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NASA Releases Massive Climate Change Data Set
An anonymous reader writes: NASA is releasing global climate change projections to help scientists and planners better understand local and global effects of hazards. The data includes both historical measurements from around the world and simulated projections based on those measurements. "The NASA climate projections provide a detailed view of future temperature and precipitation patterns around the world at a 15.5 mile (25 kilometer) resolution, covering the time period from 1950 to 2100. The 11-terabyte dataset provides daily estimates of maximum and minimum temperatures and precipitation over the entire globe." You can download them and look through the projections yourself at NASA's Climate Model Data Services page.
I see only the raw data on the link. I think that farmers would be interested in their local projections but we need tools to see them.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
There.s a 0.1 degree difference in the maximum temperature in Fargo for today.
Clearly, all of science must be wrong and I can pretty much make up anything I like and claim it is reality.
Winning!
More data is always good, but presenting any uncertainty and conditions on predictions is vital. Not only so we make properly informed decisions, but also so we don't tarnish trust by misrepresented predictions.
Climate models are really great science, but are also really ripe for this sort of problematic viewing from the public. Not just the laymen, but informed and educated public as well. To just quickly read and peruse climate model summaries you'd get the impression that confidence in models is really high. The reality is that confidence in PORTIONS of the models is really high. The whole however still has a long ways to go.
The IPCC fifth assessment report in chapter 9 notes the following:
Model tuning aims to match observed climate system behaviour and so is connected to judgements as to what constitutes a skilful representation of the Earth’s climate. For instance, maintaining the global mean top of the atmosphere (TOA) energy balance in a simulation of pre-industrial climate is essential to prevent the climate system from drifting to an unrealistic state. The models used in this report almost universally contain adjustments to parameters in their treatment of clouds to fulfil this important constraint of the climate system (Watanabe et al., 2010; Donner et al., 2011; Gent et al., 2011; Golaz et al., 2011; Martin et al., 2011; Hazeleger et al., 2012; Mauritsen et al., 2012; Hourdin et al., 2013).
That's taken context and backed up by over a dozen citations to relevant journal articles on model tuning. The short version is that tuning Top Of Atmosphere energy is still a required step to avoid climate models running out to unrealistic states. The journal articles all confirm this. With TOA energy being the ultimate overall driving force behind climate change, our predictions are still subject to the fact we aren't yet able to predict TOA energy. Without that we can make guesses what TOA energy might do, but the confidence in them is nothing like the confidence in other components of climate. Failing to qualify this though could leave us 20 years from now pointing at the AR5 projections and asking what went so terribly wrong with them, and the answer is that they had things largely right, save that TOA energy rose faster or slower than anticipated. That's in essence already the conversation over the IPCC First assessment projections from the 20+ years ago.
Oh God! When the general media gets a hold of the projections and they prove to be not perfect, the pundits are gonna come out and claim that all of NASA's climate research is garbage. The Republicans will want to reduce NASA's budget even more.
I don't know about what the Republicans want, but I do know that it's rather pathetic that even though we won the space race, we've since lost the ability to put astronauts in space. Oh but you know what? Who needs manned space exploration when we've got not one, but three, count it, THREE federal agencies dedicated to developing an awesome climate model!
Is this the un"adjusted" raw data, or does it have the various "adjustments" that have been applied to the historical data before in past releases?
In my opinion, to conduct proper science on climatological measurements, the raw measurements should be available to all, to let everyone apply any "adjustments" and "corrections" they believe are necessary - and justified - taking them into account. Then each can properly check the works of their predecessors, and reach their own conclusions, without incorporating unknown distortions from previous work.
If the maintainers of the archive believe adjustments are needed to deal with some measurement pathology, they are welcome to also release an open correction dataset or tool in parallel.
With the low price and high speed of modern digital storage and processing devices, data set size and complexity is no excuse for withholding the raw data.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Because this is how science works. You look at the data, you look at it again. Then let other look at.
