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Cause of Global Warming 'Hiatus' Found Deep In the Atlantic

vinces99 writes with news about a study that may account for a slowdown in air temperature rises. Following rapid warming in the late 20th century, this century has so far seen surprisingly little increase in the average temperature at the Earth's surface. More than a dozen theories have now been proposed for the so-called global warming hiatus, ranging from air pollution to volcanoes to sunspots. New research from the University of Washington shows the heat absent from the surface is plunging deep in the north and south Atlantic Ocean, and is part of a naturally occurring cycle. The study is published in Science. Subsurface ocean warming explains why global average air temperatures have flatlined since 1999, despite greenhouse gases trapping more solar heat at the Earth's surface. "Every week there's a new explanation of the hiatus," said corresponding author Ka-Kit Tung, a UW professor of applied mathematics and adjunct faculty member in atmospheric sciences. "Many of the earlier papers had necessarily focused on symptoms at the surface of the Earth, where we see many different and related phenomena. We looked at observations in the ocean to try to find the underlying cause." What they found is that a slow-moving current in the Atlantic, which carries heat between the two poles, sped up earlier this century to draw heat down almost a mile (1,500 meters). Most previous studies focused on shorter-term variability or particles that could block incoming sunlight, but they could not explain the massive amount of heat missing for more than a decade.

465 comments

  1. Every week there's a new explanation of the hiatus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Sweet, I can't wait for next week's alternate explanation!

    Go ahead "consensus" troll mods - do your worst to bury every skeptic questioning sketchy science on this story. Then go look in the mirror and call yourself a rational scientist.

  2. Wait by Tailhook · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Folks here have been saying that the "hiatus" is a denier hoax. But now it's real, AND we understand it!

    --
    Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
    1. Re:Wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Folks here have been saying that the "hiatus" is a denier hoax

      Please provide at least 40 citations to back this claim of yours.

    2. Re:Wait by MightyYar · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is a common tactic I see on Slashdot: "How can Slashdot be praising x when they usually say y?"

      The folks claiming that the "hiatus" is a denier hoax are not necessarily the same folks who published this paper.

      Furthermore, the argument is not that "hiatus" is a denier hoax - any fool can see temperature readings have been flat in most measured areas. The counter-argument is typically that the Earth is really big and that surface measurements alone do not necessarily represent the amount of heat absorbed by the atmosphere. Where all of that heat has been going was where the speculation has been, with the usual supposition being "the ocean" or "the poles".

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    3. Re:Wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Any single story on anything to do with weather or climate will provide you with a minimum of 40 citations. /. is chock full of self-important "scientists" that know everything about weather, climate and climate change. Even better, they all know without a doubt that any change to weather or climate is based solely on man's actions. Anything that doesn't fit their story can easily be explained by something new and exciting that is unprovable but fits their narrative.

      Chumps.

    4. Re:Wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The "hiatus" is an observed thing. What this paper is saying (if I read TFS correctly) is that the cause is not "global warming is bunk" as the deniers insist, but another piece of the global climate dynamics puzzle.

    5. Re:Wait by narcc · · Score: 1

      any fool can see temperature readings have been flat in most measured areas.

      I wouldn't go so far as to say "any fool"...

    6. Re:Wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      What I find interesting is that in a universe where heat disperses until equilibrium is reached, the deep Atlantic is somehow able to capture and hold a "massive amount of heat missing" from the rest of the planet.

    7. Re:Wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And...in that universe, heat sinks to the depths as opposed to rising in an upwelling.....

    8. Re:Wait by Citizen+of+Earth · · Score: 1

      or "the dog ate my homework!"

    9. Re:Wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well those folks were wrong. Scientists have been saying that the claim "the hiatus disproves climate change" is wrong. Deniers have been misrepresenting the hiatus and "folks" may have just used imprecise speech if they said the hiatus was a hoax, instead of, the misrepresentations of the hiatus are a hoax.

    10. Re:Wait by FatLittleMonkey · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Deep ocean water is cold.

      Because the Pacific ocean is thousands of kilometres wide, but only a couple of kilometres deep, changes in wind patterns can cover or uncover different layers of ocean waters.

      If the pattern uncovers a deep layer (as happens during La Nina), then the atmosphere cools.

      If the pattern covers the deep layers (as happens during El Nino), then the atmosphere warms.

      This is above and in addition to any underlying warming from rising CO2 levels.

      Since 2000 there's been an unusual number of La Nina years. Under normal circumstances, this should have produced a noticeably cool period, similar to the 1940s and 1890s. Instead the decade was still the warmest on record. Weird huh.

      --
      Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
    11. Re:Wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The average depth of the Pacific Ocean is over double the couple of kilometers you stated (about 4.2 km) with a maximum depth of over 10000 km. Doesn't change your point, but it when numbers are off significantly, it does detract from it.

      Amazingly enough, since 2000, it stopped heating (within any reasonable set of error bars on a data set not smoothed for longer than 10 years) and it looks like next year will be pretty damned cold. If this keeps up, it could be similar to the 1940's and 1890's. Howzabout that.

      You are totally right about deep water being cold. With a heat capacity significantly greater than air, it will take a lot more heat to hide before we achieve a difference in deep water temperature that can be detected with any thermometer not in a laboratory, as well. If they can't measure it, have they really detected anything? Predicted, perhaps. Hypothesized, certainly. ARGO didn't even reach the ability to have a statistically significant measurement capability until the middle of the last decade, so actually detecting something in this way is probably another 15 years off. I look forward to seeing the results. "I love it when a prediction comes together." (with apologies to 'Hannibal')

    12. Re:Wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Actually, if you've followed climate scientists online, you'd know that they've been pointing to deep ocean as the place for the missing heat for a long time now. What data there was also supported that theory. Only problem was that deep ocean temperatures aren't nearly as well observed as surface temperatures, so the data was spotty.

      This guy is, understandably, overstating the prior uncertainty in order to promote his own research.

    13. Re:Wait by mpe · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Since 2000 there's been an unusual number of La Nina years.

      We don't have enough observations to ever begin to know what is "usual" in the first place.

      Under normal circumstances, this should have produced a noticeably cool period, similar to the 1940s and 1890s. Instead the decade was still the warmest on record.

      Even the longest records we have may well be a few orders of magnitude too short to be of much use here. That's before even considering issues of accuracy, when can even apply to records being currently collected.

    14. Re:Wait by dave420 · · Score: 2, Informative

      No, the deniers have been saying there has been no warming during their cherry-picked years. Science has shown that there has been warming, but the rate of warming has been less than one would expect. See the difference?

    15. Re:Wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It detracts from the point when the numbers are off significantly? You mean your error by a factor of 1000 in the maximum depth of the ocean?

    16. Re:Wait by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1

      This guy is, understandably, overstating the prior uncertainty in order to promote his own research.

      Is he? http://articles.latimes.com/20...

      Xie has argued that the hiatus is the result of heat absorption by the Pacific Ocean — a little-understood, naturally occurring process that repeats itself every few decades. Xie and his colleagues presented the idea in a study published last month in the prestigious journal Nature.

      The theory, which is gaining adherents, remains unproved by actual observation. Surface temperature records date to the late 1800s, but measurements of deep water temperature began only in the 1960s, so there just isn't enough data to chart the long-term patterns, Xie said.


      This was just last year from a respected climate scientist who apparently was on the right track. Did we get all that needed data in just one year? Logic doesn't hold. They may have firmed up the theory, it is still a work in progress,. I think a large food source for the skeptics is the constant minimization or even complete dismissal of the uncertainties by many who report the science. Science reporting sucks so bad these days that anyone can conclude anything they want.

    17. Re:Wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      No, the deniers have been saying there has been no warming during their cherry-picked years.

      Not true!!! Im one of the "deniers" that you are referring to, so let me clarify our position: Im not currently, nor ever did, deny that the earth is getting warmer. There is empirical evidence that supports that claim. That is a fact. What I and most of the "deniers" questioned falls into 2 categories.

      First was the highly speculative models that required large numbers of "guesses" for parameters to determine that humans were responsible for any significant amount of it. Most of the models Ive read about show that human activity is only a tiny sliver compared to other factors, especially water vapor from evaporation.

      The second category is all the "certain doom" folks to say we "must act now" or else "the earth will certainly perish". That is an old salesman tactic and translates to "act now before you have time to think this all the way through". Those folks message is no different than those crazy homeless people carrying signs saying that rapture is here, with the only change being that they are claiming science as their religion and talking on TV instead of using handwritten signs.

    18. Re:Wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow the Maximum ocean depth is nearly that diameter of earth! How does that work?

    19. Re:Wait by tbannist · · Score: 2

      What I and most of the "deniers" questioned falls into 2 categories.

      Actually, no. You're falling for the false-consensus effect. There are a whole lot of different "denier" opinions, but yours is not one of them. You are making false cause with people who actually think that you're a deluded global warming apologist. The people who are correctly labelled as deniers are those who actually deny that global warming is happening. Generally, they deny that the greenhouse effect exists, that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, or they deny that man is producing significant amounts of CO2.

      The people, like you, who claim that the models are overstating future warming and that unchecked global warming won't dangerous are luke-warmers, not deniers.

      Most of the models Ive read about show that human activity is only a tiny sliver compared to other factors, especially water vapor from evaporation.

      Let me explain a bit here. Water vapor is effectively constantly at saturation in the atmosphere, evaporation and precipitation keep it relatively well balanced. The major factor that determines how much water vapor is in the atmosphere is temperature. So, it's a feedback effect, water vapor amplifies the warming caused by other factors such as CO2 and Milankovitch cycles. Additionally, CO2 gets the lion's share of attention because it's a long lasting gas and we produce a lot of it. It will likely take centuries for CO2 levels to fall back to pre-industrial levels even if we cut emissions to zero right now. Other, more potent gases, tend to have half-lifes that are measured in years instead of decades or centuries and we produce orders of magnitude smallers amounts of them. So while CO2 is a relatively weak greenhouse gas, we produce a lot of it and some of the other gases, like water vapor, amplify it's effect.

      --
      Fanatically anti-fanatical
    20. Re:Wait by dywolf · · Score: 1

      No, it's not suddenly real.
      It's a misconception on the part of deniers.

      Tempereatures were still rising, simply at a lower rate.

      The process of taking a GLOBAL, YEARLY average of LOCAL, DAILY (even hourly) observations masks the extreme variation around the world, as we see more higher highs and lower lows around the world, depending on local condition.

      The overall state of being has still been a net gain of energy to the system (where system = Earth).

      That's why when deniers talk about a "pause" or "hiatus" we shake our heads and say "you poor dumb non-mathmatical idiot".
      That's why we say the "hiatus doesn't exist"....because the hiatus as the deniers try to paint DOESN'T EXIST.
      they fundamentally misunderstand and misstate the concept, and try to use their flawed concept to back their completely flase claim that "GW isn't real".

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    21. Re:Wait by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      The "hiatus" is real, but can be presented as a hoax.

      Presented as an unexplained break in global warming, it's a hoax. It's been known for a long time that the oceans were absorbing the heat. To suggest that global warming has mysteriously been on "hiatus" due to a drop in surface temperatures alone is highly misleading.

      An analogy I've used before is someone predicting that a roof leak will cause a bucket to fill at a certain rate. But then it turns out that there is a small hole in the side of the bucket and when the water reaches it, it starts leaking out onto the floor. The "hiatus" hoax is to say "See, your predictions about the roof leak were wrong, alarmist! Look at how the bucket hasn't filled to the level you've predicted!"

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    22. Re:Wait by khallow · · Score: 1

      Where all of that heat has been going was where the speculation has been, with the usual supposition being "the ocean" or "the poles".

      And "outer space". That is the rub. The attempts to find the "missing heat" assume it's still on Earth and then look for it. Presuming the conclusion is a standard fallacy. But for example, the same reason that the poles could hold missing heat is the same reason that the heat might be in space - namely, that satellites aren't properly measuring heat content and heat radiation to space from the poles.

    23. Re:Wait by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is bad news for me.

      If this acceptance of the "hiatus" situation continues, I'll have lost any easy way to tell the truly informed from the ignorant activists.

    24. Re:Wait by im_thatoneguy · · Score: 1

      You're completely misrepresenting the facts. Nobody has denied that temperatures had flatlined. What they objected to was the false conclusion that the hiatus meant global warming was over.

      Every single rebuttal of the "hiatus" that I've seen has been essentially "Yes there is a pause in global warming, but only if you carefully narrow the years studied."

      For instance if you look at short segments of the long term warming trend you can find multiple instances of where over the course of a number of years it actually cooled. The hiatus proponents have essentially been looking at the temperature over a week time and said "looks like there'll be no winter this year, it's been warming the entire first week of November!"

      So yes, it is a denier hoax, in that it hasn't meant the end of Global Warming as Deniers have proposed. And yes we understand the cause of this specific short term variability. If it suddenly got much hotter than we predicted we would also look for an explanation as to why things are above expected predictions.

      Climate ultimately is somewhat simple. Just like a perpetual motion machine claim you have to look for input and output energy. Even though the world wasn't warming, it was still absorbing a massive amount of energy. Where was it going? If your water tank has a leak you can clearly see its level going down. You can know there is a leak without knowing the cause. There was a "leak" in the energy models. We knew how much water (heat) should be in the tank (world) but even with lots of water going in we didn't know where it was going since the water level wasn't rising (earth wasn't warming).

    25. Re:Wait by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      The attempts to find the "missing heat" assume it's still on Earth and then look for it.

      I have to chaff a little bit at "assume". They don't blindly assume anything - the models that scientists have been working on for 30 or 40 years all say that the heat is still on earth. They have to "find" the heat to improve the models. You could be correct - the heat could be escaping through some mechanism that is not understood or currently measured, but that's not the high-percentage bet.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    26. Re:Wait by khallow · · Score: 1

      They don't blindly assume anything - the models that scientists have been working on for 30 or 40 years all say that the heat is still on earth.

      And if the models are right, that's just fine. Reality, however, doesn't have this tendency to assume that the models are right.

      You could be correct - the heat could be escaping through some mechanism that is not understood or currently measured, but that's not the high-percentage bet.

      Like an ozone hole that we already know is present? Or radiative models that turn out to be incorrect.

    27. Re:Wait by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      Like I said, you could be correct. My bet, however, would be with the people who dedicate their lives to study such things. They are obviously fallible, being human - but they are still the best that we have.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    28. Re:Wait by khallow · · Score: 1

      We can do better than that "best" just by paying attention to what the climate actually does over the next few decades.

    29. Re:Wait by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      Of course, but that sort of defeats the purpose of forecasting. The idea is to predict what is going to happen in the future so that you can make good decisions with your resources. Knowing that average temperatures are rising, and to what extent, is useful information.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
    30. Re:Wait by khallow · · Score: 1

      If your forecasts are garbage, then it's a bad idea to use that forecast for "making good decisions" (which actually aren't). I think that sums up the current state of climate modeling.

    31. Re:Wait by MightyYar · · Score: 1

      I disagree, but then neither of us are climate scientists so our opinions are pretty worthless.

      --
      W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
  3. Yet agian... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Looking for a scientific foundation why the pre determined conclusion of global warming isn't happening...

  4. Astrophysics has the answer! by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's Dark Matter.

    If anything's missing, the answer always is Dark Matter.

    Can't find your car keys . . . ? Dark Matter.

    Short on your mortgage this month . . . ? Tell the bank, "Dark Matter."

    The Earth is not as hot as we'd like it to be . . . ? Dark Matter.

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    1. Re:Astrophysics has the answer! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Well, technically, the bottom of the Atlantic is dark matter....

    2. Re:Astrophysics has the answer! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's Dark Matter.

      If anything's missing, the answer always is Dark Matter.

      i cud nevr find waldo. nw i kno y lol

    3. Re:Astrophysics has the answer! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's Dark Matter.

      If anything's missing, the answer always is Dark Matter.

      i cud nevr find waldo. nw i kno y lol

      Like you're going to find Waldo.

      You can't even find a dictionary.

    4. Re:Astrophysics has the answer! by Tablizer · · Score: 1

      Yes, I get Dark Mod Points all the time.

    5. Re:Astrophysics has the answer! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thats not very fair to Dark Energy... Dont forget Dark Energy...

      Did you fart? Nope, it was dark energy

    6. Re:Astrophysics has the answer! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is it possible that today's climate mysteries are caused by some unknown intelligent life? According to some ancient astronaut theorists, the answer is yes.

  5. My drink... by issicus · · Score: 1

    stays pretty dang cold till the last ice cube melts.

    1. Re:My drink... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not according to scientific fact, it doesn't.

    2. Re:My drink... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Please check your data, how cold is "pretty dang cold"?

    3. Re:My drink... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Not according to scientific fact, it doesn't.

      I concur. The scientific community as a whole tacitly understands that "pretty dang cold" is qualified by any beverage whose liquid temperature is -12 deg. C. or less. For your ice to be melting, it must therefore by definition be warmer than "pretty dang cold."

    4. Re:My drink... by msauve · · Score: 3, Funny

      I use ethanol ice (-114 C), you insensitive clod.

      (And before you get pedantic, what else might you be drinking which is liquid at -12C?)

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
  6. Hiatus? by drfred79 · · Score: 1

    Hiatus presumes reoccurrence. Never use past days to predict future occurrences.

    1. Re:Hiatus? by mdsolar · · Score: 1

      Does not you complaint presume non-reoccurrence? Owing to physics, it is expected warming will continue. So, this may be considered a pause from the expected behavior. This is not merely an extrapolation of past behavior, so your thinking is baseless.

  7. why this article is nonsense by BradMajors · · Score: 2, Informative

    An explanation why this article is nonsense:

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...

    1. Re:why this article is nonsense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Informative?

      The only useful information in someone posting a wtfupwiththat link is that the poster is a moron.

    2. Re:why this article is nonsense by Xyrus · · Score: 3, Informative

      An explanation why this article is nonsense:

      http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...

      WUWT is one of the absolute worst sites you can go to for any kind of "scientific analysis". They wouldn't make it through a first year statistical analysis course, let alone any sort of rigorous review process.

      --
      ~X~
    3. Re:why this article is nonsense by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      Mod GP Funny!

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    4. Re:why this article is nonsense by jwhitener · · Score: 1

      At this point in time, don't you think anyone referring to WUWT must be a paid shrill or paid deceiver of some sort? How can the world at large not know that WUWT is full of crap by now?

  8. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Namarrgon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Do enlighten us - please link to an example of "sketchy science" that has been proved wrong by more solid, peer-reviewed science.

    Strangely, all the examples I can find just support the consensus view.

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  9. Well, at last by Anna+Merikin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Not only does this explain a lot of the recent data, but it also directs attention to an ignored part of climatology: the vulcanism under the oceans and the warm currents they cause at very deep levels.

    Good going, guys and guyettes!

    1. Re:Well, at last by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      The heat from the earth's crust is microscopic compared to incoming energy from the sun. The energy required to heat the oceans is immense.

      Underseas volcanoes heating up the water is a plausible-sounding thing to people who have no sense of scale, which is why coal lobbyists have been wink-wink nudge-nudging towards it for a long time.

    2. Re:Well, at last by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

      But does it explain why everyone pointing out the global cooling trend and the halt of global warming over the past decade or so gets shouted down with "THERE IS NO SUCH THING GLOBAL WARMING HAS NEVER STOPPED!"?

      I've been pointing out the halt in global warming trends for a year; the UK and Europe at large have been looking at the cooling trend, worrying about global cooling. I keep getting told to stop smoking what I'm smoking, because no such thing is happening, and I'm probably reading some crackpot site like Mericola or something stupid.

      Now this. Science explains it.

      Science explains the crackpot shit I've been spouting, that isn't really happening.

      What's up with that?

    3. Re:Well, at last by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

      Did someone who isn't a strawman actually tell you that?

      Here's an explanation I've posted further up in the thread:

      http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

      Anyone who said the drop in surface temperatures wasn't happening was an idiot. Someone should have told you that suggesting that this fact meant global warming had halted or reversed was highly misleading and ignorant. In fact I'll dig through my emails to see if I ever pointed this out to you myself, I know I have to many others.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    4. Re:Well, at last by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Global average heat flow from the crust is between ~65mW/m^2 on continents and ~100mW/m^2 (that's milliwatts). Absorption of solar radiation is over 200 W/m^2 on average. That's quite a few orders of magnitude difference in potential direct heat input from volcanoes (versus the atmospheric effects from ash), especially when much of that geothermal heat flow isn't volcanic, and is just heat radiating out of the crust through the rock. It's hard to believe variation in sub-sea volcanism is significant enough to account for anything climatic over century timescales, especially on a global scale, but I'd be interested in any references if you have them.

    5. Re:Well, at last by Anna+Merikin · · Score: 1

      I have seen about 440 BTU/hr/ft^2. in solar reflector design manuals. This is close to your figure for solar radiation. I have no idea about ocean vent heating, as the *data is not yet available.* This is the point of the article -- that the data is only now being gathered. One data point: The part of the vulcanism measured in the North Atlantic produces one cubic kilometer of new rock every year. What is the heat equivalent of that? I don't know. What part of the earth's total undersea heating does this constitute? I have no idea. How does this affect surface currents, if at all? I dunno. How do surface currents impact weather/climate patterns? No one is sure. Not even you. But, we may soon know these things.

    6. Re:Well, at last by sl3xd · · Score: 1

      ...the vulcanism under the oceans..

      There's a religious sect that lives under our oceans that practices the philosophy of logic and supression of emotions!?!

      Sweet. Maybe we can get them to get our government to do something logical for a change.

      --
      -- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
    7. Re:Well, at last by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      The part of the vulcanism measured in the North Atlantic produces one cubic kilometer of new rock every year.

      That's in an ocean of of over 150,000,000 cubic kilometers volume.

  10. Re:Washington DC think tanks by drfred79 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Debunk this latest what? Latest gloss over to cover up horrible weather models. I seriously wish my full time job was debunking Anthropomorphic global climate change piggybackers

  11. Re:This will be a thoughtful, productive discussio by sumdumass · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Well, i guesd i'm one of your denialist because i have yet to hear an explanation to why all the sudden a long standing natural occurance is given more weight than when it previously naturally occured which was forever. Well, i taje that back. I have yet to hear an explaination that isn't convoluted and makes me laugh.

  12. Movie Fiction by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "we’ve hit a critical desalination point.” #3 in the MIT Technology Review list of worst "Science" in Science Fiction Movies.
    http://www.technologyreview.com/view/424251/the-five-worst-hard-science-fiction-movies-ever/

    Now bad Movie "Science" morphs into University of Washington: "Many of the earlier papers had necessarily focused on symptoms at the surface of the Earth, where we see many different and related phenomena."

    Ah. Excuse me but the Earth is not alive and so the word "symptoms" is not germane and factually incorrect.

    [Do these "Science Types" just pull words from Wikipedia and not know what they mean even alone or in context?]

    1. Re:Movie Fiction by matfud · · Score: 1

      Symptom does not mean what you think it does. It does not only mean indicators of a disease.

  13. Re:Well, that's bad news... by drfred79 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Realclimate.Org....... The governmental agencies are crooked enough. Do you really need a full throttle biased website? "Hey guys wattsup just said climate change is fake!"

