO2 is OK because the Earth might have some extreme weather up its sleeve to correct for man's emissions?

      Question: Isn't "extreme weather" bad/harmful?

      It's not particularly harmful. You hear about the few storms that kill hundreds or thousands of people. You don't hear about the tens of thousands of storms that don't.

      And it remains a key problem that we're advocating expensive mitigation efforts for carbon emissions without having a good reason for them.

    34. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      Hell if I know. I haven't done much research into climate change. If a warm Jurassic Period with low CO2 isn't explained by other known factors, I'd think that more opponents of carbon regulations would bring that up.

    35. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by khallow · · Score: 1

      There's also the facts that carbon dioxide absorbs heat, combustion engines put out carbon dioxide, and there is a lot of combustion going on. A hypothesis needs to be consistent with those facts, climate change is the only hypothesis that I've heard that can do that. What's contradictory about that?

      Climate change explains why we're doing a lot of combustion or that there's more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere? The evidence you continue to leave out is that the Earth is to some degree warming (as least according to our measurements). You aren't explaining anything without that missing evidence.

    36. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by ultranova · · Score: 2

      It's not particularly harmful. You hear about the few storms that kill hundreds or thousands of people. You don't hear about the tens of thousands of storms that don't.

      And it remains a key problem that we're advocating expensive mitigation efforts for carbon emissions without having a good reason for them.

      Even a storm that kills no one will typically do tens of thousands of dollars in property damage. So, even if we go by the rather sociopathic notion that thousands of dead is no big deal, it would likely still be cheaper to switch to nuclear and renewables ASAP rather delay and keep doing Orleans-level rebuilding at decreasing intervals - especially since we'll have to switch soon anyway, since fossil fuels are running out.

      Even if you don't hear about a storm, drought or other climate-related problem, you will still pay for it in your taxes, your utility bills, and your grocery bill.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    37. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by interkin3tic · · Score: 1

      Ah, I see I'm perhaps muddling the term hypothesis.

      Well then let's simplify it: given that CO2 absorbs more heat, and given that we're putting more CO2 into the atmosphere, what other outcome could there be? Aside from your suggestion that CO2 can reflect more light in the atmosphere than it absorbs*, I haven't heard an alternative outcome, only insistence that it's not happening.

      * (do you have a citation suggesting that's possible, by the way?)

    38. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      OK, but whatever effect methane has is in addition to the effect CO2 would have, because:

      Methane is quickly broken down in the atmosphere chemically and by UV and only lasts about a decade, the released C bonds with O2 to form CO2 and the H bonds with O2 to form water

      So methane is a more potent green house gas for "about a decade" after which it becomes CO2 and H2O which are both also green house gasses.
      So I can't tell what you're trying to say. Sloppy chemistry explanations aside, by your own logic methane can only have more of an impact than CO2. Probably much more.

    39. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by khallow · · Score: 1

      Even a storm that kills no one will typically do tens of thousands of dollars in property damage.

      That's solidly in the "no big deal" territory.

      especially since we'll have to switch soon anyway, since fossil fuels are running out.

      Well then, let's switch when we have to. There's no real advantage to anticipating the end of fossil fuels.

      Even if you don't hear about a storm, drought or other climate-related problem, you will still pay for it in your taxes, your utility bills, and your grocery bill.

      And I bet I already pay more for alleged fixes to climate-related problems, like the US's huge ethanol subsidy than global warming would ever cost.

    40. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by disambiguated · · Score: 1

      what is the normal temp supposed to be

      There is no "supposed to be." Supposed to be according to whom?

      Maybe what you mean is "what is the temperature compared to what it would have been without humans?" If so, the answer is clear if not precise: warmer.

    41. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by khallow · · Score: 1

      given that CO2 absorbs more heat, and given that we're putting more CO2 into the atmosphere, what other outcome could there be?

      The atmosphere could get cooler, for example, because there's some larger effect cooling the atmosphere. It is after all a complex thing.

      Here's how I'd do it. Observation: the Earth's atmosphere appears to be getting warming, CO2 content in the atmosphere is increasing, and humanity is known to generate a lot of CO2. Hypothesis: human-generated CO2 and perhaps other human activities are primarily responsible for the observed increase in global mean temperature.

    42. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by ultranova · · Score: 1

      That's solidly in the "no big deal" territory.

      That's solidly in the "big deal" territory when you multiply it by the number of storms. And of course bigger storms cause worse damage.

      Well then, let's switch when we have to. There's no real advantage to anticipating the end of fossil fuels.

      What do you think will happen once the energy supply can no longer meet the demand? A price spike and complete economic collapse. Industry needs energy, and cannot function without it, so we have to ensure it has it or suffer the consequences.

      And I bet I already pay more for alleged fixes to climate-related problems, like the US's huge ethanol subsidy than global warming would ever cost.

      Ethanol subsidy is not about climate change, it's about corn lobby flexing its muscles. Actual climate change related charges would be for building more nuclear power or turning Death Valley into a giant solar power station.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    43. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by jbengt · · Score: 1

      Maybe because the carbon dioxide levels were actually well above today's levels during the Jurassic?

    44. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Being skeptical is good, but you don't get to reject hypotheses if you have no other way to explain the data.

      Why not? While at the wheel of my car, the speedometer has indicated I was traveling 30 miles per hour, yet outside my window, everything stood still. Data obtained from instrumentation confirms the hypothesis that the car was travelling 30 mph. But I know for a fact it's not true, yet do not know why.

    45. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You forgot the part where every time there's a snowstorm someplace, some right winger is on the radio saying "see, global warming doesn't exist". Of course, the unscientific (their audience) just eats that stuff up and goes on about driving their 7 mpg SUVs everywhere...

    46. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by khallow · · Score: 1

      That's solidly in the "big deal" territory when you multiply it by the number of storms.

      There's somewhere around fifty to hundred trillion dollars in real estate assets. Tens of thousands of dollars time tens of thousands of storms is perhaps a billion dollars a year. The small storms are insignificant. It's the outlier big storms that have the huge price tag. I don't see any evidence that those become more likely because of global warming, or for that matter, that greater storm strength is more significant than US flood insurance policy (which encourages a lot of moral hazard, particularly, pricey construction in flood prone areas).

      What do you think will happen once the energy supply can no longer meet the demand?

      Energy is not fossil fuels. We would switch to alternatives. For example, there has been a massive shift in US power generation from coal plants to natural gas plants over a few short years. The economy is very agile and already adapts quickly to modest changes in the cost of fossil fuels.

      Ethanol subsidy is not about climate change, it's about corn lobby flexing its muscles.

      Sure it is. That was the primary excuse for the ethanol subsidies after all. Any other proposed fix will suffer from the same corruption. For example, there has been massive subsidies for wind and solar power throughout the world, particularly in the developed world and China. These have made a lot of money for businesses with the right connections, but it hasn't actually reduced generation of greenhouse gases.

      The US's switch to natural gas has at least temporarily reduced US carbon dioxide emissions by a substantial amount which turns out more effective than burning money on renewable energy.

    47. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There IS carbon in the atmosphere, actually. It's in the form of CO2, methane, etc.

      Did you know that carbon dioxide has carbon in it? Now you know! It's actually made of carbon and oxygen. Since it's an element, chemical reactions don't change the carbon atoms into something else when it forms different chemical compounds. Yes, each and every molecule of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has carbon in it.

    48. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Xest · · Score: 1

      "Ok, I'm not saying that Global warming isn't happening, but you're just so off base I've got to correct you."

      Ok, I'm not the GP, but you're just so off base I've got to correct you.

      "2. There is no carbon in the atmosphere. It's Carbon dioxide, a GAS. One's an element, the others not."

      You realise this makes no sense? Do you know what gasses are comprised of? Elements. Can you guess which elements carbon dioxide is comprised of? I'll give you a hint, one of them is the element carbon, hence by definition, if the gas carbon dioxide exists in the atmosphere, so must the element carbon.

      "That's fine... but the fact of the matter is burning fossil fuels doesn't significantly increase CO2 in the atmosphere. Even diehard global warming supporting scientists wouldn't say that."

      Are you sure? In 2001 atmospheric CO2 concentration reached 391ppm, up from about 300ppm in 1950, or 280ppm from pre-industrial times. Scientists agree the sources of this are human activity (simply because human activity is the only thing releasing enough CO2 consistently to achieve this), this is a 30% increase in 60 years. So this leaves two possibilities:

      1) You're lying about scientific consensus on the reason for atmospheric CO2 increase

      2) You're claiming that a 30% increase in concentration is insignificant

      Either option makes you look pretty stupid, but if you pick option 2 you can at least pretend you were just using weasel words, rather than being outright malicious if you pick 1. Still, I'll leave it up to you.

      "5. God damn it learn what carbon is!"

      God damn it learn what CO2 is made of!

      "7. What in your entire previous six points had anything to do with logic?"

      Honestly, I'd answer, but given your point number 2 (and my explanation of why it's stupid above) then I don't think it's worth trying, because you'd need to be capable of pursuing logical thought to start with, which your point 2 demonstrates most certainly isn't actually the case.

      Might I suggest in future that if you're going to attack someone and be nasty to them, you at least make sure you know what you're on about first?

    49. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      2The atmosphere could get cooler, for example, because there's some larger effect cooling the atmosphere."

      I.e. the creationist "I don't know, but it must".

    50. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      7. What in your entire previous six points had anything to do with logic? You don't even know what CARBON is, how the greenhouse effect works, and you're trying to school someone on their stupidity in regards to both?

      You are getting really hung up on this point aren't you? I'm sure the OP knows the difference between carbon dioxide and carbon, but 'carbon' is in common usage in this context and usually does not cause confusion (e.g. in terms such as "carbon capture and storage", it is implicit that the carbon is really carbon dioxide).

      2. ...CO2 absorbs radiation from the sun and then re-radiates it in all directions. So heat that was at one time moving linearly, is now diffuse and goes in all directions. Radiation that traveled down to the earths surface and was then reflected back my ice, snow, water, or whatever, would normally have an unimpeded path back to space. But when it hits the atmosphere, the atmosphere again diffuses the radiation. Some gasses can absorb more than others. The majority of our atmosphere is made up of mostly Nitrogen followed by oxygen. They do not absorb a lot of radiation. By far, the fast majority of greenhouse effect is generated by water vapor (70% or more) followed by CO2. CO2 accounts for less than 0.04% of the atmosphere.

      So you seem to have some understanding of the basic mechanism but I'm not sure what went wrong at the end of that paragraph. First, although water vapour contributes more to the greenhouse effect it is not a *vastly* (or should that be fastly?) greater effect. Second, as I'm sure you have been told but chosen to ignore, water vapour acts to amplify the effect of CO2 but is not in itself a driver for greater warming. Thirdly, what is the point you are trying to make when you talk about 0.04% of the atmosphere. You already said that most of the atmosphere (oxygen and nitrogen) are transparent to IR so what is the significance of the ratio of CO2 to those other gases?

    51. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by khallow · · Score: 1

      I.e. the creationist "I don't know, but it must".

      Who was being the "creationist" here? I merely pointed out that the other guy didn't lay down his most important card, namely, that we have observations which indicate actual global warming is happening. In the absence of such observation, then yes, it is possible that we could be going into ice age or something because of some effect that he didn't know about or neglected to mention.

      I think a really serious problem in the climate debate is the remarkably poor quality of argument. (Another is ignorance of conflict of interest, but that's another essay.) Too often people seize on the parts where the science is relatively well understood like the radiative absorption/forcing effects of carbon dioxide, and extend that certainty to places where we don't have it, such as advocating economic actions to avoid global warming without an inkling of what the costs and benefits of such an action would be.

    52. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      not over the water you can't

      Exactly. There is no water between Brooklyn and Queens (they are both on Long Island). I LOLed.

      Well there is Newton's creek.

    53. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by fuzznutz · · Score: 1

      [...] you don't get to reject hypotheses if you have no other way to explain the data

      WRONG!

      Clearly the data is contradictory. Despite your careful measurements of the speedometer, visual observation clearly contradicts it. Therefore neither your hypothesis nor your measurement method can be confirmed. I.E. It must be rejected.

    54. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by fuzznutz · · Score: 1

      The use of the words denier/denialist is an obvious attempt at a pejorative meant to conflate skeptics with those who deny the Holocaust. The AGW proponent propaganda machine obviously has no depths to which they will sink in order to proselytize their peculiar brand of religion. Now skeptics are branded "children" or inept and irrational. Anyone who asks that AGW models be accurate, predictive and repeatable before spending large amounts on mitigation are now equated with ignorant mortgage borrowers that precipitated the housing crisis.

      I think the people who are beyond reasoning exist squarely in the AGW camp.

    55. Re:how does 2013 compare to the 1980's? by Gen_Music · · Score: 1

      No. All forms of soot are particles bonded with other things, like hydrogen. Soot is not simple Carbon. It's impure, else it wouldn't be airborne. Carbon is denser than air. As a dust it will float, but it will not sit in the atmosphere.

  3. so WTF are normal temperatures then? by alen · · Score: 0

    too warm people scream global warming
    we get a cool March, which is the opposite of warming and the same people say its too cold

    what exactly are normal temperatures supposed to be this time of year? at least for the northeast US?

    we need one of the bitter winters from 1940 or earlier to teach people what normal temperatures are supposed to be like. Maybe a "normal" summer like 1815 when its like 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer

    1. Re: so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry, Charlie, but they have to prove their claims as correct. We don't have to prove them wrong.

    2. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Synerg1y · · Score: 0

      Simple answer: We don't really know

      Scientific answer: something about wearing your ass for a hat every time you drive to work to pay their research grants.

    3. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Normal temperatures are temperatures not affected by the extra CO2 in the atmosphere.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    4. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Hentes · · Score: 3, Insightful

      There's a reason most scientists use the more accurate term climate change.

    5. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And yet you somehow avoided answering his basic question which was "WTF are normal temperatures then?" I've asked a lot of people that questions and am always greeted by a deer in the headlights look and silence. It's a simple question which no one seems to be able to answer, and you would think that the answer would be central to the AGW theory, that there is some ideal temperature that we are no longer "enjoying."

    6. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Synerg1y · · Score: 2

      Shifting weather patterns make perfect sense. Us being 6 billion people strong and contributing to it makes sense. What these scientist are saying on a month to month basis doesn't... I believe it's called junk science.

    7. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Fundamentally, a stable climate is an illusion of the "short now". We think there's such a thing as "normal" temps because we just don't live very long, compared to a planet.

      Even on a larger scale, the past 10,000 years have been an amazing anomaly, with a relatively stable climate not seen anywhere else in the data (and it's probably no coincidence that mankind happened to emerge technologically during this rare stable-ish window).

      The simple truth about all this Climate Change debate? You don't have an informed opinion either way until you've really looked at the Vostok ice core data. Study the raw data for the past several 100k years yourself - you're intuition is no guide at all for how the climate normally behaves over time.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    8. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Consistent deviations from long established and statistically significant patterns are an indicator to people with a modest amount of rational scientific understanding that the climate system is increasingly getting out of whack. What's so hard to comprehend about that?

