Solar Lull Could Cause Colder Winters In Europe

Taco Cowboy writes "Since September of last year scientists have been wondering what's happening to the Sun. It's supposed to have reached the peak of its 11-year cycle, but sunspot and flare activity remains much quieter than expected. Experts now think the recent cold snap that hit North America and the wet weather that hit part of Europe might be linked to the eerie quietness of the Sun. According to the BBC, solar activity hasn't been this low in 100 years, and if activity keeps dropping, it may reach levels seen during the 'Maunder Minimum,' an 'era of solar inactivity in the 17th Century [which] coincided with a period of bitterly cold winters in Europe.' It wouldn't have a big effect on global temperatures, just regional ones. Why? The sun's UV output drops during these lulls, and the decreased amount of UV light hitting the stratosphere would cause the jet stream to change course. Prof. Mike Lockwood says, 'These are large meanders in the jet stream, and they're called blocking events because they block off the normal moist, mild winds we get from the Atlantic, and instead we get cold air being dragged down from the Arctic and from Russia. These are what we call a cold snap... a series of three or four cold snaps in a row adds up to a cold winter. And that's quite likely what we'll see as solar activity declines.'"

Comments

Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sun does not effect climate. Only carbon.

Only carbon.

Re:Not the sun

[rossdee]

The Sun is still working on turning Hydrogen into Helium
But it will get round to Carbon eventuallu

Re:Not the sun

[hey!]

Seriously, you have captured the essential mindset of the denialists: there can only be one cause for anything. That assumption underlies most of the denialist arguments.

One of the common one is, "Wasn't the Earth warmer in the past? Without industrial carbon emissions?" I've seen that trotted out by politicians against climate researchers, as if (a) that were news to them and (b) it had never occurred to them that something other than CO2 could drive climate change. The other favorite on the denialist hit parade is "carbon lagged warming in past warming periods." Again, they say this as if the climate scientists had never considered this, when the very information they're quoting *comes* from climate science.

Or how about this one: "Mars is warming too, and there's no carbon emissions on Mars."

These arguments are mind-boggling simple-minded, and they're all rooted in a simple, implicit proposition: CO2 either explains all warming episodes everywhere over all time, or it explains *none* of them.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

We are stardust, man.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

To the denialist, telling them not to smoke in bed is worthless advice because they once knew somebody who had a house fire and never smoked a day in their life.

Heck, they know plenty of people with cancer that don't smoke, so why even worry about it?

Re:Not the sun

[sideslash]

Seriously, you have captured the essential mindset of the denialists: there can only be one cause for anything. That assumption underlies most of the denialist arguments.

Maybe it makes you feel good to think that, but the AGW skeptical material I've read certainly doesn't match that characterization. Maybe the fluff posted in the comments section on YouTube or Fox News or MSNBC etc.

Am I wrong? Why don't you link to a post in one of the major climate skeptic websites that shows this "can be only one cause for anything" attitude you describe. Or maybe you're just making stuff up in an attempt to portray your opponents in debate as fools.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

The machines left inside the sun by earlier seeders, almost a billion years ago, are working hard to compensate the observed discrepancies to the model of their target planet. Soon they'll decide a more direct approach will be needed, suspending the order to not establish contact with the natives.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

You are right! The science is SETTLED. Cast in stone. Al Gore himself says so.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not the "denialists" saying that CO2 is the only cause of climate change, idiot

Re:Not the sun

[Coolhand2120]

On the other hand the "alarmist" logic is: "we already know the cause of the warming, it is humans saturating the atmosphere with too much CO2, we just need to gather and/or create the evidence to support this theory". That's called inductive logic, and is just as unscientific as what you describe coming from the "denialists".

"Real" science comes from gathering evidence and basing your theories on the evidence gathered. You then determine what it might take to falsify your theory and try as hard as possible to falsify it.

All I see from the "alarmist" camp is people trying to support their theories at all costs, calling things causation where there is barely correlation, and making very little if any effort to falsify their theories. This behavior is more akin to religion than any sort of science.

Re:Not the sun

[garyoa1]

It can only get into carbon if it doesn't make too much helium. If it makes too much... it will float away! :::gasp:::

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Real science hasn't been able to work on the problem of global warming, anthropogenic global warming, climate change or anything else that has an effect on either side's bottom line. One has to remember that for every biased study on one side there's an equally biased study on the other.

This article tries to reconnect the activities of the Sun to the climate on Earth but another article mentioned just a few weeks ago declared that the Sun was not a significant driver of the climate on Earth. That's where you get people crying, sarcastically, that it's only man released CO2 that is having any effect on the climate.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Your wife's vagina smokes in bed, after she has sex with me. But then climate change occurs and the bitch gets cold when you're close to coming home from work.

-- Ty Rone

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Your wife's vagina smokes in bed, after she has sex with me.

Something to take the taste away no doubt.

Re:Not the sun

[djmurdoch]

Why don't you link to a post in one of the major climate skeptic websites

Pick one.

Re:Not the sun

[Orp]

Does the sun's decrease in activity effect climate change? Or perhaps affect spelling ability? That would be a weird effect.

Re:Not the sun

[sideslash]

People in general are good at making fools out of themselves. That is why Doing Science Right (tm) involves disclosing your source data, frequently blurting out to the world everything that may possibly be wrong with your approach, and placing trust in an experiment or model's results only as far as commensurate with the demonstrated reliability of those results.

For anyone keeping score, several of the alarmists have made fools of themselves as well. James Hansen comes to mind as an example of a cargo cult scientist.

Re:Not the sun

[bunratty]

How is that unscientific? Warming caused by excess CO2 in the atmosphere was predicted long before it was ever observed. Isn't that the scientific method, coming up with a hypothesis that makes predictions, then testing the predictions against observations? If we had not observed the warming, you'd have a point, but we've seen not only warming, but also melting ice and sea level rise.

Re:Not the sun

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes and no.
Yes, because it slows the warming a bit.
No, because the effect is less than 1% (in heat).
However the issues with UV (and gamma) radiation hitting the higher atmosphere and what effect that has on cloud forming is a pretty new topic.

Re:Not the sun

[TubeSteak]

On the other hand the "alarmist" logic is: "we already know the cause of the warming, it is humans saturating the atmosphere with too much CO2, we just need to gather and/or create the evidence to support this theory". That's called inductive logic, and is just as unscientific as what you describe coming from the "denialists".

You seem to be creating a strawman for the express purpose of knocking it down.

These "alarmist" scientists are the same type who told us that CFCs were creating a hole in the ozone layer.
We went to great lengths to eliminate CFCs, then lo and behold, the ozone layer fixed itself.

"Real" science comes from gathering evidence and basing your theories on the evidence gathered. You then determine what it might take to falsify your theory and try as hard as possible to falsify it.

Holy shit! Just like what happened with the ozone layer!
The Ozone Hole Alarmists were right!

All I see from the "alarmist" camp is people trying to support their theories at all costs, calling things causation where there is barely correlation, and making very little if any effort to falsify their theories. This behavior is more akin to religion than any sort of science.

Then you haven't looked very hard.
The weight of "Real" science is behind the "alarmists" and not at all behind the "denialists".

Re:Not the sun

[Orp]

On the other hand the "alarmist" logic is: "we already know the cause of the warming, it is humans saturating the atmosphere with too much CO2, we just need to gather and/or create the evidence to support this theory". That's called inductive logic, and is just as unscientific as what you describe coming from the "denialists".

"Real" science comes from gathering evidence and basing your theories on the evidence gathered. You then determine what it might take to falsify your theory and try as hard as possible to falsify it.

All I see from the "alarmist" camp is people trying to support their theories at all costs, calling things causation where there is barely correlation, and making very little if any effort to falsify their theories. This behavior is more akin to religion than any sort of science.

False equivalency is false.

Guess what? A lot of the "alarmist" are the same scientists doing the research. Sure, people get attached to theories, but do you realize that the best possible thing to happen to a scientist is for him/her to make a discovery that tosses the widely accepted hypotheses on their head? In other words, if a scientist did a rigorously peer reviewed study which indicated that, say, it's a reduction in neutrinos from the sun somehow, oh, say tweaking aerosol concentrations, leading to a strong causal relationship between this phenomenon and observed global warming - while also showing that the greenhouse effect of CO2 was much less of a factor than previously thought - that person would be fricking king of the scientific world.

The tired repeated bleatings of non-scientists who have not spent their careers repeatedly getting their work shredded by reviewers [this being the norm, not the exception] on the path to eventual publication do absolutely zilch to move things forward regarding understand what's really going on. The simple-minded idea that climate science is some sort of "alarmists versus skeptics" battle is laughable; this false equivalency between two imagined camps, each claiming to know the truth, is entirely imagined by ignorant people. Unless you've actually done science and gotten your work published in decent journals, these opinions mean absolute diddlyshit; nothing more than mental masturbation splooging text on the screen, masquerading as informed debate.

Re:Not the sun

[hey!]

Or maybe you're just making stuff up in an attempt to portray your opponents in debate as fools.

I won't comment on the "fools" part, but I'm definitely not making things up. If you want an example, how about a 12 term US congressman?

Re:Not the sun

[hey!]

"Real" science comes from gathering evidence and basing your theories on the evidence gathered. You then determine what it might take to falsify your theory and try as hard as possible to falsify it.

Indeed. You just missed the forty years of scientific debate that overturned the 1950s consensus that the Earth was entering a cooling phase. This wasn't something that happened overnight, it was fought tooth and nail for decades.

Re:Not the sun

[Vinegar Joe]

The Sun does not effect climate. Only carbon.

Only carbon.

The Science is settled!

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

wHOOOOOSH!

That wasn't a Messershmit, you dozy kraut.

Re:Not the sun

[cheesybagel]

No the 'denialist' argument is that it isn't a cause to change policy. The temperature change, if it has any impact, is irrelevant compared to existing natural causes. That is the whole point. So before you start proposing for people to freeze in the winter or overheat in the summer from closing down coal power plants, or other dumbass ideas i've heard proposed, consider the consequences.

Re:Not the sun

[Vinegar Joe]

On the other hand the "alarmist" logic is: "we already know the cause of the warming, it is humans saturating the atmosphere with too much CO2, we just need to gather and/or create the evidence to support this theory".

"Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is an absurd one." - Voltaire

Re:Not the sun

[gmhowell]

We are golden.

And we've got to get back to the garden.

Re:Not the sun

[seifried]

Or there could be something else causing global warming, like a decline in the number of beanie babies for sale on eBay, and at the same time the real cause of global climate change occurred (less beanie babies for sale) CO2 levels also happened to rise. This is why you need controls and multiple experiments, or ways to control for other factors.

Re:Not the sun

[cheesybagel]

do you realize that the best possible thing to happen to a scientist is for him/her to make a discovery that tosses the widely accepted hypotheses on their head?

You clearly haven't done much research. As one guy used to say science progresses when the last generation dies. That's how fossilized fields become when all the people doing peer review have the same mindset.

Re:Not the sun

[hey!]

Just to make it clear to folks who haven't followed this, the "ozone hole" is not a fixed feature of the Antarctic; it's like weather, it grows and shrinks in different years based on local atmospheric conditions, causing many to have declared premature victory. However the ozone levels in the Antarctic have stabilized and are expected to recover to pre-industrial levels over the coming decades.

This is not a case of the problem "fixing itself", it's a case of people deciding to take effective action by banning ozone depleting chemicals (thank you President Reagan).

Re:Not the sun

[hey!]

No the 'denialist' argument is that it isn't a cause to change policy. The temperature change, if it has any impact, is irrelevant compared to existing natural causes. That is the whole point. So before you start proposing for people to freeze in the winter or overheat in the summer from closing down coal power plants, or other dumbass ideas i've heard proposed, consider the consequences.

First of all, I didn't propose that anyone freeze in the winter or overheat in the summer; that is typical denialist histrionics.

As for the natural causes, which causes in your opinion account for the warming we've experienced since the 1950s?

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

warmer temperature was observed in all the planets of the solar system thanks to all the probes and the analysis from nasa and the other space agencies... i doubt cow farts and hair spray have reached venus and mars... the only conclusion is the sun being the direct source of global warming and ice ages... we reached the upper temperatures and now we'll going directly to a new ice age.

you may think al gore is right and the humans are the responsible of global warming, but also 1/3 of americans still think creacionism is true... just saying

Re:Not the sun

[Orp]

do you realize that the best possible thing to happen to a scientist is for him/her to make a discovery that tosses the widely accepted hypotheses on their head?

You clearly haven't done much research. As one guy used to say science progresses when the last generation dies. That's how fossilized fields become when all the people doing peer review have the same mindset.

Maybe I should have said "successfully publish a discovery" blah blah. If you don't believe that, well, talk to Einstein, Bohr, Watson, Crick, Darwin, etc. etc. etc.

Re:Not the sun

[sideslash]

That was an interesting video, thanks for posting it. The participants were obviously enjoying the exchange. I wouldn't say that anyone made a fool of themselves, though I guess I may have missed something.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you link to a post in one of the major climate skeptic websites that shows this "can be only one cause for anything" attitude you describe

As if anyone would post a link to a climate change denier web site. As if anyone would want to even read their anti-science dreck...

Re:Not the sun

[cheesybagel]

I haven't been around that long. But from what I remember the weather is, once again, as cold and wet as it was when I was a kid. People who read a bit are aware that the weather fluctuates and blaming it all on human activity when you know the magnitudes of energy involved in the process is naive. We don't even exploit a significant portion of energy in this planet yet.

As for warming, the Romans had men wearing togas and women wearing silk clothes in the street around 250 BC, so I would say the 1990s weren't hot enough.

Re:Not the sun

[cheesybagel]

Another piece of junk science IMO is dark energy and negative energy. Its like we've gone back to the ether theory again.

Re:Not the sun

[amiga3D]

No no no. Only denialists are fools. Global warming proponents are superior intelligent beings who are never wrong and always have the answers if only all the illiterate peons would listen to them everything would be okay.

Re:Not the sun

[amiga3D]

Fool and congressman are almost synonymous in my mind. The more terms they've served the more foolish they are. It matters not which side of the aisle they sit.

Re:Not the sun

[hey!]

I haven't been around that long. But from what I remember the weather is, once again, as cold and wet as it was when I was a kid.

This brings up a very important point. "Global warming" is a phenomenon where the atmosphere -- particularly the troposphere -- has more energy. That doesn't mean that that the climate in your neck of the woods is necessarily going to be warmer and drier.

We're talking about a 0.6 degree C average temperature increase or thereabouts in the last 50 years. If the climate in your home town was 0.6 C warmer, *you wouldn't even notice*. From the point of view of whether you need to point on a sweater when you go outside it is meaningless.