Nothing is ever "settled" this isn't the hysterical bible beaters that think a 2000 year old book holds all the answers.
SCIENCE is abouting questioning everything.
Why is the data no missing prior to 2012?
https://earthdata.nasa.gov/labs/worldview/?p=geographic&l=MODIS_Terra_CorrectedReflectance_TrueColor,Reference_Labels,Coastlines&t=2015-06-08&v=-107.130247114811,6.3888177285642485,-50.458372114811,45.37709897856425
One of these things will benefit humanity in the near future. The other will not.
They hate NASA so much they're killing babies.
Only AFTER they're born, though. Until then, they're all precious life.
They'll have updated numbers out pretty soon so I'll wait for those.
Actually, a great improvement for this would be auto-update functionality so they could push out updates anytime. That way we will always have the most up to date historical data!
i used to wear winter clothing in June in NYC back in the 80's
What the heck?:
"The shift to a cleaner energy economy won't happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way," said President Obama last night in his State of the Union Address."But the debate is settled," he added emphatically. "Climate change is a fact."
The debate is SETTLED. CLIMATE CHANGE IS A FACT.
No need to "look at it again". What a waste of time. Its settled.
Looks like they'd seed a few rain clouds over CA....
Only surface data? What we need is the vertical temperature/pressure/humidity profiles. Whatever the spatial and temporal resolution at the surface, it is not enough to figure out what is going on. It is great that this data is made available, but it is simply not sufficient data. The vertical profiles from a few hundred places around the world at different latitudes and time of day would be much more useful.
Then you took a snowpocalypse to the knee?
Of course climate changes over time. There were ice ages before and there isn't now... there was hotter ages than now before and will be again...
What ISN'T settled is the cause, direction, severity, etc of where we are... and where the planet is going.
Hopefully people understand that we are affecting the planet but it'd be short sighted in the least to say either we aren't affecting it AT ALL! *AND* it's short sighted to scream DOOM, CHICKEN LITTLE, DOOOOOOOM!!!
Settled? Hardly...
Quite frankly, this topic has left all semblance of being in touch with reality. It does simply not matter how much proof you find for or against climate change. Neither side will give a shit about scientific data after they've invested pretty much everything and their reputation for it.
I really, really hope the deniers are right. Sadly, I'm terribly afraid they ain't.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How DARE you do anything but blame Bush... He's obviously why we still don't have a plan for ISIS AND why we aren't on mars yet. DAMN THAT BUSH!!!
I hope that 1+1=2 is "settled" because important things in my life depends on it being... settled! Plus: that "2000 year old book holds all the answers" is a fact - it just does not deals with that 1+1=2 issue... no need to try to prove that you are more clever than a religious person (like i am) by making such stupid comparisons between science and religion for unrelated domains.
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
What the heck?:
"The shift to a cleaner energy economy won't happen overnight, and it will require tough choices along the way," said President Obama last night in his State of the Union Address."But the debate is settled," he added emphatically. "Climate change is a fact."
The debate is SETTLED. CLIMATE CHANGE IS A FACT.
No need to "look at it again". What a waste of time. Its settled.
yes, because we all know President Obama has never lied about anything during his tenure.....
In my opinion, to conduct proper science on climatological measurements, the raw measurements should be available to all, to let everyone apply any "adjustments" and "corrections" they believe are necessary - and justified - taking them into account. Then each can properly check the works of their predecessors, and reach their own conclusions, without incorporating unknown distortions from previous work.
Your uninformed, uneducated opinion is worthless because you have zero understanding of data collection.
Do you even understand what "unadjusted data" means?
The answer is no, you don't; you are in fact completely ignorant on the subject.
Perhaps you need to enroll in college with an ABET accredited engineering school, take 2 years of engineering and physics courses followed by a year of instrumentation courses then you might start to understand what is going on.
There's a reason why scientists agree on what is happening, and the republitarians deny it--Its called ignorance.