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    9. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by jovius · · Score: 2

      There's a skew factor set that's not a part of the recent rather nicely oscillating glacial cycle or that wasn't a part of the past weather extremes. I'd say normal weathers are those which happen in an environment without the excessive human energy input. The whole planet is affected whether you were or weren't part of it. When the input ceases and the planet response fluctuations ease that's the new normal. Although the coming down period if it happens will probably create a new balance seeking process.

    10. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 1

      It's also sort of entertaining that when the temperature is different from the average temperature (I prefer that term to "normal"), it's because of global warming or climate change.

      No, I'm not a denier. But just because it's been a cold March doesn't mean "climate change." Give me two or three cold Marches in a row, I'll start thinking about it. Otherwise, it's as stupid as the people who, after a big snow storm in DC, said, "Hey, where's that global warming we hear about?"

    11. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by demonlapin · · Score: 2

      Out of whack? Sounds like a self-correcting feedback loop to me. Too little sea ice -> colder temperatures -> more sea ice -> warmer temperatures. Or am I missing something else?

    12. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i'm gonna go with "rational", maybe "modest", and definitely "understanding". Of course they won't respond to you, because I believe the issue IS comprehension.

    13. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by femtobyte · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Of course, large-scale climactic changes over tens or hundreds of thousands of years are a red herring when evaluating the impact of hundred-year rapid timescale changes on human societies that need much longer to adapt without horrific violence and misery. We live in very different places/cities from where we did 10,000 or 100,000 years ago --- but pretty much in the same cities we had 100 years ago. Expecting the populations of entire nations and continents to just up-and-move over a few decades because habitable ranges have shifted (collapsing food and water supplies in once-fertile regions) doesn't play out so well in current geopolitics. As soon as you're ready to welcome a billion refugee immigrants, dislocated by famine, war, and poverty, into your own country, we can get complacent about compressing multi-thousand-year climactic cycles into human-scale time intervals.

    14. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

      You are missing that this march is marked by a particular weather pattern which is just as much out of whack as, say, this february's pattern. Look at february - Gistemp data here. Looking ahead for complete March, we will probably see significant arctic warming with a temporary cold snap in the lower latitudes.

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    15. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Sique · · Score: 2

      It's easy. Normal temperatures are called "long term average of the temperature or deviations thereof within the standard deviation".

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
    16. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Normal temperatures are exactly that, the ones you mentioned.

      And due to the way modern cities have been built with the fact that "it is so hot", when the weather gets worse over the coming decade, they are going to regret building such shitty buildings as they are going to got 50 arms and legs to keep warm.
      I'm unlucky to be in said constructions with new thin walls instead of the old houses with nearly 2 meter thick walls like the family holiday flat. (and even that thing gets nippy during winter, I know because we went up for a week in february to clean it up and do some painting)

      Global warming and cooling aren't a thing, climate change, however, is. Hot places get hotter, cold places get colder, and the bits in the middle will get considerably worse than both combined with the colliding weather fronts.
      I'm in the middle of 4 main weather groups, russia, the arctic, mainland europe and the gulf stream. Oddly, this is more stable than the North-east of America, that place gets whacked silly with storms, and it will get considerably worse in the next decade, not even century.
      Katrina was a freak, but that last catastrophe of a storm is just progressive weather change now.
      There is even a chance of another mini ice-age in the north areas again.

      My opinion on it? Move to stable weather areas or build a basement house in your house and wait a century till things get better.

    17. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Sique · · Score: 2

      Simple answer: The weakening of the Gulf stream, long predicted as a direct impact of AGW, which leads to longer and colder winters in Europe.

      --
      .sig: Sique *sigh*
    18. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by khallow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Indeed. "Climate change" is an effective propaganda technique for enabling observation bias. Have any weird weather? It's climate change and all due to the evil humans and their fossil fuel based industrial societies.

      As you might have guessed from my sarcasm, I don't buy at all that the phrase, "climate change" is somehow more accurate than anthropogenic global warming. Climate would change even if nothing particular was going on, just due to orbital dynamics of Earth around the Sun, volcanoes, and the subtle effects of continental drift.

    19. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Joce640k · · Score: 2

      too warm people scream global warming
      we get a cool March, which is the opposite of warming...yada yada yada

      Logic 101: Global warming doesn't exclude local cooling.

      --
      No sig today...
    20. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by khallow · · Score: 0

      the past 10,000 years have been an amazing anomaly, with a relatively stable climate

      You mean like the previous oh, 100,000 years which had more or less stable glaciation going on? I think the last 10,000 years aren't remarkable for have a stable climate (for example, sea level rose about 60 meters during that time), but because they were an unusually warm time for Earth's climate.

    21. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...and you're missing while we have a colder winter up here, the total global average temperature still goes up - nothing self correcting about it all, just local/regional wider changes within the overall trend. Just like a cow within a herd can move a bit north while overall the herd moves a bit south.

    22. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And yet you somehow avoided answering his basic question which was "WTF are normal temperatures then?" I've asked a lot of people that questions and am always greeted by a deer in the headlights look and silence. It's a simple question which no one seems to be able to answer, and you would think that the answer would be central to the AGW theory, that there is some ideal temperature that we are no longer "enjoying."

      They do, it's called the surface average, and it's 15C (59F) and rising (at least for the past several years.) There, are you happy? No, this doesn't mean that any temperature in one place hotter than 15C proves global warming, nor does it mean the opposite. It just means that globally, the air on the planet is getting warmer. Weather != Climate and global warming != always hot everywhere. Trying to oversimplify this as if you are a climatologist, whilst you are in fact not a climatologist, can be very confusing. I suggest not doing that.

    23. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by khallow · · Score: 1

      Expecting the populations of entire nations and continents to just up-and-move over a few decades because habitable ranges have shifted (collapsing food and water supplies in once-fertile regions) doesn't play out so well in current geopolitics.

      Come on. You have evidence of massive and rapid movement of population (the cities you refer to), and yet you still claim it can't happen. Here's how it'll go. The people will move if and when they choose to. And the current geopolitics will adapt to that reality.

    24. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by davide+marney · · Score: 1

      Are you sure you've identified the right thing to worry about? A 100-year time scale is a couple of entire human generations. That's enough time for countries full of people to shift places, easily (in the US, about 75% of the population moved from farms to factories in a single generation.)

      Within the next 100 years, robots will probably do ALL human manual labor. You want to talk about drastic changes to the human condition! The end of manual label is not only much more likely to disrupt, it will disrupt in ways that are completely unforeseen. Having to move to better digs -- that we've done before. Not even having a job for most of the world's people, now that's going to be disruptive.

      --
      "We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
    25. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe a "normal" summer like 1815 when its like 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer

      Really? You're going to mention this without citing the cause? One of the most massive volcanic eruptions in recorded history skewed the climate, and you're right on the year of the eruption but a year off on the climate anomaly it caused.

      I'm skeptical on the A in AGW myself; but shoddy arguments on either side serve nobody.

    26. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by femtobyte · · Score: 2

      How the heck are cities evidence of rapid population movement? The city centers we currently have are typically stable population centers, with firmly rooted local/national identities, for hundreds of years --- they don't move around overnight, across national borders, whenever the "grass is a little greener" on the opposite side. I'm sure "geopolitics will adapt to that reality," but "geopolitical adaptation" in the modern world typically involves a lot of bullets, landmines, cluster-bombs, machete massacres, and rape. The US is building huge, fortified walls to keep people *out* --- and most other countries hold similar attitudes (even if they don't invest such resources in border-control) towards mass-immigration of displaced foreigners. Current conflicts over limited local resources are already bloody messes, which will only be amplified by increasing the volume of struggle.

    27. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by alen · · Score: 1

      call it -30 or so Fahrenheit in the winter normal temps then.

    28. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed! Weather change, does it mean Global warming? "Oh, yes, yes, definitely, definitely" No change in the Weather? "Oh, yes, yes, definitely, definitely"
      Slight change "Oh, yes, yes, definitely, definitely" major change "Oh, yes, yes, definitely, definitely" So they can't say its getting warmer because it is not so play with the terminology that will fool enough people to believe it until they have to change the name again.

    29. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by khallow · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Global warming and cooling aren't a thing, climate change, however, is. Hot places get hotter, cold places get colder, and the bits in the middle will get considerably worse than both combined with the colliding weather fronts.

      And what in the world gives you the idea that this sort of "climate change" is going on? Increases in greenhouse gases lead to some degree of global warming not hot gets hotter, cold gets colder. WE have enough trouble debating this issue without imaginary theories coming in.

      Oddly, this is more stable than the North-east of America, that place gets whacked silly with storms, and it will get considerably worse in the next decade, not even century.

      The Gulf of Mexico provides warmth and moisture which is what you need for exciting storms such as the north east region of the US probably has seen for millions of years.

      Katrina was a freak, but that last catastrophe of a storm is just progressive weather change now.

      That part of the world sees dozens of such cyclones every year. There was nothing odd about Katrina other than a city happened to be in the way.

      There is even a chance of another mini ice-age in the north areas again.

      Apparently, glacial periods have been the norm for many millions of years. Unless we do something radical, say like dumping massive quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere or greatly widening the Bering Strait, we will see another full-blown glacial advance.

    30. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Scientists? The important point is they've got the media saying "climate change".
      The "theory of global climate change" is unfalsifiable. There is literally no possible observation that could call it into question or invalidate it.

    31. Re: so WTF are normal temperatures then? by NatasRevol · · Score: 1

      I think his point was that using anecdotes to try to prove them wrong was outright stupidity.

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    32. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Zeromous · · Score: 1

      Wow, thats about as much intellectual drivel as I would expect out of a political prisoner fresh out of labour-camp.

      Climate Change is an acknowledgment that the Earth has many interconnected systems that can be aversely or even positively affected by changes to the environment. Also a tacit acknowledgement that once it occurs its nearly impossible to reverse. It just so happens that it also nullifies any unfortunate and misguided pseudo-intellectualism vaulted or supported by the "Global Warming" meme of the 80s.

      But when you can't lean on that khallow, the best you can do is question the motives of "scientists" to prove your point? Scream propaganda and be done for the day? That's a whopper of a fallacy, and a very transparent one at that.

      --
      ---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
    33. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Indeed! And if we just had much colder weather with more ice everywhere that would be great, just great for farming and thus more food? Nooooooo . .. . what planet are you on? If there were real, actual warming going on we would see the vast northern Canada (a frozen wasteland now) open up for farming, as well as other previously cold areas, essentially doubling arable farmland available.

    34. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 1

      I think the last 10,000 years aren't remarkable for have a stable climate (for example, sea level rose about 60 meters during that time), but because they were an unusually warm time for Earth's climate.

      An unusually warm time for Earth's climate during the ongoing Ice Age, perhaps.

      But not especially warm when looked at during the long term.

      Earth has been a hothouse for ~75% or its existence, it's been in one of its cold phases for the last 10-20 million years, and even being in the warm part of a cold phase doesn't bring it up to even "average" temperatures for the planet.

      Not, mind you, that that's terribly relevant to the current climate change - we're used to the way things are, we'd like them to remain that way (never mind that that's impossible, with or without CO2 limits), and we're going to do our best to make sure the problem isn't a big issue for OUR LIFETIMES (and damn the grandkids and later generations)....

      --

      "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
    35. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by femtobyte · · Score: 1

      I'm quite capable of worrying about more than one thing at a time. I agree that mechanization (like past waves of mechanization) brings its own set of disruptive issues.

      I think you over-estimate the ease of population migration against hostile opposition. Past mass migrations from rural to city centers have occurred fully with the support of the "powers-that-be," a wealthy investor class who could both consolidate rural smallholdings into today's mega-scale agribusiness and staff factories with dirt-cheap labor. However, once a region has enough impoverished unemployed residents to solidly depress labor prices, there's little incentive to welcome more (and policy turns towards xenophobic exclusion). There are few places in the world today where the ruling class is thinking "yay, displaced climate refugees, that'll boost business!".

    36. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Good thing your not a scientist. Otherwise, you might not say things like "all due to evil humans and their fossil fuel based industrial societies." that no actual scientist ever has.

    37. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And the current geopolitics will adapt to that reality.

      And that adaptation may or may not involve nuclear war when "the people" choose to move across international boundaries due to shifting agricultural zones. When China's grain belt moves north across the border into Siberia, how do you expect "geopolitics" to "adapt"? Because I suspect it's going to involve that modern geopolitical tool known as the ballistic missile.

      But whatever. The Sun doesn't go red giant for another billion years or so; we have time to reboot this whole civilization thing another dozen times, at least.

    38. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're missing that colder US/EU temperatures don't lead to more sea ice.

      Or that more sea ice leads to warmer global temperatures.

      Yeah, you're missing that local climate has little to do with global temperatures.

    39. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, because there is extra CO2 in the atmosphere, all temperatures are by definition not normal, and that proves the extra CO2 in the atmosphere affects our climate?

    40. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I myself have thought the phrase "Global Energizing" is the most accurate but have yet to see it picked up anywhere.

    41. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Been to Detroit lately? Still, haven't seen any evidence that the gulf stream has been weakened. Haven't bothered to look at the Weather Underground news puff. I'll wait for the actual release.

    42. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Who said anything about proving anything?

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    43. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm a geologist. Yes, looking on that kind of timescale (or vastly longer) gives you a useful perspective. On the big scale of things, is life on Earth going to end because of anthropogenic climate change? No. It's seen much worse. Is the expected change going to be worse in magnitude or rate than any other climate event in Earth history? Heck, no. Or even as long as humans have been around? Again, no. Humans grew up as a species through multiple glacial-interglacial cycles. We're adapted to them, at least during the times we mostly lived in caves. The waxing and waning of continental ice sheets and the realization that (for example) the place I'm at used to be under a couple of km of ice 20000 years ago kind of puts things in perspective.

      Meanwhile, on regular human scales rather than the scale that geologists usually consider, the scale of change expected over the next century is rather frighteningly fast, and it's going to affect temperature, precipitation, all sorts of things. Human societies and agriculture are a lot more fragile than life as a whole is, or humanity as a species is, so saying "It's not so bad when looking at the long view" isn't really much of a consolation. We haven't driven through a significant climate change during industrial times. Human history has shown that these kind of relatively mild changes will likely provoke mass migrations, famine, and often wars over limited resources as the local conditions change for the better or worse. Maybe industrialized society will make us a bit more robust to it, but it's still going to be stressful. You can't solve problems easily if you're (for example) turning parts of the midwest USA back into increasingly arid sand dunes, or drowning significant coastal areas. It can be done, but it's expensive and there are practical limits where it doesn't pay off even if it is technically possible.

      So, yeah, do get a longer perspective, but keep in mind that 100k years is freaking long compared to the duration (so far) of modern human society. Even the transition from full-blown glacial maximum to the interglacial we are in now still took several thousand years to complete.