But if you consider there's something like 10^21 cubic meters of troposphere that's a lot of energy

Consider the Coriolis force; you can't *feel* it. It makes no difference whether you walk east or north, the effect is too small to measure. But it has an enormous effect on the atmosphere, because the atmosphere is huge. The same can be said for a 1 C increase in temperature; it's not much hotter, but it's a vast amount of energy that affects the movement of huge air masses. Those changes could well make your neck of the woods colder, because air (e.g. the polar vortex) is moving more often in ways it only did rarely years ago. On the other hand other places (e.g. Greenland and Alaska) may be experiencing unusual warm patterns. Average those anomalies out over the entire globe, and you get very slight global temperature increases out of a patchwork of extremes.

So the kind of mental test you are proposing ("is it warmer outside my house than it would have been thirty years ago?") has very little bearing on "global warming". A), it's not *global*. B) globally averaged, temperatures aren't very much warmer under "global warming".

Re:Not the sun

[hey!]

Again, I don't think denialists are necessarily fools. I think there's a flaw in their reasoning, which is exemplified by the nature of the congressman's questioning. His line of questioning is irrelevant, because he's laboring under the clearly unspoken assumption that if something else caused warming in the past, CO2 cannot be causing it today.

Re:Not the sun

[sideslash]

His line of questioning is irrelevant

I guess you don't need to refute your opponent if you ignore what they say. Brilliant!

because he's laboring under the clearly unspoken assumption

Once again, brilliant! You have convicted him of the crime of saying something which he didn't actually say ("clearly unspoken").

that if something else caused warming in the past, CO2 cannot be causing it today.

My hat's off to you, sir, the winner of the day. That congressman's whole point was obviously this hobby horse of yours, even though he somehow neglected to ever mention it or even remotely allude to it.

Somehow I listened to the same thing, and thought the congressman was merely raising doubts, not confidently asserting against AGW.

Re:Not the sun

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

We are stardust, man.

Well, then can I roam beside you?
I have come to lose the smog.
And I feel myself a cog
In something turning.
And maybe it's the time of year,
Yes, said maybe it's the time of man
And I don't know who I am but life is for learning.
We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we got to get ourselves
Back to the garden.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, you have captured the essential mindset of the denialists: there can only be one cause for anything. That assumption underlies most of the denialist arguments.

One of the common one is, "Wasn't the Earth warmer in the past? Without industrial carbon emissions?" I've seen that trotted out by politicians against climate researchers, as if (a) that were news to them and (b) it had never occurred to them that something other than CO2 could drive climate change. The other favorite on the denialist hit parade is "carbon lagged warming in past warming periods." Again, they say this as if the climate scientists had never considered this, when the very information they're quoting *comes* from climate science.

Or how about this one: "Mars is warming too, and there's no carbon emissions on Mars."

These arguments are mind-boggling simple-minded, and they're all rooted in a simple, implicit proposition: CO2 either explains all warming episodes everywhere over all time, or it explains *none* of them.

So please professor... explain the temperature rise on Mars and other celestial bodies ... and dumb it down for us simpletons... ok??

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Another piece of junk science IMO is dark energy and negative energy. Its like we've gone back to the ether theory again.

Whoever modded this up is a fool (same as the author) that should be banned from modding anything science related.

The fact that science found something they don't really know what that is, but can infer some of its properties, is "junk science"? Until someone comes up with a better theory, working and exploring what best explains the facts IS what science is about.

The theory of Ether was a good theory, until the measurements came out that cast doubt on it. Without the Ether theory, there would be no one trying to measure the "Ether drag" and thus no Michaelson-Morley experiment, and no fact to tell (or support) Einstein that light speed is constant, and then Relativity would not be accepted quite so quickly by other scientists.

A theory that was wrong, but point to the right direction for experiment and measurement, is much better than any dogma that cannot be proven wrong at all.

Re:Not the sun

[TapeCutter]

Reagan also pushed for and won an international "cap and trade" treaty for sulphur emissions which has dramatically reduced "acid rain" around the globe during the past couple of decades. Thatcher was his BFF at the time and I think it's no accident she had the same ideas, she was after all an Oxford trained chemist and was the first world leader to speak out about AGW. By today's standards Regan (and Thatcher) would be considered "too soft on greenies" to lead the republican party, kind of amazing what corporate FUD can do to peoples attitudes in such a short time.

Re:Not the sun

[TapeCutter]

Or there could be something else causing global warming

Thanks captain obvious, here's the IPCC attribution graph. Aside from the predicted warming, numerous other phenomena have been predicted by climate models and then observed in nature, eg: "stratospheric cooling" and "polar amplification".

The last nail in the "something else" coffin was during the 50's when spectrometers became sensitive enough to see that the CO2 absorption spectra was interleaved with the H2O spectra rather that blocked by it. Back then AGW was detectable but the only reason they were looking at all was due to their inability to explain the magnitude of the ice age climate changes from orbital wobbles alone. The original warming prediction was made ~1900, both the 1900 and 1950's predictions did not take into account the growth rate of the FF burning industry, the original predicted a doubling of pre-industrial CO2 concentrations in about 3kyrs not 300yrs.

Re: Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

You read my mind :-P

Re:Not the sun

[KeensMustard]

Maybe it makes you feel good to think that, but the AGW skeptical material I've read certainly doesn't match that characterization. Maybe the fluff posted in the comments section on YouTube or Fox News or MSNBC etc.

And of course, on Slashdot, where this argument and it's derivatives (e.g. referencing the medieval warm period or little ice age as evidence against CO2 induced warming) , is made multiple times in any discussion about climate here. Funny thing is, these remarks are never corrected by the more enlightened denialists. Why is it that you, recognising this fallacy for what it is (and more power to you for seeing that), don't step in and correct these erroneous arguments when they occur? Don't you see the damage this does to the credibility of the argument you think is true? Or do you think that fallacy can coexist comfortably with fact and help promote fact?

And also: If these arguments are not the true doctrine of denialism, what are the demonstrable facts that underpin your argument?

Am I wrong? Why don't you link to a post in one of the major climate skeptic websites that shows this "can be only one cause for anything" attitude you describe.

You ought to be aware that people in general are not going to know who or where these websites are, since it is not a matter of who but what -

(a) What (according to denialists) is the cause of the recent warming

(b) What are the independently verifiable observations that underpin this hypothesis?

Nevertheless: Here are 3 articles by denialist supremo Anthony Watts, who claims his site www.wattsupwithat.com is "the world's most read site on climate".

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/12/08/the-truth-about-we-have-to-get-rid-of-the-medieval-warm-period/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/31/new-paper-shows-medieval-warm-period-was-global-in-scope/

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/07/18/remarkable-correlation-of-arctic-sea-ice-to-solar-cycle-length/

All 3 articles rely on the fallacy you say is not mainstream denialism.

Or maybe you're just making stuff up in an attempt to portray your opponents in debate as fools.

Is there actually debate?

Re:Not the sun

[cheesybagel]

AGW believers can't be proven wrong either. A lot of us have realized this a long time ago. To me it just doesn't pass the smell test. I know too much history and college grade physics. Sorry.

Re:Not the sun

[cheesybagel]

As for dark energy and dark matter and negative energy and other similar pieces of marvelous crap i've read about the answer is pretty simple. So you can't detect enough mass or energy to account for what's supposed to be there? Get a better measuring instrument! Every couple of months their stupid estimates of this nebulous whatever that's missing keeps going down. Pretty soon it will be down to irrelevance.

Re:Not the sun

[cheesybagel]

I could care less about global average temperatures. What I care about is the temperatures around places people live in. I wouldn't trust global average temperature statistics with a barge pole since we have only been able to get accurate measurements since we started putting satellites in the sky and that wasn't long enough ago to extrapolate into long term centennial trends for anything. We used to have weather stations in places people lived or work by centuries ago. But not in the middle of nowhere.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

WTF are you talking about? It's the AGW crowd that is obsessed with carbon.

Suggest some other alternative not related to man that could be cause temps to rise and some moron on Slashdot calls you a "denailist".

Oh, BTW you must have missed this. Of course, Kool Aid drinkers such as yourself will first have a problem with the link because of the site and completely ignore the linked material, a sign of a partisan and sophomoric imbecile. Once you finally do figure out it's a link to Nature, where one of the Holy Gods of the Church of Global Warming admits to the pause, you will start blathering about unsupported and unreviewed theories, completely reversing previous insistence on peer reviewed material only.

But in the end, you are just a Slashdot lizard who's no different than the Face Painting Homers found in the cheap seats of the Football Stadium copying and pasting from this or that Blog run by non-scientists and pushing a political agenda. We could find the world covered by Glaciers and you'd still be prattling on about SUVs and Exxon.

If not for this, you'd be out burning down housing developments with the Sierra Club or in the forest crying for trees with the crazy ass Earth Firsters.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

It was a coincidence. The evidence no longer supports your hypothesis, there is more CO2 than ever but global temperatures are not rising.

 
Don't site NASA, it's embarrassing for you.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

When you have hundreds of models that predict hundreds of outcomes, some are bound to hit on it occasionally.

Re:Not the sun

[bricko]

How did this article get in Slashdot.....they have been censoring any items that throw "cold" water on any GW speculation. You need to delete this now. Someone will see it.

Re:Not the sun

[KeensMustard]

Which would only apply if we arrived at the theory of AGW by a process of eliminating other causes of warming i.e. you are claiming the very fallacy that this guy says that a serious denialist would never claim.

So which is it? Is he wrong? Or is your argument actually "fluff"?

Re:Not the sun

[bunratty]

I clearly heard the congressman say "When you see warming, why do you automatically assume it's manmade?" and "If it was warmer during the Medieval period, how could we blame it on CO2 emissions?" He's asking questions, but they're loaded questions. They make a presumption that scientists automatically assume warming is manmade and all due to CO2 emissions. He not saying AGW is not happening, but he's implying that arguments that suggest CO2 emissions are causing warming are dumb by the way he's asking those questions. He doesn't sound like he's honestly trying to learn the science, but rather he seems to have a chip on his shoulder.

Re:Not the sun

[bunratty]

You're referring to the temperature escalator. That argument uses cherry picking to throw away most of the temperature data to arrive at that conclusion. It's one of the tactics of denialism.

Re:Not the sun

[sideslash]

No, he's just raising questions also raised by scientists skeptical of AGW alarmism. They are good questions. Also, it is possible to believe that CO2 has a greenhouse gas warming effect on earth without subscribing to climate alarmism -- the positive feedback loop aspect of the alarmist models has been by no means validated. In fact, various models have arguably been discredited by the last few decades' measurements. Anyway.

Re:Not the sun

[sycodon]

Just wanted to mention Alfred Wegener, the man who proposed continental drift, only to be dismissed for nearly 50 years before being accepted.

Or, you can read about Barry Marshal who discovered that the bacterium H. pylori caused peptic ulcer disease, leading him to win a Nobel Prize in 2005. he published it in the 80's and if wasn't widely accepted until some 10 years later.

So regardless of the AGW debate, your assertion that it must be true because there is no widely accepted theory disproving it, is complete horseshit.

Re:Not the sun

[bunratty]

They would be good questions if they were not loaded. Asking "When you see warming, why do you think it's manmade?" or "If it was warmer during the Medieval period, what was the cause of the warming?" See the difference?

Re:Not the sun

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Of course, Kool Aid drinkers such as yourself will first have a problem with the link because of the site and completely ignore the linked material, a sign of a partisan and sophomoric imbecile. Once you finally do figure out it's a link to Nature, where one of the Holy Gods of the Church of Global Warming admits to the pause, you will start blathering about unsupported and unreviewed theories, completely reversing previous insistence on peer reviewed material only.

Then why don't you link to the actual Nature article, instead of Watts' cherry-picked sound bite? For that matter, why doesn't Watts link to it himself? The only real information in the Watts post is a graphic of the masthead showing the volume and issue, so it's reasonably easy to track down the article, which is open-access ... but Watts is probably calculating, correctly, that most of his readers won't bother.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Get a better measuring instrument!

What do you think scientists have been working on while you've been making ignorant posts on the internet?

Re:Not the sun

[sideslash]

Maybe you weren't aware of this, but the whole reason everybody was there is that AGW advocates are claiming that current warming is man-made. Asking why they think that, is actually OK, even if you don't prefer the way the question was worded.

Re:Not the sun

[tmosley]

Just because its hot in the house doesn't mean its on fire, though.

I like how someone with an opinion contrary to yours has a name. Really allows for dehumanization and lets you just ignore any opinion you don't like. Pretty cool psychological trick.

Re:Not the sun

[litehacksaur111]

Could you please point me to a peer reviewed single study that accounts for the overall warming that the earth is experiencing that does not reference CO2 contributing.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

and unicorn farts.

Re:Not the sun

[bunratty]

I'm just saying that I think your assertion that the congressman was merely raising doubts is incorrect. It's okay to ask those questions, but they weren't worded in such a way as to merely raise a doubt. They were accusatory in tone, accusing scientists of making unfounded assumptions and claiming all warming is due to CO2.

Re:Not the sun

[KeensMustard]

Just wanted to mention Alfred Wegener, [berkeley.edu] the man who proposed continental drift, only to be dismissed for nearly 50 years before being accepted.

Yes, excellent contrast - Wegener proposed continental drift to explain some observations that could not otherwise be explained. His theory was eventually accepted. Just like the theory of greenhouse gases, which Tyndall/Fourier proposed to explain observations that were otherwise unexplained - a theory that was at first controversial, but later accepted. In contrast, the standard denialist diatribe does not (a) explain any observations, but is actually contradicted by observation (b) does not provide a better explanation to observed phenomena compared to the default (null) hypothesis.

Or, you can read about Barry Marshal [discovermagazine.com] who discovered that the bacterium H. pylori caused peptic ulcer disease, leading him to win a Nobel Prize in 2005. he published it in the 80's and if wasn't widely accepted until some 10 years later.

Yes, excellent contrast. Marshal performed various experiments and published his data which was independently verifiable and therefore his theory, which subsumed various other proposals as to the causes of stomach ulcers, was eventually accepted - following a fairly standard scientific methodology. In contrast, climate denialists refuse to show any data, or even, fully elaborate on an alternative theory as to the causes of the current warming, have no data or methodology that can be independently verified. There is no obvious reason to take them seriously.

Re:Not the sun

[sideslash]

Why would it not reference CO2 contributing? You can accept CO2 as a greenhouse gas without espousing alarmist models of positive CO2 feedback.

Re: Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't get heated up over the sun because this could cause others to get heated up. This would cause climate change.
Just click scroll, click and scroll ..,

Re:Not the sun

[Applehu Akbar]

But the Church of Warminetics teaches that all observed weather "events" other than flat calm - storms, floods, droughts, blizzards, ship-crushing icepacks in midsummer - have a single cause, anthropogenic warming. And we must obey. Pay no attention to the logical contradiction behind the curtain.

