US Coast Guard Ship To Attempt Rescue of 2 Icebreakers In Antarctica

PolygamousRanchKid writes "A U.S. Coast Guard heavy icebreaker left Australia for Antarctica on Sunday to rescue more than 120 crew members aboard two icebreakers trapped in pack ice near the frozen continent's eastern edge, officials said. The 399-foot cutter, the Polar Star, is responding to a Jan. 3 request from Australia, Russia and China to assist the Russian and Chinese ships because 'there is sufficient concern that the vessels may not be able to free themselves from the ice,' the Coast Guard said in a statement. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority's Rescue Coordination Centre, which oversaw the rescue, said the Polar Star, the Coast Guard's only active heavy polar icebreaker, would take about seven days to reach Commonwealth Bay, depending on weather. Under international conventions observed by most countries, ships' crews are obliged to take part in such rescues and the owners carry the costs."

Comments

In the middle of summer

[MacDork]

How's that global warming thing working out for you?

Re: In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny that the linked story is from fox news lol

Re:In the middle of summer

[DexterIsADog]

How's that global warming thing working out for you?

You mean, for us? Not so well. Chaotic weather, not even, gradual warming over the entire globe, is what we can expect for quite a number of years.

Don't say that like you're not in the same boat as the rest of us.

Re:In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh go suck a cock, faggot. And lay off the Kool Aid.

Re: In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

There has been NO measurable warming in the last 15 years.

Re:In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

It's interesting that you say "gradual warming over the entire globe" when global average temperatures are falling.

That suggests rather also that they chaotic weather is not caused by that, but instead by placebo, and that weather has always had extremes.

Re:In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

What is wrong with you people? Seriously. Why does this even qualify as a decent troll argument? Winter is colder than summer, and summer is warmer than winter in the northern hemisphere, and it's the other way around in the southern. They're called seasons. The temperatures go up and down. They have nothing to do with longer-term climate change, which takes place over decades, centuries, and longer. Do you not understand the concept of averages? It's not like Antarctic ice is going to melt away in a century or something anyway. Annual ice melt is accelerating, but there's vast amounts left.

In this case it was wind, not temperatures, that has pushed the ice tightly together in the area where these ships are stuck.

Re:In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

So weather wasn't chaotic before global warming?

Re: In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd suck your dad's but I don't have the microscope I'd need to find it

Re:In the middle of summer

[cold fjord]

It will be interesting to see what happens next year.

Tornado activity hits 60-year low
2013 Atlantic hurricane season wrap-up: least active in 30 years

Re: In the middle of summer

[bunratty]

Here's a graph that shows how you're looking at things. It's called cherry picking your data.

Re:In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

People are also saying the maximum speed of cars have increased since early 20th century. Yet, when I look outside, I see plenty of cars standing still. Are we supposed to believe cars in 1901 had a negative speed?

Re:In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

here's what i want to know about the "chaotic weather" claim.

let's just stipulate for the sake of argument that awg is real and the cause of
climate change.

what has that got to do with weather being "more chaotic". was there something magic about the way things were? or is this just nostalgia?

Re:In the middle of summer

[DexterIsADog]

It will be interesting to see what happens next year.

Tornado activity hits 60-year low 2013 Atlantic hurricane season wrap-up: least active in 30 years

Yes it will. Or next week. That's kind of the point.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/unseasonable-tornadoes-in-midwest-damage-illinois-towns-killing-6/2013/11/18/36c26332-5064-11e3-9e2c-e1d01116fd98_story.html

Re: In the middle of summer

[Egdiroh]

But if you zoom that graph way out you'll see that we're cooling. It's called cherry picking your data. Looking at the data in 5-year increments tells a different story then looking at it in 50 year increments tells a different story then looking at it in 500 year increments, tells a different story then looking at it in 5000 year increments and on and on and on.

We are too dumb to understand climate. Any one who calls themselves a climate expert is a huge liar, unless they put it in the context of being relative to the rest of mankind. That lack of relativity has lead to arrogance and away from science. We've seen that the climate scientists are afraid of being wrong. This is an area where our system of academia is a weakness not a strength. People are too invested in not being wrong and finding new truths. In the climate sciences it should be about being wrong and being able to better understand that. Bad predictions should be more celebrated then correct ones, because it's easier to learn from something that went wrong.

skeptics and supporters are opposite sides of the same coin of wrong headedness. There is learning to be done, and a future that is uncertain. Those are things we should be concentrating on.

Re: In the middle of summer

[bunratty]

If you zoom that graph way out, you can no longer see the warming that is caused by carbon dioxide emissions that began about a century ago because it becomes too small to see. Yes, it's called cherry picking your data.

Re:In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

Global warming means that the "average global temperature" is rising. But note that this does not mean that the temperatures on land are rising (necessarily). The temperatures at the poles have gone up considerably -- something like 3C -- in the last century.

Now, about being "more chaotic" -- a higher average tempurature means that the atmosphere is absorbing more of the sun's energy than before. The atmosphere is more energetic, and consequently, more dynamic. The kinds of weather that were unlikely before are becoming more likely, simply because there is more energy to get the atmosphere into those unlikely states.

Re:In the middle of summer

[phantomfive]

. Chaotic weather

Chaotic weather will be here, whether the earth warms or cools. Weather conditions on Jupiter are chaotic, and it's a lot colder than here.

Arguably it's the temperature differential that causes chaotic weather, not the mean temperature. Blaming every weather event on AGW is what makes people doubt AGW.

Re:In the middle of summer

[Pino Grigio]

All weather is chaotic and current weather is no more chaotic than past weather. The only thing that is more chaotic are the vainglorious attempts by various activists, NGOs and interest green business people to get publicity. Still, regardless of the facts of the matter, as long as nobody gets killed we're having fun laughing at them all.

Re: In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

Very badly... We get things like fresh water from melted ice lowering the salinity down as deep as 30 meters, and basically floating on top of the salt water that is supposed to sink down as part of the global convection belts.

Did you take junior-high physics btw? Not to mention we have a 100km large ice sheet drifting in to block the bay in question.

Re:In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

Its become less predictable

Re: In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that the vast majority of sceptics cherry pick data to support a foregone conclusion. But on the other hand, I am far from convinced that there is no issue here at all with the surface temps. Rather than the usual examples of dodgy sceptics, what do you think of this interview with a fully legit, mainstream climatologist (who actually believes in global warming):
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/interview-hans-von-storch-on-problems-with-climate-change-models-a-906721.html (sorry I dont know how to link properly in slashdot)? It is a simple fact, that **all** climate change models had predicted a rise in surface temps, and for the last 15 years this simply has not happened, which noone had predicted. Now it may well be that the temperature of the oceans have risen by a large amount so that overall warming is still happening without any slowdown. Fine, thats all well and good. But the fact remains that the models made a huge prediction and the prediction was wrong. This is a simple fact, not a right wing slander.

  Now tell me why the population should trust the climate change models to the extent of taking drastic, economically painful measures, when the models are, frankly, very far off from being reliable. That seems like a huge thing to demand from them. Tell me why we should trust predictions like "the surface temps will go up by 6 degrees in 100 years" when they can't even predict the present temperatures, let alone the distant future? And why we should trust them enough to take a substantial pay cut to reduce C02 emissions by some drastic amount.

I personally am agnostic on the concept of man made global warming, and deep down I think it may well be, at least partially, true. But it must be said that this whole idea of trying to model inherently chaotic things based on computer simulations is rubbish. It is simply not science. Science is the process of observing phenomena, coming up with a general theory to describe all these observations, and then testing the theory against predictions. It is not just writing a computer simulation and then, when the predictions are wrong, tinkering the parameters (adding more "ocean temperature damping" in this case), and hoping that eventually your program will converge on the truth. This is not science and there is, as far as I know, no reason to thing that such a procedure will evetually generate a working model that reflects reality. This kind of stuff is just rubbish on a par with Ptolemaic astronomy, except that the weather is far more chaotic than the orbits of the planets, so there is less likehood of being able to eventually rely on the predictions (yes I know the orbits of the planets are also chaotic, but the error doubling time is much longer than with the weather).

The other issue I take is with the politicisation of the field. Scientists should try to keep their work out of politics as much as possible. Of course they can advise the goverment, but when it gets too political we end us with a huge mess, like we currently have, where the population gets polarised around a scientific question. This situation where the left supports global warming and the right opposes it is entirely the fault of those scientists who very loudly stepped into the public arena rather than just focusing on doing hard science and letting the politicians get their hands dirty. Dont blame the right for the fact that they have been turned against global warming, blame the popularity-whoring climate scientists.

Im not someone hostile to science. I am an academic in a STEM field. But I am hostile to many of the antics of climate scientists, since it goes against every value I was brought up with as a budding scientist. We are told to be impartial, to be sceptical of our results, to try to be objective and stay out of politics, and to let predictions be the judge, jury and executioner of our theories. These guys, like string theorists before them, are breaking every rule and value all scientists should have. Of course that doesnt mean their theory is wrong. But it does at least make them arseholes and non-genuine scientists.

Re:In the middle of summer

[DexterIsADog]

Blaming every weather event on AGW is what makes people doubt AGW.

Well, I think in many cases the doubt for AGW rises from financial interest, whether it's direct payments from the oil foundations or that vague fear in a recession that fixing the problem could cost average people their jobs, but whatever the cause, thank goodness I didn't blame every weather event on AGW. You know, the way deniers cite every cold snap and snowfall as evidence to the contrary.

Re:In the middle of summer

[DexterIsADog]

Well, keep laughing as the prolonged droughts do start killing people. No reason not to have a good time.

Re:In the middle of summer

[phantomfive]

but whatever the cause, thank goodness I didn't blame every weather event on AGW.

Yes, that was very wise of you.

Re:In the middle of summer

[Pino Grigio]

What prolonged droughts? Scientists predict more precipitation at the same time other scientists predict more droughts. The former is responsible for the greening of the Sahara. All I know about their models is that they're a pile of utter bilge.

Re:In the middle of summer

[DexterIsADog]

but whatever the cause, thank goodness I didn't blame every weather event on AGW.

Yes, that was very wise of you.

Okay, here's an example - remember when Sen. James Inhofe (R - Oklahoma) whored his own grandchildren for a photo op by getting them to build a snow fort in D.C. when it snowed a few years ago, and put a sign on it reading, "Al Gore's New Home"?

No, I didn't think so.

Re:In the middle of summer

[DexterIsADog]

No droughts? Okay, here you go.

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2011/06/30/258263/inhofe-heartland-denier-conference-oklahoma-record-heat-wave-and-drought/

Re: In the middle of summer

[Nivag064]

Just look at the long term trend of sea ice in the Arctic, it is noticeably decreasing! Most glaciers are substantially retreating.

There is overwhelming evidence of Global Warming, besides the above.

A consequence of global Warming is more extreme weather, some places ARE expected to get more colder weather, but this is more than offset by other places get even more warmer weather - Global Warming means the GLOBAL AVERAGE temperature goes up, not that everywhere will get warmer at the same rate.

Re:In the middle of summer

[phantomfive]

ok, that wasn't very wise of him.

Re: In the middle of summer

[SoftwareArtist]

Stop making things up. It may make you feel smart, but you have no clue what you're talking about.

Yeah, the climate is really complicated. So is the human body, but we can now 3D print working organs and implant them into patients. So is rocket science, but we now have robotic rovers driving around on Mars. If a problem is hard, that doesn't mean we can't solve it. That just means we have to work really hard. And we've been working really hard at understanding the climate for half a century. You have no clue what amazing progress has been made and how deep an understanding we now have of some really complex processes.

So if you want to know what's going on with the climate, what do you do?

1. Learn all about it, recognizing that's a big task and it will take you years of study if you really want to become an expert.

2. Listen to the people who have spent years studying it and are experts on it.

3. Don't do either of the above. Just say, "No one understands this because it's too complicated." After all, if you don't understand it then obviously no one else does either.

Yeah. That's what I thought.

Re: In the middle of summer

[Egdiroh]

But if you only look at the period with sizable human CO2 emissions then you lose the context within to gauge them as an independent variable. If you don't have context then you could conclude that the correlation between the rise in use of solar and wind power and the rise in average surface temp implied that solar and wind power caused global warming.

My point was more that the specific zoom out argument wasn't a logically valid foil to the very localized analysis because essentially the same method could be used to invalidate it. Just like how I used a parallel correlation to demonstrate why your attempt to refute my point of logic by appealing to a specific correlation wasn't logically valid. Pointing out that an argument is not logically valid does not invalidate the conclusion only the method of arriving at it.

The larger point being that in a field of study like climate that is highly complex and where we can only observe and not experiment, we shouldn't be propping up or tearing down our previous conclusions with logically invalid arguments. Our conclusions to date should be freely and often subject to re-evaluation and refinement, and that seemingly good conclusions should not kill parallel lines of investigation and further that new work should be done as neutrally as possible from previous work so that good analysis can be kept and applied to refined and altered versions of previous conclusions.

Re: In the middle of summer

[bunratty]

There's no reason to believe that the use of solar and wind power led to global warming because there's no mechanism to explain it. But carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and the warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions was predicted many decades before we observed it. Add to that the fact that no other plausible explanation for the warming has been found, and therefore our best current hypothesis is that the carbon dioixide emissions are causing the warming.

Do you have some other explanation for the observed warming that I haven't heard of?

Re:In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean in the southernmost region of our planet, where summer is the coldest time of the year?

Damn, you are a fucking moron.

Re: In the middle of summer

[J Story]

Do you have some other explanation for the observed warming that I haven't heard of?

The point being debated is that this "observed warming" is actually occurring. As for "other explanation", isn't that what models are supposed to provide?

It seems to me that the most persuasive climate models would be those that account for temperature patterns from prehistoric records all the way to today. Anything less can only be based on an incomplete understanding. Unfortunately, the livelihood of manmade global warming scientists depends on manmade global warming actually existing. For a researcher thus employed to admit that the evidence is untenable not only jeopardises his career, but those of thousands of fellow researchers as well. Given *this* reality, if I were a climate change scientist I would never put my name on a study that promoted a contrarian view.

Re: In the middle of summer

[J Story]

Von Storch concisely summarizes the dilemma of global warming proponents, as well as the frustration of sceptics. In particular: "It [science] is not just writing a computer simulation and then, when the predictions are wrong, tinkering the parameters (adding more "ocean temperature damping" in this case), and hoping that eventually your program will converge on the truth."

Re:In the middle of summer

[Pino Grigio]

I didn't say "no droughts", I implied, "well within range of natural variation".

Re: In the middle of summer

[bunratty]

We observe the warming. It's not being debated at all as far as I can tell. I can see people denying that it's happening (i.e. saying it isn't warming), despite umpteen graphs being posted that clearly show it happening. It seems to me that they are simply not looking at the graphs, or not willing to admit that they see the warming when they do see it. I suppose it upsets them too much to admit.

Re: In the middle of summer

[Egdiroh]

What did I make up? That if you zoom out far enough the climate is cooler now then the average. Nope I'm pretty sure that's agreed upon by most. The implicit fact that that makes the prior argument invalid? Nope that's just logic. (It should be noted the an argument being logically invalid does not negate or affirm it's conclusion). That we are naive when it comes to climate science? Again, this one I'm pretty sure of, I've heard many climate experts say that mankind is the species that has impacted the environment the most, but I'm pretty sure that that distinction goes to the species of bacteria that evolved into chloroplasts.

You seem to have refuted my point about how well we understand the environment, with a couple of examples of similarly complicated systems that we are making great strides with. First of all there is the logical fallacy that progress in some complex systems implies progress in others. That's just not a sound way to refute the point. I'm considered an expert in somethings but that doesn't mean I'm an expert in everything. Then there are the examples of complex things that we have "mastered". Let's start at the Human body. Drug companies, who tend to hire some of the people that know the most about the human body end up with a lot of failed attempts at new drugs. Some of the time it happens because of unintended consequences, but a lot of the time it's because a correlation that was thought to be causal turned out not to be. ( Here's a wired article about the phenomena http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/12/ff_causation/all/1 ). The other is space. Sure we have some successes but we also have a number of failures. In late 2011 we were looking at abandoning the ISS because of a string of Souyez rocket malfunctions. Also of the 3 mars missions launched during the 2011 launch window, only 1 (that's 33%) reached mars, so while Curiosity is cool, it's the exception not the rule. So to say that we've mastered either field is also not logically valid. Of course in both of those fields we can perform somewhat rigorous experiments so our progress is also faster.

That's not to say that there is necessarily anything wrong with naive science. Our understanding of gravity is still undergoing refinement, but it's force has been part of our engineering for quite some time. But having a naivety of gravity employed in a lot of the engineering hasn't been a downfall. I would say that the goal should be to know when you are doing naive science and respond accordingly perhaps by leaving terms in generic equations abstract, so that they are more readily adjusted if need be or can have more complex expressions plugged in as appropriate (for example gravitational attraction to the earth).

But on the whole your comment as an attempt to refute mine was trash. You start off with an attack, which is not a logically valid method of refutation, and justify the attack with a logically invalid argument that was based on logically invalid arguments. Then you go on talking about climate experts (which I denied the current existence of and you failed to validly refute), which you then use to declare your attempt to refute my comment successful, which does not logically make it so.

My comments were about logical validity, the absolute level of our understanding of the climate, and how the nature of our academic system interacts with fields like the climate that are very hard to study. I'm happy to go off on tangents relative to discussing those topics, but if what you're really trying to do is show me to the curb because you think I'm denying climate change, then you can rest assured that that is not my goal at all.

Re: In the middle of summer

[SoftwareArtist]

Here are some examples of things you said that are totally false:

We are too dumb to understand climate.

Nonsense. We're entirely capable of understanding the climate.

Any one who calls themselves a climate expert is a huge liar

This is total BS.

That lack of relativity has lead to arrogance and away from science.

Climate researchers are doing fantastic science.

skeptics and supporters are opposite sides of the same coin of wrong headedness.

The two groups are about as unlike as you can get. Climate scientists are dedicating their lives to working really hard, trying to solve really hard problems and figure out how the real world actually works. So called "climate skeptics" are, as a rule, willfully ignorant of the state of knowledge. They've just decided what they want to believe, make no effort to actually study climatology, and just go around making claims that are simply false. LIke, "We're too stupid to understand the climate and anyone who claims to is a liar."

So how much time have you spent actually studying climatology? And no, I don't mean reading books and websites written by self-proclaimed climate skeptics out to expose the massive fraud being perpetuated on an unsuspecting public. I mean actual climate science. Studying basic physics, reading scientific papers, understanding the math behind climate models, studying the experiments used to parametrize and validate those models, and so on. Not so much? Then maybe you should assume that you know less about the subject than people who spend their entire lives doing that.

Re: In the middle of summer

[dbIII]

So is the human body, but we can now 3D print working organs and implant them into patients.

Close but not yet, not even for mice in a lab.

Re: In the middle of summer

[Egdiroh]

Not that the source of the warming was a point I was even trying to discuss, but as to the need to provide a need to explain the warming, no explanation is needed. Until you can explain the 4+ billion year history of the earth's climate, you can't say what would be happening with or without that CO2. That's part of the whole thing I was saying about context. But again, I am saying this not to present any ideas about climate change but as part of a discussion about logic.