      The analogy I've often used is going down a ski slope. Sure, long-term it's a gentle slope going downhill that is quite manageable. But that doesn't mean you can ignore the smaller-scale ski jump or the trees that are right in front of you. You have to pay attention to both. And if you can't deal with the short-term stuff, the longer-term stuff is kind of irrelevant. We'll deal with long-term glacial-interglacial cyclicity eventually, if we make it through the next couple of centuries as an industrial society without killing most of each other off. Otherwise, maybe it's back to subsistence in caves for a small fraction of us that survive. We do know that works long-term. Industrialized society is still early in the game.

    44. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean other than lack of temperature change with increasing greenhouse gases, right?

    45. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by holmstar · · Score: 1

      Sea water (liquid) absorbs a lot more sunlight than sea ice. How in the world would that lead to cooler temperatures?

    46. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by NatasRevol · · Score: 1

      At least.

      1,000,000,000 years/25,000 years per civilization rebuild = 40,000 trials

      --
      There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
    47. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by femtobyte · · Score: 1

      And you think Detroit is a *positive* model for demographic shifts *without suffering*? The city's transition from a global model of prosperity to the butt of jokes about crime, unemployment, and poverty seems to indicate that it wasn't so easy for a big chunk of the residents to just pack up and move to more prosperous areas as the auto industry deflated. And the people who could move away mostly found other homes within the same country, with a common language and no major internal barriers to freedom of movement. Now consider needing to relocate city populations across a militarized national border, to a country with a different language and culture which views you as an unwanted parasite.

    48. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There are few places in the world today where the ruling class is thinking "yay, displaced climate refugees, that'll boost business!".

      Google 'sanctuary cities' in the US. When you are a member of a ruling class that has to give the illusion of popular support every few years, inviting random population masses into your territories so long as they vote for you (whether such voting is legal or not) is a way to maintain the illusion.

    49. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by skine · · Score: 1

      Both are accurate, but describe different things. Global warming describes when the average global temperature increases. Climate change describes changes in local climates.

    50. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by khallow · · Score: 1

      How the heck are cities evidence of rapid population movement?

      Look at most New World Cities. Except for a few that started prior to Columbus (like Mexico City and Quito), they're all less than five centuries old. In addition, most of the growth of these cities has happened in the last century. So we have massive movement of people recently in the sort of time frames necessary for any sort of catastrophic climate change.

    51. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is about the RATE OF CHANGE which IS extaordinary, you moron! Quit oversimplifying.

    52. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by femtobyte · · Score: 1

      Google 'the rest of the f*cking US' to learn that it's filled with right-wing xenophobic nutters like you, who swallow Fox News conspiracy theories about "illegals" voting, despite decades of extremely close scrutiny by anti-immigrant groups never turning up more than a tiny handful (out of billions of votes over decades) of actual cases (while *legal* voters are being disenfranchised by the millions based on such fears). Yes, plenty of places like maintaining a substantial immigrant population to provide a cheap labor force, but no, they aren't hoping *all of Mexico* will flood across the border and set up shanty-towns when the cross-border food supply collapses.

    53. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sea water (liquid) absorbs a lot more sunlight than sea ice. How in the world would that lead to cooler temperatures?

      Currents.

    54. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by femtobyte · · Score: 1

      So, were you asleep in history class, or do they just not teach real history these days?

      You do realize that the colonization of the New World "empty frontier" required the largest mass-genocides in history, as European immigrants arrived to claim resources from the tens of millions of prior inhabitants? This is a perfect example of mass population movement resulting in *absolutely horrific* costs to human life (yes, folks not on "your side" count as human too) due to conflict over resources with prior inhabitants of newly-favorable land.

    55. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by khallow · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Wow, thats about as much intellectual drivel as I would expect out of a political prisoner fresh out of labour-camp.

      I see you fit the profile quite nicely. Let's take a look.

      Climate Change is an acknowledgment that the Earth has many interconnected systems that can be aversely or even positively affected by changes to the environment.

      The word I was criticizing was "accuracy". This bullshit isn't accurate. Anthropogenic global warming is accurate. It describes the key characteristics of the phenomena, namely, that it is man-caused and that it is a global warming.

      Also a tacit acknowledgement that once it occurs its nearly impossible to reverse. It just so happens that it also nullifies any unfortunate and misguided pseudo-intellectualism vaulted or supported by the "Global Warming" meme of the 80s.

      That's an awful lot of pointless verbiage for a supposedly "tacit" acknowledgement. No, there is no such acknowledgement. "Climate change" simply means a change in climate. All the rest of your claim is completely unfounded and not implied by the label.

      the best you can do is question the motives of "scientists" to prove your point

      But of course. There are trillions of dollars riding on convincing the public that AGW is dire enough that we need to spend a lot of money. That's many times what you'd need to completely buy the field of climatology.

    56. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by khallow · · Score: 1

      You do realize that the colonization of the New World "empty frontier" required the largest mass-genocides in history

      No, I don't "realize" this. Neither do you. It's just another entertaining myth.

      Sure, most land at some point was taken from someone else. But that has nothing to do with enabling mass migration. Now, in the developed world we'd rent or sell land to newcomers rather than get into a big unpleasant fight. In the undeveloped world, sure there's a good chance that they'd get into a big fight, but that sort of thing will happen anyway whether there is AGW related catastrophe or not.

    57. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by ultranova · · Score: 1

      Climate would change even if nothing particular was going on, just due to orbital dynamics of Earth around the Sun, volcanoes, and the subtle effects of continental drift.

      And... WTF? Completely regardless if there really is an oft-speculated worldwide climate scientist conspiracy falsifying data for great injustice, are you seriously suggesting that continental drift - which tops at about 10 cm annually - could possibly explain any kind of changes in climate in the recorded history, which, at about 6000 years long, means they've moved a whopping 600 meters in all that time?!?

      Seriously, WTF?

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    58. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by khallow · · Score: 1

      When China's grain belt moves north across the border into Siberia

      That one is particularly easy since they'll grow food then in both China and Siberia. More food for everyone. The "grain belt" is not some narrow strip of territory. In North America, they grow grain from Canada all the way into northern Mexico. From this map, I see wheat grown from the equator to 60 degrees in lattitude.

      China will be able to switch to different varieties, if the climate really does change. Those varieties are already growing now in warmer places, both dryer and wetter. Also the warmer it gets, the more places that will be able to grow two crops of wheat a year.

      It's not going to involve nukes, but basic changing of crops to things that are better adapted to the current state of climate.

    59. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by femtobyte · · Score: 1

      What part of the genocide of previous "New World" inhabitants is an "entertaining myth"? Do you think there was no-one here before, or they all just joined up with the jolly Pilgrims for a never-ending Thanksgiving feast? Did the terms "conquistador," "pox blanket," "trail of tears," or "reservation" never receive mention in your history class?

      "We'd rent or sell land to newcomers" who arrive with truckloads of cash to rent/buy our land. You're utterly deluded if you think anyone "in the developed world" is going to say "aww, your life savings is $1.28 in devalued third-world currency. I'll be nice and sell your family a fertile acre for $0.50." When the vast majority of displaced immigrants, who sure as heck don't have the cash to buy land (or even a month's rent), arrive at "developed" borders, they'll be greeted by razor-wire and machine guns. Likewise, the fighting that "will happen anyway" in the "undeveloped world" definitely gets worse the more people there are with no subsistence to lose by swelling the ranks of warlord's armies.

    60. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by khallow · · Score: 1

      are you seriously suggesting that continental drift - which tops at about 10 cm annually - could possibly explain any kind of changes in climate in the recorded history, which, at about 6000 years long

      Supposedly the closing of the Bering Strait is responsible for the current ice age state of Earth over the past few million years.

    61. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by khallow · · Score: 1

      What part of the genocide of previous "New World" inhabitants is an "entertaining myth"?

      The part where it was, as you put it, "required".

    62. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by gl4ss · · Score: 2

      habitable regions haven't shifted anywhere..
      the habitable region extends from the tip of northern continents to the tip of the southern continents - just like a hundred years ago. the difference is that now we don't have famines in some of the less hospitable areas.

      actually for the past century or so we've been having problems with people moving for various stupid reasons to less habitable regions(middle east etc). those areas didn't have good water supplies to begin with and have been strip farmed for all eternity when they weren't being salted by nasty neighbours on purpose.

      in geopolitics as always we'll cross that road once we get there, but for example if the entire northern europe just moved to india we would be just a blip in the overall population over there(this story is about how we're having a cold spring here.. and it's not remarkably cold really). I wouldn't mind too much if we moved entire Finland into Amazon - at least we'd get off from the fucking winters(which have been about as crappy for the past century and further...). we'd save a lot on food too - farming in Finland is now pretty much a completely subsidized operation in other words farming here is like throwing money into the well - literally.

      what's remarkable globally about the past half-century - and even the whole century - is how good we have gotten at not fighting massive wars and fending off famine(percentually). it's been a long while since USA had it's war with mexico over lebensraum. so why do you see signs of the opposite? we live in the same places as we did after the last ice age, from Finland to Australia. how the fuck did people live around here 10 000 years ago? not well I can tell you! point being that there's no such concept as a habitable region when it comes to humans as long as we're talking about living on earth, the reasons for immigration have been 100% sociological and 0% about how habitable a region or another is - we're not mere animals in that sense.

      so somehow I have hard time believing in another wave of mongol invasions. for practical reasons which make it obvious for even pretty dimwitted that living like an invasion horde is pretty impractical - there's not even any adventure left in invading far away lands from which your cousin sent you a postcard while he was working there as a janitor.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    63. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by femtobyte · · Score: 1

      The historical population movement that occurred did "require" this (in the important sense that what happened, happened). Perhaps in an alternate history, everyone would have been nice to one another and just gotten along without bloody conflict --- in which case it would have been a different form of mass migration, which didn't "require" genocide. Since I see little historical evidence for common "everyone's nice to one another" mass migrations into otherwise inhabited areas, or signs that present societies are any less viciously violent towards masses of impoverished newcomers wanting to "nicely share" their resources, I think it's reasonable to extrapolate that climate-induced migrations won't display the unprecedented triumph of new-found human unity and neighborly love over fear and greed.

    64. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by khallow · · Score: 1

      The historical population movement that occurred did "require" this (in the important sense that what happened, happened).

      That's not a definition of "require".

      Since I see little historical evidence for common "everyone's nice to one another" mass migrations into otherwise inhabited areas

      The huge migrations into the New World are an excellent counterexample. The US, Brazil, Argentina, and a number of other countries had vast, peaceful migrations over a period of centuries.

    65. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by femtobyte · · Score: 1

      The online merriam-webster isn't exactly the "final word" on vocabulary usage. However, their "def'n 3" ("compel") fits pretty well. The combination of factors in the historical migration --- including European theories of divinely-granted dominion over "sub-human savages," martial superiority, and the natives' unwillingness to politely cede their hunting, agricultural, and cultural sites to European newcomers --- compelled the historical outcome of mass-genocide so the immigrants could get what they wanted. If the historical parties involved had been substantially different (e.g. more averse to calculated slaughter, or more willing to give away everything you have to pushy strangers), then perhaps genocide would not have been compelled/required --- but that's not what happened.

      And again, what "peaceful" migrations into pre-inhabited New World areas are you talking about? They were only "peaceful" if you mean "successful for the victors, and who gives a damn about the indigenous populations who were easily crushed." Areas like Argentina were only "peacefully" populated to the extent that they were only very sparsely inhabited before, with no large opposing populations to generate large bloodshed. To the extent that the inhabited world is a lot more crowded place now than it was then, modern-day migrations are not likely to go as smoothly.

    66. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by lgw · · Score: 1

      Heck, the who idea of a "grain belt" is a pre-genetic-engineering idea.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    67. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by khallow · · Score: 1

      The online merriam-webster isn't exactly the "final word" on vocabulary usage. However, their "def'n 3" ("compel") fits pretty well.

      No, it doesn't. Hence, my point of providing the link.

      And again, what "peaceful" migrations into pre-inhabited New World areas are you talking about?

      For example, immigration into the US from about 1780 through to the present day, in particular, the migration of people to New York City, Chicago, LA, and other urban areas of the US.

    68. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by femtobyte · · Score: 2

      OK, let's look at immigration into the US from 1780 on.

      For the first major chunk of your post-1780 period, immigration largely fueled continued Westward expansion --- with the associated continued internment and extermination of natives, squeezed into ever less hospitable reservations with endless promises of "this is the last time we'll break the treaty and make you move elsewhere".

      Initial and later immigration waves were also welcomed to provide disposable labor for the mills and mines, under horrific conditions (which certainly count as violence against humanity). As with potential climate refugees, refugees arriving for a short, miserable life of hard labor might have been a bit better off than starving in various famines back home --- but they arrived to exploitation and contempt, rather than welcome as fellow human brothers and sisters (hardly a model for a nice way to treat people forced from their homes by our Hummers).

      As the population stabilized to fill Capital's need for labor, the immigration influx was cut off. The Immigration Act of 1924 made sure that "undesirable" Eastern Europeans (including Jews fleeing shortly before and during the rise of fascism) would be under strict quotas. While nationality quotas were officially eliminated in 1965, the free flow of anyone-who-wants-to-come immigration remains severely curtailed through the present day. Entry through official or unofficial channels is difficult, expensive, and/or dangerous. Immigration policies set a steady, controlled rate of influx to serve the needs of corporate masters (whether tomato-pickers or high-tech H1-B workers), rather than to fulfill the desires of everyone who would rather be here.

      So, does America provide a model for how to relocate huge swathes of refugees? Not at all --- we're already letting in only a small trickle of applicants, and will gun down people at the border for circumventing the quota. Past cases of more liberal immigration policy depended on historical specifics that no longer exist: land to grab from natives, or a deep shortage of the unemployed for bottom-rung manual labor. We sure won't be taking in whole populations from African countries, and nor will any of the other developed countries (if anyone was willing, they'd have immigrants pouring in already), beyond the usual trickle of just enough to maintain a cheap labor pool.

    69. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by SailRick · · Score: 0

      For the past 10,000 years or so, humans have enjoyed a fairly stable and benign climate regime, that has allowed the emergence of agriculture and civilization. This is largely because atmospheric CO2 levels stayed between about 180ppm and 280ppm. This time period, or epoch, is called the Holocene. We are essentially forcing the end of the wonderful Holocene. On our current path, we will have created a world that humans have never experienced, by the end of this century, or early in the next. We have increased CO2 to 392ppm in about 100 years. That is a 40% increase. By about 2080, we will have doubled the pre-idustrial 280ppm to 560ppm. CO2 levels have not been this high in at least 400,000 years, twice as long as modern humans have even existed. And there is evidence CO2 hasn't been this high in 800,000 years We are increasing atmospheric CO2 10 times faster than at the PETM. (Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum) 55 million years ago. This was 10 million years after the dinosaurs died off. They lived in a much hotter world than humans have ever experienced. At the PETM, these already high global temperatures soared by another 5C to 6C, from the greenhouse effect, after a big surge in CARBON DIOXIDE. It took 200,000 years for rock weathering and other slow forcings to remove enough CO2 from the atmosphere to cool the earth back down. CO2 levels at the PETM were much higher than today, but it took 5,000 to 10,000 years to get there. The poles warmed by 10 C to 20 C. That's 18 F to 36 F warming. But it isn't just the magnitude of the warming, but the speed of today's warming that is dangerous. Species had thousands of years to adapt or evolve during the PETM. We don't.