Climate change posts on /. are one of those places where sysadmins who flunked out of community college get to tell the world how they know better than thousands of PhD holding climatologists. So funny.
that would bring an end to the man-made drought engineered by HAARP in CA
You are 12TB away from answering your own questions.
The ability for us to leave our planet holds great benifits for humanity.
Plus, the technolgy created as a result of the space program has already shown benifits to humanity.
Projection = data we made up
And while I'm sure they are confident in their projections, they used their largest computers, their best models, etc., I'm also equally sure the scientists were equally confident of their projections in the seventies when they declared we'd be 'enjoying' an ice age right about now...
Ken
The data includes both historical measurements from around the world and simulated projections
Simulated based on what assumptions? What model?
I hope they've labeled the actual measured historical data so it can be separated from the made-up stuff.
Why do I keep coming to /.?
Good question, especially when you think WUWT is a good source for information.
If little baby Jesus didn't think NASA was important enough to put in The Bible then why should anyone bother about them?
data set or data set of massive climate change?
Settled? Hardly...
and until we're able to have a parallel Earth and tell everyone on one Earth "pollute all you want" and the other Earth "don't pollute at all" and leave it for many years it never will be settled.
It's true: every denier is a worthless idiot, and the vast majority of those who accept anthropogenic climate change has a poor understanding of how and why it works. That's perhaps 90-95% of everybody discussing the question.
But there are still perhaps 5-10% of people who have at least a rough grasp of what's going on, and they're capable of actually discussing the real questions. Not the stupid questions, which are a waste of everybody's time, but real ones, like "how can we refine the models?" and "what are we going to do about it?" The latter may seem irrelevant, since government action is stymied by denialists, and individual actions are largely unimportant. (I'm glad you bought a Prius, and it is helping a bit, but not nearly enough by several orders of magnitude.)
Still... as bad as it is, stuff does get done. If we're locked in by chemistry and the suicide pact that our Constitution has turned into, we can at least take mitigating actions. The earlier we know about how agriculture is going to change, the better. We can take at least minor defensive measures for our flooded coastal cities. The US military needs to prepare for the various wars that are driven, in part, by climate-change driven poverty. It's even worthwhile to consider the "winners", like those Canadian farmers who will be able to take land that hasn't been touched and which finally has a growing season long enough.
It's not optimal; it's not even as good as is pragmatically feasible. But it's the best we can do in that paradox of democracy, where somehow all of us collectively are supposed to be smarter than the average of us individually. The majority of deniers and the majority of well-meaning but clueless (albeit correct) believers roughly cancel out and hopefully, hopefully it leaves a tiny minority able to do something that's better than not knowing at all. Thin gruel, but it's the best we can get.
Their top projection - the one that's getting a lot of play - suggests they think we're going to hit 935 ppm CO2 by 2099.
Which is nearly twice what most of the "mainstream" projections calls for, and is pretty much fantasy at this point - it's above the IPCC's worst case scenario (and a couple of hundred ppm above anything like a reasonable example).
The one that's closest to reality is for 538 ppm CO2 - and you have to look pretty close to notice any difference from right now. Although they gave us some "1950" baseline images, so you can actually see the difference (and notice that the "catastrophic" part of CAGW doesn't seem to be coming any time in the next 85 years).
Very interesting definition you have of "all the answers"
http://imageevent.com/firesat/strangedaysstrangeskies
Near future, my man. Near future.
One of these things will benefit humanity in the near future. The other will not.
So in other words, what you're saying is that we should look out for the near future and just do nothing at all for the far future, because right now that's basically what we're doing.
Throwing that aside entirely, what further point are we going to drive home by NASA basically doing the same thing the EPA and NOAA are already doing? Tell people even more to reduce carbon emissions? Sounds super productive, and an amazing use of tax money.
NASA is releasing global climate change projections to help scientists and planners better understand local and global effects of hazards.