And not that this is the point, but if I have to spruce up my counter correlation to make it more believable, then here's me spitballing. Large scale solar installations tend to be installed where there is very little cloud coverage, which largely means deserts. (here's where it becomes more back of the napkin) deserts tend to be pretty bright from space, so they are likely pretty reflective and are places where solar energy gets directed back into space. Solar installations are less reflective then the deserts they go on top of and as such increase the globe's absorption of solar radiation, and since most of that energy ands up as surface level waste heat contributes to global warming. For wind the best I can say is that it seems plausible that unharnessed wind energy doesn't heat the earth much as the waste heat from that portion of it that is collected for our use. There you go a plausible mechanism for my correlations since you seemed to get hung up on that. That wasn't the point though.

The point wasn't about warming. The point was that you tried to counter my argument about logical validity of arguments about arbitrary time slices, by giving merit to one arbitrary time slice because it contains a correlation that plausibly could be causal, and that is not a valid counter because you actually need the time slice to be much bigger then the one with the correlation to have the context to even understand if it could be causal. And now the point is that you weren't responding to my point and your attempts at counter points aren't even logically valid.

So what if global warming has or hasn't stopped in the last five years. Is that what you really care about? Or do you care about other changes that have resulted from the changes up until now that have continued to accumulate. I think that for most people it's the accumulating changes that matter to them, not that it's happening because it is getting warmer. Because even if it really is done getting warmer, the damage isn't done, and it's really that damage that I think that most people want to stop or mitigate. It's important not to lose site of why it matters.

Re: In the middle of summer

[MacDork]

Stop making things up... we can now 3D print working organs and implant them into patients

Pot, meet Kettle.

Re:In the middle of summer

[cascadingstylesheet]

You mean, for us? Not so well. Chaotic weather, not even, gradual warming over the entire globe, is what we can expect for quite a number of years.

You seriously believe that weather is "more chaotic" than it always has been?

Re:In the middle of summer

[MacDork]

where summer is the coldest time of the year

Do tell how summer is the coldest time of year AC. I'm sure we will all be enthralled with your derp.

Re: In the middle of summer

[Egdiroh]

Here's what's fun about logic. I can assert something and you can disagree, but logically I am not wrong until you prove me wrong, until then either the assertion or it's logical negation may be true. I think you tried to disprove some of my assertions, but your attempts were not logically valid.

So I continue to stand by statements "We are too dumb to understand climate", and "Any one who calls themselves a climate expert is a huge liar, unless they put it in the context of being relative to the rest of mankind.", (yes, I did notice you taking it out of full context) "That lack of relativity has lead to arrogance and away from science.", and "skeptics and supporters are opposite sides of the same coin of wrong headedness.". But I'll address them to give them some more perspective to maybe help you see what I am talking about or give you some more meat to use to argue against.

Now let me address that last one first since that's the one you seemed to want to actually try to tear down the most. And in point went to talk about the differences between skeptics and climate scientists. And those differences are irrelevant. Because I was talking about skeptics and supporters. You'd hope that skeptics would be different then people that supporters are supporting because then why would they be on opposite sides. But In my experience "arguments" between supporters and skeptics become a back and forth of logically meaningless nonsense.

As to us being too dumb to understand climate. I don't mean that mankind is collectively too dumb to ever figure it out. I suspect that we can and hope that we will. But today we are standing on the backs of thousands of years of people who came before us, and we seemed to be gaining knowledge perhaps faster then ever and since the advent of the computer we've been tackling problems that were far beyond our capabilities before. But we've got good climate data for like 40 years, much less thorough (and more likely to be error prone) data for a few hundred before that, and then the data starts to get really iffy. And also to be clear when I talking about understanding I'm talking about absolute understanding. Things like gravity are hard and it was a long way from before galileo to F = G(m1)(m2)/r^2, but I wouldn't call that understanding gravity. We are learning about climate daily and I frequently hear about new factors that are being considered to improve models, which certainly implies that we didn't understand it yet, and if our models are still being improved at the 10s of years scale, it's hard to imagine that we are close to a final perfect model. And all of this holds for my comment about experts. Sir Issac Newton was the man, and so many people are standing on his shoulders (arguments about parallel discovery aside), but Physics undergraduates today probably have to know more about physics then he did and an undergraduate degree and an undergraduate degree is generally not considered an expert degree. So while he was pioneer, absolutely speaking he wasn't an expert. That's why I added that bit that you truncated off. Relatively to the totality of many subjects we have no experts today, relative the mankind's understanding of given topics there are often experts

And as for the comment about being lead to arrogance and away form science. Maybe it is just the particular manner of the climate scientists that I hear speak relative to that of the other scientists, but climate scientists seem to me to speak with far more certainty then their peers from other fields. Especially other new fields. And again relative to their peers they don't seem to talk much about the difficulties of their field. They are studying the one earth we have that so far has never completely repeated itself making it really hard to get good control data and experiment and all that other stuff that becomes. I've heard scientists working in green land when talking about the sites and the dangers of working on the ice talk about how incredibly dynamic it is and how what's on the bottom one da

Re:In the middle of summer

[DexterIsADog]

Are you really expecting a serious reply from me with such a worthless question?

Re:In the middle of summer

[DexterIsADog]

Well, I could keep pinning you down as you wriggle away like a snake under a stick, but it's clear you're not interested in reason.

Enjoy the show - hope you don't have children to deal with the mess that's coming.

Re:In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

Er, exactly how reliable have weather predictions ever been? The inaccuracy of weather predictions has been a running joke long before either you or I were born.

Re: In the middle of summer

[budgenator]

Climatic temperatures tend to follow 30, 60 and 120 year cycles, they can easily explain past warming.

Re: In the middle of summer

[Uberbah]

But if you zoom that graph way out you'll see that we're cooling.

We're not.

It's called cherry picking your data.

That's called projection.

We are too dumb to understand climate.

Just like we're too dumb to understand that smoking is a cause of lung cancer, or that erosion created the Grand Canyon, despite there not being a written record of its creation.

That lack of relativity has lead to arrogance and away from science. We've seen that the climate scientists are afraid of being wrong. This is an area where our system of academia is a weakness not a strength. People are too invested in not being wrong and finding new truths. In the climate sciences it should be about being wrong and being able to better understand that. Bad predictions should be more celebrated then correct ones, because it's easier to learn from something that went wrong.

One part hand waving, one part word salad. 100% bullshit.

Re: In the middle of summer

[Egdiroh]

Wait, is it your contention that the average surface temp of the earth over it's 4+ billion year history is less then it is today? Or simply that at that generally at this point in time we are headed back to that average surface temp, not away from it?

Arguing that a 5 year sample of data isn't valid because a 40 year sample of data paints a different story, without any other justification just isn't logically valid. That doesn't make the 5 year sample valid, it is just a comment not the logical validity of the argument. And since parent had smugly used the phrase "That's called cherry picking your data", in response to someone picking an arbitrary time scale that suited their agenda, I repeated it when they did the same thing.

As to your comment about the next paragraph, I think we all know that it was One part hand, waving, one part word salad, 100% bullshit.

You see what I did there? I pointed out that I repeat smugly delivered words when appropriate, and then I did the same back to you. I'm only mentioning it to make sure you got the point.

If you want to logically attack something you see as a false assumption, you must show that it leads to a contradiction. Pretty much any other strategy is not logically valid. With the best that you can do otherwise being to state a that while that may be true a contradictory assertion may also be true, thus putting the other side in the position where they have to logically refute your assertion or failing to do so concede that the matter is at least uncertain.

Since so many people seem concerned about my supposed bias, I'll go the other way now. What does one do when someone presents a point in a discussion that seems counter the point of the discussion. The most clearcut thing to do is prove it invalid. In this case you can't do that. So you can argue that the point is not directly relevant. Which in this case I think it would be since it's the effects of warming not the actual warming that people don't want to happen,and the effects seem to continue to accumulate. Or lastly you can acknowledge the point as valid but use it to construct a stronger point that works in your favor. If you just use a parallel argument then you haven't really done anything to counter the other party.

Re:In the middle of summer

[Pino Grigio]

I'm not wriggling, I'm simply pointing out that there's no evidence of an increase in "extreme events" either globally or locally in my country (UK). An increase in extreme weather is predicted by computer models that have so far shown zero skill. Indeed, the number of hurricanes and typhoons has actually decreased over the last 30 years.

As for earthquakes, I'm sure someone is submitting a paper to Nature on how CO2 causes those too, right now, and no doubt it will fly through peer review.

Re: In the middle of summer

[N1AK]

Looking at the data in 5-year increments tells a different story then looking at it in 50 year increments tells a different story then looking at it in 500 year increments, tells a different story then looking at it in 5000 year increments and on and on and on.

And if you look at it in 100 year increments then anyone who died less than 50 years ago would be alive; which is a pretty good indication of why when you're looking at something that has only happened in the last hundred or so years you shouldn't amalgamate data over vastly larger periods.

What you're suggesting is as equally dumb as leaving as boiling a pan of water and letting it cool over an hour from 100 degrees to 30 then turning the burner on full power and then after 30 seconds when the water is back up to 40 degrees saying "the water is cooling".

Re: In the middle of summer

[Pino Grigio]

It's getting warmer. The warming is well within the range of natural variation. Michael Man is a liar and bodged up a graph, known as the Hockey Stick, to make the warming look unprecedented. The graph is now considered to be junk science. Yet here you are, still promoting the same enormous bollocks. Give it a rest.

Re: In the middle of summer

[Pino Grigio]

When you say long term, you mean short term, because 30, 60, 100 years are fucking short term with respect to climatological processes. So shut it.

Re: In the middle of summer

[Hognoxious]

Looking at the data in 5-year increments tells a different story then looking at it in 50 year increments tells a different story then looking at it in 500 year increments, tells a different story then looking at it in 5000 year increments

Hello "than", have you met Egdiroh? Apparently he doesn't know you.

Re: In the middle of summer

[Nivag064]

Hmm...

You said "... fucking ... So shut it."

These words tend to undermine the validity, if any, of the rest of your comment - to put it politely. Also gives the impression that you are uneducated, and probably never really looked at the issue under discussion in any more than very superficially.

If you really want to make a comment to be taken seriously, please repost with a more appropriately phrased comment. Otherwise, you merely come a across as some kind of troll.

Re: In the middle of summer

[Pino Grigio]

No they don't. They express my exasperation with the cretinous stupidity of all greens and their bibulous lies and misrepresentations. So you know, you can fuck off too.

Re:In the middle of summer

[cascadingstylesheet]

No more worthless than the assertion it was addressed to.

Re: In the middle of summer

[Egdiroh]

And if you look at it in 100 year increments then anyone who died less than 50 years ago would be alive

That is fundamentally not true. All of my grandparents died in the last 50 years, and none of them were alive 100 years ago. Whether or not, I can convince you that any of the rest of what you said wasn't logically valid, please, PLEASE, acknowledge that you got this one wrong.

To your larger point about implying that time scales of human lives are somehow significant and as such picking them is not arbitrary. What does the human life span have to do with it. According to wikipedia we know about 15 trees that are over 2000 years old (we don't know the ages of all the trees) And there are some whole forests that are same tree that we think are 10s of thousands of years old, and it take our intervention to extend a fruit fly life span up to 3 months. Why is our lifespan somehow special when studying the climate? Why are humans the organism with the magic life span?

As to your boiling water analogy, Imagine that you had a pot of boiling or near boiling water in that state for extremely long period of time (years) then something disturbed it and it's temperature dropped to 30 degrees, before starting to climb back up, and then we found it when it was back up to 40. We'd wonder why the water was so cool, even though it was on it's way back to normal. But if the whole change in temperature happened because an external factor came into play and then was removed, and you are only looking at the period where the temperature was back on the rise, and are looking for a why, you're not going to find it because it's not there. That goes to you "only happened in the last hundred or so years", comment as well. By only looking at the period over which something is happening you can't isolate any other unusual activity as the cause if you don't have the context required to rule out all the usual activity. This is why scientific experiments require repetition and controls. Since that's not available all possible context is required.

But again I'm not saying what time period is relevant. I'm trying to make the distinction that arbitrary timescale choices aren't valid for refuting the validity for choosing other arbitrary time slices.

Re:In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

Cute story, but that would make Earth the only planet in the observed universe whose weather gets more chaotic with global warming, as opposed to more uniform!

Slam. Dunk.

Re: In the middle of summer

[KeensMustard]

It's getting warmer. The warming is well within the range of natural variation.

Really? Please cite a study indicating

(a) That the present warming is within natural variation and

(b) Demonstrating a theory as to what happened to the warming we were expecting would happen due to increased levels of greenhouse gases. Were the laws of thermodynamics broken?

Re: In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

u r simply an asshole. just shut up and go on making ur "logic" houses of the cards while serious ppl try to solve real problems.

Re: In the middle of summer

[SoftwareArtist]

http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidney.html

We're in the very early stages, but it's already happening.

Re: In the middle of summer

[SoftwareArtist]

http://www.ted.com/talks/anthony_atala_printing_a_human_kidney.html

Re: In the middle of summer

[Anonymous Coward]

So if you want to know what's going on with the climate, what do you do?

1. Learn all about it, recognizing that's a big task and it will take you years of study if you really want to become an expert.

2. Listen to the people who have spent years studying it and are experts on it.

3. Don't do either of the above. Just say, "No one understands this because it's too complicated." After all, if you don't understand it then obviously no one else does either.

Yeah. That's what I thought.

So climate scientists are the new clergy.

Re: In the middle of summer

[Pino Grigio]

Very hard to get studies that go against the dominant paradigm published. For example:

We submitted these findings sequentially to Science Magazine, Nature, and Nature Climate Change. The editor of Science Magazine replied that the results were not of sufficient general interest, suggested we submit the work to a specialty journal, and declined to proceed with external scientific review. Nature also rejected the paper without external scientific review, for reasons that we considered spurious. Nature Climate Change initially rejected the paper, but after some discussion the paper was assigned to a senior editor and reviewed by two anonymous reviewers. Given the context of their comments, both reviewers appeared to be climate modelers.

With reference to analysis of Vostok series. Still, here's the Vostok temperature graph and here's the Greenland temperature graph. Do you see unprecedented present day warming, or do you see current temperatures being well within the range of natural variation?

With respect to the laws of Thermodynamics, climate sensitivity is low, as the IPCC are slowly admitting.

Re:In the middle of summer

[DexterIsADog]

And still you have contributed nothing. (Golf clap) Well played, sir, bravo.

Re: In the middle of summer

[KeensMustard]

Very hard to get studies that go against the dominant paradigm published.

Yes - the dominant paradigm of requiring evidence must really put a kibosh on this and other similiar theories, such as the moon being made of green cheese. The only surprise is that you are suprised that nobody takes this guff seriously.

We submitted these findings sequentially to Science Magazine, Nature, and Nature Climate Change. The editor of Science Magazine replied that the results were not of sufficient general interest, suggested we submit the work to a specialty journal, and declined to proceed with external scientific review. Nature also rejected the paper without external scientific review, for reasons that we considered spurious. Nature Climate Change initially rejected the paper, but after some discussion the paper was assigned to a senior editor and reviewed by two anonymous reviewers. Given the context of their comments, both reviewers appeared to be climate modelers. With reference to analysis of Vostok series. [wattsupwiththat.com]

This is the same Anthony Watts who gets a salary from the Heartland Institute to tell lies about climate, who once claimed that he had personally falsified the HADCM3 model (a claim quickly proven to be utterly wrong), and then later claimed the IPCC AR5 would halve the estimate of climate sensitivity (only to be proven wrong several days later) - and then did not bother to publicly correct his remarks? That guy?

Do you by chance take financial advice from scammers as well?

Still, here's the Vostok temperature graph [rocketscie...ournal.com] and here's the Greenland temperature graph [drtimball.com].

Except that isn't Taylor's or Jacksons graph. It's Easterbrook's graph. It's the infamous graph by Easterbrook that caused a scandal and embarrassed the denialist movement and threw egg in the face of it's oil industry backers.

Read the whole sorry saga here Who told you it was Taylor's graph? If Taylor submitted that graph as his work, he is lucky his paper was just rejected. He could well have been accused of fraud, given the circumstances.

Do you see unprecedented present day warming, or do you see current temperatures being well within the range of natural variation?

In the actual greenland ice core data, rather than a set of data explicitly defined to exclude the last 120 years of climate data? Yes.

With respect to the laws of Thermodynamics, climate sensitivity is low, as the IPCC are slowly admitting.

It's convenient you choose to use the IPCC (AR5) as the source of truth on sensitivity. Since AR5 says that sensitivity is holding steady at 2.1, whereas the uncertainty has decreased. Which makes all your previous statements on the subject a nonsense. Congratulations.

Re: In the middle of summer

[Nivag064]

I suggest you look at the evidence.

Your rude words, insults, and insults, suggest strongly that you don't know what you are talking about.

For a meaningful discussion, give examples - seems like that you don't actually like to think, being rude is so much easier for you.

Your statements seems to much more appropriately applied to the global warming denialists:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/01/08/climate_change_the_north_polar_vortex_and_global_warming.html

Re: In the middle of summer

[KeensMustard]

You appear to be operating under the delusion that warming was observed and then an explanation was sought to explain that warming. That is not what happened. What happened is that the spectral properties of various atmospheric gases were observed and recorded. Temperatures of other planetary bodies were observed. A theory was postulated that some gases in the atmosphere led to the atmosphere and indeed the whole climate being warmer than it would have been in their absence. This was experimentally tested and proved to everybodies satisfaction. A subsequent theory suggested that in fact, our own additions to the atmosphere could lead to changes in the climate, this was calculated but no changes were observed because at the time, our own input was insignificant by volume for the instruments to detect a change. Later on, this theory was confirmed by an observed increase in temperature aligned to the predicted changes and the increased concentration of the aforementioned gases. Then this was observed directly by measuring a delta change in the temperature differential between the top of the atmosphere and the bottom, an observation only explainable as an overall change in the nature of the atmosphere itself.

These are the observed facts. Any theory that is proposed therefore has to align to these observations. Therefore, postulated theories need, at a minimum, to explain:

1. What happen to the warming we expected to see as greenhouse gas concentrations increased

2. What the alternate source of the warming actually is

3. Why the atmosphere behaves as observed

Until such a better explanation is proposed, the current explanation will remain.

It is insufficient to observe that some people are not convinced. That is a rhetorical issue, unrelated to observation or fact.

America, FUCK YEAH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming again, to save the mother fucking day yeah!

Re:America, FUCK YEAH!

[ganjadude]

not sure how quoting a movie is flamebait mods

Re:America, FUCK YEAH!

[Anonymous Coward]

> not sure how quoting a movie is flamebait mods

Agreed. Me and my colleagues find this phenomena confusing.

After much roundtable discussion with some of the finest minds of our Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy departments, we are leaning towards a theory that the moderator in question was perhaps unaware that the aforementioned prose was in fact a reference to the lyrics to a musical work featured in a motion picture.

Of course, our discussions are at a very primary stage. With further brainstorming and research (which we intend to complete with publication and peer review), we intend to get to the bottom of this admittedly confusing occurrence.

HTH.

Re:America, FUCK YEAH!