  14. The chart is cool to look at ... by MacTO · · Score: 2

    It clearly shows a relationship between atmospheric temperature, energy stored in the ocean, and salinity. Whether you agree or disagree with the interpretation of the data in terms of global warming, at least they have provided us with a nice visual demonstrating the relationship between the ocean and the atmosphere.

  15. Re:Washington DC think tanks by Noah+Haders · · Score: 2, Insightful

    dude, there is so much money in AGW that there's no way to stop the gravy train. there's no way you can stop the gravy train.

  16. Re:Well, that's bad news... by Anon-Admin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I nether believe in global warming nor do I deny that it could be happening. I am simply interested in the science put forward and am open to adjusting my hypothesis based on the observed and tested results.

    With that out of the way, the fact that some scientists are saying that there is no actual "Hiatus" and producing numbers to back up there claims while others are examining the temperature data and looking for new systems and processes that explain the changes they are seeing worries me. It tells me that some in the scientific community have abandon the scientific method and are attempting to make the data fit the hypothesis they have. Don't get me wrong, this happens far more often in science than most believe. However, in such a hot political topic one must be vigilant and make sure that the politics does not overshadow the truth we learn through science.

    Ether way you look at it, the discovery of a new process within the chaotic system of the atmosphere simply adds more data to the mix and allows us to better understand the processes.

  17. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Then you're not looking very hard.

  18. Re:Fun Fact by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They factored it in now so they can continue the climate change scam. Hey, all that heat is in the ocean....except that it's not.

  19. Re:Washington DC think tanks by drfred79 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Seriously just join the EPA, or Greenpeace that internationally funnels money to influence politicians. Green peace Russia receives funds from Russian oil to shut down foreign oil research. BUT THAT'S OKAY. Russian oil is thinking green.

  20. Re:Garbage in, Garbage out... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Until the authors of this piece got ahold of the swift bouy data, it didn't show such a warming signal at depth. They massaged and doctored and tortured the data until it did show such a signal, much like climate fraudster Michael Mann's oft discredited hockey stick, Briffa's discredited Yamal tree ring data that did not exclude outliers and had 90% of all climate signal in it credited to a single tree, ignoring hundreds of others in the same area that showed no signal, and Ben Santer's broken antarctic weather stations that he used to allege warming in Antarctica with a little help from illegitimate use of homogenization effects improperly applied.

    How dare you state inconvenient truths?

  21. Re:Fun Fact by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yet the climate buffoons ignore the oceans in their models.

    OK, I am down on climate models, because they have poor accuracy, but come on, they don't ignore the oceans in their models. Check it out on Wikipedia at least before writing something.

    You might be able to say that their handling of the oceans is incorrect, and if you have a good reason, such a post would be interesting, but scientists definitely aren't ignoring the oceans in their models, I don't even know why you would think that.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  22. Re:Well, that's bad news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Really??? Hey, I have a bridge to sell ya! You interested?

  23. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Interesting

    please link to an example of "sketchy science" that has been proved wrong by more solid, peer-reviewed science.

    I know you're just smacking down a troll, but climate models have been over-estimating warming for years, as demonstrated by this science.

    That's not to say that climate models are bad science, they are good science investigating the nature of the earth; but people who put too much faith in them without evidence were performing bad science.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  24. Re:This will be a thoughtful, productive discussio by bhlowe · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Funny you call them denialists for being.... right! What do you call Al Gore? Good intentioned?

  25. Atmosphere affects about a few inches of surface by SuperKendall · · Score: 2

    At least they have provided us with a nice visual demonstrating the relationship between the ocean and the atmosphere.

    Why is it nice to be misled?

    In reality the atmosphere affects the temperature of a few inches of water on top of the ocean.

    Far vaster of an impact is solar energy input.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  26. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by dnavid · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sweet, I can't wait for next week's alternate explanation!

    Go ahead "consensus" troll mods - do your worst to bury every skeptic questioning sketchy science on this story. Then go look in the mirror and call yourself a rational scientist.

    Science is about skepticism. Even climatologists that support the theory of man influenced climate change are constantly questioning the data, and looking at alternate conjectures. The very article referenced explicitly states that many of the theories that were presented to explain why global surface temperatures in the last decade did not track the apparent heat load global warming induced were inadequate, and the subject of further inquiry like the research cited. That's how Science works. But Science doesn't discover all the facts instantly and doesn't advance in convenient textbook chapters. It isn't skepticism that tries to characterize Science as just a bunch of random guesses, one after the other. That's just ignorance of Science. Science works by incremental and sometimes studdering progress forward. There are lots of things we know with certainty. We know carbon dioxide traps heat in Earth's lower atmosphere. We know human activities have dramatically increased the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. The net result is an increased amount of heat absorbed by the Earth. What precisely happens to that heat in all of the complex thermal systems on Earth is still not well understood. But that doesn't mean the core principles are just random guesses. We're still discovering how 19th century chemistry works, but no one thinks that new chemistry discoveries mean chemistry is left-wing conspiracy.

    The history of scientific progress looks no different for any other subject than it looks for 21st century climatology. Our understanding of gravity, of the germ theory of infectious disease, of quantum mechanics all followed similar discovery and learning curves. The only difference is that general relativity and Schroedinger's equation aren't subjects politicians can effectively argue about.

    I think a lot of people, even some actual scientists, do not understand the role of skepticism in Science. There's a difference between scientific skepticism and peanut gallery skepticism. Scientific skepticism is healthy. When a scientist is skeptical of prevailing theories and conducts intellectually honest research aimed at probing that skepticism, that's always valuable. Science isn't a poll: if a scientific theory is correct, it will survive skeptical research. If its wrong, it will eventually be contradicted by the evidence. But when someone with no understanding of the facts or the research misinterprets the natural skepticism that is at the heart of scientific discovery by filtering it through their own "common sense" then they don't understand why science is successful overall, and really ought to shut up about it.

  27. Re:Washington DC think tanks by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1, Interesting

    why would I get a govt desk job at EPA when I can make a fortune in clean technology, driven by the urgency of climate change? real urgency or artificial urgency, the money's still green.

  28. And there you are by SuperKendall · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The real denialists are, and always have been, the ones who think science is never to be questioned.

    You are more the zealot than anyone who ever came out of Bob Roberts U.

    It will be nice a decade or two hence when it is undeniable just how far you have allowed yourself to be duped (well actually it is the case now, but even you will admit it in 20 years).

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:And there you are by crioca · · Score: 0

      The real denialists are, and always have been, the ones who think science is never to be questioned.

      I hear Creationists using that line a lot.

    2. Re:And there you are by SuperKendall · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You know what is even more similar to what religions do? Using a term like "heretics" - only your variant is called "denialists". Yes, religions have been using that trick for hundreds of years to escape questions.

      Another way you can tell you are part of a cult is when your high priests are telling you to sacrifice something while they live in comfort and plenty.

      I guess really though, we should say what you are involved in it far closer to scientology, with adjusted core sample data replacing e-meters...

      --
      "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    3. Re:And there you are by FatLittleMonkey · · Score: 1, Troll

      Yes, religions have been using that trick for hundreds of years to escape questions.

      No, what religions do is torture and murder heretics. Science just doesn't pay attention to them until they meet higher standards of evidence, proportionate to the level of heresy. Tiny bit different.

      --
      Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
    4. Re:And there you are by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

      A denialist actually has absolutely no logical similarity to a heretic.
      I'm sure you're educated enough to know that, right?

      Scientist A could consider Scientist B a heretic, because Scientist B doesn't quite tow the party line (and Scientist A was retarded)

      There's no science involved in the screeching psychobabble that oozes from you, sir.

    5. Re:And there you are by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think if you ask most climate scientists who accept that global anthropogenic climate warming is happening, you'd find that a great majority hope and wish they were wrong. Many of them spend a great deal of time searching for evidence that they might be. Speaking for myself, that's one serving of crow I'd happily eat if it meant that the next generation didn't have to deal with some pretty challenging changes in the next few decades.

    6. Re:And there you are by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      The real denialists are, and always have been, the ones who think science is never to be questioned.

      It's fine to question science but it needs to be done in a scientific manner. If you can't make a cogent scientific argument then your questions are useless and a waste of time to real scientists. Continually bringing up things that have already been examined and rejected without finding unexpected new evidence is getting old.

      It will be nice a decade or two hence when it is undeniable just how far you have allowed yourself to be duped (well actually it is the case now, but even you will admit it in 20 years).

      I would turn that around and aim it at you.

  29. What we do know - by RichMan · · Score: 2

    What we do know is that we don't know exactly how the whole system works. The whole system being the planetary carboin cycle on which we depend for our one and only nice comfortable life sustaining climate.

    Given that we don't know how it all works and we depend on it are we really happy shitting in our own bathtub by releasing all sorts of long term stored carbon? Wouldn't it be better to slow down to a more natural rate and study the thing before we continued doing what might be self destructive.

    1. Re:What we do know - by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Given that we don't know how the carbon cycle works; why do we allow unlimited numbers of immensely destructive carbon life forms to appear and wreak havoc? A lot of problems (food, water, climate, war, etc.) would be rendered insignificant if 90% of the most destructive carbon life forms were eliminated. Then, you could live in your agrarian paradise in peace.

    2. Re:What we do know - by Kaenneth · · Score: 1

      Ebola is trying as hard as it can.

  30. They melt by mdsolar · · Score: 1

    in order?

  31. LOL realclimate.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    Asking them for an unbiased scientific opinion is about as credible as asking foxes for an unbiased opinion on whether chickens are tasty.

    The site gives proper scientists a bad name. Their only concern is looking after Hansen's reputation, and they gang up and abuse anyone who dares raise proper scientific questions, or who opens discussion about counter-evidence, or suggests that there is something we do not know about the subject. They think the planet works as trivially as a test tube.

    And then they affirm their lack of scientific integrity with a site ban. Really, the site is best classified as comedy. They don't understand the basis of scientific inquiry nor the scientific method, and think that science is decided by unshakeable opinion and shouting people down.

    1. Re:LOL realclimate.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      . They don't understand the basis of scientific inquiry nor the scientific method, and think that science is decided by unshakeable opinion and shouting people down.

      Well, in politics that worked for Obama and the Democrats. Winning at all costs is acceptable to some people.

    2. Re:LOL realclimate.org by sg_oneill · · Score: 2

      Asking them for an unbiased scientific opinion is about as credible as asking foxes for an unbiased opinion on whether chickens are tasty.

      Give me an example of a "biased" opinion on that site. Just one. But to be sure we are speaking clearly here, lets lay down some ground rules.
      1) By "biased" I assume you mean "claim not from the scientific literature
      2) And is contradicted by a claim from the scientific literature.

      Keep in mind here that *all* the staff of realclimate (that I'm aware of) are working climate scientists with unchallenged scientific reputations in the actual field (ie not "cranky undergrad geologist" or "television weatherman") , so if your going to make big claims about this site, be sure to use big evidence!

      The site gives proper scientists a bad name. Their only concern is looking after Hansen's reputation,

      Why does hanson's reputation need to be protected. The man hasn't done anything wrong! Having lots of spiral-eyed pseudoscience bloggers yelling at you isn't a personality fault dude!

      and they gang up and abuse anyone who dares raise proper scientific questions, or who opens discussion about counter-evidence, or suggests that there is something we do not know about the subject. They think the planet works as trivially as a test tube.

      They report on the science. If you think theres counter-evidence, the correct forum is to write a paper and submit it to any one of the hundreds of journals that operate in the field. Remember though, big claims require big evidence, and to overturn human driven climate change would likely require junking about a century of physics progress. Theres a Nobel prize in this one if anyone ever did find such evidence!

      And then they affirm their lack of scientific integrity with a site ban. Really, the site is best classified as comedy. They don't understand the basis of scientific inquiry nor the scientific method, and think that science is decided by unshakeable opinion and shouting people down.

      Whats wrong with a site ban? Having people going on there spouting pseudo-science and then demanding scientists go over the same damn points over and over refuting it gets tiring when theres a perfectly good index on the site for people to educate themselves as to why the pseudo science they are spouting is wrong.

      Remember boys and girls, science is not a democracy, it actively silences incorrect opinions becuase they are wrong and don't need to be listened to. The politics forums are elsewhere.

      --
      Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
    3. Re:LOL realclimate.org by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      And then they affirm their lack of scientific integrity with a site ban.

      No, they just don't countenance bullshit.

  32. The Unearthly Glow by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    The bioluminescent denizens of the deep would like you to step down so as have a chat with you.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:The Unearthly Glow by Kaenneth · · Score: 2

      Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

  33. Long ranging consequences... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well,...

    is there a global warming?
    YES

    Is it ONLY man made? (or caused)

    NO, but with SIGNIFICANT man-made contribution.

    We are burning fossil fuels(oil, gas, coal), which took millions of years to create (accumulate.)

    And where are the long ranging consequences of human acts?

    Consider the acts of old Greeks/Romans:

    a) too many goats on islands - erosion
    b) too many wood cutting / also erosion (but let's not deny it, the climate in Europe has certainly changed also due to less woods- due to e.g. Roman sieges, but of course, much more due to agricultural need for pastures and fields, which was certainly not only because of Romans...)
    c) political: well, what about the Palestine? I partially "blame" the "old Romans", for all the suffering of Jews throughout the ages(in diaspora), and also, indirectly, significantly contributing even the current situation in Israel(even after cca 1979 years)
    Were they not "forced to leave", they would not have returned :-)

  34. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by silfen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think a lot of people, even some actual scientists, do not understand the role of skepticism in Science. There's a difference between scientific skepticism and peanut gallery skepticism. Scientific skepticism is healthy.

    Scientists can speculate and debate as much as they want whether it's getting warmer or colder. The issue with the global warming debate is the political demands to translate the science into specific actions, often by scientists who have no qualifications in economics or politics.

  35. Aw shit, here comes Cuthulu. by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 1

    As if global warming isn't scary enough.

    1. Re:Aw shit, here comes Cuthulu. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And his methane laden belches.

      Thing is, there's a LOT of methane trapped down in the deep oceans as clathrates. When the temperature starts rising at the ocean floor those start breaking down, and methane is a far more potent greenhouse gas than CO2

    2. Re:Aw shit, here comes Cuthulu. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is a lot of methane trapped in your guts. Hold on to it.

  36. Re:This will be a thoughtful, productive discussio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes, that is the attitude we love to see people have. Closed minded and refusing to have any discussion that doesn't go their way.

  37. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    Regardless of the role of skepticism, everybody seems to be overlooking one key point:

    If this paper were to turn out to be correct, current climate models are useless and will need to be completely reworked. Well, maybe not completely. Some more than others. But it would contradict some of the fundamental assumptions of most of those models.

  38. Re:Atmosphere affects about a few inches of surfac by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    At least they have provided us with a nice visual demonstrating the relationship between the ocean and the atmosphere.

    Why is it nice to be misled?

    In reality the atmosphere affects the temperature of a few inches of water on top of the ocean.

    Far vaster of an impact is solar energy input.

    haha just like my stovetop burner only affects the temperature of a few millimeters of water on the bottom of the pot. and, it's too bad that solar energy input only affects the temperature of a few feet of the top of our aptmosphere. i'm cold. : (

  39. Something for both sides by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I've been a staunch AGW skeptic almost from day no. 1, and have taken plenty of shit for it. To be fair though, this story has something for both sides. You've got the "hiatus" aspect of this... I thought the argument about the data was settled. I thought only the A in AGW was up for debate, and not much at that. Now here's something for the other side--I recall reading many years ago, like 20 actually, a long time before AGW was such a hot topic. There was a theory that ice ages were caused by a shutdown of the thermohaline cycle in the North Atlantic. I'm not sure if that's still the theory on ice ages; but it was definitely a mainstream theory when I heard it, and it didn't turn forums into the Middle East every time it was mentioned.

    So. For skeptics, a cooling. For AGWers, no cracks in the man-made apocalyptic armour. They can claim that your SUV shutdown the North Atlantic thermo-haline cycle.

    And yes, I've taken enough shit... I don't feel like posting with my ID.

  40. Case in point by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have no killfile because I believe in hearing what other people think.

    Like all denialists you cover your ears and go LA LA LA when confronted with heresy to your chosen brands of religion.

    It's sad really, that an otherwise intelligent individual can let himself go in a kind of self-imposed Alzheimer's.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Case in point by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That internet idealism is harshly punished by trolls. You believe in hearing what people think, but trolls do not post what they actually think.

  41. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by crioca · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Scientists can speculate and debate as much as they want whether it's getting warmer or colder. The issue with the global warming debate is the political demands to translate the science into specific actions,

    So you want to keep performing scientific research, but not use that research to inform our actions? That's... genius.

    often by scientists who have no qualifications in economics or politics.

    Oh yeah, that's a real problem with a lot of political systems; too many scientists making policy and not enough career politicians and business lobbyists. Haw haw haw.

  42. Re:This will be a thoughtful, productive discussio by crioca · · Score: 2

    Well, i guesd i'm one of your denialist because i have yet to hear an explanation to why all the sudden a long standing natural occurance is given more weight than when it previously naturally occured which was forever. Well, i taje that back. I have yet to hear an explaination that isn't convoluted and makes me laugh.

    You mustn't of been listening very hard then, because the concern is that this "long standing natural occurrence" is being unnaturally accelerated and during other times when it "previously naturally occurred" at accelerated rates it resulted in mass extinction and damage to biodiversity.

  43. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Ok.

    This article isn't saying the heat is "disappearing". The heat is indeed being trapped and transferred to ocean temperatures. Ocean currents drive climate. Not sure how you think this "debunks" AGW.

  44. Re:Atmosphere affects about a few inches of surfac by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    haha just like my stovetop burner only affects the temperature of a few millimeters of water on the bottom of the pot

    That is far more an example of the effect the sun has on the water than the atmosphere.

    If you go into a shallow lake is it the same as ambient air temperature...

    Put a few miles of water above your pot and see how far it gets when you turn on the heat below..

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  45. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by durrr · · Score: 0

    Current climate models are useless and needs to be reworked, observations have contradicted their predictions and the fundamental assumption that "CO2 = main thermostat, everything else is irrelevant, lets make a wildly increasing graph and alarmist claims" have been wrong from day 1 and very much not scientific at all.

    This paper doesn't change anything at all. It's just a restatement of a year old apologist paper.

  46. Re:Washington DC think tanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How much does Big Oil pay? I need some money send me your email.

  47. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by TubeSteak · · Score: 2, Interesting

    But it would contradict some of the fundamental assumptions of most of those models.

    Which assumptions?

    All climate models assume a lag between a cause and the observed results.
    This just means the lag might be 30+ years.

    --
    [Fuck Beta]
    o0t!
  48. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is my first reaction when a new discovery which would impact the models is made.

    I also am amused how the popular press reports and analyzes the discoveries.

    I particularly recall a few years ago reading an article in Scientific American (a misnamed publication if there ever was one -- it's at least 25% politics now). The article reported on research that concluded that we had massively underestimated the amount of methane continuously released into the atmosphere from methane hydrates in the ocean. Since methane is a potent greenhouse gas, I read the article breathlessly waiting for the discussion of how this meant the climate models must be wrong since, if their predictions tracked actual data results, the models must have attributed more climate change to human activity than appropriate (the extra methane would have meant a smaller percentage of greenhouse gasses were the result of human activity and more was naturally occurring). Yet, not a mention of this little problem (I assume Scientific American didn't want to get blackballed as a "denier").

  49. Gojira! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This will thaw him from his long slumber! All will die! (but Tokyo first)

  50. Well, that's bad news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your facts don't confirm with all the climate denier shills that mysteriously came here.

  51. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by sjwt · · Score: 1

    The missing news story here..

    "Assumptions about the Ocean heat convection currents were wrong, they do not just shut down when temperatures rise a little"

    I mean who would've thought that a large body of water would still try and maintain a thermodynamic balance..

    --
    You have 5 Moderator Points!
    Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
  52. Ocean warming is not news by gpdawson · · Score: 1

    This isn't really new. It's been well established that ocean and atmosphere warm at different rates, have their own heat exchange dynamics, and in particular that ocean heat content has been rising continuously while surface temperatures have plateaued.

    See, for example: http://www.epa.gov/climatechan...

    And a quote from this 8 month old article http://www.nature.com/news/cli...
    "NCAR researchers showed that more heat moved into the deep ocean after 1998, which helped to prevent the atmosphere from warming"

    It's well known that the heat storage of the oceans is massively greater than the heat storage of the atmosphere. Hence surface temperatures will sooner or later reflect the ongoing increase in heat content of the earth-ocean system.

    It's great to have new studies that confirm this - but why tout it as somehow "new"?

  53. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by haruchai · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The "hiatus" isn't what people think - " this century has so far seen surprisingly little increase in the average temperature at the Earth's surface"
    Note that the average temp is still rising even if more slowly than expected. But the entire planet doesn't warm or cool all at once.
    During that "hiatus" the loss of ice cover, especially in the Arctic has been tremendous and that's noteworthy for 2 reasons.

    The first is that the number of temperature monitoring stations in the Arctic is very poor. The other is that it takes a LOT of heat to melt ice - turning it to water at zero deg requires as much as raising room temp water to the boiling point.

    --
    Pain is merely failure leaving the body
  54. Re:Washington DC think tanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Their minds are too highly trained. /Still believe we're fucking up the planet.

  55. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No, they want the science to be settled more-thoroughly before we re-model our entire society in response to it. Do you have any idea how many trillions we've wasted economically on the global warming thing? If they couldn't predict and can't explain the hiatus, that's just another sign that science and policymakers are being way too confident about the scientific underpinning for wasting trillions.

    The real real truth goes something like this:

    1) Scientists discover a possible global warming problem, but data isn't perfectly clear. However, there's a 5% chance it could fuck up all of human society in a few hundred years.
    2) Scientists decide that nobody will take it seriously enough to take action, and decide that action is necessary, so they begin collectively fibbing about how solid the evidence is and how near and dramatic the impact is. They need to convince the sheeples to convince the government to do "the right thing". If there's any internal debate in the science community, it's squashed in the name of "don't let the sheeple see us disagreeing about the details! then they won't fix it!".

    But the bottom line is: people aren't as stupid as you'd like to think they are, and they don't need the science community usurping the decision-making power by internalizing the debate and lying to everyone.

  56. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Just remember that the purpose of every assumption is to shrink error bars, usually by an unknown amount. A good scientist is honest about this, unfortunately most scientists try to be honest but are incompetent when it comes to statistics and data analysis in general so they don't even realize their overconfidence. This is not in any way limited to climate science.

  57. Re:Atmosphere affects about a few inches of surfac by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In reality the atmosphere affects the temperature of a few inches of water on top of the ocean.

    The temperature of first few inches of water, in reality, affects the temperature of the water just below it. I think you might be able to apply some induction here.

  58. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Namarrgon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Your linked study really just shows what everyone could already see - the climate models are missing something. This of course isn't a surprise; they're missing lots of things, many of which are called out in the study (ENSO, AMO, volcanic activity, unexpected stratospheric aerosol variation or solar variation, etc). There's a lot of details we can't predict, but climate models are still useful even when we know they're incomplete, just like every other kind of model.