Re:Not the sun

[KeensMustard]

Asking why they think that, is actually OK, even if you don't prefer the way the question was worded.

Sure - in some circumstances, being merely ignorant on a subject (in this case AGW) is a fairly neutral stance. if you are a 5 year old, or illiterate, then being ignorant is probably understandable. Ignorance is not really what we are looking for from policy makers, when it concerns subjects we need them to make policy on.

But don't you think it is odd, if he is genuinely interested in a subject that he did not read up on the basics before discussing it at the policy level? This just seems a bit irresponsible, to be wasting the scientists, not to mention the committees, time asking for a introductory run through on climate science.

Re:Not the sun

[KeensMustard]

Given that the temperature will continue to rise even without positive feedback, you would need feedback to be negative to counteract the increased warming due to CO2.

Where is the evidence of this negative feedback?

Re:Not the sun

[pjbgravely]

I don't think it was cap and trade, just cap.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

At least he didn't link to wikipedia, the mother of all horse shit compilations.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

That has to be the biggest fucking woosh ever.

You clearly did not understand his post or the post he was responding to.

In short, you are a fucking moron..

Re:Not the sun

[KeensMustard]

In short, you are a fucking moron..

On the contrary. I would have thought it clear from my post that I am not, in fact, a denialist.

Re:Not the sun

[ChrisMaple]

Seriously, you have captured the essential mindset of the denialists: there can only be one cause for anything. That assumption underlies most of the denialist arguments.

There's an important invention you need to look into. It's called a mirror.

Re:Not the sun

[dbIII]

Maybe it makes you feel good to think that

Yes, whenever I want to feel smug about my level of education and awareness of the world around me the words of some of the luddites that have started to infest this place deliver in spades.

can be only one cause for anything

"Lord" Monckton and many, many more in the well paid travelling denialist roadshow.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

I am pretty sure if we have a period of calm weather: "the calmest period for three decades" they will blame that on global warming too.

Re:Not the sun

[bogjobber]

And you can't forget that bleeding-heart liberal Nixon who founded the EPA. It's a shame we've allowed critical governmental functions like making sure the air and water is clean become partisan battlegrounds.

Re:Not the sun

[riverat1]

That is why Doing Science Right (tm) involves disclosing your source data, frequently blurting out to the world everything that may possibly be wrong with your approach, and placing trust in an experiment or model's results only as far as commensurate with the demonstrated reliability of those results.

You are obviously just repeating something you heard because if you actually investigated and read the literature you would see that source data is available, possible issues with the results are discussed and modelers are very aware of the limitations of their models. In disseminating the information to the general public a lot of the details get left out but you can dig them out if you take the time to do some research.

Re:Not the sun

[bogjobber]

*are clean

Re:Not the sun

[sg_oneill]

If you follow this argument to its conclusion, it doesn't lead to where you want it to lead.

Denialists (And lets use the proper term here. "AGW isnt happening" is so far out of the scientific ball park its bordering on creationist level silly by now) have been arguing that "Its the sun not CO2(somehow, Im yet to see a good explaination of this supposed mechanism thats stopping CO2 from doing what the physics say it'll do) causing this" but sunspot evidence seems to suggest that we ought be cooling.

And we're not.

And thats a big problem, to which I'd suggest means the mythical mechanism that stops CO2 from absorbing infra red *just like we've seen in the lab since the 1800s when scientists tarted warning about the greenhouse effect* , probably doesn't exist and in fact physics is right and we do have a greenhouse effect (aka 'climate change') problem.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

An their rightness is assured by series of international conferences in nice places and even nicer hotels where tens of thousands of them can fly by jets and meet and ensure they are perfectly right... .. while peons could not understand while non-toxic incandescent light bulbs are forcibly replaced by full of toxic metals compact fluorescent lamps for the sake of environment...

Re:Not the sun

[riverat1]

There's a big difference between saying CO2 is the only cause of climate change and saying CO2 is the primary cause of the climate change that is occurring now which is what scientists are saying. The subtle difference between the two statements might be to much for some deniers to cope with.

Re:Not the sun

[Bongo]

When new evidence contradicts a theory, it doesn't mean the theory is wrong, as there could be something wrong with the new evidence. But it could also mean the theory is wrong. So we make progress with trial and error.

What made me a concerned sceptic on AGW was the claim that the evidence was incontriverible and that to question, to ask if it might be wrong, is morally akin to denying the holocaust, that to question it is to doubt whether the sun would rise in the morning, and to doubt the whole edifice of science.

I would point out that the reason we trust science is that it is self-correcting, with the caveat that the processs of self-correction, over a group of thousands of professionals, that self correction takes decades. Sometimes even 50 years.

When even the head of the IPCC is on video, telling a bunch of young people that, the denialists are like the people who still believe the earth is flat, and the same head of IPCC calls some indian scientists who checked a claim about a mountain range's ice melting by 2035 and found it mistaken, and the IPCC guy then responds and calls then "vodoo scientists", only for it to come to light later that the 2035 number was a simple mistranscription of 2350, you really start to wonder about the culture.

The theory may be right, but if you go round attacking anyone who disagrees, the self correction process becomes a very slow event. Instead of self correcting in 10 years, you are now having to wait until everyone who supports it professionally has retired.

In a climate where people are branded denialists, the self correction goes out the window. We can no longer KNOW if the theory is indeed right, largely right, needs some adjusting, or is just based on mistaken understanding.

Re: Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Trends go up, local observations up and down.

There are streaks with a bias. Just like in poker when someone is on a roll.

Climate CHANGE != climate warming up.

Re:Not the sun

[riverat1]

Too many people on both sides pay way too much attention to weather events such as you outline. No individual weather event can ever be absolutely attributed to climate change. Climate is the carrier wave that the signal/noise of weather rides on. When climate changes it changes the odds on particular weather events happening. But only by looking at the events over long periods of time can you observe the change in odds. Each individual weather event is only another datum for the climate scientists.

Re:Not the sun

[riverat1]

... but another article mentioned just a few weeks ago declared that the Sun was not a significant driver of the climate on Earth

I think it would be more accurate to say "The observed and inferred by proxy changes in the Sun are not significant enough to account for the majority of observed climate change. No scientist worth his salt would say a significant change in the Sun wouldn't cause a significant change to Earth's climate.

Re:Not the sun

[riverat1]

you may think al gore is right and the humans are the responsible of global warming, but also 1/3 of americans still think creacionism is true... just saying

LOL. Nice Sandusky* there conflating creationism with global warming realists.

* By Sandusky I'm referring to the attempt to conflate Michael Mann with Jerry Sandusky because they were both employees of Penn State.

Re: Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

You are dumb. Something else is creating chlorine in upper atmosphere which hinders the progress.

Re:Not the sun

[riverat1]

Of course AGW can be proven wrong. But nothing has happened so far that comes close to disproving it.

Re:Not the sun

[Gavagai80]

I could care less about global average temperatures. What I care about is the temperatures around places people live in.

You don't care about billions of coastal people being flooded because of warming in Greenland and the feedback effects from warming in Siberia? Okay. You don't care about sparsely populated farmland that feeds you? Okay. If all you care about is the temperature in cities, then they are of course significantly warmer than elsewhere because of the urban heat island effect.

Re:Not the sun

[riverat1]

I don't know why you think satellites are so accurate. They don't measure temperature directly. The "temperatures" they measure are calculated from changes in the microwave emissions of (mostly) oxygen molecules and cover broad vertical layers of the atmosphere but not the surface. Besides, the satellite temperature record matches the surface temperature record within the error ranges of both so you can't say they contradict each other. And just for the record, accurate thermometers have been available for well over 200 years. It just took getting enough of the spread out well enough over the surface of the Earth to make it reasonable to calculate a global temperature.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

These "alarmist" scientists are the same type who told us that CFCs were creating a hole in the ozone layer.

No, they aren't. You just think that they are because you agree with both.
There is another group of people that agrees with the CFC ban but disagrees with the current models that are used for climate studies based on them having a history of not matching reality. The revised models may or may not be better but it would be foolish to try to control the climate when we don't even know if the models will hold for ten years.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

So before you start proposing for people to freeze in the winter or overheat in the summer from closing down coal power plants, or other dumbass ideas i've heard proposed, consider the consequences.

Hi. I am what some people call a 'denialist'. Personally I think I belong more to the 'need better dataist'.
My opinion is that we should close down all coal power plants and replace them with nuclear immediately.
Not because of climate but because that the health problem of a worst case scenario with nuclear is better than the best case scenario with coal.

Re:Not the sun

[Splab]

Good thing we have so many earths laying about to experiment on.

And time, don't forget that, lots of time, worst case predictions don't have us completely fucked for the next couple of decades, and with best case predictions we are looking at more than a hundred years, so no point in fixing anything now.

Part of me thinks we probably should be happy that the sun has decided to not do it's shit - just imagine how bad it would be with a couple of more degrees across the globe...

Re:Not the sun

[fractoid]

Winter is coming.

Re:Not the sun

[fractoid]

Write this story. Do it.

Re:Not the sun

[Splab]

You probably should care about those averages.

And it's actually not the increase in temperatures where people live that are going to be the problem. All the fun starts out over the ocean, having warmer air over the ocean means the air can carry a lot more water and a heck of a lot more energetic and that means more fun during the hurricane season, with stuff like Katrina, Sandy et. al. becoming the norm rather than the extreme.

Imagine a hurricane like the one that passed the Philippines last year going through a place people care about, like New York or Washington D. C. - that hurricane was outside the scale, the reason being that the Simpson et. al. concluded that anything above ground wouldn't last more than 5 minutes in a "Cat. 6" hurricane. Now imagine a hurricane outside of the scale, once a year going up through the east coast; those are the consequences of fairly small increases in global average temperatures.

Trust me, you definitely want to start caring, because we are in the middle of a shit storm and still arguing rather than acting.

Re:Not the sun

[floobedy]

James Hansen comes to mind as an example of a cargo cult scientist.

OK, I'll bite. How is James Hansen a cargo cult scientist?

Re:Not the sun

[sideslash]

If you read the following, you will understand:

http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html

Scientists who try to prevent others from validating their work, who sway politicians using graphs without error bars, and who put confidence in extrapolation of curve fits to chaotic systems and insist that others share their confidence without really articulating why. Stuff like that.

I'm not saying everything he does and says is wrong, but climate science is really in its infancy, and is not prepared to instigate the kinds of global policy mandates that Hansen periodically trumpets.

Re:Not the sun

[sideslash]

Do you think Richard Lindzen is ignorant on the subject? I think you just want the congressman to submit to the AGW alarmists, and not push back. You don't want to admit that there are two views here (well, of course there are more than two).

Re:Not the sun

[hey!]

I just finished explaining to you that the problem isn't global average temperature *itself*, but the local consequences of that global change.

Re:Not the sun

[hey!]

His line of questioning is irrelevant

I guess you don't need to refute your opponent if you ignore what they say. Brilliant!

The reason the congressman's line of questioning is irrelevant is that it addresses a straw argument: namely that anthropogenic carbon is the *only* thing that can cause global warming.

Re:Not the sun

[floobedy]

If you read the following, you will understand: http://neurotheory.columbia.edu/~ken/cargo_cult.html

No, because that is a definition of the term "cargo cult science". I obviously will not "understand" that James Hansen is a cargo cult scientist just by reading the definition of the term again.

Scientists who try to prevent others from validating their work

How is Hansen preventing others from validating his work? Is he not providing his data? Sabotaging others' equipment? How?

who put confidence in extrapolation of curve fits to chaotic systems

Hansen certainly doesn't do that. That is certainly not the basis of climate science, or of Hansen's work.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sun is still working on turning Hydrogen into Helium But it will get round to Carbon eventuallu

Does the CNO cycle in the Sun count? There's carbon involved in it, you know. ;-)

Re: Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

i hope al gore chokes on his $7.00 apple options.
why do you americans encourage graft and criminal activity from your nitwit politicians?

Re:Not the sun

[IRWolfie-]

Continental drift wasn't a theory, it was a proposed historical fact. Wegener had no mechanism to suggest it which made sense, and his mechanisms where (and still are) rejected. It was the theory of plate tectonics that confirmed the historical fact of continental drift. It was not Wegener who made a concrete proposal of plate tectonics as that article you link to appears to suggest.

Re:Not the sun

[TheRealHocusLocus]

We are stardust, man.

I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld.
When I die, they will put me in a box
and dispose of it in the cold ground.
And in all the million ages to come,
I will never breathe, or laugh, or twitch again.
So won't you run and play with me here
among the teeming mass of humanity?
The universe has spared us this moment.
~~Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Re:Not the sun

[ganjadude]

As opposed to AGW truthers who believe that there can only be one cause for anything? That it is mans fault? I would say that the hardcore proponents of pro and anti AGW (or any extreme level of believing anything for that matter) would fall under the same scrutiny.

Re:Not the sun

[ganjadude]

wasnt there a scandal not too long ago about AGW supporters cherry picking data as well?

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

The Sun does not effect climate.

The sun may not effect climate, but it does affect it.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

better than building a straw man and expecting it to hold up. /redundant /redundant

Re:Not the sun

[phantomfive]

Reagan also pushed for and won an international "cap and trade" treaty for sulphur emissions which has dramatically reduced "acid rain" around the globe during the past couple of decades. Thatcher was his BFF at the time and I think it's no accident she had the same ideas,

I've been starting to think that it was Thatcher who was really leading that relationship....

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

The computer models created on the hypotheses have all failed. Temps increased 15 or so years ago but have held steady despite CO2 levels that today that even exceed those assumed when the models were created.

Re: Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Go Team! My Team forever!

Stupid twit,

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument is with the people at Berkley, where the water fountains are smarter than you are.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

You must not pay very much attention to the deniers' debate. This is almost exclusively how they argue; in fact I'm having trouble finding denialist arguments that don't follow this strategy exclusively.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

The theory is extremely falsifiable. That fact that it hasn't been falsified yet is what leads most people to accept it as valid science. If you have falsified it, you should publish your work and have it peer reviewed and accept your historical role as the most brilliant scientist in the history of mankind.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

You have made it painfully obvious you failed at 6th grade science. Thanks for pointing that out to everyone so we know we're dealing with a scientific toddler :)

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

What on earth is a "denialist" (your words)?

Your entire argument falls apart on prejudice and bias. Before you throw stones, you should always first check that you've not positioned yourself in a glasshouse.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

someone is out in full force trying to mod you into oblivion today it looks like

Re:Not the sun

[KeensMustard]

Do you think Richard Lindzen is ignorant on the subject?

