Slashdot Mirror


US Scientists Scramble To Protect Research On Climate Change (cnn.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader ClickOnThis quotes CNN: Some scientists and academics are embarking on a frenzied mission to archive reams of scientific data on climate change, energized by a concern that a Trump administration could seek to wipe government websites of hard-earned research... The chief concern: publicly available climate change data and research found on government websites would be wiped clean or made otherwise inaccessible to the public. Some worry the information could only be retrieved with a taxing Freedom of Information Act request.
One associate professor at the University of Texas tells CNN, "There is a very short window for when the new administration will come in and that's why there's a lot of anxiety. There's a lot of information to save."

534 comments

  1. Wiping servers? by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 3, Funny

    Hillary wasn't elected, what's the worry?

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
    1. Re: Wiping servers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      It's going to be so hilarious when Trump loses the primary!

      It's going to be so hilarious when Trump loses the election!

      It's going to be so hilarious when Trump loses the rebelling electoral college!

      It's going to be so hilarious when Trump is impeached!

      It's going to be so hilarious when Trump loses the election!

      It's going to be so hilarious when Trump fails to build the Mars base!

      It's going to be so hilarious when Trump fails to obtain the secrets of immortality!

      Nerr-gak 'zi8ggit zeitgoid Trump s22wellik h-gnix moid!

    2. Re:Wiping servers? by ISoldat53 · · Score: 1

      A climate scientist in Texas? What was he thinking?

    3. Re:Wiping servers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Slashdot was originally more about the inductive...stuff that matters.

    4. Re:Wiping servers? by OtisSnerd · · Score: 1

      A climate scientist in Texas? What was he thinking?

      One word, "Galveston". Maybe he (or she) has family or friends there.

    5. Re: Wiping servers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      1. Most of that bullshit is computationally generated crap. They can just recreate that from whatever code they made it with in the first place. 2. Some of these "data"sets and "papers" and the like might be available on government websites for a long time after President Trump. As evidence exhibits on the sites of the Dept. of Justice.

    6. Re:Wiping servers? by ISoldat53 · · Score: 2

      If he has family in Galveston then he doesn't care much about them anyway.

    7. Re:Wiping servers? by RogueWarrior65 · · Score: 0, Troll

      Amusing, yes. But consider that the "research" transferred to external storage and the current storage will be wiped so that nobody will be able to see the phony data and models i.e. covering their tracks.

    8. Re:Wiping servers? by golodh · · Score: 3, Insightful
      We know. Hillary wasn't elected, Trump was.

      And he really doesn't like it when the evidence contradicts him. Especially not when it reflects on the (in)advisability of his policies.

      He might not personally order a wipe, but with a view to running the country as a business, he has appointed some "climate sceptics" who could very well appoint like-minded trustees to actively realign publicly funded research efforts with national priorities, restructure research departments with a view to national needs, and focus monetary and computing resources in accordance with those needs and priorities.

      Translation: he has appointed a few idiots who in turn might appoint a posse of yahoos who see it as their mission in life to vanish anything or anyone the boss doesn't like and hide the evidence. As in: fire anyone who openly says global warming is a fact, have their funding cut, their computing resources confiscated, and their data wiped. That's what "running the country like a business" means, you know.

      Given that perspective ... why not extend and enhance current backup policies to guarantee continuity of valuable research data with an eye towards potential refocusing of research priorities and allocation of means.

      Tanslation: why not save an offshore copy of your work while you still can?

      Ordinary precaution I'd say.

    9. Re:Wiping servers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The ironic thing is how all that power-grabbing now comes back to bite you!

    10. Re: Wiping servers? by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      And you have citations to show this fraud? And no, blog posts and WSJ articles are not citations.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    11. Re: Wiping servers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's going to be so hilarious when people who voted for Trump because he's going to put Hillary in jail, find out he's not going to put Hillary in jail!

    12. Re:Wiping servers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You mean the phony data by Christy and Spencer? Maybe you mean the climate denier John Christy, who under oath during trail admitted that climate change was real. Maybe you mean the Joe Bastardi? Maybe you mean James Delingpole the guy with a degree in English Literature? Oh I know you mean Patrick Michaels, the guy who was paid tobacco industry to frame legitimate science as “junk science” on matters pertaining to health and environment, and now freely admits that he is taking money from the fossil fuel industry to write reports framing "legitimate science as “junk science” on matters pertaining to climate and environment," The of course there is Willie Wei-Hock Soon who gets his funding from U.S. oil and coal companies, including ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, Koch Industries, and the world’s largest coal-burning utility, Southern Company, have contributed more than $1 million over the past decade to his research. According to Greenpeace, every grant Dr. Soon has received since 2002 has been from oil or coal interests.”

    13. Re:Wiping servers? by davester666 · · Score: 1

      Yeah, if you aren't rich enough to move away, you deserve whatever happens to you. -creed of Republicans

      --
      Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
    14. Re: Wiping servers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's going to be so hilarious when people who voted for Trump because he's going to build a wall, doesn't build a wall!

    15. Re:Wiping servers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      actually, if you were paying attention, recently Trump reversed his opinion of Climate Change, and he publicly stated such.

      http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/22/politics/donald-trump-climate-change-new-york-times/

      http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/11/trump_changes_mind_on_waterboarding_global_warming.html

    16. Re:Wiping servers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which makes that, what, the 5th time in as many years?

    17. Re:Wiping servers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Can we be honest here. The government shouldn't own this data to begin with. It should be distributed through some kind of Non Profit site, and available for anyone to peer review. If it is not already there.

    18. Re:Wiping servers? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fake news. It is ALL backed up anyway. The fucking current boss likes CAGW, so that is what the research shows. Maybe we can at least have a fucking debate now. Fuck these assholes.

    19. Re:Wiping servers? by hucker75 · · Score: 0

      Perhaps he just wants to stop wasting money on stupid greenie treehugger ideas?

  2. There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    Widespread "Consensus" is not the measure of scientific fact; if it were, we'd all still believe that the Earth is flat, etc.

    There are legitimate criticisms about the climate models, the interpretations of measurements, and even the very way in which certain mathematical principles are applied. Like it or not, there is a real dispute, and the side that has the support of the Taxman and the liberal Hollywood elite should really be suspect.

    1. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Travis+Mansbridge · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Oh yes, those Hollywood movie stars and all their money putting the poor old entire traditional energy industry out :( Oh, if only oil companies could afford lobbyists just like Hollywood actors all have!

    2. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by ATMAvatar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The true measure of scientific fact is how well it survives the opposition trying to disprove it. Given that the opposition to climate change has given up on producing data disproving that the Earth is getting warmer on aggregate and instead resorted to attacking it politically, I would say it's doing pretty well as scientific theories go.

      --
      "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
    3. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      That's cute. A "legitimate dispute" where one participant is willing to destroy all the evidence of the other's argument, just to win. Not to be correct, not to have a debate, just to win. Billions of dollars of research being flushed down the drain, research that could save billions of lives in a few decades when the effects of global warming become more severe.

      That isn't a "legitimate dispute," any more than it was a "legitimate dispute" to burn books you didn't agree with. That is one idiot proclaiming to the world that his belief is more important than your evidence.

      I wouldn't doubt you voted for the cocksucker, you should be on a terrorism watch list for doing that to your country.

    4. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Then list these legitimate criticisms. And no, someone's blog or a WSJ article is not legitimate criticism.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    5. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Hollywood movie stars are great propaganda for the whipping up support among the unwashed, unthinking masses; that's why political leaders and Scientologists have always sought public association with them.

    6. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And yet, a theory as good as it can be until it's disproven. Just saying: "it's consensus and not certainty" is not sufficient to discredit it. In other words, we don't believe in theories, we use them until a better one is found.

      Besides, regardless one (or a government) think about an issue, removing research data paid with taxpayer money (whatever the motive) is highly unethical and despicable. That one would do it only if maliciously he has something to hide.

    7. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, if you insist on burying your head in the political sands, then I suppose that would be your interpretation of what's going on. "Deniers" (nice little marketing associating with the Holocaust) have produced and are still producing peer-reviewed scientific work; it's not their fault if you choose to disregard their work.

    8. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by burtosis · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The true measure of scientific fact is how well it survives the opposition trying to disprove it. Given that the opposition to climate change has given up on producing data disproving that the Earth is getting warmer on aggregate and instead resorted to attacking it politically, I would say it's doing pretty well as scientific theories go.

      Nah, it's an intractable problem because there is only one earth. Better to burn all the research to the ground and call it a day. Strangely enough trump petitioned scottland for variances to account for rising sea levels on his golf course there. But he wouldn't say one thing and believe/do another would he?

    9. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cite where this is the proposed agenda.

      You are just a hysteric drama-ridden latte-sipping liberal.

    10. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermometer

    11. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're delusional.

    12. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      "Deniers" ... are still producing peer-reviewed scientific work; it's not their fault if you choose to disregard their work.

      For example?

    13. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Then in doing name call.

    14. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, you.

    15. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by kanweg · · Score: 1

      It is not that politicians would use religious institutions to look for unwashed unthinking masses to whip up support.

      Bert

    16. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And there are still people who believe the world is flat, that the Moon landing was faked, that the Earth is 6000 years old, etc., etc.

      Those folks are basically harmless. Climate change deniers, particularly when governing the U.S. are dangerous.

    17. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Widespread "Consensus" is not the measure of scientific fact; if it were, we'd all still believe that the Earth is flat, etc.

      Uhhh, yeah, that is kind of the definition of what it takes to become a scientific Theory. Lots of Hypotheses tested rigorously and not disproved. If finally actually disproved the Theory is adjusted to fit the new observations.

      The only "debate" that is really happening in the scientific community, the only ones with enough understanding to completely understand what the problem even is, is how fucked we are on a scale of:

      missionary while she claws the shit out of your back ----------> full on BDSM with ball torture while being hammered with a glass shard impregnated dildo and using sand for lube.

    18. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Cute. When was there a scientific consensus that the world was flat? Oh, that's right. There never was. The scientific method as we currently understand it originated with people like Galileo, Bacon, and Newton in the late 16th and early 17th century. And there has been overwhelming expert consensus that the Earth is spherical since around 350 BC. Plato, Archimedes, and Eratosthenes all developed ways to measure the diameter of the earth. But hey, don't let the facts get in the way of your argument that there is legitimate dispute about the scientific basis of climate change.

    19. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's locally flat.

    20. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Leave aside the eminent people you mentioned. What do you think Joe Sixpack thought? It stands to reason that if the Earth was round all the sea would fall off...

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    21. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by mysidia · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you want to see the oppositions disproval, then you Need to fund their research equally, just like the researchers received the massive funding for their work who actually started off with assumption that greenhouse-gas-caused climate change exists and is caused by humans.

      The ones who assume work doesn't prove the foundation of their research is true though,
      they just further developed the theory, which doesn't receive adequate funding for critical truth analysis.

    22. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Things don't become more true just by repeating them. At this point of the debate you'd have to come up with a couple of credible references to be taken seriously. Otherwise... just shut up. You're wasting our (and your) time.

    23. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by SteveSgt · · Score: 1

      Threatening the messenger is now how science is done:

      [ https://www.washingtonpost.com... ]

    24. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by mysidia · · Score: 1

      Billions of dollars of research being flushed down the drain, research that could save billions of lives in a few decades when the effects of global warming become more severe.

      If the research is that important, then publish it and get libraries and other 3rd parties archiving it after the data is collected ---
      this is also a good thing as it means observation datasets can no longer be tampered with in the future to support new models.

      I doubt that Trump's team is going to say "delete the research data", anyways.
      They're just de-funding the continuation of the research, and data ought to be archived.

    25. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Like the argument over smoking?

    26. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by tylersoze · · Score: 1

      Except you know archiving the data costs money too.

    27. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      where one participant is willing to destroy all the evidence of the other's argument, just to win

      Calm the fuck down idiot. Nobody in the Trump administration has even hinted that they're going to destroy any of the data. This is just liberals having another panic attack because they didn't get their way.

    28. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "Deniers" ... are still producing peer-reviewed scientific work; it's not their fault if you choose to disregard their work.

      For example?

      I'm personally waiting to see all the climate model source code - and RAW data.

      ALL OF IT. With every change made over time.

      If it's science, it can withstand the scrutiny.

      If it can't stand up to that scrutiny, it's not science.

      Ever look at hurricane predictions? Where the predicted path is published for a bunch of different hurricane models? Most of the time, they mostly agree pretty closely. But every now and then, there's a huge outlier or two where the predicted path from one hurricane model differs drastically from all the others.

      That's the nature of modeling.

      BUT WHERE THE HELL ARE ANY CLIMATE MODEL OUTLIERS?!?!?!

    29. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      True enough, scientific consensus does not equate scientific fact. Further truth is that much of the CAGW argument is based on faulty statistics. What is also true is that the conscientious objectors to CAGW is also based on faulty statistics.

      Ultimately, here is the primary issue of the math. Forgetting the "C" (catastrophic) argument of CAGW, let's just stick with the AGW data: namely that there is a direct correlation between the rise in man-made CO2 in the atmosphere and global temperatures.

      If one sets the null hypothesis that being that man made CO2 does not impact global average temperatures, then one looks at the chart of mmCO2 v GT, then it is quite clear that one must accept the null hypothesis as the data does not support the rejection to the 95% level of certainty. But the data is not random either. What the analysis shows is that there is a small to middle probability that mm CO2 does impact global temperatures, but not to the degree of certainty of rejecting the null hypothesis.

      This is the fundamental cause of the polling of scientists. The data is not statistically significant to reject the null hypothesis of no impact of mm CO2 on global temperature change. However, if one were to flip the null hypothesis to state the opposite, the data is not statistically significant to reject that null hypothesis either.

      Where the math leaves us is that neither position is supported and arguments abound. My position is that there should still be considerable Climate research still being done because the risk, however small, is very impactful. This is just good risk management. Should that research be $10b per year? I don't think that is justified.

      If one were to do an analysis of all the things that are possible catastrophic to humanities existance, I don't think the global climate change would make even the top 10. From my perspective, the topmost risk to humanity is untreatable bacteria and viruses. Antibiotics would be a much more productive place to put the research dollars.

    30. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Kohath · · Score: 1, Insightful

      That's certainly moving the goalposts. Now it's "warmer on aggregate". Before it was droughts, floods, hurricanes, no arctic ice, no snow in England or New York, mass extinctions, 100 meter sea level rise, mass starvation worldwide, point of no return, end of the world.

      Next time stick with "somewhat warmer on aggregate" and keep things scientific -- rather than dividing people into tribes to fight each other so leaders can gain power and wealth.

    31. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some people even believe trump won the popular vote

    32. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You are free to install your own sensors world wide and start capturing data. Maybe in 50 years you will be able to calculate a trend.
      The fact that you didn't do it doesn't mean climate change isn't happening.

    33. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 1

      Don't confuse the religious bigotry and superstition of the 15th century with the scientific method of today, please.

      Although unfortunately religious bigotry and superstition does seem to be making a comeback in conservative circles of, how ironic, the country that was the scientific motor of the 20th century.

    34. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by rantrantrant · · Score: 5, Informative

      ExxonMobil already did some comprehensive, high quality research on climate change in the 1970s. They discovered AGW but decided to bury their research and go about a campaign to discredit anyone who made similar findings. Or perhaps you haven't been following the news lately?

    35. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Stephan+Schulz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you want to see the oppositions disproval, then you Need to fund their research equally, just like the researchers received the massive funding for their work who actually started off with assumption that greenhouse-gas-caused climate change exists and is caused by humans.

      The ones who assume work doesn't prove the foundation of their research is true though, they just further developed the theory, which doesn't receive adequate funding for critical truth analysis.

      LOL. For any scientist, disproving an established theory is a dream come true. This is the stuff to make careers. And it's not as if people haven't tried. Former climate sceptic Richard Muller got funded by the Koch brothers, and, with his team, did a completely independent reconstruction of the temperature record of the last. Of course, he came up with essentially the same results NASA, NOAA, and the HadCRUT team had previously found, and, as a good scientist, changed his position in response to the data.

      Of course, we don't fund science by desired result, but by the importance of the questions asked and the plausibility that progress towards an answer can be made. Assuming equal quality of grant applications, if 97% of working scientist hold one broad position, you would expect 97% of funding to go to this group. And, from what I have seen of so-called "sceptic" science, "equal quality" would be a long stretch...

      --

      Stephan

    36. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 0

      "Deniers" ... are still producing peer-reviewed scientific work; it's not their fault if you choose to disregard their work.

      For example?

      I'm personally waiting to see all the climate model source code - and RAW data.

      Ah yes, it's the usual "peer-reviewed scientific work" that is actually just going on a tangent to rant about something else when asked to provide proof of the original claim. I'm afraid that sort of thing wouldn't pass any peer review, unless by peers you mean other ill-informed deniers.

      If it's science, it can withstand the scrutiny.

      But if that scrutiny can't withstand a single follow-up question then I think the science is still pretty solid.

    37. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by dnaumov · · Score: 0

      Sadly, you are very wrong. One of the biggest problems ot the scientific fields of today is precisely that debunking existing theories achieves literally nothing for the people doing the debunking.