    Still, I appreciate the link, even if (as you say) it doesn't invalidate any "sketchy science".

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  59. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by silfen · · Score: 0

    So you want to keep performing scientific research, but not use that research to inform our actions? That's... genius.

    I said "The issue with the global warming debate is the political demands to translate the science into specific actions,". Is that a general statement about scientific research? Is it a call not to have research in general "inform" actions? Of course, it's neither. You're deliberately misrepresenting my position and putting up a strawman. In different words, you're a dishonest jerk.

    Oh yeah, that's a real problem with a lot of political systems; too many scientists making policy

    Apparently, you're also an ignorant jerk if you have to ask that question. I suggest you read up a little on European history and try to understand the role that science and scientists played in the worst regimes of the 20th century.

  60. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by mjwx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think a lot of people, even some actual scientists, do not understand the role of skepticism in Science.

    A lot of people dont understand the difference between healthy scepticism and outright denial.

    Sceptics analyse the evidence behind conclusions and express their concerns. When concerns are valid, the conclusions are re-examined and if need be, changes are made, experiments are re-run with these new factors in mind.

    A person in denial looks for evidence to support their point of view. They dont examine the evidence, they only look for skerricks and soundbites that support their ideas, they dont add to the scientific process at all. The problem is that denial loves to hide in and pretend that it's proper scepticism because this gives denial legitimacy. The worse part is, they will attempt to take evidence out of context to support their ideas.

    Scepticism is an important part of verification in science, in science you're not meant to believe anything. However denial means believing in your idea regardless of any and all the evidence arrayed against it. Pretty much the antithesis of scientific scepticism.

    Put simply (TL;DR)

    Scepticism says: the climate change model is incorrect, we need to change the model.
    Denial says: the climate change model is incorrect, therefore climate change is wrong LA LA LA LA LA I cant hear you.

    --
    Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  61. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's also interesting to realize the current obsession with normal distributions and averaging is a holdover from the eugenics movement.

  62. Re:This will be a thoughtful, productive discussio by silfen · · Score: 1

    You mustn't of been listening very hard then, because the concern is that this "long standing natural occurrence" is being unnaturally accelerated and during other times when it "previously naturally occurred" at accelerated rates it resulted in mass extinction and damage to biodiversity.

    Really? That's interesting. There have been five mass extinctions in Earth's history. Which of these "mass extinctions" are you referring to? How was it in any way similar to, or related to, climate models for the next few centuries?

  63. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Namarrgon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If this paper were to turn out to be correct, current climate models are useless and will need to be completely reworked.

    No model, in any branch of science or engineering, is complete and perfect; that doesn't mean they're useless.

    I'm curious to see which fundamental assumptions made by current models you believe to be contradicted by this paper. To me it looks like they're simply pointing out a deep-ocean cycle that could soak up heat from the surface - not unlike the well-known ENSO, PDO and AMO cycles, which most models don't attempt to predict. Unless you think that "incomplete" means "fundamentally assumes that no other factors can exist"?

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  64. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by lazy+genes · · Score: 0

    The angular momentum is a greater force. The convection currents may shrink linearly, but it will never shut down.

  65. So how those models doing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Regardless of whether this particular theory holds out to be right or wrong it certainly cast a lot of doubt on the models in general. How many other un-modeled factors or phenomena are there in this complex system?

    A little...or a lot? I'm betting on a lot.

  66. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    often by scientists who have no qualifications in economics or politics.

    That makes them 100 times better than the people with purportedly have those qualifications.

  67. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by phantomfive · · Score: 2

    Your linked study really just shows what everyone could already see

    Well, if everyone could see it, it wouldn't be a study lol. There must be something novel there at least.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  68. The Plimer Stupidity by dbIII · · Score: 1

    Your analogy of comparing science to religion doesn't fit as you would realise if you thought about it instead of just regurgitating Ian Plimer's stupid recycled anti-creationist rant that he warmed up to re-use against climate scientists.

  69. Re:This will be a thoughtful, productive discussio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    While there are indeed "five" known major mass extinctions, those aren't the only ones. There would be at least a dozen others.

    And there are several of them(including some of the Big Five) where global warming is a possible explanation.. Paleocene-Eocene, Triassic-Jurassic and possibly Permian–Triassic .

    The Clathrate gun hypothesis, is one explanation for them, flood basalts are another. But if you can offer your own thoughts, go ahead.

    I doubt the models are expressly identical though, since modern ones have to account for human behavior, and while the Silurians are fun to watch on the Beeb, they aren't likely to be real.

    Nor are Time Lords.

  70. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A lot of people don't the difference between a scientific hypothesis and a scientific theory. These climate change models are just hypothesis in software form. We won't able to run experiments for these hypothesis in our lifetimes, and in turn they will never reach the level of a scientific theory in our lifetime.

  71. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Dorianny · · Score: 0

    I know you're just smacking down a troll, but climate models have been over-estimating warming for years, as demonstrated by this science. That's not to say that climate models are bad science, they are good science investigating the nature of the earth; but people who put too much faith in them without evidence were performing bad science.

    There is a large movement of scientists, many not involved in climate science at all, urging meaningful action on climate change based on the worst case scenarios set by these incomplete/unreliable models. So what we end up with is backlash by people completely rejecting the entire field, and "feel good" projects and treaties that have minimal impact at best, all of which will only serve to delay the meaningful action they urge. Scientists in general and especially climate scientists and the IPCC, need to stay out of the public/political debate, it only undermines the public's faith on their impartiality.

  72. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    you would have a point, if it weren't for these 2 facts:
    1. humanity has greatly increased CO2 levels in the atmosphere. (the amount of which can be estimated by just looking at the amount of oil, coal is being burned.)
    2. CO2 traps heat (experiments showing that are all over the internet.)

  73. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I suggest you read up a little on European history and try to understand the role that science and scientists played in the worst regimes of the 20th century.

    You're treading perilously close to a call to eradicate scientists in the name of persecuting them for being associated with the worst regimes of the 20th Century.

    But you know what those regimes also did? Proclaimed themselves the guardians of liberty, freedom, justice and security for their own. Why? The same reason a con artist promises you a big score or a philander promises commitment. Or vendors of patent medicine promise miracle cures, or abusive parents claim to be teaching their children a lesson.

    It looks good.

    So yeah, people can be manipulative and deceitful.

    You'd have to be an ignorant jerk to take any message from their attempt though.

    Well, other than reasonable prudence. But then, that should be the default anyway.

  74. Re:Washington DC think tanks by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

    It was as if a million points of karma suddenly cried out in terror... and were suddenly silenced.

  75. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by sysrammer · · Score: 1

    It seems so right when you explain it.

    --
    His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  76. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by polar+red · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >Scientists in general and especially climate scientists and the IPCC, need to stay out of the public/political debate
    yeah, let's leave the important decissions to lawyers and economists, and not to scientists and engineers. Now THAT would lead to a great society !

    --
    Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
  77. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

    Well, if everyone could see it, it wouldn't be a study lol

    The novel part is they present data to confirm it, and their analysis is peer-reviewed - that's the difference between a real study and something that "everyone can see".

    What I was actually referring to was the models being incomplete, which isn't news to anyone. Fyfe et al 2013 just demonstrate this, and suggest some of the likely missing factors. TFA goes further, and gives data on a new factor (the deep-ocean current).

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  78. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    so we should stop putting a massive amount of CO2 (from 200ppm to 400ppm in 200 years...) into the atmosphere, until we have a clear understanding of the effects.

  79. Re: Every week there's a new explanation of the hi by andy_spoo · · Score: 1

    there are thousands & thousands of scientists who say we are contributing to global warming, and about two who say we aren't. TV news likes to show both sides, so on TV it looks like a 50/50 split. Just keep burying your head in the sand.

  80. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by sysrammer · · Score: 1

    What a great explanation! I try to explain what science is sometimes, albeit not so eloquently; I'm not sure elegance would help with some people anyways.

    I have a relative that was shocked when I mentioned scientific research about the parting the Red Sea in the bible. I tried to boil it down to "science is about what, and religion is about why". Not sure it helped. Maybe I'll try your spiel.

    --
    His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  81. Re: Every week there's a new explanation of the hi by andy_spoo · · Score: 1

    people need to watch this on TED for the genersl idea of what's involved:-http://www.ted.com/talks/gavin_schmidt_the_emergent_patterns_of_climate_change

  82. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by DamnOregonian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Whether or not it's getting warmer is a fact, not a debate.
    Even the much-hyped hiatus is a hiatus in growth of the anomaly, not a cessation of warming.
    You're certainly right that they can debate as much as they want as to the cause.

    Since the dawn of modern post-industrial science, scientists have been screaming for political action while larged monied interests decried their research. Whether they're right or wrong, the motives of those attempting to maintain the status quo are ridiculously complex. Industry attempted to mislead the public and use Congress to determine whether it was safe to infuse every square inch of our environment with particulate lead, our rain with sulfuric and nitric acid, our atmosphere with CFCs, our water with poisons. Personally, when a large amount of scientists start screaming about there being serious consequences to something going on, I'd listen to them.

  83. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by sysrammer · · Score: 1

    Hah! Good reply. But I understand where the OP is coming from. Unfortunately, that seems to be the way humans work. Nobody paid much attention to the previous 20-30 years of work on climate. It wasn't until things passed a certain point, then everybody started jumping on the bandwagon. Politicians follow people. And then they swing the pendulum too far in the opposite direction.

    --
    His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  84. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

    Certainly. In the same way that if the wheel on your car wobbles at 60mph, you don't figure out what's wrong, you throw away the whole fucking car.

  85. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by sysrammer · · Score: 1

    "I'm a Rational Scientist"
    "I'm Good Enough, I'm Smart Enough, and Doggone It, People Like Me!"

    --
    His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
  86. Re:Well, that's bad news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "and are attempting to make the data fit the hypothesis they have"

    The good thing is, virtually every person on this planet can tell whether two numbers are close together or far apart, so their efforts are easy to verify.

  87. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

    This guy believes the Greenhouse Effect is bunk, and disproven.
    You may be curious now, but be prepared to feel a little nauseous when he begins answering you.

  88. So in summary by viperidaenz · · Score: 1

    No one really knows how it all works.

  89. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

    I'm quite certain the problem will have killed us long before we can possibly accurately model all the places trapped thermal energy have to hide on this planet.

  90. Re:Well, that's bad news... by sg_oneill · · Score: 2

    Why is this marked insightful? The whole "realcliate.org is biased!" thing is no more "insightful" than shouting about how snopes.org is biased because it claims that obama isn't a kenyan homo-muslim atheist.

    Unless someone can actually point out claims on there that aren't in the scientific literature, theres nothing "+1 Insightful" about it.

    --
    Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
  91. HEAT SINKS and COLD RISES ??? by Noahideeya · · Score: 0

    "...the heat absent from the surface is plunging deep in the north and south Atlantic Ocean,...". Of course! That explains it... because we all know how HEAT SINKS and COLD RISES.

    1. Re:HEAT SINKS and COLD RISES ??? by Noishkel · · Score: 1

      That's pretty much the first though I had. I'm not willing to automatically call shenanigans as I just don't have enough of a grounding in how current flows around the ocean. But at first glance it does sounds kind of suspect.

    2. Re:HEAT SINKS and COLD RISES ??? by AlterEager · · Score: 1

      Thermohaline circulation.

      Two parts - "thermo" and "haline".

      Of course hotter water rises, if the salinity is unchanged.

      But add salt and things get more interesting.

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

  92. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I know you're just smacking down a troll, but climate models have been over-estimating warming for years, as demonstrated by this science.

    And know we might have am idea of where that missing heat went... Thereby possibly being able to improve the models.

    Given what we're already seeing, I don't relish what might happen if/when this 'trapped' heat is let 'loose' again, into the volumes the current models covered, in addition to what we keep pumping into the atmosphere...

    Also, what might warmer water deeper down do to deposits of temperature/pressure-solidified carbohydrates (can't recall the name for them at the moment)?

  93. Re:Fun Fact by BradMajors · · Score: 0

    Here is the most accurate climate model to date:

    http://www.climate-skeptic.com...

  94. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    I'm curious to see which fundamental assumptions made by current models you believe to be contradicted by this paper.

    If this paper is correct, then the effect (according to the authors) overwhelms ENSO, among other things. As it is already acknowledged that ENSO is a very major factor, the models have tried to account for it or at least incorporate its effects in some way. That would all have to be re-figured. And that's no small thing.

    If ENSO cannot be predicted to any great degree (it cannot), yet it has a major effect on climate models, and now another effect is found that is claimed to have a far greater effect than ENSO, what then?

    Obviously the models would be revised to use the new information. That's all great. If so, then maybe they could finally actually start predicting something... which would finally make them useful. So far, they've had almost no practical predictive value. Not none, maybe... so I retract the statement that they're "useless". They may not be useless. They're just nearly useless.

  95. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by DamnOregonian · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Shrinking vertically is the real fear; the thermohaline circulation is highly sensitive to salinity (now, if only I knew what the word haline meant, and what happens when ice melts in seawater...), and the larger scale thermohaline circulation could very realistically shut down, or shrink to vertical levels making it near-useless for global heat distribution, if given proper breakdown of thermal gradients and salinity barriers; with it the most important currents (to a lot of places that are today habitable) would be fundamentally altered.

    It's generally thought that if the cycle does slow down enough, or shut down completely, the Ocean will lose its ability to sequester any more heat, and the result will be quite catastrophic to the current climate (in that places that were previously arable, will not be), and there's plenty of evidence that this has not only happened before, but triggered extinction events.

    Currents in general are quite safe, and nobody's really worried about the ocean suddenly becoming stagnant.

  96. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    You're not in much of a position to be presuming to know what I think.

  97. Re:This will be a thoughtful, productive discussio by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

    Every single one of them.

    Sometimes the change accelerant is the Earth's sudden inability to sequester any more oxygen.
    Sometimes it's a huge fucking comet hitting the planet.
    Sometimes it's an ignorant species puking several-hundred-million-year-old sequestered carbon into the atmosphere in the form of a gas that is opaque to infrared radiation.

    In the end though, climate change got em all, and always because some accelerant made it happen too fast for most life to adapt to.

  98. Re:Fun Fact by phantomfive · · Score: 2

    Any climate model made only a few years ago is going to have an easy time being accurate. It took over a decade for the other climate models to be really obviously wrong.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  99. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Dorianny · · Score: 3, Insightful

    >Scientists in general and especially climate scientists and the IPCC, need to stay out of the public/political debate yeah, let's leave the important decissions to lawyers and economists, and not to scientists and engineers. Now THAT would lead to a great society !

    Lawyers and economists are very good in their respective fields, it would be foolish to believe that scientists and engineers would be better at matters of law or economy.

  100. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Megol · · Score: 2

    Yes he is. As is all of us that have read your poorly reasoned posts.

    Or maybe you are indicating that what you write should be ignored as you are simply trying to troll?

  101. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1
    That being the case, you may thank me for the educate I gave you on the topic that led to you changing your mind.

    http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

    Quote for extra lulz:

    Greenhouse gas theory is completely different, having to do with trapping of radiation. Which has been thoroughly discredited. [principia-scientific.org] (Just one example of said discrediting.)

    Topping on the fucking cake:

    Don't try to debate me on the science, guy. I've got you beat. I can keep shooting you down all day.

    Just for the record, you are my favorite imbecile.

  102. What you're religion does by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    No, what religions do is torture and murder heretics...

    And prevent their papers from being published in scientific journals.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:What you're religion does by FatLittleMonkey · · Score: 1

      Bruno must have chafed at not being allowed to publish his theories in Church journals, much worse than that whole being burnt alive thing.

      --
      Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
    2. Re:What you're religion does by AlterEager · · Score: 1

      No, what religions do is torture and murder heretics...

      And prevent their papers from being published in scientific journals.

      Oh, go on, just for laughs.

      Please name one paper that was prevented from being published.

    3. Re:What you're religion does by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's hard to name those. They weren't published. You can't really go around looking up the papers that weren't published, can you?

    4. Re:What you're religion does by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bruno must have chafed at not being allowed to publish his theories in Church journals, much worse than that whole being burnt alive thing.

      Ah yes, the guy that defamed the power at the time and didn't believe what the church did. But no, it wasn't about that, it was about his SCIENCE! See religion has been hampering science ever since! (But you go on believing what the new Cosmos showed you as fact)

    5. Re:What you're religion does by tbannist · · Score: 1

      There's this thing called the internet. Perhaps, you've heard of it? It would be quite easy for all these supposed scientists who supposedly are being censored to form their own website (or journal even) and publish the papers that are supposedly being censored.

      Of course, that actually has been attempted a couple of times, but on every occurence that I know of, it turned out the papers were rejected because the paper was fundamentally flawed, not because of the claimed political oppression. It turns out scientific journals want you to use facts, logic, and math. Who knew, right?

      It's so much easier to claim that you're being oppressed than to admit you wasted months because you made some basic math errors.

      --
      Fanatically anti-fanatical
    6. Re:What you're religion does by FatLittleMonkey · · Score: 1

      How does Bruno's crime change my point? I don't care if his crime was calling the Pope a paedophile, they burned him alive. You, OTOH, can call climate science a giant hoax (and many deniers do), you can liken individual climate scientists to mass murderers or terrorists (and some deniers have), you can even liken it to religion... and... we still won't burn you alive.

      The most and worst thing scientists can do to you is deny you publicity in the journals which they control, and reject your application for grant money from funds they control.

      Science can't prevent you from publishing your work online. Or creating your own journals (with blackjack and hookers). Science can't prevent corporations and wealthy opponents of a specific science (climate change, evolution, tobacco-cancer, etc) from offering you money to make up faux science to support their industry. Science can't stop those industries and individuals from throwing money at politicians to change laws in their favour, against the recommendations of scientists. Science can't even stop those bought-politicians from fucking around with science funding and government reports to harm science their masters don't like.

      But OMG science is totally like the Inquisition!

      --
      Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
  103. The Inability To Understand Point Stupidity by SuperKendall · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The people using the word "denialists" are not scientists. That's the point, once you go there you have stopped using science and have firmly planted both feet into the realm of "religion". Even if you started with Science...

    I, like all rational people, respect science and scientists when they remain dedicated to the pursuit of truth, even to the point they can admit a theory was incorrect.

    But many of your alarmists have not watched Frozen enough to get the message. Let It Go.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  104. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by silfen · · Score: 2

    Whether or not it's getting warmer is a fact, not a debate.

    I haven't debating that fact. Why do you bring it up? What is the relevance of that to policy?

    Personally, when a large amount of scientists start screaming about there being serious consequences to something going on, I'd listen to them.

    Scientists are qualified to tell us whether it is getting warmer. They are not qualified to tell us whether the consequences are "serious" or how we as a society should respond, something that involved not just narrow scientific conclusions, but economic, social, legal, moral, and political choices.

    Since the dawn of modern post-industrial science, scientists have been screaming for political action while larged monied interests decried their research.

    Scientists have also built atomic bombs, created poison gas and biological weapons, experimented on prisoners in concentration camps, justified racism, faked results to enrich themselves, and done lots of other horrible things. Uncritically listening to scientists is a bad idea, and I'm saying that as a scientist myself.

  105. Re:This will be a thoughtful, productive discussio by silfen · · Score: 1

    Every single one of them.

    Sometimes the change accelerant is the Earth's sudden inability to sequester any more oxygen.
    Sometimes it's a huge fucking comet hitting the planet.

    I.e., in no way analogous to global warming models. Good, thanks for admitting that.

    Sometimes it's an ignorant species puking several-hundred-million-year-old sequestered carbon into the atmosphere in the form of a gas that is opaque to infrared radiation.

    Good. I hope we'll go on doing it, melt the polar ice caps, and restore the usual stable climate on this planet again, instead of going through the rapid and destructive climate cycles we have been experiencing for the past seven million years.

  106. Heatsinks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Breaking news: Earth uses oceans as giant heat sinks. More at 11.

  107. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

    Your point?
    I don't recall those scientists screaming from the top of their lungs that if we didn't build bombs, experiment on prisoners, be racist nazi shitbags, or any other horrible things, then we were going to irreversibly fuck this planet up (for any time scale that is relevant to our civilization, thereafter)

    The fact that some scientists have flexible morals shouldn't be made equivalent to the fact that corporations have entirely inflexible null morals.

    I never debated those things, why did you bring them up? ;)

  108. Re:This will be a thoughtful, productive discussio by DamnOregonian · · Score: 1

    I apologize, I was answering the hypothetical answer to the GPs question... You know, the one you didn't actually answer.

    Ya me too, I much prefer a climate that we're not evolved to survive in. Humanity sure flourished through the Dryas events, didn't they?

  109. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by buybuydandavis · · Score: 0, Troll

    Your linked study really just shows what everyone could already see - the climate models are missing something. This of course isn't a surprise; they're missing lots of things, many of which are called out in the study (ENSO, AMO, volcanic activity, unexpected stratospheric aerosol variation or solar variation, etc). .

    Heathen! Heretic! Barbarian! Denier!

    The science is settled! It's been settled! The models have been perfect forever!

    So sayeth Al Gore! So it is, was, and ever shall be!

    Amen.

  110. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by buybuydandavis · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Scientists in general and especially climate scientists and the IPCC, need to stay out of the public/political debate, it only undermines the public's faith on their impartiality.

    You've got the migration patterns wrong. Ideologues and zealots got into science, and drove the unbelievers out.

  111. Re:Well, that's bad news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That is the best comment on GW I've ever read. It seems like everyone is considering only facts which support his own belief ignoring the others. The chaotic and complex nature of the atmosphere just provides a 'good' playing field for both parties.

  112. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by buybuydandavis · · Score: 1, Troll

    And know we might have am idea of where that missing heat went... Thereby possibly being able to improve the models.

    How do you improve on perfection? The SCIENCE WAS SETTLED! Didn't you get the memo?

  113. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by phantomfive · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Do you have any idea how many trillions we've wasted economically on the global warming thing?

    Uh, no I don't. How have we wasted trillions because of global warming?

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  114. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    All climate models assume a lag between a cause and the observed results.
    This just means the lag might be 30+ years.

    How do you explain this lag?
    Just setting a delay of 30 years is just another way of making a model into more of a mechanical Turk. If you don't have a hypothesis to why the delay should be for example 35 years rather than 34 or 36 then the model is no better than the lowest order polynomial that fits the value.
    The big difference is that the polynomial will be a lot better at hinting at catastrophic climate change since it will take off towards an extreme high or low as soon as you leave the data range.

    Just changing a model until it fits the data isn't good science. It isn't even science. You need to be able to motivate each parameter with something else than just "It has to be there, otherwise it doesn't follow the data."

  115. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Scepticism says: the climate change model is incorrect, we need to change the model.

    Denial says: the climate change model is incorrect, therefore climate change is wrong LA LA LA LA LA I cant hear you.

    You forgot to leave out a part about the skepticism side. If the model is known to be incorrect any conclusion from it has to be ignored.
    That means that no skeptic have seen any evidence that suggests that a catastrophic climate scenario is coming our way.
    Until the model has been changed and throughly tested we are in the dark. Taking any action either way can have equally catastrophic results.