Now if they'd only make available [1] the models (as in code) used to generate those projections and [2] a supercomputer to run it on, then someone could actually use this. The historical data has been available to interested scientists for a long time: releasing it to the public on a website provides only the appearance of openness. Without the transparency of how those projections were generated, the value of them is the same as a press release from a known politically-biased entity. (Yes, I'm talking about the Obama administration, which can't stop the endless string of daily press releases likely to be contradicted a couple of Tuesdays later.)
While I appreciate the opportunity to download 11TB of data, it would be a lot nicer if there was a high-level summary somewhere of what the projections are actually indicating are most likely to happen. I've looked but can't find one. Anyone found anything?
Nah, he's just the reason ISIS exists in the first place.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Very interesting definition you have of "all the answers"
Well, if Slashdoters need further definitions for understanding what "all the answers" of the Bible are about, and try to learn how to code in C++ from it... i can't help them!
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
They were already busted falsifying and modifying data. Liberal moonbats, the lot of 'em!
Well, apparently ISIS wasn't even "Junior Varsity" when Bush left office. ISIS is on Obama, by his own admission. Of course, he wouldn't admit that on purpose.
I have wondered what could have been achieved if the money for the space program had simply been spent on a benefits for humanity program. When I do, I remember Kurt Vonnegut's favorite insult: "go take a flying fuck at the moon", and reflect that, in a way, we have.
No war in Iraq -> No ISIS today.
ISIS exists only because of the crapshoot that Bush created with his stupid war.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Go away.
Nice strawman. No.
Still can't predict tomorrow weather accurately, much less next weeks weather. And yet here we have a forecast until 2100 to within a degree or two!
And because of radical Islam, which apparently we just factor in as a force of nature.
From articles I've read, a feedback loop in the atlantic ocean is already triggered. Genie is out of the bottle. Adapt or die.
Can't tell if spot-on satire or just stupid.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
A small essay I wrote a few years ago:
Not a denier, but I think there's a few things to understand. One, look at the history of this world, it's atmosphere has changed composition many many times through its long history, before we were even a dream in our ancestral DNA.
Two, the amount of change occurring seems to me to vastly over stated. There's change. Sure we caused it, we're a part of this planet, our activities affect the planet. Have to a utter moron to deny that.
Three, on a whole, the big picture, civilization on the whole, is not changing, and its not going to change. We're going to keep building factories and cutting down forests. No matter how loudly you people scream, business will go on.
And most important of all! We are humans, the most adaptable creature this planet has produced so far. We will adapt to the changes around us. Also, there's this talk of 'positive feedback', a cycle has been started that feeds back on itself and grows, we have NO CLUE how to stop it, even if we stopped all emissions this very instant, the feedback loop has already begun. We will simply have to adapt now. Good thing we're the most adaptable species on the earth.
The only debatable point in this whole argument is.. how fast? Stuff is changing, the only part we can even hope to affect is how fast it's changing. Will cutting emissions slow the change? Hell if I know, I don't think anyone can answer that with any certainty. We barely understand the planetary mechanics going on around us. We like to think we do, FFS, we can't even predict the weather a week out. You expect us to predict how emissions are affecting the climate? Wishful thinking, really REALLY wishful arrogant thinking.
Of course, it's utter folly to think we can force a unchanging climate that is perfect for us, all the time, for thousands of years to come. Existence itself is defined by change. The title of a favorite song of mine sticks in my head: The only constant in the universe is change.
Nothing is ever "settled"
That is not what all the AGW promoters are saying. They say it is "settled"
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
http://xkcd.com/1321/
Yup. "Simulated projections" are not data.
No war in Iraq -> No ISIS today
Maybe. Maybe not. The fact that Isis grew in strength from both Taliban influences and the Syrian civil war is inconsequential in your view. They saw Obama pulling out of Iraq as a vacation of power, and took the queue and left Syria and stated to take over a weak Iraq, with no US troops anywhere to be found.Yeah, all of that is Bush's fault.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I'm not sure the data is valid anyway. I sure would like the explanation to this: http://www.powerlineblog.com/a... since we have some of the older data- and it doesn't match the "released" data - what happened?