    70. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by demonlapin · · Score: 1

      A plausible mechanism (though not necessarily a correct one - I am not a climate scientist) is: less sea ice -> more air exposed to water -> higher relative humidity -> heavier snowfall as moist air moves ashore -> more snowpack -> less sunlight absorbed on land.

    71. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Climate Change was the original name of the phenomena. "Global Warming" is only one aspect of the problem, it's use as the prominent name is because of idiots who don't actually understand the problem (i.e. political slogan bullshit).

      Efforts to restore the original name to prominence is just trying to counteract the idiots who thought emphasising one aspect of the problem for FUD purposes was a good idea to get political action.

    72. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by khallow · · Score: 1

      So, does America provide a model for how to relocate huge swathes of refugees?

      Of course it does. But you have to actually understand the history to a modest degree rather than just ridiculously caricature it. Tens of millions of people came to the New World and found a home without violence.

      The Immigration Act of 1924

      Hence, my cutoff date of the 1920s.

    73. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by khallow · · Score: 1

      "Inadvertent climate modification" was the original name and one that has some real meaning to it. It describes human activities that change climate unintentionally. It's quite straightforward and descriptive like any scientific term should be. "Climate change" OTOH has no descriptive power aside from describing changes in climate. Human sources are only one possibility. It's also worth noting that your cited article uses "global warming" in the very title. So global warming has been kicking around for a long time as well.

      But most people who study so-called "climate change" actually study human-caused global warming. So why the use of an inappropriate, undescriptive term?

      That's where the propaganda aspect comes in. There are some ridiculous fallacies being passed off as argument, particularly the "extreme weather" thing which blames all extreme weather on global warming even though nobody has a clue whether extreme weather gets changed at all. It's classic observer bias where you blame whatever happens on the fad environmental danger of the decade.

      But by kicking around this vague label, you can incorporate any weird weather in as a "change" in climate due to human activity. Soothsayers and chicken entrails readers couldn't do any better. So how about we actually use honest language and honest debate, rather than just skipping forward to the "spend the money" stage?

    74. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by femtobyte · · Score: 1

      Your characterization of "without violence" is the whopping ridiculous caricature here. Though much of the violence occurred in waves somewhat preceding the immigrant settlers, immigrants were encourage by, e.g., the Homestead Act of 1869 to expand/settle into land "vacated" starting from the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and continuing during enclosure of land by settlers. Note that the earlier part of the settlement waves (correlated with Westward expansion) required specific historical happenstance --- the temporary availability of large tracts of arable land --- which we don't have lying around to hand out free to immigrants any more.

      The later immigrant waves (late 19th - early 20th c.) relied on a different form of violence, but violence nonetheless: immigrants were welcomed to be shunted into the worst extremes of unregulated Capitalist labor --- short, miserable lives in deadly factory and mine conditions. Physical, mental, and sexual abuse was rampant. Dissent and worker organization was brutally suppressed, by private police forces like the Pinkertons. As before, this immigrant wave no longer provides a model for current refugee relocation: the immigrants were only "welcomed" because the industrialists needed a big disposable labor pool in this country. In today's globalized economy, industrialists are happy leaving laborers in whatever poorer-off country they started in; with neocolonial arrangements, you no longer need to move laborers to your own country of residence to exploit them.

      Massive dislocated refugee groups need a country that will accept them in order to help them. History only shows countries accepting immigrants to help themselves; and, currently, no one is particularly running short on labor material (hence high unemployment across the globe). In a better world, governments would be controlled by people more willing to help their fellow humans. In the world we have, it's best to avoid dislocating people in the first place, because they won't be given anywhere to go. The problem is not that *theoretically* large populations of humans can't be peacefully relocated, but that the conditions under which such peaceful relocation could theoretically occur (including charitable and self-sacrificing nations with vast resources) exist virtually nowhere on earth.

    75. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by w0mprat · · Score: 1

      There's a reason most scientists use the more accurate term climate change.

      And not "Weather change"!
      Weather != Climate. Some mention of Weather extremes inevitably gets linked to Climate extremes. Some comment that ammounts to "It's colder today than and by next week it will be an ice age!"
      There is huge difference between Climate and Weather.

      --
      After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
    76. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by Zeromous · · Score: 1

      This is just too closed minded to reply to. Don't think zombie-mods are in any way a validation of your fallacious and contradicting opinion. In the context Climate Change is more accurate description.

      >Anthropogenic global warming is accurate
      False.

      I'm sure a climate scientist from Europe or a desert nation would love you to explain how the statement is true. I won't even bother to argue with you further the implied context of "Global Warming" and "Climate Change" which exists in the minds of those whom fund actual sciences (the taxpayer).

      So please explain for the rest of us....

      > There are trillions of dollars riding on convincing the public that AGW is dire enough that we need to spend a lot of money.

      Oh and I wouldn't mind if you source this please.

      --
      ---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
    77. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by holmstar · · Score: 1

      If that were a significant effect, then it would be self stabilizing. That doesn't appear to be happening.

    78. Re:so WTF are normal temperatures then? by LienRag · · Score: 1

      Climate-change denial are certainly not ready to welcome a billion refugees; they are though ready to kill a billion "aliens" trying to "invade" their country.
      If you can't find the logic in right-wing selfishness, it's usually because you didn't apply enough of it.

  4. Re:Warning about fake impersonator... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We're just going to have to shoot them all. It's the only way to be sure.

  5. Re:Hear come the deniers. by gstoddart · · Score: 1

    Solar storms? ;-)

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
  6. Technically by Lawrence_Bird · · Score: 1

    we are still in an ice age. Skiiers, snowboarders and global warming enthusiasts would prefer we remain in the ice age.

    1. Re:Technically by bunratty · · Score: 1

      And anyone who lives on or has a business on the seashore. And millions of farmers and others that depend on rainfall patterns to continue to supply the water they need.

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
    2. Re:Technically by i+kan+reed · · Score: 1

      First: "Global warming enthusiast"? Really? Come on.

      Second: I don't think you're considering what a neo-tropical environment would actually be like.

    3. Re:Technically by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Skiiers, snowboarders and global warming enthusiasts would prefer we remain in the ice age."

      So to, I would imagine, the millions of people in low lying coastal areas that will be forced to move as rising sea levels flood their homes, or at the very minimum make living there untenable as even minor storm surges inundate their homes. Not to mention if some of the theories surrounding the current saline balance being necessary to maintain the current Thermohaline circulation cycle are correct. If those currents changed the climates of several regions would change drastically.

  7. Queue stupid comments from team creationism! by eagee · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Why is it that with only 4 posts up (when I wrote this) I'm already pissed off? I guess I already know just how-many-stupid-things are about to be written here, and 'resigning to it in silent fury... Debating climate deniers is like getting a beer with a bunch of birthers (literally). Science has an amazing way of reinforcing crazy stupid by presenting contradicting, independently verifiable facts, sometimes it's too painful to watch.

    1. Re:Queue stupid comments from team creationism! by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Science has an amazing way of reinforcing crazy stupid by presenting contradicting, independently verifiable facts

      I suppose you mean seemingly contradictory, when viewed on a superficial level without real understanding of the matter?

      --
      Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
    2. Re:Queue stupid comments from team creationism! by khallow · · Score: 2

      Oh look, someone blowing a gasket because people disagree with him on the internets. This is so unusual.

    3. Re:Queue stupid comments from team creationism! by al.caughey · · Score: 1

      I've decided that trying to engage in a discussion with the climate change deniers is like wrestling a pig... you get muddy and the pig enjoys it.

      Go Bacon!

  8. Bububu.. by benjfowler · · Score: 1

    But! But! Global warming is a scam!! Lord Monckton and the Murdoch press told me so!!!

    1. Re:Bububu.. by i+kan+reed · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Look. Stop. When you're about to post in a climate thread, ask yourself "Does this debate need another flimsy strawman argument?" If you answered "yes", regardless of what you believe, you are part of the problem, and why there is still "debate".

    2. Re:Bububu.. by rrohbeck · · Score: 2

      If you considered this a "flimsy strawman argument" then your sarcasmometer needs a tune-up.

    3. Re:Bububu.. by i+kan+reed · · Score: 2

      I think the sarcasm is an inherent part of what makes it a straw man. You're misrepresenting the reasons the anti-science crowd really latch onto for the defense of their opinions. If you're doing it for humor, it's really weak. Acting like a childish version of those you disagree with is itself really childish. It's what children in elementary school do when they disagree, and it's painfully unfunny for much the same reason.

    4. Re:Bububu.. by rrohbeck · · Score: 1

      I think it represents the anti-science crowd rather well.

    5. Re:Bububu.. by i+kan+reed · · Score: 2

      Every day, I'm reminded that all my best arguments will be undermined by the audacity and absurdity of those who agree with me.

  9. Re:Hear come the deniers. by drsmack1 · · Score: 0

    That's a good try, but I'm pretty sure that at some point during his presidency, that George * Bush mentioned the existence of the sun. So any issues with solar output can and will be blamed on him.

    That's how it works; it's so easy only a child can understand it.

  10. Re:Hear come the deniers. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Also, cosmic rays.

    Earthquakes and volcanism use to be Acts of God (tm) as well, but today these too are understood to be fault of rich, white, heterosexual male citizens of the US.

  11. It's obvious by dkleinsc · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Where I live, it's cold right now. That means that annual global average temperature must be colder than it was last year.

    (Of course, this is silly "logic", but that's what most Americans in particular tend to be thinking)

    --
    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    1. Re:It's obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where I live, it's cold right now. That means that annual global average temperature must be colder than it was last year.

      (Of course, this is silly "logic", but that's what most people in particular tend to be thinking)

      FTFY, really getting tired of the hurr durr, muricans r dumb meme.

    2. Re:It's obvious by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

      Where I live, it's cold right now. That means that annual global average temperature must be colder than it was last year.

      I look forward to your posting in July berating people who think the hotter temperatures point to obvious effects from global warming.

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    3. Re:It's obvious by stenvar · · Score: 0

      (Of course, this is silly "logic", but that's what most Americans in particular tend to be thinking)

      Instead, people like you tend not to think at all. In my experience, almost nobody who is such a strong defender of action on global warming can even explain what "annual global average temperature" even means and how it is measured.

    4. Re:It's obvious by bdwebb · · Score: 1

      (Of course, this is silly "logic", but that's what most Americans in particular tend to be thinking)

      How did this become about Americans? I am pretty sure that Global Warming detractors worldwide hold this opinion and I'm pretty sure that proponents of Global Warming from many countries also try to tie ridiculous occurrences that counter their argument in any way possible to the support of Global Warming.

      Ultimately we need to discuss the REAL science, Climate Change, and we need informed opinions of educated people supported by facts on both sides to come to a consensus and create some real science without all the dick-waving people do because they cannot stand to be incorrect or modify their opinions. I'm not saying you are doing this because you didn't really delve into the discussion at all - I'm just saying your post makes you sound ignorant and self-important and, based upon your attitude, if you had an opinion on the matter you would probably just be a dick-waver.

    5. Re:It's obvious by __aaeihw9960 · · Score: 1

      There doesn't seem to be much of a middle ground for some reason.

      Because you base your opinion on television and media in general. For fuck's sake, how have you not figured out that people are generally the same, regardless of arbitrary country designation. We're mostly just people trying to get by, worrying about family and the weather and work and the same kinds of things.

      The fact that you can't find a middle ground tells me that you've never traveled in the states, and that you're as ignorant as the stereotype you're touting. Educate yourself. Travel. Talk to people. Or, remain ignorant and smug - you know, whatever works.

    6. Re:It's obvious by dkleinsc · · Score: 1

      "annual global average temperature" means exactly what it says:
      Annual - over the entire year
      Global - over all the points we can measure on the Earth
      Average - use statistical techniques to combine the data points
      Temperature - measuring of how warm / cold it is

      How it's measured: With a thermometer, of course, and a computer with a formula that's probably more complicated than I can write out here to do the statistical part to deal with problems like "we have more weather stations in New York City than we do in Iqaluit". And to make sure the trends are clear, we apply the same formula for each year's data.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    7. Re:It's obvious by rgbscan · · Score: 2

      Here's the thing though.... according to the Dept of Education, the average American citizen only has a high school education, and graduated with a 2.8 GPA. It only gets worse if you look at the south, or seniors in the midwest. With only 27% of Americans holding a bachelor or better... I'd say that meme is rapidly becoming spot on.

    8. Re:It's obvious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, I have, Americans do tend to be more ignorant than most others. I guess it's because in other places there's a negative feedback loop which educates the thick not to spout whatever pops into their bone boxes, whereas in America it's Free Speech and no child left behind, so every fuckwit has an opinion that needs to be heard and encouraged by his fellow morons. This by the way is slashdot, where plenty of Americans spend plenty of time decrying the ignorance of their fellow Americans, so maybe they know something you don't, or at least don't want to admit?

    9. Re:It's obvious by stenvar · · Score: 0

      Well, it's obvious to you and pretty much every part of your answer is wrong. Thanks for proving again that people like you don't know what they are talking about.

    10. Re:It's obvious by dkleinsc · · Score: 2

      FTFY, really getting tired of the hurr durr, muricans r dumb meme.

      Americans, compared to the rest of the industrialized world, score worse on standardized tests, are more likely to have demonstrably false beliefs about things that have been scientifically settled for at least a century, and have an all-around terrible educational system. Hence the belief that Americans are dumb.

      And I write this as a "murican".

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    11. Re:It's obvious by sincewhen · · Score: 1

      And I write this as a "murican".

      Liar!

      Your posting was well written, informative, and succinctly made its point without resorting to personal attacks.

      --
      -- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.
  12. Re:Hear come the deniers. by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

    When you are done with that genocide on strawmen, you could start educating yourself.

    --
    Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
  13. Amazing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    2011: Britain's hot spring could be result of shrinking Arctic
    Meteorologist Tim Woollings, of Reading University, said: "Climate models are starting to show some agreement that jet streams will shift slight closer to the poles in response to increases in greenhouse gases."

    2012: Met Office: Arctic sea-ice loss linked to colder, drier UK winters
    Slingo told the MPs that there is "increasing evidence in the last few months of that depletion of ice, in particular in the Bering and Kara seas, can plausibly impact on our winter weather and lead to colder winters over northern Europe". She added that more cold winters mean less water, and could exacerbate future droughts.

    2013: Scientists link frozen spring to dramatic Arctic sea ice loss
    Climate scientists have linked the massive snowstorms and bitter spring weather now being experienced across Britain and large parts of Europe and North America to the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice.

    1. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      2011: Britain's hot spring could be result of shrinking Arctic Meteorologist Tim Woollings, of Reading University, said: "Climate models are starting to show some agreement that jet streams will shift slight closer to the poles in response to increases in greenhouse gases."

      Woollings added. "The hot weather we had this year arose because the jet stream was deflected south. Last year, it occurred because the stream was deflected north. So it is still very difficult to predict what will happen."