  116. Not rational - pushing lies by dbIII · · Score: 1

    You are attempting to compare very different things which either indicates a lack of understanding or a pretended one in some sort of attempt to decieve the gullible for political purposes.
    I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt but your frequent earlier posts on this topic over the last few months indicate you are using pretended good old homespun stupidity as a vector to puch political propaganda - plus it's directly out of the fucking playbook.
    If you are not being paid to push the view but are merely a cheerleader willing to trash their reputation to yell for the team I suppose not all of the stupidity is pretended.

    1. Re:Not rational - pushing lies by narcc · · Score: 1

      You are attempting to compare very different things which either indicates a lack of understanding or a pretended one in some sort of attempt to decieve the gullible for political purposes.

      Or, you know, he's making an analogy.

      I'm guessing your "Jump to Conclusions" mat doesn't have a "Benefit of the doubt" square?

  117. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by JakartaDean · · Score: 1, Insightful

    But the bottom line is: people aren't as stupid as you'd like to think they are...

    Your post is strong evidence that at least one of us is. Since you're taking on and defaming scientists as a group, perhaps you would care to share your analysis leading to your figures of "trillions" and "5%".

    --
    The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures (Junius)
  118. Sigh. Some additional facts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    3. warmer air increases the rate of evaporation
    4. warmer air can hold more moisture
    5. convection carries this additional heat away from the surface
    6. precipitation returns significantly cooled moisture to the surface
    7. the amount of heat trapping done by CO2 is minimal compared to other effects
    8. the climate -- not weather -- models based upon the apparent curves have failed
    9. this ocean thing may be why -- or it may not be
    10. models of things that have not happened yet are not "settled science" until the thing actually happens at least once
    11. technology is advancing rapidly, and this will likely further distort any model's predictions

    SO, these first time predictions whose models have failed are worthy of at least some skepticism

    BUT, if the earth does warm a bit, we should keep in mind it's been a great deal warmer previously, and was a garden at that time as near as we can tell, and further, this is substantiated by the fact that plants just love CO2.

    AND, if the seas rise, they will do so extremely slowly, such that anyone who wishes to move will probably have done so long before they see a drop of water.

    Change. It's what the earth does. We're part of the earth. Coincidence? lol

    1. Re:Sigh. Some additional facts by polar+red · · Score: 1

      >7 - the amount of heat trapping done by CO2 is minimal compared to other effects
      Without the greenhouse effect, it would be 30-40 C colder on earth on average.

      --
      Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
    2. Re:Sigh. Some additional facts by i+kan+reed · · Score: 1

      Nah, actual facts like these aren't important. Instead, let's mod up the anonymous coward who calls PhD's talking about hard data "sketchy science".

    3. Re:Sigh. Some additional facts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Take the "average" surface temp on earth (~15 C = 288 K) and pressure (1 atm). Then go to the table on the wikipedia "Atmosphere of Venus" page and find the temperature at ~ atm pressure (75 C = 348 K). Divide the two (348/288~ 1.21). Now go to the venus page and get the distance to the sun (0.728213 AU) , take the square root of the inverse (sqrt(1/0.728213) = 1.176). So we compared the average earth surface temp to that of venus at the same pressure, for two no-atmosphere black bodies we would expect the ratio of temperatures to be 1.176, using these simple round numbers we find the ratio is 1.21.

      Even this is convincing that some kind of equilibrium is going on, but if we go further the 348 K appears to be measured at the equator, so comparing to the earth equator temp (~ 300K) we would get 1.16. Kliore and Patel 1982 has a nice chart from pioneer venus showing at 1 atm the temp is ~345 from 0-50 degrees latitude then drops off a bit. The temp is 338 K at ~ 60 degrees North, which corresponds to the usual average mid latitude temperature people quote: 1.176*288=338.7. This relationship extends to other earth troposphere pressures as well.

      Further the deviations from the relationship look a lot like the buoyancy frequency reported by Jenkins 1994 (although there is an error in that paper, temps are reported 10K high on accident). As we know from the cloud layers, Venus' atmosphere is not well mixed vertically. Likely the different layers of cloud particles affect the temperature locally.

      So I don't think that calculation people use to get the 30 C colder number is correct. There is something wrong with it, probably that they include albedo even though it is mainly due to having an atmosphere (ie clouds).

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Venus
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus
      http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0019103582901154
      ftp://topex.ucsd.edu/pub/sandwell/Venus_InSAR/atmosphere/radio_occultation.pdf

  119. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by riverat1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If this study is right then there will come a point when climate models are underestimating the warming again. The mechanism of this heat absorption is cyclical and eventually it will reverse leaving more heat in the atmosphere leading to rapid warming again. It's difficult if not impossible to put that into climate models partially because it's impossible (with our current knowledge) to know the timing of the switches in the cycle so models tend to just use the average which means sometimes their above the average and sometimes they're below.

    The abstract:

    A vacillating global heat sink at intermediate ocean depths is associated with different climate regimes of surface warming under anthropogenic forcing: The latter part of the 20th century saw rapid global warming as more heat stayed near the surface. In the 21st century, surface warming slowed as more heat moved into deeper oceans. In situ and reanalyzed data are used to trace the pathways of ocean heat uptake. In addition to the shallow La Niña–like patterns in the Pacific that were the previous focus, we found that the slowdown is mainly caused by heat transported to deeper layers in the Atlantic and the Southern oceans, initiated by a recurrent salinity anomaly in the subpolar North Atlantic. Cooling periods associated with the latter deeper heat-sequestration mechanism historically lasted 20 to 35 years.

    The question climate science deniers need to ask themselves is "If all of this heat is going into the ocean why hasn't it actually cooled rather than temperatures just sort of plateauing?" If all that heat is disappearing into the ocean and we're not actually cooling that means heat is still building up.

  120. Average heatup? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't understand why the 'average warm-up' is considered important in the media. Since local temperature changes are more important, otherwise they are averaged out. Places like Greenland are becoming hotter (for instance http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28852980) while more moderate areas are becoming cooler. The local changes are the ones that matter, not the global averaged ones.

  121. Re:Well, that's bad news... by Layzej · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here is what the temperature trendline looked like before and after 1999: http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...

    "flatline" is really the wrong word...

  122. The title is misleading it should read; by Stumbles · · Score: 1

    Cause of Global Warming 'Hiatus' Found Deep In their Belly Button

    --
    My karma is not a Chameleon.
  123. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by beh · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Strange how, just a knee-jerk you'll find some people defending the science, there are those that have the same knee-jerk reaction against any findings in this area. With all that uncontrollable knee-jerking on both sides - it seems that we have another great argument for universal health care, to get people's knees fixed again... But I digress...

    Whether climate change is man-made or not - I don't think there is too much debate left on the matter. But, I'm no climate scientist, so for me personally it's a matter of "belief" that mankind is behind this. We may get some theories and models wrong on how fast global warming works - or why there may be a hiatus in it.

    The question of whether we're behind this - take two past events and see how much influence we might have:

    Remember the Icelandic volcano a few years back - in response to the volcanic ash, we grounded a lot of flights for a few days - and even in that time, we could measure how much the air changed - just by taking planes out of the picture for a few days.

    Secondly, if you think mankind's influence isn't large enough given the size of the planet - look back at climate records around the time Krakatoa blew up - that one mountain exploding had a measurable impact on temperature and weather for 5 years; so, if a _single_ mountain on one day can create that kind of change -- are you sure, all of our industries around the world together over the course of years CAN'T?

    What the planet is "too large for", is for us to do some quick and easy experiments to actually test our hypotheses quickly - so climate science does what it can mostly from observation and trying to identify as many factors as possible that DO have a measurable impact in order to MODEL what's going to happen and then wait and see how close these models correlate with what's happening.

  124. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Bongo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Still useful... for what? that's the question.

    If we're going to move to alternative energy, population control, costing in environmental damage as part of the economy, global justice, etc., climate models don't seem useful for that anymore. They are useful, but not useful enough for that application, still too wide an area of uncertainty. Nobody said the models had to be perfect, just fit for purpose.

  125. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Bongo · · Score: 1

    They wouldn't be the first profession to squander away the high regard the public have for them.

    Can't they just go back to being the old amiable nuclear-bomb-inventing mad scientists we cherish and love?

  126. Hiatus? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    AKA "never use observations to create models with predictive power" AKA "don't do science".

  127. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by riverat1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It doesn't mean climate models are useless at all. The phenomenon absorbing the heat that this paper studies is cyclical with 20-35 years between more and less absorption periods. That's difficult to model because it's probably impossible to predict the exact timing of the cyclical changes. One way to model that is it just take the long term average of heat absorption and accept that sometimes the model will over predict the warming and sometimes it will under predict the warming but the long term average will be about right. The findings of the paper don't contradict the fundamental assumptions of climate models but it may point the way to improvements in modeling the ocean portion of the models.

  128. Nope, you're ignoring the facts. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The fact is the GP is wrong in their assertion that "both sides are biased".

    Despite arguments that pi=3 or not, BOTH SIDES ARE NOT BIASED. One is right, the other wrong.

    Moreover, the GP contains nothing concrete to support their biased assertion. Please, stop thinking that just because you want your "I'm not convinced, lets wait until I am before doing anything" is anything other than what those anti-scientific AGW deniers want done, thereby showing how you side with them. If your and their assertions of being unconvinced were valid, the precautionary principle would indicate you would do something now, while it's not certain, rather than wait.

    After all, you don't stand in the middle of traffic, thinking "If I move to my left, the car may swerve left, so I#d best stand right here in traffic until I KNOW it's going to hit me here", do you.

    There's bugger all reason to wonder if man has caused it. The proof is easily seen.
    There's bugger all reason to wonder if it's warming or not.The proof is easily seen.
    There's nothing to indicate the science is wrong, never mind made up beyond wild accusations of tinfoilhattery.

  129. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    Pierre Latour is still wrong.

  130. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    Things like ENSO and heat absorption in the Atlantic that the paper was about are cyclical. They neither add nor remove heat from the Earth system, they just change where it's going temporarily but average out to zero in the long run. A model isn't really expected to get the timing of these cyclical phenomena right, just the long term average. That means sometimes a model will be under the curve and sometimes it will be over the curve as the cycles cycle but it could still have the long term average right. The Earth is still gaining heat, otherwise this Atlantic heat absorption would have cause actual cooling instead of just a plateauing in temperature rises.

  131. Sigh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You have people that say global warming is man made and then you get folks that say it's bullshit.

    I say global warming is real, but it's not caused by man it's just a natural cycle the Earth goes through every several X amount of years. We presume to know it all but in reality we know nothing when it comes to weather patterns or anything related to Earth's natural cycles. You cannot predict or make accurate assessments of maybe 100 - 200 years worth of data.

    If you want to say global warming is being caused by man then I hope you got a time machine handy so you can pull up several hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years of data and if you can prove to me then that it has been caused by man then I will acknowledge it. Until then you can take your 'global warming' scare tactics and go fuck yourself, plain-and-simple.

  132. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Stuarticus · · Score: 3, Informative

    I hear the economists field is really a commons and they've made a bloody mess of it, some are calling it a tragedy.

    --
    If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
  133. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by AlterEager · · Score: 1

    please link to an example of "sketchy science" that has been proved wrong by more solid, peer-reviewed science.

    I know you're just smacking down a troll, but climate models have been over-estimating warming for years, as demonstrated by this science.

    From the commentary:

    Ultimately the causes of this inconsistency will only be understood after careful comparison of simulated internal
    climate variability and climate model forcings with observations from the past two decades

    Recent papers have investigated this and found that when either observed ENSO conditions are forced on the model, or model runs are picked whose simulated ENSO matches observed ENSO there is better agreement with observed temperatures.

    By the way, the models don't just overestimate warming since 1997ish, they also underestimate it before 1997.

  134. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by AlterEager · · Score: 1

    If ENSO cannot be predicted to any great degree (it cannot), yet it has a major effect on climate models, and now another effect is found that is claimed to have a far greater effect than ENSO, what then?

    ENSO has no long--term effect on climate. ENSO is a short term variation.

    (People who obsess about ENSO seem not to have heard of conservation of energy).

  135. Re:Well, that's bad news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How can you no believe in basic physics? More co2, which we can easily measure => more heat in atmosphere. The rest is basic physics. You'd have to be an utter moron to say "i don't believe in it". So physics is pure fantasy to you? It's so stupid slashdot even gave you 5 points for this bullshit post. Makes me lose my faith in this community.

  136. Re:Fun Fact by AlterEager · · Score: 1

    That is not a climate model. It has no physical basis. Models are not curve fitting.

  137. Is it really a hiatus? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If global warming has slowed, that doesn't mean it has stopped. The point seems to be, warming has not proceeded quite as rapidly, of late. But there's still warming.

  138. HEAT SINKS and COLD RISES ??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let's discuss this again when you have graduated elementary school and are aware that water has a density maximum at four degrees Celsius.

  139. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >economists are very good in their respective fields
    HAHAHAHAHAHA ! That's a good one.

  140. No its just weather by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I laugh at those who believe they can predict weather and even more lame to blame changes on man. If they truly believed that man is affecting the weather with pollution. Then they should be focusing their efforts on bigger world polluters such as China. Instead this is more of a effort to create and profit from a self made crisis in order to advance a agenda. Otherwise a truly noble effort would be made to stop the real polluters of the world. If you really cannot explain why your dire predictions of global warming have not come true. Then your whole theory of what is happening has very little merit. We should all be concerned about how man affects the world around us. But we don't need to fake a crisis to do what is right. If Al Gore wants to make millions playing Chicken Little. Then go to China and spread the climate gospel there.

  141. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Scepticism says: the climate change model is incorrect, we need to change the model. Denial says: the climate change model is incorrect, therefore climate change is wrong LA LA LA LA LA I cant hear you.

    I agree. The problem is that quite often skeptics, that fit your exact description above, are labeled deniers.

  142. The science is in. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This can't be true. The warming is following the model. The science is in.

  143. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by pslytely+psycho · · Score: 1

    The loudest skeptics are usually the least qualified to have an opinion. And the more qualified really don't seem too skeptical to me.

    And even if the science ultimately proves false (which I personally doubt) why should it take a crisis to want to protect the environment? Or are the majority now just too young to remember L.A. in the sixties and seventies?
    Because regulation cleaned up a lot of those problems. Just as China is currently learning.

    Admittedly, many claims were overstated, and OBVIOUSLY any model of the climate of the entire planet will be incomplete. But really, how much of that was political posturing and pressuring the scientists to make it more 'important' to get something done? A bad choice perhaps, but on the other hand some things have been improved that probably would not of been addressed otherwise.

    Then again, I heard theories about the ocean being a possible reason several years ago. It just seems that they have refined the cause down. IIRC, the earlier study could not pinpoint the mechanism that would account for how the apparent effect worked.

    And it's not like it stopped, merely slowed, I just fail to understand societies preference for waiting until it's too late to act before acting. If there is any possibility of man influencing the climate at all, we should be doing all we can to mitigate it rather than wait and see. That is just fucking suicidal. And if you lived in L.A. in the sixties you don't need a scientist to tell you man has an effect on the environment.

    I would rather an EPA that perhaps was a bit too over zealous than one that did nothing. I like clean air, water and my dirt uncontaminated.

    --
    Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
  144. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by pipingguy · · Score: 2

    30 years equals one generation, so the previous one forgets the failures of the current one and falls for the scam yet again.

  145. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by narcc · · Score: 1

    A lot of people don't the difference between a scientific hypothesis and a scientific theory.

    Including an astonishing number of people who complain that "a lot of people don't know the difference between a scientific hypothesis and a scientific theory."

    It's disturbing.

  146. Hilarious by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Global Warming alarmists will never give up on trying to convince the sheeple that they are going to die. Too funny. The come up with bogus explanations for everything......global warming will bring on more and violent hurricanes, it hasn't; It'll raise the sea level, it hasn't; there will be a smaller ice pack, there isn't, it's growing., on and on and on while Al Gore flies around the world in his polluting personal jet and loading up on the cash taken from fools.

  147. Re:This will be a thoughtful, productive discussio by Nimey · · Score: 1

    Life is too short to read the output of ideological idiots.

    --
    Hail Eris, full of mischief...

    E pluribus sanguinem
  148. Heat pumps by tmosley · · Score: 1

    "Shows the heat absent from the surface plunging int the North and South Altantic Ocean."

    That is NOT HOW HEAT TRANSFER WORKS. /Morbo

    Where's your heat pump? Or what's the insulator that kept this cold water completely isolated from the surface for the last two hundred years? If you can't explain either of these two potential scenarios that could lead to what you say being true, you are making shut up to defend your moribund theory. I don't care which side you are on, that kind of behavior KILLS THE SCIENCE. Stop that shit.

    1. Re:Heat pumps by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      Yeah i never understood how th atmospheric temperature could remain constant but the ocean temperatures be continually rising from heat input from the atmosphere.

      The major source of heat in the oceans is from absorbed sunlight. Some of that heat gets transferred to the atmosphere by convection (evaporation) and as the rate varies more or less heat remains in the oceans. In this case more of the heat is getting sucked down by oceanic currents and less is going into the atmosphere.

  149. Re:Well, that's bad news... by Rockoon · · Score: 1

    realclimate makes claims about people and journals that dare publish what their coveted journals reject, which surely are not in the "scientific literature."

    ..perhaps you didnt notice the bashing because you wanted to do some swinging of the stick yourself...

    And this is on top of the for-a-long-time-now well known blatant censorship at realclimate...

    The people that run and moderate realclimate are precisely the "high priests" at the center of the issue. Their standard operating procedure when a paper finds its way into a journal they dont control which casts doubt on their own research is to (a) bash the journal, (b) bash the authors, and (c) post a fallacy-filled rebuttal that ultimately declares victory over the straw they constructed.

    --
    "His name was James Damore."
  150. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Letophoro · · Score: 1

    yeah, let's leave the important decissions to lawyers and economists, and not to scientists and engineers. Now THAT would lead to a great society !

    If you examine the makeup of the elected portion of the government of the USA, that's what we have now.

  151. Re: Washington DC think tanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The AEI was offering $10,000 plus travel expenses for that, paid for by ExxonMobile.

    Have fun.

  152. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "you may thank me for the educate I gave you on the topic"

    The educate?

  153. Re:This will be a thoughtful, productive discussio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "You mustn't of been"

    Jesus Fucking Christ you know how to write that contraction but don't know how to write HAVE?????

  154. Re:Fun Fact by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 1

    Statistical basis.

  155. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Prune · · Score: 1

    So the technically trained, in your opinion, make for better leaders of society? Ironic, given the Slashdot story not so long ago about how a very high proportion of China's totalitarian rulers are engineers.

    I take the opposite stance, as expressed by William F. Buckley's well-known quote: "I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University."

    Disclaimer: I'm an engineer.

    --
    "Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
  156. Re:Another option by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Not surprising the GOP with their ever so faithful libertarian pets would come out of the woodworks and try to claim that global warming is bullshit when there are peer-reviewed studies that more than prove global warming, and that humans are behind it. Guess what, America is the numero uno cause of greenhouse gasses and the GOP and libertarian free market drones are itching to eliminate the regulations that prevent your greedy corporations from polluting even more. Well now that I am done you may go back to your daily GOP brainwashing session with Rush Limbaugh and other radio talk show hosts then go back to copulating with your sister.

    --
    "Eventu rerum stolidi didicere magistro."
    (The stupid have no teacher except their own experience.)

  157. Re:This will be a thoughtful, productive discussio by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Was dumping an amount of sulpher dioxide into the atmosphere good? No! We got acid rain.
    Was dumping a small amounts of ozone depleting chemicals into the atmosphere good? No! We got ozone holes.
    Is shitting in a pool you are swimming in a good idea?
    Is letting the dog waste accumulate in your back yard a good idea?
    Is dumping all your garbage on your front lawn a good idea?
    Why do you thing dumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere is not a good idea? Just because we can't see it accumulate like the stuff on the lawn, yard or pool does not mean it is not there and doing bad things? Come on people are you blinded by the simple fact you can't see it to say it has no effect at all?

    We have clear fossil and more recent evidence that CO2 can cause climate effects. See volcanic eruptions that effected the globe for decades. We now dump out every year more CO2 than any one of those "massive" eruptions did in the last million years.

    Ref#1 Mount Pinatubo Eruption climate effects.
    Ref#2"The burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use results in the emission into the atmosphere of approximately 30 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year worldwide, according to the EIA. The fossil fuels emissions numbers are about 100 times bigger than even the maximum estimated volcanic CO2 fluxes."

  158. Re: Washington DC think tanks by caveqat101 · · Score: 1

    Oh, but we are "fucking" up the planet. Age isn't about "green", unless you mean dollar,yen or euro. Green is keeping the planet habitable for " man": and women are included in that. Solar green is shifting money to untaxable locations and hiding it. It takes monies to clean pollution up, good science and an educated public, a are necessary. That's not in the plan for solar greens. Your tax dollars are being wasted by that little diversion called hate the world, kill the darkie, kill the white, and kill the other. That's what the real green solar agenda seems to be.

  159. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    > Science is about skepticism. Even climatologists that support the theory of man influenced climate change are constantly questioning the data, and > looking at alternate conjectures.

    Right. They should have never proclaimed that the science is settled. They should have never come up with apocalyptic scenarios wrapped in aura of inevitability. I am all in favor of phasing out fossil fuels and replacing them with cleaner energy sources, but I am embarrassed at the gamesmanship from the climate science community to foster their agenda, and I can't take them seriously any longer.

  160. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by dywolf · · Score: 0

    Mod down the troll.
    The skeptics are not correct, and have never correct on this.

    Rather, this is science at work: observation -> prediction -> test -> refinement -> repeat.
    There is no coverup (unless you believe in 10's of thousands of scientists there is a near perfect conspiracy....a better kept secret than even the atom bomb).
    The article is simply saying they found what happened to change the rate of increase. Namely a new event was triggered that is causing the Atlantic to abosrb even more heat than previously expected, as a current has both sped up and dove deeper.

    Also, just to be clear.. THERE IS NO PAUSE OR "HIATUS".
    It is a misnomer that has caught on and needs to be killed.
    The summary says "flatlined" and that's just as wrong.
    The warming is still occuring. The temperature is stil increasing.
    To claim a "pause", "flatline", or "hiatus" is flat wrong.
    The rate of change decreased, but it is still >0.

    The entire misconception comes directly frm an inability to read and interpret a graph. If you understand derivatives of a function, then you know that just because the slope of a derivitive function is graphed, if that slope is 0, doesn't mean that the higher order source function is also 0.

    The warming is still occuring. That is unequivocable.

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  161. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just remember that the purpose of every assumption is to shrink error bars, usually by an unknown amount. A good scientist is honest about this, unfortunately most scientists try to be honest but are incompetent when it comes to statistics and data analysis in general so they don't even realize their overconfidence. This is not in any way limited to climate science.

    That's why any reasonable analysis uses confidence intervals to identify the quality of the data. Apparently, you don't understand statistics or data analysis either.

    Posting AC as I'm moderating on this thread. And no, I did not mod you down.