I have wondered what could have been achieved if the money for the space program had simply been spent on a benefits for humanity program.
Very little. The budget for the space program is absolutely trivial compared the the US GNP, or even to the US federal budget. Estimates are that over the last 50 years, the "war on poverty" has spent something like $15 trillion. Cancelling the space program and adding it all to that would add only a few percent to that; it wouldn't change the results much.
When I do, I remember Kurt Vonnegut's favorite insult: "go take a flying fuck at the moon", and reflect that, in a way, we have.
Quote it right: "Go take a flying fuck at rolling donut. Take a flying fuck at the mooooon".
It's because of Obama sagely employing the diabolically-clever 'Bart Simpson' political strategy;
"I didn't do it, nobody saw me do it, you can't prove anything!"
Thus outsmarting and out-maneuvering his "opposition" who are unable to counter this seemingly-airtight alibi.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
No war in Iraq -> No ISIS today.
ISIS exists only because of the crapshoot that Bush created with his stupid war.
Doubtful.
While its true the ISIS leadership cut their teeth in Iraq, they are essentially an AL-queda offshoot. It isn't as if that group did not exist before the Iraq war. In any case OBL would still have been mostly driven underground. He still would have lost control of at least parts of the organization not being to lead effectively. More than likely the Arab spring would still have happened. Most like the Syrian collapse and subsequent power vacuum would have lead to similar results.
ISIS would still exist it would only be using a different name or be the more radical wing of some other group.
Now had Bush stayed out of Afghanistan it might be a different story.
Lets be totally frank about something else. We only really care about ISIS because their taking of the Iraq we built and trained is embarrassing. Nobody talks about the Syrian cities under ISIS control, at least not on the news. We hear little about what they are doing in Libya and Yemen.
ISIS could be the best thing that ever happened to us in the Middle East if we just left them the hell alone. They might just succeed in reducing the number of independant lunatics and strongmen over there so we would have fewer seperate enemies to deal with. They likely would solve problems like Iran either by being such a distraction it keeps them bottled up or by over running them too. The Russians and the Chinese can deal with preventing further expansion (again probably a positive for us). The smartest thing Obama could do is "Nothing"
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
> simulated projections based on those measurements.
Oh, goody! More made-up numbers based on models not published written by who knows who with who knows what personal agenda using money from who-knows where. That'll clear everything right up!
THE FIX IS IN!
Don't dodge the question, what further point is NASA going to drive home that the NOAA and/or the EPA don't already do?
So, would it fit on 11x1 terabyte drives? Or would I need more?
history has shown predictions are reliably unreliable.
but, postdictions, my good men, afford reasonable comfort.
They get more respect from the backwards "Gvrm'nt bad" crowd because NASA achieved things they've heard of?
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Leaving the Middle East alone would be a good start, arming terrorist groups then going in and killing them all and stealing whatever you can just doesn't seem to be working out for some reason.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
The model version being used for the CMIP5 simulations will soon be available in a complete package, though there are nightly snapshots of the current code repository available (including the frozen 'AR5_branch'), but users should be aware that these snapshots are presented 'as is' and are not necessarily suitable for publication-quality experiments.
In other words, the model isn't ready/reliable. Perhaps you'd better stop staring at the Sun for so long, AC: the risks to your health are much greater than those posed by Global Warming.
Wow! Multiple Climate Change (TM) articles in one day? How lucky are we?!? When do we start seeing a Climate Change (TM) 24-hour web stream? How else will we get our sensationalist propaganda at any time of the day or night?
They're studying different aspects of the same problem, using their own individual techniques and available tools. Do you think that's a bad idea?