      2013: Scientists link frozen spring to dramatic Arctic sea ice loss Climate scientists have linked the massive snowstorms and bitter spring weather now being experienced across Britain and large parts of Europe and North America to the dramatic loss of Arctic sea ice.

      According to Francis and a growing body of other researchers, the Arctic ice loss adds heat to the ocean and atmosphere which shifts the position of the jet stream – the high-altitude river of air that steers storm systems and governs most weather in northern hemisphere.

      So, not very amazing at all. As the jet stream fluctuates it has large effects on the weather. Increased fluctuations lead to less stable and predictable weather patterns. Climate scientists have been consistent in predicting this loss of stability.

  14. AGW theory is junk science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Love all the posters trying to support a theory that is hardly more factual than creationism.

    Sorry, but a key to the scientific method is having a disprovable hypothesis. AGW supporters skip over this and jump into "faith" like any good acolyte.

    If you want me to believe your 100 year model for climate, you need to get the next 5 right. Since predictions of the last 5 have been an utter FAIL, you have a lot of work to do.

    Yeah, I get that melting ice could make things cold, but why wasn't this predicted? Instead of casting doubt on your assumptions or the predictive ability of the model, or the fact it's obvious it is incomplete, you attack a legitimate critique.

    If you want to see stubborn faith, look in the mirror.

    1. Re:AGW theory is junk science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you want to see stubborn faith, look in the mirror.

      I suggest that if you want to see the mirror, you should get your head out of your ass!

  15. Re:Hear come the deniers. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    its understandable though, as a fairly rich, white heterosexual male, most of the shit is our fault. I know its a real bitch to blamed for shit but rich white people spent centuries blaming the same things on poor minorities, your just pissed because you can no longer convince all of us that its not our responsibility, its some niggers fault, specifically that one in the white house and his uppity wife too. Its ok as i white man i understand your frustration, they key to getting past it, however, is to come to the realization that things haven't really changed that much, its not that your opinion is largely irrelevant now, its that it was never really that relevant to begin with.

  16. Re:What? The system is self-regulating? by Sique · · Score: 1

    No. It's not. It could be the (long predicted) weakening of the Gulf stream, which leads to colder and longer winters in Europe.

    --
    .sig: Sique *sigh*
  17. WTF mate??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Just wth does a terrorist group, the Weather Underground, have anything to do with the bloody weather????

  18. Not everywhere by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In Mexico City the weather has gone crazy, one week there is cold (less than 10 c) and the next is damn hot (27+ c). All March has been like this, is fucking annoying.

  19. Exactly why I'm a firm believe in AGW by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    Even on a larger scale, the past 10,000 years have been an amazing anomaly, with a relatively stable climate not seen anywhere else in the data (and it's probably no coincidence that mankind happened to emerge technologically during this rare stable-ish window).

    That is why so clearly this anomaly is the result of AGW - Alien Generated Warming. They saw potential in us as a species so they elevated global temperatures for a time, in order for us to reach the point where we are technologically able to continue the warming trend they began - if we can figure out that we need to. That's the test required to enter the IPC (Intergalactic Planetary Coalition).

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Exactly why I'm a firm believe in AGW by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even on a larger scale, the past 10,000 years have been an amazing anomaly, with a relatively stable climate not seen anywhere else in the data (and it's probably no coincidence that mankind happened to emerge technologically during this rare stable-ish window).

      That is why so clearly this anomaly is the result of AGW - Alien Generated Warming. They saw potential in us as a species so they elevated global temperatures for a time, in order for us to reach the point where we are technologically able to continue the warming trend they began - if we can figure out that we need to. That's the test required to enter the IPC (Intergalactic Planetary Coalition).

      They're coming back to harvest us when population hits 10 Billion and we've mined enough gold.

  20. who cares? by stenvar · · Score: 1

    So what if the North Pole is ice free? Ice free poles have been the normal state for our planet for most of the time that primates have been around.

    1. Re:who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You don't understand. They need a boogey-man to scare us with. Before this it was the ozone hole. Before that it was nuclear winter. Before that it was the coming ice age. If enough people ignored them they would just dream up another myth and go away.

    2. Re:who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OMG DENIER BURN HIM BURN HIM!!

      Slashdot doesn't let me yell like a an ordinary respected lynch mob member. :?

  21. Great to stay credible. Where's my maple sugar? by Anti+Cheat · · Score: 3, Informative

    Last month the cold weather was because warm air from the south rose over the arctic cold air, thus forcing the colder arctic air down to the southern latitudes. So now it is because last summer there was less ice that froze over long before spring ever came. So how again did the ice covering all the arctic now has caused a colder spring? Did anyone tell these guys that the arctic is still frozen over as we speak? It's not open water. So why is the jet stream being affected? I'm just not clear on all this.
    I do know one thing. It's still cold outside and the sow is still on the ground. How is this different from any other Canadian winter or spring for that matter? I'm just lucky enough to remember the weather before all this global warming came along. So how is it different again? How is getting snow in the winter anything unusual? How is snow on the ground in March different? How is maple sugar season changed?

    1. Re:Great to stay credible. Where's my maple sugar? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How is maple sugar season changed?

      Global Warming stole the Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve (SMSR)!

    2. Re:Great to stay credible. Where's my maple sugar? by Anti+Cheat · · Score: 1

      Global Warming stole the Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve (SMSR)!

      My God!!!! That's it!
      Everything is caused by global warming.

      I did however like one comment in the article, on how it caused a colder and snowier winter/spring with the conclusion there will be less water. Umm the more snow that melts in the spring, usually means more water not less in the summer.

    3. Re:Great to stay credible. Where's my maple sugar? by Archibald+Buttle · · Score: 1

      It may not be all that unusual for you in Canada to still have snow on the ground at this time of year. In contrast though the last couple of winters in Toronto have been highly unusual to basically be essentially snow free.

      Here in the UK, it's very unusual for us to still have snow around now. In contrast Easter weekend last year in contrast was unseasonably warm and people were having barbecues. Normal for here is about half way between the two.

      The point is that climate is a global thing. Just because you're having a fairly normal winter in Canada doesn't mean that the rest of us are.

    4. Re:Great to stay credible. Where's my maple sugar? by Anti+Cheat · · Score: 1

      First up is that Toronto is historically mostly snow free. The little snow it gets, usually melts soon after without much if any accumulation over the winter period. It is more influenced by the lake effect than any occasional Alberta clipper. Also check Toronto's latitude as related to the rest of Canada.

      As for your comment about the rest of the world..
      The point is that climate is a global thing. Just because you're having a slightly longer winter in the UK doesn't mean that the rest of us are, or means is it a sign of global warming..

      You live in a climate buffer zone with most of your climate influenced by the gulf stream rather than the northern pressure zones. You must be young not to know colder and/or longer winter temperatures in the UK. Check the history starting now and perhaps going back 200 to 400 years. The Thames freezing over and especially Longer winters is not that uncommon in the UK. It's weather history oscillates somewhat, as would be expected at that location due to these and other factors living in that zone. Better hope the gulf stream continues flowing your way, or get used to longer and far less hospitable winters.. It historically does fluctuate.

      But my main point!
      As for what you called "my view" as compared to the rest of the world. Recognizing dry humour or sarcasm isn't your strong point is it?

  22. Just wondering by i · · Score: 0, Troll

    How come that:

    When the weather is hot, it's a prof of global warming.
    When the weather is cold, it's a prof of global warming.
    When the wind is strong, it's a prof of global warming.
    When the wind is weak, it's a prof of global warming.
    When it's dry, it's a prof of global warming.
    When it's wet, it's a prof of global warming.

    --
    Mundus Vult Decipi
    1. Re:Just wondering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's why they call it 'climate change' now, it fits ALL cases! ;)

    2. Re:Just wondering by asylumx · · Score: 1

      Because these are all weather patterns that indicate a changing climate.

    3. Re:Just wondering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You spelled proof wrong consistently.

    4. Re:Just wondering by Straumli+Perversion · · Score: 1

      There has always been hot and cold weather, strong and weak winds, and dry and wet weather, before and after we started consuming so much oil. I echo those above me, I would really like to see a falsifiable statement somewhere in the theory.

    5. Re:Just wondering by HexaByte · · Score: 2

      You spelled proof wrong consistently.

      But at least he's more consistent than the AWG guys!

      --
      HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
    6. Re:Just wondering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Unpredictable changes in established weather patterns are one of the predicted outcomes of decreased arctic ice cover.

    7. Re:Just wondering by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But at least he's more consistent than the AWG guys!

      Man tell me about it! I know AWG guy, sometime he use 22 AWG, sometime he use 30 AWG. Make up mind already christ's sake!

  23. It's a bit cold... by Gordonjcp · · Score: 2

    ... but it's not unusually cold. This is what the weather is like in the UK. Spring is a fairly unpredictable time of year, in a part of the world where the weather is generally unpredictable.

    A couple of years ago we had weeks of -25ÂC weather during the winter, but in the last two it barely got below freezing. This winter, of course, it's going to be back to really cold, or maybe it's going to be back to really warm, or maybe just kind of middling with lots of rain.

    1. Re:It's a bit cold... by Xest · · Score: 1

      "... but it's not unusually cold. This is what the weather is like in the UK. Spring is a fairly unpredictable time of year, in a part of the world where the weather is generally unpredictable."

      Yes it is unusually cold. The summed average since records began for where I am for example suggests a day time high of 12c and a night time low of 5c for this time of year, but actual temperatures for a few weeks now have been below 2c during the day and below 0c at night. It's the coldest recorded March for over 50 years, how is this not unusual?

      "A couple of years ago we had weeks of -25ÃC weather during the winter, but in the last two it barely got below freezing. This winter, of course, it's going to be back to really cold, or maybe it's going to be back to really warm, or maybe just kind of middling with lots of rain."

      We didn't get -25c where I am, that was up in the highlands, where I am we got low of -18c, but guess what again the historical average was for that time of year? 3c by day, 1c by night. Again, that's a long way out from the averages - an extreme outlier in fact.

      We're almost certainly never going to have an average year (if we did, did you know that South of Newcastle no part of the UK would actually drop as low as 0c on even one day of the year?), there's no such thing, but by and large, the extremes of the last few years have been blatant outliers, way outside any normal expected range, and way more erratic than we had for decades previous. Worse, even where we have had outliers in the past, such as bad winter in the 70s, those erratic periods were one offs - single year events, this erratic nature has been going on for 5 winters now. You're always going to see some variation, but normal variation in my part of the UK for example would be between about -8c and +28c for my part of the UK, instead the past few years it's changed to about -18c to +32c - that's a 14c expansion outside the previous normal expected range, and that's no small change.

      You may have also noticed that outside of the winters we've also had some of the worst floods and some of the worst droughts we've had in decades.

      British weather is about as far from normal as it's ever been, and has been for at least 5 years now, unless you define erratic and extreme as the new normal.

  24. SNAFU Jedi Mind Tricks by msmonroe · · Score: 2

    Weather Scientists: This is further proof of Global Climate Change.
    Fundamentalist Christian: This is not the proof that you're look for...
    Weather Scientists: This is not the proof that we're looking for...
    Fundamentalist Christian: Move along....
    Weather Scientists: You're right this is not enough proof, we'll need to keep on looking...

    1. Re:SNAFU Jedi Mind Tricks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What in the world does Fundamentalist Christianity have to do with the "debate" over global warming?
      Is it just because there's a correlation between that religious group and Republicans, a correlation between Republicans and crony capitalism, and a correlation between crony capitalism and AGW denial?
      Surely you're not going to claim there's some connection between fundie doctrines and positions on this issue?

  25. Arctic and Antarctic winds key. by chrisale1452 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is just the latest in a series of published work finding that weakening ocean and land temperature contrasts between high and mid northern latitudes is having a profound effect on the Jet Stream. Search for jet stream and arctic on Google Scholar and they'll pop up. They all show that the poles live and die by the circumpolar winds that 'lock' the cold air in those high latitudes (Antarctica included by the way!). If those circumpolar winds diminish, then the cold can effectively 'escape'. In the Northern Hemisphere, it results in the jet stream becoming extremely contorted, sets up 'blocking' and we get these long periods of abnormal weather (extra cold in late winter/early spring, extra heat in late summer/early fall?) The weather channel has a great rundown of the jet stream *today*. Illustrates it perfectly. http://www.weather.com/video/forecast-for-your-spring-35814 Lets just thank our lucky stars that Antarctica is a continent surrounded by ocean, and not an ocean surrounded by continents, like the Arctic. This fundamental difference means the southern circumpolar winds have a huge contrast to work from with the gigantic ice fields of the continent versus the far away lands of Southern America, Oceania, and Africa. Ironically, the ozone hole actually makes the Antarctic colder and the circumpolar winds stronger... so as it fixes itself as human CFC emissions dimish, those winds will start to weaken and warming will be able to creep in there as well. But at least that buys us time. Were the Arctic and Antarctic equal, global warming would have likely been much more immediate. Though who knows, maybe that would have spurred us to action before today (which is still never?) The world and science that attempts to explain it is wonderful and terrifying all at the same time. Lets hope we can get our acts together and change our course before we cause so much change to our atmosphere and oceans that we are unable to avoid the clear and present dangers now on tap.

    1. Re:Arctic and Antarctic winds key. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "If those circumpolar winds diminish, then the cold can effectively 'escape'. In the Northern Hemisphere, it results in the jet stream becoming extremely contorted, sets up 'blocking' and we get these long periods of abnormal weather (extra cold in late winter/early spring, extra heat in late summer/early fall?"

      The problem is there is no mechanism to save the extra heat from the previous autumn (when there was low sea ice) to now in the spring when we are getting more blocking.

      Also this new theory fails to take into account that all previous global warming models showed the polar jet getting stronger not weaker.

    2. Re:Arctic and Antarctic winds key. by chrisale1452 · · Score: 1

      That's not true at all. The extra heat can be very likely be transferred to the oceans. Something never possible in the Arctic Ocean before. Also to a lesser extent any permafrost that has now thawed (many studies have shown the permafrost line shrinking northward) would also represent energy lost to the earth. We are witnessing a massive change in the Earths heat budget, and it will hit the weather patterns of the Northern Hemisphere particularly hard.

  26. Not in the next 500 years or so by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    So to, I would imagine, the millions of people in low lying coastal areas that will be forced to move as rising sea levels

    The seas would actually have to rise significantly first.

    To date the actual sea rise has been tiny, and pretty consistent - about six inches over 100 years. So the people living in low coastal areas will have a few hundred years to mull over things before thinking about moving.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Not in the next 500 years or so by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where are you getting those numbers? According to what I can pull up the sea levels are expected to rise at least 2.46', and up to 5.9' over the next 90 years alone. Some areas of Europe are already having to build surge control structures to keep the tides and minor storm surges from flooding out portions of cities.

    2. Re:Not in the next 500 years or so by slackware+3.6 · · Score: 1

      And the Dutch were sticking their fingers in dykes way back in the day of Hans Brinkler.