[AK Marc]

'Cause nobody saw that movie because it sucked...

Re: America, FUCK YEAH!

[chaboud]

How would you know unless... You saw it?

Minds. Blown.

Re: America, FUCK YEAH!

[davester666]

Don't have to anymore. Trailers always show all the good parts, just out of sequence.

Re: America, FUCK YEAH!

[Anonymous Coward]

Trailers generally don't include the f-word.

Re: America, FUCK YEAH!

[AK Marc]

Have you never heard Yogi Berra? "nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." All it takes are a few critics to see it and share the contents with us, and everyone knows, critics aren't people.

Re: America, FUCK YEAH!

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I just heard about it in the comments on slashdot and assumed they were right. Just watch this

Re:America, FUCK YEAH!

[PureRain]

Love it how this is only /. news once the US becomes involved. Been news for days in Australia.

How is this even related to tech/nerd news, anyway?

One blue ship stuck upon the ice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Along came an icebreaker and there were...

Two blue ships, stuck upon the ice. Two blue ships, stuck upon the ice, along came an icebreaker and there were...

Three blue ships, stuck upon the ice...

Re:One blue ship stuck upon the ice.

[Anonymous Coward]

From http://www.uscg.mil/pacarea/cgcpolarstar/PolarStarNews.asp:

"The Polar Star is the U.S. Coast Guard’s only active heavy polar ice breaker. The ship is 399 feet in length, its maximum speed is 18 knots, it is able to continuously break six feet of ice at three knots, and able to break 21 feet of ice backing and ramming. The Polar Star is specifically designed for open-water icebreaking with a reinforced hull and special icebreaking bow."

Re:One blue ship stuck upon the ice.

[Anonymous Coward]

So... only a tiny bit more powerful than the Aurora Australis, which is already stuck?

Re:One blue ship stuck upon the ice.

[cyclohazard]

According to the article, the Aurora Australis has continued on its planned course (with the rescued passengers from the Russian ship). The stuck ships are a Chinese icebreaker and the original Russian ship. However, the Russian ship is not an icebreaker, and so the sensationalist headline is a bit wrong.

Re:One blue ship stuck upon the ice.

[Anonymous Coward]

But the Polar Star is red...

Re:One blue ship stuck upon the ice.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Just hope that they have enough beer on the wall to go with it.

Re:One blue ship stuck upon the ice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok let's compare the ships:

MV Akademik Shokalskiy (first trapped)
Displacement: 1'800 tons
Power: 1'500 hp
Ice breaking capability: none

MV Xue Long (second trapped)
Displacement: 21'000 tons
Power: 17'700 hp
Ice breaking capability: 1.1m cont.

USCGC Polar Star:
Displacement: 13'500 tons
Power: 93'000 hp
Ice breaking capability: 6.4m max, 1.8m cont.

So I would bet quite a sum that the Polar Star will not get stuck. It's lighter than the chinese ice breaker, but has about 5 times the power. By backing up and ramming onto the ice it can push itself through ice up to 6.4m thick. If the Polar Star gets stuck there will be no migthier icebreaker left to rescue them. Well perhaps some nuclear powered russian ones, but they are in the arctic.

Re:One blue ship stuck upon the ice.

[cusco]

The Russian nuclear icebreakers can't make it to Antarctica unless they're towed, the water in the tropics is too warm for them to cool properly and they'd overheat. They're designed for operations in very cold locations only.

Re:One blue ship stuck upon the ice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wiki says Arktika class is designed to break ice up to 2.8 m thick. So Polar class 6.4m has a higher spec.

send a nuclear sub.......

[Anonymous Coward]

....to vaporize some of that ice with a couple of thermonuclear missiles

Re: send a nuclear sub.......

[PaddyM]

It's the only way to be sure.

"near the frozen continent's eastern edge"

[tsqr]

I could have sworn Antarctica only has a northern edge.

Re:"near the frozen continent's eastern edge"

[dave-man]

Bingo.

Re:"near the frozen continent's eastern edge"

[KingOfBLASH]

There is a western and eastern hemisphere, of which antarctica occupies both parts.

http://geology.com/world/antarctica-map.jpg

Re:"near the frozen continent's eastern edge"

[Anonymous Coward]

Antarctica is not a perfect circle with the south pole smack-dab in the middle. So some parts are bound to not face north. Heck, some may even face south.

(It's not a whoosh if I'm attempting to expand upon the humor. Even if I end up failing at it.)

Re:"near the frozen continent's eastern edge"

[Iniamyen]

I think if you were referring to a smaller eastward-facing edge of a feature of Antarctica, you should refer to it as that feature's edge (e.g. the "eastern edge of some Antarctic peninsula.") Referring to the eastern edge as belonging to Antarctica itself is misleading, for reasons already stated.

Re:"near the frozen continent's eastern edge"

[tsqr]

Informative, but how relevant? Coasts are designated "East" or "West" based upon the compass direction in which they face. This is why North America, despite being entirely in the Western Hemisphere, has both an East Coast and a West Coast.

Re:"near the frozen continent's eastern edge"

[Chemisor]

Nonsense. Antarctica has at least two edges: a northern edge and a US coast edge. The US coast guard only guards the US coast edge and that is where all those icebreakers get stuck because ice freezes over while they wait to get through customs.

Re:"near the frozen continent's eastern edge"

[tomhath]

I could have sworn Antarctica only has a northern edge.

Only at the South Pole. As soon as you're off that point you are on a point of Latitude and Longitude.

Re:"near the frozen continent's eastern edge"

[hey!]

I interpret "near the continent's frozen eastern edge" as meaning "along the eastern edge of the Antarctic Peninsula, which sticks up to 63 degrees or so south latitude. This tends to collect floating sea ice on its eastern side (the western Weddell Sea) when there are strong easterly winds.

Oddly enough I have not been able to find the coordinates of the stranded ships anywhere. Does anyone here know this?

Re:"near the frozen continent's eastern edge"

[Anonymous Coward]

And the ships were on a mission to study global warming. No, scratch that. 'Climate Change' since we're not warming any more. Just remember to plant some trees to offset the carbon created by the rescue!

Re:"near the frozen continent's eastern edge"

[Anonymous Coward]

As I see it, the problem with the term "global warming", despite its accuracy, is that the layperson (who votes) sees reports on increased Antarctic snowfall, record-breaking cold winters, and other "cold" events, and then interprets these as evidence that global warning is just so much hooey. They don't have the time or inclination to go beyond the shallowest investigation to see that increased energy in the global climate easily explains such things (OK, and ordinary variations in weather, which is often confused with climate). The term "Climate Change" is less likely to lead the unintentionally ignorant astray (no terminology will assuage the willfully ignorant).

- T

In one week...

[mbone]

In one week will we be reading about how country X is sending an icebreaker to free the three stuck icebreakers?

Good thing it's summer down there. Wouldn't want to be stuck all winter. That would be a pain.

Re:In one week...

[Anonymous Coward]

Might as well reschedule the International Icebreakers Convention to the Arctic right now, everyone can have a jolly good bash at it!

Or, for the more paranoid among us, its a ruse by Icebreaker crews to have a excuse to finally organize the International Icebreaker Olympics!

Re:In one week...

[mcgrew]

It's early summer, it will get warmer. It's supposed to be colder here in Illinois tonight than it is in Antarctica right now.

Re:In one week...

[Citizen of Earth]

In one week will we be reading about how country X is sending an icebreaker to free the three stuck icebreakers?

It'll be Canada to show you amateurs how it's done.

Re:In one week...

[rsmith-mac]

In one week will we be reading about how country X is sending an icebreaker to free the three stuck icebreakers?

From what I understand, the Polar Star is quite a bit more powerful than any of the other vessels currently involved in this event. To the tune of being able to sustain bashing through 6ft of ice, and peaking at around 21ft.

Consequently, if the Polar Star can't cut it (figuratively and literally speaking) then we're in big trouble. Ice breakers don't come much bigger. Plus Russia's big guns, their nuclear icebreakers, are more for operational endurance and speed than they are ice thickness.

Re:In one week...

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the bit on the russian ships wiki gives a whole lot more info. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akademik_Shokalskiy

There are four ice breakers already involved the chinese Xue Long, Australian Aurora Australis, the french L'Astrolabe, and the russian Akademik Shokalski. The Polar Star will make 5. Only 2 are stuck however, as both the Aurora and L'Astrolabe almost got stuck trying to get to Shokalski.

  Of course the fact that the Russian ship was chartered by the "Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013-2014 to celebrate the centenary of the previous expedition under Douglas Mawson, and to repeat his scientific observations" indicates it was the wacky Australians that actually started this.

  Xue is in fact bigger than Polar Star, but not made for breaking as thick ice as Polar star.

  If Polar star can't break it, or gets stuck, its going to get interesting. Because other than more ice breakers, explosives, there really isn't anything else they can call on, nature wins again.

Re:In one week...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the Russians can't do it than the Canadians can't do it!

Re:In one week...

[Anonymous Coward]

The report will be about how the Antarctica single icedly beat all the superpowers of the world.

Re:In one week...

[DarthVain]

Canada does have a bigger icebreaker than the one they sent. It is not has long, but has several thousand more displacement. However it is probably a long way away from the S Pole. If it is taking 7 days for the Polar Star, it would probably take weeks for Louis S. St-Laurent to make it.

Russia has by far the largest and most capable icebreakers in their nuclear class ships. However it has been mentioned that they might not be able to use their nuclear plants outside of an Arctic region for cooling reasons, making transport difficult. I am not sure if this is the case of not as I haven't see anything anywhere to confirm that. Russia also has a large fleet of conventional icebreakers, however as to their displacement and locations I am not sure. It very well could be that pouring so much into their nuclear fleet diminished their conventional. i.e. why build any big conventional ships when you already own all the the largest nuclear powered ships.

Re:In one week...

[vac65]

More to the point:
Russia's nuke icebreakers are, possibly, not safe to be permitted to enter Antarctica. Glowing to much in the dark, penguins complaining, shit like that...

Re:In one week...

[DarthVain]

What would be cooler, is if a nuclear sub surfaced to rescue everyone. Though I suspect they have restrictions as to where they could surface with ice thickness. Though would make for a good movie perhaps where the icebreaker teams need to trek across the ice surface to a suitable location. Then again, now that their are 3 ships stuck, there may not be enough room on a sub (never mind security concerns).

Semper Paratus

[bfmorgan]

Always Ready

Re:Semper Paratus

[rmdingler]

Coastie or Guardian?

Re:Semper Paratus

[bfmorgan]

Coastie

Who pays?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given that the Chinese icebreaker got stuck as a direct result of attempting to rescue (successfully in conjunction with an Australian icebreaker) the passengers off the Russian icebreaker, who pays the US icebreaker for the rescue of the Chinese icebreaker?

Re:Who pays?

[hawguy]

Given that the Chinese icebreaker got stuck as a direct result of attempting to rescue (successfully in conjunction with an Australian icebreaker) the passengers off the Russian icebreaker, who pays the US icebreaker for the rescue of the Chinese icebreaker?

RTFS

Under international conventions observed by most countries, ships' crews are obliged to take part in such rescues and the owners carry the costs.

Re:Who pays?

[Anonymous Coward]

Which owner? The owner of the rescuing ship or the owner of the ship needing to be rescued?

Re:Who pays?

[Etherwalk]

Yeah, I kind of thought it was a dick thing to do for the summary to talk about who has to pay for it at all--when someone breaks down at sea, you rescue them. If there's money, great, but you don't talk money *before* you've rescued them, because it implies you would be leaving them out there to die. Like how the fire department in ancient Rome would settle the price with you as your house burned down...

Life Imitates Art

[DexterIsADog]

"The 399-foot cutter, the Polar Star, is responding..."

Hey, that's one of my favorite novels! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polar_Star_(novel)

This whole incident...

[felrom]

of people setting out to the pole at summer, to highlight the damage wrought by global warming, and then getting stuck in the ice, and then their rescuers getting stuck in the ice... it really feels as if over-the-top global warming alarmism has jumped the shark. Right here. And all excuses about how the ice is always still thick this time of year, or it's really just unlucky winds that blew it around the ship, those don't matter. People see global warming fear mongers, trapped in ice, in the summer, in the Antarctic, and their rescuers threatened by the same ice.

We'll look back in 20 years and say, "Remember when that ship got stuck in the ice on their journey to drum up fear about receding ice?"

Hell, I remember when I was in grade school in the '90s, and we were constantly told of the horrors of the hole on the ozone layer that was going to burn us to death, and the rain forests that would be 100% destroyed by 1995, suffocating all the aerobic life of the earth due to lack of oxygen. There's something in the human brain very susceptible to environmental alarmism, and it takes a really magnificent demonstration of stupidity every generation or so to snap people out of it. This is it!

Re:This whole incident...

[codepigeon]

I don't know about you, but when it comes to the only livable planet we know of, and my current home, I would prefer we err on the side of caution.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Ozone hole really was a problem in nz and australia, with skin cancer levels increasing, and people having campaigns like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGgn5nwYtj0 . Good thing CFC levels in the atmosphere have since dropped due to extensive regulation, and the ozone hole has started closing.

It would be nice if global climate change went the same way. Average sea levels are still rising, which is a bit of a problem in a place defended by sea walls and/or river walls. (like where I live. ;-)

Re:This whole incident...

[Known Nutter]

of people setting out to the pole at summer, to highlight the damage wrought by global warming, and then getting stuck in the ice, and then their rescuers getting stuck in the ice... it really feels as if over-the-top global warming alarmism has jumped the shark.

This bit here is pretty popular on the internet these days. Taking a single incident of global warming researchers stuck in ice and using the (rather remarkable) irony of that to debunk global warming as a whole.

My reply to that thus far has been something along the lines of me, using that same logic, being able to prove global warming is occurring by pointing out the 19% of normal snow pack in the California Sierra right now.

I am no environmental scientist, but I do know it's going to take just a bit more critical thinking than either of these two thought processes to figure the thing out.

Re:This whole incident...

[beelsebob]

To be fair, the hole in the ozone layer only stopped growing because we actually succeeded in not pumping out CFCs.

Re:This whole incident...

[mcgrew]

Hell, I remember when I was in grade school in the '90s, and we were constantly told of the horrors of the hole on the ozone layer that was going to burn us to death, and the rain forests that would be 100% destroyed by 1995

They didn't happen because people took measures to mitigate them. The ozone layer was disappearing because of CFCs. Now that we don't use them in spray cans and air conditioners any more the hole is shrinking and should be gone in another 100 years.

You're like the people who scoff at the Y2K Armageddon that didn't happen. It didn't happen because a lot of folks did a lot of hard work to keep it from happening.

Had everyone shrugged and done nothing like you propose with global warming the ozone would still be disappearing and the Y2K meltdown would have been serious.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

Average sea levels are rising, but temperatures are falling, doesn't that rather suggest to you that (at very least) our models of what causes the sea level to rise, and at what rate, suck, and can't be used to reliably predict anything?

Re:This whole incident...

[mbone]

I think that right wing talking points jumped the shark years ago.

By the way, the Ozone hole was saved by concerted international effort. Too bad that was prevented this time around by a small band of billionaires and their useful idiots.

Re:This whole incident...

[plover]

Do we know skin cancer is on the rise due to the ozone hole? There are many plausible explanations, so a simple rise in numbers won't cut it.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it is dropping due to A: People taking better measures. B: the ozone hole closing. Regulation is fixing it.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do we know lung cancer is on the rise due to cigarettes? There are many plausible explanations, so a simple rise in numbers won't cut it.

Re:This whole incident...

[idji]

go and look at Ozone depletion and see that the alarmism was worth it because the world did ban CFCs and the charts show the improvement since. What we need is global coordinated action on the issues of today
Icebreakers being stuck in ice doesn't say much about climate change - incidents of such icebreakers stuck in ice over many decades may say something. Don't confuse an incident with a trend
I am sure there are many stupid Americans in New England seeing how amazingly cold it is this week and mocking Climate Change. (I live in Central Europe and we have at the moment one of the hottest Januaries on record). Climate Change predicts weather extremes because there is more energy available in weather systems to push to hotter and colder extremes.
That thick ice in Antarctica could be an example of climate change if, for example, more ice is rolling off the land faster, or climate change has changed currents to push more ice into that bay. Only objective longterm observations can help here.
There are problems with Alarmism, but it was right with Acid Rain in the 1970s, leaded petrol and Ozone in the 80's - those problems were reversed - and the scientific community is in consensus that CO2 today is a far more serious issue and we need alarmism before we reach tipping points.
I would rather take action with alarmism, then do nothing out of cynicism while species go extinct and Africans and Bangladeshis try to emigrate in their millions.

Re:This whole incident...

[mjm1231]

Your facts don't suggest anything because they are in fact false. http://www.skepticalscience.com/going-down-the-up-escalator-part-1.html

Re:This whole incident...

[mjm1231]

Those are interesting examples. In each of those cases, the problem was solved by actually doing something (for example, greatly reducing CFC emissions). So, if by "snap people out of it" you mean they should take active steps to reverse or prevent a problem, your examples lend good support to that claim.

Re:This whole incident...

[gnasher719]

of people setting out to the pole at summer, to highlight the damage wrought by global warming, and then getting stuck in the ice, and then their rescuers getting stuck in the ice... it really feels as if over-the-top global warming alarmism has jumped the shark. Right here

It would depend on these people's IQ. If you start with for example 20 feet of ice, then no ship is going to get stuck in there because they can't get in. If it melts to 10 feet of ice and breaks up because of global warming, then they get stuck.

Re:This whole incident...

[Rockoon]

This bit here is pretty popular on the internet these days. Taking a single incident of global warming researchers stuck in ice and using the (rather remarkable) irony of that to debunk global warming as a whole.

So long as you repeatedly and disingenuously take each instance as a single instance, you make sense. The problem is that there are quite a bit of instances, most poignant of which is that southern ice has been increasing for decades, even while the alarmists were pointing at single instances of the southern ice shelf breaking off as evidence of global warming.

....meanwhile the complete lack of any recent compelling evidence of atmospheric warming is explained away by claiming that the oceans are absorbing all of it in ways and with an efficiency that we do not understand.

If it is not important that Antarctic ice melt is this year the lowest ever recorded, then what are we to make of "warmest year", "most hurricanes" and other assorted alarmisms?

The thing about science is that its supposed to be falsifiable. Why is it then that real data is completely ignored in favor of proxy data that doesnt even correlate with the real data?

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

People will use any story to advance their ideas, goals. Never let a good tragedy go to waste. Make a possible plausible outcome with some unprovable scientific rhetoric, repeat it as often as you can - BAM: call to action. People fall for it because it makes the news, whose reporters couldn't spell objectivity with a dictionary and coincidentally have their own bias in their reporting.We are having record cold (East coast), I could use a little global warming about now.

Re:This whole incident...

[Known Nutter]

So long as you repeatedly and disingenuously take each instance as a single instance, you make sense.

Way to miss my point. As I said...

... I do know it's going to take just a bit more critical thinking than either of these two thought processes to figure the thing out.

