NOAA: Earth Smashed A Record For Heat In May 2014, Effects To Worsen

Freshly Exhumed (105597) writes with news that NOAA's latest global climate analysis is showing things are getting hotter. From the article: Driven by exceptionally warm ocean waters, Earth smashed a record for heat in May and is likely to keep on breaking high temperature marks, experts say. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Monday said May's average temperature on Earth of 15.54 C beat the old record set four years ago. In April, the globe tied the 2010 record for that month. Records go back to 1880. Experts say there's a good chance global heat records will keep falling, especially next year because an El Nino weather event is brewing on top of man-made global warming. An El Nino is a warming of the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean that alters climate worldwide and usually spikes global temperatures.

Comments

records go back to 1880, very funny

[rubycodez]

taking measurements from inaccurate thermometers and scant coverage from over a century ago, and claiming we know global average temperatures in the 19th century is beyond ludicrous. No amount of massaging of data can make credible comparison to today's grid of sensors.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Ralph Wiggam]

It's weird how those old thermometers were always inaccurate in the negative direction.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Dishevel]

Well if we wanted to we could look at global temp history for a long period of time and have it be really accurate.

Of course looking at that we would find that the Earth is in a fairly moderate area between much cooler global temps and much higher global temps.

The earth has been in the not so distant past very uncomfortable for humans in both directions. The earth some day will get much more tropical again. The earth will again see Ice Ages. These are true statements. Nothing we can do in the next 50 years will give us the technological expertise needed to do much of anything about warming or cooling.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called statistics moron. The thermometers were surprisingly accurate, there were quite a lot of them actually, and by being smart about it, scientist can produced very good estimates of global tems back that far. Yes, the error bars are larger than recent estimates, but therer's nothing controversial or fundamentally difficult about makeing estimates back that far.
 

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[K. S. Kyosuke]

If only we knew which thermometers are located in the heat islands so that we could filter them out...oh, wait!

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Jahoda]

By the 1880s, the English Empire alone was more than capable of providing a fair sampling of global temperatures.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You know, there's this funny theorem that in the absence of systematic errors, averaging measurements from multiple instruments (each of them systematically, but randomly-per-instrument overshooting or undershooting) and measurement times (each instrument having a random error here) keeps the mean centered on its true value while decreasing the measurement error.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Intrepid imaginaut]

I'll take the cold any day. It's easier and usually more fun to warm up than it is to cool off.

Also, snoooowwwwwww!

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Mashiki]

Uh why is mercury thermometers, baromiters, and sphygmomanometer's considered the gold standard then? Not only in medicine but also other areas of science.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Mashiki]

Scant coverage a century ago? Hell, it was scant coverage in the 70's. But that's supposed to be fully accurate too. Never mind that the number of remote monitoring stations has dropped through the floor. Hell my city here in Ontario doesn't even have a monitoring station anymore, everything is "estimated" from nearly 40km away in London, Ontario. At the airport, surrounded by asphalt. We had a monitoring station 15 years ago but it's gone. My sisters town in Alberta? 52km away, in the shadow of a mountain, in a gully, next to a mountain river, surrounded by trees.

Accurate!

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[bobbied]

Or not. Depends on the distribution of the errors. If they truly are random errors that happen to be distributed around the actual value, then yes. But this distribution of errors is not always true.

Also, remember that we are discussing discrete measurements made on unique devices with unknown accuracy/errors which are NOT duplicated, but are for unique locations which we may or may not accurately know, at varying intervals, under conditions which can have huge impact on measurements. You may be able to normalize away some of these variables in some cases, but when you do this for multiple variables, your data set does not improve in accuracy.

Say you had 50 recorded measurements for the same time and place taken by 50 devices/methods you might be able to claim better accuracy than just one, but only if you have a reasonable distribution of measured values. If say 25 of your devices just gave you random numbers (didn't measure anything) your data set will still be corrupted.

But the issue here is NOT accuracy but TRENDS. Given that we are NOT using the same devices for the last 200 years, there will be little you can do with the data in regards to trend information. Through the years we have changed how and where we measure temperatures. This means that the absolute error in each data point will remain because it's about how much things have changed. Problem is, there are things that have changed which have nothing to do with the data. Locations, equipment, and techniques have all changed over the last 200 years, many of these changes are invisible in the data, but can change the trends you see in it.

For instance, Say you measured temperature data in the middle of a grassy field for 200 years. What happens when part of the field gets paved about 70 years ago? Now add in that the area around the field starts to see a lot of buildings and about 50 years ago light aircraft traffic (piston engines). Then in the late 60's that traffic switches over to jet turbines and a lot more of the field gets paved. Now, consider how many data points this might actually be in the USA data set given that a high percentage of "observations" are made at airports these days and tell me how much affect that has on your TREND or how you think you are going to normalize that out of the data?

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[techno-vampire]

Nobody in their right mind is saying that it wasn't cooler 200 years ago; there are enough accounts of both the Thames and Hudson rivers routinely freezing over back then, even if you completely ignore temperature readings. However, thermometers back then were nowhere near as accurate as they are now, and the idea of using those records to get a global temperature that's accurate to .1 degree Celsius from measurements that were, at best, accurate to half a degree is just plain ludicrous.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Or not. Depends on the distribution of the errors. If they truly are random errors that happen to be distributed around the actual value, then yes. But this distribution of errors is not always true. Also, remember that we are discussing discrete measurements made on unique devices with unknown accuracy/errors which are NOT duplicated, but are for unique locations which we may or may not accurately know, at varying intervals, under conditions which can have huge impact on measurements. You may be able to normalize away some of these variables in some cases, but when you do this for multiple variables, your data set does not improve in accuracy.

Every thermometer makes random errors in individual measurements, and every thermometer can have a systematic error, but I'd really like to see a reason why this per-instrument systematic error should be biased in average. Calibrating processes for measurement instruments surely don't work this way.

But the issue here is NOT accuracy but TRENDS. Given that we are NOT using the same devices for the last 200 years, there will be little you can do with the data in regards to trend information.

I don't know about the rest of the world, but I'm pretty sure our local stations keep records of major instrument overhauls which can be taken into consideration. In addition, if we're looking for trends, as you say, the additive systematic error of temperature measurements is automatically cancelled and the importance of the multiplicative systematic error is diminished given that we're looking at small deltas and the measurement error is going to be similarly small, by virtue of being proportional to the delta, so (unless something is eluding me here) the trends shouldn't be obscured by either systematic additive error or systematic multiplicative error of any given measurement instrument.

For instance, Say you measured temperature data in the middle of a grassy field for 200 years. What happens when part of the field gets paved about 70 years ago?

Again, fortunately, we happen to have records of these things so that we can make informed decisions as to which measurements are candidates for exclusion due to human development introducing local environmental biases.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[rubycodez]

wrong, they are not filtered out, instead a correction factor is applied

Re: records go back to 1880, very funny

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is why additional methods are used to verify: tree rings and ice cores, for example.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[K. S. Kyosuke]

In some cases, this correction can be probably be calculated. But even if we come to the conclusion that the correction doesn't actually allow us to filter the bias out of long-term trends, there's no reason not to filter them out completely. Where I live, there's plenty of meteorological/climatological stations out in the boonies that have been in operation for quite some time, something like one station every fifteen miles or so.

Re: records go back to 1880, very funny

[techno-vampire]

True. Do you know how accurate those methods are, and how that was measured? (This isn't an attempt to discredit your point; I'm just curious.)

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[K. S. Kyosuke]

There's a station here that's been continuously recording the daily data meticulously since the 1780s. In the first half of 1800s, there were up to twenty daily measurements there (before the international custom of three measurements per day became established). Of course everything relevant gets recorded and logged. Don't underestimate the power of the Force^H^H^H^H^HOCD.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[msauve]

Shhh. Admitting to chaos isn't deemed "scientific." Likewise, a one month period is climate when it supports your view, and merely weather when it doesn't.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[GoChickenFat]

So, given all that, what has science landed on as the "correct" or "perfect" temperature average for the globe?

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I'm really not sure the whole issue is about temperature rather than heat flux balance. For example, it seems that most new energy absorbed in the climate nowadays goes into the oceans, which may not get immediately reflected in what we perceive as local (or even global) contemporary climate. Better ask your friendly neighborhood qualified climatologist for a more erudite response.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Anonymous Coward]

So you've never heard of Canada, Belize, Bermuda, Guyana, or the Falkland islands? All of these were British possessions in the 1880s, and they cover a nice range of latitudes.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[AthanasiusKircher]

Such equipment records surely don't exist back to 1880.... So, my argument stands.

Just because you think something couldn't possibly be true doesn't mean it isn't.

Thermometer manufacture was precise enough to produce very high quality instruments by the late 1800s. The issue, as GP points out, isn't random errors popping up (thermometers were about as accurate as rulers could be in the late 1800s), but rather whether we know how the instruments were calibrated and how older scales might match up to instruments that were calibrated against modern international standards.

And, at least in the U.S., standard regular calibration standards had been agreed upon by the first couple decades of the 1900s. Good instruments even decades before then should have very little random error -- the question is only whether anyone bothered to check new equipment calibrated to international standards against the old equipment (or sent the old equipment to be tested once such standards were developed).

So, then you have to ask yourself: people who are bothering to meticulously record scientific data continuously for decades on end -- and they're not going to even bother to check whether their old instruments line up properly with new calibration standards?

Sure, I'm positive there are plenty of places that don't have such records. But we have continuous logbooks going back for centuries in many places. The idea that people taking meticulous records wouldn't even bother to check new equipment against old just seems a little ridiculous... not saying it wouldn't happen, but we have plenty of data points where it did happen to extrapolate estimates for error distributions.

You're acting like temperature measurement in the late 1800s was people guessing random numbers or drawing them out of a hat. But that's not what it was like, and there were lots of places with VERY detailed records.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Anonymous Coward]

You must have failed your stats 101 course in college. Let me educate you: any random sampling has limited accuracy. A randomly sampling of real temperatures that is made using low quality thermometers will probably have a very limited accuracy. But as you take more samples, you will either find that the measurements are biased or that they are normally distributed. If they are biased, you should be able to model the bias and apply a correction to achieve a normal distribution. Once you have a normal distribution, you know that an increase in the number of samples allows to say with a greater degree of confidence that the real value is within a certain range of the mean of those samples. So, even if you have shitty thermometers, you may be able to draw useful conclusions from them if you have thousands of measurements. This is the kind of stuff that the big boys talk about when they prepare journal articles for peer review. You know, p 0.05 and all that.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Maxo-Texas]

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFoss...

It's been hotter 4 times in the last 400,000 years.

This particular heat wave looks to be 10,000 to 20,000 years "early".

If it goes up just a little bit more, then we are in record breaking territory.

Every time it's been this warm in the last 400,000 years, the temperature plunged by about 10c (that's almost 20f) within a few thousand years.

We won't know the answer in our lifetimes. The likely result in our lifetimes is 10" higher water. The likely result in the lifetimes of children being born today is 20" higher water.

I can say, I don't enjoy the "tropical" bugs working their way northward into formerly temperate zones.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Fjandr]

Your argument has no factual basis, as you don't have any data to back up a systematic bias in error rates that only goes in one direction. Absent that data, there's no reason to believe there was a biased error rate.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[gweihir]

You are clueless what properly applied statistics and physics can achieve. Or maybe you do not want to know.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Anonymous Coward]

They dredged the Thames to improve shipping. That's why it doesn't freeze anymore. It had nothing to do with global warming.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[techno-vampire]

How does dredging the Thames prevent it from freezing? It doesn't have to freeze all the way down, you know, and probably didn't, even when the ice was thick enough for them to hold ice fairs in the winter.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[itzly]

So, when deniers love to bring up the fact that "the earth has been warmer before" this is also beyond ludicrous ?

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[CaptainLard]

Of course looking at that we would find that the Earth is in a fairly moderate area between much cooler global temps and much higher global temps

So why rock the boat? How bout we use this time of plenty to fuel epic expansion of the human condition instead of burning everything up and causing a shitload of problems.

The earth some day will get much more tropical again. The earth will again see Ice Ages. These are true statements.

We're all gonna die. This is a true statement. Whats the point of a good diet and exercise?

Nothing we can do in the next 50 years will give us the technological expertise needed to do much of anything about warming or cooling.

You're right, we can do it all right now! The solar panels about to go on my house are going to cost me 10 years worth of electricity bills (at the most). Of course, they'll provide all the electricity I need for at least 20 years. Even when you take away the tax credit, its still cheaper than the cheap coal electricity in my region!. The past 50 years produced the once unfathomable gift of giving every moron on the planet a chance to be heard by anyone with 10 seconds to spare. Perhaps the next 50 will produce a technology (education?) to shut all those morons up. Your prediction for technology in 2064 is the opposite of, yet just as valid as Kurzwiel's singularity.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[itzly]

There has been shown a good correlation between temperature anomalies up to 1500 km apart, so 40 km is perfectly fine. But why take my word for it ? The temperature records for all the stations are on-line, so feel free to do your own statistical analysis if you don't believe it.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[riverat1]

taking measurements from inaccurate thermometers and scant coverage from over a century ago, and claiming we know global average temperatures in the 19th century is beyond ludicrous. No amount of massaging of data can make credible comparison to today's grid of sensors.

The coverage was fairly scant at the time but accurate thermometers have been around since at least the 1700's.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[riverat1]

Yes, to bring it back to a concrete example that most can understand in baseball your batting average is composed of measurements that are either a 1 or a 0. Yet they commonly calculate batting averages to 3 decimal places. Even if a thermometer is only accurate to +/- 1 degree it's still reasonable to calculate to several decimal places when you combine thousands of measurements.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[riverat1]

I repeat what I posted just above: http://news.slashdot.org/comme...

Yes, to bring it back to a concrete example that most can understand in baseball your batting average is composed of measurements that are either a 1 or a 0. Yet they commonly calculate batting averages to 3 decimal places. Even if a thermometer is only accurate to +/- 1 degree it's still reasonable to calculate to several decimal places when you combine thousands of measurements.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[riverat1]

Even if the thermometers are biased one way or the other it is still possible to discern how temperatures are changing over time.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Jane Q. Public]

wrong, they are not filtered out, instead a correction factor is applied

Steve S. Goddard has made it his career to track these "corrections" and missing data points for the USHCN (Historical Climatology Network). He has uncovered a lot of "corrections" where there should be none, and inappropriate "filling in" of missing data points. Not to mention that the "missing" data points have been overwhelmingly in areas of colder climate. He has easily 100 examples of deliberate distortion of the data in USHCN, and he has even tracked this progressive re-writing of history over the last couple of decades.

Here is just one of a great many examples.

Steve has also found many historical records that directly contradict what modern "climate scientists" have been saying about the past 200 years. And make no mistake: these are scientific papers, and government's own data he has been collecting.

Not to mention that through May of this year, not only were large parts of the Northern hemisphere experiencing record cold (including the averaged United States temperatures), but the Antarctic sea ice in the Southern hemisphere was also setting records. That is hardly my only source... I have been following the climate reports because my own region was experiencing record weather.