      Scientist careers today live and die by citations - how often their published work is cited by others. The problem is that published works that debunk an existing theory get cited several orders of magnitute LESS than the work they are trying to debunk. Worse yet, among people who actually read the "works of disproval", the majority only slightly change their opinion of the work being criticized.

      So no, in the current environment it is highly improfitable and illogical for a scientist to engage in anything but original work (or work that at least looks original).

    38. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

      You are free to install your own sensors world wide and start capturing data. Maybe in 50 years you will be able to calculate a trend.
      The fact that you didn't do it doesn't mean climate change isn't happening.

      I don't think his issue was necessarily with how data was being collected, it was about how it was being interpreted by said models. The raw data and models should be released to the public.

    39. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am a big bang denier. Please to meet you.

    40. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah and don't even think about citing CNN or BBC or Fox or Time or Economist or Academic Journals etc

      Only acceptable references are Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, 4chan or Breitbart

    41. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some people even believe Hillary could have won the election.

    42. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree that we need to be careful that we don't accidentally fund a narrative. Science should check whether things are true rather than start with that assumption. Still, I have yet to see any compelling argument that opposes the conclusions of climate change research. From what I can tell you get these categories.

      1) Somehow, without any real proof people admit the Earth is warning, but then try to change the attribution to some other cause such as solar activity. As far as I know trying to completely move the attribution to this is just not valid.

      2) You have of course the golden oldy (sp?), where you just throw the entire group you disagree with under the bus for whatever reason seems to work. Once again, this allegation is easily shown to not be supported by the data. This number is of course infinitely flexible. See Donald J. Trump.

      3) Rather than directly applying number 2, you first prop up a nice straw man complete with fake science to raise doubt, and then apply number 2. Of course this is similar to (1), save it doesn't necessarily admit to warming. Variations on (3) are of course the various disinformation campaigns, where the people creating the disinformation know they are lying. Again see Donald J. Trump.

    43. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Stephan+Schulz · · Score: 2

      Sadly, you are very wrong. One of the biggest problems ot the scientific fields of today is precisely that debunking existing theories achieves literally nothing for the people doing the debunking.

      Scientist careers today live and die by citations - how often their published work is cited by others. The problem is that published works that debunk an existing theory get cited several orders of magnitute LESS than the work they are trying to debunk. Worse yet, among people who actually read the "works of disproval", the majority only slightly change their opinion of the work being criticized.

      So no, in the current environment it is highly improfitable and illogical for a scientist to engage in anything but original work (or work that at least looks original).

      "Debunking" is a very soft term. But if you look e.g. at "Unidentified curved bacilli on gastric epithelium in active chronic gastritis" (by Warren and Marshall), which identified a bacterial cause for most peptic ulcers, and followup-paper "Prospective double-blind trial of duodenal ulcer relapse after eradication of Campylobacter pylori", "debunking" the prevailing theory that fatty diets and stress are the primary causes of ulcers, they received over 4000 and over 1000 citations, respectively. That is more than many scientists collect in a lifetime.

      Or, too look more closely, "Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years" by Soon and Baliunas received 190 citations, despite being utter crap. That's apparently more than any other paper by Willie Soon, and in particular more than any of the papers on astrophysics he ever wrote.

      --

      Stephan

    44. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't understand your point.

      Are you saying some greater purpose is being served by not releasing all data and methodology on climate change?

      If it's real, and the data shows it, then the best way to convince everyone would be to show everything that you possibly can, in as much explicit detail as possible.

    45. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Noishkel · · Score: 1, Insightful

      And there's where climate 'activist' are just idiots. They think an emotional appeal somehow countermands the need for people who question a controversial scientific subject with a snide comment on social media. Contrary to those 'the debate is settled' ass holes there is no such thing as a settled scientific debate that can never be questioned. That's not science. That's called a religion.

    46. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A comeback? It never left. Those clowns believe there's a magical wizard who lives in the sky and impregnates innocent Arab women, because someone found a scroll in a cave written by some random heatstroked Arab 2000 years ago who said it's the word of The Wizard, but will fervently refute climate change and all of its scientific proof.

    47. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 1

      If you want to see the oppositions disproval, then you Need to fund their research equally, just like the researchers received the massive funding for their work who actually started off with assumption that greenhouse-gas-caused climate change exists and is caused by humans.

      That sounds fair until you rephrase it as giving equal funding to those who accept over 100 years of accumulated scientific research and those who think that it is all wrong. You would have to make a pretty compelling case of why you think that way if you wanted to be taken seriously when making a proposal for a new study.

      The problem is that science doesn't work like an internet troll. Just because you make an assumption doesn't mean that you have to stick with it in the conclusions of your paper. In fact, you would be far more likely to get your paper cited by others (a metric used by some to determine the worth of a published work) if you can prove your own assumptions to be wrong. For example, you might make a study that poses: "Assuming X, then in theory Y must be true - so let's see if that is the case". If you find that Y is not true, then you can conclude that there is the need for more studies to find whether the theory of Y is false or the assumption of X is false. And more studies means more grants, so the financial imperative is not to follow the company line but actually to be controversial.

      That is why this notion of equal funding is unnecessary. It also makes no difference, as the Koch brothers found when they funded (in part) a study that ended up agreeing with the scientific consensus. And boy, did the deniers suddenly turn against Richard Muller, who they thought was their "tame scientist"!

    48. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Next time stick with "somewhat warmer on aggregate" and keep things scientific

      How very truthy. Science is built on trivia. /s

    49. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by PopeRatzo · · Score: 0

      Calm the fuck down idiot. Nobody in the Trump administration has even hinted that they're going to destroy any of the data.

      No, they've skipped that step and went straight to destroying the scientists.

      http://www.reuters.com/article...

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    50. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nothing like using strawmen to make your case.

    51. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by PopeRatzo · · Score: 0

      SUNDAY FUN CHALLENGE: Can anyone else spot the three huge logical fallacies in the above post?

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    52. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Arabs didn't exist 2000 years ago. They weren't invented until the 7th century.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    53. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's the thing. Claiming "the science is settled" only shows that you're not dealing with anything that resembles science. For a reference to what I'm talking about when I say this, google the term "scientific method."

      The ones who tell everyone to stop questioning them, and to accept their words as gospel, and seeking persecution of all who dare oppose their worldview? Those are not scientists, they're religious zealots, they're the ones in charge, and they're the ones who have the most to lose then the curtains are pulled back the the truth is revealed.

    54. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by hey! · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Widespread "Consensus" is not the measure of scientific fact; if it were, we'd all still believe that the Earth is flat, etc.

      Let's put this idiotic meme to bed once and for all.

      (1) There has never been a scientific consensus that the Earth was flat.

      The consensus among natural philosophers since the time of Aristotle (4th century BC) has been that the Earth is spherical. In the third century BC Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth as 252,000 stadia, which works out to 39,838 km. The modern figure for the circumference of the Earth is 40,030 km. Since Eratosthenes was dealing in round numbers, he had an accurate figure that is merely less precise than the modern figure. The Portuguese had a more accurate figure for the size of the Earth, which is why they rejected Columbus's expedition which was based on an estimate that was 1/3 too small.

      In medieval universities astronomy was one of the "liberal arts", and the standard texts considered the Earth spherical. The "flat earth" notion was only widely held by the ignorant.

      (2) Scientific consensus is not about eternal truth, it is about who currently bears the burden of proof.

      Science is unique in that it admits, even depends upon crackpot ideas, but it imposes a high burden of proof on them. On the other hand it imposes a low burden of proof on ideas that have a long history of standing up to scrutiny.

      This is discrimination, but it's not unfair discrimination. It's a system that allows those crackpot ideas a shot at becoming a new scientific consensus, without burdening everyone else with endless recapitulation of the evidence for things that currently enjoy the support of overwhelming evidence.

      When evidence supports a change in the scientific consensus, it changes very rapidly. Take the Heliocentric theory. Copernicus's model had a number of shortcomings, but after the work of Tycho Brahe and Kepler it rapidly gained support among professional astronomers. The main opposition to heliocentrism was political -- not actually religious. The Pope was a Renaissance humanist and an admirer of Galileo; but he had a problem with the Spanish cardinals and couldn't afford to appear "soft on heresy". It's a familiar problem to us today.

      3) The existence of scientific dissent does not somehow make an idea more credible.

      Dissent, even crackpottery, is not only inevitable, it is an important feature of science that even crackpots are allowed to participate. It doesn't matter what you believe, it matters what you can prove. So if your critieria of evidence is scientific unanimity, you won't get it on just about any topic. Not even conservation of momentum. Everything is open to debate. Even "real" debate.

      This means that if you take the "some scientists disagree" route you can go scientist shopping for whatever position you want. Science would have no value whatsoever if we used it that way. You can of course cite dissident scientists if you want of course, but their dissent in itself isn't proof of anything. You have to drill down to why they believe what they believe and why you believe that is correct. People who rely on the scientific consensus within a field need only rely upon the fact that it *is* the scientific consensus.

      This reflects the same asymmetrical burden of proof that happens within science. One side is making an extraordinary (in scientific terms) claim and needs equally compelling evidence. The other is making a non-controversial claim.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    55. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by hey! · · Score: 0

      Hollywood movie stars are great propaganda for the whipping up support among the unwashed, unthinking masses;

      So, evidently, does being a billionaire.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    56. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BUT WHERE THE HELL ARE ANY CLIMATE MODEL OUTLIERS?!?!?!

      There are lots of them; there's a huge span of model forecasts. Some of them predict huge amounts of warming, some much smaller. The mean of those is just so far above zero that you don't get any projecting, say, (global) cooling. To use your analogy, that would be the equivalent of a hurricane model deciding that it will end up producing strong rain and wind over Iowa. You may get a wide variety of answers, but hurricanes in Iowa are usually not among them.

      The reason for this is that the physics is extremely simple: CO2 is transparent in the optical band where the Sun is brightest, but much less transparent in the IR where the Earth is brightest. As such, it allows heat in from the Sun, but suppresses the radiative cooling of the Earth, thus warming it. How much, and where, and at what times is quite complicated (hence the huge spread in models and vigorous scientific disagreement -- and rapid progress -- on these points), but the basic process isn't. You can go demonstrate it to yourself with a plastic bag, an alkaseltzer, and a thermometer in your backyard right now if you want.

    57. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      As a best practice, try to not install these sensors over top of air conditioning exhausts or in the middle small asphalt parking lots at the edge of huge national forests. Also, when that 50 years is up, please don't claim that the oldest data needs to be adjusted (to suit your needs as an alarmist) because "obviously anything that old isn't gonna be accurate."

    58. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh no, please don't make assumptions about what commoners thought many hundreds of years ago. The GP is right. It's one of those annoying perpetuated myths that there was once widespread belief that the earth was flat. Of course you will find some flat-earthers throughout history of mankind (though some were more joking or hoaxers than serious), but it generally cannot have been a widespread belief. It's fairly easy to check that the earth is spherical and sailors knew it since Antiquity. See e.g. here or here or any other link you'll find with a quick Google search.

      On a side note, in the context of the discussion, what would Joe Sixpack's beliefs have to do with the analogy to climate science? That Joe Sixpack is an indicator of the current state of the art in the field?

    59. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It was pretty well understood generally. That's why no one would fund Columbus for a long time: he thought the Earth was round and waaaay smaller than it actually was. Everyone else knew it was round and the right size and that, barring new continents in the middle, he would die of starvation sailing from Spain to Japan. Which, had America not existed, he would have.

    60. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Are you saying some greater purpose is being served by not releasing all data and methodology on climate change?

      I'm saying that the greater purpose of bringing up this different topic was to draw attention away from this claim:

      "Deniers" ... are still producing peer-reviewed scientific work; it's not their fault if you choose to disregard their work.

      Someone asked for an example of this peer-reviewed scientific work and all we got was an off-topic rant about seeing the raw temperature data. That was not the example that was requested which would prove the original assertion. I believe that the only reason why this irrelevant and sudden change of subject was posted here was because the alternative would be to admit that deniers aren't producing anything remotely like science. The original statement was a lie, and this business of climate model source code is just your attempt to distract us from the original question.

      It is the usual denier tactic of rapidly switching to the next bullet point on their favorite denier website the moment anyone picks a hole in their crazy theories, or indeed actually answers their question. I have no doubt that if I posted a link to the raw data that you think is so important that you would quickly jump to the next prepackaged denier post.

      May I suggest for the next leap in the discussion that we haven't see the old "they have fogotten about about the sun" line for a while. It's a shame that you can't point to 1998 anymore to "prove" that the climate is actually getting colder; that was always a good one. Don't you think that being a denier would be so much easier if it just would stop getting hotter?

    61. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Loki_1929 · · Score: 1

      Not only are there legitimate criticisms about the interpretations of measurements, but even of the measurements themselves. Prior to the 1920s, most stations around the world providing temperature measurements weren't staffed with trained personnel recording the data. In many cases, the measurements weren't taken at any regular intervals, but rather when someone had free time in between performing other work to do so. In fact, it was often a janitor or other completely untrained staff member recording temperatures because it wasn't viewed as a critical task and being with a degree or two was good enough. This began to change around the 1920s and 30s, especially as radio and television began to take hold and the sciences around climate and weather began to develop.

      Accurate instruments didn't even become available until the late 1800s, so any direct measurements taken prior 'til then are highly suspect regardless of who was in charge of taking them. This makes most of the direct measurements prior to ~1930 extremely limited and any direct measurements prior to ~1880 just about utterly useless. It isn't until the 1960s that you really start getting measurements useful to a discussion about 1C of variability in climate worldwide. Earlier climate data is even worse, as that primarily comes from proxy measurements. Two problems there: 1) the proxies lack the precision to be useful in a discussion of 2-3C of climate variation and 2) the proxies don't agree with one another, nor do any of them agree with direct measurements.

      Statistical smoothing is used to work around this, and that's where we get into what you stated about problems with interpretations of the measurements and the way in which mathematical principles are applied. You can blur your way out of very minor errors and largely leave the data intact, but you can't do so when your error bars are orders of magnitude greater than the trend you're seeking. At that point, by the time you've blurred away the errors, any reliable data hidden in there has long since been turned to mush.

      None of this is to say we shouldn't be working hard on climate science. Rather, it's to say we need to do better work on the subject and stop pretending we understand our world's climate or its history. None of this is to say we shouldn't be working hard on shifting from technologies that pollute and poison our environment to cleaner and better technologies. Rather, it's to say we shouldn't jump to absurd doomsday conclusions and take radical actions like geo-engineering "solutions" to problems we can't yet say for certain even exist.

      Good science is honest about its faults; about what it does know, what it should know, and what it can't know. Good science starts with good data, strict methodology, open presentation of work for review, and the ability to accept valid criticism. Unfortunately, climate science has been tribalized into an "us vs them" situation unlike virtually any other science. There are great debates in science about the validity of things like string theory, quantum loop gravity, etc, but those arguments are based on the underlying math and how well it explains what we've actually observed thus far in our universe. The debate around climate science is mostly crap. It's two sides screaming "WE'RE RIGHT, YOU'RE WRONG!" at each other. I'm not surprised that there's a group that will always refuse to believe humans have any impact on the climate of our world because we have a group (and it's largely the same group) that refuses to believe evolution is a real thing despite the fact that we can observe it happening in front of us. No, what surprises (and saddens) me is that there's a group that believes in AGW with a religious fervor on par with the worst of the zealots. Questioning the data or the science behind their dogmatic beliefs is an attack on their very being, and they respond by spewing hate. It's unfortunate, because there are extremely important questions to answer and there needs to be real work done on answering them rather than merely confirming beliefs.

      --
      -- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
    62. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But disproving an establish theory is real science, and real science has no place in this debate! All we need is Al Gore.

      97%? You must mean 97% of a cherry picked group of 74 people, quite a few of whom lack actual backgrounds in climate or meteorological science.

    63. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They just announced plans today to undo nearly all climate regulation from the last decade, 73 climate regulations all told: http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/12/16/13967888/freedom-caucus-regulations

    64. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      That's not science. That's called a religion.

      Galileo vs. the Pope

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    65. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Find your safe space and get some crayons and play doh. The article you link to says nothing of the sort.

      We covered this last week.

      It's just more leftist panic and shock at having lost power and easy unlimited access to tax payer money.

    66. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by PopeRatzo · · Score: 0

      We covered this last week.

      No, you didn't "cover" this last week. You acted like something that happened, in a publicly available document didn't actually happen. The Trump team disavowed the questionnaire as "unauthorized" but there is no doubt the document was sent.

      I expect to see the Trump administration doing a lot of this sort of disavowal of their own behavior in the near future. Because of course, he's "No puppet. No puppet".

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    67. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      The true measure of scientific fact is how well it survives the opposition trying to disprove it. Given that the opposition to climate change has given up on producing data disproving that the Earth is getting warmer on aggregate

      "The opposition" isn't getting any funding to produce opposing research.

      and instead resorted to attacking it politically, I would say it's doing pretty well as scientific theories go.

      The political attacks are about policy, not science. Personally, I don't care whether the average global temperatures will be a few degrees higher in 2100.