My point was that many, many people on comment threads seem to be disingenuously taking the single instance of the global warming researchers' ships stuck in ice as de facto proof that global warming is bunk. My point was not to debate the merits of either position.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh lookie, he put up a link to climate scientists denying what is actually happening. Lets take a look at the record book of what they predicted vs what is actually happening. I'll even spot you their ability to change their prdedictions over the years as they get more time with their models and more data.

Graph

Right there, anyone with any sense knows not to trust the IPCC models, period. If you are still quoting them after seeing the above you are intellecutally dishonest by choice.

Don't debate AGW supporters anymore, they know they lie.

Re:This whole incident...

[the eric conspiracy]

Congratulations for what will no doubt be the most idiotic comment attached to this story. Something we've come to expect from right wing science deniers.

1. The Akademik Shokalskiy was retracing the Douglas Mawson expedition conducted a century ago. The glacier in their vicinity was named after Xaviar Metz who died on the expedition. It's notable this original expedition was not by ship. It is the subject of David Roberts's book "Alone on the Ice: The Greatest Survival Story in the History of Exploration"

2. The ozone layer hole issue has been ameliorated because the nations of the world got together and banned the CFCs that were causing it. Amazing how science works, eh?

3. You must have a really bad memory. Or maybe you are just a liar. Nobody was predicting loss of rain forests by 1995. Brazil has 5.4 km sq of rain forest, since 1970 they have lost about 10%. Long term it's an issue, which is being addressed by legislation.

Re:This whole incident...

[sjbe]

Do we know skin cancer is on the rise due to the ozone hole? There are many plausible explanations, so a simple rise in numbers won't cut it.

I don't mean to seem snide but do you really think that same thought hasn't occurred to anyone else? There are ways of testing and controlling for possible causes. Proving causation in cases like this is challenging but not impossible. It's sort of like proving that smoking causes an increase in lung cancer. It's difficult to prove in individual cases but actually much easier in populations. You check a lot of correlations, you test for overlapping, you slowly control for specific alternatives and over time you get a pretty good picture of how much of the problem is causes by the suspect phenomena.

My wife is a skin doctor and her take on the matter is that yes there appears to be some credible evidence that the ozone hole is responsible for at least some of the increase in skin cancer. The exact amount is unknown and realistically unimportant. What is important is that there appears to be a real and measurable (if imprecise) effect on the population.

Re:This whole incident...

[gtall]

Yes, and the chlorofluorocarbons, you do remember those don't you, were and still are one of the major contributors to the ozone holes. The Montreal Protocol which started in the late 1980's, got a head of steam in the 1990's, and continues to this day pretty much banished chlorofluorocarbons from production. The expectation is the ozone holes will get back to normal around 2050 when chlorofluorocarbon have left the atmosphere.

And as someone below mentioned, there's been quite a large increase in skin cancer in the S. latitudes as a result of the ozone holes. There's something very susceptible to environmental blinkers, and it takes a really magnificent demonstration of intelligence every generation to snap people out of their blindness towards environmental dangers. This is it!

Re:This whole incident...

[angel'o'sphere]

South of Australia some ice breakers a stuck in pack ice.
In Australia we have a heat wave unheard of, and the summer has just started 2 weeks ago.
In Finnland we have the "hottest" winter since recorded history. At the northern polar circle, mind that, we still have + temperatures. In a real winter it would be -30 degrees there.

Re:This whole incident...

[Velex]

Stop watching Captain Planet and go read some of the actual science.

Re:This whole incident...

[angel'o'sphere]

The problem is that there are quite a bit of instances, most poignant of which is that southern ice has been increasing for decades,
I don't get why people still repeat such nonsense on /.
The ice is retreating since decades, however in winter it grows and in summer it shrinks.
What counts is the long term trend. Long term: every winter it is a bit less than the (or a few) winter(s) before.

If it is not important that Antarctic ice melt is this year the lowest ever recorded,
Never heard about that claim. Any proof? NASA and ESA photos don't confirm this.

The thing about science is that its supposed to be falsifiable. No it is not. It is supposed to be "investigate able" by experiments. That means it is "provable" ... no idea why americans always use the term "falsifiable". Must have a special meaning in some circumstances?

Or, how do you "falsify" the theory of gravity?

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

Skin cancer is raising in the northern hemisphere, specifically the US and UK.

So there is your control group not affected by the ozone hole. The proposed reason is bunk and if your wife is a dermatologist, not sure why you said skin doctor, and you asked her you would have known this already.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

Popper developed the idea of falsifiability and defined any question that couldn't be tested for falsification as none scientific. He's quite popular with the Thatcherites so it is probably a right wing thing. To falsify gravity let go of a pen a foot of the ground with nothing connected to it and see if it stays there

Re:This whole incident...

[tsqr]

Actually, according to the CDC, we know that lung cancer has been on the decline in the US since 2000. We also know that lung cancer is not skin cancer. We also don't know what your point is.

Re:This whole incident...

[Bing Tsher E]

Why simply err on the side of caution, when you can scuttle the entire world economy with superstitious ignorance?

Re:This whole incident...

[ganjadude]

Im not a supporter of AWG, and yes I joke when things like this happen. HOWEVER I understand that when I make a statement on a hot or cold day of "so how about that global warming?" I know its nothing more than a Joke. I cant speak for other people who do not believe in AGW but in my case, Yes i will say it, but Its a joke, AGW supporters need to learn to laugh more

Re:This whole incident...

[MooseMiester]

I was in grade school in the sixties, and we were taught two indisputable scientific consensus facts:

That the "Malthusian Dilemma" theory PROVED we would all starve to death by the year 2000 or there about. Funny thing, they had a hockey stick graph too.

That the great ice age was coming. In the early 70's, this was on the cover of Time Magazine.

The folks selling this stuff then were just as certain as the folks harking this crap now. Then, as now, the lefties claimed the evil right wing was spreading propaganda. What does this teach us about ourselves?

Nobody ever got rich by telling people that things will probably turn out just fine, and that we as a species are remarkably adept at solving problems

Chicken Little stories attract a lot of highly emotional, intelligent, and supremely arrogant people who want to dictate their version of reality to the rest of us.

The minute somebody tells you in a dire voice that "If we don't do X then we are all doomed... and if you dare question their position they start insulting you... they... are full of crap and are to be ignored.

Re:This whole incident...

[cforciea]

You do know that graph you just linked has an upward temperature trend, right? And that some of the projections are actually under the best fit line?

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree anti global warming supporters lie but you are the first I've seen admit it.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

No. Don't bring Y2K into this. Y2K was a money grab by salesfolk to fleece idiots. Here's a hint sparky: "All computers have clocks" is true of most computers. But the clock is a square wave sync pulse. Its also called an oscillator. When you talk about a computers 'clock rate' this is what you are talking about. It doesn't give a fucking fig about the year 1999. If you had a system that used the COBOL programming language, then you had a problem. THERE ARE NO industrial controllers, microcontrollers, embedded systems of any kind that use COBOL, yet the fucking sales idiots (who themselves know dick all about computers) yelped and screamed and made millions in sales because of the fear. Most people don't know from sync pulses or heart beats. So they spent millions needlessly (and the charlatans got rich). A few people had to do some work so your pension check printed correctly. The electrical power grid was never in any danger. FTFY.

Re:This whole incident...

[phantomfive]

My reply to that thus far has been something along the lines of me, using that same logic, being able to prove global warming is occurring by pointing out the 19% of normal snow pack in the California Sierra right now.

Sadly, someone actually said that exact thing to me two weeks ago. Any time there is anything perceived as unusual, it is taken as a sign (sometimes even by scientists!).

It's almost like we're still in the dark ages, using weather events as omens, and peering into day-to-day changes in temperature graphs as if they were tea leaves in a cup, determined those signs will tell us that we'll win the battle.

Re:This whole incident...

[phantomfive]

Or, how do you "falsify" the theory of gravity?

I've been floating here on the ceiling all day and still no one believes me!!! There are plenty of ways to falsify it.

Re:This whole incident...

[phantomfive]

You're like the people who scoff at the Y2K Armageddon that didn't happen. It didn't happen because a lot of folks did a lot of hard work to keep it from happening.

Y2K armageddon was never going to happen. At worst, it would mean some payroll calculations would be delayed, and airline flights would be cancelled. Anyone who thinks we were going to see power plants blow up and raging hordes across the landscape, well, they are deservedly mocked.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't global warming that caused the recent economic collapse and it never will be. The economy is set up and defined by humans (I'm one btw!) so it is a reflection of them rather than the world, thus those claiming it would collapse if we stopped global warming are helping to engineer such an event when Keynesian economics would suggest. I know that's not so popular round here where so many have drunk the Kool aid but there you go.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

You falsify the theory of gravity by observing two objects with mass unaffected by a force pulling them together.

A hypothesis being "falsifiable" means that while it may or may not be directly observably true, it can be directly observed to be false. In fact, the vast majority of scientific hypotheses (yes, including the theory of gravity) can't really be said to be "proven," since it takes only one instance ever of two objects with mass not affected by gravitational force to prove -- without scare quotes -- that the theory is not correct. Since we have not observed every two objects ever, we have not proven gravity.

The point is that while some hypotheses are so strongly verified we call them laws, they can almost never be "proven" true. Accepting that fact is humbling, and also leads to better science as opposed to anec-data fights on the internet.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

"couldn't spell objectivity with a dictionary and coincidentally have their own bias in their reporting."
Such as yourself? Global warming doesn't mean every point on the planet will be warmer than it was at -x seconds ago. For instance global warming is threatening the gulf stream that helps keep the UK from being like Norway (in temperature). Thanks to all the ignorant who are threatening the rest of the world because of stupidity or greed. I say stupidity because I know of no scientist I respect who denies global warming and those denials I have seen are a load of rubbish.

Re:This whole incident...

[david_thornley]

Boy, your grade school sucked.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife is a skin doctor and her take on the matter is that yes there appears to be some credible evidence that the ozone hole is responsible for at least some of the increase in skin cancer. The exact amount is unknown and realistically unimportant. What is important is that there appears to be a real and measurable (if imprecise) effect on the population.

Some? Exact amount unknown and unimportant? Yet still real and measurable, but yet imprecise?

So, what kind of "skin doctor" is your wife, a fucking shaman?

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

There might not be any industrial controls run on cobol now (although I suspect there are) but there used to be. Microcontrollers aren't the only sort of controllers and there was definitly a lot of trouble with db backed apps and similar using 2 digit years. This might not instantly kill you but you might be a little upset if, for instance, the bank decided you hadn't paid anything to it yet.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

An observation of gravity not working is as uncertain as all other observations. Basically negative evidence is no more reliable than positive evidence.
All questions of falsifiability that I can think of can also be expressed as its inverse so really its just which way you ask the question as to which evidence falsifies and which evidence supports. I haven't yet managed to prove that that is always the case though

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither the minimalizations like yours, nor the "end of days" predictions were credible, nor are they any better in hindsight. Just some cancelled flights, you say? Tell that to those who had to reprogram or replace process control systems at industrial facilities, as just one example. Many things worse than late paychecks were mitigated - not armageddon of course, but serious problems.

- T

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you serious? If you throw an apple off your balcony and observe that its trajectory is not a parabola, but say, a straight line, then you would disprove Newtons theory of gravity. A good theory makes precise predictions and when these fail it is falsified. This is the scientific method. Anything less than this is not science but mere empirical observation like say the ancient Sumerians made of the cosmos without any real understanding of what they were seeing. Its amazing how much ignorance there is about science even on slashdot.

Re:This whole incident...

[plover]

My concern on this is that health care has dramatically increased lifespans. More people are dying of cancer because the things that used to kill them no longer do so as often. Yes, i figured they controlled for age, exposure, environment, but even so, it's really hard because melanoma is so slow acting.

Re:This whole incident...

[Rockoon]

The ice is retreating since decades, however in winter it grows and in summer it shrinks.

So you admit to being ignorant and believing a complete alarmist lie, then?

Which part of record ice levels confuses you? If I have to google the facts for you, that would be because you are willfully ignorant, so I wont bother. You will call NASA a bunch of deniers or something.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

I get sunburned on a clear hot day here where I live in South Australia in about 20 mins of unprotected exposure, it's uncomfortable if anything touches the sunburned bits. I recently went a touch furthar south to Tasmainian latitudes and got burned so badly that all the skin on my head pealed off after only 25 mins exposure on a 7/11ths cloud cover 24C degree day (A moderate day).

It blows goats not having an Ozone layer, as I understand it the northern hemisphere and equatorial regions are still reasonably well protected by Ozone, despite pumping out most of the polutants because for whatever reason the hole is over the southern pole and improves in a graded fashion North.

So Mother Fkers living not living in the southern parts of the southern hemisphere aught to be thankful.

Re:This whole incident...

[angel'o'sphere]

You don't need to google ... there is no record ice level anywhere on the world.

Re:This whole incident...

[angel'o'sphere]

Breath out your helium, man!

Re:This whole incident...

[clovis]

I was in grade school in the sixties, and we were taught two indisputable scientific consensus facts:

That the great ice age was coming. In the early 70's, this was on the cover of Time Magazine.

Are you sure you remembered that correctly?
http://science.time.com/2013/06/06/sorry-a-time-magazine-cover-did-not-predict-a-coming-ice-age/
http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2013/06/04/the-1970s-ice-age-myth-and-time-magazine-covers-by-david-kirtley/

And if you think that you were taught in the 1960's that Thomas Malthus essay PROVED we would all starve to death by the year 2000, well, you need to go find that teacher and have your grade changed to "F".
Thomas Malthus wrote that essay in 1798, and it had been debunked long before our great-grandparents were twinkles in our great-great grandparents eyes.

Re:This whole incident...

[bunratty]

Not only is Antarctica losing ice each year, the ice loss is accelerating.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about regarding Y2K problems, nor how irrelevant your discourse on COBOL and industrial controllers is.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not the parent you're responding to but here is Washington Post reporting that "Antarctic sea ice hit 35-year record high Saturday":
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2013/09/23/antarctic-sea-ice-hit-35-year-record-high-saturday/

In the middle of the article there is a link to the data from "National Snow and Ice Data Center" web site. The data is available in CSV format for you to download. That is not the record but quite close to the record numbers set 3 decades ago in 1978.

Re:This whole incident...

[Bing Tsher E]

We all KNOW it wasn't global warming. Nor can blame be assigned to the people shrieking about anthrogenic climate change. Thankfully they've never had enough power to do all that much damage yet.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

And in the Midwest US and Canada we've had the coldest winter in 30 years. Weather is weather.

Re:This whole incident...

[dbIII]

That the "Malthusian Dilemma" theory PROVED we would all starve to death by the year 2000

China got it's shit together (Mao dying helped) and went from the prospect of hundreds of millions starving when the weather got rough to being a food exporter. Around the majority of the world vast improvements were made to agriculture.

Time Magazine

Sometimes they print shit. I've read some old Scientific American magazines from that time pointing out the S.A. editor thought so on that topic.

Is that all you've got?
Why didn't you manage to work those two things out for yourself?

This is like suggesting that you have proof of a Doomsday Device because your source is the New York Times.

Re:This whole incident...

[bunratty]

As has been explained before, the reason there's lots of ice in the Antarctic sea is that the ice on the land is melting, which makes more of the ice flow into the sea. http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/antarctic-ice-melt

Re:This whole incident...

[petermgreen]

No. Don't bring Y2K into this. Y2K was a money grab by salesfolk to fleece idiots. Here's a hint sparky: "All computers have clocks" is true of most computers. But the clock is a square wave sync pulse.

As well as using those clock pulses to synchronise logic they also count them to measure the passage of time and record and process those date values in various ways. There are a few popular methods of such counting (and lots of strange custom ones). Some use simple linear counts, others use the same date structures we humans use. Which is chosen for a particular system is pretty arbitary and as systems grow more complex it is very likely that there will be many conversions between different date formats.

Since a complex system will likely use multiple date formats in different places different parts of system will respond in different ways to the rollover. Taking the year 2000 as an example some will handle itfine because they don't use a vulnerable date format. Some will wrap round to 00 (which may be later interpreted as 1900), some will produce malformed dates (like 1/1/100 which may later end up being interpreted as 1/1/0100 or 1/1/19100 or 1/1/A0 or 1/1/:0). So suddenly different parts of your system may have very different ideas of the date and anything that compares those dates to measure elapsed time will start generating nonsensical results or possiblly even crashing.

THERE ARE NO industrial controllers, microcontrollers, embedded systems of any kind that use COBOL

Even if that is true (and I find it doubtful) COBOL is far from the only place that human style date formats with 2-digit years are used (and if you think Y2K stopped people using such date formats you are sadly mistaken).

The electrical power grid was never in any danger

A wraparound in a common date format is a risk because it can break many independently developed systems at the same time. A power grid can handle a few plants dropping off at once because they shutdown due to a control software bug but if too many drop off you have a grid collapse.

Was Y2K overhyped? somewhat
Was there a need to check big systems to make sure they weren't vulnerable to systematic failure when one of the worlds most common date formats wrapped round? yes

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hot air, actually.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please do not pretend the other side is the superstitious one. It is you who ignore the majority of scientists in favour of your beliefs. Thinking "I better trust the experts on this, just like they trust me on X" is not superstition, it's being rational. While your attitude of "ha! those egg-heads sure are stupid! if it were up to me we'd have colonized the Sun by now as we can land at night!" is plain foolishness, although I suppose it helps your ego.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

Some? Exact amount unknown and unimportant? Yet still real and measurable, but yet imprecise?

So, what kind of "skin doctor" is your wife, a fucking shaman?

Back to your RealDoll, you jealous troll.

Re:This whole incident...

[pipedwho]

As an embedded systems programmer, I worked on at least 100 different systems between 1995 and 1999. Some problems were just cosmetic, others caused overrun buffers, infinite loops, code paths that would no longer run, and of course the usual date comparison and cosmetic problems.

The 'doom' wasn't so much a single system going down, but a sudden coordinated failure of hundreds or thousands of systems at the same time. At least 1 in 5 of the systems we worked on were 'critical' systems that would very likely have caused serious damage, injury and/or loss of life if they weren't fixed. The company I worked for primarily dealt with equipment used in hospitals, power plants / utilities, and industrial equipment. Other companies would audit a facility (eg. a hospital), and we'd be called whenever they found something that hadn't already been dealt with.

Sometimes we didn't have access to source code, and had to recommend replacements or rewrites.

Re:This whole incident...

[ChrisMaple]

If there were 6 studies, each showing some particular increase in skin cancer between 50% and 300% due to the "ozone hole", it would be proper to say the exact amount was unknown, yet the phenomenon was real and measurable (and measured) but imprecise. Referring to the exact amount being "unimportant" is OK if it's understood that what's being argued is the existence of the phenomenon rather than its strength.

Re:This whole incident...

[ChrisMaple]

The point of the distinction between falsifiability and provability is not the certainty of observations, but the effect of observations. Falsifiability is the understanding that one contrary observation can "disprove a theory" (i.e. show that a statement does not agree with reality). No number of observations can prove a theory; the best that observations can do is reinforce the utility of using a statement to describe reality. (Ultimately, that's all we have, "utility of using a statement to describe reality." And that's all we need; we live in reality and need to be able to use statements about reality to live well therein.)

Falsifiability is an important concept because if a statement is not falsifiable, it adds nothing to human understanding of reality.

Re:This whole incident...