And please don't give me this "weather vs climate" guff, because we are discussing a single month, which is by definition weather.

It hardly seems credible that with all that world record cold virtually everywhere (except for the Pacific El Nino event), that May could have ALSO been a "record warm" month. It just doesn't add up. Just like so many of NOAA's other figures.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[riverat1]

After surfacestations came out with their list scientists decided to check it out. They compared the temperature trends for well sited weather stations to the temperature trends for poorly sited stations. They found that the poorly sited stations actually have a slightly lower temperature trend than the well sited stations.

Is the US Surface Temperature Record Reliable?

NOAA used the site ratings by surfacestations.org to construct two national time series. One was the full data set, using all weather stations. The other used only Class 1 or Class 2 weather stations, classified as good or best.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[mpe]

It's weird how those old thermometers were always inaccurate in the negative direction.

Also that a modern thermometer in close proximity to large (and moving) gas turbine engines is incapable of being inaccurate in a positive direction :)

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Orgasmatron]

The difference, of course, is that 0 and 1 are integers. They have infinite precision. Batting records are not +/- x, they are discrete; the records never indicate that a batter got 0.97 or 0.05 hits during an at bat.

We could adopt the convention of saying that a given batter has hit 60-of-200 or whatever, but it is more useful to normalize that down to .300 batting average so that we can compare him to the guy that has 221-of-743. But in the end, the batting average is really just shorthand for the actual ratio of discrete events.

A temperature measurements is not a discrete event and temperature "averages" are not a simple ratio of them.

The average of 14 +/-1 and 31 +/- 1 is not 22.500, it is the range [21.5-23.5].

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[riverat1]

I imagine that a number of those centuries old thermometers still exist so it's easy to measure their accuracy. Accurate thermometers have existed since at least the 1700's. We may be able to measure with more precision now-a-days but I don't think the accuracy is that much better (I'm talking about repeatable accuracy, even if a thermometer is off by 2 degrees it can still accurately show how temperature is changing over time).

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Barsteward]

Christopher Booker is a shit journalist of the Rob Enderle mold, i.e. take what someone says and don't do ANY investigation to see if its true.. here's an example of booker's shit http://www.theguardian.com/med...

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Truth_Quark]

taking measurements from inaccurate thermometers and scant coverage from over a century ago, and claiming we know global average temperatures in the 19th century is beyond ludicrous.

The coverage was a lot smaller than today's but it was so much cooler then, that the error is less than the change.

No amount of massaging of data can make credible comparison to today's grid of sensors.

Yes it can. It's just that the error bars are larger back then.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[riverat1]

When you combine a bunch of stations to get a global average temperature the law of large numbers applies.

Re: records go back to 1880, very funny

[itzly]

For the last century, you can compare the data to modern temperature records to get an idea of the accuracy. For older data, you can compare the different measurements to each other. Note that in addition to ice cores and tree rings, there are dozens of other temperature proxies.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[itzly]

What happens when part of the field gets paved about 70 years ago?

What you'll see is a step change in the temperature data compared to the temperature data from surrounding stations. Once you identify such as step change, you add a correction.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[TapeCutter]

All well and good, but we're not looking at the absolute temperature, we're looking at the change in temperature. A thermometer is quite likely to give you an inaccurate spot reading but the error will be consistent across all the spot reading from that thermometer. ie: There is much less room for error when looking at the variance over time, which is what we are interested in.

You can demonstrate this quite easily as many others have already done, take the "best" 100 stations listed by the contrarian Anthony watts and compare it to his "worst" 100 stations, the upward temperature trends for both sets are almost identical and match the trend for the entire data set of ~1100 stations, precisely because the absolute reading need not be accurate to get good idea of the variance.

Watts and his followers are actually doing us all a favour by pushing for better climate monitoring, but the data he has does not support his claims, nor has he ever attempted to publish his claims in the peer-reviewed literature.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[dargaud]

I don't know about the rest of the world, but I'm pretty sure our local stations keep records of major instrument overhauls which can be taken into consideration.

I used to work in climate science and we had a saying: "If you give a thermometer to a meteorologist, he knows what temperature it is. If you give him two, he's confused."

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[TapeCutter]

and the idea of using those records to get a global temperature that's accurate to .1 degree Celsius from measurements that were, at best, accurate to half a degree is just plain ludicrous.

The central limit theorem is ridiculous, who knew? Seriously, for what you claim to be true you must demonstrate that the errors of measurement are not normally distributed across the independent samples, pretty sure there's a nobel prize waiting for whoever saves the world by solving that "conundrum".

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[TapeCutter]

Nothing we can do in the next 50 years will give us the technological expertise needed to do much of anything about warming or cooling.

It has been known for a while now that CO2 has been the "thermostat of global climate", for the at least as long a multi-cellular life has been around. In the past CO2 was a natural positive feedback wrt the direction of change, thus amplifying the ice ages changes that are driven by orbital cycles. This effect is still at work today and it's perfectly feasible to control the CO2 concentration to ward of the extremes of these changes. We have been doing this for a while now but in wrong direction, over the next 40yrs we will add half a trillion tons of CO2 into the air, the same amount as what we have put into the air over the last 250yrs, the spike in CO2 due to man is not the highest in the geologic record but it is almost certainly the most rapid change in levels (up 30% in 250yrs and accelerating exponentially ).

It's been clearly shown to all independent observers that we have already significantly altered climate with the first half trillion tons, we can easily observe the North pole melting over the last few decades. So given all that, what makes you think the next half trillion tons won't have an accumulative effect on climate? We could, if we so desired, start scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere today to restore the climate to the equilibrium our agriculture and civilizations have evolved to suit, the technology is there to do whatever the politics wills with CO2 levels over the next 50yrs.

Re: records go back to 1880, very funny

[ed1park]

Can you cite where these records are that will show how grassy fields that have become urbanized with concrete and asphalt affect temperature readings over a 200 year period?

Interesting podcast with Joe Rogan discussing this topic with Randall Carlson. Sounds a lot like winter is coming Game of Thrones style!

http://www.youtube.com/attribu...

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[American Patent Guy]

The number of measurements taken and the level of precision are irrelevant if the reference standard used to set those thermometers is off. If you'd passed your stats 101 course, you'd have been able to figure that one out, Coward. We can do without your "education".

There are records of a guy by the name of Noah surviving a worldwide flood in the Old Testament: just because you've got "records" back for centuries does not make your information reliable.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I guess that must be a reason why meteorologists aren't entrusted with this task today. Still, I'd argue that the historical data we have is better than no data at all, provided that it gets used by people with brains.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Ginger Unicorn]

A cursory googling doesn't paint Steve S. Goddard as someone that has a rigourous approach to statistical analysis.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Eunuchswear]

I don't understand how it is that in all these discussions, no one ever talks about the problems with the monitoring stations.

What are you talking about? Anthony Watts wrote a peer reviewed paper about it:

Fall, Souleymane; Watts, Anthony; Nielsen-Gammon, John; Jones, Evan; Niyogi, Dev; Christy, John R.; Pielke Sr., Roger A. (2011). "Analysis of the impacts of station exposure on the U.S. Historical Climatology Network temperatures and temperature trends". Journal of Geophysical Research 16 (D14). Bibcode:2011JGRD..11614120F. doi:10.1029/2010JD015146.

The opposite-signed differences of maximum and minimum temperature trends are similar in magnitude, so that the overall mean temperature trends are nearly identical across site classifications.

Whoops.

Re: records go back to 1880, very funny

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I'm not really sure I understand your question. Where are the early records that show the effects of urban heat islands? Obviously, it is those records that were kept in large population centers that will show these effects. But given the social and technological realities of the time (no remotely operated automated stations in the middle of nowhere in the 19th century, and given the "practical" interests of the period), by the time these records started being kept in the early industrial era, these areas were already urbanized to a large extent, so I'm not sure how pronounced this effect is in these particular parts of the data set and how it fares compared to the "from grassy fields to Manhattan" kind of development.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[nctritech]

I have not read (nor do I ever intend to read) every single peer-reviewed paper on this subject (it's honestly not a very interesting subject). I also have yet to see this paper come up in any of the AGW post discussions on Slashdot. In any case, thanks for bringing it up.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[rtb61]

It kinda is when it involves the whole globe rather than a particular region (they even showed the colder than average bits). Look at the end of the day, you know you are lying, I know that you are lying, you now know that I know you are lying and all I will do it point you to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?..., hope it works out for yah. In fact all everyone should do when caught up arguing with a climate change denialist is show them that video and walk away laughing.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Pino Grigio]

It's actually worse than that. They "adjust" the past record to make it look cooler and therefore to make current temperatures look even more "unprecedented". NOAA has done this with the US land temperature record with gusto.

Also, you'll get modded down for doubting AGW here on slashdot. It's a wedge issue for Marxists you see.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Pino Grigio]

Yes, there's no question that cannot be truthfully answered with a cursory googling is there Ginger.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[bobbied]

If you know the device is the same one, does not loose it's accuracy or change over time and if the observations are consistently made. I'm not saying you cannot normalize data, I'm saying that there are more variables here than just the observed temperature, more reasons for the observed temperatures may have changed. I'm guessing nobody has attempted to consider all the variables here and when you normalize the data, you are possibly changing the observed results.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[riverat1]

What? You think scientists are so stupid they haven't thought about all these problems long before you came up with them? Not likely. They've been wrestling with the problem for decades.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[riverat1]

When you combine the readings from hundreds of weather stations the law of large numbers comes into effect. My comparison is apt.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Dishevel]

I do not see him as arguing that the Climate does not change. It does. It will. With or without man.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Dishevel]

Solar is all good and everything. It will not stop the earth climate from change when ever it wants to though.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Dishevel]

After you are done with that we can kill off all the pesky humans that constantly exhale CO2.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Dishevel]

I was rather clear about the whole thing. I understand what climate change will bring. I know that the Earths climate has and will change.

Why worry about the cities near the Ocean. We just rebuilt New Orleans! A city that sits below the Ocean and A Huge Lake. A city that will see more hurricanes.

If we as people were planning on making any intelligent decisions we would have started by not rebuilding that city in the same stupid place. Worry about things that you can do something about. Preventing the Earth from changing is not one of them.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[techno-vampire]

A very ingenious response. It's a shame you spent so much time working out the wrong answer. I take it that you've never heard of the thermocline.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[rubycodez]

sure, but that's hardly a decent grid. Have you seen the records from that time for USA and UK, they are online. Time of temperature taking sometimes just "morning, noon, evening", gaps of years or even decade at station....most the data is thrown own, small percentage used

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[bobbied]

They've been wrestling with the problem for decades.

Great, so can we see what their approach to these issues might be?

Personally, I don't think most of these people know much more than how to make cool looking graphics out of existing data, and the "existing" data isn't what we are being told it is... But hey...

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[cyberchondriac]

Y'know, in my younger days, I pretty much hated winter, the cold, and short days and long nights.. I loved summertime, beaches, sunshine, long days.. but oddly, as I approach middle age (some would say I'm there already) I find myself preferring wintertime now. As you said, it's easier to get warm than it is to get cool. Also, I hate having to mow my lawn at least once a week every week, and I'm tired of the incessant drone of lawnmowers and chainsaws all weekend long, every weekend. (Obviously I live in the 'burbs). And the mosquitoes. And constant thunderstorms, which knock out power (sucks being in IT when UPSes fail, and we have stations spread out all over the state)
Things just seem more calm in the winter, there's just less static background buzz, and snow is pretty. (well.. literally speaking, there's more static - zap). I should move farther north. A blanket, a fire, a book, and a mug of hot chocolate, life is good.

But there's still one thing to be said for summertime that winter will never match. women in tank tops, shorts and bikinis. Guess I'm not that old yet.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[CaptainLard]

I agree 100%. But I'll expand your point by adding that when the Earth climate changes naturally it takes many thousands of years. Thus I refer you back to my first point: "Why rock the boat?". There currently exists a better option so the sooner we transition away from our coal/oil energy economy, the less painful everything else will be in the long term. Of course a meteor could always wipe us out or yellowstone could blow it's top but if you're really worried about that off topic possibility then you're better served with my second point: "were all gonna die so fuck it".

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Ralph Wiggam]

Every ice fisherman knows you're wrong.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[danbert8]

Deeper water, increased flow. Both add thermal mass and the increased flow velocity could slow or halt freezing on the surface. I'm not saying anything about temperature differences, just pointing out that there is a scientific argument to be had that dredging a river could make it less likely to freeze given constant temperature.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[danbert8]

I agree, when people say "what will we do with cities like Tampa and New Orleans?" and I reply, 200 years ago, they were just a few maybe 2-3 story buildings. How many cornerstones in those cities are marked pre-1814? Not many important ones. People migrate over time due to the environment, it's a natural process.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[itzly]

The CO2 that is exhaled by humans was recently captured from the atmosphere by plants. It's a short term cycle, with no net effect on CO2 concentration.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Jane Q. Public]

Yes, there's no question that cannot be truthfully answered with a cursory googling is there Ginger.

Yes, it's really quite amusing. GP's first link is to a site that is full of ad-hominems, but more to the point tries to use GISS data to refute Steve, when GISS is one of the data sets Steve has quite exhaustively shown to have been deliberately manipulated. So much for "cursory glances".

The second link, also full of ad-homimen, points out a flawed graph, but fails to acknowledge that Steve himself acknowledged it was a mistake right after it was published.

So it amounts to somebody making a mistake and publicly admitting it right away, and even being pointed out in the blog post linked to, yet they come along later and saying "Look! Misinformation!" Which is, itself, misinformation.

What a load of BS.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[itzly]

Great, so can we see what their approach to these issues might be?

Yes, of course. That's why they publish scientific papers.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Jane Q. Public]

Just because it was cold in New York due to the vortex oscillations does not cancel out the overall upward.

Way to BS-up your argument. The entire continental U.S., even when you factor in the areas in the Pacific that were experiencing El Nino, experienced record cold for the entire first 5 months of 2014. USHCN's own raw data.

And the same time, Antarctic sea ice was also setting new records.

Was it warmer in the Arctic? Probably not. Sea ice extent was perfectly normal this year, after several years of shrinkage. That argues that the temperatures in the Arctic were normal, too.

When you have huge areas of the globe showing normal to historical record lows, then in order for the Earth to be "warmer than normal", much less record warm, you would also have to have large areas that were extraordinarily hot during the same period.

I have seen no evidence of such.

Do you have some? TFA certainly did not provide any.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Dishevel]

There currently exists a better option so the sooner we transition away from our coal/oil energy economy, the less painful everything else will be in the long term.

So what is this better option? Name something that is as easily available, transports well, has a high energy density and does not involve going back to the dark ages.

Nuclear is great for the power grid. Problem is the greens hate it. You just can not build a Nuclear power plant in the US. Solar, Wind and Hydro all have their places. None of which is on the road and to top it off ... Greens (hate Hydro, now bitching about windmills killing birds and they want no more bird deaths from the solar plant near Vegas. Can not make them happy.)