    3. Re:Not in the next 500 years or so by Farmer+Tim · · Score: 1

      So the people living in low coastal areas will have a few hundred years to mull over things before thinking about moving.

      You're absolutely positive about that?

      --
      Blank until /. makes another boneheaded UI decision.
  27. History has caught up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The whole AGW crowd is going down the tubes. The idea was to get in quick with a few data points, get the treaties signed, and then it wouldn't matter.

    Unfortunately for the AGW crowd, we can now Google 30 years of newspaper headlines that say things like:
    "Why it's getting colder"
    "Why we were wrong before, and why it's getting warmer"
    "Why the weather is crazy and we'll see more frequent, more powerful hurricanes"
    "Why we were wrong before, but even the occasional strong hurricane proves us right"
    "Why it's getting colder"

    Maybe I'm unclear on the word "prediction", but I don't think it counts if your theory can only predict the past.

  28. What's with the anti-environment crowd? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I find it really bizarre that Slashdot, a website that usually has intelligent discussion, is filled with climate change naysayers.

    Is this real life?

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record

    The 9 warmest years on record happened this century. The Earth is heating up, and rapidly.

    Who the fuck are you people?

    1. Re:What's with the anti-environment crowd? by moeinvt · · Score: 1

      People who see through the BS of one manufactured crisis after another being used as an excuse to expand the size and power of the government.

      Communists, terrorists, WMDs, financial armageddon, climate change. SSDD. Always stirring up fear as a justification for more and more concentration of power. I'm not "anti-environment" I'm "anti-central planning". Grant the people who passed the 2012 NDAA additional power to micro-manage my energy use? Not a chance.

    2. Re:What's with the anti-environment crowd? by nitehawk214 · · Score: 1

      I find it really bizarre that Slashdot, a website that usually has intelligent discussion, is filled with climate change naysayers.

      Is this real life?

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_record

      The 9 warmest years on record happened this century. The Earth is heating up, and rapidly.

      Who the fuck are you people?

      What.

      --
      I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
    3. Re:What's with the anti-environment crowd? by al.caughey · · Score: 2

      IMHO - The real problem is that the time-scales and forces go beyond our capacity to imagine... we're now so used to pithy comments in less than 140 characters that we cannot fathom the millions of years involved in this problem.

      The oil and coal that we consuming is a result of geological process that took millions of years to complete... and we're burning through it in a few hundred years.
      i.e., in a comparatively short time, we're releasing back into the atmosphere millions of years worth of carbon (and a whole host of other pollutants)...

      Is that the only reason that the climate is changing ? Of course not.
      Is that rapid infusion of carbon going to influence those changes? I can only imagine yes
      Can I prove this? No.
      Can we afford not to be concerned about this? Not at all

    4. Re:What's with the anti-environment crowd? by meta-monkey · · Score: 4, Informative

      I don't get it either. And it isn't just ignorance, it's outright stupidity. If you've been informed, and still don't understand, that's stupidity. And it's been explained over and over and over again.

      Weather is not climate and global warming is not climate change.

      One more time:

      1) Radiation in and out are the only methods of changing the average temperature of the earth.

      2) The sun emits radiation from the near-infrared range up through UV.

      3) When molecules absorb radiation, the reemit it in a random direction.

      4) Oxygen absorbs and reemits UV radiation, spitting most of it back out into space.

      5) Atmospheric gasses are transparent to visible light, so the visible light radiation is absorbed by the surface of the earth.

      6) the surface warms, and reemits lower energy thermal radiation (IR).

      7) So-called "greenhouses gasses" like CO2, water vapor, and methane which make up only small parts of the atmosphere are opaque to IR radiation. They absorb this radiation, gain energy, and physically collide with the other gasses in the atmosphere, heating them. Nearly all heating of the earth's atmosphere is from this interaction.

      8) The GHG's then emit an IR photon in a random direction, where it is reabsorbed by another molecule and reemitted on and on until it happens to ping pong out into space, radiating heat away from the earth.

      9) The higher the concentration of these trace gasses in the atmosphere, the longer it takes for a photon to leave earth, and the warmer the atmosphere is, on average.

      10) Man burns lots of long chains of carbohydrates which result in a forced higher concentration of CO2. This happens slowly over time.

      11) Plants do not gobble it all up, because plants don't live on CO2 alone. Some of it dissolves in the ocean, causing ocean acidification, which is a completely different problem. Regardless, enough of it stays in the atmosphere.

      12) The earth slowly warms because of CO2 forcing. Additionally, higher average temperatures result in more water vapor in the air, and water vapor is an even more effective green house gas than CO2. This leads to the "runaway" greenhouse gas effect.

      13) This process that produces higher average global temperatures from man-made activities is called anthropogenic global warming.

      14) While the global mean temperature is higher, local average temperatures will certainly vary. Some places will become warmer on average, some cooler, some wetter, some drier, on average, than before.

      15) These average changes at different points in the year change the overall climate of those places. This is called climate change. It is a product of global warming.

      16) A changed climate results in different weather patterns for an area than the weather patterns that existed before climate change.

      17) The weather, as influenced by a changing climate as a result of global warming, is not necessarily warmer in every region of at all times. It is simply different than it was.

      This should not be complicated for an educated audience to comprehend.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    5. Re:What's with the anti-environment crowd? by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      it's mostly about being tired of being offered one bullshit explanation after another month after another depending on if northern europe has been warm or cold for the past month regardless of if it's fitting to the season or not.

      so what intelligent is there left to talk about an explanation that covers both if it's warm and if it's cold? buying hybrid cars?

      I want the average here to go up by about ten c's, fwiw. and why not show a diagram that shows the temps for when iceland was colonized? that's what tiring and bullshit, drawing a devil on the wall - offering no recourse and ignoring the earlier devil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png

      now who the fuck are you mr anon and when you're rapidly cumming does it take 200 years for it to make a difference on crops?

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    6. Re:What's with the anti-environment crowd? by Requiem18th · · Score: 1

      Forget that, what about the many slashdotters that still believe in God? Slashdotters are technically inclined but many are still pretty crazy.

      --
      But... the future refused to change.
    7. Re:What's with the anti-environment crowd? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OK, fine, but everything you mentioned can be manufactured by government and compliant media except this. There's actual proof of it happening. In fact, the media has consistently ignored or tried to "show both sides" for a long time now. (as if there always has to be two sides and each must be given equal weight no matter how ridiculous their position or shabby their evidence)

      I've been hearing about the Gulf Stream and the probable effects of it shifting for European winters for some time now. Years, in fact. Yet I see countless posts around here from people who I assume have honestly not heard of this before.

      The only thing "manufactured" about this has been made up crap like "climategate" and other pro-corporate anti-science stuff. If you hate central planning so much, how about reserving just a little of that hatred for centralized corporate planning. Same thing. Different office.

    8. Re:What's with the anti-environment crowd? by Neil+Boekend · · Score: 1

      Don't forget: 18) Humans live where the climate allows it. If the climate changes, the places where humans can live change to. 19) The way from livable to unlivable is fast, the way from unlivable to livable is slow. 20) During the changes there will be less places to live.

      --
      Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
    9. Re:What's with the anti-environment crowd? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As somebody that isn't convinced that global warming is an actual phenomenon let me applaud your description of radiant heat. However you miss the point. A SCIENTIST far more intelligent than myself pointed out a very important observation. He said something like "Looking at global temperatures in the minute amount of time that we humans have been recording temperatures is like betting on a stock that we observed for a minute on the stock exchange. Based on that small amount of data you can't accurately understand the overall trend. Global temperatures over the past eon fluctuate more dramatically than the stock market and the limited data that we have to work with is too small to accurately predict anything of usable scientific purpose." If you tried selling bathing suits in October with no other data than your sales, you would predict that there was a poor market for bathing suits, the data sample needs to be larger to establish a trend. At one time glaciers ran over New York State, but they melted with no help from man. The southwest of the united states has always been a desert except for a few times in the last thousand years. The Colorado river is at the lowest levels this century, but past data shows that it normally is at levels lower than it currently is, and that we have been enjoying an environmental glitch that it has been at such high levels this last century.
                With all that said and your head steaming, I will placate you that I subscribe to John McCain's response on global warming. "It doesn't matter if you believe in global warming or not, the technologies and the progression towards a greener industry benefit us all."

    10. Re:What's with the anti-environment crowd? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Excellent summary, but the GW deniers will continue to throw chaff into the air, seizing on every little comment to distort facts. They are worse than the bible thumpers denying evolution.

    11. Re:What's with the anti-environment crowd? by 32771 · · Score: 1

      Since we as "nerds" are so highly specialized and dependent on industrial society I would expect us to try to hang onto our dreams just that much harder. I mean if you would actually be willing to get rid of the fossil fuel fraction of societies energy input you would probably have only 20% left. The peak oil guys fear exactly that. The people you see here arguing that AGW is fraud are probably in some form of kicking and screaming stage while being dragged towards recognizing the problem. Once you get your head around the problems we are facing you would probably enjoy whats left of the party, instead of arguing with the stragglers. Which is essentially a waste of time, since all the information necessary to make educated policy decisions has been around for ages and has been ignored, so why would you expect more from some basement dwellers.

      --
      Je me souviens.
    12. Re:What's with the anti-environment crowd? by meta-monkey · · Score: 1

      Why would that make my head steam?

      You reference "A SCIENTIST." Well I will call upon the authority of Carl Sagan to respond "arguments from authority are worthless."

      First, the climate of the earth does change over time. This has never been in doubt. However, man's influence has greatly accelerated the process.

      Now, the exact nature of the changes we'll experience are not definitive, but some of them are almost certainly bad. What troubles me more than anything, honestly, is ocean acidification, because we're seeing massive depopulation in fishing stock, and, man, I love me some motherfucking fish. So tasty.

      The political problem, though, is we can't even begin to plan for the future when lots of vocal morons won't even acknowledge the situation exists. It's like, we can look outside and see it's starting to rain. There are dark clouds on the horizon. Jim wonders, "Huh, looks like rain. Think an umbrella will do, or should I go for the full-on poncho and galoshes?" Steve says "AIN'T NO RAIN." Jim says, "No, no, it's definitely raining. I mean, it's sprinkling right now. There's some puddles. It's pretty obvious." Steve says "SKIES DON'T RAIN! YOU LIE!" Jim sighs, takes Steve by the arm, pulls him outside into the storm. "See? Feel that?" Steve says "JUST GOD'S KISSES YEEEEHAW!"

      What to do is up for debate, but the fact that it's happening and why isn't. Like Neil Tyson says, "That's the great thing about science. It's true whether you believe it or not."

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    13. Re:What's with the anti-environment crowd? by meta-monkey · · Score: 1

      "BUT THEY'RE ONLY THEORIES!"

      It's basically the perfect form of IRL trolling, because they make you spend 10 minutes explaining the difference between the colloquial version of the word "theory" and the scientific one.

      --
      We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
    14. Re:What's with the anti-environment crowd? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "The 9 warmest years on record happened this century. The Earth is heating up, and rapidly"

      One would expect the warmest years when the warmth is peaking. The earth is heating 0.13C per decade, not "rapidly". Part of that 0.13C was a more rapid spurt in the 90's which has ended. We expect that CO2 will continue to slowly heat the earth and be added to or subtracted from by natural variations. We are coming into a period where natural variations will result in global cooling. Specifically the slowing of solar activity has yet to manifest in any substantial amount due to thermal inertia. But it will manifest in the next decade or two.

    15. Re:What's with the anti-environment crowd? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "12) The earth slowly warms because of CO2 forcing. Additionally, higher average temperatures result in more water vapor in the air, and water vapor is an even more effective green house gas than CO2. This leads to the "runaway" greenhouse gas effect."

      Water vapor does not respond to CO2-caused warming. Water vapor (mostly clouds) is the driver of global temperature. The global average temperature fluctuates 0.03C in one day which is at least 2 years of warming from CO2. Over the very long run CO2 will have a more noticeable effect, but we have yet to see that long run (many decades in the future) but there will never be "runaway" warming from water vapor, it is simply impossible: it is uneven, it will rise, it will result in global cooling.

  29. Gulf Stream has not weakened. by mc6809e · · Score: 4, Interesting

    According to the most recent SST anomaly map found here, much of the Gulf Stream is anomalously warmer than expected.

  30. Just use the simple formula by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's too hot: global warming
    It's too cold: global warming
    Lots of hurricanes: global warming
    Relatively few hurricanes: global warming
    We need more funding: global warming

  31. Bull by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It *always* snows during March Madness. Without exception. One day of snow at the end of March isn't new.

  32. Global Warmin Advocacy is NOT SCIENCE by PortHaven · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Seriously,

    weather = super hot = evidence of global warming

    weather = freezing cold = evidence of global warming

    weather = no snow = evidence of global warming

    weather = record snow = evidence of global warming

    Global Warming Skeptic exclaims "weather not correlating to global warming" = Global Warming Advocate "weather isn't an indicator of climate change" Weather hot, no snow, etc. And suddenly, Global Warming Advocates use weather as an indication of global warming. Which is it?

    Global Warming Advocacy argues ALL changes in weather point to, and are explained by global warming. The only proof we can possibly have against global warming, would be a decade long period in which zero change in average temp, percipitation, ice, or what not occurred. (And frankly, I'd laugh my butt off if that actually happened and we went through 10 years with zero climate change - I'd also say there'd be proof that there is a God and that he has a warped sense of humor.)

    But the reality is, that global warming advocates put forth a non-testable hypothesis that can explain everything. And has zero way of being countered per scientific method. And all of this is over a mere 1/2 to 1 1/2 degree variation in temperature. With questionable records at that. Furthermore, we know it was much warmer 150,000 years ago when much of the arctic ice was gone

    Just some comments per Wikipedia

    "NASA, found that the “rate of warming in the Arctic over the last 20 years is eight times the rate of warming over the last 100 years"
    [Okay, a 120 years geologically speaking is a blink in the record.]

    "In September 2012, sea ice reached its smallest size ever."
    [Really, history records it as having disappeared completely a number of times. Do we mean smallest in modern history? Cause scientific evidence has shown the ice cap has had significant melts several times over the last 2.8 millions years (which is still a short time span geologically speaking)]

    1. Re:Global Warmin Advocacy is NOT SCIENCE by Requiem18th · · Score: 1

      Why must you be such an idiot? Weather is not Climate, record snow, rain and cold are localized phenomena, when you consider the entirety of Earth's atmosphere it is hotter than 50 years ago, it continues to get hotter every year and even the rate of acceleration is itself is increasing. We are talking about Earth's atmosphere as a whole. How many times do you have to be explained that your local weather this week isn't an adequate model for the whole Earth? Why do we have to go through this every year? Oh yeah, because you are an idiot.

      --
      But... the future refused to change.
    2. Re:Global Warmin Advocacy is NOT SCIENCE by PortHaven · · Score: 2

      a) You are the tools calling every hurricane, flood, drought or blizzard is PROOF of global warming.

      b) You are the tools claiming a 1/2-1 degree, change from 50 years ago is proof the end of the world is coming.

      c) Earth's atmosphere has been significantly hotter, by several degrees. Life still flourished.

      d) "How many times do you have to be explained that your local weather this week isn't an adequate model for the whole Earth? "

      Thousands...until you stop claiming every local weather incident is global warming. And how 50 years in a 150 million years of life history is any reasonable measure of time.