[ChrisMaple]

And what is seldom mentioned is that there's increasing volcanic activity under the antarctic ice.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can never disprove something then it's not science, because science only reduces, not eliminate, uncertainty. So, you can't prove a theory, we just use the simpliest ones we aren't able to disprove. If we were able to prove things, as in math, there'd be no need for further inquiry. However, we obviously can't say that our current theories take everything into account, hence the current system.
 
Your example of gravity is a good one, as it's quite poorly understood, but we have a few competing theories that haven't been disproven yet. Does gravity result from space-time distortions, a "gravon" particle, or perhaps something else entirely? We cannot prove either, but if we knew the speed of gravity we could disprove one and be better closer to knowing the truth.

As for my two cents on climate, I'll say this. I'm more familiar with medical research. Observational studies are good for curiosity and further study design, but not terribly accurate because humans are amazing at rationalizing. To change policy you need several large, independant, randomized controlled trials. Climatology doesn't come close, but alarmists suggest economic actions that will foreseeably kill millions. Hence why we do so little despite one field's concensus.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

So geostationary satellites falsify gravity ;)

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing about science is that its supposed to be falsifiable. No it is not. It is supposed to be "investigate able" by experiments. That means it is "provable" ... no idea why americans always use the term "falsifiable". Must have a special meaning in some circumstances?

Or, how do you "falsify" the theory of gravity?

Falsifiability is one of the basic tenets of empirical science - and being American has nothing to do with it. Karl Popper was Austro-British and worked in New Zealand and England.

"The concern with falsifiability gained attention by way of philosopher of science Karl Popper's scientific epistemology "falsificationism". Popper stresses the problem of demarcation—distinguishing the scientific from the unscientific—and makes falsifiability the demarcation criterion, such that what is unfalsifiable is classified as unscientific, and the practice of declaring an unfalsifiable theory to be scientifically true is pseudoscience."

If you have no understanding of the philosophical basis of empirical science and how it differs from the 'inductive method' maybe you should spend less time spouting off and more time reading up.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

You cannot "prove" physical theories as you prove math theorems.
But you can falsify a theory if you find even only one experiment (which can be reproduced) that shows that the theory is false.

Newton's theory of gravity was indeed falsified by the precession of mercury and many other experiments. When hints appear it's not always clear if the theory is wrong or there are some missing elements (for example an unknown planet perturbing Mercury's orbit).

Einstein's general theory of relativity made a prediction about how light would be bended in a gravity field. This meant that the theory was falsifiable if we didn't observe this phenomenon. It was observed after Einstein came out with the theory (http://archive.ncsa.illinois.edu/Cyberia/NumRel/EinsteinTest.html).

Making predictions and getting them right increase our confidence in a given theory.
A theory which cannot predict anything more than what we already know is not very exciting. (And let's not confuse depictions/stories about reality with theories; there are often many ways to look at/explain a physical theory that are physically quivalent)
A theory which predicts things which we cannot test is said to be non falsifiable.

http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Falsifiability.html

Re:This whole incident...

[MooseMiester]

I accept, and respect that you believe with all your heart that unless some transformation in human behavior occurs, we're all doomed in some way.

My point that this kind of thinking has gone on for a lot longer than either of us has been alive, it is nothing new. If someone older than me comes along, they can educate us on the horrific tales being told in the 1950's.

Arguing with you would be akin to convincing a Muslim that his God was no good, and he should choose mine. Or trying to convince an Oracle DBA as to the wondrous capabilities in SQL Server. Or selling a MAC user on Windows 8.

What you need to understand is that not everybody in this world has altruistic intentions, and that money, and greed, motivate people to do some pretty astounding things. That being said, please try to have faith in humanity - We are capable of pretty amazing things when presented with problems.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

Falsifiable means that it has criteria for a situation that would prove it wrong. Gravity isn't provable in that we don't have any experiment that will tell us that is the exact and only way the effects of gravity could be observed. We can only look for situations where it might be wrong and test those (These do exist for Newtonian gravity). In a sense falsifiable means investigatible, it's a term introduced into scientific philosophy by Sir Karl Popper to distinguish between unprovable assertions and testable theories.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

If it is not important that Antarctic ice melt is this year the lowest ever recorded,
Never heard about that claim. Any proof? NASA and ESA photos don't confirm this.

It was, like. really hard to google "Antarctica Ice Melt" and click on the first news article, but I managed to do it. The only problem is that the article's source is behind Science magazine's paywall.

Or, how do you "falsify" the theory of gravity?

Ask Jan Hendrik Oort, Horace Babcock, Louise Volders, Vera Rubin, or Kent Ford.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Time Magazine one was false...

But what about all these other ones?

Re:This whole incident...

[swillden]

The thing about science is that its supposed to be falsifiable.

No it is not. It is supposed to be "investigate able" by experiments.

You need to read up on your philosophy of science. Karl Popper was the one who identified that the key element of a hypothesis that makes it scientific is falsifiability. Some later work has added that some additional requirements, but falsifiability is very much a key requirement.

That means it is "provable"

No, because nothing can ever be truly proven. In mathematics, we can define axioms and prove theorems based on them, but science is effectively about trying to discover what the axioms of the universe are so we can never have that solid basis from which we can prove things.

But, what we can do, is disprove things. But if you have a hypothesis which can never be disproven, under any circumstances, then it isn't scientific. Generally this is because it doesn't make any testable predictions.

... no idea why americans always use the term "falsifiable".

It's not an American thing. Anyone who has studied modern philosophy of science will understand and use that term.

Must have a special meaning in some circumstances?

In discussions of science, it has a very particular meaning. The definition given by Wikipedia for it is "A statement is called falsifiable if it is possible to conceive an observation or an argument truthness of which proves the statement in question to be false." Note that a hypothesis can be beyond our ability to test and yet still be falsifiable. It's not necessary that we be able to make the observation that could falsify the theory, just that such an observation is concievable.

Or, how do you "falsify" the theory of gravity?

By finding or constructing some scenario in which your theory is shown not to hold. Basically, by finding a counterexample.

Actually, Einstein conjectured many scenarios in which Newton's theory of gravitation would not hold, and tests have shown that Einstein was right, and so Newton's theory of gravitation has been proven to be false. Of course, Newton's theory is right in enough situations that it's still highly useful (and used), but, for example, if we used Newtonian mechanics to construct the Global Positioning System, it would give inaccurate results, because relativistic issues do come into play.

It's also worth pointing out that Einstein didn't just tweak Newton's theory of gravitation around the edges, he completely replaced it. Gravity, it turns out, isn't a fundamental force at all, but instead is an effect of curved spacetime. This is an entirely different explanation than Newton's theory of gravitational attraction -- though in everyday experience the observed effects are the same. And when I say "it turns out" that Gravity is an effect of curved spacetime, that's per Einstein's relativity, which is itself a falsifiable theory which makes various testable predictions. So far, all of our testing has confirmed the theory, but it's always possible that we'll find a way in which it doesn't work and then we'll need a new theory, which might completely revise the way we explain gravitation yet again.

If you'd like to understand this stuff in detail, there's a fascinating (and very readable) book by David Deutsch called "The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World". Deutsch addresses not just Popper's theories of scientific reasoning but some of the improvements made by later thinkers.

Re:This whole incident...

[angel'o'sphere]

Finding a counterexample is the right way.
But having a theory that is 'hard to find a counter example for' like e.g. theory of gravity, does not make the theory wrong as most americans claim here.
Anyway, I read your post again on my laptop as here on iPad it is hard to answer :) (copy/paste does not work on this web site on iPads, no idea if it is a iOs problem or a problem with Java Script)
Bottom line my argument is: for all scientific theories I know about, it is IMPOSSIBLE to find a counter experiment. So the 'american' claim about falsifiable does not make any sense at all to me (and it certainly never as mentioned in my science education).

Re:This whole incident...

[swillden]

If it's impossible to find a counter experiment, meaning that there is no conceivable way that a counter experiment could exist, then the theory is pseudo-science at best. If it's conceivable that a counter experiment could exist, but no one has been able to show one, then that's a currently-valid theory.

Also, there is nothing "american" about the notion of falsifiability. Not in the slightest. Popper was British, and his explanation of the philosophy of science (essentially, a theory of how and why science works), has been generally accepted everywhere.

Re:This whole incident...

[bhiestand]

You are entirely correct, of course... but you're missing an important point. Those screaming about "alarmism" don't really mean what they say.

If we weren't being alarmist they would use our nonchalance as proof that we did not really believe AGW would have serious consequences.

Most AGW deniers are on the right-far right. How often do we see them railing against "socialism alarmists" or "gay alarmists"? Alarmism about those things is just fine because those things are bad, whereas alarmism about AGW is bad because communists.

Re:This whole incident...

[dbIII]

Nice strawman you are building of me. With such obvious lies about a person you know nothing about how can you expect people to take you seriously? You just threw the global cooling lie in to stir people up and never fell for that stupidity back in the day did you? I certainly didn't know anyone who fell for that.

Re:This whole incident...

[MooseMiester]

I win. I accepted your opinion, and expressed my respect for it - You accuse me of being a liar.

Re:This whole incident...

[Anonymous Coward]

You must not know much about science if you don't understand why falsifiablity is important. Hypotheses have to be falsifiable, otherwise how do you craft an experiment to disprove them? Its not just Americans, Dawkins goes on at length about the importance of falsifiablity in his book "The God Delusion."

What would falsify the theory of gravity? Dropping a feather and a bowling ball on the moon at the same time and having one of them hit the ground faster than the other. What would falsify evolution? Fossilized rabbits in the Precambrian period.

Re:This whole incident...

[angel'o'sphere]

Then why are textbooks about physics full with experiments that "support" (prove) a certain theory and no single (obviously failed) experiment for anything is in a text book?

Re:This whole incident...

[dbIII]

So playing a petty game AND a liar?
Plus your "respect" was an outright insult suggesting that I believe with all my heart something that was wrong. Don't try to spin it as paying attention to my opinion, your strawman construction proved that you most definitely do not.
Nice petty little "getting the last word" trick to "win" your little game as well.

Re:This whole incident...

[laptop006]

Summer starts on the 1st of December by Australian convention.

Certainly December wasn't that warm by recent standards.

Re:This whole incident...

[clovis]

RE: http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/the-1970s-ice-age-scare/

Nice link - it must have taken a lot of work to make that page, and it is good to see that someone has taken the trouble to gather actual evidence to support a position. Kudos.

The problem is that the wordpress page is a list of newspaper articles that talked about the "coming ice age",
It takes a side and says "look at these". What we would want to see is a list of all climate-related articles from the 1970's and then determine if there was a preponderance of one kind of another, and what kind of magazines/journals published each.

Secondly, these are not links into scientific journals, so it can hardly be considered a consensus of scientific thought, but it does serve very well to show how public opinion may have been influenced.
I have to agree that the press published be-scared articles, but as I recall (and I was an adult), there as a significant number of articles saying balderdash to popular press imminent ice age articles. The people that I knew at that time admitted to the possibility that we may be moving into an ice age eventually, or perhaps a period of cooling in the near future, and everyone was aware that ice ages come in cycles. I don't know anyone that thought the newspaper articles were compelling enough to be actionable.
Confession: my degree and work is in a sci/tech field so the people I associated with tended to be a good bit more skeptical and knowledgeable than the general public.

Here's some counter-examples to the belief that there was a universal ice-age scare, see the links at the bottom/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling
However, the wiki isn't looking at both sides either, but it gives you another point of view.

As for the wordpress blog. It could be improved somewhat, though. here are some suggestions.

Starting with the first one, the NCAR graph from Newsweek.
It's NOT an article predicting an ice age. it's an article saying the minor cooling in the Northern hemisphere may severely impact agriculture output. Why did you not post the other graph in that article that showed warming in the Southern hemisphere?
What about the quote in the article: "Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions"

National Academy of Sciences graph. The graph shows Northern hemisphere temperatures. I don't see any prediction of an ice age. The link returns two non-weather articles from 2005.

The Milwaukee Sentinel screen shot of a fraction of a George Will opinion piece from 1992.
He is not saying that there is a coming ice age, he is saying the exact opposite. However, his stance is that some newspapers were using scare tactics, and he is using several newspaper articles quote fragments to show that the newspapers had got it wrong back in the 1970's.
You really should not use a 1992 opinion column's article to support claims that 1970's were having an ice-age scare.
BTW, two of the links in the Wordpress article point to the George Will article.

The Windsor Star article: Scientist Hubert Lamb, who also said "not for another 10,000 years"
Here's another contemporaneous article offering Professor Lamb views and some balance. That is, rejection of his position by other scientists
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1314&dat=19750908&id=jfJLAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ae0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=5280,2927204

Sarasota Herald-Tribune article:
Read the entire article on page 14A. This article is the exact opposite of an ice age scare - it says of the recent cooling trend "The first, which he said is held by the majority of weather and climate specialists, see trends originated in th

Re:This whole incident...

[MooseMiester]

I am not at all playing a game with you. I respect that you believe what you believe, and that you are very passionate about this.

My whole point, that was lost on you, is that some of us have quite a different perspective on all of this based on what we have personally lived through.

Consider these two quotes about the "polar vortex" from Time Magazine:

From 1974:

Scientists have found other indications of global cooling. For one thing there has been a noticeable expansion of the great belt of dry, high-altitude polar winds —the so-called circumpolar vortex—that sweep from west to east around the top and bottom of the world.

From this month's edition:

But not only does the cold spell not disprove climate change, it may well be that global warming could be making the occasional bout of extreme cold weather in the U.S. even more likely. Right now much of the U.S. is in the grip of a polar vortex, which is pretty much what it sounds like: a whirlwind of extremely cold, extremely dense air that forms near the poles.

So the "polar vortex" was the result of global cooling in 1974, whereas now the same "polar vortex" must be related to global warming? Sure looks like whatever the conditions are, they support the popular theory of the time. In my opinion, this isn't science, this is politics and trolling for money. That's my opinion, please try to understand that in 1974 I was a senior in High School and very passionate about these things. I was the one arguing about climate change and how we have do to something about it. Today I believe my personal concerns about the coming ice age were the result of youth and gullibility.... and I just can't get on board with the populist theory of today, having lived through all this. That doesn't mean I am against clean air and water, or want to abolish the EPA, or any such thing.

So perhaps you can take a moment to consider my life experience, and where I coming from, instead of assuming I am some kind of ideologue who simply shouts his opinions, and considers everyone else to be the enemy. That's how I behaved in 1974, but that's not who I am now. All I ask is that you respect my opinion. That is the basis of getting things done. Hurling accusations at each other solves absolutely nothing.

Re:This whole incident...

[jwhitener]

That means it is "provable" ... no idea why americans always use the term "falsifiable". Must have a special meaning in some circumstances?

It is only special in that it correctly describes how science works. As a practical matter, scientists may consider a theory proven, but it never really is proven. It just happens to be the theory that matches the most observable evidence at this time. What science can conclusively do, though, is disprove a theory. If a theory does not match the observable evidence, it is false.

Re:This whole incident...

[dbIII]

Your life experience does not seem to apply at all if one bit of bullshit that made it into Time and was repeatedly pointed out as bullshit made such an impact.
You are not applying your life experience to this situation.
You are merely using that as a bluff to scare off the kiddies born after 1970. That's not going to work on me.

Nice story though, but we all believed stupid stuff when we were young. I thought Trotsky had some sort of point without understanding that he was just the least objectionable of a band of bloodthirsty bandits.

All I ask is that you respect my opinion.

Your opinion about mocking other opinions? Fine. But you are pretending there are different facts - everyone gets their own opinion but denying reality is a different story.

I'd swap your polar vortex with the 41C day I had on Saturday if I could, so that bluff fails too. Nice attempted shift of the goalposts from climate to weather, but personally I think I'll go with the experts on this one instead of lying tricksters that should know a lot better.

Re:This whole incident...

[MooseMiester]

This is clearly hopeless and I am sorry. I do have a lot of friends just like you though, so I get it.

Re:This whole incident...

[dbIII]

It's been clear from the start that you have been pretending just to have a straw to grasp to back up what some idiots in politics are telling you to say, whether you believe it or not. In this case the straw is a bullshit article Time magazine introduced as "balance" to stir up interest some years after a report on global warming was put on President Johnson's desk.
Using "life experience" as an excuse to believe a debunked magazine article from decades ago over an entire field of study is truly a perversion.

In short I think your attempt to mislead the readers here for petty political ends is disgusting. Some of us don't live in the same place as you so your political squabbles are of lesser interest than just about any topic you could mention.

Re:This whole incident...

[angel'o'sphere]

Then you should watch news.
There where already heat records of over 50 degrees celsius reported in various places in Australia around christmas.

Re:This whole incident...

[MooseMiester]

My second quote is from the this month's Time Magazine.

In 1974, decades of study as well as the "scientific consensus" phrase (still used today) were taught in schools - That we were headed into an ice age. Something tells me you weren't alive then. I was. I'm not sure how that is "petty political ends". I lived it. One can learn a lot from the past, as history often repeats itself, and what is old, becomes new again.

Re:This whole incident...

[dbIII]

Something tells me you weren't alive then. I was

Your bluff failed. I didn't hear about the cooling thing back then, it certainly didn't make it into my school, but I did read later in Scientific American back issues about how far off the mark the Time Magazine article was.
Using an out there "balance" piece from a magazine to oppose an entire field of study just makes you look utterly ridiculous IMHO, let alone using an ice melting event as "proof" of cooling and recent weather as "proof" of cooling. Niagra falls may be freezing but a coastal city near me is forecast to have four days over 40C next week. So which weather event do we use? Maybe if we ask the experts and consider climate as a whole instead? Oh that's right - you are mocking the experts so let's ask a Time Magazine hack who's looking for a contraversy instead. Then that gives us plenty to mock.

I'm not sure how that is "petty political ends"

This whole anti-science Christianity-Lite thing crept in the back door of one of your political parties when they went for the evangelical vote. You've been spewing some of their talking points, it's depressing that you think I'm so stupid as to not have noticed right from the start.

Similar story

[PsyMan]

I once got a chainsaw stuck in a tree trunk, 3 borrowed chainsaws later I got them all out. Thought I was going to end up with an expensive redneck garden art feature though.

Re:Similar story

[Jmc23]

Are you implying they don't know how to use their ships?

Re:Similar story

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just burn down the tree?

Re:Similar story

[Anonymous Coward]

I once got a chainsaw stuck in a tree trunk, 3 borrowed chainsaws later I got them all out. Thought I was going to end up with an expensive redneck garden art feature though.

I had something like that happen. Then my uncle showed me how those chainsaws have a little motor on them. Start the little motor and the chainsaw cuts much better, and your arms don't get so tired.

Re:Similar story

[Anonymous Coward]

No - the redneck art feature's what's left after you try to blow up the tree.

Re:Similar story

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like someone who has never cut a big tree down in windy conditions, even with wedges a gust can twist a little and lock the bar in really tight.

I own several chainsaws, the biggest being 7bhp with a 36" bar. Twice in all my years I've had a bar stuck so bad that I unbolted the powerhead and cut the tree off up a little higher.

nuke the ice........