    68. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Galileo was Catholic and dedicated his books to the Pope. I think you've got your facts wrong.

    69. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Stephan+Schulz · · Score: 5, Informative

      But disproving an establish theory is real science, and real science has no place in this debate! All we need is Al Gore.

      97%? You must mean 97% of a cherry picked group of 74 people, quite a few of whom lack actual backgrounds in climate or meteorological science.

      Well, there are several sources for the ca. 97%, but they seem to have been too conservative (in the non-political sense of the term). The latest analysis among actually publishing scientists (by James Powell) finds "above 99.99%", or what he calls "virtual unanimity". The fact that several studies with different methodologies all find support in the high 95+% is a nice example of consilience, and that usually is takes as very strong evidence for a fact.

      Of course an alternative explanation is that all the scientists, all the editors, and all the scientific organisations are conspiring to keep THE TRUTH from us, with only a small number of heroic conservative think tanks and fossil fuel companies desperately trying to defend it. You take your pick...

      --

      Stephan

    70. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      given up on producing data disproving that the Earth is getting warmer on aggregate

      If only this were the proposal the Climate Change advocates were advancing. It isn't, they could care less about the repeated failure to provide a model of impact that corresponds to empirical fact.

      Like Al Gore's resource-guzzling lifestyle repeatedly gives the model for, the actual question posed to skeptics is "prove I shouldn't be given unlimited political power because temperatures are rising". That's the only objective that's actually being forwarded and the skeptics derided in questioning in questioning it, under the guise of a "denial" that temperatures are rising, which extremely few actually have.

      It's a political spectrum goal, not a truth goal. The issue won't be settled when "we know the truth", it's be settled when "we are given all the unaccountable power we want". To fail to see this in the structure of the argument and the political movement is, willful or not, complete blindness or outright abdication of both science and intellectual honesty.

    71. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      I thought I did since most climate research is funded by tax dollars.

    72. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here's one: statistics and computer models aren't even science but they're being presented as though they are. Please point to the experiment that I can perform that would prove or disprove AGW. I'll run it and see if I can reproduce it.

    73. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by hey! · · Score: 2

      If the research is that important, then publish it and get libraries and other 3rd parties archiving it after the data is collected ---
      this is also a good thing as it means observation datasets can no longer be tampered with in the future to support new models.

      This tampering thing is a myth. Datasets do need to be normalized and massaged before you draw any useful conclusions from them, but you can get the raw data if you're interested -- for example the station data in the instrumental record. The myth persists because people want to believe it and don't even make rudimentary efforts to see if it is true.

      I've been reading a lot of this bullshit, and it's clear the people spreading them have never bothered to look for the data or go to the papers which published the data, or to even figure out what the data means. For example I have been hearing a lot from denialists about how the "unadjusted radiosonde" data shows there's no warming, so I tracked down the paper which is the source of that claim. To understand the data you have to understand what a radiosonde is: it's balloon-borne instrument that takes a cross section of measurements from the troposphere -- which warms under AGW -- into the stratosphere -- which cools under AGW. So adding up all the measurements can't tell you whether or not the lower levels of the atmosphere have gotten warmer, you have to select just the relevant data.

      I doubt that Trump's team is going to say "delete the research data", anyways.

      Of course he hasn't said he's going to do it, but neither did the Harper government in Canada. In that case the advance notice was sent out in August when many of the library staff was on vacation stating there was going to be a consolidation of services and a move toward electronic distribution. That sounded innocuous, but three weeks later a hundred years worth of journals, technical reports and datasets were in the landfill.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    74. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by smooth+wombat · · Score: 3, Informative

      Stating a fact is not a strawman argument. Trump did petition to have a sea wall installed and in his petition it is specifically stated it is because of the possibility of rising sea levels due to climate change. The exact words:

      "If the predictions of an increase in sea level rise as a result of global warming prove correct, however, it is likely that there will be a corresponding increase in coastal erosion rates not just in Doughmore Bay but around much of the coastline of Ireland."

      Further, he sent out flyers to the local populace in regards to this proposal in which it states:

      "Predicted sea level rise and more frequent storm events will increase the rate of erosion throughout the 21st century."

      So Trump being Trump, he says one thing but does another. Like his golf course in Connecticut which he has repeatedly bragged is worth $50 million but wanted to claim on his taxes was only worth $1.5 million.

      Then again, the con artist has done the same thing around the country with his golf courses, bragging about being worth X millions but claiming for tax purposes significantly lower values.

      --
      We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
    75. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is this more WP "Fake news" ?

    76. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

      Better to burn all the research to the ground and call it a day.

      Although, that would be a man-made contribution to global warming...

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    77. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by quantaman · · Score: 1

      If you want to see the oppositions disproval, then you Need to fund their research equally, just like the researchers received the massive funding for their work who actually started off with assumption that greenhouse-gas-caused climate change exists and is caused by humans.

      The ones who assume work doesn't prove the foundation of their research is true though,
      they just further developed the theory, which doesn't receive adequate funding for critical truth analysis.

      Cool, so who's going to fund my flat earth research?

      --
      I stole this Sig
    78. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

      Can you perhaps cite the peer reviewed paper predicting all those things?

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    79. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by phantomfive · · Score: 0

      Former climate sceptic Richard Muller [wikipedia.org] got funded by the Koch brothers, and, with his team, did a completely independent reconstruction of the temperature record of the last.

      He wasn't a skeptic: that was propaganda and you fell for it.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    80. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Stephan+Schulz · · Score: 1

      Former climate sceptic Richard Muller [wikipedia.org] got funded by the Koch brothers, and, with his team, did a completely independent reconstruction of the temperature record of the last.

      He wasn't a skeptic: that was propaganda and you fell for it.

      Global Warming Bombshell (by Richard Muller) sure sounds very sceptical about the Hockey Stick.

      --

      Stephan

    81. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by phantomfive · · Score: 2
      Quote by Richard Muller, from the very article you linked to:

      If you are concerned about global warming (as I am) and think that human-created carbon dioxide may contribute (as I do)

      Again, you fell for propaganda.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    82. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Kohath · · Score: 1

      Your post and the post I was responding to cite exactly zero peer-reviewed papers.

    83. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by khallow · · Score: 1

      No matter how much evidence there is

      Typical of the overblown rhetoric. "We don't have a lot of evidence for our claims, but if we did, you'd still ignore it!"

      If you look at actual spending on climate change propaganda, you'll see that the "deniers" are outspent by the "alarmers" by at least an order of magnitude. It's not even close.

    84. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by khallow · · Score: 2

      ExxonMobil already did some comprehensive, high quality research on climate change in the 1970s. They discovered AGW but decided to bury their research and go about a campaign to discredit anyone who made similar findings. Or perhaps you haven't been following the news lately?

      Given how their innocuous research has been blown way out of proportion to claim that they're doing a "Big Nicotine" denial act, they were right to keep it secret. It takes a particular mendacity to claim that merely doing climate research is an admission of guilt in some imaginary propaganda war.

    85. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by lgw · · Score: 1

      Yup, exactly the same effect. But apparently the evangelical right has such limited influence these days that Trump won the primary - though still enough to matter in the general or Trump wouldn't have picked Pence.

      Trump proved that you can be pro-choice and still win the Republican primary. That's a real milestone.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    86. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      You're so brainwashed you really believe that story. Read a little history, isntead of propaganda. He was punished for mocking the pope's personal theory after writing a contract to include it in his book. And yes, it was the pope's personal theory; the pope most specifically stated that it was not divinely inspired.

    87. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by khallow · · Score: 1

      The latest analysis among actually publishing scientists [sagepub.com] (by James Powell [wikipedia.org]) finds "above 99.99%", or what he calls "virtual unanimity".

      In other words, a crap study. There aren't that many climate researchers in the world to maintain a 10,000 to 1 ratio over the publishing skeptics by probably two orders of magnitude.

    88. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by lgw · · Score: 1

      Then again, the con artist has done the same thing around the country with his golf courses, bragging about being worth X millions but claiming for tax purposes significantly lower values.

      Every rational person does this. Have you ever owned a house? You fight every tax assessment that raises the value of your house, because that's non-trivial money out of your pocket. That has nothing to do with the value you try to sell your house at. In fact, a large gap between the market price of the house and the tax-assessed price is a selling point.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    89. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Like Al Gore's resource-guzzling lifestyle

      Mentioning Al Gore == sign that you are afflicted with right-wing dumbfuckery, and should seek medical attention.

    90. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      "The opposition" isn't getting any funding to produce opposing research.

      Right, because the industry where a single company can make $40 billion in a quarter just doesn't have any money to advocate their interests.

    91. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by admin7087 · · Score: 1

      Widespread "Consensus" is not the measure of scientific fact.

      It definitely should be for laymen.

      Moreover, scientific facts are not brought into existence by 'disputes'. You can discuss on public forums whether the earth is flat or not all day long and link to various flat-earth conspiracy blogs, and those discussions will not give you the slightest insight about the earth's shape. If you think you have something to contribute, get invited to an international conference on climate science. That will be easy if you know something about climate science and have done some research.

      Like it or not, there is a real dispute

      No there isn't, as huge meta-study has already shown one or two years ago. Unless you're a climate scientist, the 'dispute' is only in your mind.

    92. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Before it was droughts, floods, hurricanes

      You forgot tornadoes, massive forest fires and heat deaths out of your list of things that have already happened.

      no arctic ice

      It's a work in progress.

      no snow in England or New York

      Warmer temperatures mean more moisture in the air, which contributes to some of the 30" snowstorms that New England has had over the last few years.

      mass extinctions, 100 meter sea level rise, mass starvation worldwide, point of no return, end of the world.

      So which movies are you basing your idea of what scientists have actually said? Day After Tomorrow? Because otherwise, that's just a pantload of hysterical denialist straw men.

    93. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by lgw · · Score: 1

      Well, most people just never cared, but it was commonly understood that the world was round. Every sailor knew it, and that's in fact how it came to be known in antiquity.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    94. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Imrik · · Score: 1

      A more likely alternative explanation would be that the people in question are afraid to disagree with the majority without strong evidence and the vast majority aren't interested enough to do the analysis themselves. Not that I think that that's actually what's happening, but strawman arguments do more harm than good.

    95. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      If you want to see the oppositions disproval, then you Need to fund their research equally, just like the researchers received the massive funding for their work who actually started off with assumption that greenhouse-gas-caused climate change exists and is caused by humans.

      Drivel. Climate scientists are dependent on grants from the U.S. Government, and the U.S. Government has an overwhelming bias towards fossil fuel production. Even "liberal Democrats" like Obama have threatened to use force to keep oil moving through the Gulf, opened the eastern seaboard to offshore drilling, and bragged about domestic producers drilling oil faster than we have transpiration capacity to move it. And the single largest user of fossil fuels is the U.S. military.

      Did you blather on about biases and agendas when scientists were proving that asbestos and cigarette smoke caused cancer? If not, why not?

    96. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Imrik · · Score: 1

      oblig XKCD

    97. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Alleged billionaire.

    98. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Imrik · · Score: 1

      Not around here it isn't.

    99. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sure, grab some carbon dioxide, h20, a source of IR radiation, and a thermometer. Probably some nitrogen will also be necessary. Should be pretty easy to find. For a classical example, you could look at the work by Tyndall. The claims you're going to want to investigate are the absorption of IR by CO2 and the amplifying effect of H2O gas. You'll probably want to start with a mostly-nitrogen atmosphere, and I am sure you will be quite interested to note the opacity of low concentrations of CO2.

      On a more global scale, you would be able to disprove global warming by showing an unknown but finely-tuned feedback effect which would exactly cancel the effect of additional carbon (otherwise we would merely have a different problem to worry about). You could also disprove that atmospheric carbon levels are rising, or discover a new method for Earth to transfer energy to space.

      There are observations that would disprove gravity, too. Be sure to test that as well.

    100. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 1

      Widespread "Consensus" is not the measure of scientific fact; if it were, we'd all still believe that the Earth is flat, etc

      Actually, we haven't believed the earth is flat ever since we started to seriously consider the matter. The proofs that it's round are just too obvious. In fact, Eratosthenes determined the size of the globe within a few percentage points over 2300 years ago.

    101. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Stephan+Schulz · · Score: 4, Informative

      The latest analysis among actually publishing scientists [sagepub.com] (by James Powell [wikipedia.org]) finds "above 99.99%", or what he calls "virtual unanimity".

      In other words, a crap study. There aren't that many climate researchers in the world to maintain a 10,000 to 1 ratio over the publishing skeptics by probably two orders of magnitude.

      Powell counted 69406 to 4, and apparently the referees and editors at the Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society agreed. The full paper including the methodology is online, as are the data sets.

      --

      Stephan

    102. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      All the taxpayers, if you too can convince the government to steal their resources and hand it over to you.

    103. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by stigmerger · · Score: 1

      Widespread "Consensus" is not the measure of scientific fact; if it were, we'd all still believe that the Earth is flat, etc.

      There are legitimate criticisms about the climate models, the interpretations of measurements, and even the very way in which certain mathematical principles are applied. Like it or not, there is a real dispute, and the side that has the support of the Taxman and the liberal Hollywood elite should really be suspect.

      Widespread consensus offers a qualitative measure of how the issue is playing out amongst those who are well-informed. The "legitimate criticisms" about the models have somehow not persuaded them that the issue is still being pulled equally in opposite directions. The "interpretation of measurements" question is apparently not enough of a conundrum to confound the conclusion that the steady absoption of energy by the climate system can be roughly quantified, and that this is consistent with a range of observations, from melting ice to changing ocean chemistry. We're to understand that there is still some room for discussion on the matter of climate sensitivity, but it likely falls within a range that suggests the problem is extremely urgent and deadly serious.

      Such a "consensus" doesn't settle the question, but it tells us that the scientific community has run out of alternative hypotheses that fit the data, or which cast significant doubt on which conclusions to draw regarding causes. It doesn't mean you are not allowed to pose a new hypothesis that fits the data.

    104. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      That's just an absurd claim made by morons who have no idea what they're talking about. While that does demonstrate your stupidity, it doesn't provide the information I requested.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    105. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Are those scientific sources? Why would you even mention them? Are you a fucking idiot?

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    106. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Oh no, please don't make assumptions about what commoners thought many hundreds of years ago.

      Except for people living near the coast, most commoners would never have even heard of the sea, let alone seen it.

      The thought about what shape the Earth was wouldn't have even crossed their minds.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    107. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      Right. Almost everyone knew the Earth was round because 99.999999999999999999999999999999% of people were sailors in those days.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    108. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by CanadianMacFan · · Score: 1

      I'm sorry but I must have missed their work because I didn't see them get the Noble prize for physics. The truth is that if someone does come up with an explanation for the warming that we are experiencing which gives better predictions and doesn't require the CO2 emissions from humans then they will win that years Nobel.

      The problem is that based on a video I've seen there's a very simple experiment to show that an atmosphere with more CO2 warms up faster and it's very easy to calculate the amount of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere per year to increase the percentage as compared to what is naturally increasing it.

      The experiment:
      - Take two tubes that have a black back such as those that are used to heat water on roofs
      - Insert a thermometer into each
      - Seal each tube off
      - Into one tube add CO2 so that it increase the concentration by 5ppm (I don't remember what the experiment did)
      - Place both tubes into the sun

      You should see that the tube with the increased CO2 gets warmer faster. From that you can extrapolate that our atmosphere would be warmer if the concentration of CO2 was higher. And you know that the concentration of CO2 is going higher because we're burning so many fossil fuels. You know how much it's increasing in the atmosphere in one year and you can subtract how much we contribute by burning fossil fuels, both known or guessable values, to get a value for how much CO2 nature is putting into the atmosphere a year.

    109. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 1

      I first wanted to say thank you for holding your scientific position here in the face of ignorant objections. it always astounds me how people believe that the consensus among scientists is either a massive conspiracy or some sort of hugely biased poll where the objectors never get a voice.

      With all that said, I took a few minutes to read your linked article. Something is a little "fishy" in that figure, based on the other articles cited. For example, he cites a 2010 study that claimed to find 2.5% of the top 200 climate researchers "as ranked by expertise (number of climate publications)" were "unconvinced by the evidence." That's 5 climate scientists just out of the top 200 -- and those 200 were apparently the most published folks.

      How do we square that with the article's claim to only find 5 articles TOTAL (with 4 authors) -- out of the ~70,000 he claims to have looked at -- which show evidence of rejecting the hypothesis? The article further claims that these 5 articles were only ever cited once, implying that they don't have a strong reputation.

      These claims seem a bit contradictory. If we are to believe the present study that there are only ~4 scientists who are skeptical (and apparently have minimal unpopular publications), how did the 2010 study find 5 skeptical scientists just among the 200 most published climate scientists??

      Granted, the present article was done with publications a few years later, so some skeptics may have changed their minds (or died or whatever), but something doesn't quite add up here to get the 99.99% figure.

      Also, this article apparently accepts "clear statements of rejection or that some process other than AGW better explains the observations" as the only evidence of "rejection," while lumping together all other articles in the "positive" group. I agree with the article's critiques of previous methods that just ignored all articles which didn't declare a "for or against" explicitly -- that also seems stupid. And I agree with the author that the vast majority of those which don't declare explicitly "for" AGW probably do still adhere to the theory. But that doesn't justify calling ALL articles without "clear statements of rejection" to be authored be scientists who adhere to the theory with no reservations.