I fail to see how you could have leapt to that conclusion.

I think you just want the congressman to submit to the [science demonstrated by evidence], and not push back. You don't want to admit that there are two views here (well, of course there are more than two).

More apparent blind speculation on your part. Like everybody else, our worthy congressman needs to take the rough with the smooth. Science is something of an all or nothing proposition. He cannot embrace the good things delivered by science - electricity, structural engineering, modern medicine, global communications, and ignore science on the occasions when the news is not so good: unfavourable medical diagnoses, climate change due to anthropogenic emissions and the like. Science is not fairy wishing, and no amount of fairy wishing will make reality turn away. If the good congressman wants to abandon reliance on the scientific method he is quite welcome to - and go into the woods and live in a cabin without electricity or communications, and die a short time later of an easily preventable disease.

Re:Not the sun

[sideslash]

Good grief. How does asking (good) questions of a scientist equate to ignoring science? I would suggest that not inviting scientists to testify to congressional committees would be an easier way to ignore science. This fellow is doing the opposite -- he's very much paying attention to and engaging with the scientific community.

Re:Not the sun

[mcswell]

And this is not perhaps the mindset of those who believe CO2 coming from the burning of fossil fuel is the only cause of global warming? Actually, if you were to go to most skeptic websites, instead of pretending you know ex cathedra what they believe, you might find a whole host of reasons given for global warming: solar variation is only one of them.

Re:Not the sun

[mcswell]

I pick http://wattsupwiththat.com/, which by readership is bigger than almost anything else, including the non-skeptic sites. There's a whole range of theories there, from "(alleged) global warming is due to mismeasurement" to "global warming is due to a variety of causes. But why don't you post there and ask?

Re:Not the sun

[mcswell]

I just posted such a link (to "Watts Up With That?"). I think you'll find considerable science (and math) there, particularly in the blog entries. You will find some anti-science in the *comments*, but that's because (short of a handful of defamatory posts) comments are not censored, unlike some sites.

Re:Not the sun

[Citizen of Earth]

and placing trust in an experiment or model's results only as far as

Experiments and models are very different things. Experiments test how well your model matches the actual universe. Models test how well your model matches your model.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

I told you already... MASSACRE. It brings down temperatures so it does not even SNOW. The more you ignore it, the more massacres can get justified.

Re:Not the sun

[djmurdoch]

Okay, so I read the story there about flooding in Somerset. The article itself is pretty reasonable, but many of the replies to it met the characterization of "only one cause":

"The EA was taken over by environmentalists years ago."

"The UK EA ... was created by Blair to promote the myth of CAGW."

There's no possibility that the lack of dredging is due to budget cutting or a lack of a need for dredging now that the rivers aren't used for barges any more (I don't know if they ever were), it's the AGW proponents who caused it. And there's no possibility that the floods have multiple causes, not just the lack of dredging. For example, places that used to be swamps tend to subside as the water is taken out.

Re:Not the sun

[Anonymous Coward]

Right here. Everybody arguing that the "single cause denialist" argument was a strawman, here is an example of such a denialist. Cow farts and hair spraw haven't reached Venus and Mars, therefore the "only conclusion" is that the sun is the source of global warming and we're at the upper temperatures now.

Re:Not the sun

[Ghaoth]

50% of the Earth's heat comes from nuclear reactions in the core. The China syndrome is responsible for heating the core causing CO2 to bubble out of the ocean floor. Ban nuclear power, ban coal power...ban everything.

Re:Not the sun

[KeensMustard]

Good grief. How does asking (good) questions of a scientist equate to ignoring science?

Previously you said that genuine skeptics never resort to the fallacy that the science says there is only one driver for climate. It was a bold thing for you to say - I've never heard a self styled skeptic be so open about one of the central arguments presented by their compatriots before. This, as I have previously noted means that arguments alleging that the medieval warm period poses some problem for the prevailing theory are also fallacious, having, at their heart, the same allegation.

This, as this poster helpfully points out, is precisely the argument our worthy congressman puts forward. You have previously said, unequivocally, that this argument is fallacious and not part of counter argument to the established hypothesis. Now, you label the argument "good". Are you confused by what he said? Did his remarks befuddle you? Or have you changed your mind?

I would suggest that not inviting scientists to testify to congressional committees would be an easier way to ignore science.

But that would be moronic. You ignore science at your peril. In the case of the congressman, ignoring the science would also imperil his fellow countrymen. It's a pretty low baseline to merely hope, rather than expect elected officials to be somewhat more than morons.

This fellow is doing the opposite -- he's very much paying attention to and engaging with the scientific community.

Sounds more likely he is trolling - if we accept your previous remarks to be accurate.

Re:Not the sun

[sideslash]

I don't think you quite have grasped the idea of "skepticism". Skepticism isn't about promoting a grand unified theory, it's about questioning somebody else's. Skeptical treatment of the medieval warm period would include questions like:

1. If climates were similarly warm in the MWP, why is it such a disaster for it to be warm again now?

2. Do we know what caused the MWP? If not, then could the same cause underly some of today's warming trends, rather than solely greenhouse gases?

3. What was the deal with "hide the decline", anyway?

(I added that last one in just to honor the important cargo cult science contributions of Michael Mann and his colleagues.)

Re:Not the sun

[KeensMustard]

So just so we are clear, you think it is okay to assert something you personally believe is incorrect and a fallacy, for the sake of ... what? Ego? Being on the right side?

I'm tempted to pursue a line of questioning as to what would motivate you (and presumably other denialists) to do that. But that would be useless, because I have no more reason to believe your assertions about your motivation than I have to believe your assertions about climate. Which is none.

I'd be interested to know though, whether it is a small number, or indeed a majority of denialists who, like you, are knowingly spruiking fallacy.

Re:Not the sun

[sideslash]

So just so we are clear, you think it is okay to assert something you personally believe is incorrect and a fallacy

No, I don't think that, and I am not sure where you got the idea.

Re:Not the sun

[cheesybagel]

The good ones who believe in the experimental method yes. The theorists who have nothing better to do no.

Re:Not the sun

[cheesybagel]

I hate statistics. There is only one thing that has ever come out of that field in physics which I find useful and that is the Boltzmann equation. Statistics are just misunderstood or misapplied too often IRL. Especially when you see it being used to promote what is essentially a political agenda, that's when you should get concerned. Lots of people, who know the field better than I do, point glaring errors all the time just to get dismissed summarily as unbelievers or whatever they label people who disagree with their theory with today. So I could care less about AGW theory.

Re:Not the sun

[Magius_AR]

what are the demonstrable facts that underpin your argument?

There wouldn't be facts. Most of us don't attack the facts, we attack the process and the certainty of the conclusions. We question the use of very large error bars and grand conclusions from weak supporting data on complex chaotic systems. We question the field in general as being akin to economics in size and complexity, with end results being just as hit-or-miss. We question the utmost certainty with which believers stake their faith in, based on models that are continually missing the mark or failing to account for one factor or another.

One guy here on Slashdot (forget the name) has continually asked for a falsifiable hypothesis for global warming. And I've yet to hear someone give a reasonable response. Because there isn't one. The error bars are so wide and models so adaptive that nearly any climate change can be made to "fit within predictions" while the next-gen models are skewed to recognize the "new norm". I'd love to hear someone tell me what observations would disprove AGW. Moreover, I'd love to hear what observations would disprove CAGW, because that argument is about as flaky as they come.

Re:Not the sun

[KeensMustard]

what are the demonstrable facts that underpin your argument?

There wouldn't be facts.

No. There is just allegation and slander. Not specific allegations mind you, in case the allegation could be made falsifiable.

For example:

Most of us don't attack the facts, we attack the process and the certainty of the conclusions.

Make vague, generalised references to a process being careful not to be specific in case it comes to light that you have no idea how models are built.

We question the use of very large error bars and grand conclusions from weak supporting data on complex chaotic systems

Make vague, unattributed and non-specific references to a few sciencey sounding things which you don't understand. Be sure not to mention which model, journal or paper you are referring in case someone bothers to test the '100% error bar!' assertion.

We question the field in general as being akin to economics in size and complexity, with end results being just as hit-or-miss.

Draw spurious parallels without demonstrating, at any level, how the two things are the same.

We question the utmost certainty with which believers stake their faith in, based on models that are continually missing the mark or failing to account for one factor or another.

Make broad brush generalisations, vague references to models that have "failed" without defining failure at all, or naming the models in question.

One guy here on Slashdot (forget the name) has continually asked for a falsifiable hypothesis for global warming. And I've yet to hear someone give a reasonable response.

This is a perfect example on why you should avoid specifics! I happen to know the person you are referring to. In fact, several people, including myself, exposed the fallacy of the 'falsifiable hypothesis' argument. I have citations of a few of those occasions, if you are interested. Of course, after his fallacy was exposed, he liked to come back and post the fallacy again, as if we might have forgotten his egregious hypocrisy, hoping to stymie someone with sciency sounding terminology. But then on another occasion he claimed that Anthony Watts had falsified a model (the NOAA 2008 model). I spent some time asking how he could think that the model could both be falsifiable and not falsifiable, he was unable to provide an answer. After that conversation he went away.

He made the mistake of delving into specifics.

Re:Not the sun

[KeensMustard]

So just so we are clear, you think it is okay to assert something you personally believe is incorrect and a fallacy

No, I don't think that, and I am not sure where you got the idea.

From your remarks.

I asked: Previously you said [slashdot.org] that genuine skeptics never resort to the fallacy that the science says there is only one driver for climate. It was a bold thing for you to say - I've never heard a self styled skeptic be so open about one of the central arguments presented by their compatriots before. This, as I have previously noted [slashdot.org] means that arguments alleging that the medieval warm period poses some problem for the prevailing theory are also fallacious, having, at their heart, the same allegation.

This, as this poster [slashdot.org] helpfully points out, is precisely the argument our worthy congressman puts forward. You have previously said, unequivocally, that this argument is fallacious and not part of counter argument to the established hypothesis. Now, you label the argument "good". Are you confused by what he said? Did his remarks befuddle you? Or have you changed your mind?

In your response, you explained this contradiction by saying: [It] isn't about promoting a grand unified theory, it's about questioning somebody else's. The only rational way to interpret this response is that you think it is okay for the congressman (and by extensions, yourself) to hold and assert 2 or more contradictory beliefs at the same time.

Re: Not the sun

[sideslash]

I see where you're coming from, and wanted to say thanks for the exchange. Sorry for lying down on the skepticism job, royally sick with GI bug right now. Cheers!

Re:Not the sun

[Magius_AR]

I have citations of a few of those occasions, if you are interested.

Yes, I'd like to see those.

Re:Not the sun

[KeensMustard]

Sure: http://news.slashdot.org/comme...

http://science.slashdot.org/co...

And this one:

http://science.slashdot.org/co...

... Ouch.

Re:Not the sun

[Magius_AR]

I don't see what those links prove. You're just bashing some other people for not providing facts. You're not stating WHAT falsifies the models.

For instance, it was claimed in NOAA that 15 years of "an observed absence of warming" is a very rare event (around 5% chance of happening). They've since changed their mind, claiming such events are more common than they originally said.

Similarly, the 2007 IPCC report said that global warming would make storms stronger and more frequent (with greater than 50% certainty). The latest IPCC draft lowers than confidence to "low" (or 20%)., now that we haven't observed such weather.

This is the problem...the kind of things that would falsify these models are glossed over...the model is changed, the goalposts are moved, and suddenly there's a new standard for falsification. It doesn't matter if the old papers/predictions turn out incorrect/off. They merely call it "science", adjust the sliders/confidence, and reiterate their 100% certainty that they'll be 100% right going forward.

So I ask you again for a falsifiable hypothesis. Namely, one that won't change five years from now when it doesn't meet expectations. Give me something concrete that says "when this doesn't occur, we are wrong".

Re:Not the sun

[KeensMustard]

I don't see what those links prove.

You asked for links, I provided them. I don't have anything to prove. Nevertheless those links demonstrate that your claim that no-one previously demonstrated the fallacy of the 'falsifiable hypothesis' argument for the benefit of the fallacies originator - there it is right there. So much for Pielke and his hopes of becoming famous by distorting Popper into fallacy.

You're just bashing some other people for not providing facts.

Yep. If you make assertions, but can't prove them, then you can expect some flack for not doing so. I fail to see why this would be a surprise.

You're not stating WHAT falsifies the models.

No need. The other poster claimed that the model in question was falsified - how the model was falsified was his affair, rather than mine. Perhaps he misunderstood what models are for, and perhaps his method of falsification is bunk. Perhaps you, also, misunderstand the purpose of climate models. His ignorance (or yours) is really nothing to do with me. If you say that some model can't be falsified, it is your job to demonstrate sufficient knowledge of the topic at hand to prove your assertion.

For instance, it was claimed in NOAA that 15 years of "an observed absence of warming" is a very rare event (around 5% chance of happening). They've since changed their mind, claiming such events are more common than they originally said.

Which (if true) means what, exactly? NOAA is an organisation, not a model. You did know that right?

This is the problem...the kind of things that would falsify these models are glossed over...the model is changed, the goalposts are moved, and suddenly there's a new standard for falsification. It doesn't matter if the old papers/predictions turn out incorrect/off.

I see that once again you have lapsed into broad generalities. Which model was updated post publication and the published predictions modified secretly to reflect the actual observed climate shift?

Name the model and the person who modified it.

They merely call it "science", adjust the sliders/confidence, and reiterate their 100% certainty that they'll be 100% right going forward.

I've never once heard a climate scientist predict a result and ascribe 100% certainty to it.

This kind of hyperbole is exactly why your argument rings hollow.

So I ask you again for a falsifiable hypothesis.

You're mistaken. You didn't ask me for a falsifiable hypothesis. You said there wasn't one.

Now prove it.

Re:Not the sun

[Magius_AR]

Yep. If you make assertions, but can't prove them, then you can expect some flack for not doing so. I fail to see why this would be a surprise.

Hence why we give all these climate "scientists" so much flack. They've made a bunch of wild assertions about the future that didn't come true

Which model was updated post publication and the published predictions modified secretly to reflect the actual observed climate shift?

Secretly? Who said anything about secretly? They're very open about all the changes they make to the model when they're proven wrong time and time again. Here's a long list of the changes made to models of shit they just don't understand (still): http://www.realclimate.org/ind...

I've never once heard a climate scientist predict a result and ascribe 100% certainty to it.

Oh? And what of this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... "The scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth's climate system is unequivocally warming, and it is extremely likely (at least 95% probability) that humans are causing most of it through activities that increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere"

Sure as hell seems pretty certain to me...