[Anonymous Coward]

and nuke it NOW

send in the navy to NUKE THE ICE

mo3 0p

[Anonymous Coward]

of bUsiness and was

The situation as described in BASIC

[Anonymous Coward]

10 STUCKSHIP=1
20 PRINT "Oh No!!! we have ";STUCKSHIP ; " ships trapped in the ice!"
30 LET STUCKSHIP=STUCKSHIP+1
40 GOTO 20
50 END

nuke nuke nuke nuke nuke nuke nuke that ice.....

[Anonymous Coward]

nuke it 'til it's STEAM

then nuke nuke nuke nuke nuke nuke
nuke it AGAIN

and watch them fires GLEAM!!!!

International Cooperation and a Happy New Year.

[wjcofkc]

An Western European led research vessel gets stuck in the ice. A Chinese ice breaker comes to the rescue. The Chinese ice breaker gets stuck in the ice. A Russian ice breaker with an international crew comes to the rescue. The Russian ice breaker gets stuck in the Ice. Now we have a US Coast Guard ice breaker on the way to save the day. The moral of the story? When you subtract nasty international politics from the equation, we really can get along.

Re:International Cooperation and a Happy New Year.

[DarkOx]

Or at least get collectively owned by mother nature.

Re:International Cooperation and a Happy New Year.

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, it shows what we can do when we all work together.

Serially fuck up big-time.

Re:International Cooperation and a Happy New Year.

[Anonymous Coward]

For a second there, it sounded like you were about to tell a variant on the "Walks into a bar" joke.

Re:International Cooperation and a Happy New Year.

[Anonymous Coward]

Or "use the right tool for the job". Don't send an icebreaker that can break up to 2 meters into an ice field that's already near that.

And there's no russian ship sitting in the ice by now. It's just the initial australian with the scientists/tourists and the chinese one. The one the US is sending now can break up to 6 m ice, that should be sufficient here...

Re:International Cooperation and a Happy New Year.

[angel'o'sphere]

Well, they have the ice! I guess the russians bring in vodka and the amis their "idea of" a whisk(e)y.
The Chinese are invited, ofc.

Re:International Cooperation and a Happy New Year.

[Anne_Nonymous]

A Western European led research vessel, a Chinese ice-breaker, a Russian ice-breaker, and and American ice-breaker, walk into a bar. Which one talks to the pretty girl at the bar?

The American vessel, of course; it's the only one good at breaking the ice.

Re:International Cooperation and a Happy New Year.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well blow me down. You win!

Re:International Cooperation and a Happy New Year.

[bhiestand]

Worth noting that the Polar Star hit its expiration date, retired, got refurbished, and has not been on a real operation since being refurbished. It will probably do just fine, but there is a little room for failure here.

A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would the US Coast Guard own any icebreakers? We don't have any deep ice around our coastlines.

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[wjcofkc]

Why? For situations just like this.

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Umm, yes we do.

Lake Superior, for example, sometimes has 6 to 12 feet of ice, and the Coast Guard opens channels in the spring for shipping to proceed as early in the season as possible.

There can be ice around Alaska coastline as well, and Coast Guard resources are used to free stuck ships.

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would the US Coast Guard own any icebreakers? We don't have any deep ice around our coastlines.

Forgetting about something, are we?

You must be related to the tourist that gets off the cruise ship in Juneau and asks where they can exchange dollars for Alaskan money.

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[jonbryce]

I've heard rumours that Alaska can get quite cold.

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[mytec]

Why would the US Coast Guard own any icebreakers?

According to a Wikipedia article:

Polar Star has a variety of missions while operating in polar regions. During Antarctic deployments, the primary missions include breaking a channel through the sea ice to resupply the McMurdo Research Station in the Ross Sea. Resupply ships use the channel to bring food, fuel, and other goods to make it through another winter. In addition to these duties, Polar Star also serves as a scientific research platform with five laboratories and accommodations for up to 20 scientists. The "J"-shaped cranes and work areas near the stern and port side of ship give scientists the capability to do at-sea studies in the fields of geology, vulcanology, oceanography, sea-ice physics and other disciplines.

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[Bing Tsher E]

He's that Russian dude on Saturday Night Live who claims 'I can see the Tea Party from my patio.'

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[MooseMiester]

Please take out a map... and look at those big lakes. Some people even go as far as to call them "Great".

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard rumours that Alaska can get quite cold.

They just say that to keep the tourists away.

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sitka Alaska has no ice? Anchorage Alaska has no ice? Juneau Alaska has no ice? Glacier Bay Alaska has no ice? The oil refuelling station at Point Hope Alaska has no ice? Brown Low Point Airport, Alaska has no ice? Are you conceding Alaska to Canada or Russia?

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoever asked "Why would the US Cost Cuard own any icebreakers?"

Lets see... Ah yes its called Alaska.. You know one of our 50 states..

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[dbIII]

This thing can apparently chew through 6 metres of ice.

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would the US Coast Guard own any icebreakers? We don't have any deep ice around our coastlines.

The US Coast Guard has 6 ice breakers in service on the Great Lakes:

Early ice causing problems on Lake Michigan:

The ice is getting formidable, particularly in the lower St. Mary's River, which connects Lake Superior to the lower Great Lakes.

"Most of the iron ore and the biggest coal shipping ports are on Lake Superior, so if our ships can't get through the St. Mary's River, the steel mills won't get their iron ore and power plants won't get their coal," Nekvasil said.

Two Coast Guard icebreakers as well as one from Canada are working on the river, Nekvasil said.

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Polar Star was in transit to Antarctica anyway.

It was diverted from its annual task of clearing a channel through the Ross Ice Shelf to allow ships to do their once a year re-supply of McMurdo Base.

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, built bigger and badder than we really need.....just like the giant SUV I drive. But the Chinese vessel that is stuck wouldn't be able to make it through parts Lake Superior this year.

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the border between the US and Russia as well as the North Shore of Alaska is of vital strategic interest?

Re:A US Coast Guard Icebreaker?

[dbIII]

That one has already cut through pressure ridges many times thicker than anything that forms on the lakes, but the US ship is built to get deep into the Ross Sea so can cut through more than the Chinese ice breaker.

Isn't it ironic?

[billcarson]

A expedition trying to prove global warming gets stuck in the ice?

Re:Isn't it ironic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it is, two-point-four million boy.

Now STFU and allow the grown-ups their time to themselves.

Re:Isn't it ironic?

[billcarson]

Maybe someday you'll look back at this reply and realise it was unnecessary harsh.

Re:Isn't it ironic?

[Anonymous Coward]

A expedition trying to prove global warming gets stuck in the ice?

Yes, especially (as stated by another commenter above) since the pack ice is trapped because a huge iceberg melted off, not because it's colder than normal.

Re:Isn't it ironic?

[bunratty]

Here's an article that shows that Antarctic ice is melting at an accelerating rate, in addition to the Arctic sea ice and ice sheets and glaciers worldwide.

Re:Isn't it ironic?

[dbIII]

I don't think so. It's not any colder down there this year and a very big iceberg (Texas Ranch sized) has broken off to trap the pack ice. Trying to use that to fuel science denial, even as a joke, is going to annoy those of use that still think that subject matter experts have value.

Re:Isn't it ironic?

[billcarson]

If you start arguing about science topics like it's a religion, then I no longer consider that debate related to science either.
I'm not denying any science publications (all signs seem to point they are indeed right), but I hate these so-called "scientists" that try to force their views upon me. I already had that treatment with religious nuts years ago.

Re:Isn't it ironic?

[dbIII]

If you start arguing about science topics like it's a religion

If you can't tell the difference then I can help a bit if you quote what I've written that looks like religion to you and I'll explain the difference to you. Go ahead. Put up or stop pushing this silly "it looks like Dogma to me" line.


How's that for calling a science denier's bluff when they try the "I'll pretend to be too stupid to tell the difference" trick?
We can go back to laughing at him now for pretending that a breakout of sea ice built up on the edge of the ice shelf over many winters, trapped by a very old broken off glacier portion is in some way evidence that it's getting colder. From what little I know about the subject it appears that ice tends to break off when things get warm not cold.

Re:Isn't it ironic?

[billcarson]

I wasn't specifically referring to your comment, but to that irate response I've got to what I intended to be a joke (I'm not a researcher, why should I contest their research?). However, my point was: if you are so devoted to your subject that you can't take any amusing comments, than I doubt it you can hold a constructive debate on that subject, and I doubt it you can write an objective report about it too.
The whole setting of "don't you dare to attack our point of view or we'll break your leg" reminds me of the religious views I had forced upon me during my childhood, and in my opinion gives scientists a bad name. Science is in my opinion about publishing the results and letting the world know. Whether the people are convinced and want to change their behaviour is a pure political debate.

Re:Isn't it ironic?

[dbIII]

I wasn't specifically referring to your comment but to that irate response I've got to what I intended to be a joke

The same "joke" has been repeated with the intention of being serious through the Murdoch press (some others, but the same article goes out in many outlets in that group). There are also a lot of very active posters here that try to pretend that the earth sciences (meteorology, geology etc) and biology are not "real" science. If your comment was intended as a joke and not an attack there really was no way to tell - just like the "only a joke" with racist slights comparison (eg. British Black and White minstrel show verses the US ones which looked designed to be nasty).
Either way it looks like pushing even possible evidence of warming (a massive ice breakout from the edge of the continent) as some sort of proof that warming isn't happening. Even if it's innocent it looks like it's calculated to offend, it looks like deliberately arguing the opposite of reality so as to be able to get a "win" every time.

That's assuming it was all perfectly innocent and ignorant of the how it would be seen as a troll.

Of course your subsequent posts, backtracks and refusal to address what an inconvenient real person has written instead of a conveniently silent and attackable strawman has presumably written makes that very unlikely. It appears instead that you are whining about the consequence of your deliberate trolling.

Re:Isn't it ironic?

[billcarson]

I guess your response shows how hard it is for people to distinguish between genuine comments and comments ment as mockery/outlet. I have never been found guilty of trolling (and certainly not in a language that I am not fully familiar with).
I don't read newspapers of Murdoch; here in Europe those only have a minor share of the market, just like the global warming debate only has a minor role (most people that opposite it here are just out to get the energy taxes lowered).

I guess I'll have to take lessons and be more careful next time.

Epic fail

[dbIII]

The pack ice is trapped because a huge iceberg melted off, not because it's colder than normal.

and it takes a really magnificent demonstration of stupidity

Thank you for yours.

I don't get it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Along came an icebreaker and there were...

Two blue ships, stuck upon the ice. Two blue ships, stuck upon the ice, along came an icebreaker and there were...

Three blue ships, stuck upon the ice...

I don't get it.

I was thinking the ice breaker was along the lines of ... "So, come to Antarctica often?"

Re:I don't get it.

[Bing Tsher E]

The icebreaker was 'say, do all these ships have a carbon footprint?'

But the ecotourists just frowned in response.

international convention

[Anonymous Coward]

didn't *require* the u.s. ship to travel all the way down there to perform the rescue. summary is fucked, as usual.

the u.s. is doing the rescue mission because it was asked to and because the u.s. government is in desperate need of good publicity for a change.

Re:international convention

[Anonymous Coward]

the u.s. is doing the rescue mission because it was asked to

They pretty much always do this...to a fault.

It made the *news* because the government wants some good PR.

Cost/Price/Payment

[Anonymous Coward]

Love how, as soon as the USians got involved, the subject of payment came up.

Re:Cost/Price/Payment

[Anonymous Coward]

Because we are broke. We have spent ten years fighting a 'war on terror'. All the USian oligarchs have their bank accounts in foreign countries so the tax base is drying up. We can always tax the poor, but the poor being the freeloaders that they are don't have any money. We do still have a legacy ice breaker. I just hope they don't fuck it up. The CG is not always reliable. The are hampered by beuracracy and institutional arrogance.

Good luck Coast Guard. To bad we don't have any nuclear ice breakers. USians are afraid of nukes.

This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[Toe, The]

There are some complex facts that usually don't get dragged into this discussion because they make it so much larger. But some interesting facts to color the warming issue are:

1. We are currently in an ice age. The current Quaternary glaciation (i.e., the current ice age) started 2.5 million years ago.

2. Within that ice age, we are in an interglacial: a period of temporary(?) warming within the ice age. Our current interglacial is the Holocene epoch, which started 11,700 years ago.

But as long as we still have ice caps, we are still in an ice age. If the ice caps melt, we'll know the ice age is over and we're back to what is in fact more normal temperatures for Earth.

However, it can't be said that Earth's normal warm is necessarily good for humanity. After all,

3. Humans, as in the genus Homo, evolved around 2.5 million years ago. The same time as the the beginning of the current ice age. In other words, the adversity of the Earth's freezing put heavy evolutionary pressure on our ape ancestors.

So, cold = good? Well, remember the current interglacial started 11,700 years ago. Now that's interesting. The Old Stone Age begins with the first humans, that ~2.5 million years ago. But...

4. The Middle Stone Age started right around when the interglacial started. That's when humans first began to make more advanced tools, create advanced art, develop spirituality, etc. In other words, when things warmed up a bit, humanity began to flourish.

So what's good? Warm, cold, in-between? What's "natural?" 'Cause that seems to be extremely warm... unless you're talking about humans, then it's extremely cold. Or moderate.

Complex, eh?

Now, apart from global warming, the related issue that always gets short shrift is ocean acidification, which is also caused by an abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere, and which appears to be a huge threat to life on Earth. But it's harder to understand than warming, so let's not talk about it.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[bunratty]

Not to mention that no matter what, we'll have to stop using fossil fuels one day because they'll simply run out. We have to develop alternative energy sources if we want to continue our current lifestyle with billions of humans on the planet.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[Cinder6]

Now, apart from global warming, the related issue that always gets short shrift is ocean acidification, which is also caused by an abundance of CO2 in the atmosphere, and which appears to be a huge threat to life on Earth. But it's harder to understand than warming, so let's not talk about it.

Actually, I think that ocean acidification is easier to understand. People can handle a wide range of temperatures, such that many will scoff at the notion that a difference of a couple of degrees is problematic for the planet. But acid? People understand that acid can be dangerous. Tell them the ocean is becoming acidified, and it will make sense to them that that's probably not good for the things that live there. (Even though the most pH change, according to Wikipedia, also looks like a tiny number at -0.12).

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[MacDork]

The reason you warmers fail is precisely because you treat people like they are stupid. You know what else is acidified with CO2? Soda. Soda doesn't scare anybody. Normal people understand fish don't want to swim in soda anymore than plants crave Brawdo, but when they ask "How much will it acidify?" your attempt to deceive them with what you admit is a very small number is uncovered and you lose their trust.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[Alt_Cognito]

I would treat people like they were stupid if they can't handle facts. The fact is that living organisms are sensitive to very, very subtle changes in PH:

http://www.chemcraft.net/acidph2.html

But hey, if it's 0.1, or 0.01, that's a small number, and anyone who thinks thatz a big numberz iz gust trin 2 pul the wul over ur eyez.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're obviously well informed.

We are currently in a warm period of an ice age. And going back to an ice age would put huge "evolutionary" pressure on us. And that is not a good thing, as you note.

Warming is not good either. The melting of the ice caps would cause billions of people to be displaced from their homes. If "you" think immigration is bad now, just wait until billions of people need to move out of flooded cities. A global economic collapse lasting a few generations is very likely in that scenario. Let's not forget that the Roman empire ultimately collapsed because of invasions in China, which lead to migration to the west, and more wars, and more migration west, as people looked for security.

Ocean acidification or the slowing of the thermohaline cycle would be the absolute worst cases of warming.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now ask anyone with a reef aquarium if 0.12pH is a very small number.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[BringsApples]

This is basically the best way out of any of these stupid "global warming" arguments that everyone seems to love to get into these days. To think that 'the Earth was just chillin for eons at a stable temp, but then humans came and broke the planet' is simply the ego at work.

I don't know what you do for a living, but I'll bet you're pretty good at it.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[khallow]

However, it can't be said that Earth's normal warm is necessarily good for humanity.

Ok, why? If you haven't noticed humanity is a little different now than it was 2.5 million years ago.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[khallow]

Not to mention that no matter what, we'll have to stop using fossil fuels one day because they'll simply run out. We have to develop alternative energy sources if we want to continue our current lifestyle with billions of humans on the planet.

We already have developed a bunch of alternative energy sources. So what's next on your list?

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[bunratty]

Continue developing them to the point they can replace fossil fuels, obviously.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[khallow]

Continue developing them to the point they can replace fossil fuels, obviously.

Well, when fossil fuels become expensive enough, it'll happen automatically without the need for more development now. While now, there's no indication that more development on its own will do anything to change the situation.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[bunratty]

If we continue developing alternative energy sources sooner, they'll be cheaper than fossil fuels sooner, so the maximum price of energy will be minimized. That seems to be a desirable outcome to me. I think we should take steps to reduce energy use through more efficient lighting, transporation, and appliances and also continue to develop alternative energy sources, from a purely economic standpoint, even ignoring any effects from global warming, ocean acidification, and air pollution. It boggles the mind to think that so many people are opposed to it for some reason. I suppose that next quarter's fincances are all that matter to some people.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole Do The Math blog is worth reading, but specifically, The Energy Trap explains why the market alone can't transition away from fossil fuels without some serious growing pains.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[cusco]

Replacement stocks for plastics, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, coatings, dyes, etc. Look around the room. Is there anything in the room that isn't made partially or predominantly with fossil fuels? There are a lot more uses for petroleum than moving a couple tons of steel down the street.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[Uberbah]

To think that 'the Earth was just chillin for eons at a stable temp, but then humans came and broke the planet' is simply the ego at work.

Asking climate scientists if they are aware of the fact that climate has changed without human intervention in the past is like asking a marine biologist if they know that water is wet.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[BringsApples]

o...k... but then why is it so 'up in the air', all this debate about global warming? Why don't these climate scientists let us all know that the Earth has no actual temperature, and that the fact that it's fluctuating is a normal part of the nature of the planet? You know, so that we can all shut the hell up, and go back to... whatever it is that we do as humans.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

And yet, there are species in the oceans that have a fossil record going back a whole lot longer than 56 million years, which is the last time this carbon-led warming trend happened, so the idea that "ocean acidification" is a threat to all life on Earth is a bit of an overreach.

Whether OUR species survives it, will depend on our ability to still use chemistry as the Earth warms up.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[kbolino]

If we continue developing alternative energy sources sooner, they'll be cheaper than fossil fuels sooner, so the maximum price of energy will be minimized.

This is a very limited analysis of the matter, and a contestable one at that.

First, In order to "develop" alternative energy sources before it is economically sensible to do so, you must allocate some measure of resources to the task which people are not already allocating themselves. This reallocation incurs a cost upon the people from whom the resources are taken. The periodic cost may not be that high, especially since much of it is hidden by debt accrual, but the compounded cost over time can be great, especially when you factor in the debt. So even if you are able to "minimize" the apparent price of the good, you are in the process diminishing the purchasing power of the people who consume it, and thus increasing its actual price.

Second, the allocation of effort to a task does not inherently decrease its costs. Subsidies, excise taxes, and other price manipulations only distort the picture by shifting the costs to other areas. A correlative analysis of select industries does not substitute for a causal analysis of all of them. As has been demonstrated numerous times in many industries, simply throwing more money or more people at a task actually increases its costs. The so-called "economies of scale" only occur when there are high fixed costs and low per-unit costs, such that the price of the unit decreases as the greater number of units are made, and that is only feasible when there exists sufficient demand.