We could do a lot. Want to do good things for the earth and not kill off the rise of developing countries? Lest build Nuclear power plants here in the US. Lots of them. We can keep putting solar on the houses and businesses that want them.Wind farms for those areas where it makes sense. Remove subsidies from all energy. Oil and Green.

But we will not. What we will do is hate the energy we have, fear that which we could have and punish the world for breathing. Also ... Very important here.

Does anyone one really think that allowing a government agency to regulate the gas we breath out while we live is a good idea? Really? Because there is no way that a government agency would ever take the powers they start with and expand them till it is just silly. Right?

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[mpe]

Nobody in their right mind is saying that it wasn't cooler 200 years ago; there are enough accounts of both the Thames and Hudson rivers routinely freezing over back then, even if you completely ignore temperature readings.

The typical "warmist" response to well well documented cold (and especially warm) periods in the past is to claim that these are "local" but the current warm period is "global". (Very rarely are these people able to give an objective definition of "local" or "global". Or for that matter "weather" and "climate")

However, thermometers back then were nowhere near as accurate as they are now, and the idea of using those records to get a global temperature that's accurate to .1 degree Celsius from measurements that were, at best, accurate to half a degree is just plain ludicrous.

Even with modern thermometers 0.1 C might well be "pushing it" when it comes to real world temperature measurements. Yet you will see 0.01 C, even 0.001 C as claimed accuracies...

Re: records go back to 1880, very funny

[mpe]

Which is why additional methods are used to verify: tree rings and ice cores, for example.

Tree rings are a measure of how good growing conditions were for the tree at the time. Temperature is only one contributing factor. Along with rainfall there is likely to be an optimal range for the plant too.
Also what you'd be measuring by such techniques would, at best, be some kind of long term averaged temperature. Not necessarily "averaged" in the same way that thermometer readings are. (Often a combination of the midpoint of extremes and arithmetic means.)

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[DedTV]

Farther north and your weekend is filled with the sounds of snowblowers and chainsaws, the ping of salt and gravel bouncing off of undercarriages and windshields, the scrape and roar of plows etc...
I started in the central valley of California but temps up to 120F in Summer, where opening your front door felt like getting punched in the face by an angry fire god, got annoying. So I moved to Northern Pennsylvania and found that shoveling 2 feet of snow every morning to get the car out of the driveway, spending all night listening to the sound of trees exploding from -20 temps and having to don 80lbs of clothing before opening the front door got annoying even faster.
So I moved to the midsouth. Temps rarely go beyond 100F for more than a couple days at a time in summer, very rarely go below 0 in winter and a couple inches of snow shuts down the entire region. And if bikinis are your thing, you can always find a fat woman in a bikini at 3am in the local Walmart winter or summer! :)

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[cyberchondriac]

And if bikinis are your thing, you can always find a fat woman in a bikini at 3am in the local Walmart winter or summer! :)

Well thank ya very much for that lovely imagery! May as well put a thong on a snowman. Actually, that sounds less horrific.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[khayman80]

It hardly seems credible that with all that world record cold virtually everywhere (except for the Pacific El Nino event), that May could have ALSO been a "record warm" month. It just doesn't add up. Just like so many of NOAA's other figures. ... When you have huge areas of the globe showing normal to historical record lows, then in order for the Earth to be "warmer than normal", much less record warm, you would also have to have large areas that were extraordinarily hot during the same period. I have seen no evidence of such. Do you have some? TFA certainly did not provide any. [Jane Q. Public]

The linked NOAA article certainly did provide maps of May temperature anomalies and May temperature percentiles. Far from showing "world record cold virtually everywhere" they show absolutely no "record coldest" grids, and quite a few "record warmest" grids.

The entire continental U.S., even when you factor in the areas in the Pacific that were experiencing El Nino, experienced record cold for the entire first 5 months of 2014. USHCN's own raw data.

Again, no. I've previously told you that we're not experiencing El Nino yet, but obviously you ignored NOAA in favor of your uncited "neighborhood meteorologist". NOAA still states that "ENSO-neutral conditions continue" but forecasts a 70% chance of an El Nino this summer.

And again, May temperature percentiles show that only Louisiana and south Texas were even "cooler than average" (not "much cooler than average" or "record coldest"). The rest of the continental U.S. was either near average, warmer than average, or much warmer than average (especially Alaska).

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[mpe]

For example, in my hometown other than the terminal, there were no buildings within a mile of the weather station at the airport and only five scheduled flights a day when I was born. When I went with my father to maintain the weather station, it was rare to see any planes.

In the earliest days of aviation "airfields" literally were fields. Now even a fairly small airport is an urban area.

Also, there was only one concrete runway. Now there's an Interstate, about 4,500 houses, 35 office buildings taller than two stories, twenty-five acres of asphalt parking lots, and nearly three miles of asphalt runway all within a mile of the weather station.

The point of airport weather stations has ALWAYS been to help with aviation. Ideally pilots would want the temperature at wing height in the middle of the runway, but it's obviously impractical to put measuring station there. Possibly the only reason that the air there is warmer compared with the surrounding area is having been through a few 900C internal combustion engines :)
Only a fool would expect an airport to be anythng other than warmer than typical for it's location.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[mpe]

So, then you have to ask yourself: people who are bothering to meticulously record scientific data continuously for decades on end -- and they're not going to even bother to check whether their old instruments line up properly with new calibration standards?

You'd think so. Except that when members of the public went to look at the USHCN sites only a minority of them were sited correctly. Something far simpler to check than any sort of calibration.

Re: records go back to 1880, very funny

[TwoEyedJack]

Put some error bars on those measurements and your snr drops to the point of meaningless. Ice cores are essentially meaningless for measuring temperatures, and tree growth is far more a function of precipitation than small variations in temperature.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[AutodidactLabrat]

So, let me get this straight. The observation of tree rings over the last 50 years, when we have global IR temperature readings along with reliable precipitation does NOT co-relate with tree ring / climate 50,000 years ago (assuming fossilized wood here)?
Talking about pushing it!

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Beck_Neard]

At this point, there's actually no need for century-old data (although it does add to the increasing pool of evidence). Weather satellites have been up in space for long enough now to establish warming beyond any reasonable doubt.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[david_thornley]

You know, people die every day, and hardly anybody lives a full century, with or without human actions.

Now, just ignore that red spot on your forehead, please, and we can provide a conclusion to this argument.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[techno-vampire]

And what effect did this have on the Hudson River, which stopped freezing over at about the same time?

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[techno-vampire]

Let's not mix apples and oranges here. I was writing only about calculations based on recorded readings of thermometers. And, while I'm thinking of it, do you happen to know how accurate the tree ring records are, when compared to readings from thermometers? I'm not trying to imply that they're inaccurate, it's just that I don't know how much accuracy you can get from those readings and wondered if you might know.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[rtb61]

Regardless of the cause, the way we build our numerous coastal cities, our ports, our coastal airports, our coastal power stations etc. Means our society can not tolerate any substantial changes in sea level and must take equal substantial steps to stabilise global climate otherwise we risk societal collapse in the event of major climate change. So temperatures are rising we must take what ever steps are required to reduce that, so white roofs, white roads, less CO2, less methane etc. One of the technological advances of mankind should be steps to control and moderate weather, potentially high risk but the payout is the elimination of weather extremes.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[riverat1]

As itzly said the information you seek is in the published scientific papers. Why should we listen to someone like you unless you can demonstrate that you're familiar enough with the literature that we're not rehashing old news?

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[Dishevel]

No. You do not try to slow the inevitable. That is fucking stupid. You end up with flooded cities a few years later.

You get ready to adapt to the things you know are coming. You do not rebuild New Orleans.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[rtb61]

What is inevitable is psychopathic insatiable greed but that doesn't mean you let them do what they want, you just get rid of them and their inevitable greed is avoided. Just as you don't try to hold back the flooding you seek to prevent it occurring in the first place.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[rubycodez]

you are the one who has failed stats 101 with your assumptions
. look at the real data from say the US stations for 19th century the same thermometer wasn't used at a station, and there are gaps of years and sometime decades in records. Time of measurement wasn't even precise ("morning", "noon", "evening")

  statistics become meaninlessl, but you show what the problem is

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[rubycodez]

wrong, for periods of millions of years it is known that co2 rises AFTER warming

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[rubycodez]

we don't even know if the same thermometer was used for the decades at each station (and there are gaps of years and decades), we don't know the time of measurement in half the cases ("morning", "evening")

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[rubycodez]

bad assumption the same thermometer used for decades at a station, there are gaps of years and sometimes more than decade per station

you are silly thinking "statistics and physics" can overcome that

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[rubycodez]

invalid assumption that same thermometer even used at a station over the decades (with the huge gaps of years), and the time of measurement not known "morning" "noon" "evening"

building a house of cards on rubbish is what has been done

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[AutodidactLabrat]

All we need are a current baseline comparing current tree-rings to precipitation / temperature for more than a hundred years (which we have) and then we only need look at local fossilized remains to backtrack.
Like I said, good all the way back to 50K BCE.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[techno-vampire]

Thank you. Asked and answered.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[riverat1]

The scientists are aware of all of those problems and have taken steps to mitigate the problems and have explained it all in the scientific literature. If you think it's all rubbish you need to publish some scientific evidence to show that. Otherwise you're just blowing smoke.

Re:records go back to 1880, very funny

[FirstOne]

"40 years, another 1/2 trillion tonns of CO2".. is a significant under estimate!

Humanity is currently dumping 36 billion tonns(2013) of CO2 into the atmosphere each year. Projecting out using 2.1% yearly growth rate, humanity will hit that 1/2 trillion tonn mark in 2025. Just 11 years from now.

Wording...

[ndogg]

Records go back to 1880. Experts say there's a good chance global heat records will keep falling, especially next year because an El Nino weather event is brewing on top of man-made global warming.

That's not a confusing sentence at all...

No

[bugs2squash]

No, no it didn't happen. La La La La La - I can't hear you

Re:No

[mtrachtenberg]

No, no it didn't happen. La La La La La - I can't hear you

Please consider running for office as a GOP candidate -- you've got that special je ne sai quoi.

Re:It's about time

[Ol Olsoc]

You talking about Phil Jones?

How interesting, Tell me all about the science.

Re:It's about time

[bunratty]

I wonder what's making all that ice melt then.

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

No temperature increase? Only if you're ignoring ocean temperatures. Measurements have shown a lot of the temperature increase has been going into the oceans over the past decade or so:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/09/what-ocean-heating-reveals-about-global-warming/

not a record

[rubycodez]

Earth provably warmer in the "recent" (less than 12,000 years) past, and moreover that higher peak held for 3,000 years from 7500 B.C.

The hysteria and FUD and the billions of dollars and euros wasted on "climate modeling" is absurd, so is basing billions of euros and dollars of cap and trade scams upon them

Re:not a record

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but the earths population wasn't as large 'way back when'.

The coastline ending up a few more miles inland didn't matter as much when there was room for the population to move back from the edge.

Now ?, well, a large proportion of the worlds most densly populated areas may well become uninhabitable, and really, no where for large numbers of people to go.

The only 'easy' fix is less people, and I imagine one way or another, that will be the outcome.

Re:not a record

[timeOday]

So before continuing, your position is that the earth is warming, but is unavoidable, or will cost more to correct than to let happen, correct?

Re:not a record

[zippthorne]

Those statements have been conceded on both sides of the issue....

Re:not a record

[quantaman]

Great news if you want to live in the holocene.

Not so good of news if you think a significant environmental change in the middle of a mass extinction is a bad idea.

Re:not a record

[bug1]

"The hysteria and FUD and the billions of dollars and euros wasted on "climate modeling" is absurd"

Understanding reality is not hysteria, trying to deny it is.

Re:not a record

[riverat1]

Earth provably warmer in the "recent" (less than 12,000 years) past, and moreover that higher peak held for 3,000 years from 7500 B.C.

You won't be able to say that in 2100 unless we get real serious about the problem.

Re:not a record

[Namarrgon]

Nope. There are still a number of "skeptics" claiming that the earth is not warming, and most scientists believe we can still avoid the worst of the warming yet to come (though some significant warming is now inevitable). Also, most economic studies of climate impact & mitigation (e.g. the Stern Review) have concluded that it will be much cheaper to mitigate CO2 emissions ASAP and avoid the costs of adaption.

Re:not a record

[Whorhay]

What kind of fantasy bollocks is this?

There are certainly a lot more people living on the Earth today than in past millenia. But we also know how to sustain way more people on far less land than was necessary then. Remember world hunger problems are not actually a food production problem, it is a financial and political problem. In fact here in the US one of our more energy and land intensive crops to farm is subsidized heavily to prevent over production and we still turn a lot of it into Ethanol pretty much just for a feel good effort.

There may not be any unclaimed land left, but there is more than enough space to resettle every single coastal city futher inland. And that isn't even taking into account the extra land area that would be made more habitable in every way by the rising temperature.

Maybe we'll end up with wars between nations which have extra dry land and those that need to relocate entirely, but I don't see any reason that this has to be the case.

Re:not a record

[micahraleigh]

You're saying the only fix is murder.

Is everyone here posting from prison?

Re:not a record

[MrBigInThePants]

Nope - not in the way you mean.

If action was taken right now, with current technology, we could make a meaningful long term impact. The fact that this will not happen is due to lack of will, not lack of ability.

Now when being pessimistic, people refer to the above as "unavoidable". But this is quite obviously the wrong word since it could be.

Re:not a record

[rubycodez]

you are very funny, you imagine people are going to stand in place for over a century while the ocean rises few millimeters a year? what is the lifetime of typical house or office building?

Re:not a record

[rubycodez]

most of the thousands upon thousands of climate models are discarded. trivial to cherry pick one that matches past events, that's called "cooking the books". Note the models and approved from ten years ago have been proven to be complete rubbish. we can't model climate, we've proven that. And the IPCC has been backpedalling on its dire predictions with every report to the UN in the last 15 years

Re:not a record

[im_thatoneguy]

All this silly "Volcano Warning" FUD. Why, 100,000 years ago, this whole land was covered in Ash and lava from a giant super volcano. Why should I evacuate or worry about this "volcano warning"? Billions of dollars on Volcano Warning systems when people used to co-exist just fine with volcanos without freaking out every few decades about "imminent death". /s

Doesn't matter to me

[Anonymous Coward]

I have property in both Canada and Costa Rica. Hot or cold, I don't care, as long as it kills the fucking mosquitoes.

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

Too bad it isn't possible to mod a post "Flamebait" and "Insightful" at the same time.

It's hard to keep the stories straight these days

[dbraden]

And at the same time, there's a story that the NOAA has been fabricating their temperatures for years: The scandal of fiddled global warming data

Re:It's about time

[sumdumass]

I dunno.. Do you?

http://www.techtimes.com/artic...

Re:It's about time

[bunratty]

I believe it to be the heat trapped by greenhouse gases released by humans burning fossil fuels. I don't think there are suddenly volcanoes popping up all over Antarctica, Greenland, and the Arctic.

Is it if A then B, or is it if B, then A?