This kind of hyperbole is exactly why your argument rings hollow.

Oh, the irony.

Now prove it.

Why is the onus on me to disapprove ridiculous assertions from a bunch of climate nuts? I'm not the one making the grandiose claim here. They're the ones saying they're certain the sky is falling. Then it doesn't happen...and I have to come up with a proof why their models didn't pan out? Fuck that.

global cooling

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh the irony...

Re:global cooling

[Immerman]

So would a second "Maunder Minimum" now be a good thing because it buys us a little more time to get our act together? Or a bad thing because it lets us keep our heads in the sand even longer so that we get hit all the harder and faster when the sun returns to its normal behavior?

Not that we have solar observations going back long enough to detect long-term cycles, but another 50+ year minimum starting up now when it could make it much easier to avoid the worst permanent climate changes would be almost enough to get me believing in intelligent intervention.

Re:global cooling

[ColdWetDog]

Your argument presupposes that we can manipulate our behavior and environment cohesively and quickly enough to effect a useful change that would - well, what would it do? Allow increased population growth? Allow for better standards of living for humans? The rest of the biosphere?

Given the inertia of 7 billion humans and our imperfect knowledge of some very, very complex systems, I'm not at all sure that anything we can do will actually help.

Re:global cooling

[Koby77]

It would be bad, but not for the reason you mention. It would be bad because then the alarmists don't get to tax and control the economy. Lefty socialists the world over are severely panicking that this prime opportunity is evaporating before their eyes.

Re:global cooling

[Spy Handler]

If we enter another little ice age, that's bad for most everybody. Europe's agriculture would be decimated, many towns in the Alps will be overrun by glaciers, etc. We have good records of what happened during the last one ~200 to 600 years ago. It wasn't pretty.

The oil exporting desert kingdoms might benefit since energy demands will skyrocket and they might get some respite from their usually brutal summer heat.

About the only good thing from a new little ice age would be putting Al Gore, Michael Mann, etc. in their place, which is to say utterly discredited and labeled as perpetrators of the biggest fraud in history.

Re:global cooling

[bunratty]

Ah, finally the real objection to believing in AGW comes to light... you're afraid of your political opponents gaining power. But just for a moment consider that we may need to actually reduce carbon dioxide emissions for legitimate reasons. Can you think of a way that we could do that without the commie pinkos taking over? Let's get creative.

Re:global cooling

[Immerman]

Greenhouse gas heat capture is reasonably well understood, even if many of the secondary effects are still being discovered. While completely unrealistic, eliminating carbon emissions tomorrow would do quite a bit to stabilize the climate, if we were very, very lucky the global climate wouldn't change much by the end of the century and after that the crisis situation would largely be over and global climates would likely remain reasonably stable thereafter. We're probably past the point of getting the climate back to the state it was in a century ago without massive geoengineering, but we can still work towards mitigating the changes.

As for the benefits - a big one would be a biosphere not confronted by a second major extinction event to exacerbate the one were already in the midst of (human hunting, fishing, farming, and (more recently), toxic pollution has devastated the biosphere over the last few millenia). We're going to be hard-pressed to sustain the ~10 billion people the global population is expected to stabilize at by mid-century without any climate troubles. If our farmland is being rendered non-viable by climate shifts that problem will be much, much worse. For example it's looking likely that without serious changes in climate policy in the near term, within a century or two corn mostly won't be a viable US crop except in the northernmost states. Canada will have become much more suitable, but that will mean devastating ecologically important wilderness areas, and while farms are fairly easy to move, you can't just up and move all the processing plants and other infrastructure, and refitting a century worth of infrastructure to process whatever crops, if any, are suited to the new climate is liable to be very expensive if even possible. Now imagine that happening to every crop, everywhere on the planet, simultaneously. Extremely expensive. Not to mention that during the transition period you're going to have vast regions of agricultural land that has become non-viable for one crop but not yet viable for another. And we'll also have all those more extreme weather patterns to contend with as the forcing factors from polar temperature differences weaken and stop forcing the weather to follow predictable patterns from year to year. We're already seeing the polar wind belts becoming weaker and more meandering, which allows weather patterns that would once have swept across the country to get trapped in the eddy currents to cause severe protracted storms in some places and droughts in others.

Global famine is looking like a very real possibility, and that would likely destabilize world peace more thoroughly than anything we've seen in centuries. Peace is one of those luxuries you strive for once not starving to death has been taken care of.

So basically yes to all of your possibilities. But we're not talking about an increase from today, we're talking about avoiding, as much as possible, a massive decrease in all of them. It's looking like some decrease is inevitable - estimates are that we're already harvesting the global ecosystem (farming, fishing, logging, etc) at a rate ~40% higher than is sustainable (we're "spending the capital" and doing long-term damage to environmental productivity). Getting efficient we could possibly support 10 billion people in comfort sustainably, but that's a tall order, and probably not even remotely possible if climate change are powerfully undermine our productivity. And what exactly do you suppose will happen in the intervening time if the global population is forced to be reduced by 1/2 or 3/4 within a few generations?

Re:global cooling

[Immerman]

Absolutely! Virtually every independent climatologist on the planet agrees that we're causing extremely serious long-term climate problems because they're part of a leftist conspiracy to control the economy. Good thing we have big oil and other entrenched corporate interests looking out for us, they have no reason to lie! And when they use their wealth and power to secure massive subsidies from the government that's not "control", that's just the free market at work!

Re:global cooling

[Immerman]

Yes, but that's very unlikely to happen because of an extended solar minimum alone - The Maunder Minimum actually occurred towards the tail end of the medieval little ice age. In this case we're in a situation where human forcing factors are pushing towards extreme warming, a few decades of solar decrease would only slow the rate of increase, buying us some more time without resorting to geoengineering projects with potentially devastating unintended consequences.

Re:global cooling

[cheesybagel]

The next ice age is going to come eventually. We aren't that far away from the point when its supposed to happen again. In fact some people claim we would already be experiencing its effect it it wasn't for the elevated CO2 and higher than usual solar activity in the last decade. Now that the Sun is abnormally inactive, which is something which may be indicative of an ice age, since the causes phenomenon are not completely well defined, we shall see.

When Al Gore bought real estate in NY which was close to sea level, that was enough to tell you that even he doesn't believe the crap he spouts.

Re:global cooling

[tlambert]

Greenhouse gas heat capture is reasonably well understood, even if many of the secondary effects are still being discovered

Apparently it's not very well understood by the companies selling natural gas (methane, a greenhouse gas) in the U.S., which were recently reported to be leaking dangerous amounts of the stuff all over NYC and Washington DC, and that's not including the town that blew up in California.

Re:global cooling

[ScentCone]

you're afraid of your political opponents gaining power

Well, sure. Who wants a bunch of statist central command types running their lives? Tax-ravenous Nanny Staters are bad news. Why should we want them to get any more power than they've already got? They've latched onto climate alarmism as their latest propaganda tool, and it's perfectly delightful when they are deprived of easy, distracting sound bite fodder. Half their fun already ended when they had to switch from "global warming" to "climate change," and this just makes it a little harder for them to spew their usual lines. That's just great.

Re:global cooling

[bunratty]

There's a natural carbon cycle that gets plants their food. No one is suggesting interfering with that cycle. I'm discussing burning fewer fossil fuels so we don't add more carbon into that cycle. Believe me, no plants will die if we stop burning shit. If you think so, how do you think they survived the many millions of years before humans existed?

How can we reduce the amount of fossil fuels we burn without socialists running the planet? I don't think this is a hard question.

Re:global cooling

[Immerman]

Who says they don't understand it perfectly well? It's just not in their own best interests to fix the problem, and it *is* in their best interests to deny it exists. Do you really expect them to be any better than the Tobacco industry?

Re:global cooling

[bunratty]

Then why don't Republicans propose a tax on fossil fuels, and a tax on imports from countries that import fossil fuels? Then there's no need for liberals to take control of the situation. If you have a better way to reduce our usage of fossil fuels without statist central command types running our lives, let's have it!

Re:global cooling

[cheesybagel]

Coal is made up of dead plant matter. So the carbon was available and in the environment at one point. I don't like coal power plants either but not because of CO2. I am more concerned about fly ash, coal mining deaths, carbon monoxide poisoning and things like that. CO2 doesn't even compute. There are alternatives like nuclear. Yes even wind with pumped storage hydro is a partial alternative. However I could care less about the amount of 'fossil fuels' we burn. The end state of the universe if we continue is heat death as entropy increases. The Sun itself will burn out at one point. So talk about 'renewables' is a misnomer. Its a matter of timescales of availability. No resource is infinite since the universe is finite.

Re:global cooling

[DanielRavenNest]

> How can we reduce the amount of fossil fuels we burn without socialists running the planet? I don't think this is a hard question.

That's easy. Make non-fossil energy sources that are cheaper than fossil energy sources. This is already happening, but it will take time for the new sources to displace the old ones (you don't replace a grid's worth of power in a day or a decade).

When I say "it's already happening", I mean the newest utility-scale solar PV plants are coming in considerably cheaper than nuclear, and wind turbines have been competitive for several years. The only reason they are not dominating new installations is Natural Gas is just ridiculously cheap these days.

Re:global cooling

[ScentCone]

If you have a better way to reduce our usage of fossil fuels without statist central command types running our lives, let's have it!

It's called nuclear energy. We have all sorts of options along those lines, but idiot lefty green-types can't stand the idea because it has the word "nuclear" in it.

Re:global cooling

[tlambert]

Who says they don't understand it perfectly well? It's just not in their own best interests to fix the problem, and it *is* in their best interests to deny it exists. Do you really expect them to be any better than the Tobacco industry?

At least t-butyl mercaptan (the smell they add) isn't bieng added to make it more addictive...

Re:global cooling

[bunratty]

Who cares what idiot left green-types think? Mainline liberals, notably the Obama administration, are in favor of nuclear. Perhaps more education about newer types of nuclear plants could help assuage fears of nuclear power. I don't think calling a group of people idiots is going to bring them around to your way of thinking.

Re:global cooling

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck that, I could care less about any control and environmental tax if they weren't needed. I would much rather live a world where I have cheap electricity, cheap toys, and can drive around a big fun car without worrying about impact to the environment. Things would be a lot simpler if my research work was not in a field constant consulted for policy issues and a political quagmire. If I had to chose between a world that didn't have externalities for CO2 and let us do more with less responsibility, versus a world where we need to fight over who will take responsibility of externalities, I would take the former in a heart beat. I would also like to live a world where eating a tube of cookie dough doesn't make my stomach upset and cause me to gain weight, but instead I've learned to adapt and be responsible about that in the real world.

Re:global cooling

[bunratty]

Yeah, it's already happening, but it seems to not be happening fast enough to actually reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Perhaps Republicans can propose eliminating subsidies to the fossil fuel industry to help alternative energy sources compete with fossil fuels on cost.

Re:global cooling

[Immerman]

That's what they want you to think, but when's the last time you actually avoided any exposure to gas for a few weeks to test it? All part of the long term plan my man, all part of the plan.

[chuckle]

Re:global cooling

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey!

I'm an idiot lefty green-type, and I LOVE nuclear power.

Re:global cooling

[ScentCone]

I don't think calling a group of people idiots is going to bring them around to your way of thinking.

True. But then, people so irrational that they haven't stopped chanting "No Nukes!" since a 1980's rally starring Jane Fonda aren't going to take a deep breath, read up on the current reality and come to their senses.

Re:global cooling

[ScentCone]

I'm an idiot lefty green-type, and I LOVE nuclear power.

Then there's hope for you. What's the hang-up on getting the rest of your buddies to see the light?

Re:global cooling

[dryeo]

Shit is plant food and people as well as animals excrete it. Once you start on that path, the usual consequences are death, famine and misery.
There was also a lot of denialism about whether shitting in the drinking water and not washing your hands before operating or examining a pregnant woman could cause disease. Many a prominent scientist called the idea unscientific and they sure weren't going to spend time scrubbing.

Re:global cooling

[the eric conspiracy]

Another denialist myth, misquoted.

Al Gore bought some waterfront property. In CA. On a hill. It's very unlikely the sea level will rise some 80' during his lifetime considering the expected rate is less than 1" per year.

Re:global cooling

[ChrisMaple]

If you want to see a genuine tragedy for humanity, it's global cooling, regardless of the cause. A full-blown ice age means death on a scale worse than all the nuclear weapons in existence. Look for widespread starvation as agriculture becomes impossible north of Atlanta.

Regardless, you keep on believing things like "permanent climate changes" that don't depend on the sun aging. You'll fit right in with the billions of other fools that make up our species.

Re:global cooling

[ChrisMaple]

Republicans don't propose a tax on fossil fuels because unlike Democrats, Republicans wish to minimize slavery in the form of taxation.

You are proposing what moderates have been proposing for decades, and that always fails: to give up principles in order to deprive the opposition of an issue. What happens is that the opposition then takes a more extreme stand, policy changes and fails because it denies reality, and the opposition claims change failed because it wasn't big enough and it was opposed by the opposition.

I'm 64. During my life I've seen the Democrats go from being a party mostly of lying thieves to almost entirely lying thieves. Suggesting that the Republicans try to get out in front of Democrats is a really poor idea.

Re:global cooling

[ChrisMaple]

"independent climatologist" is an oxymoron. There isn't a one that doesn't work for an organization with a political bias.

Re:global cooling

[Gavagai80]

Oh the irony of not being able to read the entire summary, to understand that Europe is not the world.

Re:global cooling

[riverat1]

What would happen if there was a new period like the Maunder Minimum has been looked at by scientists. What they found is that it would reduce warming by 0.1 to 0.3 degrees Celsius. That would slow global warming by a decade or two but it wouldn't stop it and when the new minimum ended temperatures would rise back to where they would have been without it anyway.

Re:global cooling

[serviscope_minor]

So talk about 'renewables' is a misnomer. Its a matter of timescales of availability. No resource is infinite since the universe is finite.

The mental hoops you're prepared to jump through to convince yourself that there's nothing wrong are quire remarkable.

Anyway: renewable isn't a misnomer. With coal, once it's dug up it's all gone. The time until it's all gone depeneds only on how much you take. With solar, the same is available whatever you do. that's what is meant by renewable: not that it's infinite.

You really do seem to be the King of Straw. You seem to enjoy creating an army of straw men to slaughter.

Re:global cooling

[ganjadude]

not the same poster, but its not that im scared of "insert group here" getting power. Im scared that whatever group in charge will spend billions of dollars to "fix" something that either A cant be fixed or B isnt going to cause a big enough dent to fix it cost efficiently. Lets just look at the obamacare website as one example (or IRAQ if you want to try and say im singling out the democrats) We threw 650 MILLION dollars at a website... that doesnt work and is not secure. So what do we do? instead of admitting it was a bad idea, we double down and give another company 90 million more. Now what are the odds that we need to throw even more at it in 2 months when they find out, oh yeah that didnt work. I know MORE MONEY!!!