      And when we look back at Cook et al. (2013), we find 78 abstracts and 124 authors "reject AGW" explicitly and 40 abstracts/44 authors are "uncertain on AGW." While Cook found a gradual increase in the acceptance numbers over time (about +0.1%/year), he still was estimating it at ~98% in 2011, compared to ~97% over the 20-year period examined. Did these ~168 skeptical authors simply vanish in 2-3 years for your article's data? Have the criteria used to justify classifying a paper as a "rejection" been raised?

      I didn't go digging through all the supplementary data to Cook, but from a graph of their data over time, it looks like they examined roughly 1500-1700 papers from 2011, which given their reported percentage of 98% acceptance in 2011 would imply somewhere around 30-35 papers Cook et al. found just in that year alone. But by 2013-14 of your cited study, that number fell to 2.5/year for a much larger sample (~12,000 articles/year).

      The numbers don't quite mesh between these various studies, even if you take into account the rational criticisms of previous studies.

      Basically, I'm mostly with you and the author of this article in that consensus is at least 97% and probably quite a bit more. But there's some flimsy argumentation being made here... either that, or the previous studies that claimed to have found a slightly higher percentages of objectors were fundamentally flawed in simply COUNTING the "rejections" in some way (even though the author doesn't argue that the previous data was outright false or something on that order).

    110. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 1

      Oh, in my final sentences I forgot the last possibility, i.e., that >90% of the previous "skeptics" had either died, stopped publishing for some other reason, or changed their minds between 2011 and 2013. I suppose that's possible, but that doesn't follow the trends Cook observed of a much more gradual growth of consensus despite fairly overwhelming evidence being collected in the early 2000s.

    111. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That being your only response to the argument, shows you are infected with liberal knee-jerk irrational idiocy, and no medical attention will fix that.

    112. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      Provide the list of works that falsify AGW. And no, tweets, blog posts and WSJ editorials are not falsifications. Since you seem to believe AGW has been demolished, it should be trivial to find a dozen published articles falsifying the link between CO2 emissions and warming, or falsifying the data that demonstrates the warming.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    113. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      The "publishing skeptics" you refer don't publish AGW-skeptical papers. This is something you should note very carefully. The actual small number of out and out skeptical researchers in climatology don't write their vast AGW-debunking critiques in journals, they write them in places like the Wall Street Journal. Their published works tends to be pretty mundane stuff.

      This reminds me so much of how people would trumpet Michael Behe as the great destroyer of evolutionary theory, because he is a Intelligent Design-trumpeting biochemist... except he doesn't actually publish anything that debunks evolutionary biology at all, but rather uses his reputation as a IDer/Creationist to bilk morons in church basements out of speaking fees, much as Spencer and Curry use their reputation as AGW-debunkers to earn speaking fees and get anti-AGW screeds published in the WSJ, while they collect nice little paychecks from the Koch Brothers.

      Sorry mate, if you're going to the literature to look for you big debunking anthropogenic climate change, you're pretty much fucked. There's about as many published works debunking AGW as there are works debunking Common Descent and General Relativity. You've been sucked in by a scam every bit as made up as a perpetual energy scam, but with some very rich people who have a lot to lose if CO2 is priced for the damage its doing. You're a sucker.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    114. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      Some day they'll sort out that Canute was trying to demonstrate he *couldn't* stop the tide. Too late for everyone of course.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    115. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You must be like the guy telling the Jews in the mid-1930s "Don't worry, they just want to register you. It'll be just fine..."

      Trump has made it clear he doesn't accept the science. He's surrounded himself by people who either don't accept the science, or have strong commercial reasons to try to suppress it. He has a Congress stacked with people who either think God wants coal to be burned or who take their orders from fossil fuel companies.

      But you know what, it doesn't fucking matter, because the laws of nature don't give a fuck about Donald Trump, and CO2 has the properties it has, and all the delicate little Republican snowflakes in the world won't make a bit of difference. You cannot stop the laws of physics with a fucking vote.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    116. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by dbIII · · Score: 1

      That was politics.
      Calling someone with a lot of political power an utterly brainless goose can tend to provoke conflict.

    117. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by dbIII · · Score: 2

      Yes, yes - the mainstream is bigger than the idiot fringe, just get over it.

    118. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your ignorance is absolutely stunning. Go read about Arabs on Wikipedia.

    119. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >whipping up support among the unwashed, unthinking masses
      Particularly women. Women are unable to think critically at the best of times, and are prone to follow 'popular' trends. Thus, women are easily blindsided by propaganda pushed by celebrities. Not that men are immune to these effects; of course, men are susceptible too. But women are orders of magnitude worse.

      Giving women voting privileges was quite honestly the worst mistake western countries ever made.

    120. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by lgw · · Score: 1

      Did you know people talk to other people? OK, they may not talk to you, all things considered, but it's a real thing! Google around for it if you need to, but it was commonly known that the world wasn't flat quite early on.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    121. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      That being your only response to the argument,

      What argument. Al Gore Derangement Syndrome isn't an argument, it's dumbfuckery.

      shows you are infected with liberal knee-jerk irrational idiocy, and no medical attention will fix that.

      Your projection is noted.

    122. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who in the scientific community is spending more than the energy industries to influence the government and electorate? This is some stinky, stinky BS and I'd love to see what you try to cite as a source for this.

    123. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      That was politics.

      Really?

      Galileo was ordered to turn himself in to the Holy Office to begin trial for holding the belief that the Earth revolves around the Sun, which was deemed heretical by the Catholic Church.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    124. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But he wouldn't say one thing and believe/do another would he

      He will say/believe/do anything if there is something in it for him. Since the "something" varies from time-to-time and place-to-place the speech/beliefs/actions vary too. He calls himself a businessman in an attempt to differentiate himself from politicians, but ultimately he acts exactly the way he accuses 'the politicians' of acting.

    125. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Stinky+Cheese+Man · · Score: 1

      I don't know how things are where you live, but around here the assessed value of real estate for tax purposes is roughly 70% of it's fair market value. I don't think this is uncommon. Taxable value and fair market value are different things, and it is not surprising (to me, anyway) that Trump would say the market value of his property is higher than it's taxable value. This is not hypocrisy -- this is just how the system works.

    126. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      Right, because the industry where a single company can make $40 billion in a quarter just doesn't have any money to advocate their interests.

      We were talking about research, not advocacy. And your numbers are way off; total annual profits of all US and Canadian oil and gas producers are about $100 billion. That compares to over a trillion dollars the US government is spending on public schools, public universities, and research grants, all of which are dedicated to pushing the party line on climate change on the most impressionable members of society.

    127. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by dbIII · · Score: 2

      Yes really.
      Also intensely personal since the Pontiff and Galileo were rivals as students.
      It's worth considering the vote of the Cardinals as well, many were on Galileo's side, just not a majority of them.


      Make authority look stupid (Simplicio in Galileo's text being an obvious and insulting parody of the Pontiff) and they see it as a threat to their power and lock you up - that is the lesson to be taken from that situation. Books by Copernicus had been circulating among the clergy for decades before the dispute.

      I suggest you read a bit more about it since it was a very interesting situation and because it seems every psuedo-science scam artist takes the name of Galileo in vain when their scam is questioned.

    128. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Those are mostly crap studies, with narrowly defined questions that even skeptical scientists will agree with (questions like, "Does human influence have some effect on the climate?"). Here's a much better study with a nuanced approach, for those who actually want to understand the issue.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    129. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by khallow · · Score: 1

      Who in the scientific community is spending more than the energy industries to influence the government and electorate?

      Governments, NGOs. But I guess they're no more the "scientific community" than energy industries are.

    130. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by khallow · · Score: 1

      Powell counted 69406 to 4

      Bullshit. There aren't that many climate researchers in the world. And Stephan, I have a bit of hate for you right now for making me read this stupid piece of shit just so I could refute your argument. Here's the problem right in the methodology:

      To find the number of recent articles that reject AGW, I used the following method:

      Web of Science Core Collection

      Enhanced Science Index

      Publication Years: 2013 and 2014

      Document Type: Article

      Topics: âoeGlobal warmingâ or âoeglobal climate changeâ or âoeclimate change.â

      Remove duplicates by combining searches using the OR command.

      Export the search results to an Excel file.

      Review titles and abstracts looking for clear statements of rejection or that some process other than AGW better explains the observations.

      Notice that the author does not actually count climate research papers, doesn't actually find authors who refute or affirm AGW or other climate change theory, and doesn't actually count climate researchers.

      Waste of my time.

    131. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by khallow · · Score: 1

      I first wanted to say thank you for holding your scientific position here in the face of ignorant objections.

      AthanasiusKircher, this sort of research is as profoundly unscientific as it comes (including the stuff you quote from Cook et al). And your comments are just as bad. For example, consensus about what?

      Notice that the alleged 97% consensus is relatively accurate when the claim is that there is global warming. It goes down once you add that the global warming is human-induced. And then it goes down much further when the claim is that the impact is catastrophic or severe over the next 50 to 100 years to 41%. 41% is a bit less than 97%, right?

      I suspect you will find similar divided opinion on the matter of whether immediate mitigation efforts are required right now.

      James L. Powell's 99.99% paper is ridiculous and you can see that just by looking through the methodology. It doesn't measure what it claims to measure. You can't get more damning than that. Yet once again, we have these slashdot posts talking about scientific positions and holding the line in the face of "ignorant objections".

    132. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by mean+pun · · Score: 1

      Quote by Richard Muller, from the very article you linked to:

      If you are concerned about global warming (as I am) and think that human-created carbon dioxide may contribute (as I do)

      Again, you fell for propaganda.

      Being concerned that global warming might be real and that human-created CO2 may contribute is now propaganda rather than being open-minded?

    133. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by mean+pun · · Score: 1

      Is this more WP "Fake news" ?

      No, it is not.

      Or do you think that Mr. Mann has not gotten any death-threats, or does not fear this will get worse now during the Trump regime?

    134. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Stephan+Schulz · · Score: 1

      I first wanted to say thank you for holding your scientific position here in the face of ignorant objections.

      AthanasiusKircher, this sort of research is as profoundly unscientific as it comes (including the stuff you quote from Cook et al). And your comments are just as bad. For example, consensus about what? Notice that the alleged 97% consensus is relatively accurate when the claim is that there is global warming. It goes down once you add that the global warming is human-induced. And then it goes down much further when the claim is that the impact is catastrophic or severe over the next 50 to 100 years to 41%. 41% is a bit less than 97%, right? I suspect you will find similar divided opinion on the matter of whether immediate mitigation efforts are required right now. James L. Powell's 99.99% paper is ridiculous and you can see that just by looking through the methodology. It doesn't measure what it claims to measure. You can't get more damning than that. Yet once again, we have these slashdot posts talking about scientific positions and holding the line in the face of "ignorant objections".

      You may not like Powell, but he is entirely clear about his methodologies, about how he measures what he measures, and about what data he used. You can certainly disagree with his conclusion, but if you want to be taken serious, you should actually do the work of re-doing the analysis with the same transparency and provide a clear argument for your different interpretation (if it still differs - "Powell is totally wrong, the consensus is only 99.3%" ;--).

      I think we are now into infinite regression territory. Everybody who is scientifically literate and looks at the primary literature (and by than I don't mean propaganda blogs) can easily determine the prevailing position. And with a bit of experience in reviewing it's also easy to see the quality (rare) and scope (narrow) of the very few disagreeing publications. But that apparently is not good enough, and we get nit-picking from people who don't like the consensus. What we don't see are significant publications providing alternative explanations.

      So now we have meta-analyses, where people go to great length to analyse papers, to count positions, to interview scientists, and to publish their findings in the peer-reviewed literature. But that apparently is not good enough either, and we get nit-picking from people who don't like the consensus. What we don't see are significant academic publications showing that there is indeed no consensus - the best we get is the occasional opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal or the 17 year old fraudulent Oregon Petition.

      What's next? Meta-meta studies? Meta-meta-meta-studies? As far as I can tell, the opposition to the consensus is largely immune to rational arguments - "global warming is a hoax invented by the Chinese" is one of the more prominent stupidities in this field.

      --

      Stephan

    135. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Stephan+Schulz · · Score: 1

      Powell counted 69406 to 4

      Bullshit. There aren't that many climate researchers in the world. And Stephan, I have a bit of hate for you right now for making me read this stupid piece of shit just so I could refute your argument. Here's the problem right in the methodology:

      To find the number of recent articles that reject AGW, I used the following method: [...]

      Notice that the author does not actually count climate research papers, doesn't actually find authors who refute or affirm AGW or other climate change theory, and doesn't actually count climate researchers. Waste of my time.

      You do understand that by casting a wide net, Powell increases the chance of finding sceptical papers, right?

      As for the number of climate scientists, we can do a simple Fermi approximation. There are apparently around 40000 universities in the world (which jibes nicely with a bit over 400 universities for approximately 80 million inhabitants in Germany). Going with the German sample, about 1/4 to 3/4 of these are research universities (depending on your definition) - so call it 20000. Assuming that half of these do climate research and that the average research group has 10 people, we are at 100000 climate scientists just at universities - without counting NASA (which spends approximately US$ 2e9 on Earth sciences - that should pay about 10000 people alone) or NOAA (with a nearly US$ 5e9 budget - another 25000 people) or Max Planck Institutes in Germany or JAXA in Japan, or any of the corresponding organisations in other states. Now neither NASA not NOAA is all scientists, but it should be clear that 69000 is not an implausible number of climate scientists.

      --

      Stephan

    136. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      I'm 71 years old.

      I helped write the fucking book.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    137. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by dywolf · · Score: 0

      Google is hard.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    138. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by dywolf · · Score: 1

      doing research isn't an admission of guilt.

      burying research that agreed with the research of others, but was detrimental to their bottom line, and then discrediting the similar findings of other groups for the same reason....that's the admission of guilt.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    139. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by dywolf · · Score: 1

      you mean this "cherry picked group of 74 people" ???
      http://www.jamespowell.org/res...
      methinks you don't have a clue.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    140. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by dywolf · · Score: 1

      and now you reject evidence simply because the numbers are too big based on....what?

      your gut instinct?
      or are big numbers just too hard?

      in a world of 7 billion people you think there cant be that many climate scientists?

      keep digging that hole deeper.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    141. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by dywolf · · Score: 1

      big numbers are scary, therefore they don't exist!

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    142. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by tbannist · · Score: 1

      Trump proved that you can be pro-choice and still win the Republican primary. That's a real milestone.

      Really? I thought Trump proved that you could be both anti-choice and anti-life and still win the Republican primary and the electoral college.

      --
      Fanatically anti-fanatical
    143. Re: There is a legitimate dispute by khallow · · Score: 1

      burying research that agreed with the research of others, but was detrimental to their bottom line, and then discrediting the similar findings of other groups for the same reason....that's the admission of guilt.

      Which let us note, is a story that has been blown way out of proportion. The basic facts are that Exxon did some research on the matter a few decades back and found the usual inconclusive results that have been kicking around in climate change the whole time. Then they spent small amounts on groups that certain critics don't like.

      Exxon makes a vast amount of profit. Yet we don't see spending on these alleged activities proportional to that profit in any way. They could have spent a hundred times as much as they supposedly did on the alleged activities, and still make that huge profit. They could have a huge propaganda operation hounding climate researchers, politicians, etc. But they don't. Exxon is a scapegoat not the cause of the ongoing failure of the climate change message.

    144. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by khallow · · Score: 1

      and now you reject evidence simply because the numbers are too big based on....what?

      First, that many researchers is equivalent to the US's entire PhD production annually.

      in a world of 7 billion people you think there cant be that many climate scientists?

      Yes.

      Let us also note that the paper doesn't actually do what it claims. Just look at the methodology. There's no way the author is finding climate researchers or climate research with the search they're doing.

    145. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by tbannist · · Score: 1

      Taxable value and fair market value are different things, and it is not surprising (to me, anyway) that Trump would say the market value of his property is higher than it's taxable value

      Did you notice he's claiming the taxable value is 3% of what he says the actual value is? That's kind of like saying it's "just speeding" when someone gets caught doing 150 mph on the highway...

      --
      Fanatically anti-fanatical
    146. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by khallow · · Score: 1

      You do understand that by casting a wide net, Powell increases the chance of finding sceptical papers, right?

      Powell makes a subjective judgment as to what counts as "Skeptical" papers. And the glaring problem, he already acknowledges that his methodology doesn't count consensus, it only counts researchers who bothered to put a relatively extreme claim in their research. Read the section on "Consensus in the Scientific Literature" where Powell shows how terrible his approach is for other fields. There's a bit of research on censensus out there that isn't deeply broken. Why can't you use that instead?

      As to your Fermi approximation, I think you are off greatly in number of research universities, number of research universities that have a climate research program, and the number of people who actually publish relevant climate research. Hence, my claim that you are off by two orders of magnitude.

    147. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by khallow · · Score: 1

      Everybody who is scientifically literate and looks at the primary literature (and by than I don't mean propaganda blogs) can easily determine the prevailing position.