[Hussman32]

The question is not only if the climate is changing, but if it's directly related to CO2. Robert Essenhigh's point is quite interesting. http://bit.ly/11IsUri

Re:Is it if A then B, or is it if B, then A?

[drinkypoo]

The question is not only if the climate is changing, but if it's directly related to CO2. Robert Essenhigh's point is quite interesting. http://bit.ly/11IsUri

It was quite interesting until he failed to explain how heat produces CO2, after claiming that it was easily explainable; when he claimed that a ~5% increase in CO2 release from burning fossil fuel for energy was "statistical noise" and implied that it was the extent of industrial production of CO2, he became a denialist liar. There are numerous other industrial sources of CO2; for example, the production and curing of concrete alone (not accounting for the CO2 release of burning the energy, already accounted for here) accounts for approximately 2.5% of our CO2 emissions. Iron and steel production are likewise carbon-intensive processes, even putting aside the energy consumption. He also doesn't back up his statement that only two possible causes deserve explanation, nor what the four possible causes are, etc etc. He also blames the entire thermal forcing on water vapor, but relative humidity (the only kind of humidity he mentions in the linked page) is decreasing due to rising temperatures.

tl;dr: Essenhigh is trivializing human CO2 production, which exceeds volcanism, and also failing to back up his statements.

Re:Is it if A then B, or is it if B, then A?

[Hussman32]

It's not a mystery. The solubility of CO2 in water decreases with increasing temperature (dissociation constant of water increases, increasing hydrogen ion concentration, which pushes the equilibrium of carbonate towards molecular H2CO3, then CO2). Anyone who has opened a can of cold soda and let it get to room temperature has seen this.

Regarding inventories: The ocean inventory is 155,000 gigatons with 1,000 gigatons in the thermocline, and there is 150 gigatons annually of exchange. Human contribution is 10 gigatons annually, which would be in the measurement error of the other sources.

We need to reduce pollution, so if the climate change arguments will drive a large population that is generally uninformed towards greater efficiency, then great. But don't slaughter legitimate scientists for being appropriately skeptical. That is, after all, the fundamental tenant of the scientific method.

Re:It's hard to keep the stories straight these da

[schwit1]

Be careful. Speaking truth to power with this administration means a visit from the IRS or the climate change police.

Re:It's about time

[bobbied]

But it seems to have stopped in the USA for that time... Globally might be another story.

Has the data been modified? Some have done that in the past and seem to be doing it now in some cases. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ear...

Does that invalidate your view? Perhaps not, but it does add to the case that you might be wrong.

Re:It's hard to keep the stories straight these da

[bhlowe]

What, was that posted on FauxNews or the Sludge Report? /sarcasm

Re:It's hard to keep the stories straight these da

[Mashiki]

People seem to have this reality problem, when they can't figure out that drudge is an aggrigator and posts news from all spectrum's of the isle. From Alexjones to Motherjones and everything in between. I guess reality has a factual bias for you.

Re:It's about time

[ultranova]

Warming did not stop for 15 years, for chrissakes, and you're either a liar or a moron for restating it.

Not really. Notice the word "warmists" there? It's used as a tribal identifier. In other words, symbolset's post is actually a boast against a perceived other tribe - no different than "your mom's fat". The actual content of the message is not about your mother's body composition, nor Earth's climate, but rather "this is our territory!". It's only an unfortunate accident of evolution that we use the same mechanism for establishing dominance than we use for problem-solving.

It's quite fascinating how much of human communication is utterly unrelated to its nominal content. And it also explains why these discussions tend to degenerate into poo-flinging contest in short order.

Re:Still cooler than the MWP

[BenSchuarmer]

Do you have a citation saying that the MWP was warmer world wide?

As for the the earth being colder during the Devonian period when CO2 was higher, the Sun was significantly dimmer back then.

Your argument is invalid

[BadPirate]

1. Decide your position
2. When findings are presented that call into question your position, find any flaw with said findings. Preferably one that can't be verified.
3. Present flaw as proof that the findings are not only invalid, but through being invalidated prove your position

Re:Your argument is invalid

[ColdWetDog]

1. When the law is on your side, pound on the law.
2. When the facts are on your side, pound on the facts.
3. When neither the law nor the facts are on your side, pound on the table.

Re:NOAA, please shut up.

[MightyMartian]

Because regional conditions represent global conditions.

Re:It's about time

[sumdumass]

Sigh..

What has significantly changed in the oceans so that they do not play a role any other year except when it appears to be cooling or the warming lapsed?

Here is the problem with blaming the oceans. The effects we see aren't new. they were present in the past, they will be present in the future. Separating them when it is convenient is misleading and outright dishonest because you do not separate the effects at other times. It is like saying 2+2 is 4 except when you have less than 5 and some weird unknown rule kicks in and you add 1 but it is still accurate because you want it to be.

Now it is true that the oceans do absorb and release heat. It is true for measurements in 1999, 1918, 2006, 2014 and it will be true for measurements in 2025 and 3000.

What is true also is that the entire "Ocean did its thing so the lack of warming all the sudden is not real" is impossible to test because of decadal oscillations and rotational current patterns. The temp and effects of the temps in the Sargasso Sea for instance will naturally change with deviations in the North Atlantic decadal oscillations as well as the migration of the currents which pretty much guarantee changes in temps from year to year.

The importance of the linked article is for climate modeling, not debunking the lack of observed increases in warming.

Re:It's about time

[sumdumass]

I believe I will believe the science being done by scientists. Granted, they are from Texas and Texas is an oil state, but it's up for peer review in the journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" and I have yet to find anyone challenging it.

http://www.pnas.org/content/ea...

But then again, I believe in sky fairies as long as we are confessing our beliefs in things.

Re:It's about time

[geekoid]

You know that 'scandal' was completely shot done as a media created event, right? Did you fail to notice that as soon as actual facts came out Fox et. al. stopped talking about it?

i don't care about this stuff.

[NemoinSpace]

As long as all you blowhards die along with me, I will consider entropy the most effective form of government. Seriously, you guys need to die NOW. I don't wanna wait till the poles melt.

Re: i don't care about this stuff.

[NemoinSpace]

ALL of the Chinese care less than I do. I don't have real evidence to back up this claim. But the cloud is making backups obsolete. Thankfully for you, I think that Slashdot rate limiter is going to kick in soon.

Re:It's about time

[Muros]

Full disclosure: I'm a rabid pro-global-warming zealot.

You burn as much coal and oil as you can?

Re:It's about time

[geekoid]

No, it has not been modified, you should look deeper into that story.

Look at the record since 1880 it rise, levels, rises. levels and so on.
If there wasn't man made global warming then there would be rise and a return.
Look,m the global warming science is fairly simple. Certain actor in the industry are paid to intentionally make it seem confusing.
Pay attention:
1) Visible light hits the earth. Falsifiable, and tested.
2) When visible light strikes something, IR is generated. Falsifiable, and tested.
3) CO2 is transparent to visible light. Falsifiable, and tested.
4) CO2 absorbed energy from IR. Falsifiable, and tested.
5) CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing. Falsifiable, and tested.
6) The VAST majority of excess CO2 in the air is generated by humans. Falsifiable, and tested.

That's it. That is global warming. If you disagree with that, then you need to prove where the science is wrong. I look forward to your noble prize winning paper.
If you read that and still think it doesn't impact the climate(climate change) then you need to show where the absorbed energy is going.

Seriously, stop being a dolt.

Re:It's about time

[ArmchairGeneral]

Absolute rubbish! This 'story' goes alllll the way back to 2007 when they realized the measurements were incorrect. Goddard is recycling old news to spread FUD. He's an idiot for not doing the proper research!

Read it here http://www.geotimes.org/aug07/...

Re:It's about time

[geekoid]

They never changed the name. Please stop being so freaking stupid.

Global warming = Energy captured by excess CO2
Climate change = how global warming impact the climate.
Climate disruption= Economic change do to climate change.
Te first two came int' use almost at the same time.
They are all related but different things. No one is changing anything. I understand the the media confuses the terms, and some pundits use that as some sort of ad hom attack, but you need to be better then that.

Who cares?

[WaffleMonster]

Outcomes from surveys where technology, sensor placement and encroachment of cities even if super careful have error bars on the same order of signals from multi-decade surveys... are... mostly... useless.

They always result in the same tired predictable rumblings of fools who see what they want.

All the while very important and relatively uncontested facts such as continued decrease of ocean pH and sea level rise are summarily ignored.

GLobal warming scien is simple

[geekoid]

why are so many people her suckered by pundits?

Pay attention:
1) Visible light hits the earth. Falsifiable, and tested.
2) When visible light strikes something, IR is generated. Falsifiable, and tested.
3) CO2 is transparent to visible light. Falsifiable, and tested.
4) CO2 absorbed energy from IR. Falsifiable, and tested.
5) CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing. Falsifiable, and tested.
6) The VAST majority of excess CO2 in the air is generated by humans. Falsifiable, and tested.

That's it. That is global warming. If you disagree with that, then you need to prove where the science is wrong. I look forward to your noble prize winning paper.
If you read that and still think it doesn't impact the climate(climate change) then you need to show where the absorbed energy is going.

Some of you are very disappointing, falling into ad hom attacks and bad science. Scien that can trivally be checked out. But no, some of ypu moron keeps spouting the same crap.
AGW is a scientific fact.

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[drinkypoo]

6) The VAST majority of excess CO2 in the air is generated by humans. Falsifiable, and tested.

While I agree with your point, we can't track CO2 molecules to find out where they came from (yet? maybe someday. advances in physics? not today.) so this statement is unsupportable, and it's not _strictly_ true anyway. Human release of CO2 doesn't exceed "natural" release overall, from things like decomposition. What it does is push beyond the planet's ability to sink the CO2. IMO, you should say instead that "Excess CO2 is a result of human activity exceeding the Earth's ability to dispose of it" or similar.

Not at all trying to detract at all from your post, which I agree with completely, only fiddling with wording to make it less potentially objectionable to denialists. I'm sure it won't help, because they can deny anything, but anyway.

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[drinkypoo]

I've got bad news for you, because we can. Not all carbon atoms are the same. This is trivial science, so find your own reference.

We cannot tell precisely where they came from. We can tell if they potentially could or could not have come from a particular source, but not if they actually came from that specific source. This is trivial science, so find your own reference.

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[khallow]

And how much warming does that "simple" phenomena cause? It's interesting how much effort is devoted to debating the radiative model and how little to whether global warming is a serious threat or not, or if it is, what, if anything we should do about it.

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[Uberbah]

'6) The VAST majority of excess CO2 in the air is generated by humans. Speculative and not agreed'

Nice try, unless you're sitting on a supermassive volcano that nobody knows about, one that's been building for the last 50 years or so. But, that's the easy thing about being an anti-science troll...you just move on the to next canard, no matter if it's one that's been debunked a hundred times over. Because those debunkings haven't been reposted in this conversation. And when they are....you just move on to the next canard. Next in the rotation: scientists were worried about a new ice age in the 70's, so you can't trust anything they say!

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[angel'o'sphere]

Natural CO2 releases are irrelevant as they build a cycle of release and 'absorbtion'. E.g. your example of decomposting is wrong, decomposting is a zero sum game. Exactly the same amount of carbon is released that originally was incorporated into the plant during its growing (and actually one learns that in school in third or fourth grade ... )

So bottom line the increase of CO2 in our atmosphere is 100% man made. Well, 95%? Not sure if there was an event in recent history that had a natural release.

Re: GLobal warming scien is simple

[mpe]

Yep and can measure the co2 levels in the air trapped in the article ice. And it's at it's highest concentration.

The problem here is that ice does not immediatly (if ever) form an inert gas tight container. So comparing air "trapped" in ice with current air samples is somewhat "apples and oranges".
Indeed the "elephant in the room" with "climate science" is a frequent inability to understand concepts like the need to compare "apples with apples". Or even the physical limits of the methods used in general.
Typically the closer one looks at it the worst things look.

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[rrohbeck]

The carbon increase in the atmosphere can a) be compared with the amount of fossil fuels burned and b) has a different isotope isotope composition because 14C has only a few thousand year half life so fossil carbon is practically devoid of 14C. Not speculative at all, falsifiable and tested.

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[riverat1]

While I agree with your point, we can't track CO2 molecules to find out where they came from (yet? maybe someday. advances in physics? not today.) so this statement is unsupportable, and it's not _strictly_ true anyway.

While we can't track the source of individual CO2 molecules we can measure the ratio of 12C to 13C in the atmosphere. Because photosynthesis prefers the 12C isotope the fossil fuels from plants have a higher ratio of 12C to 13C than the atmosphere. The measured ratio has been changing as expected if the source of the added CO2 is fossil fuels.

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[tp1024]

Congratulations, you've acurately described what happens when you put a couple of glass panes on the moon. Your "atmosphere" isn't an atmosphere.

An atmosphere consists of gasses. You may want to review the properties of gasses. One of them is: they are not solid. This means, when a part of a gas attains a higher temperature than the surrounding gas within a field of gravitation, the hot gas will rise up. The hot gas is rising up, it takes thermal energy with it, regardless of how much CO2 is in the gas. The amount of heat thus carried by a given amount of gas depends linearly on the temperature of the gas. The amount of gas actually carried depends linearly on the temperature gradient of the atmosphere (that is: the temperature difference between the cold upper part and the warm lower part). The stronger the effects you described the a) higher the temperature of the gas and b) the larger the gradient.

Beyond that, the surface of the earth consists to a fairly good approximation entirely of water. Under the conditions of our atmosphere, water will evaporate. Its rate of evaporation depends on the temperature of the water surface and the relative moisture content of the atmosphere. The relative moisture content of the atmosphere is controlled by precipitation. Hence, a rise in temperature will lead to increased evaporation. Evaporation "consumes" energy which is "released" when the water condenses again. Evaporation happens in lower areas of the atmosphere than condensation. Heat is being released in the upper atmosphere, that came from the lower atmosphere. (That's true even when rain evaporates before reaching the surface.) Heat is being transported and CO2 didn't have anything to do with it.

In both cases, the higher the temperature at the surface, the higher the heat transport. And you know how much heat is already being transported in those two ways? 60% of the total.

Science is when you don't ignore stuff that is important.

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[Eunuchswear]

So bottom line the increase of CO2 in our atmosphere is 100% man made. Well, 95%? Not sure if there was an event in recent history that had a natural release.

Actually the CO2 increase is about 200% man made - i.e. we're releasing around twice what the increase is. Turns out that natural sinks can take up about half of what we release.

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[PortHaven]

Curious, how much CO2 is released to form an island?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...

How much during earthquakes?

Truth is, all this talk of natural balance of CO2 is hogwash. Read up on the Cretaceous period. CO2 levels were much higher. Temperatures were up to 20 degrees higher.

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[tp1024]

When water condenses, it heats up the air or makes it cool down more slowly than completely dry air. When air is warmer or less cold than in a comparative case, it will radiate more heat to space. The water itself will proceed to precipitate back down to the surface. That's what you call the water cycle and I don't care who was the first to describe it, because it is a basic enough phenomenon that I don't need to refer to higher authority to say it's true.