The issue in my case is not whether or not man is causing warming or not, but if it is actually something that can be taken care of without sending us all back to wood and mud huts

Re:global cooling

[ganjadude]

you mean the same tax breaks that are given to every company? or do you believe we should all be paying 20 bucks a gallon of gas? I already have to spend 70 bucks a week on gas as it is just to get to and from work (and no, dont tell me to move closer or get a more fuel efficient car, if that were an option I would)

Re:global cooling

[ganjadude]

because the cost of gas is already prohibitivly high for many of us here. Yes I know in the rest of the world prices are even higher, but that doesnt mean that we can afford it. If the cost of gas jumped 1$ overnight and never dropped, I know many people who would no longer be able to get to work, keep a roof over their heads and eat properly. And we got greenies wanting us to increase that by more than double the current cost!

Re:global cooling

[Anonymous Coward]

> asked for a solution "without statist central command types running our lives"
> suggests the most centralized, state-regulated form of power generation currently available

Well played...

Re:global cooling

[Immerman]

>That's easy. Make non-fossil energy sources that are cheaper than fossil energy sources.

A wonderful idea. May I suggest we start by phasing out all the subsidies flowing into the fossil fuel industry? No more direct exploration/development subsidies. No more tax breaks. No more free passes on pollution damages, they can buy insurance or risk liquidation. Make the fossil fuel industry play on a level field and I think you'd discover many alternative energy sources are already considerably cheaper.

Re:global cooling

[Immerman]

Hardly - the fossil fuel industry is singled out for considerable subsidies and tax breaks (not to mention wars of convenience), and possibly even more importantly gets virtually a free pass on pollution damages - hell, if someone were to screw up a fracking operation tomorrow and, say, render the entire aquifer system for the greater Denver area completely toxic, the company is granted explicit immunity from any liability. What do you suppose would happen to the price of gas if they had to buy insurance or risk company-wide liquidation in the case of an accident? What do you suppose electricity from coal-fired power plants would be if they weren't allowed to dump toxic ash into massive leach fields endangering everyone downstream?

Yes, gasoline will get expensive, that can't be avoided because we are using it up. Would you really rather put the price hike off onto your kids or grandkids who are already going to be faced with some really ugly environmental fallout of the shit we've been doing for the last 100 years?

Don't want to pay $150-300 a week for gas? I think you'll find that an extra $1000/month in expenses a convincing argument to re-evaluate your situation. Get a scooter or utilitarian motorcycle - they're cheap and typically get at least 2-3x the mileage of a car. Or change jobs and/or move so your commute is less, you'll get the added benefit of a more free time. Of course it's an option - the country is a big place with lots of different situations available, even if they don't always pay quite as well. Don't want to change? That's fine, but you need to acknowledge at least to yourself that it's a matter of preference and convenience holding you where you are, not some diabolical snare.

Well, unless the co-parent of your children steadfastly refuses to acknowledge reality, in which case I really hope you've got some good negotiating skills - reality doesn't back down.

Re:global cooling

[Falconhell]

The great irony is those that deny AGW and push nuclear frequently accuse Climate scientists of lying and being corrupt, but somehow think the nuclear scientist who say its safe are pure as driven snow, its cognitive dissonance at its finest. Hoisted by their own petard, lol!

Re:global cooling

[Immerman]

>Half their fun already ended when they had to switch from "global warming" to "climate change,"

And yet the globe is still warming. You know why the preferred term changed right? Because some people refused to accept that just because the *planet* is warming up, doesn't mean any particular location will, or that changes will be uniform throughout the year. Most of the warming will happen at the poles, and that will destabilize global climate patterns because it's the temperature difference between the poles and equator that drive and shape the major jets streams and ocean currents. Some places will get warmer. Some places will get colder. Some will have both hotter summers and colder winters. And some will become milder year round. Perhaps most damaging though many will find themselves subjected to far less predictable weather from year to year and storms get caught in eddy-currents of slower and more meandering jet streams. We're already seeing some signs of that - storms that just "stop" and dump their whole load over one region instead of passing over, leaving the region downwind suffering droughts.

Re:global cooling

[Immerman]

I agree that fission appears to be high on a short list of options, but I can also understand people's hesitation. I have no doubt we can build safe nuclear plants. I also have no doubt that if the regulatory infrastructure isn't in place greedy and short-sighted businessmen will allow those plants to fall well outside of spec, putting the public at risk after all. Why should protestors believe that new plants will be kept well maintained when we're still allowing so many old ones to be operated despite having developed dangerous flaws?

And why the %$#@! aren't we reprocessing spent fuel? Yes, it's more expensive than mining fresh ore, so what? Fuel only accounts for a few percent of the lifetime operating costs of a nuclear reactor. Place a tax on all fresh ore to cover the difference. Or just flat out require that all purchasers reprocess the waste in a timely fashion. Lots of ways to do it that don't require storing highly radioactive toxic waste for geologic timescales. Lets start addressing the really obvious problems surrounding the existing nuclear infrastructure that will apply equally to new reactors, and *then* we can go nuts building new ones.

Re:global cooling

[cheesybagel]

Coal is dead plant matter that sat on the soil for millions of years or whatever. Like I said it is a matter of timescales. Wait long enough and more coal will form. Dig it all up and its all gone is hence a misnomer. If you don't want to wait you can synthesize coal. Read about charcoal on Wikipedia. It is just not as energy efficient from a human perspective to use since you are actively using energy resources to produce the coal.

Renewable is a misnomer since all these energy supplies rely on nuclear fusion in the Sun. Be it solar, wind, biomass, or whatever. Nuclear fusion converts lighter elements into heavier elements. At one point, when most of the hydrogen has been converted, the Sun will increase its radius and the Earth will be scorched. That's how infinitely renewable your precious resource is.

Everyone knows the sun has ....

[3seas]

absolutely nothing to do with the political hot air and chilling political failures this planet is suffering from.

Re:Everyone knows the sun has ....

[rolfwind]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c

Re:Everyone knows the sun has ....

[3seas]

The smartest person on (uh err... in) the planet...!!!

OB: Global warming

[rueger]

Aha! Weather in some places that's colder or warmer than others! With stuff happening on the Sun.

Obviously Global Warming is a fiction created by neo-Luddite Green party members.

And communists. Yeah. Communists.

Re:OB: Global warming

[bill_mcgonigle]

Weather in some places that's colder or warmer than others!

Truly unprecedented in history.

Regardless of the predictive value of our models, let's raise some taxes.

Re:OB: Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

> Truly unprecedented in history.

But it fits the models! Look! I just refit them so they match what happened so I know I was right all along!

Re:OB: Global warming

[TubeSteak]

Regardless of the predictive value of our models, let's raise some taxes.

You mean the ones that are at historical lows?
Or the other ones which account for businesses externalities and are mostly zero?

Re:OB: Global warming

[cheesybagel]

Taxes are high man. Especially here in Europe. What is low is interest rates.

Re:OB: Global warming

[Ichijo]

Regardless of the predictive value of our models, let's raise some taxes.

Then we would emit less carbon and reduce the public debt at the same time, all for the price of a carbon tax. Who doesn't like two-for-one deals?

Re:OB: Global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

When, in the history of this planet, have increased taxes been used to reduce public debt? An increase in taxes creates a temporary increase in revenue, which fuels an increase in spending which does NOT decrease when revenues fall.

A carbon tax will provide a windfall for some, a massive burden on others, and an increase of bureaucracy for everyone.

Re:OB: Global warming

[the eric conspiracy]

Taxes are relatively low in the US right now.

http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxfacts/displayafact.cfm?Docid=205

Re:OB: Global warming

[ChrisMaple]

Taxes in the US are very high compared to any time over 200 years ago, going back millennia.

Re:OB: Global warming

[Ichijo]

Carter and Clinton both reduced the public debt.

If, for some reason, you think that those you've personally chosen to lead the country won't do as you've requested by using your tax money to reduce the public debt, then you might favor a revenue-neutral carbon tax. If the tax is $1 per gallon of gas, and if the average person uses 500 gallons per year, then the everyone would receive a $500 check from the government every year, no matter how much gas they've used. Again, it would encourage people to emit less carbon while creating no hardship for the average person, so it would reduce carbon emissions without costing the average person anything, Who doesn't like a deal that benefits everybody while costing nobody anything?

Re:OB: Global warming

[dkf]

Taxes in the US are very high compared to any time over 200 years ago, going back millennia.

Only on the little people.

Re:OB: Global warming

[riverat1]

Up until about World War I the major source of revenue for the US Government was import tariffs. Perhaps we should go back to that model. It would certainly bring manufacturing and jobs back to the country.

For the investment minded

[xtal]

Good chance to make some money on rising energy costs. ...cause nobody wants to build nuclear plants, but nobody likes being cold, either.

Re:For the investment minded

[cheesybagel]

Like the guy used to say, just use another sweater. Good luck doing that at -20 C though.

Re:For the investment minded

[amiga3D]

Just burn more carbon based fuels. That will warm you right up.

Didn't expect it would take long

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we just save everyone a lot of keyboard smashing a skip the tired debate this time?

-Yes, this is egg on the face of Human Induced Climate Change(HICC).
-No, this is not going to convince the people banning incandescent light bulbs that there is contention surrounding the "prevailing science".
-No, I don't need a refresher on the difference between "climate" & "weather".

For all the time and energy people spend trying to prove or disprove an un-disprovable hypothetis(that humans are causing the problem) we could make a lot of headway towards minimizing the impact of the solar cycle on our weather/climate by reducing CO2 emmisions.

Just a thought... On the other hand, I'm sure there are plenty of people left who haven't heard the same talking points a million times before.

It just occurred to me that if the scientists wait

[3seas]

till after the fact, they might just be right.....

We could ...

[PPH]

... offset these cold snaps by generating additional greenhouse gasses and injecting them into the atmosphere.

I, for one, am willing to do my part.

Re:We could ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm helping too - I ate beans for lunch

Re:We could ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been doing my part for years.
I leave the heating on fully 24/7 during the winter.
I leave the lights on (all led of course, because they last longer) all the time.
Sometimes I turn on the oven and leave it open if I want to get my apartment really hot.

China will save us!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, pump more toxic C02 in the air, warm this bitch up!

Told you so.

[Heraklit]

Winter *is* coming.

Re:Told you so.

[angel'o'sphere]

Summer *is* already happening: on the sothern hemisphere.

Re:Told you so.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the real war, not these conflicts around the world. Everybody will be needed.

Northern Hemisphere bias

[ChunderDownunder]

It's been bloody hot this week downunder. perhaps the sun just flew south.

Re:Northern Hemisphere bias

[Pinky's Brain]

Europe hasn't seen any real winter yet either, just lots and lots of storms ... birds think it's spring already.

Re:Northern Hemisphere bias

[Anonymous Coward]

We've been having a real winter for about a week or so here in Finland.

Re:Northern Hemisphere bias

[Vinegar Joe]

Europe hasn't seen any real winter yet either, just lots and lots of storms ... birds think it's spring already.

European swallows think it's Spring? What is the opinion of African swallows?

Re:Northern Hemisphere bias

[cheesybagel]

You don't have a clue man. There are places in Europe where frost is showing up when it usually doesn't all year. This week has been horrible.

Re:Northern Hemisphere bias

[tlambert]

It's been bloody hot this week downunder. perhaps the sun just flew south.

Quit standing under the ozone hole.

Re:Northern Hemisphere bias

[nojayuk]

Britain is half-way through a mild winter, the fourth-mildest on record. We had a series of wet and windy storms blow in from the Atlantic in December, lots of rain and flooding but temperatures have remained above freezing even in central Scotland which is at about the same latitude as Baffin Bay for comparison. No frosts here which is very unusual, we normally get periods of below-freezing temperatures starting in early November. Where are these places in Europe getting unseasonal frosts?

Re:Northern Hemisphere bias

[bigmadwolf]

And the hot weather down under was caused by a high pressure system in the Tasman sea deflecting south the usual run of cold fronts passing over South Eastern Australia. I wonder if that blocking high pressure system was kept there by a meandering jet stream as mentioned in the article?

Re:Northern Hemisphere bias

[Anonymous Coward]

Bloody southern jessies up north the real cold weather dosnt start until n now anyways.

Turning down the lights

[Anonymous Coward]

Reduces thermal flux.

You can't turn down the Sun without dropping the average temperature on Earth.

Re:Here comes the rightwing deniers

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew it all along that Wired and the BBC were right-wing propaganda outfits full of climate-deniers....

How dare you post this AGW denialist propaganda?

[Anonymous Coward]

We all have a concensus on the fact that the single largest source of heat (energy, enerally) in our solar system - a nuclear furnace many times larger than all the planets combined - makes no significant contribution to Earth's temperature. The big contributors are the teensy tiny cars that a fraction of the puny humans drive about; the U.N. has said so, so it MUST be true. Pay no attention to that big unshielded reactor in thes sky or to wildfires or volcanoes etc.... we must ban coal! Our great grandkids will thank us for not letting it be 0.1 degrees warmer a century from now.

Maunder Minimum

[Taco Cowboy]

Just a link to add for the " Mauder Minimum " that was mentioned in TFA -

http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/SunspotCycle.shtml

Hope this helps !

Re:Maunder Minimum

[Taco Cowboy]

The Maunder Minimum is the degree of deviation from the white line allowed before the trooper cites you for being drunk.

I understand you are trying to make light of the subject at hand, but anyway, please refer to the below graph for the real Maunder Minimum as refer to the extraordinarily quietness of the Sun, as had happened back in the 17th century -

http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/ssn_yearly.jpg

Re:Maunder Minimum

[fyngyrz]

Thanks, c/Taco. I know what it is. I was just possessed of an urge to start typing when I shouldn't have.

I'm a big fan of solar weather, and to the extent we can suss it out, solar history. Also, ham radio operator, and the state of the sun is the first thing I check in the morning.

Re:Maunder Minimum

[Anonymous Coward]

Peter Hadfield (aka: potholer54) has the most informative debunking of BS on both sides of of the issue. His series of YouTube videos should be required viewing for policy makers and "armchair experts" alike.

Re:Maunder Minimum

[Reziac]

As a vaguely related aside, I don't need to check the data to know the sunspot cycle ... there's a cyclic fungus that affects some animals with black or red coats (makes white hairs or spots) which is active during years with high sunspot activity. It should have been active again a couple years ago, but far as I've seen, it wasn't.

And here I thought...