  162. Re: Every week there's a new explanation of the hi by caveqat101 · · Score: 2

    Really. Why is it that the north polar cap melts in July august? And the south polar cap, happens to gain ice during those same months? By the way did you happen to see the article about the ring of fire there? Or several years ago read the article about the newly discovered volcano's under the icecaps of the article? But no one in artic science reported those, seems they must be secret, like sub's using the noise to sit outside ports? Maybe that's why some of the ports were ice free in article areas... I wonder what else was hidden by/for a forgetful/gullible public.

  163. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by dywolf · · Score: 2

    The science drove the unbeleivers out.
    That's how science works.

    You don't get to question Einstein just because.
    The more evidence for the prevailing theory piles up, the greater the burden of proof you must overcome in order to overturn the consensus.
    You don't have the automatic right to considered just as valid just because you have the ability to say "well, i think it's....". You need a damn good pile of data to back you up.

    and right now, the cranks have diddly squat.

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  164. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by dywolf · · Score: 1

    Troll, edumicate thyself:
    Global Warming 'Pause' Isn't What Climate Change Skeptics Say It Is

    http://www.weather.com/news/sc...

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  165. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by tbannist · · Score: 1

    You're not in much of a position to be presuming to know what I think.

    You've written multiple long-winded posts about how the Greenhouse Effect doesn't exist. Are you recanting those statements?

    If so, then we should congratulate you and you win this one, if not, then's he right and you lose.

    --
    Fanatically anti-fanatical
  166. Hiatue by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The hiatus is caused by the fact that man-made global warming has been a hoax from the beginning.

  167. Re:Washington DC think tanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Is your argument that since there are some who make money through questionable methods in a given field, then the whole field is inherently a scam? By that (broken) logic, I could also say:

    "dude, there is so much money in Religion that there's no way to stop the gravy train. there's no way you can stop the gravy train." (Billions made, Tax Free!, that should piss off everyone).

    "dude, there is so much money in Fossil Fuels that there's no way to stop the gravy train. there's no way you can stop the gravy train." (They stand to lose WAY more than the scientists stand to gain if AGW is true, doesn't it make sense that they would do everything they can to try to misinform people so they can continue to make as much money as possible?).

    etc...

    Let me as you (and the parent) as simple question:

    What would it take to convince you that AGW is real?
    I ask because there is a mountain of evidence for it. And, to be honest, not a whole lot of evidence against it. Granted, there have been some misteps but misteps doesn't mean that the problem isn't real, it means that our description of the problem needs refinement... big difference.

  168. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Type44Q · · Score: 1

    Even climatologists that support the theory of man influenced climate change

    Which is to say, what, 99.8% of them??

  169. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

    Do you have any idea how many trillions we've wasted economically on the global warming thing?

    It's true, vast sums of money pissed away cleaning up pollution and emissions, billions wasted developing more efficient technology... And noting to show for it.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  170. The simple fact by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...is that the earth is a huge and very resilient planet and our presence, while does have an impact, is not as large as we think it is. Our planet is capable of self adjusting to most what we throw at it. This is not to say that we are incapable of destroying it, but that we would have to work a lot harder at it than we have up until now.

  171. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    To me its about the ice caps melting

    There are two ice caps. Only one of them is net melting. The other is expanding. Citation.

  172. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by BitZtream · · Score: 1

    You don't get to question Einstein just because.

    Actually, you do. Thats what makes it science.

    In science, to do the methodology properly, you are NEVER EVER UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES supposed to 'believe' you 'know' ANYTHING. Ever.

    You seem to think that certain things are supposed to be believed regardless of conflicting evidence and only with substantial proof against what you WANT to believe, then its questionable. Thats exactly the opposite of proper science.

    Science is completely centered around questioning the theories and accepted ideas, constantly.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  173. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by phlinn · · Score: 1

    What does seem to be news to everyone that isn't a skeptic is that the models are almost all wrong in one direction: more warming. The alarmists in general still refuse to accept that the fears of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming are vastly overstated.

    --
    "Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
  174. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do enlighten us - please link to an example of "sketchy science" that has been proved wrong by more solid, peer-reviewed science.

    Strangely, all the examples I can find just support the consensus view.

    Um... Go look at the study that we're talking about, then. They also say that half of the recent warming was due to this ocean current, not due to the global warming causes from your preferred consensus view. Here's an example that says that the methods being used by the models are at least half wrong.

  175. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by BitZtream · · Score: 1

    Wasted depends on if it is or isn't reality.

    If global warming is an issue, we've not really 'wasted' anything.

    If it is an issue, you could point to many things, carbon credits be the first thing that comes to mind since it seems to be coming up often lately. Though I would argue that curbing CO2 output is good for our lungs regardless of the global warming situation.

    All the time spent investigating it, all the scientists spending time working on it, politics related to it, this discussion is an example of possible waste due to global warming ... IF its more than just a natural cycle.

    --
    Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
  176. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by superwiz · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The moment someone asks for "peer-reviewed" rebuttal is the moment I know they either don't know what they are talking about or they are vicious liars. You can't have "peer-review" standard in the situation in which the whole field is accused of fraud. We don't ask for peer-review of drug dealing charges by other drug dealers. In this situation the field has to stand up to a higher standard than peer-review. It has to withstand the critical review. The field is accused of being incestuous (in the sense of being self-selecting by rejecting everyone who is not a fawning supporter). This self-selecting membership makes peer-review irrelevant. You get to pick your peers. You don't get to pick who is qualified to be your critics.

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  177. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How does an obvious troll get marked "+4, Interesting"? What the hell, people?

  178. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by walshy007 · · Score: 1

    There are lots of things we know with certainty.

    i think richard feynman put it best.

    The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty, and this experience is of very great importance, I think. When a scientist doesn’t know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is still in some doubt. We have found it of paramount importance that in order to progress we must recognize our ignorance and leave room for doubt. Scientific knowledge is a body of statements of varying degrees of certainty — some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain.

    Now, we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is possible to live and not know. But I don’t know whether everyone realizes this is true. Our freedom to doubt was born out of a struggle against authority in the early days of science. It was a very deep and strong struggle: permit us to question — to doubt — to not be sure. I think that it is important that we do not forget this struggle and thus perhaps lose what we have gained.

  179. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by phlinn · · Score: 2

    "Even the much-hyped hiatus is a hiatus in growth of the anomaly, not a cessation of warming." Read that again and think about what the words actually mean.
    warming: increase in temperature
    anomaly: difference in average temperature from a defined period (that's how the word is generally used in climate science)

    A hiatus in growth of the anomaly really does mean a cessation of warming. It make pick up again later.

    --
    "Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
  180. Re:This will be a thoughtful, productive discussio by silfen · · Score: 2

    I apologize, I was answering the hypothetical answer to the GPs question... You know, the one you didn't actually answer.

    You didn't answer the question. You simply made an erroneous assertion.

    Ya me too, I much prefer a climate that we're not evolved to survive in.

    Well, I do prefer a climate that we're evolved in to survive. Which is why it would actually not be such a bad thing if the current ice age came to an end. We are currently in an ice age with rapid temperature fluctuations. That is not what mammals or primates evolved in. It's probably one of the most challenging climates in the history of the planet, short of snowball earth. I refer you to the cold temperatures and rapid temperature fluctuations that started about 7 million years ago and have been getting more and more extreme:

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

    Conveniently, there are temperature predictions from the worst case IPCC predictions (RPC8.5) in that graph, which show you that those would merely take us back to the climate of 7 million years ago, just about pre-ice-age.

    We should be so lucky. In reality, RPC8.5 is not a reasonable prediction, and humans will stop burning fossil fuels due to market forces long before that. Unfortunately, we will probably not be able to end the current ice age.

    Humanity sure flourished through the Dryas events, didn't they?

    Well, no, it probably was not so pleasant for humanity. Since the Dryas events were periods when a period of rapid global warming was interrupted and a previous cold climate was restored, I'm not sure in what way you think that that's an argument for keeping the climate cold. Colder temperatures are generally not a good thing.

    Humanity clearly did flourish during the period of rapid global warming and sea level rise that started 20000 years ago and ended about 2000 years ago.

  181. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If by "good" they mean EVERY SINGLE WEEK something is "UNEXPECTEDLY" not what the economists have said the day before, they they are "very good."

    lol

  182. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by mpe · · Score: 1

    If this paper were to turn out to be correct, current climate models are useless and will need to be completely reworked. Well, maybe not completely. Some more than others. But it would contradict some of the fundamental assumptions of most of those models.

    We already know that these models useless at predicting. Which rather implies that ALL of them have at least one fundermentally wrong assumption.
    How many truely independent models exist anyway?

  183. And do you know what caused THAT? by gelfling · · Score: 1

    Global Warming!!!!

    Winning!

    1. Re:And do you know what caused THAT? by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      Winning? Losing, this admission is that models were useless, shameful the billions of dollars and euros wasted on climate models that are a farce. Finally there is hope of producing a rational model and decent science instead of the agenda driven propaganda of the IPCC

  184. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by silfen · · Score: 1

    I don't recall those scientists screaming from the top of their lungs ... then we were going to irreversibly fuck this planet up

    No, they generally just predicted the doom of humanity, or at least their own nation, to get politicians to act their way. Predicting the doom of the entire planet is less common, but I guess all things are getting bigger and more global, including scientific FUD.

    The fact that some scientists have flexible morals shouldn't be made equivalent to the fact that corporations have entirely inflexible null morals.

    Corporations don't have morals, they respond to what the people actually want, as expressed by what they are willing to pay money for. The people want cheap transportation, bright lights, lots of gadgets, and entertainment, and that's what corporations deliver. That's a whole lot better than putting people with "flexible morals" in charge, in particular putting them in charge of something as dangerous as directing corporations to do things.

    I never debated those things, why did you bring them up? ;)

    Of course you didn't "debate them"; you prefer to ignore them because they destroy your point that we'd be better off following the policies advocated by scientists. Given the fact that scientists have historically advocated policies that have destroyed entire nations, we should be very careful in following their advice. We should, of course, listen to what they have to say ("it's been getting warmer"), but not necessarily to their policies ("therefore, you must sharply limit carbon emissions").

  185. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I particularly recall a few years ago reading an article in Scientific American (a misnamed publication if there ever was one -- it's at least 25% politics now). The article reported on research that concluded that we had massively underestimated the amount of methane continuously released into the atmosphere from methane hydrates in the ocean. Since methane is a potent greenhouse gas, I read the article breathlessly waiting for the discussion of how this meant the climate models must be wrong since, if their predictions tracked actual data results, the models must have attributed more climate change to human activity than appropriate (the extra methane would have meant a smaller percentage of greenhouse gasses were the result of human activity and more was naturally occurring). Yet, not a mention of this little problem (I assume Scientific American didn't want to get blackballed as a "denier").

    It often appears to be easier (or more PC) to ignore, even outright deny, facts which are at odds with (accepted) claims. Which is far more "politics" or "religion" than "science"

  186. Heat pumps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah i never understood how th atmospheric temperature could remain constant but the ocean temperatures be continually rising from heat input from the atmosphere. This is not how thermal transfer works. There is some coefficient of transfer between the ocean surface and atmosphere determined by currents, surface temperature, and surface area among other things. The temperature of the atmosphere would increase substantially inorder for the transfer rate to the ocean to increase or the surface temperature of the ocean would have to dive drastically lower so that the thermal transfer rate would increase. There is not really a way for the atmosphere to transfer additional heat load without increasing temperature. The thermal load the atmosphere can support without increasing is much lower than that of the ocean.

      It's like saying you could add some water and air to a thermally insulated sealed pot with a metal lid apply heat to the lid of the pot and somehow make the water boil without increasing the temperature of the water in the pot without increasing the air temperature in the pot. Much more likely is that the temperature trends of the atmosphere are slaved to the heating and cooling of the ocean which is mainly driven by radiant heating from the sun rather than convectional heating from the atmosphere.

  187. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems like there is some movement recently that shows the 'cholesterol = heart disease' theory is wrong. Anyone that tried to speak up against the theory over the years was dismissed. Atkins was considered dangerous. The government has been telling everyone, to stay away from saturated fat for years. Now we find out that is was carbs all along. Not only that, but lowering cholesterol by eating more carbs is harmful in many ways: diabetes, obesity, and high amounts of Pattern B LDL which has been linked to coronary heart disease.

  188. Heat pumps by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "It's like saying you could add some water and air to a thermally insulated sealed pot with a metal lid apply heat to the lid of the pot and somehow make the water boil without increasing the air temperature in the pot. Much more likely is that the temperature trends of the atmosphere are slaved to the heating and cooling of the ocean which is mainly driven by radiant heating from the sun rather than convectional heating from the atmosphere."

    Let me edit this sentence because my phone mangled it.

  189. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Apparently, you don't understand statistics or data analysis either."

    And what assumptions do you make when you use confidence intervals? Do these assumptions affect the error bars? Also, from your response I doubt you know what a confidence interval is. Do you understand it is the percent of intervals that will contain the true value (given all assumptions are true), not the probability the true value is within the interval?

  190. Admission that the "Hiatus" exists... by dtjohnson · · Score: 0

    Here is an implicit admission that there is such a thing as a "hiatus" from the predicted increase in global temperature. Most of the recent stories have suggested that the planet was past the point of no return, that the antarctic ice cap was doomed, that the arctic would soon, be ice free, that sea levels were on the verge of dramatic increase, that drought caused by planetary warming was accelerating, and so forth. The entire idea of human-caused global warming is based on information we have that the the atmospheric concentration of co2 is increasing and computer models which suggest that this increase in co2 concentration would lead to an increase in global temperatures due to heat being prevented from radiating back into space. But...what if the computer models are...dare we say it...wrong? What if the earth's albedo changes due to changes in atmospheric water vapor and condensed water (clouds) that are not modeled? What if the solar output changes leading to planetary heating and cooling cycles stretching over centuries? What if the amount of heat radiation into space that is being blocked by carbon dioxide is far less than predicted by the modeling due to kinetic gas mixing and reradiation? What if the amount of heat originating from the center of the earth is varying more than we expect and affecting our surface climate? If our crude computer models attributing climate change solely to simplistic effects of carbon dioxide heat absorption are...wrong, one result would be that planetary surface temperatures might not actually increase as the models have predicted. Now, though, the co2/AGW proponents are attributing exactly this effect to an increase in subsurface ocean temperatures. However, there is obviously no long-term data on these temperatures making any such prediction fanciful at best. To put this into perspective, if all of the solar radiation striking the earth in a one-year period were to be absorbed by the earth's oceans and none of it were re-radiated into space, the temperature of the earth's ocean waters would increase by only about 0.2 C in that year. Now, consider that even AGW proponents will concede that 99.99 percent of that solar radiation is re-radiated into space and the temperature variations in the deep ocean would be very small and lost in the 'noise' of the measurement precision and absence of historical data for comparison. TFA is nothing but interesting conjectural speculation based on very limited data and certainly not the definitive 'answer' suggested by the slashdot article title.

    1. Re:Admission that the "Hiatus" exists... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      To put this into perspective, if all of the solar radiation striking the earth in a one-year period were to be absorbed by the earth's oceans and none of it were re-radiated into space, the temperature of the earth's ocean waters would increase by only about 0.2 C in that year.

      To put this into perspective, that rate of temperature increase only translates to all the world's oceans boiling within at most 500 years.

  191. Re:Atmosphere affects about a few inches of surfac by GameboyRMH · · Score: 1

    So you didn't even read TFS. If you did you'd see how ocean surface temperatures can affect temperatures lower down.

    But you're beyond not trying to answer your own questions. You've become a tinfoil-hatted conspiracy theorist, while a real, factually provable conspiracy operates to maintain your belief.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  192. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Uecker · · Score: 1

    I think a lot of people, even some actual scientists, do not understand the role of skepticism in Science. There's a difference between scientific skepticism and peanut gallery skepticism. Scientific skepticism is healthy.

    Scientists can speculate and debate as much as they want whether it's getting warmer or colder. The issue with the global warming debate is the political demands to translate the science into specific actions, often by scientists who have no qualifications in economics or politics.

    Nonsense. The issue is that people who do fear certain political actions are badmouthing the underlying science and the scientists involved instead of debating political questions. I wish we would actually debate how to best deal with global warming instead of whether it exists or what causes it.

  193. One more piece of the puzzle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This planet is much more water than land, yet the climate folks based the original predictions on land surface temp history.
    These temps are important because that's were we live, but there is no reason to expect them to give us anywhere near a whole picture for a climate model.

    Our short term weather models are good at recognizing senarios they have seen before.
    The way these models are built is to start with a physics model of the system, then refine it using historical data until it works.
    After much refinement and with the oceans relatively constant, the models predict fairly well using mostly atmospheric sounding data.
    IE, It works a few days out with better than random precision. (The bar for a good weather prediction is not very high.)
    But major changes in the ocean energy flows ask these models to predict things they have not seen before.
    They are pretty much limited to telling us that things are different from what we are accustomed to.
    (IE, weather men sem less good at predicting tomorrow's weather, and see more historical records broken.)

    I'm thinking the climate models are like more crude, longer term weather models.
    They can use physics models, but there is much less available historical data to refine them.
    Given that they are just starting to refine the models with undersea weather data, and that this is a major energy transport system for the planet,
      I don't see how they can predict how the whole planet will adapt to this new norm.

    Still, it's good that these folks are starting to add the sea weather to their models.
    Eventually this exercise will result in a better understanding of how things work.

    For now, aside for things seem different and this may be bad because we are optimized for the way things were, I don't see how these models can tell us where we are heading. At best they might say why things are changing, but the significance of that change seems at best a guess.

    That doesn't say we should do nothing, but it does say we should temper our response by what we actually know.

  194. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

    The hypothesis described in this article should be easy to test. Has there been a program of benthic temperature measurements at given places in the world over a "long" period of time? If so, how do today's temperatures compare with that record? Temperatures taken at depth should represent long-term averages, immune to all the short-term effects that go on near the surface.

  195. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Good comment. Besides, the article cannot possibly be correct because warm water in "intermediate ocean depths" would rise. Cold water above it would not "trap" it.

  196. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by BCGlorfindel · · Score: 1

    No model, in any branch of science or engineering, is complete and perfect; that doesn't mean they're useless [arstechnica.com].

    Agreed, but how good are the climate models is a very important question. Plenty of people are pushing very, very hard for sweeping large scale economic and political level reforms based on the results of these models. Global CO2 emissions are tightly locked to economic development, particularly in developing nations like China, and significantly cutting those means significant economic fallout.

    Look at the IPCC assessments and you can see what their current assessment of climate model reliability is. They rank it to be quite high. At the exact same time, they also note that climate models are NOT well agreed on what SIGN to place on the impact of cloud feedback. Apologies if it makes me sound like I'm cherry picking my data. Clouds contribute significantly more to the greenhouse effect than CO2, and models are uncertain what SIGN to place on clouds? I DO NOT believe the certainty the models can give on CO2 impact is all that powerful while there remains disagreement on the sign to attribute to clouds. Most importantly to all of us stuck on this rock, it certainly seems insufficient to advocate massive global political and economic reforms.

  197. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    ok then, how did we spend trillions on AGW?

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  198. Re: Washington DC think tanks by whistlingtony · · Score: 1

    You do realize you sound crazy.... right? The "green" solar agenda is to shift money to untaxable locations and hide it (I thought that was EVERYONE's agenda), and to divert the world's attention by hating the world and killing everyone?

    I... wow. What does anyone say to that? Where did you GET that?

  199. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by whistlingtony · · Score: 1

    There are two ice caps. The one that is ice floating in warming water is melting. The other one is over a land mass, and hence not melting with warming water. The mount of ice on the southern pole is regulated by wind and snowfall. More heat in the system makes more vigorous winds, hence freezing more.

    This is not unexplained. You just didn't look.

  200. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    If this study is right then there will come a point when climate models are underestimating the warming again

    True, assuming that's the only significant unknown in the climate. What do you think are the chances of that?

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  201. Re:Washington DC think tanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mod -10

  202. background info by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    a key paper is fyfe etal
    http://hypergeometric.wordpress.com/2013/08/28/overestimated-global-warming-over-the-past-20-years-fyfe-gillett-zwiers-2013/
    also
    http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v501/n7467/nature12534/metrics/blogs
    http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.2297/abstract;jsessionid=248054334638E607C6ADD94B04F54D92.f01t04

    also
    http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/08/07/1407229111.abstract?sid=e2e7718d-f0ec-4837-ae65-3ec7be19d316

  203. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by ultranova · · Score: 1

    No, they want the science to be settled more-thoroughly before we re-model our entire society in response to it.

    No, they want to avoid any change since that risks the status quo that works just fine for them and their buddies. Demanding more evidence is simply a delay tactic at this point.

    But the bottom line is: people aren't as stupid as you'd like to think they are, and they don't need the science community usurping the decision-making power by internalizing the debate and lying to everyone.

    And they're never more ingenious than when they're coming up with excuses for why they don't need to change. Which is their problem when it's their own body or personal life they're ruining, but becomes my problem when it's the entire world that's at stake.

    --

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

  204. Wtf by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please explain AWAY the melting polar ice caps, the permafrost melt, massive release of methane from said permafrost melt (which is 20+ times more damaging then CO2),& other HORRIFING examples of "global warming". How many Millions/ Billions of $$$$ do you get for spouting these lies. Are you deniers going to move close to sea level ??? I didn't think so.......

  205. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by silfen · · Score: 1

    I wish we would actually debate how to best deal with global warming instead of whether it exists or what causes it.

    That is exactly what we are debating. And the best way of dealing with it is to ignore it, because the costs of dealing with global warming down the road are tiny compared to the costs of limiting emissions right now, for any realistic IPCC scenario. The problem is that climate scientists and their activist friends are unwilling to accept basic economics and keep making proposals outside their domain of expertise.

  206. Hey, I like that! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >> Another way you can tell you are part of a cult is when your high priests are telling you to sacrifice something while they live in comfort and plenty.

    You are absolutely right actually. I like that. Al Gore and ALL "oh my god, the earth is going to die unless we appease the gods through sacrifice" global warming apocalypse cultists live in absolute luxury in homes with seven furnaces jetting around the world in huge private jets all the while telling their blinded followers to bike to work, turn down their thermostat, live the life of a pauper to protect planet Earth because that will appease the gods and hopefully prevent them from destroying the Earth.

  207. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by budgenator · · Score: 2

    Do enlighten us - please link to an example of "sketchy science" that has been proved wrong by more solid, peer-reviewed science.

    Strangely, all the examples I can find just support the consensus view.

    How does 95 different climate models, returning 95 different results, all of which fail to approximate real-world data support a consensus view, and what does a consensus have to do with science in the first place? Here's a clue, if you want me to make an effort to reduce my "carbon footprint" and spend more of my hard earned money to achieve the same, don't hide your supporting original research behind a paywall. I'm not convinced by the interpretations of a Journalism Major that graduated from a liberal arts college in matters of real science, most of those dwebes couldn't pass a real laboratory science class if their lives depended on it; let's see what Journalists have to say after they've passed Calc I &II, DifEq, Stats and a Physics class!