Also, if you had actually read the piece by Arrhenius you would have noticed that he assumes away the processes which I described and said that nothing about the convective heat transfer changes, because those things are much harder to calculate.

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[Hussman32]

why are so many people her suckered by pundits?

Pay attention: 5) CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing. Falsifiable, and tested. 6) The VAST majority of excess CO2 in the air is generated by humans. Falsifiable, and tested.

That's it. That is global warming. If you disagree with that, then you need to prove where the science is wrong. I look forward to your noble prize winning paper. If you read that and still think it doesn't impact the climate(climate change) then you need to show where the absorbed energy is going.

Some of you are very disappointing, falling into ad hom attacks and bad science. Scien that can trivally be checked out. But no, some of ypu moron keeps spouting the same crap. AGW is a scientific fact.

Re 5: The CO2 concentration is controlled by the temperature and pH of the oceans. The pH is not driven by CO2 as it's a weak electrolyte, and the overall pH of the ocean is about 8.0 (which is alkaline). CO2 equilibrated water pH is about 5.5. If air CO2 concentration is rising, it's because the ocean (which may be warming from something like undersea volcanic activity or dozens of other natural phenomena) belches it out.

Re 6: False. Check the data (http://www.grida.no/graphicslib/detail/the-carbon-cycle_a224#). Natural sources are 90 gigatons from the ocean interactions, 60 gigatons from land based sources. 10 gigatons at most from human interaction. There are 750 gigatons in the air.

Nobody said the climate isn't warming, we're in a 10,000 year warming period compared to recent history. The question is what humans have done to influence it, and that question is far from resolved. I agree it warrants further study, and the overall the effects of reducing pollution are positive, but let the questions be answered by the scientific method, not rhetoric and politics.

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[Uberbah]

Truth is, all this talk of natural balance of CO2 is hogwash. Read up on the Cretaceous period. CO2 levels were much higher. Temperatures were up to 20 degrees higher.

The next canard: hey we've had climate change before, so this is no big whoop! Read up on your drivel, as periods of rapid climate change happen after big events, like the asteroid that took out the dinosaurs, or the eruption of a supermassive volcano - and are accompanied by mass extinction events. Dinosaurs didn't choose to put a big rock on the path to their planet, though.

But that's the great thing about being an anti-science troll - you'll just move on to the next Big Lie. Up next: hey, it's really the sun getting hotter!

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[angel'o'sphere]

Turns out that you are wrong. There are no natural sinks that suddenly get triggered and where off-line before mankind started to produce so much CO2. The only 'sink' is the accidiation of the oceans (and ordinary lakes ofc) ... so we have a bit less in the atmosphere but what we have less there is in the water now

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[micahraleigh]

Then why are there so many shenanigans here?

1) Heavily fudged East Anglia Institute records 2) Discredited IPCC papers (discredited by the IPCC 3) Discredited NOAA records

If it was a scientific fact, then why are the scientists working so hard to cook the books?

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[Methadras]

You neglect massive oceanic water vapor evaporation that does effectively the same thing and far an away exceeds the levels of CO2. Even still, if AGW was a scientific fact, so what? Adaptability here will be the key to overcome it. Normally cooler locked geography will experience some warming and may provide arable land after decades if not millennia of non-usability possibly. Furthermore, outside of your backhanded ad hom on the rest of us, please, tell us what you want the nominal surface temperature of the earth to be after your rant? It's nice that you can ply scientific facts on us all (thank you captain obvious) but you offer no viable alternatives nor solutions to this horrific menacing scientific fact horror. Oh the huge manatee!!!

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[SomeoneFromBelgium]

Really?
A. Introduction
B. Observed Changes in the Climate System
C. Drivers of Climate Change
D. Understanding the Climate System and its Recent Changes
E. Future Global and Regional Climate Change

Do you know what this is? Its the table of content of the IPPC WG1 fith report SPM which stands for 'Summary for Policy Makers'.
Want to hear more about the risks? Here is the table of content of the WG2 fifth SPM report:

A: Observed impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation in a complex and changing world
B: Future risks and opportunities for adaptation
C: Managing future risks and building resilience

Thses and more in depth reports that explain the underlying science are available at the IPPC site (www.ipcc.ch).

Either you decide that all this science is just crap (like many climate denialists seem to do) or you have to accept that global warming is a serious problem that is created by men for which the scientific comunity has provided huge amounts of evidence, warnings and pointers to possible causes of action.

Re:GLobal warming scien is simple

[khallow]

And this is the same report which has a factor of three difference between the low and high estimate for carbon dioxide's effect on global mean temperature. Argument from obfuscation combined with confirmation bias is just as scientifically invalid as all the other games that get played with climate change arguments.

Either you decide that all this science is just crap (like many climate denialists seem to do) or you have to accept that global warming is a serious problem that is created by men for which the scientific comunity has provided huge amounts of evidence, warnings and pointers to possible causes of action.

No, I think I'll decide instead that the case just hasn't been made yet. All this verbiage from the IPCC wastes my time. Nail down the key problems and parameters, don't just merely assert that there are problems in a huge number of pages without any underlying evidence to back it up.

Re:What planet are these people from?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is global warming, not the local weather in a denier's backyard.

'Earth smashed record for heat'

[Snufu]

Pssh...steroids.

Re:It's about time

[thaylin]

You are way off base there. You have to separate the ocean data because its temperature changes MUCH slower then everything else, ask your neighborhood chemist about specific heat. The problem is that because of this it has a longer lasting effect then the ground or air temps, because it is going to retain that heat into the fall and winter months, keeping those temperatures higher.

Deniers can't make up their minds

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is it that the global warming deniers can't decide whether warming isn't happening, it is happening but it isn't human-caused, or it is happening, it is human-caused, but it isn't economical to do anything about it? It can't be all 3, yet the deniers can't seem to get their story straight.

The truth is that it's the 3rd option. Deniers first argue that it isn't happening. When science proves them wrong, they then argue that it is happening but isn't human caused. When science proves them wrong again, they fall back to their real position that despite it existing and being human caused, it isn't worth doing anything about because that would take work and cost money. It's very dishonest.

Re:Deniers can't make up their minds

[Bodhammer]

Please stop confusing the issue with facts. Are you new here?

Re:Deniers can't make up their minds

[Livius]

You answered your own question.

They go through the different versions until they reach the one that convinces their target audience, and as a last resort fall back on economic reality.

And of course it's dishonest.

Re:Deniers can't make up their minds

[iggymanz]

science has proved what?

this isn't the hottest year on record, and artic ice levels are greater than last years which were greater than the year before

antarctic glaciers not melting because of global average temperature rising, but volcanoes

in fact, science says the hottest years in the last 13,000 years for a whopping 3,000 year stretch occured over 7,000 years ago, hotter global average temperatuer than now.

what is it with the guilt over progress, the hysteria you warming alarmists have?

Re:Deniers can't make up their minds

[riverat1]

They go through the different versions until they reach the one that convinces their target audience, and as a last resort fall back on economic fantasy.

FTFY

Re:Deniers can't make up their minds

[angel'o'sphere]

Arctic ice is not more than in recent years, how do you come to that braindead idea?
No, the antarctic glaciers are not smelting because of vulcanoes! For fuck sake, if you see an article with the words: ice, antarctic, volcano - then perhaps you should actually READ IT?
The vulcanoes let the ice shelfs 'flow faster' than originally. expected, that is all.
Of this not the 'hottest year on record' on many places of the world. After all we had a strong countering El Niña effect the recent years ...

Re:Deniers can't make up their minds

[serviscope_minor]

science has proved what?

Global warming is happening.

what is it with the guilt over progress, the hysteria you warming alarmists have?

Why do morons like you confuse facts with feelings. Fact: the earth is warming very fast due to all the CO2 being dumped in it.

That fact has nothing to do with whether this is a good thing or bad thing, whether progress is good, whether it will "matter" in some universal sense (ultimately, no, of course not), and etc.

So basically your argument is: science hasnt prooved anything because it was warmer in the past and your a anti progress poopyhead

Re:Deniers can't make up their minds

[dave420]

It's still June. The ice *area* might be increasing, but ice *volume* is steadily decreasing. The Antarctic glaciers are being partially melted by geothermal heat, but the majority of the melting is still from the climate.

At least get your facts straight before trying to single-handedly debunk an entire field of science. That way you won't look quite so stupid.

Re:Deniers can't make up their minds

[iggymanz]

yes, arctic ice went to a minimum in 2012, then a little more in 2013 and (thus far) 2014...the "braindead idea" is straight from NASA,must hurt to hear something that conflicts with your religion

Re:Deniers can't make up their minds

[angel'o'sphere]

You are simply wrong :)
In summer there is often no ice at all, and that there is ice in winter is normal. Different coverage areas in winter are not called climate but weather.

Re:Deniers can't make up their minds

[MutualFun]

Why is it that the global warming deniers can't decide whether warming isn't happening, it is happening but it isn't human-caused, or it is happening, it is human-caused, but it isn't economical to do anything about it? It can't be all 3, yet the deniers can't seem to get their story straight.

The truth is that it's the 3rd option. Deniers first argue that it isn't happening. When science proves them wrong, they then argue that it is happening but isn't human caused. When science proves them wrong again, they fall back to their real position that despite it existing and being human caused, it isn't worth doing anything about because that would take work and cost money. It's very dishonest.

Well said. The question is this, IMO:

a) If warming/climate change is a myth *and* we do something about it, what is the cost? As stated above, economic impact. We pay more for solar, alternate fuels or vehicles, etc.

b) If warming/climate change is NOT a myth and we do *nothing* about it, what is the cost? Well, we all get permanent sunburns and move inland.

Re:Deniers can't make up their minds

[SomeoneFromBelgium]

it is happening, it is human-caused, but it isn't economical to do anything about it

The truth is that it's the 3rd option [option mentioned above].

Well if you read the IPPC report you would find out that it's the oposite. It's not economical NOT to do anything about it.
The costs incurred by letting GW continue and fighting all the resulting changes are much higher than trying to minimize the impact as much as possible.

Re:Deniers can't make up their minds

[iggymanz]

there is always ice in arctic, there is ice-free area around pole. The minimum of september "average extent" was in september 2012.

Re:It's about time

[symbolset]

This was going to be a poo flinging festival no matter what.

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

About what I would expect to find here on /. Same people that go to AOL, YAHOO, HuffnPuff Post, PMSNBC and CNN and would rather throw the stones at Fox or Rs than offer something constructive.

Re:It's about time

[riverat1]

The problem is you take something like the paper you cited and act as if it's the only thing causing ice melt rather than one factor among several. Also, do you have any idea how long those geothermal heat sources have been active? Unless they just became active in the last decade or two how can you say they have much to do with the current melting?

Re:It's about time

[sumdumass]

Ok, then separate the oceans from the other readings and claims of warming. That is the point, it is either built in, meaning you walk outside and take the temp and it is accurate despite the oceans, or it is not and needs separated completely.

The problem is that the oceans also contribute to the recorded heat. Only considering them separate when it is convenient or when the temp readings are inconvenient is misleading bordering on fraud.

Re:It's about time

[riverat1]

That depends on what you mean by modified. The data have been adjusted to account for a sorts of things that cause problems with the temperature record such as changes in instrument, changes in weather station location, changes in the time of day of observations, changes in the environment around the weather stations. Scientists wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't account for and make adjustments for those issues.

If you think they modified the temperature records just to produce a result they wanted then it's up to you to prove it scientifically.

Re:It's about time

[riverat1]

Sigh..

What has significantly changed in the oceans so that they do not play a role any other year except when it appears to be cooling or the warming lapsed?

Sigh ...

Are you on about that again? Nothing has significantly changed in the oceans. They still do what they do. What's changed is the level of data we have about them since the Argo floats were deployed starting in 2002.

Smash?

[jklovanc]

I am not so sure you understand what "smash" means. The combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces in 2010 was 0.72C. The same data for this year is 0.74C. I would hardly call 0.02C as smashing.

Re:Smash?

[the eric conspiracy]

0.72C?

Surely that must be a relative measure.

Re:Smash?

[jklovanc]

It is a relative measurement from the 20th century average. Still, 0.02C is a small number. I wonder if that is within the margin of error of the readings?

Re:Smash?

[digsbo]

Agreed. The text is this:

"With records dating back to 1880, the combined average temperature over global land and ocean surfaces reached a record high for May, at 0.74C (1.33F) higher than the 20th century average. This surpassed the previous record high anomaly of 0.72C (1.30F) set in 2010."

You would expect records to be broken by small margins from time to time. I wonder if there was a record cold month in the past 15 or 20 years?

Re:Smash?

[digsbo]

To answer my own question, definitely not. But realizing that there's a bit of variability in the data set, this certainly qualifies as an inflammatory description of expected data. https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/...

Habitat Destruction is a Bigger Issue

[Mars729]

Global warming is clouding the bigger issue of habitat destruction. Human beings have altered the planet significantly. We have taken a significant proportion of the planets biomass to devote to agriculture. The fact that aerial insectivores are doing badly suggest that flying insects are in significantly lower numbers and biodiversity. Bees are in trouble due to colony collapse disorder leading to losses of crops because flowers are not getting pollinated as often.

We have made great cities. Aside from the land these cities take, a substantial amount of resources are required to sustain them. Wood, fossil fuels and minerals are all required in vast quantities. Forests get altered, the air and water get polluted.

The oceans are in trouble due to overfishing. For most commercial fish there is only 10% or less of its original abundance. Plastic is accumulating in the ocean.

MInor in comparison are street lights. Nocturnal bugs get trapped by lights and are easy prey in the morning. Many nocturnal species of bugs are getting reduced in numbers or going extinct.

Massive habitat change will cause climate change ... and the consequences are complex and unpleasant.

Re:It's about time

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Ummm, not so much. Indications are that warming/cooling has been gong on for billions of years before man started burning anything more than trees, and the levels of C02 in the atmosphere don't seem to have anything to do with those cycles.

Major logical fallacy here. If we know that A causes C, it doesn't automatically mean that B doesn't cause C as well.

Re:It's about time

[sumdumass]

The source of heating is believed to be a tearing apart, or rifting, of the crust under the Antarctic ice sheet. This allows movement of magma and creates volcanic eruptions, melting the ice. Liquid water and geological activity under the sheet allows the massive feature to slip off the continent.

So yes, it does appear that it is recent as in happening now. Otherwise tearing would have been replaced with something like torn apart and allows would likely have been allowed. So even if they were active in the past, the wording suggest it is happening recently.

Not quite that simple

[Sycraft-fu]

The big spoiler that makes models a bit more difficult is water vapor. It is both more prevalent than CO2 in the atmosphere and more variable in the amount (CO2 is pretty uniform, water vapour varies a lot based on location, time of year, etc). Also when you look at the absorption spectra, water vapour absorbs larger bands of IR than CO2, particularly in the thermal IR region.

That's not the only extra bit of complexity, but it is one that confounds the situation.