    3. Re:Global Warmin Advocacy is NOT SCIENCE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Key word = rate. YES, there have been periods with more CO2 in the atm and higher global temps. HOWEVER, the RATE of the increase [not heat people!] and CO2 increase are unprecedented. Who gives a shit? How about all living things that need to evolve to or migrate to new environments. Bacteria got it made, their generational time makes them a sure bet to be ok. Plankton? I'm fairly confident they will be ok as long as they can handle the ocean acidification. Plants - depends on the generation time, annuals, sure, Redwoods? I'm doubtful. Most mammals? I'm not so sure, at least not in the numbers we got now. So food production is going to be an issue. Some people say, so what, the grasslands move North as the world ave temp increases. Ok. Where the solid appropriate for food grains coming from? Ever see boreal forest soil? Pretty thin stuff and not exactly nutrient dense to grow modern grains with. So expect grain yields to drop like a rock. Already happened a few times in the last few years due to heat strain. The physics is settled we know what CO2 does. The complicity of clouds/water vapor/soot/albedo change/particulates are harder to PREDICT yes, but the overall mechanisms tend to be positive reinforcements. Ultimately the threat is to BIOLOGY. We're all arguing over what to order for dinner not who's gonna pay the bill.

    4. Re:Global Warmin Advocacy is NOT SCIENCE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here in Auckland we were told a few years ago that global warming would bring increased rainfall. Now that we're experiencing the worst ever drought with old trees dying we're told global warming will bring decreased rainfall.

      Perhaps people would be less sceptical if climate-change activists didn't say every change in the weather was evidence of global warming and make predictions that keep not panning out.

    5. Re:Global Warmin Advocacy is NOT SCIENCE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      a) I think you are mistaken. Citation? Even a few examples would suffice (but it would have to claim PROOF).
      b) Citation?
      c) And life will probably still flourish after we're gone. It just won't be human life.
      d) I don't know of any scientist who says an individual weather event is caused by global warming alone. Again I think you're mistaken. I *have* read scientists attempting to explain that global warming increases the likelihood of various weather events. It is certain that fewer of certain types of extreme weather events would have occurred if not for AGW, but who can say which individual events wouldn't have happened? Scientists may speak of probabilities, but I don't think anyone picks individual weather events and says "This one was caused by AGW and nothing else."

      In fact, you've just listed 3 lies out of 4 statements; either you pulled them out of your ass to make the other side seem bad, or you have a serious comprehension disability. The only truthful statement is that other forms of life flourished in hotter times.

    6. Re:Global Warmin Advocacy is NOT SCIENCE by Legion303 · · Score: 1

      1/10. Troll harder.

    7. Re:Global Warmin Advocacy is NOT SCIENCE by PortHaven · · Score: 1

      Oh, well, let's chuck science...as very few people ever get to hear from scientists. We get to hear news reports. And there are tons of articles claiming to quote scientists alluding to weather events as tied to global warming/climate change.

      Citation = Google, it's your friend...

  33. Pacific side is warmer. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No gulfstream here in the pacific northwest. We had a dryer than usual winter and not cold at all.

  34. Re:Hear come the deniers. by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

    So, accepting the scientific consensus not only because it is consensus, but because it actually makes sense now makes one a liberal/marxist. Well, well, if you want to be taken seriously, you should upgrade your arguments. That goes for tmosley as well, who has been spewing his water vapor bullcrap for years here, in spite of being pointed to actual data, papers and every kind of source which disprove his talking point - which is, in the end, that because of water CO2 doesn't matter - still keeps on repeating the old tired lies. Don't put yourself in the place of Galileo, your intellectual dishonesty is bad enough without it.

    --
    Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
  35. Re:What? The system is self-regulating? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...and less warming.

  36. Sahara Desert Was Lush by SnappyTech · · Score: 1

    The Sahara desert was a green and lush place just a few thousand years ago: they still have the skeletons of HIPPOS and other beasts to prove it. How much water does a HIPPO need guys? Quite a bit. NASA says it was green "10,000" years ago but I always felt it was more like -- go ahead and laugh -- 4,000 years ago. Areas around Iraq had cities that were surrounded by water, Venice-style. Israel was brimming with BEARS and lions and wolves. Takes a lot of vegetation to support a BEAR. The middle east use to have plenty of forests and trees. The world is filled with examples of gigantism in previous ages. Basically, the world is dying a slow death -- and it all began before a single factory existed. The scientists that insisted that the world was climatically constant for hundreds of thousands of years have basically set everybody up for a big surprise when they begin to realize things are really changing. Now they want to shut down the economies of developed nations to hand manufacturing over to the biggest polluters on the earth.

    1. Re:Sahara Desert Was Lush by fl!ptop · · Score: 2

      The Sahara desert was a green and lush place just a few thousand years ago

      I believe the change there is due to the precession of the earth's axis.

      --
      When you recognize love in another and realize how precious it is, everything else seems so insignificant.
  37. Re:Hear come the deniers. by drsmack1 · · Score: 0

    As a student of science history, I have seen the term "scientific consensus" many many times throughout history. Usually it is followed immediately by something like "and then blah blah happened."

    >> your intellectual dishonesty is bad enough without it

    Uh, what intellectual dishonesty? Do you dispute my characterization of how the scientific method should work?

    You would be better off simply not replying when you have no comeback. By retorting with a zero-content post, you only confirmed that in this battle you are completely unarmed.

  38. Bet on it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Would anyone who believes in AGW who owns waterfront property please give me a call?

    I will happily take that soon-to-be-underwater (and therefore almost worthless) land off your hands for a reasonable price, and you can use the money to purchase soon-to-be-appreciating land on higher ground.

    Thanks.
    Sincerely,
    Al Gore.

  39. Ask Michael Oppenheimer. by slackware+3.6 · · Score: 1

    Oft-quoted Princeton scientist and climate-change advocate Michael Oppenheimer speaks of a 65% margin of error in their temperature predictions.
    http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/30/botched-environmental-forecasts/
    If you are ignorant of something, that is not our responsibility to correct. Your use of the word "our" implies that you are part of a group. I believe based on your statement that is the Global Warming group. So your group makes a claim of Global Warming. So yes it is your responsibly defend your claims and explain your methodology used to come to your conclusions. I never made a claim I have nothing to expain, you made a claim so you do.

    1. Re:Ask Michael Oppenheimer. by KeensMustard · · Score: 1

      Oft-quoted Princeton scientist and climate-change advocate Michael Oppenheimer speaks of a 65% margin of error in their temperature predictions. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/12/30/botched-environmental-forecasts/

      I see. Do you have a citation that actually matches your assertion?

      Also if you thought you knew what the error margin was, why did you claim that you didn't?

      If you are ignorant of something, that is not our responsibility to correct. Your use of the word "our" implies that you are part of a group. I believe based on your statement that is the Global Warming group. So your group makes a claim of Global Warming. So yes it is your responsibly defend your claims and explain your methodology used to come to your conclusions. I never made a claim I have nothing to expain, you made a claim so you do.

      I note your attempt to establish, by momentous leaps of logic, a circumstance whereby the scientific community owes you an explanation for the fact that reality behaves in a way that you (personally) do not like. I note this attempt in order to highlight it's failure.

    2. Re:Ask Michael Oppenheimer. by slackware+3.6 · · Score: 1, Informative

      Global warming scientists are not "the scientific community" and their reality is not fact it is speculation based on computer models. That is why not a single member of the global warming community will ever defend their possition. They can't because it isn't real. Claims like the ice is melting in the arctic and soon ships will be able cross the arctic ocean are bogus the North West passage was first navigated by Roald Amundsen in 1903–1906. Bet the co2 levels were really high back then. I was taught that co2 was plant food in school. When did that change? Why are the global warming scientists the only alledged scientists that don't want to expain their supposed facts and get angry when asked "how did you come to this conclusion"? Global warming scientists owe me a explanation because they are getting my tax dollars and they have the gall to say we don't owe you an explanation but trust us and give us more money.
      Here are some of their lies.
      March 20, 2000, from The Independent, According to Dr David Viner of the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit, snowfall in Britain would become “a very rare and exciting event” and “children just aren’t going to know what snow is.”
      June 30, 1989, Associated Press U.N. OFFICIAL PREDICTS DISASTER, SAYS GREENHOUSE EFFECT COULD WIPE SOME NATIONS OFF MAP–entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of “eco-refugees,” threatening political chaos, said Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program. He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect.
      1990 Michael Oppenheimer, The Environmental Defense Fund, “(By) 1995, the greenhouse effect would be desolating the heartlands of North America and Eurasia with horrific drought, causing crop failures and food riots”(By 1996) The Platte River of Nebraska would be dry, while a continent-wide black blizzard of prairie topsoil will stop traffic on interstates, strip paint from houses and shut down computersThe Mexican police will round up illegal American migrants surging into Mexico seeking work as field hands.”
      1988 or 1989, Dr. James Hansen (In an interview with author Rob Reiss. Reiss asked how the greenhouse effect was likely to affect the neighborhood below Hansen’s office in NYC in the next 20 years). Hansen, looking out the window, answered: ”The West Side Highway [which runs along the Hudson River] will be under water. And there will be tape across the windows across the street because of high winds. And the same birds won’t be there. The trees in the median strip will change.There will be more police cars.[since] you know what happens to crime when the heat goes up.”
      1969 Lubos Moti, Czech physicist ”It is now pretty clearly agreed that CO2 content [in the atmosphere] will rise 25% by 2000. This could increase the average temperature near the earth’s surface by 7 degrees fahrenheit. This in turn could raise the level of the sea by 10 feet. Goodbye New York. Goodbye Washington, for that matter.
      January 2000 Dr. Michael Oppenheimer of the Environmental Defense Fund commenting (in a NY Times interview) on the mild winters in New York City. ”But it does not take a scientist to size up the effects of snowless winters on the children too young to remember the record-setting blizzards of 1996. For them, the pleasures of sledding and snowball fights are as out-of-date as hoop-rolling, and the delight of a snow day off from school is unknown.”
      If any other real scientist was as full of shit as a global warming scientist well we wouldn't call them scientists but frauds.

    3. Re:Ask Michael Oppenheimer. by Alioth · · Score: 1

      Carbon dioxide is "plant food" but it is also a greenhouse gas. That CO2 is a greenhouse gas is not even under debate, it's a well known property of carbon dioxide.

    4. Re:Ask Michael Oppenheimer. by slackware+3.6 · · Score: 1

      It is a political thing there are a lot of worse greenhouse gasses like methane and nitrous oxide. 68% of nitous comes from fertilizing crops (that corn is so awesome) has 310 times more impact than co2.
      60% of methane comes from human activity and traps 25% more heat than co2. If global warming is real than we need to deal with the worst problems first. The co2 meme is getting old and is being used as an excuse the charge more for certain items that we need. My house is very energy efficient (i built it myself and put alot of effort into making it energy efficient) and it is only 978 ft/sq and 2 adults 3children live in it. My car (i bought one identical to my old one so I could recyle the parts) gets 40-45 mi per gallon just last night I removed the a/c system to get that extra 1 mi per gallon ( I live in a cold climate and it only gets used a couple weeks a year).
      I care about the enviroment but I am sick of rich people who do nothing to help the enviroment getting even richer in the name of co2. And politicians that have no clue telling me I have to pay an indulgence to some rich asshole for my sins to the enviroment. If co2 is so bad why arn't we getting rid of the private jets, yachts and limos? Why doesn't the president drive a smart car? Why does Al Gore need such a big assed house? Why does it seem that the strongest supporters of global warming have the most to gain financially?

    5. Re:Ask Michael Oppenheimer. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why is this shit modded +4 informative?

    6. Re:Ask Michael Oppenheimer. by Tamerlin · · Score: 2

      "I believe based on your statement that is the Global Warming group. So your group makes a claim of Global Warming." The facts say that global warming is real. Hence it's YOUR burden to find evidence to the contrary. Since global warming is actually happening, the models have predicted what we've been seeing in the real world, and the measurements back up the models, it's on the deniers to prove that they're not completely full of it. Since the deniers can't do that, one must conclude that they're full of it.

    7. Re:Ask Michael Oppenheimer. by Tamerlin · · Score: 1

      Why is this shit modded +4 informative?

      Because the idiocracy has already won. That there are still people who claim that global warming is false is incontrovertible proof that the idiocracy has, through simple dint of numbers, defeated the intelligentsia and is dooming future generations to a world of hell and high water is now also a scientifically verifiable fact.

    8. Re:Ask Michael Oppenheimer. by slackware+3.6 · · Score: 0

      If global warming is real why not reduce and tax nitrogen oxide that has 310 times the effect on global warming compared to co2 according to the EPA? The impact of 1 pound of N2O on warming the atmosphere is over 300 times that of 1 pound of carbon dioxide and accounts for 4% of greenhouse gasses emmited in the US anually. My source is http://epa.gov/climatechange/ghgemissions/gases/n2o.html. I'm sure you can do the math.

    9. Re:Ask Michael Oppenheimer. by Tamerlin · · Score: 2

      I've done the math. Maybe you ought to give it a try sometime? That is of course assuming that you can handle even basic arithmetic...

    10. Re:Ask Michael Oppenheimer. by slackware+3.6 · · Score: 0

      Smart asses, all you global warming frauds are the same never any proof just lies and insults.
      CO2 is bad it accounts for 84% of GHG emmitted by the US.
      N2O is 310 times worse than CO2 and accounts for 4% of GHG emmisions in the US.
      Methane accounts for 10% of US GHG emmisions and is 21 times worse than CO2.
      Notice in this thread not a single global warming fraud has given a single number or a single source for any of their claims. You have not pressented a single fact you are a liar or very stupid.
      If global warming is real why go after the smallest contributor to global warming? But you can't answer that can you?

    11. Re:Ask Michael Oppenheimer. by Tamerlin · · Score: 1

      "If global warming is real why go after the smallest contributor to global warming? But you can't answer that can you?" I can, but what would be the point?

    12. Re:Ask Michael Oppenheimer. by slackware+3.6 · · Score: 1

      If you honestly believed in global warming you would make every effort to make others understand what you claim is the truth. But you don't. Why? Because you believe so stongly? No because you belive based on faith not facts just like the christians do.
      God made the earth.
      Well do you have proof?
      I don't have to answer you because your a denier.
      That is why fewer people are believing in anything based on faith. What people do believe is the preachers promoting faith based global warming are just like the preachers proming faith based christianity. They are making a ton of money preaching their respective faiths and they don't want the money to stop.

    13. Re: Ask Michael Oppenheimer. by dfeifer · · Score: 1

      Also, we have quite a few less trees then we did in 1902..

    14. Re:Ask Michael Oppenheimer. by dave87656 · · Score: 1

      Um ... you are using fox news as a reference here? Seriously? Isn't that the network that actually sued to be able to lie to viewers presumably under the guise that television and news is entertainment.