[Em Adespoton]

... that the Solarian civil war had finally ended and the sun was at peace once more.

Before this turns into a derpfest...

[Orp]

The NCAR link is probably the best for relating this to climate change:

So could a lengthy drop in solar output be enough to counteract human-caused climate change? Recent studies at NCAR and elsewhere have estimated that the total global cooling effect to be expected from reduced TSI during a grand minimum such as Maunder might be in the range of 0.1 to 0.3 Celsius (0.18 to 0.54 Fahrenheit). A 2013 study confirms the findings. This compares to an expected warming effect of 3.0C (5.4F) or more by 2100 due to greenhouse gas emissions. In other words, even a grand solar minimum might only be enough to offset one decade of global warming. Moreover, since greenhouse gases linger in the atmosphere, the impacts of those added gases would continue after the end of any grand minimum.

So perhaps a serious lull in solar activity could put some feeble brakes on global warming, slowing it down... temporarily, only to charge back when the sun gets over its issues.

I'm a meteorologist, not a climate guy, but I find the hypothesis that the current solar lull is responsible for the recent cold snaps in the northern hemisphere to be extremely dubious. Much more tenuous than the hypothesis that the meandering jet stream is happening due to the reduction in the north/south temperature gradient due from a reduction of Arctic ice cover, which itself is physically feasible but still not shown very conclusively.

The best way to get a grip on these issues would be to run many, many ensembles of weather models and coaxing out statistical links. And this is where weather/climate modeling is going, for good reasons... but as all the armchair slashdot climatologists will (perhaps rightly) point out, models have issues... but they are getting much better and ensembles help a lot to provide a handle on the probability that forcing A is causing response B.

Re:Before this turns into a derpfest...

[Torodung]

Thank you for the sane, intelligible reply, and I hope you get modded up.

Re:Before this turns into a derpfest...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi meterologist,

Think about meandering jet streams and polar outbreaks over land being intensified by warmer oceans, the land vs ocean affect, and more air entering the vertical circulation cells due to heating. Thus the land vs water affect focuses the outbursts which are stronger because of the increased vertical movement of air in the global circuilations.

Re:Before this turns into a derpfest...

[Anonymous Coward]

climate changes are ciclical like everything in the nature... we'll see a paulatine reduction in global temperatures because we are going to the new ice age... if we look to the timeframe between ice ages we'll see we are in the warming peak between ice ages, and from here we'll have colder and colder years

Re:Before this turns into a derpfest...

[cheesybagel]

His comment sounds like utter bullshit though. You can put all the CO2 in an atmosphere you want. If you don't have solar flux the heat on the surface will be minimal. One good example is Mars. There have been plenty of examples along history of temperatures decreasing by more than .1 or .3 Celsius even when there were no humans on the planet.

Re:Before this turns into a derpfest...

[Orp]

His comment sounds like utter bullshit though. You can put all the CO2 in an atmosphere you want. If you don't have solar flux the heat on the surface will be minimal. One good example is Mars. There have been plenty of examples along history of temperatures decreasing by more than .1 or .3 Celsius even when there were no humans on the planet.

Ok Dr. Bagel. You win. I'll go burn my diploma, tell my colleagues at NCAR to eat a bag of dicks, and await your clearly superior intellect to publish that which is something other than 'utter bullshit'.

Since you are clearly an expert on the subject of the sound of bullshit, please, o wise one: Exactly what does utter bullshit sound like? As opposed to just plain bullshit? Do the flies buzz louder?

Re:Before this turns into a derpfest...

[cheesybagel]

Jesus I have better things to do than publish in that rats nest that is climatology. I have enough issues publishing in my current field. I see enough group think as it is. If you try to go one inch outside the group think you will constantly get challenged that your results are crap or invalid even if you provide a way to reproduce the experimental results. Meanwhile I see glaring errors in their own publications all the time like superlinear speedups and the ilk. Not physics related as you probably realized by now. I had physics in college but I have other things to do with my life. What I do find ridiculous is his assertion that regardless of how bad it gets it will never be worse than some previously established solar minimum activity recorded by some guy living in the XIXth century. THAT is ridiculous. No the worse that could happen is the Sun just stopping to emit any light at all or something totally blocking its output. THAT is the worst case scenario.

Re:Before this turns into a derpfest...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have better things to do than publish in that rats nest that is climatology. I have enough issues publishing in my current field.

So, in other words, you are not a climate scientist, right?

If you want to cut through the BS on both sides of this "debate" check out Peter Hadfield's excellent YouTube series. It is both entertaining and very informative.

Enjoy.

Re:Before this turns into a derpfest...

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt that you'll publish anything with your rambling, run-on sentences, atrocious grammar, and spelling mistakes.

Re:Before this turns into a derpfest...

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you check out the correlation between sunspots and hurricanes/tornadoes? You should really, REALLY look into them as you might change your attitude about the cold snaps being caused by the lull. I'm not saying it is causing it but there is enough of a correlation that it would be stupid to ignore.

For wet weather and floods in UK...

[Anonymous Coward]

there is a much better explanation by a British politician on the BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-25793358

'nugh said.

Re:For wet weather and floods in UK...

[cheesybagel]

See? God himself wills it so. Makes as much sense as some of the crackpot theories i've heard.

Re:Here comes the rightwing deniers

[Anonymous Coward]

Great. It's become "immoral" to publish scientific facts, because the masses are too stupid to interpret them properly. You, sir, are the definition of what's wrong with an elitist, highly specialized social grouping, and the trap of a parochial desire to protect the laypeople from themselves.

You are actually protecting no one. Categorizing any science as needing suppression is an act of the dark ages.

And you probably don't have the specialized skills either, as no climatologist worth his salt would willingly ignore or suppress these findings. After all, it is actually climatology. An actual climatologist would just be happy to see climate issues described correctly on the front page.

Maunder Minimum

[fyngyrz]

The Maunder Minimum is the degree of deviation from the white line allowed before the trooper cites you for being drunk. Even without exceeding the Maunder Minimum, poor performance here combined with "blowing an .08", a (very low) standard for fellatio (the theory being that you'd have to be *really* drunk to perform that poorly*), can combine to annoy the trooper into issuing a ticket. Tomorrow, we're going to re-discover "Boyle's Laws of Gasses", which dictates performance of glassware with insufficient bong fluid. Now put away your books; time for a pop quiz: Coke, or Pepsi?

* Scale normalized 0.0~~1.0 as per International Standards Req. 4:20, para 69, lines for two.

The solar minimum versus carbon emissions

[oculusprime]

The original post is about changes in solar emissions, which certainly could have (and has had) an effect on climate. So why is this conversation degenerating into the "controversy" over whether burning fossil fuels could be altering the earth's climate. Look, Carbon Dioxide IS a greenhouse gas. No scientist disputes that if we just keep shoving the stuff in the atmosphere forever, eventually things will warm up. The only question is whether or not we are putting enough up there right now to have this effect. So lets do some simple math: 1 gallon of gasoline requires about 100 tons of biomass. 1 barrel of oil makes 20 gallons of gasoline. The world uses 85,000,000 barrels of oil per day. Doing the simple math, we use the equivalent of 170,000,000,000 tons of biomass per day. The earth's current biomass is estimated at 560,000,000,000 tons. So we burn the equivalent of 1/3 of all the earth's current biomass every single day. I find this pretty compelling. Changes in solar emissions may cover this up or even counteract it for a while, but eventually, if we keep shooting carbon into the atmosphere year after year, we won't be able to count on a solar minimum to compensate for it...

Re:The solar minimum versus carbon emissions

[bussdriver]

Don't forget Global Dimming which everybody would know about from the "skeptics" and the fossil industry except that Global Dimming was found to fit in with Global Warming and undermine their propaganda strategy. You might hear more about it from the Atmosphere Engineering people who will cite it as proof we can change the climate... but instead of unhealthy pollution we are dimming the earth with today we'd use more healthy pollution. There is no doubt we'd be much hotter today if it were not for Global Dimming. Me, I think we'll eventually be sold on some "safe" form of pollution for a bunch of cash to mitigate the problem (more money to be made on all sides with that kind of solution. safety be dammed.)

The impact of pollution dimming seems to be larger than that of this change in the Sun; which sounds to me like it is just triggering some weather changes not changing the overall temperature. Wouldn't it have to be rather massive to impact us greatly?

That is to say, we are closer to the sun in the winter and we have winter simply because we have more darkness due to our rotation at an angle -- to compare with those wouldn't the sun need really drastic event way beyond anything observed? Think about it: during winter we are completely blocked from the sun for more of the day - to do something similar the sun would have to turn down by 30%?

Re:The solar minimum versus carbon emissions

[Anonymous Coward]

Think about it: during winter we are completely blocked from the sun for more of the day - to do something similar the sun would have to turn down by 30%?

When it's winter here, it's summer on the opposite hemisphere of the globe --- and thermal currents do travel around the globe. You don't need to cut the whole planet's solar input by 30% (which would freeze everything solid); much smaller (long-term average) changes to the net balance have big effects.

Re:The solar minimum versus carbon emissions

[phantomfive]

So lets do some simple math: 1 gallon of gasoline requires about 100 tons of biomass. 1 barrel of oil makes 20 gallons of gasoline. The world uses 85,000,000 barrels of oil per day. Doing the simple math, we use the equivalent of 170,000,000,000 tons of biomass per day. The earth's current biomass is estimated at 560,000,000,000 tons. So we burn the equivalent of 1/3 of all the earth's current biomass every single day. I find this pretty compelling.

Wait, you find it compelling because it's a big number, or what? What's missing from your argument is: how much CO2 is enough to warm things up?

The Cold Outflow Was not due to less sun

[Anonymous Coward]

The cold was an arctic outflow. It was cold here because of the jetstream structure, it was a greatly expanded polar cell.

Facts
a) in winter water is warmer than land
b) from (A) arctic outflows happen over land not water
c) forcing affect of (b) is stronger the warmer the water is
d) cold air does not even come from up north, cold air comes from high in the atmosphere where it radiates to space
e) hot air rises
f) cold air falls
g) even though (d) said cold air does not come from up north, that is where most of the cold air descends from on high, so cold air does come from up north
h) (g) is well known. Look up Polar Cell, MidLatitudeCell, Hadley Cell. or google global air circulation
i) I have not said anything about global warming yet

The article referred to is obvious counter global warming "the sun is cooling" crap.
j) I have now referred to global warming
k) 70% of the earths surface is water. if all the land cools by 5deg and all the water surface warms by 3deg the whole earth has warmed by 0.6deg. Math says you have look at the whole planet not just the land.
l) In addition to (k) land warms/cools only about 6 feet, water warms/cools the full depth of the water eventually as water circulates.
m) it takes a lot more energy to warm water compared to air
n) I have not referred to global warming since (j)

Thanks for reading

real but

[frovingslosh]

No, it is real, but it might not be enough to save humanity from the next coming ice age. Some of us have been warming things up to try to prevent that disaster, but environmentalist wackos are fighting us.

Re:real but

[riverat1]

According to scientists we've already prevented the next glacial cycle from occurring. Back in the mid 20th century when they were trying to figure out how glacial periods happened they couldn't make the math work until they discovered from the ice cores that CO2 was substantially lower during them than during the interglacial periods. A CO2 level of 400 ppm is enough to prevent the next ice age from occurring.

Re:real but

[Anonymous Coward]

not to be a pedant but we are in an ice ace at the current time.

Re:real but

[riverat1]

Not to be a pedant but I think you meant ice age. I know that but outside of scientific circles the term ice age is commonly used for a glaciation.

Global Warming is so powerful

[Anonymous Coward]

It's Affecting the sun!

Solar Powered Car

[swinefc]

The solar powered car I drive to save the planet from global warming has sucked all the energy from the sun? Oh the irony!

strange summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps this is the summary author's intent but I'm left with the impression that while we can't predict the weather we have a nifty explanation for whatever weather occurs. Doesn't leave me with much respect for the science involved.

What's next?

[jennatalia]

We have Global Warming and now Solar Cooling? What's next Lunar Melting?

hard to understand

[Anonymous Coward]

but were it not for us and our planet, our solarsywtem would be pretty dead. and by dead I mean like b0ring.
now for a quick context switch: many crystal radios can sap the power of a multi kw radio transmitter.
now switch back: from a bankers point of view, managing the solar output of a sun in a dead solar system requires him to make a few calculations and then retire until the supernova. but for our radio transmitter...errr...sun, the banker can never retire. our living earth functions like a crystal radio.
I cannot tell you how the weather with pressure and temperature affects the permeability of the magnetic fiele but it is pretty much a fact that earth magnetic field is interlocked with the magnetic field of the sun.
so there you go. you can make the sun shine more or less.

Re:hard to understand

[viperidaenz]

You're a fucking idiot.

Re:hard to understand

[germansausage]

You forgot the part about the 4 day time cube.

climate change scepticism = denial

[matbury]

Just FUD:

Let's face it, how can anyone reasonably claim to be sceptical about man made climate change? The evidence is there for all to see and the energy companies have done their best, with their unlimited resources, to pick it apart. Looks like a pretty strong hypothesis to me. If anything, they're probably being way too conservative about their predictions.

BTW, Prof. Mike Lockwood has explicitly stated that he things man made CO2 emissions are the main driver of climate change. In one statement, he says that solar activity is linked with variability (and it's not even conclusive because apparently sometimes they seem to go in opposite directions), not overall climate change, which is a big difference.

Re:climate change scepticism = denial

[bunratty]

Because certain people think that socialists and liberals are using climate change to force their ideals on people against their will. They make any excuse they can to say that it's not warming, or the warming isn't due to mankind, or that it's nothing to be worried about, because they're afraid their lifestyle will need to change. It's denialism.

Re:climate change scepticism = denial

[matbury]

Re: "Because certain people think that socialists and liberals are using climate change to force their ideals on people against their will." -- Wow, that's a loaded statement! Do you mean ALL socialists and liberals? How would you define them? Who would fall into this category and how many people do you suppose that is? And how do they propose to " force their ideals on people against their will" and how does this differ from any other politically oriented group?

Awaiting your informed response.

Global...

[Anonymous Coward]

First they cried GLOBAL WARMING... then when that didn't work and nature got COLDER... they now cry GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE... well newsflash. climate is not static.

It never was about science warmer boy

[Anonymous Coward]

I like how you call the people who don't agree with you 'deniers', like the people who 'deny' the Holocaust happened. What pap.

 
The apocalyptic global warming sales pitch of the left was never rooted in science, it was cherry picked 'ignore the decline' cover your ass raise taxes and get the government grant bull manure from the get go.

 
You're about as insightful as any bully who has turned around just in time to catch a left hook.