Them starting in Iraq and moving to Syria doesn't even figure in your appraisal of the situation, does it? They started in Iraq as "Jama'at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad", which joined Al Qaeda in 2004. They fought during the Iraq invasion, which gave them lots of experience in battle, and access to the spoils of war. They then joined another Iraqi group - Mujahideen Shura Council - to form the "Islamic State of Iraq" in 2006. In 2011 delegates were sent to Syria, in a group called "Jabhat an-Nuá£rah li-Ahli ash-ShÄm" or "al-Nusra Front", and dug in. In 2013 this group then formally merged back with ISI to form ISIL.
So yeah, no war in Iraq, no ISIS. It's not even up for discussion any more - their history has been well documented, and is available to anyone who cares to learn. They started in Iraq and Bush gave them just what they wanted - an insurgency in which to grab as much as they can. This is all before they were even in Syria.
They are not an al Qaeda offshoot. Al Qaeda has distanced themselves massively from ISIS, and ISIS's start was completely separate from al Qaeda. It was only after the Iraq invasion that it all got ratcheted up a gear, with them getting battle experience and all the arms they could capture.
That AGW is happening is settled. It was settled the moment Arrhenius worked out how CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas. What is not settled is the details - but they are getting more and more accurate as time goes on. Clearly some answers are needed, but nothing is at all likely to disprove AGW.
You wouldn't be politically incorrect, you'd be flat-out incorrect.
Might as well use the Farmer's Almanac for all the value those predictions have; what models were used, what assumptions, what is the margin of error, what is worst case/best case?
The danger is that now, more than ever, political and policy decisions will be made that will significantly affect people, all based on a _guess_ of unknown quality. Too depressing for words.
The only people who will be happy with this are those who stand to profit.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
No we call question about conclusions science- edicts on truth are called religion
>Considering we don't know what the temperature will be tomorrow, or whether it will rain at my house, I'm pretty sure we don't know what the climate will be in 100 years. So, not settled in my book.
That's a ridiculously stupid claim to make. Climate is a LOT simpler than weather. Many, many orders of magnitude simpler. Why ? Because climate is an average.
Climate is an average of weather over long periods (30 years typically). That's a LOT simpler to predict than the individual weather points that make it up.
Apples meet oranges. With weather the prediction is based on well known conditions in the surrounding areas. We then are able to map out the likely changes for the next couple of days. The more days you go out, the less certain things become. The trick though is that when predicting tomorrow's weather, you are working with a very complete set of initial conditions.
Compare that to climate in 100 years or 300 years. You have the initial conditions still, but mapping out what planetary ice, plants, ocean currents and water vapor are gonna do to the TOA energy balance that drives climate decade after decade is hardly simple. Compare to a 5 day weather forecast, it is as a matter of fact much more challenging. Add onto that the fact that weather models can be tested against NEW data almost weekly, while climate models need to wait decades for actual true NEW data to compare projections against.
If you want to predict the average of weather, that's different than predicting changes to the climate. Average weather is as simple as observing something global average temperature next year will be much like this year +/- 0.5C. You can even confidently declare that global average temperature 25 years from today will again be the same as this year +/- 1.0 C. Climate scales stretch out to hundreds of years where the overall energy imbalance can swing things a couple of degrees. As I quoted directly above you, that projection of TOA energy is still an unsolved problem that requires corrections for modelled hindcasts to be reasonable.
Climate projections are every bit as challenging as weather projections, and when taken in context climate modelling faces many unique challenges that weather does not. Most importantly that weather models can be tested and refined on a much shorter time frame and against many, many more datasets.
Except for the fact that Al-Qaeda and such came out of Afghanistan of the 80's and have direct lineage to Taliban and the Mujaheddin that fought the USSR. Part of which can be traced back to Jimmy Carter in the late 70's. Which can be traced back to the 1950s, and back then to WW1. And our issues with the Islamists goes all the way back to the founding of our country.