Now before you fly off the handle and start screaming and ranting: I'm not challenging the validity of the theory here, I'm just saying you are oversimplifying things. Going after people for being stupid, but then showing ignorance of the complexity of the issue is rather silly.

The problem is that it is complex. If it were a simple system, we'd likely have a very accurate model for it. The complexity is precisely why despite general agreement on the theoretical mechanism of action there are such wide error bars on the predictions.

Re:Not quite that simple

[Anonymous Coward]

Water vapor isn't a spoiler - the bands that it absorbs are different from the bands that CO2 absorbs. That's all there is to it really. There's so much water in the atmosphere that water vapor bands are essentially entirely absorbed. We can't reduce the amount of water in the atmosphere, and we wouldn't want to even if we could, so any gains that we make have to be outside the water absorption spectrum.

Re:It's about time

[bobbied]

That depends on what you mean by modified. The data have been adjusted to account for a sorts of things that cause problems with the temperature record such as changes in instrument, changes in weather station location, changes in the time of day of observations, changes in the environment around the weather stations. Scientists wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't account for and make adjustments for those issues.

If you think they modified the temperature records just to produce a result they wanted then it's up to you to prove it scientifically.

So you accept that the data is modified. Problem for your clean argument is that it seems that the data has been modified in such a way that increases the global warming trend, by increasing the bias of the data upwards as it gets newer. Without "correction" there is no global warming (or it is minimal at best). I would LOVE to see how that is justified.... I suspect that what we have is circular logic by the activists, mainly because the RAW data is not usually used by most of these studies...

So, it is really not my question to answer given that the unmodified data supports my view. Why was the data adjusted and what was the logic for these adjustments? My side hasn't adjusted the data, your side has, you have the burden of proof here.

Re:It's about time

[bobbied]

Ummm, not so much. Indications are that warming/cooling has been gong on for billions of years before man started burning anything more than trees, and the levels of C02 in the atmosphere don't seem to have anything to do with those cycles.

Major logical fallacy here. If we know that A causes C, it doesn't automatically mean that B doesn't cause C as well.

So burning trees caused global warming back in the stone age?

Re:NOAA Findings

[drinkypoo]

I mean crazy bat shit conclusions like spraying the atmosphere with aerosols or sucking the CO2 out of the atmosphere on purpose.

What's crazy about fixing the CO2 that we've released?

Re:Godless progressives

[drinkypoo]

You can't have it both ways - either humans are part of the system or above the system - which is it?

With a relatively low (Sub-1M) UID, I expect a better troll from you. How much did you pay for it?

Re:NOAA, please shut up.

[ColdWetDog]

Excellent. We'll all move over to your house. Recall the first word in the phrase "Global Warming".

Re:It's about time

[sumdumass]

And you do not seem to understand.

Regardless of what the oceans are doing at this moment, unless they all the sudden started doing it, it has been happening for all of time. Well, with it's variations within the system. So either the temp measured today is as valid as the temp measured yesterday, or 150 years ago, or the temps measures yesterday and 150 years ago are invalid also- due to the oceans.

You see, you cannot change mid stream and trot something that has always existed out when it is convenient or the temp record becomes inconvenient. The data as presented needs to be at least congruent with the calculations within it. Otherwise it is smoke and mirrors trying to hang onto belief that doesn't appear to be true any more.

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

Get serious. There is nothing in that paper about increasing geothermal flux. Nothing. Any rift under West Antarctica has been there for many glacial cycles. You really have no clue what you are talking about. Read my link. It has quotes from the authors of the paper you are spreading lies about.

Re:It's about time

[ColdWetDog]

You do have a point, but it must be realized that ocean currents (and structure) have changed over time. The Atlantic conveyor has formed and collapsed and reformed - the continents move around which obviously changes currents as does raising and lowering of mean sea levels. So you can't add the same numbers into the mix - it's complicated and poorly understood.

Re:It's about time

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I don't think so. Trees aren't made of fossil carbon extracted from reservoirs that don't partake in the short-term carbon cycle, there aren't all that many of them anyway, and any increase of CO2 caused by wildfires gets re-sequested fairly soon in form of new vegetation in those places.

Re:It's about time

[sumdumass]

Read my orignal link.
http://www.techtimes.com/artic...

I can see how they would back down from that.

http://www.americanthinker.com...

http://gawker.com/arrest-clima...

It's not like they are free to say anything about anything they find without fear of repercussions.

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

[quote]Good luck and prepare for Armageddon, because if you think your huffing and puffing about the man made part of this will matter to the geopolitical realities of this world, you have some really harsh lessons coming. Global warming or no, Man made or no, you can bet that countries like Russia, China and the like who[/quote]

When exactly did China and Russia tell you they want to ensure our mutual assured destruction? Ever heard of The Kyoto treaty? I dont think it was China or Russia that caused that to fail. That propaganda for the simple minded. People are people, regardless of those imaginary lines on the globe.

Your huffing and puffing is more than likely funded by the biggest profiteers in the destruction of the future of mankind, oil companies.

Nice moderation, dbag

[drinkypoo]

Here, maybe this will help. You can tell whether it's a fossil fuel or not, but not whether a person burned it, or where it came from. You can't even tell it if came from coal or oil, since both are made of C13. You simply cannot determine the original of an individual atom of carbon once it has been released into the atmosphere, only what kind of course it came from.

When you find an individual C13 molecule, you do not in fact know that human activity released it.

Note that I have argued passionately in favor of the AGW theory in this thread, so if you are moderating me down because you think I don't believe in global warming, you're an idiot.

Re:Nice moderation, dbag

[mpe]

You can tell whether it's a fossil fuel or not, but not whether a person burned it, or where it came from. You can't even tell it if came from coal or oil, since both are made of C13. You simply cannot determine the original of an individual atom of carbon once it has been released into the atmosphere, only what kind of course it came from.

IIRC where the carbon ratios of oil, coal and (petro) methane have actually been measured they have been found to vary. Even in some cases including C14. AFAIK nobody is currently monitoring the carbon ratios of what comes out of the ground, never mind fuels which wind up being burned.
Other fractors which could easily affect observed ratios in atmospheric carbon dioxide include agriculture and even temperature.

Re:Still cooler than the MWP

[Bartles]

So, the sun is getting brighter...

Re:Godless progressives

[Bodhammer]

your mom gave me some extra cash...

Re:It's about time

[khallow]

There is nothing in that paper about increasing geothermal flux. Nothing.

Fortunately, we have other places where we can look. It's well known that volcanoes are not constant in behavior or nature. They have spurts of activity. This is universal behavior for any volcano we can observe, even for relatively well-behaved volcanoes like Mauna Loa or Stromboli.

So for volcanic activity in Antarctica, we would, like any other volcanic activity on the planet, expect it to have periods of greater and lesser activity. So while it hasn't been shown that there is increasing geothermal flux (it may well be ice melting in the face of decreasing geothermal flux), this is something that has a greater effect than previously thought on the current situation in Antarctica.

Re:It's about time

[riverat1]

Here is a graph of raw data vs. adjusted data from the GHCN. The difference isn't large enough to affect the conclusions.

Why the data was adjusted and the logic for it are available in the scientific papers on the subject. Here is a document that discusses the reasons and methods of adjustments for the USHCN. I you want more detail you'll have to dig for it yourself.

*GHCN/USHCN = Global/United States Historical Climatology Network

Re:It's about time

[riverat1]

What the ocean have do they have done for all of time (at least as long as we care about). But on short time scales there are periods when more of the heat goes in the oceans and periods when more goes into the atmosphere. Quasi-cyclical things such as ENSO, the PDO. the AMO affect how much heat is absorbed by the oceans vs.the atmosphere. In the long run though they average out to zero effect.

English Empire?

[rossdee]

It was the British Empire back then, The Scotch and the Welsh went out and conquered the world too.
Remember the 24th Regiment singing Men of Harlech as they fought off the Zulus at Rourke's Drift in 1879

Re:English Empire?

[funwithBSD]

No I don't remember, even my great grandfather was but a gleam in my great great grandfather's eye.

Gold stanard

[rossdee]

"Uh why is mercury thermometers, baromiters, and sphygmomanometer's considered the gold standard then?"

Because if you have actual molten gold in the tubes of your measuring devices you know its getting too hot...

Re:It's about time

[riverat1]

The warming and cooling of the past million years was largely driven by orbital changes collectively known as Milankovitch Cycles. But those cycles operate on scales of 10,000 to 100,000 years. The changes in them over the past 200 years have almost zero effect and what effect they do have is trending toward cooling after they reached a peak about 10,000 years ago.

Re:About effin' time

[Windwraith]

Yet you are happy to use products created by other humans. I don't believe your anti-human charade.
Remember that the only reason you are here writing against humans is because humans allowed you to do it. Since it was not your invention, I think you owe humanity an apology. Know your place.

Re:It's about time

[funwithBSD]

Goddard's site shows the current NOAA chart, and the previously published NOAA chart.

The "smoothing" to fit the AGW story is pretty evident, and he is using THEIR data, so there is no "denying", just your projection.

Re:It's about time

[funwithBSD]

Obviously you would not look at the actual article and graphs presented, or you would know the smoothing is done on pre-1970s data, not 2000-2007 data.

 

Re:It's about time

[funwithBSD]

Beans. Lots of beans.

Methane is more powerful than CO2

Re:It's about time

[Curunir_wolf]

The problem is you take something like the paper you cited and act as if it's the only thing causing ice melt rather than one factor among several.

Hmmm... that sounds familiar.

Re:It's about time

[JimSadler]

Climate disruption may also refer to human lives splattered all over by wind storms created by warming whether man made or nature made or both. If a hurricane or tornado scrambles your poop before it leaves your body you will feel disruption more acutely than if your wallet blew away.

Re:It's about time

[Curunir_wolf]

When exactly did China and Russia tell you they want to ensure our mutual assured destruction? Ever heard of The Kyoto treaty? I dont think it was China or Russia that caused that to fail.

China agreed to it because they were exempted from everything, and they are now the largest producer of CO2 on the planet. Besides, it was actually the Kyoto protocol itself that failed, regardless of who did and didn't sign up for it.

Re:It's about time

[khallow]

No, the term was in use long before him. As I understand it, he proposed use of the term for propaganda purposes. And it looks to me like that term actually is being used for propaganda purposes, just not by the US GOP or the former Bush administration.

People have tried hard to rationalize why using a generic umbrella term for a very specific set of phenomena is scientifically appropriate. But it isn't. Terms are more scientific when they are more descriptive not less.

Re:It's about time

[Fjandr]

You mean, 15 consecutive years before all of the other previous records.

Here, try to hide this one too

[drinkypoo]

You're modding me down because I pointed out the stupidity of what someone said. Hell, maybe this is even a second account for that person. Well, mod me down some more. I'll get more karma tomorrow.

Re:Here, try to hide this one too

[drinkypoo]

Dude, you're not getting modded down for pointing out "the stupidity of what someone said," you're getting modded down for being an asshole. Stop it and try having a civilized conversation instead.

The moderation is gone now, so either you were the moderator and thought logging out would be sufficient to prevent your moderation being erased (hint: it wasn't) or the moderator thought better of their moderation, and posted somewhere else to remove it. Unless, of course, you were the moderator, thought better of the moderation and removed it, yet still felt the need to call me an asshole. I hope it's the second option, because the former and latter cases both boggle the mind.

In any case, like likes like, and I gave what I got. I said precisely what was said to me, except it was actually applicable when I said it.

I don't think I'm infallible. Call me out when I'm wrong. Just be sure I'm wrong. I'll try to extend you the same courtesy, even if you're afraid to log in and have your opinions associated with your account.

Prediction

[Michael Woodhams]

When El Nino leads to a new record high temperature by a large margin (for argument's sake, in 2015), the denialists will quietly adopt this as their new standard for 'normal' and in 2025 they'll be saying "warming is a hoax because temperatures haven't risen on average since 2015."

http://xkcd.com/1321/

Re:Prediction

[Eunuchswear]

Global warming ended in May 2014. You heard it here first.

Re:Prediction

[REALMAN]

When you refer to those who disagree with your THEORY as "denialists", your credibility drops to zero. People with sound arguments don't have to demonize others who disagree.

Re:Godless progressives

[gweihir]

There is no such consensus. In fact it is completely wrong. Both the egg and the sperm are alive before conception. The question is actually a different one, but you are likely unable to even understand it: When does a human being begin to exist.

You are stupid, dishonest, disgusting. Go kill yourself, which is about the only way you could contribute something positive.

Re:Still cooler than the MWP

[Curunir_wolf]

Do you have a citation saying that the MWP was warmer world wide?

Yep. There's one right here. And here is another one you won't like.

Re:It's about time

[itzly]

#6 isn't dodgy at all:

1) CO2 has been gently swinging between 200-300 ppm for at least a million years, and all of a sudden it jumped to 400 ppm since we started the industrial revolution.

2) At the same time, oxygen levels have decreased slightly, enough to explain O2+C -> CO2

3) Carbon dating the CO2 shows it is based on old carbon, so it's not coming from the biosphere

4) Total fossil fuel use is more than enough to explain the rise in CO2

5) Ocean acidity has increased, showing that oceans are absorbing CO2 rather than releasing it.

6) CO2 graph shows a smooth rising slope, consistent with human CO2 production, but not consistent with volcanic activity.

Everything points to human origin. If you have a better way to explain where the CO2 is coming from, while at the same time explaining where all the CO2 went that was produced by fossil fuel use, let us have it.

tl;dr version

[Uberbah]

Denialist trolls: explain why Venus is hotter than Mercury despite being much farther from the sun, if CO2 isn't a greenhouse gas with higher concentrations leading to higher temperatures.

Re:tl;dr version

[Uberbah]

Two can play that game:

Then you just ran the ball into your own end zone.

Hint: Nobody claimed that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas

Hint: it's the first step in denying AGW, before moving on to the "it might not really be humans" or "it might not be that bad" canards.

Re:It's about time

[itzly]

Problem for your clean argument is that it seems that the data has been modified in such a way that increases the global warming trend, by increasing the bias of the data upwards as it gets newer.

If the evil overlords controlled the data, and they wanted to show a rise, why did they allow the so called "warming pause" ?

Re:It's hard to keep the stories straight these da

[Uberbah]

Speaking truth to power with this administration means a visit from the IRS

You mean from the one group that was actually denied tax-exempt status? You know, the liberal one?

or the climate change police.

Do you still use leaded gasoline or paint because you don't think the science behind lead poisoning is "settled"? If not, why not?

Re:It's about time

[Anonymous Coward]

And I'm sure you would be quick to quote skepticalscience.com

And why not, the articles on skepticalscience.com extensively reference the original peer-reviewed science. If you don't believe skepticalscience you can go back to the original papers and if you don't believe them you can examine the maths.

That's actually what a reputable site looks like.

Re:It's hard to keep the stories straight these da

[Mashiki]

Protip: Motherjones is far-left.

Your bias is showing.

Re:It's hard to keep the stories straight these da

[CaptainLard]

Thanks for pointing that out. Its a good thing Christopher Booker (author of your "story") is here to report on NOAA data fabrication.