  40. Re:Hear come the deniers. by Mindcontrolled · · Score: 1

    Yep, I am better off by simply not replying to bullshit. Go peddle your crap to the wattsuphiscrap echochamber.

    --
    Ubi solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
  41. Re:Hear come the deniers. by drsmack1 · · Score: 0

    Yet another zero content post. I guess you're not used to being challenged. Kind of pathetic really.

  42. Judging by the comments on this and other threads by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I was wondering how long has it been since Slashdot became a den of reactionaries?

  43. Re:Magic Gulf stream by Sique · · Score: 2

    The Gulf stream model was not very much revised. As far as I remember models about Global Warming (at least 20 years back), it was always stated that Global Warming will cause the Gulfstream to weaken or to change course, which in turn means Europe (especially West and North Europe) becoming colder in winter and getting on par with regions on the same geographical latitude in North America and North Asia.

    --
    .sig: Sique *sigh*
  44. So the whole globe is freezing their ass off? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh, no, they aren't.

    I guess you need to do more checking as to what the globe is doing, rather than assuming that what one person does (that you cherry picked) is what everyone else does too.

  45. Taking five years because they froze in it. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Whereas nowadays, you don't need a specially constructed rig to navidate. just a prow enough to break some ice.

    And take only a few days to do it.

  46. Not so by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    the one thing that has been a true fact all around is that the Earth IS getting warmer. Yeah, they might have predicted half a degree and got a full degree, which is a 50% error, but that doesn't change the fact that it's STILL WARMER. :P.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  47. Re:What? The system is self-regulating? by disambiguated · · Score: 1

    The system most certainly is self regulating. So is my living room. If I light my sofa on fire, my air conditioning will kick in. I don't think it'll do much to prevent my house from burning to the ground though.

  48. Re:Magic Gulf stream by fremsley471 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here in NW Europe, we're being told we're kept warm in the winter by the "warm waters of the Gulf Stream". Unfortunately, we don't literally bathe in those waters. Heat is transported by SW winds that blow across them, picking up moisture which is then rained out over us and releasing latent heat.

    This unseasonably weather is nothing to do with the Gulf stream weakening, it's simply the winds are blowing in the opposite direction (from the cold, dry land). Why they are prolonged is to do with the jet stream position's much further to the south. The mid-latitude jet's a product of the atmosphere's thermal gradient (and some orographically introduced wobbles) and its odd, prolonged position could quite conceivably be to do with Arctic sea ice loss.

  49. Content, please read carefully by Joe+U · · Score: 1

    Here's some content:

    Sometimes you actually should listen to the people who dedicated their lives to science. These people spend years learning their field, they are rigorously tested in their field, and most of them graduated as doctors in their field. So forgive me for actually listening to what they have to say as opposed to some schmuck on Slashdot who thinks they know better because they read the weather report last week.

    You're making a joke out of the entire scientific method, and fuck you for doing it.

    1. Re:Content, please read carefully by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And again, zero content. You guys are nothing but bullying and group-think. A paper tiger that can only gain momentum with a complete lack of resistance. I do listen to scientists - at least the ones who actually care about the truth instead of sucking whatever politically correct funding penis that gets them the most faux acclaim.

      I made several assertions about the scandalous behavior that your "scientists" flaunt - which in every possible way perverts the scientific method. And your only retort is to name call.

      Very scientific of you.

      Putz.

    2. Re:Content, please read carefully by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Basically: 'I do listen to scientists, except the ones I personally don't like, not based on scientific data, findings or methods'

  50. No by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So now Weather Underground is the publisher for Hansen, Jones, Trendberth and Mann Junk Porn since they can't publish it anywhere else.

  51. The pace of change is always swift by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Vostok data has many examples of increases in atmospheric temperature by proxy of over 1 degree C/ka, and temperature swings as wide at 12.5C in under 10,000 years. Given what we know about the variability of climate cycles, short term temperature trends and so on, it is absurd to try and claim that the sort of swing being reported now is anything out of the ordinary - certainly not unprecedented. The motility of CO2 in ices being what it is, the data is not sufficient. The transition is not a smooth progression. For a swing of 12.5C to occur in 9,000 years - or worse, 8.5C in 4,500 years, such incidents must be presumed to have occurred. By saying "large-scale climactic changes over tens or hundreds of thousands of years" you are yourself throwing out a red herring: a mean increase in temperature of 8C always occurs in this data in under 10,000 years - and yet you had to put 100,000 years in there as if that was a potential thing when it hasn't been seen in a million years - i.e. since the rise of Man. There is no incidence in the data the GP referred to of such an increase taking longer than 10,000 years. The climate does not ever gradually progress either to or from the glacial condition that could not sustain our 7 billion humans - the transition is always swift. Apparently it was also very near, as the global mean temperature was swiftly descending to the transition temperature until just recently. Maybe we've dodged a bullet. A Gaist might say that maybe Nature was trying to train us to dodge this bullet, cycling the thermostat to try and encourage evolution of a species that could do more than the dinosaurs by turning the thermostat up and down over and over for a million years to encourage evolution of a species that could gain control of the thermostat.

    Now let's talk about these "global climate" temperatures. These are always given as air temperatures. This is a tricky thing. You see, the air is not the Earth's primary climate - not by a long stretch. Of the small fraction of the Earth's biosphere that is on the land surface, in the sea and in the air, the oceans outweigh the land and the air more than 50x - the biomass is by far in the oceans above the land and air. Far above those below the surface of Earth both under air and sea contains far more bacterial anaerobic biological mass than all the rest thriving on geothermal energy - but let's not think about that. The oceans outweigh the atmosphere by 280x and share a broad surface with it with a ready energy transference through phase transition (more about this later). If the air temperature instantly increased by as much as 28C then over time (other things remaining the same) the oceans would absorb this energy and increase in temperature only 0.1C - causing little difference in the ocean's biosphere other than slightly increased bioactivity toward the poles. Obviously this isn't going to happen, but that's how the thermodynamics work. In reality the air can't get hot enough fast enough for the oceans to not absorb the change. Naturally at 0.3% the mass of the oceans and with ready energy transference the temperature of the air is just not that significant in the wider scheme of things.

    About that energy transference: of course you know the physics of phases of matter. Solid, liquid, gas forms of the same matter vary quite reliably according to mass and energy input right up until the phase transition. At the phase transition boundary however, the energy equation changes. It takes far less energy to move water from 0.01C to 99.99C (at standard bar) than it does to change its phase from liquid to gas. Of course the same goes for the transition from ice to liquid - and that explains how steady our climate has been for 10,000 years. We have been melting the glaciers which once covered our continents. The glaciers transitioning from solid to liquid have absorbed the bulk of the energy transference related to our orbital change. They have been our air conditioner, keeping our climate stable. There is more tha

    1. Re:The pace of change is always swift by femtobyte · · Score: 1

      So, over ~400,000 years of records, the most drastic climate changes were ~2C/ka.

      Compare to the IPCC numbers of +1.1-2.9C over the 21st century, in the *best* low-emissions case (and considerably higher for the emissions trajectories we currently seem to be on). That's ~10x faster than the *fastest* changes in the "always swift" Vostok record. And those past dramatic climate changes correlate with pretty serious ecological upheavals; while "life" in general finds a way to go on, the picture isn't so rosy for particular species, populations, and ecosystems. If you happen to have a particular concern for Homo sapiens species populations (and, by extension, the complex ecosystems that support them), you might get pretty worried about 10x more abrupt ecological upheavals than the worst the planet has recently seen.

      And yes, though atmospheric temperatures are cited/measured in many circumstances, climate scientists aren't so absolutely f*cking stupid that they ignore that the earth has an ocean. Climate models indeed include that ~90% of the excess global warming heat is being absorbed into the oceans, which lag the atmosphere somewhat in temperature because of their higher thermal mass but are on their way warming up too (with some potentially highly disruptive nonlinear changes from disintegration of the polar ice cap and re-routing of major currents). No, climate predictions don't have the air rising by 28C before the oceans rise 0.1C, which would only be possible in the completely unphysical ridiculous case where the solar heat pumped in gets 100% absorbed by the atmosphere before touching the oceans, instead of (as expected) being 90% absorbed in the (dark colored) oceans instead of the (mostly transparent) atmosphere, then being trapped from radiating back from the ocean to deep space by greenhouse gases. I don't see why you bring up ocean temperatures in this manner, unless you are intentionally trying to confuse and spread FUD with insinuations from misleading half-truths.

    2. Re:The pace of change is always swift by symbolset · · Score: 1

      I brought up ocean temperatures because they are relevant. Not only do the oceans outweigh the atmosphere 280x, but they have a mutual energy exchange interface of 361 million square kilometres, and an easy energy interchange method in evaporation also. We are discussing air temperatures to a fraction of a degree as if it was an issue of merit when it is not.

      /yeah, that was me. Apparently I can't restrain myself.

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    3. Re:The pace of change is always swift by symbolset · · Score: 1

      Reading your post I sense you might have anger issues. Would you take a referral to a qualified therapist?

      --
      Help stamp out iliturcy.
    4. Re:The pace of change is always swift by symbolset · · Score: 1

      And those past dramatic climate changes correlate with pretty serious ecological upheavals; while "life" in general finds a way to go on, the picture isn't so rosy for particular species, populations, and ecosystems. If you happen to have a particular concern for Homo sapiens species populations (and, by extension, the complex ecosystems that support them), you might get pretty worried about 10x more abrupt ecological upheavals than the worst the planet has recently seen.

      You don't mind if I quote you, do you? Let's settle a couple of things right off: crops don't grow on glaciers. That's a pretty well established fact.

      We have seven billion people, and if they must starve to support your AGW theory, they're likely to get a little pissy about that.

      Some of these people have guns. A few have nuclear weapons. That's likely to get iffy

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    5. Re:The pace of change is always swift by femtobyte · · Score: 1

      You like throwing around "big" numbers about the oceans as though (a) they are not warming at a similarly unprecedentedly fast rate (albeit somewhat behind the atmosphere), and (b) as though air temperatures (of a couple degrees over the coming century, not just a "fraction of a degree," though measuring those fractions is important to seeing the larger change) don't matter on their own.

      Hint: even though the deep ocean stays about the same temperature, we up at the surface experience these things called "seasons" where weather patterns vary significantly due to changes in air and shallow-surface temperature, with the corresponding shifts in air current patterns, amount of moisture retained and released, etc. Messing with these variables impacts all the parts of the biosphere not deep under the ocean: including those systems that supply the bulk of food and drinking water to humans.

    6. Re:The pace of change is always swift by femtobyte · · Score: 1

      I may need a therapist, but I'm doubtful of your ability to judge professional qualifications. I might end up with an Oil/Coal lobbyist posing as a shrink.

    7. Re:The pace of change is always swift by femtobyte · · Score: 1

      And from where, in that quote, do you leap to the conclusion that I want people to grow crops on glaciers and starve?

    8. Re:The pace of change is always swift by Troed · · Score: 1

      "The time span of the past few million years has been punctuated by many rapid climate transitions, most of them on time scales of centuries to decades or even less. The most detailed information is available for the Younger Dryas-to-Holocene stepwise change around 11,500 years ago, which seems to have occurred over a few decades. The speed of this change is probably representative of similar but less well-studied climate transitions during the last few hundred thousand years. These include sudden cold events (Heinrich events/stadials), warm events (Interstadials) and the beginning and ending of long warm phases, such as the Eemian interglacial. Detailed analysis of terrestrial and marine records of climate change will, however, be necessary before we can say confidently on what timescale these events occurred; they almost certainly did not take longer than a few centuries."

      http://www.esd.ornl.gov/projects/qen/transit.html

  52. TL:DR by symbolset · · Score: 1

    Brilliant!

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  53. Global Warming Melted Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Of all the contentious topics on Slashdot—from Jesus to Linux to taxes to instruction sets to gender in geek culture—the thing that brings out the most belligerent illogic and gibbering crazypants ranting is *climate science*?

    Really? Since when is "Nuh uh cause the sun did it" insightful?

    Concepts equally barren of insight:
    - "There is a Cadre of Well-Funded Climatologist Illuminati Trying to Burn Down Capitalism!"
    - "Climate Models Never Saw This Coming!"
    - "There Never Were Any Climate Models!"
    - "It Has Been Hotter in the Past and Look Everything Didn't Die!"
    - "Humans Didn't Even Cause Any of Those Millenia-Spanning Climate Cycles, So We Must Not Be Causing This One That's Happening Orders of Magnitude Faster!"
    - "Not Just the Sun Did It, but Volcanos, Too!"
    - "Like Most Other Humans, I Am Excellent at Internalizing Small Cumulative Changes and Multidecade Statistical Patterns, and That is Why I'm Certain Last Year's Very Cold Winter Debunks the Work of an Entire Scientific Discipline!"
    - "If a Few Billion People Find Themselves Living in a Desert, They Can Just Move to Not-Desert!"

  54. Because we human care about SHORT TERM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah sure climater over million of year gopes from way colder than it is now to way hotter. But who cares ? We are seeing a rate which is very high and will change us toward more chaotic climate with more extrem. By the time sea ice is gone, it might be the same situation as 2.8 million years ago, but for us human dependent on tech and stable climate to plane our infrstructure, it will suck and blow.

  55. The problem of false expertise by sg_oneill · · Score: 1

    The problem with climate change is theres a debate happening and theres research happening, and they are not happening in the same place.

    Within the scientific community, there isnt really a debate about it anymore. We actually know climate change is happening, and its largely driven by human CO2 output. That much isn't controversial [i]amongst scientists[/i].

    But there IS a debate amongst the political class who appear to have developed a raging case of the Dunning Kruger effect, and latched onto a tiny minority of scientific outsiders and cranks, and become bedazzled by the graphs and arguments from "experts" who are actually no such thing. (Seriously, when your local newspaper starts quoting a high school graduate journalist with a pretend lord title [monckton,, he's not actually a real lord, or a scientist or mathematician] you know the newspaper has no idea how to identify an expert in the field).

    In my view the problem is that the public simply dont know how to identify actual experts on the topic. The newspapers are bombarding people with false expertise and as a result a very sizeable minority of lay people believe that there is still an open question about the topic, and thats proven itself very harmful to the politics of actually acting on the problem.

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  56. obviously by kspacey · · Score: 1

    the climate change discussion has devolved to the levels where certain monied interests want it to be...

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  57. i wonder after reading all the comments by kspacey · · Score: 1

    how many posters - on both 'sides' of this so-called 'debate', who are lending vociferous insights about The Scientific Method and climate 'science', and denigrating the intelligence of certain folks, interestingly many coming from Anonymous Cowards - actually have PhDs in organic chemistry, atmospheric chemistry or physics, or even physical geography... apart from I Kan Read's link (and i admit I may have missed something), I don't recall seeing one piece of 'support' from a peer-reviewed science journal... whereas the original article derives rom a source which cites folks with such degrees, most of the comments echo 'arguments' heard from one form of propaganda or another (take your pick)... which clearly demonstrates propaganda works

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