The price of fossil fuels is not likely to increase suddenly any more than the price of alternative energy is likely to decrease suddenly. The slow shifting of the relative prices will naturally create an incentive to develop the latter well before the complete exhaustion of the former. Furthermore, people will have created more wealth in the mean time, thus increasing their ability to afford the change. Intervening in this process actually introduces significant risk, and it is likely that the damage we create will exceed the damage that we are trying to prevent.

I think we should take steps to reduce energy use through more efficient lighting, transporation, and appliances and also continue to develop alternative energy sources, from a purely economic standpoint, even ignoring any effects from global warming, ocean acidification, and air pollution. It boggles the mind to think that so many people are opposed to it for some reason. I suppose that next quarter's fincances are all that matter to some people.

All of what you are talking about have high upfront costs that must be paid before the long-term benefits can be realized. Paying those costs requires great wealth, which developed countries generally have. However, for quite some time our fiscal and monetary policies have been destroying wealth--while at the same time concentrating money--which has made us less able to afford these things. The policies you are lending your voice to support are the same sort as have put us in this position to begin with, and so will only exacerbate the problem further.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[Uberbah]

o...k... but then why is it so 'up in the air'

It's not. It's denialists being willfully obtuse. The whole point of AGW is that human-produced emissions are changing the climate faster than it would under natural conditions. Not that all climate change has happened as the result of human activity.

But, you trolls new that already.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[khallow]

The whole Do The Math blog is worth reading, but specifically, The Energy Trap explains why the market alone can't transition away from fossil fuels without some serious growing pains.

Energy != oil. The article is fail on that point alone. The author doesn't get, for example, that it would be economically acceptable to extract oil that costs more per unit of energy that it generates. And the author also reveals a little of their mindset near the end:

Politically, the Energy Trap is a killer. In my lifetime, I have not witnessed in our political system the adult behavior that would be needed to buckle down for a long-term goal involving short-term sacrifice. Or at least any brief bouts of such maturity have not been politically rewarded. Iâ(TM)m not blaming the politicians. We all scream for ice cream. Politicians simply cater to our demands. We tend to vote for the candidate who promises a bigger, better tomorrowâ"even if such a path is untenable.

The only way out of the political trap is for a substantial fraction of our population to understand the dimensions of the problem: to understand that weâ(TM)ve been spoiled by the surplus energy available through fossil fuels, and that we will have to make decade-level sacrifices to put ourselves on a new track. The only way to accomplish this is through sober education, which is what Do the Math is all about. Itâ(TM)s a trap! Spread the word!

But why should society engage in frivolous, unnecessary acts of sacrifice? It's worth noting here that society has already engaged in the decades of the sort of sacrifice that he says we haven't made, and those alternatives just haven't worked out. Economics trumps yet another feelgood religion.

Re:This is an ice age. Is that good or bad?

[jwhitener]

So what's good? Warm, cold, in-between? What's "natural?" 'Cause that seems to be extremely warm... unless you're talking about humans, then it's extremely cold. Or moderate.

Interesting post. However, it isn't really relevant if we are deciding whether action or no action is required to modify the current climate changes.

What is good are rates of change that are slow enough that it gives life time to adapt. Our current rate of change is going to be very difficult and costly for us humans to deal with, and likely impossible for other species to deal with, leading to a lot of extinctions.

For The Love Of God!

[Anonymous Coward]

For the love of God, Slashdot. Please stop forcing this beta.slashdot.org pile of horseshit on me! Please!

  Your Web 3.5 blog is abhorrent.

Obligatory...?

[Kiwikwi]

Am I the only one reminded of this?

Re:Obligatory...?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm more reminded of the usual string of stuck 4x4s (add a tractor or 2 for extra hilarity).

Re:Obligatory...?

[Bing Tsher E]

You fail to realize that the whole FUN of owning a 4x4 is getting it stuck for awhile. Otherwise, all they get to do is speed along in the left lane on the freeway before slipping off into the ditch. (where having 4x4 mostly doesn't matter, call 911 now, you hardcore dudes)

MOD PARENT UP!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, no measurable warming unless you COOK THE BOOKS which they are STILL DOING.
 
But be expected to be modded down. Slashdot has been overrun by the "diggers" since they destroyed their site. You know, the HuffPost type. They like to have their set like a fake coffee shop, three "reporters" or "anchors" with their iFruit slave labor built trashtops all facing the camera DIRECTLY. Not at a 10 degree angle, but DIRECTLY at the camera to show off the Apple logo and hide their wiry bodies just enough to show off their short, spiked hair, nose rings, and peeved (for no apparent reason) and smug visages.
 
You disagree with our status quo "we're the victim minority" environmentalist idea, and you're an outcast. And an IDIOT.
 
So yeah, mod parent up.

Funny but not evidence of anything

[sjbe]

it really feels as if over-the-top global warming alarmism has jumped the shark.

It's GLOBAL warming. Not local warming. The fact that some random ship go caught in sea ice carries precisely zero relevance, nor does the fact that they happened to be studying global warming. While amusing and a bit ironic this ship getting stuck doesn't remotely constitute evidence against temperatures rising globally. Last time I checked the Antarctic hasn't thawed and thus it is a very dangerous place to sail regardless of time of year. There always is danger from ice in that part of the world.

We'll look back in 20 years and say, "Remember when that ship got stuck in the ice on their journey to drum up fear about receding ice?"

People who do that will basically be publicly acknowledging their ignorance of science. While it may turn out that fears of global warming end up being overstated to some degree, this incident is not going to be relevant in proving that fact one way or the other. Furthermore a cavalier attitude about something like global warming is incredibly dangerous. We only have the one planet to live on and if we want to keep living on it as a species we would to well to tread carefully.

Re:Funny but not evidence of anything

[Bing Tsher E]

People who do that will basically be publicly acknowledging their ignorance of science.

You forgot to capitalize, and slightly misspell that word 'science' that you used. Also put a (tm) at the end to keep others from capitalizing on whatever you define it to mean.

Glad to help you commies

[amightywind]

Now, lets talk about cost. China, we'll take the South China Sea, and assume you will stop harassing Japan over the Senkacu Islands. Ruskies, hand over Snowden for, er, questioning.

Wind. Riiiiight...

[MacDork]

In this case it was wind, not temperatures, that has pushed the ice tightly together in the area where these ships are stuck.

Remember, the original stuck Russian vessel was retracing the steps of a century old expedition. Funny how Sir Douglas Mawson's Antarctic expedition didn't have this problem back in 1911 despite the fact that

Cape Denison proved to be unrelentingly windy; the average wind speed for the entire year was about 50 mph (80 km/h), with some winds approaching 200 mph.

Re:Wind. Riiiiight...

[hey!]

Because polar expeditions never used to get caught in the ice in the austral summer.

Re:Wind. Riiiiight...

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're drawing conclusions concerning the evolution of climate from two data points: one in 1911 and the other in 2013.

Re:Wind. Riiiiight...

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they'd landed and where traveling ON the ice by this point.

Re:Wind. Riiiiight...

[Anonymous Coward]

Average wind speed in what direction?
And did the global warming back then free up enough ice in the first place to be pushed against the ships and trap them?

Re:Wind. Riiiiight...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mawson's ship, the Aurora, didn't get trapped in the sea ice...because it left without him! Shackleton's ship, the Endurance, was trapped and crushed in the ice!!!

It could still be political...

[Anonymous Coward]

in 100 years time when everyone is clamoring for the last planetary resources in Antarctica, it certainly wouldn't hurt the US claim that they were the only country 100 years ago who were operating a reasonable maritime presence in the area, everyone else kept getting stuck. Therefore oil belong to us bitches.

I suggest a new strategy:

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the ice win.

Where's the 1998 spike?

[MacDork]

Everybody know's there's a 1998 spike. Who's cherry picking now?

Re:Where's the 1998 spike?

[bunratty]

The two graphs use different sets of data. One shows BEST land-only surface temperature measurements, and ther other uses satellite data for land and ocean measurements. In both graphs, you can easily see the warming trend. The one you linked to even has trend lines that show the warming. Don't you see them? It seems that it is you that is still cherry picking data, by ignoring data from before the 1998 temperature spike caused by that year's El Nino.

Re:Where's the 1998 spike?

[MacDork]

Ha ha ha! land-only. The earth is 66% ocean bro. You were just caught cherry picking while blaming someone else for cherry picking.

Re:Where's the 1998 spike?

[buck-yar]

Kind of resembles the NASDAQ

Re:Where's the 1998 spike?

[buck-yar]

http://davidpratt.info/climate/warm7.jpg
http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/classes/met130/notes/chapter16/isotope.html

Global warming is a complete scam.

Re:Where's the 1998 spike?

[bunratty]

The ocean and land graph also shows the same warming, as long as you do not neglect the data from before 1998. I see that you didn't look at it. Go take a look.

Re:Where's the 1998 spike?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree and its being perpetrated by those who haven't paid for the costs of cleaning up after themselves. More privatised profit and socialised cost. Also realclimate.org is a site contributed to by actually competent scientists. Have a look:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?cat=10

Re:Where's the 1998 spike?

[gnasher719]

Ha ha ha! land-only. The earth is 66% ocean bro. You were just caught cherry picking while blaming someone else for cherry picking.

And soon it will be 67%.

Re:Where's the 1998 spike?

[Pino Grigio]

Oh fuck off you spastic. RealClimate is funded by a PR company with links of Al Gore.

Re:Where's the 1998 spike?

[Pino Grigio]

As it would have been in any case, as sea level has been rising by a few mm a year since records began.

Here we come

[Anonymous Coward]

Here comes USA to save the day..

Regardless of your opinions on global politics, budgets, or political party, you must admit our armed forced almost always prove to be totally bad ass.

Re:Here we come

[Anonymous Coward]

Situations like this are good for the US, which as others have said is much needed. The fundamental issue here is the "US the good" hasn't been as visible as "US the bad" recently.

By he way, this is the US coastguard, not really the "armed forces". The "armed forces" doesnt "always prove to be totally bad ass" and if you are looking for some evidence, just look up "friendly fire" accidents.

Re:Here we come

[Anonymous Coward]

or Vietnam

but do they really need *rescue*

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a polar ship, presumably able to be iced in, carrying months worth of supplies. Heck, polar explorers used to deliberately let their ships be iced in over winter to provide a secure base of operations.

Oh, it was also carrying "tourists" in addition to the crew and scientists. I guess the tour must go on

Re:but do they really need *rescue*

[Bing Tsher E]

The ecotourists were running out of weed. And you can NOT have Chinese Military Helicopters airlift in another kilo of weed. It just doesn't work that way. So they HAD to be rescued.

while you still "down" there

[fredan]

you going to see that the japs doesn't kill any whales, right?

Re:while you still "down" there

[Anonymous Coward]

It'd be better if they sink the pirates.

Re:while you still "down" there

[fredan]

what pirates?

Uhmericuh!

[arisvega]

.. F*ck Yeah!

Coming again, to save the mutherf*cking day, yeah!

Three!

[tlambert]

Three! Three stuck icebreakers!

Muahhhaaaahhaaaahhaaahhaaahhh!

I *love* to COUNT! That's why they call me the COUNT!

Muahhhaaaahhaaaahhaaahhaaahhh!

Ironic

[Anonymous Coward]

It's like iiiii-iiii-iiiiiiiiice..... on your global warming research trip

They are ridiculing you

[Anonymous Coward]

They are making fun of people like you who every time a piece of ice falls off a glacier anywhere you point out that as proof of global warming. Go ahead and claim you don't, but every time I hear of a tornado in the US, the hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, and on and on, each of those instances people are trotted out on the news as climate experts claiming that this shows AGW is real and we need to do something.

The person making the statement you replied to doesn't believe this single incident proves AGW is false. They are making fun off all the people on your side that use every single instance as proof. The rest of us can look at how far off IPCC predictions are here, or Al Gore's expert opinion about how the arctic would be ice free by 2013 here, or any other time a climate scientists made a prediction that could actually be tested.

They are making fun of you and you are so dumb you don't even realize it and think you can "debate" your way out of the actual truth. The frozen ice in the antarctic isn't listening to your debate no matter how much you try.

Re:They are ridiculing you

[cforciea]

I followed the shitty blogs linking to shitty blogs all the way down to watch Al Gore's "predictions". It's funny how saying things like that he was told some models show a 75% chance that all polar icecaps will be melted by x date gets translated to "Al gore's expert opinion". I notice the other trend there is to use words like "scientist" when talking about Al Gore, even though he is clearly no such thing, to set up a false relationship between him and actual people doing science, so that whenever he does say something stupid, a bunch of people like you can dance around and pretend that he is representational of the climate science community.

So yes, you "make fun" of people like us by trying to find examples of people who happen to agree with us for whatever reason on this particular issue, and then pouring on ad hominem attacks against them. And not only that, you have to make shit up because otherwise the ad hominem attacks aren't even compelling enough. I suspect you sound a lot smarter in your head than you do to the rest of us. Maybe you should spend a little more time getting your facts in places other than blogspot.

Re:They are ridiculing you

[clovis]

The rest of us can look at how far off IPCC predictions are here.

Umm, you just showed us a graph that shows the opposite of your claim. It shows that the IPCC predictions are sometimes less than the actual warming and sometimes more as you would expect when comparing a straight line to climate data, and that the newer IPCC model's upslope has gotten much better in matching the actual temperature upslope over time.
Considering the year-to-year variability in surface global temperature, the 2007 IPCC predictions are not bad at all.
Here's some surface temp graphs to compare: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/

Chaotic? Sure, but the explanation is simple.

[hey!]

At least in principle. The exact details of *weather* are always complex.

Here's a link to an article explaining where the ice in question comes from:

“There's a misconception here – we are not trapped in new ice that's been created because its cold,” said Turney. “This is very old, thick ice that's been re-mobilised. It was attached to another part of the continent and has broken out and, with the south-easterly winds we've had, has pushed it up against the coast and pinned us in.”

The austral sea ice situation is complicated by the fact there's a continent down there and it's not perfectly round. It sticks out into the sea in irregular ways. This means that the extent of sea ice (which is present year round) is dependent on the wind, which in turn is stronger with a more energetic (warmer) atmosphere.

Re:Chaotic? Sure, but the explanation is simple.

[DexterIsADog]

Thanks, you found something that's actually informative on the issue. But look out, you may be called a shill for Big Warming.

Re:Chaotic? Sure, but the explanation is simple.

[hey!]

Thanks, you found something that's actually informative on the issue. But look out, you may be called a shill for Big Warming.

I wouldn't mind, if only someone could tell me where to pick up my paycheck.

Re:Chaotic? Sure, but the explanation is simple.

[Pino Grigio]

Really, is there nothing that a few tenths of a degree of warming cannot do? Now we have stronger winds, for which there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever. Is it even predicted by the theory? Well, what isn't.

Re:Chaotic? Sure, but the explanation is simple.

[hey!]

Just because you haven't been paying attention to the research doesn't mean it didn't happen. You should subscribe to Science News, and you'd get the memo *before* it hits the mainstream media.

Re:Chaotic? Sure, but the explanation is simple.

[Pino Grigio]

A computer model with no skill is not "research". It's a curiosity. Get back to me with some actual data, but only if it hasn't been through the AGW "adjustment" sausage machine to make it look far worse than it actually is.

Glad I have an AC to set the record straight

[sjbe]

Skin cancer is raising in the northern hemisphere, specifically the US and UK. So there is your control group not affected by the ozone hole.

And the results of your two second "study" are published where exactly? Which form of skin cancer are you referring to specifically? What studies are you citing from which journals?

The proposed reason is bunk and if your wife is a dermatologist, not sure why you said skin doctor, and you asked her you would have known this already.

Glad you are so knowledgeable that you you can post anonymously with no citations to set the record straight. [/sarcasm]

And I said skin doctor because when I say her actual specialty (dermatopathology) most people give a deer in the headlights stare. If you know what that is, good for you but skin doctor gets the point across just fine.

The Truck Got Stuck

[Filter]

Any one else reminded of this "The Truck Got Stuck" Corb Lund video?

Vessels' Position

[hey!]

Is reported to be approximately 100 nmi (115 statute miles) east of this position.

Unfortunately I haven't found any online mapping resources that employ a reasonable projection for polar regions.

Re:Vessels' Position

[AndrewBuck]

OpenStreetMap to the rescue. ;)

Assuming the coordinates are formatted the same in your google link, this should be the location shown on a polar projection (not sure what specific proj they use though). I recommend people check this out as it is interesting to see Antarctica rendered properly rather than the normal mercator projection which makes it look really weird.

http://polar.openstreetmap.de/#zoom=6&lat=-66.662778&lon=140.001944&layers=BT

-AndrewBuck

Not An Icebreaker. The Icebreaker

[Anonymous Coward]

The Chinese ship is rated for 1-meter ice. The USCG ship is rated for 6-meter ice.

Bang Ding Ou

[Anonymous Coward]

$140 million rescue to pe payed by US tax payers!

Ho Ri Fuk, Ho Ri Fuk.

Wa Da Wong, Wa Da Wong.

Bang Ding Ou.

Almost a hundred years since Shackleton

[g01d4]

Some things have changed and some haven't. I didn't really learn much about his expedition till after the hype several years ago died down. At least it created a lot of material. The story is amazing.

data: ice at maximum; Turney tried to prove melt

[Anonymous Coward]

The official ice data is here. The antarctic ice has been at maximum recorded highs.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png

BBC: "One of the aims was to track how quickly the Antarctic's sea ice was disappearing."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25573096

Re:data: ice at maximum; Turney tried to prove mel

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr Pierre Dutrieux of the British Antarctic Survey publishes results showing that:
"We found ocean melting of the glacier was the lowest ever recorded, and less than half of that observed in 2010. This enormous, and unexpected, variability contradicts the widespread view that a simple and steady ocean warming in the region is eroding the West Antarctic Ice Sheet."
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/press_releases/press_release.php?id=2452

Re:data: ice at maximum; Turney tried to prove mel

[Anonymous Coward]

Le Monde gives the figure, for each of the icebreakers involved (the French one also spent 7 days) of
20 000 euros/day for the French vessel and 60 000 euros/day (=$100000/day) for each of the Chinese and Australian vessels, figures which do not include crew salaries.
The operating costs of the very big American and Russian icebreakers which are on a 3 weeks trip to save the Shokalskiy, are not mentioned.

http://tinyurl.com/qfa5pap

The minimum rescue cost appears to be of the order of $2 million.

antarctic mission poetry

[Anonymous Coward]

[antarctic zen]
noisy humans leave theories stranded in eternal ice

[climate goose]
Chris Turney went up on a fence
To show humans’ climatic offense
But a giant ice wall
Made his theories fall

And all the king's horses and all the king's men
Cannot put Turney’s science together again
Threescore men and threescore more
Cannot make things back as they were before

[climerick]
A climate professor named Turney
Went on a melting finding journey
His companions were whiny
And his science was tiny
So now Turney’s journey put climate on a gurney

[climate goose]
Ring-a ring o’roses,
Global warming posies,
Ice up! Ice up!
It all falls down.