    I did read the Press Release and found an interesting reference to the fear of an impending ice-age back in the '70s

    The authors dug up historical data to show that the cooling in the three decades between 1945 to 1975 – which caused people to worry about the start of an Ice Age – was during a cooling phase. (It was thought to have been caused by air pollution.) Earlier records in Central England show the 40- to 70-year cycle goes back centuries, and other records show it has existed for millennia.

    Changes in Atlantic Ocean circulation historically meant roughly 30 warmer years followed by 30 cooler years.

    seems like that means that all of the Warmists who claimed that fear of an ice age during the 1970's was denialist propaganda, are either incompetent researchers or bald-faced liars. Oh by the way if you want to know more about the 30/60 year quasi-periodic warming and cooling cycles due to the ADO and PDO, ther is tons of info over at WattsUpWithThat to get you started.

    --
    Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
  208. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Not true! Only about a third of them are oil shills. Another third are coal shills, and the rest are mostly just idiotic dupes.

  209. Re: Every week there's a new explanation of the hi by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Dammit J'a'm'e's, quit using apostrophes to pluralize! They don't belong there!

  210. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

    Selection bias. They went looking for heat sinks and found them. Heat sinks that have always been there and with no proposed mechanism for them accelerating. Just arm waving.

    The no doubt walked past a dozen heat sources, but ignored them. The heat is from CO2, that's already settled in their minds.

    --
    John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
  211. Re:Washington DC think tanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    While I appreciate that you disagree, you have provided no substance at all. Is there anything in that post which you can demonstrate isn't true? Or are you just disagreeing because it doesn't match your unsubstantiated world view?

  212. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure you can call this an unknown. We've known for a long time heat is absorbed in the ocean in this way and about the specific currents in the Atlantic that this paper is examining. It's just that since the ARGO floats were deployed starting 12 years ago we are better able to quantify the effects now.

  213. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No one is trying to bury skeptics in this subject. We LIKE skeptics. What people ARE trying to do is move on from already debunked criticisms of legitimate science.

    For example:

    We observe that the temperature on earth is rising, AGW is proposed as a theory to explain that observable fact. Skeptics claim "well Mars is warming too, maybe it's solar activity?". A reasonable question... if the premise were true.

    Mars is NOT warming at a pace comparable to Earth's. They took small regional changes (which have a different length of cycle from Earth's due to a a different year length) and ASSUMED that they applied to the whole planet, they don't.

    So, now that this alternate theory to explain the observation that the Earth is warming has been invalidated... almost a decade ago. Why do we still need to explain that it is not a valid explanation? Please, if you can come up with an explanation which has not already been invalidated, do so. I honestly would love to hear some alternative theories.

    Note: non-scientific claims like "We are too small to make a difference" don't count. You'd first have to quantify how much CO2 would make a difference, then you could show that we simply fall short of that.

  214. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    The only source of heat on the Earth is the Sun with minor, rounding error level contributions from geothermal processes and human heat production. As far as accelerating the phenomena the paper talks about is known to be cyclical with a 20 to 35 year periodicity so there are times when it absorbs more heat and time when it absorbs less. As far as CO2 goes, it doesn't produce any heat either, it just changes the radiative characteristics of the atmosphere which affects the energy balance of the planet. More CO2 (and other GHGs) means an increase in temperature as the energy balance adjusts.

  215. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    I'm not sure you can call this an unknown.

    Then the models should have accounted for it.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  216. Re:Washington DC think tanks by whitroth · · Score: 2

    Really? Where can I sign up for some?

    And here I thought the factual evidence was that the petrochemical industry was pouring literally tens of millions to deny it, creating and funding think tanks, TV ads, and paying politicians, oh, sorry, bundlng campaign contributions, and dumping into 527s (is it?)

                  mark "there are two kinds of Republicans: millionaires... and suckers"

  217. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    The only source of heat on the Earth is the Sun with minor, rounding error level contributions from geothermal processes and human heat production

    If you're going to talk about rounding errors, you ought to mention we can't accurately figure out how much warming the earth's atmosphere does to within 10 degrees Celsius. That is, if the earth didn't have an atmosphere at all, there is significant uncertainty in how warm the earth would be.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  218. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Zeromous · · Score: 1

    I don't know, I tend to support whatever leads us to a more efficient use of our hydrocarbon resources as a society. I look at this as the greatest economic opportunity of our times, as it's pretty clear to me, the remaining hydrocarbons yet to be extracted would be far more beneficial to society as a strategic fuel source, and source of polymers, rather than literally burning it 'up in smoke' out of our tailpipes.

    --
    ---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
  219. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The question climate science deniers need to ask themselves is "If all of this heat is going into the ocean why hasn't it actually cooled rather than temperatures just sort of plateauing?" If all that heat is disappearing into the ocean and we're not actually cooling that means heat is still building up.

    and the question political science deniers need to ask themselves is the likely outcome of rent-seeking monopolized energy control based on hypotheses that either can't be falsified or which would be subject to relentless politicization. Unlike the questions of climate science, the answer to the political science question is as predictable and regular as dropping a heavy stone from a roof top.

  220. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by budgenator · · Score: 1

    2. CO2 traps heat (experiments showing that are all over the internet.)

    Any "experiment" about CO2 "trapping" heat, you see on the internet will vary from amusing naiveté, to blatant fraud like the Al Gore/Bill Nye demonstration; they will all be wrong.

    --
    Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
  221. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by budgenator · · Score: 2

    The science drove the unbeleivers out.
    That's how science works.

    You don't get to question Einstein just because.
    The more evidence for the prevailing theory piles up, the greater the burden of proof you must overcome in order to overturn the consensus.
    You don't have the automatic right to considered just as valid just because you have the ability to say "well, i think it's....". You need a damn good pile of data to back you up.

    and right now, the cranks have diddly squat.

    I thought Einstein was the guy who said "You don't need a consensus to disprove a theory, you just need one person" or something close to it.

    --
    Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
  222. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by dywolf · · Score: 0

    Questioning....for a valid reason.

    Questioning....because you don't like it, or especially for political reasons, which is the number one reason for these cranks who say they have an equal right to their "opinion"... is not sufficient.

    Don't tell me what I think when I keep telling you what I think.

    Just because you CAN question something doesn't mean your theory is just as valid as the prevailing theory with tons of data to back it up.
    Your new theory can only overturn the prevailing mountain of thought if it is sufficiently rigorous.
    If it is not, you're just a crank.
    If it is...if it can and does overturn the prevailing consensus....then it becomes the new consensus (over time).

    but everytime it has happened, it hasn't happened just because the person was a crank, but because he was able to sufficiently back it up, sufficiently defend it, and show its superiority. and that is the problem with deniers, and why they are cranks: they have nothing.

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  223. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by budgenator · · Score: 2
    --
    Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
  224. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by david_thornley · · Score: 2

    The models were doing pretty well until the 21st-century slowdown. At that point, we have two possible explanations: that the warming of the planet has slowed considerably (since it's still been getting warmer), or the heat is going somewhere else. If the total warming has slowed, that's good news (although hard to explain). If the heat's just going somewhere else, that heat sink is likely to become less accessible (as it apparently was during the 1990s), or fill up, and the atmospheric temperatures are going to go up fast again.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  225. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    I'm going to suggest that scientists are better at this science thing than other people, and that decision makers should listen to them. What to do about global warming is a political and economic decision, not a scientific one, but if you want to make actual good decisions (as opposed to decisions that will keep the Koch campaign donations coming in), you need to know what's happening.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  226. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Sure you get to question Einstein. The question is whether anybody should listen to you, and that depends entirely on what you've got for evidence and competing theories. If you can come up with a competing theory that explains the observations we've already got, and predicts other observations we haven't made yet to be different from what relativity predicts, great!

    Similarly, you get to question global warming. However, unless you have some sort of evidence, as opposed to mass character attacks on scientists, nobody should pay attention to you.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  227. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Okay, so why would you think the whole scientific field would be fraudulent? What, aside from the fact that you don't like their conclusions, would give you that idea? What evidence do the accusers have that the problem is with a whole group of scientists?

    Something like 97% of peer-reviewed papers agree with AGW, which suggests that 3% don't, so any scientists in the field who disagree can still publish. Now, if some scientist comes up with something that overthrows a major part of a field of science, that scientist is going to be famous, so there's a big incentive to refute AGW if possible.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  228. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    We're not necessarily going to be better off following policies advocated by scientists, since scientists tend to be lousy politicians. We're almost certainly going to be a lot worse off if we ignore scientists talking about what will happen under certain circumstances.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  229. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by budgenator · · Score: 1

    Halite is the mineral name for salt, sodium chloride salt, so thermohaline circulation refers to both the temperature and the salinity effect on the water's density and flow.

    --
    Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
  230. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Nitpick much? What's happened is that atmospheric temperatures in the 21st Century have gone up considerably slower than in the 1990s. They have still gone up. If you want to reword that, feel free.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  231. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

    There are tons of real problems to solve like access to energy and sanitation and global warming expenditures often only make those harder and more expensive.

  232. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    And your source of that economic statement is....?

    What would the cost be of sea level rising 10m as opposed to attempts to limit CO2 production?

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  233. Re:Washington DC think tanks by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1

    I'm not saying it's a scam. I'm saying now that the idea has built momentum and there's money to be made, AGW like TSA or NASA or the F-35 -- it keeps going because influential people are making money. It will be really hard to kill it off.

  234. Re:Washington DC think tanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "dude, there is so much money in Religion that there's no way to stop the gravy train. there's no way you can stop the gravy train." (Billions made, Tax Free!, that should piss off everyone).

    Um... yes.

    What would it take to convince you that AGW is real?

    Yes... AGW is real. What we are really arguing about are degrees or fractions thereof. I'm not going to get excited about one or two degrees, especially since those extra degrees may critical to prevent the next ice age, which arguably would be much more destructive than a few extra tornados/hurricanes and regional drought.

  235. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by budgenator · · Score: 1

    I don't know about that the temperature anomaly has been stuck in the neighborhood of 0.3 for a long time.

    --
    Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
  236. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by david_thornley · · Score: 0

    Would you care to name skeptics that are labeled deniers? I'd like to see evidence that they're skeptics, not deniers, and that they were labeled deniers by sufficiently many people to make a difference.

    I've started asking about all these mythical people, since I don't see them myself.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  237. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Denial says: the climate change model is incorrect, therefore climate change is wrong LA LA LA LA LA I cant hear you.

    Your bias is showing.

    Either way you look at it, words from both sides, ala "deniers" and "alarmists" are used to discredit the opposing side without taking merit for their words. I strongly suggest anyone even attempting to participate in the debate to throw aside the tendency to de-humanize those holding the viewpoint that is slightly different from theirs, and focus on the matters at hand. You cannot honestly deny that this happens on both sides, which is why the discussion rarely goes anywhere useful.

  238. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by dnavid · · Score: 1

    A lot of people don't the difference between a scientific hypothesis and a scientific theory. These climate change models are just hypothesis in software form. We won't able to run experiments for these hypothesis in our lifetimes, and in turn they will never reach the level of a scientific theory in our lifetime.

    There's an oversimplified version of the Scientific Method that says we start with a scientific hypothesis, which is a conjecture or a guess, then we run an experiment, the experiment either contradicts the hypothesis or confirms it, and after X number of confirming experiments the hypothesis becomes a Theory. In practice, its more complicated than that and the transition from a conjecture to a theory is not binary. The theory of anthropomorphic global climate change is a large set of interlocking and overlapping smaller theories combined. For example, the theory of the greenhouse effect is strongly confirmed: different gasses in the atmosphere affect the absorption and radiation of infrared radiation in different ways, affecting the amount of net heat energy trapped on the surface of the Earth and lost to space. That's pretty settled. We can't, of course, experiment with thousands of different planet's atmospheres to test that theory in the simplified way, but we can do experiments on smaller scales and correlate them with Earth's atmosphere and the atmospheric conditions of other planets we can observe.

    We know the first order effect of increased CO2: it tends to trap more heat energy. But that doesn't automatically mean global temperatures have to rise. That's the natural presumption, but Earth's surface is a complex environment. More heat energy could cause more clouds to form, causing a negative feedback effect which tends to slow or halt increased temperatures by blocking radiation from reaching the surface. The oceans have a huge impact on energy distribution on the surface of the Earth, and can sequester heat energy for a very long time in principle.

    However, the net result of all of these various conjectures and theories in the aggregate is that the most logical explanation for the observed increase in global surface temperatures over time is the increase in CO2 caused primarily by human activity. That statement is less a theory, and more of an explanation for all the other smaller theories that individually explain small parts of the whole.

    The transition from scientific hypothesis or conjecture rests not just with how many experimental wins the conjecture accumulates, but also the degree to which the conjecture accurately makes useful predictions and the degree to which it synergizes and accommodates other more well confirmed theories. We're never going to be able to experiment with other universes in all likelihood, but that doesn't mean the Big Bang will always be a scientific conjecture. Philosophers might make that claim, but the Big Bang is considered a genuine scientific theory because it makes testable predictions that are not just confirmable, but very powerful and wide-reaching. There's no obvious reason why we should observe the nucleosynthetic proportions we see in the observable universe, and yet the Big Bang makes very specific predictions about how much helium we should see relative to hydrogen. If the Big Bang was wrong, the odds of it making such a prediction accurately are extremely low. At some point, its not luck but skill, and in the same way at some point scientists decide a conjecture can't be that lucky, and therefore must, to a high degree of probability, incorporate some fundamental truth about the universe. It might not be precisely right, but it can't be completely wrong.

    Over three hundred years after Newton published Principia, the theory of Newtonian gravity has held up remarkably well. Einstein didn't completely overthrow Newton, and after centuries its highly unlikely anything will: it simply makes too many predictions that are always confirmed. What Einstein did was modify Newton's

  239. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by dnavid · · Score: 1

    Regardless of the role of skepticism, everybody seems to be overlooking one key point: If this paper were to turn out to be correct, current climate models are useless and will need to be completely reworked. Well, maybe not completely. Some more than others. But it would contradict some of the fundamental assumptions of most of those models.

    Actually, that's not true, or at least its an exaggeration. If this paper is correct, what it actually says is that most of the models out there may have been basically correct, but missing an important parameter: an additional heat sequester due to deep ocean currents. No model is perfect, and when modelling a system as large and complex as the Earth, you have to work hard to simplify what you can to make the model work at all, while not oversimplifying to the point of eliminating the validity of the model's results. And most climatologists have known for a long time that the largest blind spot in most climate models is the Earth's oceans. That's why this sort of research even happens in the first place.

  240. Re:Well, that's bad news... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Would you know a fallacy-filled rebuttal if it bit you on the ass? I don't know anything about the people at realclimate, but bashing journal and authors and issuing a rebuttal seems reasonable if the paper is crap science.

    My personal theory is that most climate scientists are honest, most anti-AGW papers are crap, and that there's a big smear campaign going on by people who stand to lose money if somebody does something constructive. It fits the facts that I've seen very nicely.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  241. Re:Well, that's bad news... by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    What do you think the scientific method is? What we have here is a theory that says that the planet is warming up at a certain place. We find that air temperatures are not rising as fast as expected, so if the theory's correct there has to be another place the heat is going. So, people look for the other place. If they find one, they can incorporate that into the general science. If they can't find one, it casts doubt on the theory. In the meantime, everybody's free to look for some other theory that fits as well.

    Think about the Newtonian model of gravitation. Consider that Uranus wasn't behaving the way the theory predicted, so some scientists tried to make the data fit the hypothesis by postulating another planet beyond Uranus. Are you saying that the search for Neptune was unscientific? (And, of course, the anomalies in the orbit of Mercury turned out not to be due to another planet, but were explained by relativity. This can go both ways, but I do claim that the search for Vulcan was good science.)

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  242. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by dnavid · · Score: 1

    I think a lot of people, even some actual scientists, do not understand the role of skepticism in Science. There's a difference between scientific skepticism and peanut gallery skepticism. Scientific skepticism is healthy.

    Scientists can speculate and debate as much as they want whether it's getting warmer or colder. The issue with the global warming debate is the political demands to translate the science into specific actions, often by scientists who have no qualifications in economics or politics.

    I believe climatologists have a better understanding of economics than economists or politicians have of climatology.

    I think the people best in a position to think about this problem rationally tend to be actuaries; insurance professionals. Insurance professionals have to apply imperfect knowledge and incomplete risk models and make economic decisions within that environment all the time. They don't always get it right, but moreso than most they tend to balance the two on at least large scales on some rational basis. Insurance companies tend to believe that the odds of economic damage due to climate change are high enough to be financially material. In other words they are tending to bet it is happening, will get worse, and they have to budget for that eventuality.

    That doesn't mean they are right or that Scientific judgment should rest with actuaries. It simply means if the argument is that unless Scientists are 100% certain, and even if they are, they shouldn't be telling people how to spend their money, that's actually true to an extent. But they do have the right to advocate no different than anyone else does, and that advocacy tends to be based on something other than political ideology. And the actual people whose jobs it is to actually try to understand the risks on a technical level and also the economics on a macro level aren't siding with the skeptics. So the skeptics can't argue that presuming climatologists are correct is not economically practical to people who have to think about money. Scientific consensus has been pretty broad for quite some time, but in the last five years I've seen a shift even in areas like the broader business community and the military that ignoring the real risks that global climate change will have significant negative impacts is foolhardy. They aren't betting it *will* happen, they are doing what risk managers do: they have assessed the risk that the scientists are *close enough* to being right that its worth acting on that risk.

    So yeah, scientists should do Science and economists should do Economics, but what the rest of the world should be doing is risk management. By the time 100% certainty for all aspects of all elements of climatology arrives, it will be History. But its way past the point where practical people with unbiased objective outlooks should be considering risk management: reducing the risks where possible and planning for the risks where necessary. And even the cold blood bean counters are starting to do that in earnest now.

  243. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    If the Earth had no atmosphere it would have an average temperature similar to the Moon's (about -5C according to Wikipedia) but it wouldn't have a great a range as the Moon because it revolves in 24 hours rather than 28 days. There might be some small albedo differences but without an atmosphere there would be little water so not much ice to affect that. Maybe you're talking about an atmosphere without CO2 in it but I think we could figure that out to better than 10 C too.

  244. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    How can models account for something where the periodicity is only known to +/- 7.5 years? As I said this new more detailed information may lead to improvements in the ocean portions of climate models.

  245. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    So you think political science trumps climate science? Good luck with that.

  246. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    There might be some small albedo differences but without an atmosphere there would be little water so not much ice to affect that.

    It would actually be a big albedo difference.

    but I [guess] we could figure that out to better than 10 C too.

    That's you're problem, you're speculating. Find out, like I did, instead of speculating.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  247. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Uecker · · Score: 1

    I wish we would actually debate how to best deal with global warming instead of whether it exists or what causes it.

    That is exactly what we are debating.

    Obviously we are also debating whether global warming exists or is caused by humans. To me - as a scientist - this is a deeply worrying sign of ignorance.

    And the best way of dealing with it is to ignore it, because the costs of dealing with global warming down the road are tiny compared to the costs of limiting emissions right now, for any realistic IPCC scenario.

    This is an interesting opinion. You present it as obvious, but it is the opposite of what most people who studied this seems to think.

    The problem is that climate scientists and their activist friends are unwilling to accept basic economics and keep making proposals outside their domain of expertise.

    This is clearly not basic economics. Is is more about estimating future risks and estimating economic cost which seems difficult to me. The term "climate scientists and their activist friends" also indicates a bit of paranoid thinking.

  248. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by superwiz · · Score: 1

    Something like 97% of peer-reviewed papers agree with AGW, which suggests that 3% don't, so any scientists in the field who disagree can still publish.

    3%? As in outside of, what is it, 2.2 sigma? That sounds like a statistical error that is to be expected in any self-selection group.

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  249. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by superwiz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Now, if some scientist comes up with something that overthrows a major part of a field of science, that scientist is going to be famous, so there's a big incentive to refute AGW if possible.

    This idiotic sophism has been so often refuted, that any attempt to do so again seems futile. In fact, if I were in a fouler mood, it would elicit the well-deserve soup of expletives in your direction. But hey, I am not there yet.

    So once again, any self-selected group cannot be considered honest if they are not open to criticism or introspection from outside experts. The AGW camp is just such a group. If you are one of them, you are a "peer". If you are a renowned world-expert on a subject on which these "peers" make statements, but you yourself are not an expert on their entire subject, when you ask questions on the field of your expertise, they brand you a denier, bring out the tar and feathers and drag your name through the mud. So not only are they not open to any outside criticism, they, under the threat of destroying people's careers, actively discourage any outside experts from questioning their "findings."

    This is a classic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N... type of logical fallacy.

    I am glad we've covered that so that the next rabid dog foaming at the mouth, because his favorite politicians or celebrities told him to support AGW, can repeat this fallacy again.

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  250. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    If there were no atmosphere there would be no ice (except maybe some pockets at the poles like the Moon). So the surface albedo wouldn't be that different from the Moon.

    Perhaps you could point me to the research that says we can't figure it out to better than 10 C.

  251. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    If there were no atmosphere there would be no ice (except maybe some pockets at the poles like the Moon). So the surface albedo wouldn't be that different from the Moon.

    The moon is white, significantly more reflective than the earth

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  252. H-S shift between Greek and Latin by zooblethorpe · · Score: 1

    Much as Budgenator said, the haline in thermohaline refers to salt.

    There is a common pattern in some words with Greek and Latin roots, where the Greek will start with H while the Latin starts with S. So it is here with haline (Greek root) and saline (Latin root).

    Other examples include Greek hyper and Latin super ("over, above" -- remember that the Y in Greek roots was often pronounced more like an ü, and not like the /ai/ sound of English eye or hyper), Greek hypo and Latin sub ("under, beneath"), Greek hept- and Latin sept- ("seven").

    Cheers,

    --
    "What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
    "A four-foot prune."
  253. Yay...more methane ice can be melted! by dsoodak · · Score: 1
  254. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    the remaining hydrocarbons yet to be extracted would be far more beneficial to society as a strategic fuel source, and source of polymers, rather than literally burning it 'up in smoke' out of our tailpipes.

    I've often wondered this, if in the future we will say, "what idiots we were, burning that valuable stuff now that we know what we can do with it!"

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  255. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    Don't you think that without an atmosphere the Earth's surface would move toward that state as well?

  256. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    Yes, if the earth were the same color as the moon, it would have a similar albedo

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  257. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    Um... have you bothered to look at the raw temperature records?

  258. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    ENSO has no long--term effect on climate. ENSO is a short term variation.

    This is completely irrelevant to my point, which was not about the total energy budget.

    THE PURPOSE of models is to do forecasting. So far, no models can accurately project the behavior of ENSO. Now we have a proposed cycle that supposedly drives or at least overwhelms ENSO, but is equally unpredictable. At least so far.

    If the model can't forecast not just ENSO, but a larger cycle that supposedly drives or overwhelms ENSO, then the models are that much LESS useful for forecasting.

    Get it? I made no comment about energy either staying or leaving. Conservation of energy is not relevant to this point.

  259. Go on and lick my ballsack! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because the world would better off with you licking my ballsack than referring to WIKIPEDIA as an authoritative (or even factual) source.

  260. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    The correctness or incorrectness of a model is not a binary problem. As has been famously said, "All models are wrong, but some are useful." So the idea that if a model isn't (close to) perfect it's results have to be ignored is an absolutist position that has no place in science.