      And everybody who can do that, can also go straight to the evidence. And when we do so, we see things like a factor of three error in the most important parameter in climate science, the temperature sensitivity of a doubling of CO2. We also see important disagreements in opinion on AGW and what, if anything to do about it.

      What we don't see are significant publications providing alternative explanations.

      I already mentioned one such study. Actual polling of scientists is far superior.

      So now we have meta-analyses, where people go to great length to analyse papers, to count positions, to interview scientists, and to publish their findings in the peer-reviewed literature. But that apparently is not good enough either, and we get nit-picking from people who don't like the consensus. What we don't see are significant academic publications showing that there is indeed no consensus - the best we get is the occasional opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal or the 17 year old fraudulent Oregon Petition.

      Consensus on what again? You're doing that thing again, where you speak of consensus, but not of what the consensus is about. For example, I believe that there is AGW (so I would be part of that consensus), I just also happen to believe that current climate research has greatly exaggerated the problems and understated the costs of the would-be solutions (so I'm not part of that imaginary consensus).

    148. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by khallow · · Score: 1

      big numbers are scary, therefore they don't exist!

      I too can make straw man arguments. Does that make you wronger?

    149. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Convenient of you NOT to cite a source. What government/NGO spends more to lobby (itself?) than the energy industry lobbyists? I wanted hard information, numbers, as you seem to claim they are an "order of magnitude" greater. Why would a government even spend money on this? What stake do they have? No need to reply now, it's pretty clear you're pulling shit out of your ass.

    150. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Achmed, you were assigned to counter global warming claims, which would be good for our oil industry. You are not supposed to discuss politics!

    151. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      New York is NOT part of New England. I know, the name makes it sound like it is, but it is not.

    152. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Since women had the vote, the taller candidate with the better hair always wins. Trump's hair was only slightly better than Hillary's, but clearly he was taller.

      It should be recorded that the first thing women did with their votes was pass alcohol prohibition, an epicly, undeniably terrible decision.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    153. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Even in the days of his ancestor, Josephus VI-Packus, it was commonly believed that the Earth was round.

    154. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      At the time, good catholics believed the pope infallible in all things. Or at least paid lip service publicly.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    155. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      We are also free to note that 'official' historical data getting colder with each subsequent 'adjustment'.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    156. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Don't lecture about what you don't understand.

      The key numbers are the CO2/Water vapor positive feedback coefficient and the CO2/albedo negative feedback coefficient. Both are pulled from dark places and can make the models tell the modelers anything they want. They are responsible for the range of forecasts and really can't be validated with backcasting.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    157. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by khallow · · Score: 1

      What government/NGO spends more to lobby (itself?) than the energy industry lobbyists?

      The UK MET (lobbying "itself" via researchers like the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit or researchers involved with the IPCC). As to NGOs, there's the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace International.

    158. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Stinky+Cheese+Man · · Score: 1

      I don't think the speeding analogy is a fair illustration because there you are dealing with a clear law and two absolute, fixed values: 150mph vs 70mph. But tax valuation and fair market value are two different things. Also, I suspect the lowball figure is Trump's opening offer, subject to negotiation. Which is what you would expect from a sharp businessman.

      Here is a helpful link: http://www.maxrealestateexposu...

      If you think real estate assessed value and real estate fair market value have any correlation to one another then you are wrong! As you read further you are going to discover the difference between assessed and fair market real estate values.

      ... One of the misconceptions that I routinely come across is people who like to draw a definitive correlation between a homes assessed value and it's fair market value.

      Lets set the record straight folks -- there is very little correlation in most circumstances between the two figures.

      ...

    159. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      If you believe that human-created carbon dioxide contributes, to global warming, as Muller does, then you are one of the 97% of scientists who believe the standard doctrine.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    160. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by mean+pun · · Score: 1

      If you believe that human-created carbon dioxide contributes, to global warming, as Muller does, then you are one of the 97% of scientists who believe the standard doctrine.

      Mr. Muller was willing, at the beginning of his research we are discussing, to consider the possibility that human-created carbon dioxide contributes to global warming. Is that a problem for you? If so, why?

      As I understand it, upon examining the evidence, Mr. Muller is now convinced that this possibility is true. Is that a problem for you? If so, why?

    161. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      Mr. Muller was willing, at the beginning of his research we are discussing, to consider the possibility that human-created carbon dioxide contributes to global warming. Is that a problem for you?

      The problem is that you are misrepresenting his statements, probably on purpose. He fully believed that human-created CO2 contributes to AGW.
      All I can say is: that's a mean pun.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    162. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes they do, they're just sad because even when TRYING to create a particular outcome (which is not scientific at all), they produced the outcome that has been reproduced every single time. You must realize you are being scammed, please seek help for your mental condition.

    163. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by mean+pun · · Score: 1

      I repeat from your own post:

      Quote by Richard Muller, from the very article you linked to:

      If you are concerned about global warming (as I am) and think that human-created carbon dioxide may contribute (as I do)

      Note the word may. He thinks that human-created carbon dioxide may contribute. How am I misrepresenting what Mr. Muller is saying?

      And if he already was convinced 'that human-created CO2 contributes to AGW', what was the point of doing his own independent research to verify the work those 97% of scientists? The whole point of doing his own research was that he was sceptical, no?

    164. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hear! Hear! ...though I haven't seen evidence of evolution showing a new species coming forth...just small adaptations...

    165. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by dbIII · · Score: 1

      I'm not far behind you so no, that's no excuse. There has been so much bullshit thrown up over the subject over the years to "jazz up" the story, and like the carrots instead of radar thing it has stuck.

    166. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by mysidia · · Score: 1

      Cool, so who's going to fund my flat earth research?

      Who's funding "round earth research" ?

      The shape of earth is directly observable via photography from space.
      Thus its shape is not so much a theory as a direct observation.

      Or do you propose there is a phenomenon called Global Flattening,
      where over time, the earth is becoming less and less round and more and more flat,
      and this activity may be accelerated by human intervention, such as humans mining precious metals and sucking oil out from the middle, creating a future trend where you predict according to some model that earth's overall surface could tend to cave in like a popped balloon as we continue to suck its middles out?

    167. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Not your fault, but that dumbed down to the max link is fucking insulting BTW.

    168. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      You're right.

      It's not my fault that you're insulted.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    169. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      Know what's more complicated than science?

      Bullshit.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    170. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by dbIII · · Score: 1

      This is just as short a piece that is a bit more accurate:
      http://io9.gizmodo.com/5839933...

    171. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by tbannist · · Score: 1

      I don't think the speeding analogy is a fair illustration because there you are dealing with a clear law and two absolute, fixed values: 150mph vs 70mph. But tax valuation and fair market value are two different things. Also, I suspect the lowball figure is Trump's opening offer, subject to negotiation. Which is what you would expect from a sharp businessman.

      It's also what you would expect from a conman.

      --
      Fanatically anti-fanatical
    172. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      TL;DR

      My post was short and legible.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    173. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by phantomfive · · Score: 1
      Nah, you haven't been reading trying to understand. Here's another quote from him:

      Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate. I would love to believe that the results of Mann et al. are correct, and that the last few years have been the warmest in a millennium.

      It's pretty clear what he believed, and what he wanted to believe.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    174. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Yes but dumbed down and inaccurate.
      I don't understand all the fuss and what you are out to prove. The situation was definitely about politics, personal issues and an abuse of power which all had fuckall to do with religion or science.

    175. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by mean+pun · · Score: 1

      Without further context these sentences look contradictory to me. Can you please provide a reference to the article where he wrote this?

    176. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      Your cause is lost.

      There were politicians at the time and Galileo wasn't a heretic so he could get elected or to piss off the manufacturers of the Ptolemaic model mobiles for sale at the hobby shop and put the geocentric craft out of business.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    177. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      He linked to it in the article you linked to. You can check it.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    178. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by dbIII · · Score: 1

      My cause? I just seem to be getting insulting for bringing up detail.

    179. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only lobbying sectors that donate more to political causes than the energy industry are finance, health and communications. This is what's called a "source" for my information. If you want to keep prattling on, please backup your assertions with some information.

    180. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      You're not being insulted.

      You're being schooled.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    181. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by dbIII · · Score: 1

      How? You have not mentioned a single thing I did not know?

    182. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      You're not being insulted.

      You're being schooled.

      You did not know that.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    183. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Ah - I see being put in my place by a bully.
      Thank you for reminding me of my "education" from more than four decades back. I really do not see why you bother.

    184. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

      I really do not see why you bother.

      Because it's a forum where we bother.

      --
      It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
    185. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Sounds kind of pathetic but fair enough.

    186. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by khallow · · Score: 1

      Lobbying can be done for other reasons and certainly does not influence the electorate. You haven't shown that the lobbying in question is climate related. I'll also note that you or some AC who sounds remarkably like you, slid the goalposts over from a discussion of propaganda to lobbying.

      But when we see donations to propaganda groups with an explicit orientation, either pro or con, then we have something to talk about. Here, as I noted earlier, the fossil fuel industry is vastly overspent by those governments and NGOs.

    187. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The [Koch] brothers have made significant financial contributions to libertarian and conservative think tanks and campaigns. Their network of groups pledging to spend $889 million from 2009–2016 and its infrastructure has been said (by Politico) to rival "that of the Republican National Committee."[5] They actively fund and support organizations that contribute significantly to Republican candidates, and in particular that lobby against efforts to expand government's role in health care and combat global warming.[6] By 2010, they had donated more than $100 million to dozens of free-market and advocacy organizations.[6]

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      Two brothers with huge stakes in the energy industry, openly against the concept of climate change, alone have donated over $100M to advocacy organizations to push their agenda. This is just two people. Where's your $100M? (or any link to any relevant information you're not pulling directly from your ass)

    188. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by khallow · · Score: 1
      The World Wildlife Fund burned through $260 million in 2015. $48 million of that was government funding. The IPCC alone consumes almost $10 million a year, so that's somewhere around $60 million in strictly catastrophic AGW advocacy right there, almost as much just by itself as what the Koch brothers are alleged to have spent on a far larger category.

      And Greenpeace International which is nearly pure propaganda spending has a budget of almost 240 million Euros.

      This is just two people.

      This is just two incredibly wealthy people who happen to be the largest donors in the very areas you mentioned in your link.

    189. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You can't compare the entire operating budget of an agency to the donations made by two people and suggest there's a parity. Let me make this simple: you suggest we "follow the money." I ask you: who has more?

    190. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      I know, the name makes it sound like it is, but it is not.

      You know New Mexico has the word "new" in it, right? No one mistakes that state for New England.

      New York is NOT part of New England.

      Except if we're going down that pedantic road, plenty of Puritans settled in northern New York, as well. As most the state will tell you, New York doesn't begin and end with New York City.

    191. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      We were talking about research, not advocacy.

      Paying for research that backs up your position is advocacy. The problem is the oil companies did just that, except once their researcher looked at the data he agreed that climate change was real. Whoopsie doopsie.

      of all US and Canadian oil and gas producers

      The U.S. and Canada don't have any U.S. or Canadian oil companies, they're all international - otherwise the CIA would have had to overthrow their respective governments.

      That compares to over a trillion dollars the US government is spending on public schools, public universities, and research grants, all of which are dedicated to pushing the party line on climate change on the most impressionable members of society.

      Complete dumbfuckery. The USG has an overwhelming bias towards fossil fuel production. The U.S. military is the world's single largest user of fossil fuels. The Arctic and the eastern seaboard have been opened for drilling. The son of the Vice President of the United States got a seat at Ukrainian energy company after the U.S. overthrew its democracy. Regime change has been attempted as well in another oil producing country (Venezuela) and in Syria (to build a pipeline). Use of force has been promised in the Middle East to keep the flow of oil moving, and fracking has been exported to the world.

      And that's just under the tenure of the "liberal" President Obama.

    192. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      Paying for research that backs up your position is advocacy.

      Correct, and that is something to keep in mind when the US government spends close to $10 billion on research related to climate change.

      Complete dumbfuckery. The USG has an overwhelming bias towards fossil fuel production.

      One part of the US government supports fossil fuel production and use, while another part hypes up fear about climate change, and yet another hands vast amount of money in subsidies to "alternative energy" companies. Those positions are contradictory as energy policy, but the goal of government isn't to have consistent and useful policies, it is to increase its own size and power.

      And that's just under the tenure of the "liberal" President Obama.

      You say that as if there were some contradiction; in fact, modern liberalism and crony capitalism go hand in hand.

    193. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      One part of the US government supports fossil fuel production and use, while another part hypes up fear about climate change, and yet another hands vast amount of money in subsidies to "alternative energy" companies.

      You mean scientists got funding to do research, and after doing said research, they drew some conclusions based on the facts gathered. Same process by which scientists concluded that smoking & asbestos cause cancer, and lead paint causes birth defects.

      So, ooloorie, do you hand your two year old a Camel while dressing her in asbestos pajamas, before putting her to bed in her lead-painted crib? Just to stick it to those librul scientists with an agenda, before you give her a glass of arsenic-laden drinking water in the morning.

      If not, why not? What's the substantive difference between you and Jenny McCarthy?

    194. Re:There is a legitimate dispute by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      You mean scientists got funding to do research, and after doing said research, they drew some conclusions based on the facts gathered.

      No, I mean what I said: one part of the US government supports fossil fuel production and use, while another part hypes up fear about climate change, and yet another hands vast amount of money in subsidies to "alternative energy" companies. They have all been done at the same time by several administrations, including the Obama administration.

      So, ooloorie, do you hand your two year old a Camel while dressing her in asbestos pajamas, before putting her to bed in her lead-painted crib? Just to stick it to those librul scientists with an agenda, before you give her a glass of arsenic-laden drinking water in the morning.

      Being a "librul scientist" myself, no I don't, because I actually know better. You sound like you come from a progressive family, though, so there is a good chance that your parents did that to you, given that asbestos, lead paint, and city water supplies were the latest thing and fully approved by the government. Perhaps that explains some of your deficits.

      If not, why not? What's the substantive difference between you and Jenny McCarthy?

      She's a lot prettier than me. Oh, and I'm a scientist and don't believe vaccines cause autism. I'm also a liberal, however, which means that I respect her right to make her own choices even if I believe she is wrong. Liberalism, you should try it some time!

  3. Seems like this is easily solved by archive.org by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    All they need to do is make a deal with archive.org to take the materials off their hands in a deal which doesn't involve a robots.txt file, as a special collection. This is precisely what the internet archive is for...

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:Seems like this is easily solved by archive.org by arielCo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Also, it's a fine time to put our money where our mouths are, as donations are being matched (presumably out of the same concern):

      Dear Internet Archive Patrons:
      You’ve come to the Internet Archive in search of knowledge, to find Web pages you would have lost. Now we need your help in return. Will you help sustain this non-profit library built on trust? We have a huge mission: to give everyone access to all knowledge, forever. For free. The Internet Archive has only 150 staff but runs the #250 website in the world. Your privacy is very important to us, so we don’t collect your personal information. We don’t accept ads. But we still need to pay for servers, staff and rent. That’s where you can help us. Right now a generous supporter will match your donation 1-for-1. So you can double your impact! If you find our site useful, please give what you can today. Thank you.

      Guess I'm chipping in again...

      http://archive.org/

      --
      This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
    2. Re:Seems like this is easily solved by archive.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or release a torrent. http://academictorrents.com has been a thing for years now.

      I feel safe betting that this won't happen, though. Accurate raw data and climate alarmism just don't play well with each other. Never have and never will.

    3. Re:Seems like this is easily solved by archive.org by ilsaloving · · Score: 2

      Now's a great time to point out that the Internet Archive themselves are so afraid of what Trump is going to do, that they're currently collecting funds for setting up a mirror outside the US.

      May you live in interesting times, indeed.

    4. Re:Seems like this is easily solved by archive.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Now's a great time to point out that the Internet Archive themselves are so afraid of what Trump is going to do, that they're currently collecting funds for setting up a mirror outside the US.

      May you live in interesting times, indeed.

      And what is it that they are afraid Trump is going to do to them?
      Well, they can't tell you, but they really need you money to stop it!

      Sucker.

    5. Re:Seems like this is easily solved by archive.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Interesting. Somebody mod parent up informative, agree with the commentary or not. Any pointers on which datasets are good to grab/back up besides looking at low numbers of seeders? I could probably seed about 1 TB out of the 16+ TB they have available.

  4. Because by burtosis · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    What you don't know can't hurt you. Obviously we need to defund NASA and move it to NOAA but in a crazy coincidence that money will get lost and go to pet projects. Maybe Trump will grab someone else by the pussy at the same time so the media talks about that instead of real issues.

  5. BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    FN trollbait. A scientist, and cant figure out to preserve research. Buy a FN usb drive.

    1. Re:BS by queazocotal · · Score: 1

      And when your department gets sacked, and the data storage defunded, what good does that USB drive (neglecting the fact that it may be petabytes) do in your garage?