You cannot isolate it to a singular source. And remember, it was Obama calling them the JV team just a year and a half ago. Yeah, underestimating your foe is a critical blunder. There is plenty of blame to spread around.
But no, it didn't start with Bush. He just made things difficult. Before you go hog wild on GWB, remember, HRC was one of the very loudest voices for going to war too. Of course, "what difference does it make, at this point" probably works.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
tl;dr
Or in this case tl;dd
Guys their projections for global temperature are so far off that it is laughable. They are not even close any more. Please adjust your receiver.
If you want to read a great explanation of why the IPCC models are broken beyond belief there was a great article describing that and all the other problems with climate science by Dr Brown of Duke university
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/06/real-science-debates-are-not-rare/
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%.
Apparently you do not have a fucking clue.
ISIS is crawling with Baathist leaders, not Al-Qaeda. In case you forgot. The baathists were Sadaam Hussein's group in Iraq. Guess who ousted them from leadership and simply disbanded the military with no continuation or accountability? The same ones who thought they would be greeted as liberators with no plan after "blow 'em up, they got WMDs!" -- little bush and his warmonger buddies.
Where did you get your drudge fox impression of the situation?
My copy is too old to cover rvalue references and initializer lists, I'm afraid.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It's settled enough so that we should plan for it, and take action based on it. That's enough of "settled" and "fact" for political purposes.
The "debate" is mostly between people who know something about the subject on one hand, and people who are so sure of themselves that they think the actual scientists have to be dishonest, corrupt, and/or incompetent based on their claims about climate science. I know which side I'm on.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
My copy is too old to cover rvalue references and initializer lists, I'm afraid.
Thank God - C++11 is blasphemous!
Antisthenes: "Wisdom begins by examining the words/names." - excuse my English, i am (slightly...) better with my Greek!
That AGW is happening is settled. It was settled the moment Arrhenius worked out how CO2 acts as a greenhouse gas. What is not settled is the details - but they are getting more and more accurate as time goes on. Clearly some answers are needed, but nothing is at all likely to disprove AGW.
Reminiscent of the famous "What do you think I am?" "We've already established that, now we're just haggling over the price" exchange.
This is not entirely true. The specific people behind ISIS are in those positions because of Iraq War, but their ideology is older (and likely something like that would have popped up elsewhere a few years later, anyway). Arguably, the real starting point of when it became a serious thing (and not just a few crazies like e.g. Sayyid Qutb) was when CIA and ISI started to support the Afghani mujahideen in their civil war against the Soviet-backed DRA government.
To remind, the mujahideen were all Islamists to some degree, and their list of grievances with the PDPA, among legitimate things like their collectivization policies, included items such as mixed-gender schools, and the existence of male gynecologists. Some of those guys were pretty hardline, too - e.g. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar - and, ironically, it was those hardliners that received the most support in money and arms and training, because they were "more efficient" (and because Zia ul-Haq was quite fond of fundie Islam himself, but that wasn't listed as the official reason, obviously).
When those same people discovered Qutb, we've got Taliban, and also a bunch of fighters who became "professional mujis", so to speak - as the collapse of multi-ethnic states (USSR, Serbia etc) around the world resulted in many localized conflicts where Muslims were one of the sides, they traveled there to join the fight, which was always welcomed because they brought their experience. But at the same time, they also became Salafi preachers, wooing the converts by their military prowess while also explaining to them the theology of jihad fard-ayn. This happened in Chechnya, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Bosnia, Kosovo, Palestine etc. The other fault of US was creating the conditions in Iraq and Syria (and Libya) that were ripe for those same people, or their students, to come in and do what they're used to doing. But if that wouldn't have happened, they would have done the same later, or possibly in a different country (Tajikistan in particular is very likely to flare up soon).
Except for the fact that Al-Qaeda and such came out of Afghanistan of the 80's and have direct lineage to Taliban and the Mujaheddin that fought the USSR. Part of which can be traced back to Jimmy Carter in the late 70's. Which can be traced back to the 1950s, and back then to WW1.