  261. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    That being the case, you may thank me for the educate I gave you on the topic that led to you changing your mind.

    You didn't "educate me" about anything. Fourier's own writings make it clear that he initially believed De Saussure's apparatus warmed via trapping of radiation, which we know today to be false. It worked by preventing convective cooling... just like a real greenhouse does. No "trapping of radiation" was involved... which we KNOW from hundreds of years now of observation of real greenhouses. Yes, I'm saying Fourier (at the time he wrote those notes) was wrong.

    He later postulated that gas in the sky could work via a similar mechanism, holding energy by trapping radiation. However, he correctly noted that the effect in the atmosphere would not be the same, because it includes convection. The problem with this idea is that the first effect -- the radiation trapping -- did not occur at all (we know this from real greenhouses).

    The point of the particular comment which you linked to above was not that the greenhouse effect does not exist (that's a different discussion). The point was that the "physics" it was based on was an incorrect conjecture by Fourier about De Saussure's apparatus. The effect did not exist in De Saussure's apparatus. All of the temperature is accounted for by absorption by the blackened cork, and lack of convective cooling.

    You then go on to state that if there were no radiation trapping, all the radiation would go straight off to space and the earth would be very cold. But if you really believe that to be true, I suggest you look up how long it takes lunar regolith (in no atmosphere) to cool entirely by radiation once it rotates out of sunlight. You're in for a very big surprise.

  262. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    You've written multiple long-winded posts about how the Greenhouse Effect doesn't exist. Are you recanting those statements?

    I've written multiple detailed comments to other people about specific claims about the science. If you wish to interpret them as saying "the greenhouse effect does not exist" that is your business, but it is not quite what I said and not what I was thinking.

  263. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    I think it's too bad that Feynman isn't still alive. It would be interesting to see what he had to say about all of you folks trying to use his words to cast doubt on current climate theory. Do you have any real evidence that climate scientists aren't practicing science as outlined by Feynman? All of the doubt is no doubt well represented in the scientific literature and scientific discussions but when it comes to the general public without scientific training expressing the doubt mostly just confuses them.

  264. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    If you would like to get a real "education" about what Fourier said on the matter, you can find it here.

  265. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    Just for the record, you are my favorite imbecile.

    How does it feel to have an imbecile demonstrate you to be wrong on both of the points you tried to make?

  266. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by silfen · · Score: 1

    This is an interesting opinion. You present it as obvious, but it is the opposite of what most people who studied this seems to think.

    Most people who have studied "this" (i.e. climate change) are not economists; therefore, they lack the background and the qualifications to make informed judgments about what actions we should take in response to climate change.

    This is clearly not basic economics. Is is more about estimating future risks and estimating economic cost which seems difficult to me.

    The IPCC has estimated the future effects and costs. Their estimates are biased, but even taking them at face value, it is still clear from an economic point of view that the right course of action is to do nothing.

    Obviously we are also debating whether global warming exists or is caused by humans. To me - as a scientist - this is a deeply worrying sign of ignorance

    No, that's not what we're debating. Climate scientists and activists use accusations of ignorance, ad hominems, and straw men as a debating strategy.

    The term "climate scientists and their activist friends" also indicates a bit of paranoid thinking.

    I think that is a reasonably neutral way to refer to these two groups. How do you think I should refer to these two related groups that hold friendly views of each other?

  267. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by silfen · · Score: 1

    that advocacy tends to be based on something other than political ideology ... And the actual people whose jobs it is to actually try to understand the risks on a technical level and also the economics on a macro level aren't siding with the skeptics.

    Scientists are highly political creatures, and when they engage in political advocacy, they very frequently misuse their scientific credentials.

    In the end, what this comes down to is whether we, as a society, should leave these kinds of decisions to government selected experts. You may be of the opinion that we should. But if you accuse people who disagree with you of being unscientific or corrupt, you have crossed a line.

    And even the cold blood bean counters are starting to do that in earnest now.

    Good. When I say that "we should take no action", what I mean is that government should take no action, because government programs are going to delay whatever needs to be done. The free market (insurance companies, developers, energy companies, etc.) will respond appropriately all by itself.

  268. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by silfen · · Score: 1

    Go look up the costs and risks in the IPCC report; it's all there.

  269. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by silfen · · Score: 1

    We're almost certainly going to be a lot worse off if we ignore scientists talking about what will happen under certain circumstances.

    Again, where did I say that we should "ignore" them? Climate scientists have made various predictions for how climate is going to change under various emission scenarios; that is their area of expertise. It's useful information that we should pay attention to. But choosing not to act on the recommendations of climate scientists isn't "ignoring" them, it is recognizing that climate scientists lack the expertise or authority to recommend policy.

    It is rational to acknowledge the emission scenarios and predictions of climate scientists and completely reject any form of government action to try to reduce emissions. In fact, I think it is the only rational position.

  270. Re:This will be a thoughtful, productive discussio by silfen · · Score: 1

    I don't have a kill file, but you certainly are in my "stupidity alert file".

  271. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by walshy007 · · Score: 1

    I see people claiming that something is without a doubt 100% certain and truth. Which is why I linked that speech.

    there are plenty of scientists out there who know the limitations of what they know, and there are a few who are more certain than they should be. When measures are proposed from theories where the measures are likely to destroy some people's livelihoods,the amount of certainty people want can differ. Those who aren't likely to be adversely affected by the measures are the most likely to want to push forward. Those that will be adversely affected, want to be truly sure it is worth it.

    wanting to protect the environment from people can be a nice goal, but people need resources. It doesn't matter if we become 30% more energy efficient across the board when the population doubles.

  272. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Layzej · · Score: 1

    As well as being the foremost expert in radiative physics, he is also an expert in digital forensics. He claims that Obama is not eligible for presidency - he has "proof" that Obama's birth certificate is fake - (but don't call him a birther!)

  273. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Layzej · · Score: 1

    ENSO, PDO and AMO cycles, which most models don't attempt to predict

    Although they don't predict the timing of such events, I was under the impression that these properties did emerge in the models. For example: http://www.eposters.net/pdfs/e...

  274. Re:Well, that's bad news... by HarryCallahan · · Score: 0

    Anything wrong with this? Started where your trend lines start, 1970; showed unsmoothed; and divided the two trend lines at 1998.

  275. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So, let's wait until they're missing less things before we run around in a panic. Because it is STILL colder than 299 of the last 300 million years.

  276. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    What about them? When I say the Earth is still gaining heat I'm including the oceans as well as the atmosphere.

  277. How long? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A question for everyone who thinks that CO2 controls the climate. How long with rising CO2 and flat or falling temperatures before you admit your theory is wrong? 20 years? 30? Never?

    All 5 of the major datasets (RSS, UAH, HadCRUT4, GISS, NCDC) show no warming for between 14 and almost 18 years. In that time CO2 has risen 8-10%.

    Here are 2 predictions. First I predict that CO2 will continue to increase because China and other countries don't care about CO2. They don't even care about real pollutants much less CO2. Second I predict it will get colder over the next 20-30 years. Why?

    Dr Libby in the 1970s said that "looking forward it will stay cold until the mid 80s (it did), then it will warm by about 1/4 degree F until the end of the century (it did), then it gets cold". When asked how cold she was predicting a 1-2 degree F drop with an
    outside chance of a 3-4 degree drop. Pray it is the former.

    Dr Easterbrook in 2001 said the PDO was done it's positive warm cycle and that we were in for 25-30 years of cold weather. How cold? We have his good, bad and ugly predictions based on previous negative cold phases of the PDO. Pray it is the first one.

    Dr Abdusamatov in 2006 said we are at the top of the temperature sine wave and it will be 200 years of cold weather. Pray he is wrong.

    Why do I join with them and side with their predictions? While past performance is not a guarantee of future correctness it is a lot better record than the IPCC and their dozens of models of which none have been accurate. They are all based on CO2 controlling the climate and the other 3 are all cyclical natural cycles. I'll go with those who have a good track record at predicting future climate. Dr Libby is the most impressive as her prediction is 30+ years going and still accurate.

  278. What measurements do they have? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anything before the ARGO system was deployed (2000-2003) is just guessing. I would like to know what they are using to measure the ocean temperature down 1500 meters?

  279. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Even the much-hyped hiatus is a hiatus in growth of the anomaly, not a cessation of warming.

    Really that's why temperatures have been flat or slightly declining for 17 years now?

  280. Sorry Wonks, no more parties by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    GW 'science' has always been about parties and funding. If the temperatures haven't risen, it must be because Hollywood bimbos getting drunk with 'scientists' stopped it. Therefore, we must continue to have parties.

  281. A revelation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Let me sum this up.

    They have discovered that warm see water sinks. Perhaps this has an application as a Phlogiston generator

  282. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lawyers and economists are very good in their respective fields, it would be foolish to believe that scientists and engineers would be better at matters of law or economy.

    Unfortunately, lawyers are not very good in their field. Quite the opposite, at least in the USA. The US legal system is riddled with ethical conflicts of interest on the part of the legal profession, and the lawyers find it convenient to do nothing about this. As the right to ethical practice of law is certainly a right "retained by the people" under the 9th Amendment, this represents oath-breaking and unethical practice of law on a massive scale. Hardly what I would call being "good" at their field, since ethics MUST be the foundation of the practice of law, and EVERYTHING depends upon it.

    This particular problem simply isn't happening in science and engineering, and has never happened.

    This situation does not result from a conspiracy, it comes about simply as a result of individuals choosing not to acknowledge the ethical implications of their actions, both as individuals, and as members of a group within society. This has happened many times in the history of law, and has played a big role in all kinds of wrongs. Study the history of slave laws in the USA, or the Jim Crow laws in the USA, for examples of how this kind of thing has happened in the past (and taken enormous effort over many decades, or even centuries, to correct).

    Those European readers smugly thinking this hasn't happened to them might want to reflect on the fact that far more slaves died in the European colonies in the Caribbean and South America as a result of mistreatment and neglect, than in North America, as a result of the brutal conditions on the sugar plantations. Slavery was part of the various legal systems of the these nations, so those responsible for the legal systems must bear some of the blame for this holocaust.

    Germany, of course, got the full experience of what can happen when those responsible for the law are irresponsible. Adolf Hitler was elected to power. Somehow the US legal profession has managed to remain oblivious of the implications of Nuremberg for THEIR conduct.

    The ethics point regarding law has been discussed in detail in many previous Slashdot discussions, as it is a major factor in many broken aspects of the legal system of interest to scientists and engineers (and this issue should concern every citizen). I won't repeat those discussions here. Do your homework.

    We clearly need more scientists and engineers setting policy in professional ethics, including legal ethics. There is no Constitutional basis for the legal profession having control of this, and it's clearly been a huge disaster to date to let them have control.

  283. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lawyers and economists are very good in their respective fields, it would be foolish to believe that scientists and engineers would be better at matters of law or economy.

    And equally foolish to believe lawyers and economists would be better at matters of science and engineering.
    Unfortunately it seems they may have more decision making power in those fields than scientists and engineers have over the fields of law and economy.

  284. Re: Washington DC think tanks by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

    agenda is to shift money to untaxable locations and hide it (I thought that was EVERYONE's agenda),

    If that's really your attitude then you must be some sort of right-wing tax-avoiding nut job.

    American? That would explain it!

    --
    Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  285. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by uninformedLuddite · · Score: 1

    I just tighten the coathanger holding the wheel on.

    --
    The new right fascists are bilingual. They speak English and Bullshit.
  286. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Still does not explain warming on Mars or other planets. I just don't feel like signing in. This is TimSingleton1962.

    I still think it hilarious that when I was a kid everyone was worried about the coming ice age and that climate change is just a BS scheme to institute a worldwide tax.

  287. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    climate change is just a BS scheme to institute a worldwide tax.

    Sometimes it seems like that.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  288. Hiatus? When? by Optali · · Score: 2

    I am not sure that there has been any such Hiatus (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/2014/7#temp).

    (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/)

    May I have overseen something? Like the Hollow Earth theory or Bigfoot?

    Oh yes, the links belong to the NOAA, the same source used by the Evil(TM) IPCC (Illuminati Pokemon Collectors Club)... so, may you be so kind as to provide any alternate DATASETS (nope, I'm not interested in distorted graphics based on your momma's basal temperature).

    NOTE: You may be talking about the STRATOSFERIC TEMPERATURE, which indeed raises at a slower level than SURFACE TEMPERATURE.

    BUTWhen we talk about Global Warming, we are not talking about the Stratosphere... mainly because we don't give a flying fuck about how cold or warm it is up there as we happen to live on the SURFACE of the planet and not in balloons. AND to make matters worse, even up there temperatures are indeed rising.

    And yes, I know: Global Warming is a big hoax created by Obama to forbid the hard working US citizen to openly carry their RPG-7 and to tax the hell out of them.

    God Bless the Tea Party!!

    --
    -- 29A the number of the Beast
    1. Re:Hiatus? When? by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      Be careful of multi-year averaged graphs; they are useful but the reality is 1998 was the hottest year on record. After that many near-record years happened, moreso in past. But the point is global average temperature has not been increasing year after year. Today's article is first intelligent thing I've ever seen on Slashdot in a year on climate change; most people just ape the more hysterical claims of the IPCC and their ilk.

  289. and the rebutall .... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/24/missing-heat-in-the-atlantic-it-doesnt-work-like-that/#more-114881

    Why not just admit that CO2 doesn't control the climate?

  290. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    Really? You've got a refutation that says that a scientist can come up with something that overthrows a major part of a field of science, that scientist isn't going to be famous? Do tell.

    It's entirely possible that a self-selected group does contain all the experts on something; does that make them dishonest?

    Last time I asked for a name of somebody "dragged through the mud", I was given the name of somebody who didn't get his paper published in a particular journal, and got butthurt about it. So, I'm going to ask for specifics.

    Can you name somebody who is a renowned world-expert on a subject affected by global warming, who asked questions on the field of their expertise, and was branded a denier and had his or her career threatened? Two or three such people?

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  291. No he's pushing a political barrow again by dbIII · · Score: 1

    No it's about shouting political slogans on a tech site.
    The "benefit of the doubt" is given once or twice and not more than twenty times to people like the repeat offender above otherwise they just see you as a gullible fool to be exploited.

  292. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by AlterEager · · Score: 1

    ENSO has no long--term effect on climate. ENSO is a short term variation.

    THE PURPOSE of models is to do forecasting. So far, no models can accurately project the behavior of ENSO.

    The purpose of the climate models is to forecast climate, not short-term events that have no effect on the trend.

    ENSO is irrelevant to climate, it's interesting for weather forecasting.

  293. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by superwiz · · Score: 1

    Freeman Dyson

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  294. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by superwiz · · Score: 1

    Nate Silver

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  295. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by superwiz · · Score: 1

    It's entirely possible that a self-selected group does contain all the experts on something; does that make them dishonest?

    Only if they are hostile to anyone questioning them (as AGW camp is). The point which you yourself so eloquently demonstrate by this

    Last time I asked for a name of somebody "dragged through the mud", I was given the name of somebody who didn't get his paper published in a particular journal, and got butthurt about it.

    use of a jailhouse metaphor in reference to a scientist. A scientist whose name you don't mention despite the fact that you yourself insist on specifics.

    I listed 2 names which I can recall just off the top of my head. Little research would show many more

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  296. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by superwiz · · Score: 1

    I am curious though. You can't really be that oblivious to the pernicious effect of people such as yourself. There is no way you live in such a bubble that you don't get the full effect of branding skeptics as "deniers". No one can be that tone deaf. You are just trolling, aren't you?

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  297. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by dywolf · · Score: 1

    again. not flamebait.

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  298. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by notonthegrid · · Score: 1

    I think what we are seeing here is caused by the "publish or perish"
    paradigm. The deep ocean currents capturing energy and storing it and moving
    it around the globe has been known for a long time. The climate modelers
    chose to ignore it so they could simplify things and write something that
    looked "close enough" and publish *something* before their funding ran out.
    Or they hand-waived and said it was too expensive to acquire accurate
    time-series data from deep ocean currents, and hence, ignored. The "peer
    review" cycle is just so much crap, since if I constantly poo-poo your
    results, you'll do the same for my results. If we aren't in positions to do
    that, then we aren't 'peers'.

    The corollary here is that climate models simply cannot be made to be
    accurate without 'all the data', and 'all the data' is either too expensive
    to acquire, or can't be acquired in a short enough time to publish in the
    peer review cycle.

    It happens all the time in academia, and is a big part of this whole
    problem. How do you tease out the "close enough" BS results from the "what
    really happens" models? Good luck with that! Just don't claim 'deniers' are
    the problem here. They are obviously not the problem.

  299. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by dnavid · · Score: 1

    In the end, what this comes down to is whether we, as a society, should leave these kinds of decisions to government selected experts. You may be of the opinion that we should. But if you accuse people who disagree with you of being unscientific or corrupt, you have crossed a line.

    I would also be perfectly happy with picking climatologists at random. The result would be about the same as picking physicists at random to decide whether gravity officially exists.

  300. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by jwhitener · · Score: 1

    I think a lot of people, even some actual scientists, do not understand the role of skepticism in Science. There's a difference between scientific skepticism and peanut gallery skepticism. Scientific skepticism is healthy.

    Scientists can speculate and debate as much as they want whether it's getting warmer or colder. The issue with the global warming debate is the political demands to translate the science into specific actions, often by scientists who have no qualifications in economics or politics.

    If your wording indicates exactly the meaning you wanted to convey, then YOU just demonstrated perfectly what the real problem is: a large portion of our decisions makers have not gotten past the 'is it warming?' part of all this.

    If we had believed the scientists 20 years ago about the warming, we could have spent the last 20 years debating what to do about it... and not whether it is actually happening.

  301. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by jwhitener · · Score: 1

    Industry attempted to mislead the public and use Congress to determine whether it was safe to infuse every square inch of our environment with particulate lead, our rain with sulfuric and nitric acid, our atmosphere with CFCs, our water with poisons.

    Don't forget the period of time when the harms of smoking were "debated".

    Personally, when a large amount of scientists start screaming about there being serious consequences to something going on, I'd listen to them.

    Oh come on. You know this time it is totally different... because.. uhm, freedom?

  302. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by dywolf · · Score: 1

    My mod stalker sure has a lot of points to abuse

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  303. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by dywolf · · Score: 1

    And this idiocy still gets modded "insightful" while actual science gets modded "troll".
    Stupid fucking mod system.

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  304. I know I was using long sentences, but ... by dbIII · · Score: 1

    I'm guessing your "Jump to Conclusions" mat doesn't have a "Benefit of the doubt" square?

    Pity you never made it past the end of my first sentence (starting with "I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt but") before you decided to post. What exactly inspired such behaviour?

  305. Correction by dbIII · · Score: 1

    The second sentence started with "I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt".

    1. Re:Correction by narcc · · Score: 1

      Are you sure this time? :)

      Take it easy. I don't know what SuperKendall did to you in the past. I know he's irritated me before, so I understand, but it's time to let it go.

      Trust me. You'll feel so much better.

    2. Re:Correction by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Feeling better now - or is it not about ego but instead did you just win some more points in some sort of troll bingo game?
      I don't see why I have to put up with condescending bullshit just because I'm not going to roll over when the luddite propaganda machine comes to a tech site recycling twenty year old shit from Ian Plimer from when he used it on creationists.

    3. Re:Correction by narcc · · Score: 1

      I don't see why I have to put up with condescending bullshit just because I'm not going to roll over when

      For perspective: It's the comments section on a website.

      A handy tip: You can effectively ignore users by clicking the little "Alter Relationship" bobble beside their name. Then use the Configuring Comments feature to knock your foes down to -6.

  306. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

    That would be news, yes. While it's quite true that surface temperatures haven't increased much recently, ocean temperatures are still warming at least as fast as ever. Which is exactly what TFA describes - the extra surface heat is being moved into the oceans. All other examples of this effect have been cyclical - in the near future, the process will reverse, moving heat from the oceans to the surface. When that happens, surface temperatures will jump - as they have in the past.

    The only observation that would seriously challenge our understanding of anthropogenic global warming would be to see a sustained cooling phase, both surface and ocean, which would indicate that the previous rises were merely part of a larger natural cycle. However, no such cooling has been seen - the opposite is expected, given our calculations of the greenhouse effect.

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  307. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

    We really don't care much what the temperature was 300M years ago - we care what it is now, while we're here to experience it. And particularly, we care when it changes suddenly and drastically.

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  308. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

    Global CO2 emissions are tightly locked to economic development

    This is only assumed to be true, and only if fossil fuels are your sole source of energy. Investment in other sources of energy creates economic development in itself, as well decoupling this assumption.

    it certainly seems insufficient to advocate massive global political and economic reforms.

    Luckily we have many thousands of informed individuals in dozens of countries who have studied the matter in depth, and they're telling us very clearly that there is more than enough certainty to warrant reforming our energy sector.

    If you don't feel there's enough to go on, perhaps the problem is that you don't have all the information?

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  309. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

    Luckily, the detailed impact of natural ocean cycles like this one (and ENSO, PDO, AMO etc) is not required to be known.

    Because they are cyclical, any contributions they make to surface temperatures are by their nature temporary; at the other end of the cycle, the process and temperature contributions are reversed, and the net impact is zero. For the purposes of long-term forecasting, short-term natural cycles are irrelevant.

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  310. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    The purpose of the climate models is to forecast climate, not short-term events that have no effect on the trend.

    You don't know that it has no long-term effects on the trend. ENSO hasn't been understood long enough. THEORETICALLY, it may be true, but it sure as hell isn't proven. Even now it is not well understood... which was part of my point.

    If you can't model climate over 10 years, you can't model it over 100. No reliable advance predictor of ENSO is known. Now they're saying there is a longer-term trend that they can't predict, either. At least so far. Which throws an even bigger wrench into the works.

    But what's really funny is how this definition of "long term" changes with the temperature! Not all that long ago, warmists were saying "A trend has to be 10-12 years before it can be called 'climate'." But once the "pause" -- I'm being polite -- was about 16 years long they started saying 20 years, and 30 years. It's hilarious.

    This "pause" is one month away from being 18 years long... only 1 year shy of the entire warming trend since 1979, which is what everybody was screaming about in the first place.

    Yes, I've seen the "evidence". Probably a lot more of it than you. But unlike most folks, I've seen the evidence on both sides of the aisle. The evidence for warming was never very convincing and has become less so as time has turned up new evidence.

  311. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    Pardon me. For the sake of accuracy, I must add that it depends on what dataset you are looking at. It is somwhere between 13 1/2 years and 18 years.

  312. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by AlterEager · · Score: 1

    The purpose of the climate models is to forecast climate, not short-term events that have no effect on the trend.

    You don't know that it has no long-term effects on the trend. ENSO hasn't been understood long enough. THEORETICALLY, it may be true, but it sure as hell isn't proven. Even now it is not well understood... which was part of my point.

    The "theory" that says that ENSO has no long term effect is conservation of mass/energy.

    I know you guys like to imagine that your vague hand-waving trumps basic science, but that's going a little far, don't you think?