    2. Re:BS by l0n3s0m3phr34k · · Score: 1

      That's what I am thinking too...often, "archiving" data means backing it up and putting the physical media some place that is secure and inaccessible in case of some disaster recovery scenario or to remove old, unused data from the more-often accessed systems to lighten the load on the infrastructure. They shouldn't be "archiving" it, they should be "replicating it" to various cross-border systems that are outside the control of the centralized US government.

    3. Re: BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You hold on to it until a less batshit administration comes back and rebuilds the science departments.

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

      Nice copypaste, comrade.

    5. Re:BS by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1, Informative

      I wonder how much better productivity would be if people were healthier due to lower pollution.

      Anyway, short term profits don't trump averting a long term disaster.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    6. Re:BS by coastwalker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually China looks a lot more effective than the US at combating climate change long term. In the US it all depends on whether big oil has bought the government of the day. China makes all the solar pv cells for the world and has an actual plan.

      --
      Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
    7. Re:BS by khallow · · Score: 1

      China makes all the solar pv cells for the world and has an actual plan.

      Their plan is status quo till 2030 and maybe China will do something about global warming then, maybe not. Funny how similar that is to the US plan.

    8. Re:BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "You must similarly believe that the US is the only ones that can, and need to, somehow solve the problem"
      Come on man and get with the program. The US is supposed to cure all the worlds problems while everyone else stands on the sideline holding their coats and complaining. There are some exceptions with other countries offering token support based on how much money the US is willing to throw their way. When the problems don't get fixed the countries standing on the sidelines can blame the US. Climate change is just another one of the many problems in the world that get laid at the US's feet.

      And these scientists who are afraid of Trump deleting their data are morons. If these scientists are this stupid, and politically biased, we best get some others to review the data these morons are worried about losing. And for the record climate change data is compelling evidence of climate change. The problem is what can be done to help solve the problem. And what causes global warming? Too many fucking people on the planet. That is the root of the problem and it is only going to get worse. Population growth will always outpace any other action trying to control climate change. As natural resources become more scarce the wars will begin. After the war reduces the world population to a few million the climate can fix itself over a few hundred years.

      When it comes to "international" cooperation the US is left holding the check. The US funds almost 25% of the UN and 80% of the ISS. The US subsidizes the military protection for countries in Europe while funding 70% of NATO. And what has the US received in return? A bunch of whiny morons incapable of addressing and understanding multi faceted situations. Blaming the US for their troubles is much more simple and protest signs are not big enough to include all those responsible for whatever the protest of the day is.

      Having problems with head chopping psychopaths rampaging across the ME? First you need to blame everything on US interference. Then once the blame is firmly affixed the whining masses can move on to the next outrage of the day. These ass hats NEVER offer up any realistic ideas to resolve the problems they just like placing blame and venting their outrage. These ass hats can take a large share of the credit for the 750,00 deaths and millions of refugees in Syria. The entire world has did nothing but supply just enough support to make sure the war would drag on. And all this leading up to the carpet bombing of a city filled with civilians. With hospitals and schools specifically targeted. The US could have destroyed the Syrian air force early on in the conflict but withheld it's hand due to politics. Politics - the refuge for those with complaints but no solutions. The home for people who put winning an argument ahead of addressing the content of the argument. The home for those latch on to an idea and fiercely oppose looking at any information that may conflict with the their close minded world view.

    9. Re:BS by lgw · · Score: 2, Insightful

      In the US:

      Is CO2 "pollution" to you? If so, CO2 has nothing to do with health, so "not any better". If not, US has massively reduced air pollution since I was young - to the point that the only places that even have a problem are a handful of cities where for some reason there's very poor circulation between the air above the city and the atmosphere in general. So "almost no difference, but maybe a little".

      I China or India: it's a big deal. But it's no worse than the US when we were going through the industrial revolution, so it's not like we have any moral high ground here. They'll eventually get on top of the problem, just like we did.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    10. Re:BS by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

      Well, climate change has health consequences, and is caused by CO2. Sunburn and skin cancer, for example. Drowning. Blunt force trauma from falling debris.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    11. Re:BS by lgw · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Poe's law in full effect now, but given your posting history I'm guessing you're not joking.

      I'm curious how you believe that more CO2 in the atmosphere will increase UV emissions? If the atmosphere heats up we'll get more water vapor and thus increase the UV albedo of the atmosphere, yes?

      Drowning? Are water levels increasing faster than people can walk part of your religion? Falling debris? I'm sure you'll explain how climate change causes earthquakes - I know I've seen that claim in the media a couple of times now.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    12. Re: BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Typical lard-assed American is unhealthy because of French fries, not air pollution, you ignoramus.

    13. Re:BS by stigmerger · · Score: 2

      Your analogy is wrong. You believe that somehow "Global" warming only impacts America? You must similarly believe that the US is the only ones that can, and need to, somehow solve the problem. I have no idea how you ignore China, India, Pakistan, and Russia, and quite frankly the majority of what we call "Developing Nations" (most of the planet)

      So, your attitude is that the US should just let someone else solve the problem, and then buy the next generation of reactors, solar panels, etc, from them? Maybe we should do that with other industries, as well? After all, they take a lot of effort. Let someone else design new cell phones and computer chips. Let someone else develop new materials for insulation, energy distribution, and industrial processes. Let someone else conduct research on the terrestrial ecosystem.

      ... who have been increasing pollutants and industrialization over the same time the West has done the opposite.

      The West has not reduced pollution, we have simply reduced the rate at which we are adding pollution.

    14. Re:BS by s.petry · · Score: 1

      Your plan to reduce population is what exactly? Your plan had best contain "me first" in the doctrine or I'll consider you a quack. Ted Turner for example claimed that well over 9/10ths of the population needs to be killed off, yet he has 5 kids. Double what sustaining population requires. I don't take him seriously because he's not offering up any of his children or himself to the sacrifice, he only want's people of less economic status than himself dead.

      So lets hear your great plan.

      Oh, and when your plan to avert long term disaster omits the majority of the humans on Earth, your plan is doomed to fail. How about your plan to "fix" global warming? I'm anxious to hear that one too.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    15. Re:BS by s.petry · · Score: 1

      False dichotomy. The US is only "part" of the problem and can only be "part" of the solution. Since there is no such thing as a One World Government it can not be regulation by One Government to fix issues.

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    16. Re:BS by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Informative

      China? What a great example. It's a country that has curbed the rise in CO2 emissions far more than the USA over the past 2 years. And I mean who do they think they are with being number 20 in the list of countries in emissions per capita. The USA is far better at ... well fuck we are number 7... Actually per capita we emit 3 times as much as China and 9 times as much as India.

      Yeah those bloody developing nations ruining the world. Damn them right?

      Idiot.

    17. Re:BS by bbelt16ag · · Score: 1

      think of the four horsemen and you would about cover what is coming..

      --
      NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER GIVE UP! "No limitations, no boundaries, there is no reason for them."
    18. Re:BS by BlackPignouf · · Score: 4, Informative

      +1. The US is responsible for almost 30% of all the historical emissions :
      https://www.theguardian.com/en...

    19. Re:BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      China? What a great example. It's a country that has curbed the rise in CO2 emissions far more than the USA over the past 2 years.

      http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/world/asia/china-climate-change-peak-carbon-emissions.html?_r=0

      http://www.forbes.com/sites/rrapier/2016/06/19/the-u-s-leads-all-countries-in-lowering-carbon-dioxide-emissions/#2ada863e307c

      "But the second positive note in the numbers is that the U.S. continues to lead the world in reducing carbon dioxide emissions. In 2015, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions fell by 145 million tons, by far the largest decline of any country in the world. In comparison, Russia was in 2nd place with a decline of 64 million tons from 2014. On the other end of the spectrum was India, which led the world with a 112 million ton increase in carbon dioxide emissions from 2014. China, which has now spent a decade as the world's leading emitter of carbon dioxide, saw a 12 million decline in emissions from 2014, its first decline in nearly 20 years. Cumulatively, growth in India and China has resulted in explosive growth in carbon dioxide emissions for the Asia Pacific region, which are quickly approaching double the total emissions of the U.S. and the European Union"

    20. Re:BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The US just needs half a billion people living in mud huts to bring our per capita emissions down.

    21. Re:BS by MightyMartian · · Score: 2

      Water vapor amplifies warming

      https://www.google.ca/amp/phys...

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    22. Re:BS by dbIII · · Score: 1

      No. Their plan currently appears to be to build something from every available electricity generation method and to see how it goes. Nukes, wind, everything.

    23. Re:BS by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Since there is no such thing as a One World Government

      I see the new medication works!
      Now that you are getting more lucid please consider that the USA still pollutes more per person than any other nation on the planet, thus some effort to reduce that WILL have an impact on the global situation.

    24. Re:BS by lgw · · Score: 1

      That's was not the question at hand.

      Increased water vapor increases the Earth's albedo - in fact, it's the dominant factor in the Earth's albedo (with reflection from ice and simple refraction also playing a part). It still has a net warming effect, because it traps IR more than it reflects UV.

      Did you follow that? Do you see why it's comical to predict more UV as a consequence of global warming?

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    25. Re:BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > I wonder how much better productivity would be if people were healthier due to lower pollution.

      I wonder how much healthier people would be, if they got a proportionate share of the profits from their productivity!

    26. Re: BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Living in an area of high pollution, I call BS on your post. We finally got the EPA to act on a lot of these dirty polluting companies and we had to show the problems they were causing. Trump is going to make it even worse. So go stick an iron up your ass. Just because you live in your privilege bubble doesn't mean we all do.

    27. Re:BS by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      I guess you don't think those floods and extreme weather have anything to do with climate change. The science disagrees with you.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    28. Re:BS by r0kk3rz · · Score: 1

      Per capita emissions doesn't actually matter though, only total emissions matters.

      Sure splitting things up in relative terms makes it easy to compare different nations, but at the end of the day it's the same planet and the emissions affect it with the same strength whether it's been generated for 10 people or 1000.

    29. Re:BS by dave420 · · Score: 2

      China is putting a lot of effort into reducing its emissions. As is the EU. You seem woefully confused about this, to the point you are arguing against your own best interests. How terribly sad.

    30. Re: BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's not the question at hand either.

      It's more about trump's libido.

    31. Re:BS by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Per capita emissions doesn't actually matter though, only total emissions matters.

      Yeah, if you're a raging asshole who thinks they are better and therefore are allowed to emit more than some other people who you think should be sanctioned because you yourself fucked up the world.

      but at the end of the day it's the same planet and the emissions

      Exactly so drop the me me me attitude and realise that YOU are far worse then THEM.

    32. Re:BS by r0kk3rz · · Score: 1

      Yeah, if you're a raging asshole who thinks they are better and therefore are allowed to emit more than some other people who you think should be sanctioned because you yourself fucked up the world.

      Or you realise that not all countries are equal, and if your country emits more CO2 than other countries then its up to you to fix it. I'm Australian, and as far as per capita emissions go we're about as bad as the USA, but because there's so few of us our total emissions make up less than 1% of total global emissions.

      If somehow we pull a heroic effort to get rid of coal power tomorrow, the world would still be in trouble. Now you can call me a raging asshole if you like, but I'm applying what political pressure I can in my part of the world, and I recognise that in this situation the lions share of the responsibility is currently on China.

      With great population comes great responsibility, or something like that.

    33. Re: BS by kenh · · Score: 1

      China is putting a lot of effort into reducing its emissions.

      Oh really? Have they stopped (or even slowed down) their construction of new coal-fired generators?

      --
      Ken
    34. Re:BS by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      The (CO2/Water vapor) positive feedback coefficient is pulled from a dark place and can be used to make climate models tell you anything you want them to.

      The (CO2/Cloud cover/albedo change) negative feedback coefficient is exactly the same.

      Some early climate 'scientists' were so enthusiastic they proposed a positive feedback coefficient so high the first bug's CO2 exhale would have led to Venus on Earth. They defended these models for years, until the laughter made them pretend they had never proposed them in the first place.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    35. Re:BS by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      That isn't the 'Status Quo'? Where?

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    36. Re:BS by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      Just factually incorrect.

      It really depends oh how you do the accounting. If China gets to export its emissions along with the (manufactured goods/raw materials/ag products), then so does America.

      In any case, there are no statistics to back your claim. IIRC Kuwait has the worst raw #s. Europe has the benefit of having very little chemical industry left. Like I say, it depends on how you crunch the #s.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    37. Re: BS by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      They hired a publicist.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    38. Re:BS by thegarbz · · Score: 1

      Or you realise that not all countries are equal,

      You're just really pushing the arsehole case aren't you. Damn China for having a larger population. USA! USA! USA!

      I'm done. I didn't make it past that comma in your first sentence, but I'm sure the rest of your post was equally as bullshit supremacist.

    39. Re:BS by Reziac · · Score: 1

      Really? Chemical pollutants overlay, positioned so you can see China vs North America:

      https://earth.nullschool.net/#...

      or how about the whole rest of the world:

      https://earth.nullschool.net/#...

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    40. Re:BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution-idUSKBN1480XM

    41. Re:BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm sure you'll explain how climate change causes earthquakes - I know I've seen that claim in the media a couple of times now.

      I fail to see how that is far-fetched, given that anyone versed in new learning knows that sheep's bladders may be employed to prevent them.

    42. Re:BS by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >I'm curious how you believe that more CO2 in the atmosphere will increase UV emissions? If the atmosphere heats up we'll get more water vapor and thus >increase the UV albedo of the atmosphere, yes?

      No. From a few more clouds, maybe a little but not enough. As winter snow and polar ice disappear, the albedo decreases and heat absorption increases.

      >Drowning? Are water levels increasing faster than people can walk part of your religion?

      Have you tried moving 100 million people from low lying areas in places like south Asia? Not as simple as walking away.
      Walking away means having somewhere to move to and that is expensive.

      But, its not the people moving that's the main problem. The planet is warming up faster than trees, crops, insects, animals can migrate to areas with suitable climates. That means agriculture will need to shift, and again that is expensive - ask the farmers in California about how easy that is.

    43. Re:BS by dbIII · · Score: 1

      Good point about Kuwait etc.
      However, does that change the situation where an improvement in the USA would be an improvement in a very large percentage of the total? I do not think it does and I think we are already seeing improvements as US cities move to better lighting and other forms of energy consumption reduction.

  6. Climate change evidence by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have observed climate change. It is obviously caused by deforestation, paving wide swaths of land, and depleting the water table resulting in drought. Not one of these factors is addressed by climate change zealots and what they do address happens over centuries not the decades I have observed personally.

    Save a website that is already saved on the wayback machine if you want, but can we at least get a life based on observable short term trends?

    JJ

  7. Backups? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Shouldn't as part of standard policy already be backups somewhere? You all are worried about Trump, when something as simple as a hardware failure could have done the same.

    1. Re:Backups? by queazocotal · · Score: 1

      It does.
      The backups are however not free, and stored in government property.

      If the funding for those goes away, then at some point, it gets deleted.

  8. Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit Will Be Happy by K.+S.+Van+Horn · · Score: 1, Interesting

    "Some scientists and academics are embarking on a frenzied mission to archive reams of scientific data on climate change"

    Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit will be happy; in the past he's had endless struggles trying to get data from climate scientists.

    1. Re:Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit Will Be Happy by Xyrus · · Score: 0

      Apparently Steve McIntyre doesn't know how to use a search engine.

      --
      ~X~
    2. Re:Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit Will Be Happy by colin_faber · · Score: 1

      The issue has been, and countenues to be that the source data has been adjusted, abridged, or modified from its original form. There may be good reasons for this, however doing so has thus far resulted in poor performance of the climate prediction models and overall distrust of the conclusions reached by awg supporters.

    3. Re:Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit Will Be Happy by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

      He was given plenty of data, he just didn't like what it was saying so kept trying to get some more to his liking.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re:Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit Will Be Happy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Distrusting basic tenets climate science because of whatever defects of climate models is like distrusting the germ theory of disease because your epidemiological model wasn't predictive enough.

    5. Re:Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit Will Be Happy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No the raw data has always been available it just that McIntyre found that even after he "adjusted" the data he got the same results. Kinda like Tony Watts who said he would accept the results of the Berkeley Earth project results until Berkeley said things were worse than what other groups were reporting. Suddenly Berkeley Earth was garbage

    6. Re:Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit Will Be Happy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For those in the warming camp, if you have the balls, listen to a real honest to goodness climate scientist tear apart the corrupt science community that prostitutes itself for government handouts to the tune of $1.5 trillion in research grants. But you have to be willing to hear and receive the truth. Cowards need not apply:

      Delingpole

    7. Re:Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit Will Be Happy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it's not raw data + algorithms used to scrub it, that is like providing obfuscated source code to comply with the GPL.

      And when it comes to hand-massaged data, well, there's another term for that, too: "made up".

      It's *likely* that the scrubbing was all done above-board⦠but scientists are supposed to be their own harshest skeptics, and make a concerted effort to provide their critics with the best data possible with which to debunk their assertions.

      Otherwise, it's not science. It's just being clever.

    8. Re:Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit Will Be Happy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Great, more podcast deliberate misinformation bullshit is just what the world needs. Please take a look at this graph from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, follow the yellow line (=all of environmental science spendings) and tell me again where those mystical $1.5 trillion in research grants came from. They are all just in your delusional head. The Iraq war is supposed to have cost around $2.4 trillion in total by now, but that's only possible because the US spends way more on its military than on science in total and we're looking at the cumulative spendings.