AND ALSO to let us know that 2nd hand smoke and lung cancer are not related, asbestos poses no risks and the /. favorite...get ready, its a doozy... Evolution is based on BS assumptions and BLIND FAITH and Intelligent Design is the truth!. If you include that last bit when you quote him it will be much easier to keep the stories straight. Your welcome!

Re:It's hard to keep the stories straight these da

[Kaenneth]

I used to set lead type in my parents print shop as a kid, and I'm perfectly fine, even after setting lead type in my parents print shop, it had no effect on me, just like setting lead type in my parents print shop.

Re:It's about time

[sjames]

We have a number of research stations out there. Got any seismograph data to support your theory? There certainly should be some.

Re:It's about time

[symbolset]

You may find this paper interesting. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...

Re:It's about time

[sjames]

Did you ACTUALLY just claim that visible light isn't hitting the Earth, or did you get confused?

Re:It's hard to keep the stories straight these da

[CaptainLard]

How the hell did you get a +4 insightful?

Speaking truth to power

Holy smokes are you president of the Christopher Booker fan club?? From his wikipedia page "...he speaks truth to power...". From the 2 minutes of research I've done on him I'd say he speaks truthiness to power. He makes his living as a professional contrarian. All of his pubilished views are the opposite of scientific consensus in a vast variety of subjects. Its possible he could be smarter than all climate scientists, cancer scientists, infectious disease scientists, and Evolutionary Biologists. But there is a much higher likelyhood that he is just full of shit.

Re:It's about time

[riverat1]

LOL, maybe so but I'm willing to adjust my veiwpoint when I get new information.

Re:It's about time

[sjames]

Perhaps briefly, soon to be reversed by the new trees growing to replace them. But since the trees wouldn't burn completely, some of the carbon would get sequestered long term under layers of soil, so over-all the cycle of burnming and re-growth sequestered carbon and caused global cooling.

We are now busy digging up many tons of that sequestered carbon and burning it.

Re:It's about time

[Khashishi]

You know, when you combine many statistically insignificant measurements together, you can get something that is statistically significant. That's how statistics work.

Re:It's about time

[riverat1]

And before it was Global Warming it was Climate Change clear back to at least the 1950's.

Plass, G.N., 1956, The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change, Tellus VIII, 2. (1956), p. 140-154.

Of course the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was created in 1988.

It doesn't matter what you call it. It matters what the effects are.

Re: It's about time

[riverat1]

ROTFLMAO! We've added so much CO2 to the atmosphere that there's no chance of that for thousands of years.

Re:It's about time

[riverat1]

Yes, long before him. Gilbert Plass published a paper in 1956 titled:

Plass, G.N., 1956, The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climatic Change, Tellus VIII, 2. (1956), p. 140-154.

Re:It's about time

[riverat1]

Third option, the author of that story is full of shit.

Re:Godless progressives

[Khashishi]

Actually, your spermatozoa or ova are also alive, and so are some of the skin cells you are shedding, so it doesn't follow that life begins at conception.

Re:It's about time

[Barsteward]

you are obviously "comprehension challenged"

Re:Still cooler than the MWP

[riverat1]

Yes, as the Sun ages it gets brighter. Graph

Re:It's about time

[Barsteward]

the journo who wrote that article has history of being a shit journalist http://www.theguardian.com/med..., a bit like Dan Enderle of SCO fame where he does no investigation and takes someone's word for it.

so don't be surprised if no-one takes the telegragh rant seriously

Re:NOAA, please shut up.

[riverat1]

Obligatory xkcd.

Re:Godless progressives

[Sarius64]

...and you they said you couldn't be courteous or civilized!

Re:It's about time

[TapeCutter]

Google "Frank Lutz memo", that's where this stupid "change of name" thing originated. The term "global warming" was coined in the seventies to describe observations of climate change, the phrase "climate change" goes back to the 50's. People in the 1950's were not looking for global warming they were trying to explain the ice ages, which cannot be done without understanding the role of CO2. The detected AGW as a consequence of that investigation. It was not until the 1950's that spectroscopes (for heat seeking missiles) became good enough to separate the H20 and CO2 absorption spectra. Until that time the H2O absorption spectra was assumed to overlap the C02 absorption spectra and thus CO2 was thought to have no effect on climate.

No Global Warning at Fox News

[Kalium70]

It has been awfully hot outside. I'm thinking about switching over to Fox News, where global warming isn't happening and the summer is as cool as ever.

Re:Watermelons!

[Indigo]

I didn't know it was possible to stuff that many conservative hot-button phrases into such a small amount of text. "I don't care if the world's getting hotter, just end the subsidies and get the government out of my way so I can get rich, you damned Oreos, I mean Watermelons." Beautiful. *Slow clap*.

Citation please

[Namarrgon]

Depends which temperature proxy you look at, but on average, nope.

Of course there may have been warmer days in the "recent" past, but we have no records of that, so the article's claim stands. And your claim requires ignoring most of the various proxy reconstructions that have been done, so it doesn't hold up either.

Re:It's hard to keep the stories straight these da

[Namarrgon]

This is the same guy that denies the link between passive smoking and cancer, and that asbestos is dangerous. I should introduce him to my friend with mesothelioma. He certainly can't be relied on for the facts.

The READ the whole Luntz paper to see how libs lie

[Anonymous Coward]

Luntz was telling right-wingers how to deal with left-wing propaganda. He was warning them that the left-wing propaganda was reaching a tipping point at at some point the right-wing positions on certain things would become untenable POLITICALLY because it would fall on "deaf ears" propagandized not to listen. Lefties twist those words to make people think Luntz was warning that the time of scientific uncertainty was ending when what he was ACTUALLY warning was that the minds of the population were being closed.

He was NOT saying "you have a limited time to lie about reality before the truth catches up" he was saying "you have a limited time to speak to a population that is persuadable and has doubts, before the left-wing propaganda takes over and people will not absorb contrary information". With each passing year, another group of kids graduate from the Democrat-run schools with their certificates-of-indoctrination. Our schools USED to teach kid HOW to think (reading, writing, math, geography, history, civics, art, music, chemistry, physics, biology) but now our schools are pumped-full of social lessons of "justice", "multiculturalism", "ecology", etc and even the courses that used to be solid content are now thoroughly-riddled with indoctrination (even in the details of word-problems in math classes and reading assignments in English classes)

Re:It's about time

[nospam007]

"Actually, I find most flamebaits to be insightful. I will always mod them insightful because they provoke heated discussions which I enjoy reading. "

You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Re:It's about time

[serviscope_minor]

Christ what a moron.

Words mean things dumbass.

Global warming means what it says on the tin. Global average temperature is going up.

Climate change means what it says on the tin. Climate not the same as before. I.e. the climate changes.

The former cause the latter becaue you know, physics.

So you can take your crackpot ranting about "shitizens" and what not and cram it, preferably while reading a dictionary to confirm what well-known words actually mean.

Re:It's about time

[Curunir_wolf]

You mad, bro?

Did you even bother to read the link? It's from the experts at Yale. So before you accuse ME of crackpottery, consider that I am only passing on the knowledge from the experts. Yell at them, if you don't like the facts.

Serious Question

[dcw3]

I see many posts pointing to the burning of fossil fuels, and the subsequent release of CO2 as the source of global warming. Presuming that the fuel was once fossils, and the fossils were once something entirely different. Where was the CO2 back then?

I'm not a "denier", and haven't honestly taken a stand in this area, though I'd tend to believe it when I read things like this http://climate.nasa.gov/scient...

Re:Serious Question

[david_thornley]

Way back when the fossil fuels were formed, the planet was a lot hotter and there was more CO2 in the air. That's the short version, anyway.

BTW, I can respect somebody who hasn't dug into the science himself and doesn't take a stand. Skepticism is good.

Re:It's about time

[serviscope_minor]

So before you accuse ME of crackpottery,

It was "shitizens" which gave it away. At least you've moved on from "sheeple". Using either of those in earnest will, however, get you firmly on the crackpot list.

Oh yeah and I did read it. The article seems to be about public perception not OMG U SHUD USE THIS TO MAKE TEH SHEEPAL F33R TEH GLOBALZ AWRNINGS OMGLOLOLOL!!111!!!1 rantery that you seem to be going on about.

In other words:
1. Words mean things (seem my previous post)
2. People think stuff.

This doesn't change the fact that the effect is global warming and the result of that is climate change.

If you don't believe me, try reading a dictionary. You will also find that "shitizens" is not a real word.

Re:It's about time

[dywolf]

yes. a texas (oil state) researcher (funded by oil companies) thinks the reason the ice sheet is melting is underwater volcanos.

which totally explains why the ice sheet is losing mass from its boundaries and upper surface, instead of the bottom surface directly and in closest contact with said theorized volcanoes....totally logical right?

do your part to stop the spread of misinformation: stop posting.

Re: It's about time

[K. S. Kyosuke]

There are multiple carbon cycles around us. One is the obvious, atmospheric one, where rotting plants and animals release CO2 and growing plants sequester it again, on a timescale of dozens of years. Another is a long term one, in which carbon contained in marine sediments gets transported deeper in the tectonic subduction zones, the hydrated carbon-containing rocks then get into areas of high temperature where their hydration decreases the melting point of those rocks and the surrounding environment to the extent that the rocks melt, form magma, and volcanism and CO2 outgassing ensues. That happens on a timescale of millions, or tens of millions of years.

There seems to be a number of feedback loops in this latter process that increase the absorption of CO2 if there is too much of it in the atmosphere and decrease its absorption if there is too little of it, while the volcanoes dump the CO2 back at some random but I guess roughly stable rate (dictated by how fast the tectonic plates deliver the carbon to be outgassed, and this process doesn't care much about what happens on the surface).

And here's the problem: The carbon we're digging up and burning right now had been slowly deposited from the atmosphere into coal and oil over a long period before we started mining it, while these feedback mechanisms had enough time to continuously keep the atmospheric CO2 at some level using these deep crust reservoirs. But now we've been burning the coal and oil quickly, so even though the total amount of carbon in the air, water, continental rocks, marine rocks and generally, the Earth's crust stays the same, and while these feedback loops are stil in effect, we're pumping it from continental rocks (coal, really) into the atmosphere way faster than these long-term cycles can re-deposit it back into the deeper crust.

(But I'm Not A Geologist, so if there is one around and I got it wrong, please correct me on anything.)

Re: It's about time

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Oh, and I forgot...

One possibility is that the carbon in the environment was much higher back in the day, but then that implies that the ecology worked with it back then too.

That is true, but also consider that Sun's radiative output is continuously increasing at a rate of about 1% every one hundred million years or so (and that has been happening throughout billions of years, and will do so for roughly the same period in the future), which essentially means that the higher CO2 levels in the past were really just a compensation for the lower solar irradiation to keep the temperature in balance. The young Earth would have frozen solid without large quantities of CO2 in the atmosphere. (In fact, some people think it did just that a few times, since it would explain some peculiar geological features. My understanding is that this is still far from having been resolved, though.)

Re:It's about time

[Curunir_wolf]

Oh yeah and I did read it. The article seems to be about public perception not OMG U SHUD USE THIS TO MAKE TEH SHEEPAL F33R TEH GLOBALZ AWRNINGS OMGLOLOLOL!!111!!!1 rantery that you seem to be going on about.

Hmmm... let's see what they say:

We found that the term "global warming" is associated with greater public understanding, emotional engagement, and support for personal and national action than the term "climate change."

This report provides results from three studies that collectively find that global warming and climate change ... activate different sets of beliefs, feelings, and behaviors, as well as different degrees of urgency about the need to respond.

[global warming generates] A greater sense of personal threat, especially among women, the Greatest Generation, African-Americans, Hispanics, Democrats, Independents, Republicans, liberals and moderates

By contrast, the use of the term climate change appears to actually reduce issue engagement by Democrats, Independents, liberals, and moderates, as well as a variety of subgroups within American society

The first use of either term that respondents were exposed to was a measure of their positive or negative affect – feelings of good or bad – associated with the term they were given. We found that the two terms evoke different affective reactions by the public.

Well, I'm not sure where you get the idea that this is nothing more than an academic exercise in etymology of terms. You'd have to be a pretty naive to think this report won't be used by engagement groups to sway public opinion.

Volcanism vs Human Emissions

[Tenebrousedge]

Humanity is emitting about one Yellowstone Supervolcano per year, or two Pinatubos per day.

Even assuming that the CO2 is natural, the forcing would still be a problem. The idea that the natural CO2 cycle is little-studied is lunatic. Aside from laboratory experiments on CO2 absorption spectra measuring the "global scale CO2 cycle" is practically the entirety of climate science.

Ice on Great Lakes in June

[freak0fnature]

I saw the map they published. They have the western Great Lake region just slightly below normal, and the eastern great lakes above average. Lake Ontario is currently at 46F in June, well below normal...yet this map has the Lake Ontario region as "above average".

Re:It's about time

[bobbied]

No, I'm claiming IR is too, but I'll stipulate #1 because it's not a major problem in the list. It's that last logical leap being made that I dispute mostly.

Can anyone say "grant standing"?

[RogueWarrior65]

Show us ALL the data and ALL the methodology.

Re:It's about time

[serviscope_minor]

Hmmm... let's see what they say:

I read what they said. don't fault me for your misrepresentation of it.

You'd have to be a pretty naive to think this report won't be used by engagement groups to sway public opinion.

You are a very confused person.

Just because people with an axe to grind will grind their axe doesn't make the terms any less accurate or appropriate.

Global warming still means that globally the average temperature is warming.

Climate change still means that the climate will change (duh).

Also, "shitizens" is *still* not a real word.

Re:It's about time

[Eunuchswear]

no you need to prove your absurd comments. sun spot activity and volcano's are the driving force in climate change.there is no scientific evidence to prove otherwise.
theories,conjecture and,pre-programmed computer models are not proof.

Sorry, not seeing it.

http://woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1980/mean:36/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1980/scale:200/mean:36

Re:It's about time

[Anon-Admin]

4) CO2 absorbed energy from IR. Falsifiable, and tested.
5) CO2 in the atmosphere is increasing. Falsifiable, and tested.

Well, yes but there is a limit to #4 and #5 I question to some extent.

So here is an experiment for you. Take a sealed room and add CO2 tell the concentration reaches 1500ppm, Add 2kw of Lighting and fill the room with plants. You will learn a few things, #1 the temperature does not increase much (.1c) #2 the plants grow much faster and larger, #3 The 1500ppm of CO2 is dropped to less than 200ppm in 48 hours, #4 You can breath just fine at 1500ppm of CO2.

Botanists and Weed growers have been augmenting CO2 in grows for years, It is common to bring the environment up to 1500ppm to increase plant growth.

Re:It's about time

[Curunir_wolf]

You're really hung up on one simple typo, aren't you.

Typical warmist responses, of course. Name calling, shouting down, and ignoring facts obvious to everyone else, and denying all obvious attempts at social engineering as "misrepresentation".