  313. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by phlinn · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry, nothing you said was actually responsive to my point. The models didn't make any claims about ocean temperatures increasing. They specifically predicted surface temperatures continuing to increase. They were wrong in a single unified direction. Ocean warming is an attempt to explain why they were wrong in a single direction, but that doesn't make the models actually right. It's not just that they were wrong, but the consistency in the nature of their error. Since those predictions are the basis of the fears of catastrophic warming, their fears were based on an error. I stand by "overstated" but I would be willing to walk back "vastly" if ocean warming holds up as an explanation.

    --
    "Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
  314. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by phlinn · · Score: 1

    It's completely fair to point out when someone tries to claim A is not equal to A', where A' is just a different wording of the same thing. I didn't say anything about whether the warming has actually stopped or slowed, only pointed out that he was trying to claim a distinction without a difference.

    --
    "Pulling together is the aim of despotism and tyranny! Free men pull in all sorts of directions" -- Havelock Vetinari
  315. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Layzej · · Score: 1

    The scientist has a lot of experience with ignorance and doubt and uncertainty

    Feynman didn't mean that we could not use science to make predictions or decisions. Quite the opposite. He meant that scientists are equipped to deal with uncertainty. Science is a great tool in spite of the uncertainty.

    Our understanding of the climate is vast, yet there is uncertainty. That is not a scary word to scientists - even though it may be for laymen. We can still use science to evaluate the true cost of burning fossil fuels and make intelligent decisions based on that.

  316. Re:Washington DC think tanks by qfman · · Score: 0

    Hmmm. probably helps to explain this. "Numerous methane leaks found on Atlantic sea floor. " at
    http://news.sciencemag.org/cli...

    --
    They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
  317. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    If you are a renowned world-expert on a subject on which these "peers" make statements, but you yourself are not an expert on their entire subject, when you ask questions on the field of your expertise, they brand you a denier, bring out the tar and feathers and drag your name through the mud. So not only are they not open to any outside criticism, they, under the threat of destroying people's careers, actively discourage any outside experts from questioning their "findings."

    I'm being pernicious? I'm asking for names of people who have received the treatment you claimed above. You are claiming that climate scientists are acting thoroughly unprofessionally. I want evidence. I'm not going to join in the two-minute hate blindly.

    Freeman Dyson's career was never under threat by climate scientists. He says he was strongly criticized, and did seem to think climate scientists were being overly dogmatic. However, when he got involved, he made some serious errors of fact on his claims, and that may have contributed to any rejection.

    Nate Silver? There isn't any mention of climate science in his Wikipedia article, and no sign of any disruption of his career. Wikipedia isn't perfect, but it normally catches the significant stuff.

    I found the name I was last given, Lennart Bengtsson. He seems to have a series of important scientific positions, and recently stirred up some controversy over a paper the reviewers of a particular journal didn't like.

    So, in a quick survey, we find that Dyson thinks climate scientists don't welcome inquiry enough. This is certainly possible, although I'd like to get opinions from somebody who doesn't show up, act dismissive, and make erroneous statements.

    Among the names I've been given, I see no apparent career disruption. Got quotes from climate scientists calling any of these people a "denier"? (I don't call skeptics deniers. I call people whose mind has been made up, and claim that any evidence to the contrary is manufactured by a giant conspiracy, deniers.)

    I'll give you another shot. My meta-theory of AGW is that climate scientists are mostly honest and good scientists, and that the issue has been distorted by political activists, most perniciously by the fossil fuels industries. So far, what I've seen is consistent with that meta-theory. Got any good evidence against that theory?

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  318. Re:Well, that's bad news... by jwhitener · · Score: 1

    http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/09/global-warming-pause-ipcc

    Read the history of this whole 'hiatus' thing above. In a nutshell, there is no hiatus. There is a slow down in the growth of temperature. But it was still going up on average. Some scientists made statements like, "we are not sure why the rate of temperature increase has slowed down", and some bad science reporters wrote headlines like, "The planet is no longer warming, and scientists are baffled!!!!".

    With that out of the way, the fact that some scientists are saying that there is no actual "Hiatus"

    Yeah, some scientists, after the bad headlines from bad science reporters came out, said "No, no, no, the reporting is wrong. We never said the planet stopped warming, we said the rate of warming slowed."

  319. More uncalled for advice from ADD boy? by dbIII · · Score: 1

    Since you had a very major reading comprehension clanger when you decided to jump on this thread unasked to put me in my place I really cannot see how you can continue to pretend that your advice is of any value, so what's the deal here? Personal ego boosting? Fair enough, I will concede that you are vastly superior at mass debating, however I do not wish to witness you mass debating all over my posts when it's not remotely relevant to what I have written.

    1. Re:More uncalled for advice from ADD boy? by narcc · · Score: 1

      Well, considering that you insisted on engaging me several days after I made the post that so offended you, I figured you cared very deeply about my thoughts and opinions.

      Your continued participation in this "discussion" seems to support that belief.

      I really cannot see how you can continue to pretend that your advice is of any value

      Pretend? Do you not think that the ability to ignore uses that cause you serious distress is valuable? It seems to me that that is exactly the sort of advice you need!

      It will clearly improve your life significantly. Just think of all the hours of angst you'll spare yourself!

    2. Re:More uncalled for advice from ADD boy? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      I just didn't visit this site for a few days and then found your ridiculous ADD comment with condescending advice and I felt it was ridiculous enough to reply to. It may not satisfy your ego but that's the very simple reality.

    3. Re:More uncalled for advice from ADD boy? by narcc · · Score: 1

      Out of curiosity, why do you call it an "ADD comment"?

      While I'm thinking about it, if this is so unimportant to you, why do you continue to engage me?

      What to know what I think? I think you're deeply insecure. I think you really need imaginary foes to fight against to make yourself feel important. Why else would you care so much about what a bunch of anonymous people say on a web forum?

    4. Re:More uncalled for advice from ADD boy? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Out of curiosity, why do you call it an "ADD comment"?

      Attention deficit disorder - as in rushing in to post something without reading beyond the first sentence, as hilariously revealed above when you showed you'd entirely missed the "benefit of the doubt" in the second sentence.

      I think you really need imaginary foes to fight against to make yourself feel important

      That fits your ridiculous behaviour of jumping on my comment without even reading beyond the first few words to deliver some sort of lecture. I suggest you let it go instead of indulging in such petty bullying in the hope that I have a low enough self esteem for such a comment to gain traction.

      So let's have a bit of truth from you now - why did you jump in too swiftly to even read my comment when I was being critical of a luddite rolling out an old and tired argument from the luddite's playbook?

      why do you continue to engage me?

      I found your "epic fail" above somewhat amusing and wish to know more about the clown who wrote it.

    5. Re:More uncalled for advice from ADD boy? by narcc · · Score: 1

      I found your "epic fail" above

      A bit like your first reply, yes?

    6. Re:More uncalled for advice from ADD boy? by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Another post devoid of any connection to the one above it. Why bother?
      You still haven't told me why you chose to jump on to give me a lecture despite not actually reading more than the start of the post that was the target of your lecture. Are you the holder of both the narcc account and SuperKendall pretending to be an unrelated person? Are you the ten year old child of the actual owner of the narcc account? Is this some stupid Eliza script being run as a game? Either way, why do you feel that you are in a position where you are fit to lecture me when your own behaviour shows a distinct lack of maturity? Why should I roll over when some immature little shit attempts to bring me to task yet the little shit is in some way above criticism?

    7. Re:More uncalled for advice from ADD boy? by narcc · · Score: 1

      Wow, now a conspiracy theory.

      I think you've cracked. You really need to learn to let go. Think of your health!

  320. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by walshy007 · · Score: 1

    I agree with your post, I brought it up mainly because someone said that we know something with certainty, my post was to remind people that we don't really know anything 100% and to always leave room for doubt, nothing more.

  321. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Namarrgon · · Score: 1

    I think you're missing my point too. The models are only inaccurate temporarily. They're still quite valid for predicting longer-term trends.

    The reason for this is because of the cyclic nature of the ocean warming. ENSO, AMO, PDO etc are all natural cycles that shift heat between the ocean and surface. While heat is being transferred to the ocean (as currently), the models will over-predict surface temperatures. When the cycle reverses, heat is transferred from the ocean back to the surface - and the models will under-predict surface temperatures.

    Because heat isn't created or destroyed, only moved around, the net effect of these cycles is zero, and does not affect the longer-term warming trend that the models show. If you take a longer-term running average of surface temperatures, they still come very close to the models' predictions.

    Climate scientists already know that the models won't match the short-term noise created by these currently-unpredictable cycles - but that's OK, because they're not intended to. It's only uninformed laymen that insist that any short-term mismatch is a "failure" of the models, rather than simply using them for longer-term predictions only, as designed.

    --
    Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
  322. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 1

    The "theory" that says that ENSO has no long term effect is conservation of mass/energy.

    No, it isn't. You can't take one and conflate it with the other without something connecting them.

    This recent theory says heat is stored in the deep oceans. I purely cyclical ENSO would have no effect, but this paper is claiming that the deep storage DOES have an effect on climate.

    In essence, if there is any INCREASE or DECREASE in total stored energy, it does have an effect, even if it is cyclical in nature. It only has "no effect" when the entire energy budget remains the same.

    By arguing that it has no effect, you are arguing that the paper this whole discussion about is also of no consequence.

  323. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by superwiz · · Score: 1

    Nate Silver's website (five thirty eight) published an article from an AGW supporter who wanted to put statistical context on the claims of fiscal damages resulting from effects which are purported to result from AGW. The article basically came said something along the lines of "there is more stuff around so there is more stuff that gets destroyed so fiscal measurements need to be correlated to the increases in present value." Mann came out blasting saying that the article didn't account for 4 variables. But the author of the article already published previous papers which did account for these variables. This followed by Silver himself getting attacked for his previous (quality) research and various concerted efforts to smear his name. He ended up commissioning (!!!!) a rebuttal to the article his website published because of the flurry of attacks in his direction.

    Oh, and since you really don't see that the effort is concerted, I guess you are tone deaf. Nice try with the conspiracy claim, btw. But if this rises to the level of conspiracy theory, you can make the same claim of any political campaign. It's coordinated spread of a message. It's not really done in secret, so it doesn't rise to the level of conspiracy. They are pretty obvious (not to you because we already established that you are blindsided on this issue).

    Dyson was not wrong on facts. He did ask relevant questions, but most importantly he suggest the obvious solution to release of carbon which would mean that the whole topic is irrelevant (because if the problem exists it would be easily fixable). His career could not be threatened because he is a revered figure. But he has been marginalized ever since. The moment the AGW people tried as much as question Dyson (and every single one of the so-called climate "scientists" could not hold a candle to Dyson's level of achievement), the whole movement became questionable. Attacking him was the straw that broke the camel's back. The AGW became a religion when they did that.

    Not going to respond to blabber about fossil fuels industry. Of course, they would be the only ones sponsoring this research. Governments would not issue grants to study something which undermines their claims of need for more taxes. This is like arguing that marijuana is dangerous because no study shows otherwise (because anyone trying to attempt such a study would have their funding pulled). This is why I didn't want to have this argument. All these points have been beaten to death. And yet you keep repeating arguments which have been refuted long ago. So what incentive do I have to keep doing this? You think YOUR claims are somehow more superior than every other religious nut's? I don't.

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  324. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by superwiz · · Score: 1

    Btw, very few religious fanatics realize that they are fanatics. But the outsiders can tell right away. No scientific theory (no, even the theory of evolution) inspires its supporters to get nasty. And yet AGW does. I know, you have very, very good reasons (frustration at this and that) and I am being dismissive and patronizing and such... But you can't separate a religion from its followers. And AGW camp operates as a religion. They most definitely do NOT follow the scientific method. So they are not scientists. They most definitely do make visceral attacks against those who question them.

    I suppose nature abhors a vacuum. And when we created a state in which religion was separated from the state, a new type of belief system had to be invented to justify ever-increasing powers of the state. I am not saying it was planned. Only that nature abhors a vacuum and the institutional marriage of church and state has always been a part of the power structures and of the human condition.

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  325. Re:Well, that's bad news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    the sun is expanding and earth was not originaly an icey planet.
    nothing to see here folks

  326. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by superwiz · · Score: 1

    Got quotes from climate scientists calling any of these people a "denier"?

    3rd reply to the same post, but here it is from Mann himself (when talking about Nate Silver):

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-e-mann/nate-silver-climate-change_b_1909482.html

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  327. Re: Washington DC think tanks by whistlingtony · · Score: 1

    That was sarcasm... But I get it. Tone is hard to get through text. It DOES seem to be what every corp is doing. I personally like the civilization that my taxes buy.

  328. Re:Washington DC think tanks by whistlingtony · · Score: 1

    You think people are making money from the idea that humans are causing global warming? All those scientists flush with Fat Cash, right? All those really influential people like.... who again?

    And ... you... don't see the people making Fat Cash from ignoring the idea that humans are causing global warming? All those rich oil dudes... Nothing?

    How does that WORK?

  329. Re:Washington DC think tanks by Noah+Haders · · Score: 1

    idk like Elon? his cars are great, but he has benefitted from a lot of public interest and government funding because people see electric cars as an alternative to AGW-causing petroleum. That's just one example.

  330. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by silfen · · Score: 1

    The problem with climatologists is that they are climatologists; they are not sociologists, politicians, economists, or ethicists. Anybody who advocates following the advice of climatologists on climate change is either a charlatan or a liar.

  331. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by silfen · · Score: 1

    a large portion of our decisions makers have not gotten past the 'is it warming?' part of all this.

    They don't need to get past that, because whether it is actually warming or not has no impact on policy. Under all IPCC scenarios, there is no need in any government-initiated policies against climate change.

    If we had believed the scientists 20 years ago about the warming, we could have spent the last 20 years debating what to do about it.

    The reason we didn't talk about policy 20 years ago was because it was easiest to put a stop to this nonsense by pointing out that scientists didn't even have good data (actually, they still don't in terms of extrapolation).

    But the policy issues are the same: the reason nothing can be done about climate change is rooted in economics and politics. And the reason nothing should be done is because whatever we could do is likely going to end up worse for humanity than simply living with warmer termperatures.

  332. A.D.D. squared!!!!! by dbIII · · Score: 1

    WTF? Conspiracy theory?
    The Eliza "AI" program of the 1990s showed more apparent intelligent life than you are demonstrating here. At least it tried to appear to be relevant by quoting strings back at people instead of being totally random.

    So - answer the question - why did you jump onto my post and give me a lecture without even reading my post? I'm not going to let such attempted petty bullying stand, it's peices of shit like you that give us all a bad name.

    1. Re:A.D.D. squared!!!!! by narcc · · Score: 1

      I'm not going to let such attempted petty bullying stand

      I thought you said we were "done"?

      Did you change your mind?

  333. A.D.D. cubed by dbIII · · Score: 1

    I thought you said we were "done"?

    No I most definitely did not. You've probably got me mixed up with someone else you are trolling.
    Come on now A.D.D. boy - answer the question. Why the lecture? Why do others have to be at a higher standard than you are demonstrating yourself?

    1. Re:A.D.D. cubed by narcc · · Score: 1

      Why the lecture?

      Because it's advice you sorely need. Look at how terribly stressed you've become over a simple suggestion!

      Relax. It's the comments section on a website. It's not important. It will never be important. Let it go.

    2. Re:A.D.D. cubed by dbIII · · Score: 1

      I'm not stressed. Your posts have been hilarious and filled me with a smug sense of superiority over such an utter loser as yourself that cannot even keep track of simple threads that you are perpetuating yourself.

    3. Re:A.D.D. cubed by narcc · · Score: 1

      that you are perpetuating yourself.

      It takes two people to have a discussion, you know? You've even asked me questions!

      I'm not stressed

      Really? Then why all the name-calling and other nonsense? You certainly ACT like you're stressed. You've even done a bit of stalking!

      It's okay. Someday, you'll learn to let go.

      Maybe you're made because I pointed out a mistake you've made? It's okay. We all make mistakes. Try to feel better about it.

  334. Re: Washington DC think tanks by RockDoctor · · Score: 1

    "Civlisation - I buy it with my taxes!" Or some failry similar quote. There used to bwe a regular on here who used it in his signature. I can't remember if it was a Robert Heinlein or Thomas Paine quote, but it was someone who you wouldn't normally expect such thoughts from.

    --
    Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
  335. Entertaining clown by dbIII · · Score: 1

    Maybe you're made because I pointed out a mistake you've made?

    Read that one :)
    However I think it's time for you to stop using your daddies slashdot account for your mindless trolling.

    1. Re:Entertaining clown by narcc · · Score: 1

      Oooh, a typo! I must be a moron!

      At least you seem to have calmed down. Let's rile you up a bit. :)

      your daddies slashdot account

      Do you see it? If not, perhaps you should stop posting from your daddy's slashdot account.

      Relax. It's a forum on the internet. You'll get over it.

    2. Re:Entertaining clown by dbIII · · Score: 1

      I am fully aware that turds such as yourself attach themselves to the bottoms of other people's posts and see it as some sort of victory if they get the last word. Why should I let you have that? String this out as long as you like and continue to make yourself look stupid and all I have to do is tell people to refer to your posting history to see exactly what a piece of shit you are - you think that's stalking? GROW UP and take some responsibility for your actions and be prepared for others to rub your nose in your expelled filth.
      Once again - why the lecture for me pointing out a luddite science denier using a tired old page from the luddite playbook? All these posts and nothing but evasion and stupid mistakes.

    3. Re:Entertaining clown by narcc · · Score: 1

      Once again - why the lecture for me

      Once again - because you obviously need the advice!

      Let it go man. It's really not important. Promise.

      Why are you so obsessed with this?

    4. Re:Entertaining clown by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Me obsessed? You are the one attaching onto threads without even reading the post you have replied to.

  336. Re:Well, that's bad news... by Whibla · · Score: 1

    ... the fact that [1]some scientists are saying that there is no actual "Hiatus" and producing numbers to back up there claims while [2]others are examining the temperature data and looking for new systems and processes that explain the changes they are seeing worries me. It tells me that some in the scientific community have abandon the scientific method and are attempting to make the data fit the hypothesis they have.

    First off, the two statements you make ([1] & [2]) are not mutually exclusive. I'm not sure you meant them to appear so, but phrasing it as you did tends to imply a contradiction between 'two schools of thought'. Both can be, and probably are, correct.

    Secondly, this doesn't strike me as an abandonment of the scientific method, more a misunderstanding of the situation on your part, one I'd like to correct. (If, on the other hand, I'm misunderstanding the origins of your concerns please accept a preemptive apology, and consider this a request for some clarification of the why you are concerned.)

    I'll to preface my explanation with a simplistic summary: Radiative Energy from the Sun >>>-->>> The Earth >>>-->> Re-radiated Energy from the Earth. From measurements taken, at various elevations on the earth's surface as well as in the atmosphere and in space from various satellites, we have determined that there is a difference between the energy coming in and the energy going out. More is coming in. According to our understanding of physics this should cause terrestrial temperatures to rise. Because we think we have a pretty good idea of the raw numbers involved (energy in / energy out), and the basic physics (conservation of energy) we thus expect the rise in temperature to lie within a certain range. Unfortunately, this is not what we have seen. In fact the increase in temperatures has been lower than we expected, and thus we have to ask ourselves: "What have we missed?"

    One crucial point to note here is that asking this question, is almost the very definition of definition of science, not, as you seem to suggest, an abandonment of the scientific process.

    Possible answers to the question include such things as: Our understanding of the basic physics is wrong (extremely unlikely); Our instrument data, all our measurements of radiation / re-radiation are wrong (unlikely to be out by significant amounts); Our understanding of where the excess energy is being stored is wrong (likely).

    Given the possibles (and yes, I'll freely admit there may be others - maybe it's not just my summary which is simplistic) it makes sense to go looking for "new systems and processes that explain the change". In what way is this not science?

    Ether way you look at it, the discovery of a new process within the chaotic system of the atmosphere simply adds more data to the mix and allows us to better understand the processes.

    Agreed! Well, other than being slightly unsure how mid- to deep oceanic currents count as the atmosphere. :P

  337. Re:Washington DC think tanks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    dude, there is so much money in AGW that there's no way to stop the gravy train. there's no way you can stop the gravy train.

    And it's not like there's billions of dollars per year at stake for petrochem companies with millionaire lobbyists or anything.

    I'm sorry...was that your "gravy train" that just derailed and spilled oil all over North Dakota?

  338. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by dnavid · · Score: 1

    The problem with climatologists is that they are climatologists; they are not sociologists, politicians, economists, or ethicists. Anybody who advocates following the advice of climatologists on climate change is either a charlatan or a liar.

    The problem with sociologists, politicians, economists, or ethicists is that they know nothing about climate change. Therefore, anyone following *their* advice about climate change is an idiot. I guess we just throw darts at a board, because everyone qualified to know the subject matter of anything doesn't know how to use it, and everyone who knows how to use the subject matter knowledge doesn't possess any of it. Given a choice, I will go back to the world of lying charlatans, and you can go back to the world of living in a cave waiting for lightning to strike a tree and make the hot glowy.

  339. Re:Every week there's a new explanation of the hia by silfen · · Score: 1

    The problem with sociologists, politicians, economists, or ethicists is that they know nothing about climate change. Therefore, anyone following *their* advice about climate change is an idiot.

    Let me explain how this works. Climatologists look at natural phenomena and make predictions about what the climate in the future might look like given various actions; that's the entirety of their expertise. It's not rocket science for them to communicate this either. Economists, sociologists, politicians, and ethicists then look at those options and make choices. It's like a restaurant: the chef gives you a menu of choices, but he doesn't get to tell you what to eat.

    Given a choice, I will go back to the world of lying charlatans

    Well, yes, it's obvious that you're an idiot.

  340. Re:Well, that's bad news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hmmm.... let's see. What if we use the unadjusted global mean, and made the cutoff 2001 instead of 1999? Hey look at that -> Global cooling!

    My point is that you can slice the data many different ways, many of which are valid, and not all point to the same conclusion. But, I'll give you that the line after 1999 or 2001 is not flat.....

  341. Re:Well, that's bad news... by Layzej · · Score: 1

    Well, I chose 1999 since this was the year referenced in the article. You didn't mention it, but you have also changed the data set to one without global coverage. You have also picked an old version of that data set that had even worse coverage than it does now! As it turns out, much of the heat over the last decade has accumulated in the the gaps of the HADCRU3 data set. So what you have done is shown that if you ignore the heat --> cooling!

    Here is the trend from 2001 using a data set with near global coverate: http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...

    Curiously, the satellite data compiled by skeptics Spencer and Christy at UAH shows an even greater trend after 1999 - so according to the satellite data warming has actually accelerated! http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...

    What we've got is a steady but slow upward trend with a noisy natural variability wave transposed on top of it. Most of this natural variability is caused by the transfer of energy between the atmosphere and the ocean. When the ocean absorbs energy (La Nina) the atmospheric temperatures drop below the trend. They jump above the trend when the ocean releases energy into the atmosphere (El Nino). If you pick a sufficiently short time span you could find many periods of cooling (even in a data set with global coverage) just by playing these humps and valleys. This doesn't really show anything useful though.