    9. Re:Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit Will Be Happy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hear! Hear!

  9. All climate research data and modelling should be. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    ..public information if it is being used to justify legislation.

    we saw that data was being falsified in advance of a vote to establish an international agreement on carbon taxes during the climategate scandal, by interests positioned to profit from the creation of a carbon tax credits trading exchange (who funded the falsification).

    I don't think this is a Trump issue, but a general issue, and while there's so much FUD going about, at least it's bringing attention to the problems inherent in the climate change issue.

  10. There is no climate change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It just snowed in the Midwest. Global warming isn't happening. We need to continue reducing our spending on education to give tax cuts to millionaires. Screw spending money on roads and bridges. I've got an airplane and a yacht!!!

  11. Eat your hearts out, Nazis! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The Nazis destroyed "entartete Kunst", "Degenerate Art" not reflecting what they considered German virtues. The Trumps will destroy "entartete Wissenschaft", "Degenerate Science" not reflecting what they consider American interests.

    "This should never have existed" is boorish for art. For scientific knowledge, however, it is downright criminal, not just in the way the sentiment is pursued but even in its principal notion.

    1. Re:Eat your hearts out, Nazis! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Perhaps somebody should make a call to Berlin and ask if they would archive and redistribute some measurement and simulation data. Particularly, if they suspect that the American Taliban is about to invade the Office. Irony times two!

    2. Re: Eat your hearts out, Nazis! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Trump defunding NASA climate research is probably also fiction, right?

  12. You sow the wind ... by quietwalker · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Motivations aside, remember when the climate skeptics said, "Make the raw data public so we can analyze it!" and actual government agencies, supposedly working for the public were like, "nooooooooooo. You wouldn't understand it the right way, so we can't do that! We only show it to certain people that we've pre-vetted to ensure that they think like us. We'll release these summarized graphs that prove our point!"

    Yeah, ignore the fact that the whole of science actually works when people share their ideas and findings, and in this case, it's not like they were protecting monetized corporate secrets or anything. There was really nothing stopping them from widely distributing this data, and not in fits and bursts and rollups rather than raw.

    Well, good going, now you've screwed. I hope you choke on the fruits of your labor, it's what you deserve from so highly politicizing your science.

    1. Re:You sow the wind ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Technically have you been able to access raw data for *anything*? Sure, open data policy is a Good Thing. But why the focus on climate research? Wouldn't you be also interested in government statistics? Raw data about goverment programs, UNO missions, and things like that?

      Also, if you don't have any training as a statistician, how do you ensure you extract valid data from raw data? It's very easy to mistake correlation and causation, for example.

      I'm all out for giving all available data to the public. But it's like FOSS. Most people don't read source code. And they can be manipulated by people who do... Specially if those people have a political/economic agenda, such as Big Oil and Nukular.

    2. Re: You sow the wind ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Idiots like you really wouldn't understand it, so the scientists are right again.

      The thing you really don't understand is nature and ohysics don't give a damn what you think of climate scientists. You may have ignorant masses and big money on your side, but that doesn't actually alter the facts no matter how badly you want to attack the messengers and peddle your false corporate serving beliefs.

    3. Re:You sow the wind ... by hyades1 · · Score: 0, Troll

      I'm past being polite to goofs like you. First of all, you and your ilk consistently used how much raw data is involved to cripple climate scientists with repeated demands for terabytes of it, over and over again.

      Second, assholes like you would then pounce on outlier results from a few rogue data collectors as "proof" there's some kind of global scientific conspiracy going on, even when its perfectly obvious there was some kind of mechanical failure. And then your bullshit conspiracy garbage gets resurrected over and over again, regardless of how often it's shot down. Which is your aim...divert the time and energy of decent people into repeatedly debunking your lies.

      So yes, real scientists are afraid to just throw raw data out there into the public domain.

      Now fuck off. There are honest people here. You don't belong.

      --
      I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
    4. Re:You sow the wind ... by queazocotal · · Score: 1

      The problem is (as has happened in Canada) - it becomes a lot harder later to prove thing the government doesn't want proved, if the government can legitimately say 'there is no data to prove that' - when it's been thrown out.
      The problem isn't access to the raw data only - it's getting rid of that raw data.

    5. Re:You sow the wind ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      NASA's raw data on global temperature and the GISTEMP code they use to analyze it are all openly available online. NOAA's climate data is openly available and there are good R packages to make it easy to download. NCDC's climate data archives for the US and for the whole world are freely available online. NASA's satellite climate data is all available on line. Paleoclimate data from ice cores is all on line. NOAA measurements of atmospheric CO2 and other greenhouse gases is all on line. All the code for NCAR's community climate model and NASA's GISS Model E are available on line. Other integrated assessment models, such as GCAM are open-source.

      I have been teaching climate change for years, and I have found it very easy to write scripts in R and Python to automatically download the raw climate data from various public government repositories (NASA, NOAA, NCDC, ORNL, etc.), and process it to produce up-to-date figures for my lectures. It's really easy to do.

      So what data do you think the government is not making openly available to the public?

    6. Re:You sow the wind ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm past being polite to goofs like you. First of all, you and your ilk consistently used how much raw data is involved to cripple climate scientists with repeated demands for terabytes of it, over and over again.

      Second, assholes like you would then pounce on outlier results from a few rogue data collectors as "proof" there's some kind of global scientific conspiracy going on, even when its perfectly obvious there was some kind of mechanical failure. And then your bullshit conspiracy garbage gets resurrected over and over again, regardless of how often it's shot down. Which is your aim...divert the time and energy of decent people into repeatedly debunking your lies.

      So yes, real scientists are afraid to just throw raw data out there into the public domain.

      Now fuck off. There are honest people here. You don't belong.

      You discredit yourself. If you have something to say about climate change, say it. If you have something to say about the study of climate change, say it. If you are going just spew hate, don't say it. It's as disgusting as climate change denial itself.

      Global warming is a complex process resulting in increased total energy of the biosphere. What we have been told is a narrow story about carbon, methane, air temperature and hand wavy claims about sea levels. We simply don't know what we haven't been told. We can't guess where the gaps might be. It is inexcusable we weren't given the data.

      There is a political component to this whole fiasco and you're not helping. If you care in the slightest about this issue, then you're going to have to stop being so intolerant.

    7. Re:You sow the wind ... by hyades1 · · Score: 1

      I've got lots to say about Climate Change. However, I'm past wasting my time saying it to people who kept claiming there was "no scientific evidence" smoking causes cancer and their willing dupes. There is literally no point in wasting my time on them.

      --
      I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
    8. Re:You sow the wind ... by admin7087 · · Score: 1

      remember when the climate skeptics said, "Make the raw data public so we can analyze it!" and actual government agencies, supposedly working for the public were like, "nooooooooooo. You wouldn't understand it the right way, so we can't do that! We only show it to certain people that we've pre-vetted to ensure that they think like us. We'll release these summarized graphs that prove our point!"

      This time never really existed. Some scientists might have said that laymen cannot understand the raw data, because most of them can't, but the data is and has been publicly available on many places for a long time.

    9. Re:You sow the wind ... by admin7087 · · Score: 1

      No, he's right. It is wrong to try to discuss climate change with people who have a political agenda and think, for whatever bizarre illogical reasons, that the question whether there is man-made global warming or not is a political matter, something that is related in any way to political opinion. Such people are helpless cases. Don't discuss with them, instead show them their disrespect and ridicule them. That has a better overall effect on them and they do not want to discuss science anyway. When there is overwhelming consensus in the scientific community, there is nothing to discuss for laymen anyway, and experts can take it to the conferences and publications.

      I'm as sick as the original poster of these invented non-topics, contrary to what people say not everything is worth discussing and no amount of discussion has ever settled a scientific question either. BTW, just to make this clear, such people exist on the left and right political spectrum, the climate change non-issue is just an example of a topic that has been instrumentalized by the political 'right wing', but anyone who has ever had the pleasure to 'discuss' social constructivism and the claim that all science is just political and man-made with some misguided 'lefty' knows that the problem has no partisan borders.

      Mark Twain described the problem with those people very eloquently: "Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience."

    10. Re:You sow the wind ... by colin_faber · · Score: 1

      Global warming is a complex process resulting in increased total energy of the biosphere. What we have been told is a narrow story about carbon, methane, air temperature and hand wavy claims about sea levels. We simply don't know what we haven't been told. We can't guess where the gaps might be. It is inexcusable we weren't given the data.

      Excellent point.

    11. Re:You sow the wind ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bovine excrement Raw and processed climate data has been available from the get go. The source code for the processing routine and the source for climate models is available for download at no cost. Given the computer power in todays desktops and servers anyone can processes the data themselves and run a climate model at home.The only people shoveling the :excrement that the raw data isn't public are clowns that spout stuff like ""Make the raw data public so we can analyze it!" and actual government agencies, supposedly working for the public were like, "nooooooooooo. You wouldn't understand it the right way, so we can't do that! We only show it to certain people that we've pre-vetted to ensure that they think like us. We'll release these summarized graphs that prove our point!"

    12. Re:You sow the wind ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mark Twain described the problem with those people very eloquently: "Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience."

      Teddy Roosevelt said that, dumbass.

    13. Re:You sow the wind ... by hyades1 · · Score: 1

      You nailed it. These days, most of the raw stupidity is on the right, but by no means all of it. And that wasn't always the case, either.

      The difference is that this time, there's a lot of fossil fuel dollars supporting the denier side. It's ironic, since they're always claiming scientists are getting all kinds of grant money. Apparently it doesn't count that any climate scientist who abandoned their ethics could be rich beyond their wildest dreams if they backed the denier agenda.

      --
      I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
    14. Re:You sow the wind ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You do know that the raw data is available, right? It's not some elusive thing. I have terabytes of it on my computer dating back to 2011.

    15. Re:You sow the wind ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is like claiming that every biologist who ever got a grant has an obligation to patiently argue with any creationist
      or any geographer doing the same with a flat-earther

      Sorry it does not work like that.

  13. Fake News by tomhath · · Score: 1, Insightful

    The chief concern: publicly available climate change data and research found on government websites would be wiped clean or made otherwise inaccessible to the public.

    There is no reason to believe this will happen. It's FUD, fake news, whatever you prefer to call it.

    1. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep. Chief concern was caused by the Trump transition team demanding a list of client change scientists so that they'd know who to fire. Reported by all the major media.

      Problem?

      Not true. Never happened.

      This is all hysteria over nothing. Besides, given the record cold temperatures we're experiencing right now, I think America might like some of this supposed "global warming" that's happening.

    2. Re:Fake News by tomhath · · Score: 0

      demanding a list of client change scientists so that they'd know who to fire

      More fake news. They couldn't "fire" federal employees even if they wanted to.

    3. Re:Fake News by cirby · · Score: 1, Interesting

      If those scientists were doing real science, they'd be proud to have their names associated with their actions. Instead, they're ashamed and trying desperately to hide. That should tell you something.

      Instead, they're going with "You don't need to know what we've been doing for the last several years, because, um, censorship? Something? Only Nazis would want scientific accountability!"

      I've been to a UN Climate Conference. No science, just politics and a vacation on government money. When the weather turned unseasonably cool in Cancun one year, all of the important people left early because they couldn't sit on the beach and party.

    4. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is no reason to believe this will happen. It's FUD, fake news, whatever you prefer to call it.

      Except you know, a history of Republican intransigence on issues where they blind their eyes, cover their ears, turn up their noses, and gag other people's mouths.

      That's what the American right has earned. A reputation for censorship, deception, and dishonesty.

      How does it feel, to know that you aren't respected, that you aren't esteemed, that ultimately, you have become the wretched?

      That every fear, every doubt, every claim of malfeasance has now become a real problem? That's what you get for embracing a known and established demagogue.

    5. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes. I know. Read the entire comment. :)

    6. Re:Fake News by tomhath · · Score: 1

      Sheesh, you probably want me to read the article too, don't you? :$

    7. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're saying Trump didn't ask for a list of employees who were involved in a specific Obama carbon credit programme the incoming "administration" hates? You think that is fake? It was pretty mainstream news.

      Now as to what Trump could want with a list of the actual names of his future employees who endorsed and furthered something he dislikes, instead of, you know, just the name of THE ENTIRE DEPARTMENT they worked for whose official stated policy it was... can you furnish any particular reason why he'd need it except to use it to prevent their advancement or try to fire them?

      Can you?

    8. Re:Fake News by Xyrus · · Score: 2

      You mean like how it didn't happen in Australia or Canada?

      When the incoming administrations starts issuing demands for the equivalent of a Jew List for climate and environmental scientists, are planning to gut earth science funding, appointing heads who have vendettas against all things climate and environment, etc. you have to be pretty fucking stupid not to see what the end goal is.

      We've seen this shit before. We know exactly where it's going. That's why scientists are taking steps to make sure the data is saved and will still be available.

      --
      ~X~
    9. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mainstream News == Fake News

      Thus saying, "It was pretty mainstream news." doesn't really mean it happened.

    10. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In Canada, Harper had environmental data sent to the landfill.

    11. Re: Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fact: A member of the Trump team sent a questionnaire to the energy department including requests to identify staff working on climate change. Fact: the energy department refused to identify staff as such a request was an abuse of political power. Fact: after this was publicised the Trump transitional team claimed the staff member that sent the questionnaire was not acting to protocol and had been "properly counselled". Fact: the climate team are scrambling to save data because they *fear* it will be destroyed under the Trump regime. So what but is fake again? Oh, right, probably the Trumptard claiming that there was once " overwhelming scientific consensus that the world was flat" therefore we cant trust any science and magnets how do they work. Anyone with a knowledge of the history of science knows that this is pure crap. The Trump team has 100% shown itself to be anti-intellectual and pushes political "truths" over rational ones. In the circumstances, if I were a scientist I'd be exiting the US sharpish before the kakocracy begins.

    12. Re:Fake News by Kohath · · Score: 2

      It's certainly not news. News is when something happens and you tell people, not when some excitable, self-involved people imagine something might happen and tell a story about what it might be like.

    13. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So basically nothing ever really happened, it's all just a story, man! Made up by the man!

      Who's the man? Oh, read these underground publications, they will tell you who the man is!

      But if everyone read those publications, wouldn't it be mainstream?

      No, man. If everyone reads it, you read something else for the truth!

      Trust no one except your biases? If it was reported by more than one competing news entity it's very possibly fake?

      You need help.

    14. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > You mean like how it didn't happen in Australia or Canada?

      To backstop that statement, here is some reporting on how it happened in Canada:

      The Harper Government Has Trashed and Destroyed Environmental Books and Documents

    15. Re:Fake News by tomhath · · Score: 1

      You're saying Trump didn't ask for a list...

      Please quote me where I said that.

    16. Re:Fake News by PopeRatzo · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yep. Chief concern was caused by the Trump transition team demanding a list of client change scientists so that they'd know who to fire. Reported by all the major media.

      Problem?

      Not true. Never happened.

      Yes, it happened. The questionnaire is public record. After the outcry, the Trump transition team claimed it was "not authorized", which basically means they got caught and then pretended it didn't happen.

      Claims of "fake news!!" are going to be harder for the Trump administration to make now that everything, including the tweets of Drumplethinskins himself are going to be public record by law.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    17. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Instead, they're ashamed and trying desperately to hide.

      So were the friends of McCarthy, that slayer of un-american activities. We need a modern Red Scare to purge AGW collaborators. They should be forced to wear a sun symbol, something like a yellow star.

    18. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Probably a UN conference on climate change was about politics because it's a political body trying to find political solutions to the problem? You should go to an AGU meeting if you want it to be more technical.

    19. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It "never happened" because the memo was about MONEY. Who spent what, who authorized it, who approved the conferences and trips, etc.

      "What line item is paying for this", aka "What's your charge code" is the most basic concept in the Federal Government - and when you panic because someone is asking that question, you're doing something wrong. Criminally wrong.

    20. Re:Fake News by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      It "never happened" because the memo was about MONEY. Who spent what, who authorized it, who approved the conferences and trips, etc.

      Then why did the Trump transition team go all over the news in order to disavow the questionnaire and pretend that it was "unauthorized"?

      Funny that of all the things that the Department of Energy spends money on, the one thing they want to know about is who spent money going to climate conferences. This from a guy who's charging the Secret Service millions just because his wife doesn't want to be anywhere near him.

      http://www.redstate.com/jaycar...

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    21. Re: Fake News by tomhath · · Score: 1

      So what but is fake again?

      The insinuation that research will be destroyed or "could only be retrieved with a taxing Freedom of Information Act request".

      By the way, here's another fact you might have overlooked: Trump and Al Gore had a long conversation, which Gore called "a lengthy and very productive session with the president-elect. It was a sincere search for areas of common ground".

    22. Re:Fake News by gurps_npc · · Score: 1

      The UN is a political organization, not a science one. Yes they discuss the science, but the focus is on politics. Mainly because science is not done in discussions, but politics is. The fact that you don't know that demonstrates your own stupidity, not their fraud.