Re:It's about time

[BobMcD]

Let's try this, then:

Pay attention:
1) Electric current encountering resistance generates heat. Falsifiable, and tested.
2) The VAST majority of heat from electrical resistance is generated by humans. Falsifiable, and tested.
3) Man's use of electricity correlates directly with the hockey-stick. Falsifiable, and tested.

Unplug your computer to save the planet!!!

(By the way, don't you mean VERIFIABLE? Wouldn't it weaken the argument to use falsified data?)

It could be that in a system as vast and complex as the Earth's atmosphere, you probably can't draw up a bulleted list to explain all the reasons we're observing what we're observing. Unless you're God, you're just guessing along with everyone else. It isn't like you have a series of scale model Earths you can use to run your tests.

Here's another list...
A) We've (supposedly) been hotter than we are before, when there were (supposedly) no humans around to blame.
B) The Sahara (supposedly) used to be fertile.
C) Humans are extremely resilient creatures.
D) The Earth is quite likely more resilient, and is unlikely to explode in a ball of fire if it gets too hot. It may require some adapting, but life WILL go on.
E) Polar bears are down, but sharks are up. See D, above.
F) The impact of changing the entire human energy experience is not insignificant, and could well upend society itself if not managed properly.
G) Every government on the planet is currently ran by complete idiots, and even if they knew EXACTLY what to do, they'd still fuck up the implementation.
H) It is entirely possible that 'humans > polar bears' is a valid opinion to have.

Lists are fun. I could go on and on... :)

Re:Here's what's crazy about it

[drinkypoo]

"fixing" anything that is not "broken"

Well, I should have said fixing the carbon. As opposed to releasing it.

Even if you show that humans HAVE put "excess" CO2 into the atmosphere and are warming the planet (even over some "tipping point") you have failed to demonstrate any evidence that this is not precisely what humans, collectively as an evolved lifeform, are SUPPOSED to do. Our job in the grand scheme of things

You are making an appeal to religion. There is no purpose. There is only matter interacting with matter. If we want to continue to exist as matter organized into something identifiable as human, we need to preserve our environment in a state which can support us, and from our study of the past we know that we are creating conditions which have not existed since before the planet was habitable for our kind. All the rest of your argument is just decoration and excuses.

Re:It's about time

[serviscope_minor]

You're really hung up on one simple typo, aren't you.

Was it a typo? If so that's a funny one to hit sh instead of c. But whateves.

Typical warmist responses,

I jumped in to correct you on a pedantic point of wording. Note I never stated anything about my feelings on the matter of whether warming is happening what the consequences will be etc etc.

But yet I must be a "warmist" because I don't agree with you 100%.

denying all obvious attempts at social engineering as "misrepresentation".

Yeah you misrepresented it. You claimed they were using the terms to induce fear whereas the article was a much more unbiased look at how people perceived the different terms. They made no recommendations as to which you should use, or whether in fact the terms referred to anything real at all.

I pointed this out to you and apparently this makes me a "warmist". I have no idea what you even think you mean by "warmist" apart from "someone who doesn't believe my obvious shit 100%". Honestly, I think you should try getting your talking points from timecube.com. You will actually gain credibility at this point.

Re:Godless progressives

[Bodhammer]

Ahh, the tolerance of progressive fascists for conflicting ideas is so refreshing! Praise Gaia!

https://www.princeton.edu/~pro...

Re:It's about time

[dave420]

The climate changes ("climate change"), in this instance by getting warmer ("global warming"), which causes increased droughts and worse storms ("climate disruption"). What's so hard to understand?

Re:It's about time

[dave420]

That works for some plants, but not all, including the ones humanity has a strong need for to survive. Trying to model the world's climate by comparing it to a vaguely-described room is, well, ridiculous.

Re:It's hard to keep the stories straight these da

[Ceriel Nosforit]

Rather hilarious that anyone other than a rival nation state would seek to challenge the NOAA. Right or wrong, decision makers listen to the NOAA either directly or indirectly since they do most of the US's recce.

We need open source science

[ohmiccurmudgeon]

Face it. You can't trust anything published on the internet or other media. Trying to dig to get the actual data is about hopeless. Most of the papers on global warming refer to other papers refer to other papers refer to papers by the same author based on a computer model. Scant attention is paid to validating the models against history. Actual data collected from the field gets locked behind for-pay firewalls. I've been tracking the CO2 issue since the 1970s when I was told we needed to solve the CO2 problem by 1980 or else its all over. I've witnessed reports on the internet reporting volcanic CO2 production revised to lower the production estimate by an order of magnitude without explanation and without acknowledgement it was altered. Much of the data you see on the Web is a lie on both sides of the issue.

We all have computers or else we wouldn't be reading /. Lobby your government representatives. If a scientist accepts money from the government they must digitally sign their data and make it publicly available. If they develop computer models, they must release it open source so they rest of us and review and run it.

Global warming is probably happening, but probably not for the reasons we suspect. One eruption in Africa released more CO2 than the entire annual industrial output of the United States. In the 1980s most CO2 came from "land use change" -- the burning of rain forests. The pollution of the ocean was still unevaluated so we have no idea how much CO2 is no longer absorbed into the ocean. We're stilling coming out of the last Ice Age so Earth is going to get warmer. Perhaps it is stupid to dump more CO2 when we're already getting warmer, but is that our only global warming problem? The science has become so politically obscured that I'm afraid we're missing other real dangers.

Re:It's hard to keep the stories straight these da

[Uberbah]

I used to set lead type in my parents print shop as a kid, and I'm perfectly fine

Other than the side effect of dodging simple questions, unless that's a recent development for you.

set lead type in my parents print shop as a kid

Uh huh. Here's another simple question for you to dodge: since you were fine as a kid, and the science behind lead poisoning "isn't settled", do you give toys with lead paint to your nephews at Christmas?

If not, why not?

Re:It's about time

[Curunir_wolf]

Yeah you misrepresented it. You claimed they were using the terms to induce fear whereas the article was a much more unbiased look at how people perceived the different terms. They made no recommendations as to which you should use, or whether in fact the terms referred to anything real at all.

Thus my statement that you claimed it was nothing more than a big, expensive, academic exercise in etymology. Not really very credible. Sort of like claiming that geological studies funded by ExxonMobile are just neutral exercises to increase scientific understanding of earth processes.

I pointed this out to you and apparently this makes me a "warmist".

Duh. Because no one outside the influence of that religion would look at that document and not see the implications of manipulation by media and NGOs.

I have no idea what you even think you mean by "warmist"

Warmist A.K.A. anthropogenic global warming alarmist, engaged in evangelizing that religion and providing cover for the politicos using the issue for their own social agenda. The latter of which you have spent most of this thread doing. As well as the name-calling and shouting-down that other evangelists in your cult do a lot of lately.

Re:Still cooler than the MWP

[Curunir_wolf]

In short the first link looks like a genuine and well done paper but it doesn't say anything about the global temperature. The second link is suspicious as hell, and is either deliberately written to push an agenda, or is a terrible attempt at science that would never pass peer review.

Your ad-hominem was highly predictable. Try responding to the content, instead of looking for nefarious motives. It's a meta-study of other papers. It's well-referenced and you can go read all the papers they cite yourself.

The point is, there are MANY studies (go find your own citations, if you don't like mine) that show that the MWP was, indeed, a global phenomenon. I won't even try to explain why that's not widely reported, nor the entire history of scrubbing the episode out of the IPCC reports.

Credibility

[EverlastingPhelps]

NOAA has the same credibility as the NSA, the IRS, the VA, and all the other government agencies -- NONE. They all lie, they all lie about everything, ESPECIALLY numbers and measurements.

Re:It's about time

[danbert8]

My problem is with 7... The assumption that a warmer climate will be catastrophic or even net harmful to humanity. Even worse is number 8, the assumption that we can or should attempt to keep the climate where it has been throughout the very recent period of human societal development.

Re:It's about time

[TheRealLifeboy]

Steve Goddard is simply showing what the paid-for media shills are trying to hide. You obviously have no idea of anything judging by your remarks

Records will keep falling!

[Optali]

Indeed. El Nino seems very strong this year after a long period of injury and change of sponsor. He declared that he feels strong and well prepared and will attempt to PR this season.

Re:It's about time

[serviscope_minor]

Thus my statement that you claimed it was nothing more than a big, expensive, academic exercise in etymology. Not really very credible. Sort of like claiming that geological studies funded by ExxonMobile are just neutral exercises to increase scientific understanding of earth processes.

Aaaah so now you're attacking their motives with no evidence because you simply don't believe that people are interested in public perception of science. Well shit. You're wrong, I'm not and please provide evidence before launching personal attacks.

Because no one outside the influence of that religion would look at that document and not see the implications of manipulation by media and NGOs.

If you mean that the media has affected public perception, then no shit, sherlock. If you mean they are intentionally misrepresenting things, the put up or shut up.

Warmist A.K.A. anthropogenic global warming alarmist,

ooookkkkkaaay the crazy is strong in this one.

So because these people report on public perception of various terms that makes them "warmists" and it makes me a "warmist" too for pointing out that you're making shit up with no evidence.

The latter of which you have spent most of this thread doing.

[citation needed]. In other words I haven't. You're so wrapped up in your timecube-esque nutbaggery that you actually seem unable to read the words on the screen in front of you, instead preferring to lauch into a red mist of rage over what you believe people must be saying because (surprise!) they recognise for the incoherent nut bag that you are.

As well as the name-calling and shouting-down that other evangelists in your cult do a lot of lately.

In your case it's fair: you seem unable to read something without making up all sorts of conspiracy theories as to their motivations. That makes you a nutjob.

Seriously go join timecube, the material there is getting stale and you're sure to be able to give it a new lease of life.

What a coincidence

[MooseMiester]

The same day this comes out, the UK Telegraph runs a story about how NOAA has gone back and destroyed the temperature records by adjusting the data to prove that the computer models are working.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ear...

So who ya gonna believe? My advice... don't believe any of them, they are all liars with ulterior motives.

Re:About effin' time

[Opportunist]

Just working on humanity's downfall from the inside.

Re:It's hard to keep the stories straight these da

[micahraleigh]

You do realize there was thing identical situation where the East Anglia Institute in the UK not only fudged the corrections to "hide the decline" in global tempratures ... they were trying to keep out the people who were publishing research as they saw it.

And their problem was they couldn't find a way to discredit their opponents!

The IPCC has discredited their own reports several times as well.

People are not going to believe these global warming claims when there are so many shenanigans going on.

Re:It's about time

[khallow]

Words have the meaning that people give them. You sound like one of those autistic geektards who thinks their own personal definitions are the one and only true definitions. Good luck with that.

And you sound like you're projecting. Yes, words have meanings and they can change over time. But it doesn't take a social outcast to notice that there has been a propaganda effort in recent years to redefine climate change to mean the particular thing of AGW consequences.

Common responses from the fossilized minds

[AutodidactLabrat]

Reading up and down this thread, precisely as I might have anticipated, comes the shocking news that either there is a worldwide conspiracy of climatologists eager to get their $400 / year grants to study tree-ring O-14 ratios while passing up the Nobel Prize for proving 75 years of Climatology is a hoax OR there are a large number of otherwise capable brains here in Slashdot land who will NEVER accept the disaster of cheap fossil fuels until they themselves succumb to heat stroke.
Given human nature, and particularly the nature of psuedo-liberalism, I'm willing to place my faith in the 'conspirators' who point out that our children, not our grandchildren, are going to starve sometimes thanks to fossil fuel burning.

Re:It's about time

[funwithBSD]

Again, it talking about changes around the end of the 90 and the 00's, this shows a smoothing of the 20s to 40s spike in temperatures, erasing the heat wave of the 30s, and making the temperature record look like it slopes up in the 20th century, rather than spiking in the 30s, dipping in the 70s, and then climbing back up in the 90s and 00s.

You will also note that the EPA did not get the message about Global warming.

http://stevengoddard.wordpress...

Re: bonehead

[K. S. Kyosuke]

How exactly?

Re: chicken little

[K. S. Kyosuke]

That is no proof of lack of a causal relationship, that's at most a proof of lack of directly proportional relationship.

Re:It's about time

[i.kazmi]

Conservatives, no matter where they hail from, have one thing in common; they tend to deny any inconvenient facts. As an example just look at the case of climate change, despite the slew of peer reviewed, (almost) universally accepted (in the scientific community) publications, conservatives still somehow manage to deny climate change as just a hoax to get them to stop using their big ass SUVs and get them into unpatriotic dinky cars...

How do conservatives differentiate amongst themselves? Simple, they call conservatives from any other group (even if the differences are minor, superficial), terrorists and kill em!

Re:It's about time

[riverat1]

Good point, I'm borrowing it.

Forget May. What about January?

[iMactheKnife]

We had a record COLD winter this year. Will a one month record a few tenths of a degree higher make up for it? And how much money does the government propose taking out of the economy to fix a portion of a tenth of a degree?

Let me know when it's safe to assume this is not a political argument.

Re:It's about time

[riverat1]

There really aren't any research stations very close to this section of Antarctica near the Amundsen Sea. Map

Re: It's about time

[sjames]

While there is probably some carbon coming in from space and some escaping the atmosphere, I doubt it's at all significant. So it is close enough to zero sum.

The carbon was present in the gas clouds that formed the Earth. Back when more of it was in the atmosphere, there was a working ecosystem, but it worked for species that are now extinct. It wouldn't work very well for us or the other species on Earth now.

A big difference though is the rate of change. It was very slowly sequestered over millennia. There was time for evolution to do it's thing. We are freeing it again at a tremendous rate, much faster than it can be sequestered. I doubt it will be fast enough to wipe out all life, but it's quite possible it will wipe out all human life. Or at least make it quite miserable.

To put it in perspective, if we re-process our nuclear fuel, the nuclear waste (even that which escapes containment) will be gone long before the carbon balance is restored. Even if we stop all carbon emissions today, the zone of alienation around Chernobyl will be a forest ripe for human habitation before our existing emissions are sequestered again.

Re:It's about time

[sjames]

They look to be close enough to detect the seismic activity if there is any.

Re:It's about time

[dywolf]

Facts are not trolling.
Stop abusing mod points.

really!?!!

[crashinbrn]

OH NO!! say it isn't so!! run for the hills everybody!! the sky is falling, the sky is falling!!

Re:It's about time

[sjames]

Well, if the CO2 is a problem, which is better: More or less?

Re:It's hard to keep the stories straight these da

[dbraden]

I'm not familiar with Christopher Booker or his works (he might be full of shite the majority of the time, I just don't know), but it looks like he was right about the 1930s having the highest temp on record: NOAA Reinstates July 1936 As The Hottest Month On Record

I'm not a supporter or denier of "human-caused global warming/cooling/changing/whatever", I think people are a bit arrogant to think they have accurately modeled a system as complex as our planet's weather. To all of the fanatics on the subject, I say "tone it down, you don't know either". /shrug

Re:It's hard to keep the stories straight these da

[dbraden]

I would agree with that. "Fabrication" was used in the article, and was probably a bit of a stretch. I have no idea if there was intent to deceive at the NOAA, and am willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.