Adrian O

Let's remove one word

[dbIII]

Any one who calls themselves a ... expert is a huge liar, unless they put it in the context of being relative to the rest of mankind

Hey kids! With relativism we can all be right no matter what we say! Apart from those bastards that have actually thought about a subject and considered evidence - ignore them because they will tell little Timmy that there is no Santa Claus.

The attacks on biology, geology and now climate science for being a threat to dumbed down religion for money franchises have now extended as far as denial of expertise in general.
Don't blame the above poster, he's just a victim and carrier of the idiocy and seems to have got more than halfway to seeing what's wrong with him.

Re:Let's remove one word

[Egdiroh]

Wow!

First, I didn't comment on all people who call them selves experts, I specifically was commenting about the climate, which to fully understand requires knowledge of several different areas of physics, chemistry, and biology, and who knows what else, for which we're still figuring out new types of data to collect which needs to be done on a global scale and takes years for the amounts of data to be super useful and then years longer for hypothesis testing. It's a tough field and it's going to take a long time before we have any real experts. It's ok to need to learn. If you look at that whole paragraph, it's not talking about how far we've come it's talking about how far we have to go. We're not going to progress if we don't pay attention to the people who know the most.

Second, while you seem sure of them, you are gravely mistaken about my motives. I attack bad logic for being a tool of dumbed down religion. I don't care what religion that is, but it brings me extra joy to poke the bubbles of those that are smug in their faith.

An attack like that is clearly the work of a zealot. Yay! I'm almost looking forward to the response to this because of how funny it will be, but really I'm mostly dreading it, because of how the lack of logic and reason will make me cringe. But if you're looking for a fight you're barking up the wrong tree for so many reasons. It's a free country so respond all you like, but I won't again nor should my silence be considered the concession of any points you make, only a refusal to further engage. But you go ahead and be you, and good luck with that.

Re:Let's remove one word

[dbIII]

Yes I get it - damning with faint praise.
Face it, nobody else knows any better than an expert in a given field.

An attack like that is clearly the work of a zealot

I'm not your strawman. Try communicating with me instead of something in your imagination.

Automatically my foot

[dbIII]

I think I'll bookmark that as the difference between a technical viewpoint and an MBA.

"Oh let the Moorlocks sort it out while we play in the garden, doing nothing more useful than contributing to the food chain."

Re:Automatically my foot

[swillden]

Tomato, tomahto

The point is that market forces will naturally motivate the huge amount of work necessary to develop and exploit alternatives -- including lots of work by MBAs.

But what about our own coasts?

[hawk]

Won't this leave our *own* Australian coast undefended from rampaging icebergs!

hawk, scratching his head trying to figure out what the USCG is doing in Australia

Re:But what about our own coasts?

[rtb61]

The US has bases in Antarctica and Australia is much closer to Antarctica than the US, hence it makes sense for them to resupply out of Australia. Of course there is also South Africa, Argentina, Chile and New Zealand. However with Australia having a similar culture (fortunately not the same) to the US it makes it better for the crews to rest and recreate in Australia. In fact it would make logical sense for a permanent base 'US Coast Guard' base out of say some place like Hobart to service the US bases in Antarctica.

Antarctic Exploration 100 Years Ago

[Anonymous Coward]

The guys who got trapped in the Antarctic ice are supposedly recreating the expedition of Australian explorer, Sir Douglas Mawson:

Mawson declined an invitation to join Robert Falcon Scott's expedition in 1910 (see below) and instead led his own expedition in 1911.

On Mawson's journey, there were constant blizzards, and the average wind speeds were 50mph, but reached as high as 190mph.

Mawson's main team consisted of three men: himself, Xavier Mertz, and Lieutenant Belgrave Ninnis.

Ninnis fell through a snow-covered crevasse and was never seen again.

Mawson and Mertz tried to survive starvation by eating their pack of dogs. However, Hypervitaminosis A from eating the dogs' livers gave Mertz brain seizures and drove him insane. He later fell into a coma and died.

Mawson's ship, the Aurora, actually left him behind. He was forced to winter there until being rescued in December 1913.

Here are the stories of a few other British explorers who weren't as lucky as Mawson...

* Robert Falcon Scott (1910–13): All five explorers died on the return journey from the Pole through a combination of starvation and cold.

* Ernest Shackleton (1914–17): Their ship, the Endurance, was trapped and crushed in the ice. The expedition then rescued itself after a series of exploits, including a prolonged drift on an ice-floe.

* Aeneas Mackintosh (1914–17): These eight were depositing supplies for Shackleton's main group. Three of the eight men, including their leader, Mackintosh, lost their lives.

By contrast, the lucky individuals down there now have it pretty good. No winds, no blizzards, they haven't had to eat their dogs or each other, and nobody's dead.

Re:International Cooperation and .Happy New Year.

[Anonymous Coward]

Three words. Ice Station Zebra.

why do they need boats, anyway?

[clovis]

Planet Earth is just an endless WTF.
Endless ice breakers are getting stuck while some woman rides her tricycle to the South Pole?

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/450608/British-women-sets-new-world-record-for-cycling-to-the-South-Pole

Pascal's Wager

[Anonymous Coward]

Your statement is exactly why these scams always work for a significant portion of the population... and it's just a version of Pascal's Wager; In this case, you are saying "I might as well believe in {insert apocalyptic eco claim} and behave accordingly, because if the claim is true we'll be better off, and if it's not then no harm is done"

Of course, by choosing to "err on the side of caution" you forego many possible things and you might have been much better off but you just do not know it. For example: by limiting carbon emissions, you might supress entire industries thereby causing many people to have lower-paying jobs and therefore shorter lives with worse healthcare, fewer vacations, cheaper less-safe cars and homes, lower-quality diets, etc. Millions of humans will be negatively impacted in one way or another by carbon taxes and/or limits, but the proponents of measures to fight AGW never want us to consider THOSE people.

Polar Star - LOL!

[Anonymous Coward]

otherwise fondly known as 'The Polar Pig'

signed,
a crew member of Uncle Sam's Canoe Club

You need smoking gun?

[hey!]

As for "not predicted in theory", how does a result from 1902 grab you?

The relatively greater importance of wind over thermodynamics in antarctic sea ice extent was well established over thirty years ago;

Recent statistical and function (EOF) analyses have shown two primary areas of higher annual variation of sea ice conditions which are presumed to be more sensitive to variations in forcing fields, probably of dynamic (winds and currents) rather than thermodynamic (temperature) origin.

[Ackley, S. F., 1981: A review of sea-ice weather relationships in the Southern Hemisphere. Sea Level, Ice and Climatic Change, Vol. 131, I. Allison, Ed., International Association Scientific Hydrology, 127–159.]

If you want a smoking gun, here is one from 2001 (Flato, G.M. and G.J. Boer, 2001: Warming asymmetry in climate change simulations. Geophys. Res. Lett., 28:195-198.:

Observed trends in sea-ice extent over the past two decades exhibit hemispheric asymmetry with a statistically significant decrease in northern but not in southern ice cover.

In summary, the models did not predict a reduction in Antarctic summer sea ice extent, because has been well-established for decades now that wind patterns account for more than 2/3 of the annual variation.

And, *yes*, there have een

Re:You need smoking gun?

[Pino Grigio]

"Simulations" - get it? SIMULATIONS. Models with no skill being used to make predictions. The horror!

There was an old woman...

[malacandrian]

Apparently this icebreaker is manned by horses specially trained to rescue any livestock swallowed by the crew of other ships.

Global Warming HOAX!

[ilec_geek]

Funny how nobody seems to mention the curious fact that this was an expedition of global warming nutjobs on a mission to prove how the polar ice caps are melting, polar bears are drowning, sea levels rising, ad nauseum. Stuck in an unexpected ice pack in the middle of summer, no less! Poetic justice!

Re:Global Warming HOAX!

[Anonymous Coward]

well, you are wrong because a great many people said exactly the same thing.
Except for a couple of things .... The ice pack was expected; to look at the ice pack was one of the reasons why they're going there.
FYI, it was unexpected melting and wind that caused a segment of the pack to capture their ship, not freezing.

Re:You need smoking gun?

[hey!]

Nice try, but I won't let you move the goalposts.

Here's one I prepared earlier

[dbIII]

Bullshit. When speed is required you end up with whatever prepared solution is closest to market. If you have nothing you are stuck with nothing.
You don't start R&D six months before you know you need a new product. You go broke and someone else that has been funding R&D gets the market you wanted.

Re:Here's one I prepared earlier

[swillden]

That would be an issue if the transition were abrupt. Markets are not good at handling quick, radical changes. They're amazingly good at exploiting marginal differences produced by shifting economics across broad and diversified areas. Most large-scale changes are the latter, and the exhaustion of fossil fuels is definitely of that sort.

This is actually rather obvious if you look at the decades of failed alternative energy companies... but more spring up all the time, because that's how the market seeks new methods: mutation and selection, just like nature. And as we're forced to more and more marginal (and therefore expensive) fossil fuel sources, the impetus for people to seek fortunes in the next big alternative energy source will motivate more and more investment... and rising fossil fuel prices will make more and more of that investment pay off as people shift to the more cost-effective energy source.

This is exactly what markets do well. Global warming... that's a different sort of issue. Absent regulatory action, climate change is an ignorable externality. Even when it does directly impact businesses, it's often still economically better to ignore it, due to tragedy of the commons dynamics. Not to mention the fact that it's easy to deny that it's an issue at all until it's too late to do anything about it.

Re:Here's one I prepared earlier

[dbIII]

This is actually rather obvious if you look at the decades of failed alternative energy companies

Coal seam gas appears to be thriving. Natural gas running turbines was considered an "out there" and far too expensive alternative energy only a couple of decades ago. Solar is doing pretty well these days too. What you see as "obvious" is merely a preconceived idea that is currently differing from reality and was merely a stopped clock being correct at brief times in the past. It's being reinforced by the common but rather stupid idea that anything that succeeds is no longer an "alternative energy".

I'm getting the impression that you are not aware of the very long lead times for product development so you are applying assumptions from a different field - perhaps software, and getting nothing but an analogy that doesn't fit.

Either way we are drifting away from my point above about "the market deciding". If the market does not have good choices it remains static and there is nothing for it to decide - just stagnation, irrelevance or oblivion. The MBAs are like Eloi playing in the garden and get eaten up by whoever has clever Moorlocks doing something other than playing.

Re:Here's one I prepared earlier

[khallow]

I'm getting the impression that you are not aware of the very long lead times for product development so you are applying assumptions from a different field - perhaps software, and getting nothing but an analogy that doesn't fit.

It's worth noting here that modern fracking went from a $6 million experiment to most of US oil production inside of 30 years. And the vast majority of actual deployment of the technology happened in the last ten years.

So sure, the development lead times are long relative to software development, but they still happen pretty fast when something good comes along.

Either way we are drifting away from my point above about "the market deciding". If the market does not have good choices it remains static and there is nothing for it to decide - just stagnation, irrelevance or oblivion.

This point is irrelevant because the market does have good choices.

Re:Here's one I prepared earlier

[swillden]

I'm including solar, wind etc. in alternative energies. Those are some of the market's (modest, so far) successes, which are always accompanied by a lot of failures. What you're seeing there is the market working. So far, the use of those technologies is limited to locations and uses where they are cost effective. As the cost of the technologies fall (driven by research which is in turn driven by perception of market opportunities), and as the cost of traditional energy rises, their use will expand.

The increase in natural gas production (I'm including that with fossil fuels because it's a fossil fuel) is another example of the market working, along with coal seam gas, oil sands and oil shale production, crude extraction from difficult locations (e.g. undersea), etc. Those are all examples of the market finding more cost-effective ways to extract fossil fuels, not shifting away from them... but those examples are crucial to understanding how the transition no non-fossil fuels will happen. As costs rise, it becomes cost-effective to exploit ever more difficult resources, which is why we aren't going to face a fossil fuel availability "cliff", but a gradual (but not smooth) tapering, AND it also becomes cost-effective to move into non-fossil energy sources.

The biggest and best example of government intervention trying to "fix" the market is ethanol, which is widely used but by almost any measure a failure. Of course, ethanol, like most politically-driven changes, was less about utility and more about paying some people off for their votes.

Thanks for supporting my argument, BTW :-)

Re:Here's one I prepared earlier

[dbIII]

The biggest and best example of government intervention trying to "fix" the market is ethanol, which is widely used but by almost any measure a failure

It works in Brazil to the point where is is not considered an alternative energy - just like you do not consider natural gas as an alternative energy because it's now a mainstream energy source. It works in plenty of other places to a lesser extent. Just because corn welfare has resulted in something weird in your country doesn't mean the energy source is useless when derived from something else in another place.
Personally I think "government intervention" should be in the role of investigating promising energy sources so that there are choices available so it all appears to run like magic as khallow is suggesting above. I'm possibly biased due to being in R&D in a power generation organisation some years back - enough years ago that we were wondering if natural gas running in large turbines was a viable alternative energy and we were not even looking at solar, wind etc.
Advances in technology do not happen automatically. Development takes time and effort that exceeds the short term time frames of market forces. Once market forces are pushing things around it's a matter of a few very short years to take a viable option and do something with it.

Unicorns suddenly appear from rainbows? I doubt it

[dbIII]

You've missed my point - NONE OF THIS HAPPENS AUTOMATICALLY.
The choices available when market forces drive action depend on what is known about.
You only know by trying things out. This takes time. Market forces do not leave much time.
Simple enough?

This should be so incredibly obvious that people who think it all happens by magic should be ridiculed for their magical thinking.

Re:Unicorns suddenly appear from rainbows? I doubt

[khallow]

The choices available when market forces drive action depend on what is known about. You only know by trying things out. This takes time. Market forces do not leave much time. Simple enough?

And in practice, we observe real world markets acting fast enough. That's my point.

Re:Unicorns suddenly appear from rainbows? I doubt

[dbIII]

No. In practice we don't see real world markets acting fast enough and instead the real world markets have months or a year or two to make a choice from what is already available if not necessarily mainstream. That's my point.
There is no magic.
The market cannot decide to chose something that is not already there when there isn't a choice already provided by the work and time of those who had the foresight to move before the market decided. The best of a bad lot becomes the default instead.
Your suggestion of magic happening is depressing to see on such a technically orientated site but not entirely unexpected from your earlier posts on other topics which indicate such a tendency.

Re:Unicorns suddenly appear from rainbows? I doubt

[khallow]

No. In practice we don't see real world markets acting fast enough and instead the real world markets have months or a year or two to make a choice from what is already available if not necessarily mainstream.

Which is much faster than necessary for deciding about energy technologies. I really don't see your point at all. The real world just doesn't change that fast where a couple of decades isn't sufficient to adapt.

The market cannot decide to chose something that is not already there when there isn't a choice already provided by the work and time of those who had the foresight to move before the market decided.

Those choices already exist. The whole point of choice is that something gets chosen and something does not. The market already provides incentive for people who have that foresight.

The best of a bad lot becomes the default instead.

That's your subjective opinion that these choices are "bad". The other choices simply aren't embraced for whatever reasons, usually economic or user preference. That doesn't make them bad choices.

Deliberate barrier to communication

[dbIII]

This pretended stupidity is extremely annoying and I wish you would stop doing it. "Best of a bad lot", as you know, is a common phrase for a limited set of choices and not whatever stupid spin you are putting on it.
It seems as soon as an issue appears to look even remotely like it's going to become political some people decide to turn their brains off because it gets in the way of the slogans.


As for your "fast" markets - I remember seeing two hybrid car prototypes in 1987. They were not the first by a long shot. It took a long time from then and a lot of work by a lot of people before they were a marketable choice and now there are a lot of them in the market. Just waiting for the magic to happen would not have made Toyota etc the money they made from selling those products. Just waiting for the magic to happen and not training engineers and scientists means missed opportunities. Just waiting for the magic to happen will mean that China and India will eat your lunch and leave you hungry - because they don't believe in magic just like the people who built the industry that formed your society didn't believe in the magic of things just happening when a niche appears.
A niche appears and then whoever has whatever can best fit gets in there. People who see the niche already there and then start to react are too late, because they can't get instant results by magic.

So it comes down to reason versus magical thinking. Guess which end of the stick you are waving with your bullshit of the market providing so there is no point attempting to make improvements.

Re:Deliberate barrier to communication

[khallow]

"Best of a bad lot", as you know, is a common phrase for a limited set of choices and not whatever stupid spin you are putting on it.

In that case, your phrase makes little sense since choice is always limited especially if you're constraining it economically.

As for your "fast" markets - I remember seeing two hybrid car prototypes in 1987. They were not the first by a long shot. It took a long time from then and a lot of work by a lot of people before they were a marketable choice and now there are a lot of them in the market.

A huge society-level funding of hybrid cars in the 80s or earlier would have been a waste since energy production hasn't changed enough in almost 30 years to justify that. If there's no reason to change fast, then why be surprised that it doesn't happen?

As I noted, when there is a reason to change, it can happen very fast as the advent of modern fracking demonstrates.

Just waiting for the magic to happen and not training engineers and scientists means missed opportunities.

I'm not a car company. I'm not missing any opportunities by "waiting for the magic". And last I looked, the production of engineers and scientists is heavily subsidized all over the world without much to say for it.

Just waiting for the magic to happen will mean that China and India will eat your lunch and leave you hungry - because they don't believe in magic just like the people who built the industry that formed your society didn't believe in the magic of things just happening when a niche appears.

That's the power of markets. It doesn't matter whether you believe in "the magic" or not. It happens just the same as a quick perusal of car manufacturing history would show.

Guess which end of the stick you are waving with your bullshit of the market providing so there is no point attempting to make improvements.

Where do I say that there's no point attempting to make improvements? My point is that large scale interference with alternative energy development wasn't an improvement in the past, but rather a huge waste of time and resources. The same sorts of rationalizations were used then as are used now.

Just because you think hybrid cars, alternative energy, or whatever are improvements over the current state doesn't mean they actually are. Markets remain an excellent way to determine that. And a lack of ready adoption in the marketplace indicates that these ideas aren't actually all that viable at this time.

Re:Deliberate barrier to communication

[dbIII]

You just don't get it even with a blatant example. You don't get the "huge society-level funding" until something is almost ready for market. Until then it's just not on the radar and the market cannot "decide" about something it is unaware of.
If you take your "do nothing" approach then you end up sixty feet deep in horseshit because there is no car available to perfect and sell.
Let's try a different example. With coal seam gas the market would have "decided" in the oil shock of the 1970s if the methods, most actually quite low tech, were available - the need of the market did not magically make it available as you seem to be suggesting. The market is not magic. It cannot see anything other than what is put in front of it. Coal seam gas was not there in front of it until a lot of people had put work into it over time. "The market" was actually an impediment there in the 1970s since a concentration of energy interests with very conservative non-technical management were not prepared to risk doing anything new even when they were in deep trouble. In such a case the niche was available but money was too tight to exploit it - a frequent case when people hope that the market will decide.

Suggesting a halt in development and then just a blind hope that the market will magically provide a generation of engineers just when we need them to rapidly produce something new IMHO shows a great deal of personal limitation - magical thinking.