~ approachingZero

Re:It never was about science warmer boy

[riverat1]

I like how you call the people who don't agree with you 'deniers', like the people who 'deny' the Holocaust happened. What pap.

Climate science deniers have tried to hijack the meaning of the word denier to make it sound like we're comparing them to Holocaust deniers. But the word has a long venerable history. After all it was Mark Twain who quipped "Denial ain't just a river in Egypt." long before the Holocaust.

The truth

[Anonymous Coward]

The truth you can deny does not make it any less the truth. Many deniers with there last dying breath may yet deny as the change sucks the last bit of life from their tarry breasts, but the truth changes not a whit.

A White Knight Rides In

[Anonymous Coward]

Keith Trenberth of NCAR will save us.

India has identified Trenberth as the greatest human being alive and greatest to who will ever live. India is sequestering all females for immediate impregnation by Trenberth when he is captured and rendered to India. All India females will be required by State law to carry the sperm to Trenberth to berth and beyond.

Trenberth the greatest Scientist.

Trenberth the greatest Human.

Trenberth the GOD to Save Humanity from Human Global Warming!

President Obama in the White House Situation Room was overheard so say, "I wan to be impregnated by the greatest genus to ever live, Trenberth! Call the Secret Service and Walter Reed Army Hospital at once. I want Trenberth's baby!"

Obama is a just a Kenyan-Caucasian born in Hawaiian '70s 'stoner' after all. So just ignore his drug-induced babbling!

Great - Another summery of an article that makes r

[Anonymous Coward]

Your crazy weather is from the Arctic collapsing. Good luck.

Hot Air Producers

[Anonymousekiteer]

this lull in Solar activity can be replaced with the Anti- Environmental Hot Air of GOP and everything will be back to Normal

Khabibullo Abdusamatov

[Anonymous Coward]

Would be nice to hear Khabibullo Abdusamatov's comment on this.Liked his Bicentennial decrease of the solar constant leads to the Earth’s unbalanced heat budget and deep climate cooling.

It's our fault

[Anonymous Coward]

It's our fault - if we hadn't been stealing solar power by converting it to electricity, the sun would be warmer.

on slashdot its always funny to see

[Anonymous Coward]

this story has 2x the comments of the next one because it is climate related. even among the nerdy users of /. its controversial even though something like 97% of climate scientists working in the field do not have any doubt. just shows that political idead even among welll read people influence stupid ideas :)

Re:on slashdot its always funny to see

[viperidaenz]

This story has half the number of comments than the one about code after it, despite it being slightly older.

Just shows you don't know how to look at data.

Re:on slashdot its always funny to see

[Fantastic Lad]

This story has half the number of comments than the one about code after it, despite it being slightly older.

Just shows you don't know how to look at data.

Sweet Jesus, it's true.

And he even brought up that 97% turkey.

AGW True Believers are the quintessential "Correlation != Causation" offenders.

Re:on slashdot its always funny to see

[ganjadude]

just like climate scientists!

My vote goes to...

[viperidaenz]

The sun saw we were having global warming issues so it decided to turn down the heat.

Thanks Sun!

Re:

[thexfile]

Sun of a bitch.

Milder

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in northern Europe, and the winters here have just been getting milder and milder the last 10 years. So yeah, whatever.

quiter than expected but not quiet

[umafuckit]

I don't get this summary (or TFA, for that matter). They're saying the sun is too quiet and this could explain the recent cold spell. The sun may have fewer sunspots than expected for this time in the cycle, but it still has more spots than it did during the last minimum: http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/Zurich_Color_Small.jpg Certainly we're nowhere near something that looks like the Maunder Minimum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum).

Re:quiter than expected but not quiet

[TheRealHocusLocus]

The sun may have fewer sunspots than expected for this time in the cycle, but it still has more spots than it did during the last minimum.

Going by a straight count of visible spots has served us pretty well since people started spotting spots. But while lots 'o spots have been spotted the magnetic flux and general energy release has been spotty. For another metric look at this comparison of spot-count to magnetic field data. Also see this solar slump article by Anthony Watts, and look for "pores" in the comments. The criteria for identifying spots is changing in ways that might overstate the count as compared with previous observational methods. Adjustment is inevitable -- we are using a sunspot count in historical record spanning the era of the naked eye right through improved optics to the whole-spectrum imaging of today.

Re:quiter than expected but not quiet

[TheRealHocusLocus]

Also see this solar slump article by Anthony Watts

OOPS, I meant THIS solar slump article, not this solar slump article on Slashdot. Apologies to all who are trapped in a recursive loop.

Re:Here comes the rightwing deniers

[ganjadude]

you seem to act as if when we have a "record high" that sharpton and others use that isolated incident to to feed those who use their gut instincts on how silly those conservative tea party geeks who and ignore what they have to say....

Cloud & Cosmic Ray connection

[TheRealHocusLocus]

I would like to point out a theory where a solar lull also results in lower global temperatures -- in a way that may be complementary with the UV-centric approach taken in TA... Svensmark's theories on cosmic rays and their effect on cloud formation. See this documentary Svensmark: The Cloud Mystery. Radiation-seeded cloud formation was first observed by Charles Thomson Rees Wilson in 1896. In BBC: Connections, Death In The Morning (index to 38:15) James Burke describes the events that led to WIlson's great invention, the cloud chamber. I highly recommend the entire Connections series, especially the original first season which begins with "The Trigger Effect".

On clouds... another Good Watch is the BBC documentary on the phenomenon of Global Dimming, especially its opening minutes where David Travis of the University of Wisconsin measured a 1 degree C change in temperature ranges in the days following 9/11, when all aircraft in the US were grounded. This (shocking!) correlation, that could only be ascribed to a particular human activity -- a lack of contrail cloud seeding -- reminds us that our contribution to climate might far exceed pure-chemical CO2 causation.

On clouds... while researching contrails years ago I had a true what-the-fuck moment to see that NASA had also noticed significant human triggered cirrus cloud formation but managed to leverage the presence of cirrus (Minnis et. al) into a net warming effect. This has led to extraordinary ideas like enlarging ice crystal size in cirrus by seeding to 'reduce' this 'warming' effect. I am old school and any claim that increased clouds (of any kind) are net-warming and not net-cooling is an extraordinary claim and should be confirmed by an extraordinary level of proof, not just computer energy-budget models of incoming versus outgoing long-wave radiation. And I'm glad to see that the cirrus net effect is not yet decided by everyone.

On survival during the coming solar minimum... those jolly old River Thames Frost Fairs look like a a real tonne of funne, but faced with the likelihood of global cooling it behooves us to fast-track the development of Thorium based energy. Because MSR/Thorium is the answer for both Global Warming and Global Cooling. I am generally behooved these days.

Also... the timely development of molten salt reactors and supplying the globe with cheaper grid-energy would improve the human race. It would help to offset the effect of driving on women's pelvises by relief from washing clothes by hand.

___
Obligatory bump to the Thorium Alliance and my own letters on energy,
To The Honorable James M. Inhofe, United States Senate
To whom it may concern, Halliburton Corporate

High winds could cause monkeys to fly out of my...

[Anonymous Coward]

... ass.

Funny word, "could."

I hope there is a new Maunder Minimum

[riverat1]

Because if there is when global warming just slows down a bit instead of reversing the contrarian side will have to give up on their "It's the Sun" arguments. All you guys who get so worried about the coming glaciation (ice age) need to calm down. The science shows pretty conclusively that it ain't happening at 400 ppm of CO2.

The sun doesn't affect climate at all ..so say the

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh no the sun can affect climate change.....
how stupid do these purveyors of woo pseudo science think we are?
The sun is the single biggest most powerful object in our solar system ...
when it changes it's output our weather changes.....

Global Whatevering

[govett]

This, too, is caused by Global Whatevering.

no justice, just us..

[Anonymous Coward]

a biomass of seven billion people may possess (or seem to possess) a formidable inertia.

The important thing to recognise is that change and cool ideas come from individuals, dude. Think about it.

As for sun or carbon emissions? What, just set up two sides and let them battle it out while existential landlords sit in boardrooms laughing into their sleeves? Sounds to dualistic. Dualism always smacks of close minded blinkered thinking. But I don't currently have anything intelligent to add to the debate, except an appreciation for every human. We are golden. And we've got to get back to the garden. Whatever that means.

as regards lightbulbs ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"ignore what else they have to say about light bulbs " ... ummm i have this to say about energy efficient lightbulbs: I hate the light they produce (except some LED's).

Many of these eco lights flash on and off very quickly to save power, like a fluro. it sucks. Does my head in and I cannot work under or near them. Other people are able to, but i suspect many people feel similar symptoms to what i feel under these types of lights. Also, the light emitted is cold, bright, harsh. Awful.

LED's however emit a steady light, and if they could be manufactured so the light is kind and warm, it would be better for everyone. just having a rave, sorry about that.

But really I must admit, I absolutely love the light from regular incandescent bulbs; definitely think and work better under them.

Scientists in general would come up with much better ideas and solutions if they worked under incandescent lights.

doh :p

[Anonymous Coward]

he said part, not fart.

Can't mandate "green" energy

[blindseer]

The problem I have with man made global warming theorists is the methods they use to compensate for it. They do so with making government bigger so that is has greater control on our lives. The government will pay people to buy solar panels and place them on their roof. The subsidies go to those wealthy enough to buy the solar panels. These rich people get more wealthy with the government subsidies.

What about the poor people lacking the means to get any subsidy since they cannot purchase a any green energy. They buy what it cheap, fuel oil and natural gas. The rich get richer, the poor stay poor.

The price of electricity rises as more and more "green" energy sources get added to the utilities. At some point the price of the utility power gets so high that home owner does some math that they don't need the expensive utility power. They can make their electricity from natural gas generators on site. Next to most every grocery store, bank, government building, lumberyard, home owners' back yards, is a backup generator. These sit there in the case of a rare power outage.

What if that power outage arises? All those back up generators fire up. People will start to do the math. This outage from the utility is costing them less than if they bought the "green " energy. People that are off the grid are now paying less for power since they no longer have to pay for the windmills and water dams. Natural gas is just too cheap.

The natural gas power will get cheaper still as people find that the "waste" heat from the generators can be used to heat homes and businesses.

The electric utilities will find it real hard to sell their electricity to people. They just start to move off the grid. So long as the utilities are mandated to buy power from expensive solar and wind the natural gas will always be cheaper and more reliable.

The rich people with their solar panels will have the government subsidized panels on their roof, the best they can buy, competing with the large number of panels the governerment bought last year, older and less efficient.

What is the government going to do now? Tell businesses and homes that they cannot have back up generators? Tell people they must buy the more expensive "green" electricity from the utilities? Well, they'll move their manufacturing and technology to somewhere else. Take it to another country where thy don't have to buy the expensive "green" energy.

We've seen this happen already with light bulbs. We don't make like bulbs in the USA any more. All our lights are made in China. What else is moving to other countries? Aluminum refining? Do we even forge steel here any more?

Jobs, money, everything will move out f the USA. The only things left will be military contractors that cannot legally move their manufacturing out of the USA. For them to operate with the "green" energy they will have to be giving blank checks for how many bald eagles get killed in windmills. They will be getting blank checks for how much pollution they put in the water from the elements that leach out of the solar panels.

We will be left with the very polluted environment we tried to avoid because the laws mandated it. The rewards were for solar and wind, not for the reduction in the dangers to the environment.

We will see another year of increased carbon output, a lowering of global temperatures, and the "climate scientists" will be shocked. They will point to their models and scream up and down on how the WORLD is wrong. The models are right but they didn't collect alll the data, or some ocean current is sucking all the heat into the ocean, or some more nonsense.

The problem is that we do not understand enough about the argument to make these predictions. If they want to show that reducing carbon output will reduce global warming then we need a power source that is cheap, reliable, and produces little carbon. We have it, it is nuclear fission. Build more nuclear power plants and carbon emissions will go down. On

That's what the deniers claim, all right!

[Anonymous Coward]

And carbon ONLY causes higher agricultural output, too!

However, the science says neither of those.

Only deniers insist that there is only one cause, hence

a) proving CO2 is a plant food
b) proving that since temperatures haven't gone up as much as CO2 has, it can't be doing anything to the climate

Where are these AGW alarmists?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are they the ones claiming that doing anything about AGW will cause the ruination of the Western World the alarmists? They are, but I don't think you're thinking of them here, are you?

If your doctor claims that your cough is a lung infection and you should stop smoking or you could die before you retire, are they a "Smoking Alarmist"?

Science such as "CO2 ice at the North Pole!"

[Anonymous Coward]

amirite?

And you're wrong about comments not being censored (I take you are referring to SkS, right? WattBots ALWAYS whine about it). They don't even publish the censored comments, so you need to be quick at the wayback machine to find any censored posts.

However, the moderator there has MANY times claimed "Your posts are never going to be accepted again" and "Talking on this subject will NOT be allowed" and even refusing to allow posts at all.

So where is that claim?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, doesn't exist, except as a strawman on WTFUWT?

" to ask if it might be wrong, is morally akin to denying the holocaust,"

Denial as a pathology predated the Nazis by nearly a hundred years.

Is this denialist bingo we're running here?

"When even the head of the IPCC is on video, telling a bunch of young people that, the denialists are like the people who still believe the earth is flat,"

You are.

"and the same head of IPCC calls some indian scientists who checked a claim about a mountain range's ice melting by 2035 and found it mistaken, and the IPCC guy then responds and calls then "vodoo scientists""

He never did. And note that this was

a) a typo
b) never spotted by you deniers
c) corrected by the scientists who are supporting the consensus
d) wasn't in the WG1, science parts, in the report

"The theory may be right, but if you go round attacking anyone who disagrees"

So we must agree to every half-assed (or even no-assed) ideas because if we disagree or tell them they're nuts when they are, this "proves" us wrong somehow?

Eskimos manage

[Anonymous Coward]

And they don't have sweaters in their homes, their toddlers walk around in the buff.

I guess you merkins are just a punch of pansies.

(PS you do know if you don't like the weather there, you're free to move, right?)

Re:Eskimos manage

[cheesybagel]

That's what Eskimos used to do as well. Nomads. You can live that way. Still it is no good way to have the stable foundation to develop a prosperous society.

Not actually.

[bussdriver]

Mars gets almost half the sunlight as earth. It's more close to 60% so that is a 40% drop from what Earth has. With their weak atmosphere it is COLD on mars and at the poles everything does freeze, even the air. But if Mars had earth's atmosphere it would be significantly warmer than it is now.

Now keep in mind that we lose solar power in the summer when the earth is further away - but it is a negligible amount. What I'd like to know is what % do we lose due to the kilometers variation of the orbit.. Probably sun variations are more but I don't think they are likely going to be significant either; at least for billion years or something.