Radical Islam wasn't really a thing back in WW1 outside of the Arabian peninsula (Wahhabi). The ongoing rise of Salafism in Afghanistan, Iraq etc can all be traced down to the Afghan War - it was the funding of the most extreme factions of the mujahideen by CIA and especially ISI that made them from a fringe group of a few crazy fanatics into a large and formidable force that could preach all over the world and steadily attract new recruits.
Why would democrats abort their voting base?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I don't think any "liberal/progressives" would object you questioning gravity while next to an open window..
Happy landings. Or maybe you'll fly
Apparently you do not have a fucking clue.
ISIS is crawling with Baathist leaders, not Al-Qaeda. In case you forgot. The baathists were Sadaam Hussein's group in Iraq. Guess who ousted them from leadership and simply disbanded the military with no continuation or accountability? The same ones who thought they would be greeted as liberators with no plan after "blow 'em up, they got WMDs!" -- little bush and his warmonger buddies.
Where did you get your drudge fox impression of the situation?
How can you know that and still miss the obvious? You correctly note that a lot of former Baathists are working with ISIS. Presumably from your tone you also are not a fan of ISIS and believe that them expanding their control and influence is a bad thing.
Can I suggest taking the next step and asking we ponder what Iraq might be like if those guys controlled the entire country and whether or not you think that would be a positive change?
The reason I ask, is because that WAS the situation before bush and his warmonger buddies ousted them. No question Bush and co fouled things up from day one, but the actual decision to remove Saddam and the Baathists was hardly a bad thing. ISIS has yet to touch the atrocities that Saddam perpetrated while in power, and yes, keeping the remnants of his diseased regime out of power is certainly important and another reason to resist ISIS expansion. Just don't try and over simplify things to the point you start making the absolutely idiotic wish that Bush hadn't screwed up Iraq with his horrible war. Iraq was already an awful place long before, and the former Baathists that are working with ISIS are the biggest part of that.
it was a thing going back to the founding of our country. read into the barbary pirates
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
explains the push for illegal immigration doesnt it
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Barbary pirates were Muslim. They weren't radically so, however, and Islam didn't play any particular role in their agenda. They were attacking ships for profit, not because they believed in an impending Armageddon or building a worldwide Caliphate.
In addition to what AC already said, simply giving money to people doesn't do them any favors. Ultimately the only way to bring anybody out of poverty is for them to act on their own. Neither you, the government, nor charitable organizations can change that fact.
That's not what I asked. What message do you believe they're going to deliver that the NOAA and EPA don't already deliver?
Use less carbon? Already done.
Pollute less? Already done.
Recycle more? Already done.
Stop cutting down trees? Already done.
In other words, what exactly do we expect to gain from NASA's research that we won't gain from NOAA/EPA?
Doing research just for the sake of doing research is not only pointless but wasteful. If you don't have some kind of concrete goal, then at the very least come up with one, otherwise don't waste money.
in letters between jefferson and others, there is a statement from the pirates that they do it "because the koran demands it of us"
Id call that radical (or if you prefer it your way.. simply muslim...)
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
How convenient that what the Koran demands of them just happened to be what was profitable.
As I recall, conquistadors also often used rationales such as "we are here to bring Christ to the heathens"...
but your point was they werent radical
Id say based on todays definition, they were.
we have been at war with them since the founding of our country
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Based on today's definition, everyone was a radical back then.
You haven't been at war with them for long, either. If you recall, there was that peace treaty (which still stands, by the way).
And, of course, "they" back then weren't Muslims. It was one particular nation (or rather, more like a federation of tribes in the process of national genesis) that happened to be Muslim. They don't really have any meaningful connection to any Muslim nations that US has fought since then (and it didn't fight any until more than a hundred years later, and that when trying to occupy other countries, like Philippines).