      Also, even in scientific events, they are not doing science, they are publicly discussing the science they already did. Think the most boring series of TED talks you ever heard, with a ton of data and big words that you don't understand unless you have the RIGHT PhD.

      And yes, the scientist hang out on the beach and/or get drunk when they are not listening, because they are almost as bored by it as you are. It's work, not fun, so after work they go have some fun.

      --
      excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
    23. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I know you're splitting hairs just for the hell of it, but you did say that "demanding a list of client [sic] change scientists so that they'd know who to fire" was "fake news".

      So I don't really need to quote you, because you didn't disambiguate, now did you?

      They did demand a list of climate change scientists who worked on a particular Obama plan. Despite the fact that it was the policy of the entire department, obviously. It's pretty obvious this list isn't going to be used to promote them. It's going to be used either to fire, reassign, constructively dismiss or hold them back.

      Get a grip of yourself.

    24. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Basically, the whole 'MSM' thing is one of those things that both left and right wing nutters latch onto. They claim they know 'the truth' that 'the establishment' is hiding. In fact they really want to get you to a stage of (initially) believing nothing you read, so you'll then be susceptible to their 'truth'.

    25. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just because you're too dumb to understand the science doesn't mean everyone else is. I've been to a UN conference on climate too, and it was filled with some of the most brilliant minds I've ever met. No politics, just cold hard reproducible science.

    26. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your comment about self-involved people doesn't really add to the discussion. Do you know the researchers who are doing the research? How do you know they are self-involved? Are you a scientist? If so what is your field? Have you published in a reviewed journal? If so what was it? Do you know the people who are doing the research?

    27. Re:Fake News by Meski · · Score: 1

      First they came for the ... :)

  14. Re:All climate research data and modelling should by guruevi · · Score: 1

    I do think there is a legitimate problem with our climate and that us humans are more than capable of influencing it for good or for worse even if it was an entirely natural cycle, if nothing else we should be able to ensure our survival.

    The problem I see is indeed the politicized parts of it. We are donating large swaths of money in the form of carbon credits to the very nations that should be improving their situation, but instead we export our "dirty air" and allow them to make it worse even though Chinese smog particles are now affecting coastal cities in the US. In the end it's just a taxation to offset debts and improve their economy and when it comes time for "them" to pay up they'll just back out of whatever agreement they signed, just like Trump wants to do.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  15. I actually don't remember that by rsilvergun · · Score: 5, Informative

    there's tons of raw data out there. I see folks on /. periodically doing their armchair analysis of some of it. And anyway, if they were just holding on to the data because they were nefarious scientists (probably just sucking on that sweet sweet grant money) than why would they care if it got preserved? If they were never going to give it up anyway what difference does it make if it's saved?

    See, this is one of those things I always thought was funny. You've got a bunch of folks with PHds, usually with a heavy emphasis on math and statistics, but the implication I get again and again from folks is that they're somehow trying to cheat us all for the mountains of grant money.

    These folks are in ridiculously high demand in the private sector. They command salaries 2-3x the public sector at the drop of a hat (and if they go to Wallstreet 5-10x). I'm not saying there won't be the occasional bad apple or just plain wrong person, but really, if they were out for personal gain they have much, much better alternatives and they're smart enough to know what they are.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
    1. Re:I actually don't remember that by jandersen · · Score: 1

      there's tons of raw data out there

      Exactly - people in generl have little idea just how much we are talking about. All scientific activity produces mountains of data - it isn't just the LHC at CERN (which produces 100s of GB per second) - even a small study of sea-birds, with the use of small strap-on cameras and similar, can produce TBs in a relatively short span of time. For climate data, it has to be enormous amounts of data too: several daily observations from perhaps millions of weather stations, plus satelite data, radar observations, etc, not to mention results produced by runs of simulations over and over with tiny variations in the start parameters.

      But people are always like that - there's an anecdote from the beginning of the mainframe - possibly apocryphal: It used to be that you could order a printout of the source code (in assembler, of course) of the OS of your IBM system, and in one place they decided that this would be instructive and might be useful; so they put in the order. After a week or two, a lorry turned up with 25 tons of print-out. IOW, think before you ask for all the data.

    2. Re:I actually don't remember that by argStyopa · · Score: 0

      "You've got a bunch of folks with PHds, usually with a heavy emphasis on math and statistics, but the implication I get again and again from folks is that they're somehow trying to cheat us all for the mountains of grant money."

      Because it's been proved (at least as well as AGW)?

      - http://a-sceptical-mind.com/th... That trickey 'hockey stick' graph that so motivated the world?
      - http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.... "We don't have the original climate data"
      - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/com... and
      - https://notalotofpeopleknowtha... Massive, and repeated 'creative' manipulation of the data;

      --
      -Styopa
    3. Re:I actually don't remember that by SuricouRaven · · Score: 1

      I've heard a similar story, but not of source code. The account I've heard passed down was of an inexperienced employee who, while teletyped in to a remote mainframe, mistyped a single character when executing a program: Rather than outputting to magnetic tape, he set it to output to an automated card punch machine. The truck, and the bill, arrived some days later.

    4. Re:I actually don't remember that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      By random blogs and op-eds? I'm an academic (particle physicist, not a climatologist), and can tell you two things about how academic science and career incentives work:

      1) The grant money gravy train is not that awesome. You have the ability to work for less than half what you would be paid in the private sector for the privilege of groveling for money in a hyper-competitive field every two or three years. Woohoo.

      2) There is no surer way of making your career than by proving the orthodoxy wrong. This is what literally everyone is trying to do all the time in all of science. If you do a bunch of experiments and prove that the thing everyone thought was true is still true, not only do you not get grants, you probably can't even get published. Doing that is a career-killer. On the other hand, if you managed to prove that global warming is *not* happening, you would be swimming in talk invitations, grants, and job offers for making a tremendous breakthrough.

      You are proposing here a conspiracy that would result in the participants systematically sabotaging their own career prospects in a (given education levels) low-paying job, while any single person who broke with the conspiracy would be showered in honors and success. That's a pretty low-quality conspiracy theory: all the incentives are aligned against participation, and somehow thousands of people all over the world join in in perfect lockstep for decades?

    5. Re:I actually don't remember that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Millions of weather stations?

      You are not allowed to have or post an opinion on this topic until you learn something about it.

      You are making pro AGW people look like completely ignorant dipshits and wasting precious bits on the internet better used for piano playing cat videos on YouTube than your ignorant nonsense.

    6. Re:I actually don't remember that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you want some raw data, I have some from the last two weeks on a research vessel. It's CO2 amounts from an in-water measurement in the Pacific. Even though the data (raw and processed) is publicly available from NSF less than a week after docking, they have a few security concerns about vessels in port so I've scrubbed the times. I hope you find it useful. If you're not interested in any specific vessel, you can always check out NASA's archive https://www.nasa.gov/open/data.html

      pco2_ldeo_merge *** 2016339.99177, 2229.49, 36.39, 1012.62, 12.28, 392.96, 381.34, 24.15, 24.49, 0.00, Equil, 2413.266119 N,15307.753312 W,71.66,9.8,24.3308, 35.0087,1010.8 ,17.7,158.8
      pco2_ldeo_merge *** 2016339.99365, 2229.71, 36.40, 1012.65, 12.79, 393.01, 381.41, 24.13, 24.49, 0.00, Equil, 2413.377158 N,15307.219794 W,70.31,11.5,24.3312, 35.0083,1011.0 ,18.3,162.2
      pco2_ldeo_merge *** 2016339.99550, 2230.35, 36.40, 1012.64, 12.82, 393.15, 381.53, 24.15, 24.49, 0.00, Equil, 2413.497988 N,15306.691272 W,75.94,11.5,24.3317, 35.0074,1011.1 ,17.5,172.1
      pco2_ldeo_merge *** 2016339.99739, 2231.02, 36.40, 1012.67, 12.87, 393.29, 381.70, 24.13, 24.50, 0.00, Equil, 2413.609113 N,15306.158351 W,79.92,11.0,24.3353, 35.0063,1010.6 ,18.4,174.7
      pco2_ldeo_merge *** 2016339.99927, 2231.00, 36.40, 1012.68, 12.96, 393.29, 381.68, 24.17, 24.50, 0.00, Equil, 2413.719812 N,15305.633026 W,79.26,11.2,24.3399, 35.0061,1011.2 ,18.5,168.9

    7. Re:I actually don't remember that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Some people don't understand how other people can have principles because they don't have any themselves.

    8. Re:I actually don't remember that by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

      These folks are in ridiculously high demand in the private sector.

      Those who can, do. Those who can't scrabble for tenure.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    9. Re:I actually don't remember that by argStyopa · · Score: 2

      So attacking 'random blogs and op eds' for what they are, and not arguing their proposed facts (I trust them by default no more than I do the AGW academics), is that the scientific equivalent of the lawyers' dictum: "if you can't argue the facts, attack the source"? Because it smells like it.

      1) I never said the grant money gravy train is their motivation. I don't believe there is that much money in it either. Yet...the left has been peddling a constant stream of foretold disasters 'just around the corner' for my entire lifetime (50 years) - from peak oil, to mass starvation, to DDT, to the catastrophic danger of nuclear power, to ANYthing to do with Republicans in office, to imminent nuclear war, to climate change. Same chorus, different fucking verse. I don't care to speculate WHY they do it (I don't honestly care) but they've been hammering away INSISTING the sky is 'just about to fall any moment now if we don't (X) right away'.

      2) You're certainly right in my experience, but I think you are either mistakenly or deliberately disregarding the omnipresent herd mentality in academia as well. Sure, *maybe* 1% will hit the academic jackpot of overturning some orthodoxy by discovering ulcers are bacterial or a reactionless drive that nobody can explain. 99% will go down in ignominy as fools (maybe to be validated someday, long after they're dead and don't care any more).

      I'm not proposing any sort of vast left-wing conspiracy, I'm not HRC, seeing conspiracies instead of recognizing my own shortcomings.
      No, what I'm suggesting is that there are a number of factions on the left that, while they may not be singing explicitly from the same sheet of music, are certainly comfortable harmonizing together and seeking goals that are in the same ballpark. Combined with the echo-chamber of eco-marxist, hard-leftist academia in the US, it's certainly plausible without imagining some sort of coordinating cabal. It's really more the Left's thing to see the Koch brothers behind everything, or to posit some grey eminence pulling hypothetical strings (it was Cheney from 2000-2007).
      No, I think it's far easier to observe herd mentality, plus well-meaning but gullible, naive people, all very comfortable agreeing with each other.

      And as far as AGW is concerned, I don't even honestly dispute it, because I don't really care. My position on it is much like Bjorn Lomborgs: there are a CRAPTON of more tangible, direct, better uses of resources to improve the lives of the poorest half of humanity than chasing some stupid AGW chimera to save 0.5 deg C over the next century.
      https://www.ted.com/talks/bjor...

      --
      -Styopa
    10. Re:I actually don't remember that by jandersen · · Score: 1

      Thank you for your enlightened and helpful comments, mr Coward.

      Millions of weather stations?

      - or to take in a bit of context: "... perhaps millions of weather stations..." - this word, "perhaps" tells the enlightened reader that I am making a guess, but I think it is likely to be reasonable. A weather station is basically just a small, white painted box about 2 m above the ground and containing a few, simple instruments, like a thermometer and a barometer. They have been standardised and in use for more than a century, and they are surprisingly common, so I wouldn't think putting their number in the millions is to high.

      You are not allowed to have or post an opinion on this topic until you learn something about it.

      Ah, that would be this "Freedom of Speech" that people like you go on about? I live in an evil, communist country (UK) where we are not familiar with this concept; I mistakenly thought that it meant that I could talk freely about thing I think are right. Where did I go wrong? Was it that I don't include enough childish insults or simple minded, sweeping statement?

      You are making pro AGW people look like completely ignorant dipshits and wasting precious bits on the internet better used for piano playing cat videos on YouTube than your ignorant nonsense.

      AGW can mean "Anthropogenic Global Warming" or "Anti-Global Warming"; having read this last bit, I can't figure out whether you mean one or the other. But thank you for the tip - next time I will include a cat video and play piano.

      I'm not sure what ignorant nonsense you are referring to. Scientific recsearch generates enormous amounts of data, far more than the effluent from Facebook or Twitter, if that is your idea of "Big Data". The only part of my original post that isn't based on concrete knowledge is the bit about the weather stations. You clearly didn't bother to check for yourself - if you had, you would have been able to provide a better estimate than I did.

    11. Re:I actually don't remember that by RyoShin · · Score: 1

      I had a "discussion" with someone who claimed it was a hoax to sell energy-efficient appliances. I mean, Poe's Law, but he appeared to be100% serious. Claimed there was no evidence at all for AGW, though he seemed to acknowledge that humans produce the vast majority of CO2 and that the Earth is getting warmer. He tried to say it was 100% due to the Sun, and I couldn't get him to give a definitive answer as to if he thought CO2 trapped heat.

      Then he said that all links and websites are just opinion and can't be used to provide any evidence (despite trying to do so himself, failing to read his own links.) If I thought I'd get a half-coherent answer I would have asked what he would accept as evidence; probably be something like "show me a cloud made of nothing but CO2 reflecting heat" (and then, because he couldn't "see" the heat, it still wouldn't count.)

      I know that intelligence tests for voting are bad in multiple ways but, damn, people like him make me wonder...

  16. U.S. Scientists work at the U. of Toronto? by chispito · · Score: 1
    I think we found those Hillary voters that actually moved to Canada.

    Summary title: "US Scientists Scramble To Protect Research On Climate Change"
    From TFA:

    at schools like the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Toronto, academics are attempting to download and save as much data as possible. The Canadian school on Saturday is set to host a "guerilla archiving event" in collaboration with the Internet Archive's End of Term 2016 project, which will archive the federal online pages and data that are in danger of disappearing during the Trump administration, including climate change, water, air and toxics programs.

    --
    The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
  17. Re: All climate research data and modelling should by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    There was no climategate scandal. There was made up propaganda bullshit by right wing shills misinterpreting emails written in what to the scientists involved was colloquial language. If you're not in the profession, any profession actually, it's easy to misinterpret shorthand slang, or to use it in a well funded smear campaign like the well funded right wing for profit denial machine does.

    And before some idiot brings up the whole Clinton/Podesta email thing--most of those messages are clear language and not easily misinterpreted. That was actually the problem there from their point of view--saying they were misinterpreted would be unbelievable because it was hard to do that.

  18. Dear Scientists. by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Release ALL OF IT as a torrent and encourage people around the globe to download it.

    Honestly all this shit needs to be in the hands of regular people and not sequestered away for only the chosen to look at.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    1. Re:Dear Scientists. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Great, I am going to download all of the data, then simply reverse it in time. Then upload the data set that proves the earth is cooling!

    2. Re:Dear Scientists. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

      Unfortunately, there is the Dunning-Kruger effect to contend with. Picture a hundred amateurs on youtube trying to draw graphs in Excel and reaching all sorts of crazy conclusions.

    3. Re:Dear Scientists. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Works for linux, works for OSS, works for all computer science really. Why not try open sourcing other kinds of science too?

    4. Re:Dear Scientists. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Deal with it. Research belongs to the people who paid for it — in this case, the U.S. taxpayers. (Otherwise, it's not under U.S. government control and therefore not in danger of being destroyed by Trump.)

    5. Re:Dear Scientists. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If only we had people like Linus watching over the work and cussing out people who get it wrong...

    6. Re:Dear Scientists. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Does an individual has a disk up to capacity? We're not talking GB or even TB here...

    7. Re:Dear Scientists. by mean+pun · · Score: 1

      Release ALL OF IT as a torrent and encourage people around the globe to download it.

      Do you have any idea how many Petabytes of data you are talking about?

    8. Re:Dear Scientists. by Xyrus · · Score: 1

      Release ALL OF IT as a torrent and encourage people around the globe to download it.

      Honestly all this shit needs to be in the hands of regular people and not sequestered away for only the chosen to look at.

      First, it already is publicly available. Google isn't that hard to use.

      Second, you're not going to torrent petabytes of data.

      --
      ~X~
  19. One way or another it's going to cost us. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Long story short, my father-in-law was asked why he didn't believe in human caused global warming and after listening to 20 minutes of him spouting the same old talking points that we have all heard many times before, it came down to other people's money. Having to fork over money to other countries to help them cope with global warming.

    That's it. What it comes down to is that folks are afraid that their standard of living will decline. They will lose.

    I have some horrible news - our standard of living is guaranteed to go down.

    What has always happened when climate changes drastically is that arable land and fresh water declines dramatically and even disappears in some areas. And what do the people do? They migrate. Where to? Where there is fresh water, arable land and other resources - or even dry land.

    Unfortunately for them, there are always other people there. And what do humans do? They don't share because it means that the people who are already there have to lower their living standards to share the food, water and land.

    WAR. And wars are the most expensive things on Earth. Loss of money, life, property, freedom, .... I think it's better to help other cope than deal with mass migrations or better yet, stop the problem itself - but getting people to give up their big cars, burgers and steaks and live more environmentally friendly is too much to ask.

    So, if anyone thinks that by denying Global Warming or keep clinging to the hope that it's not true will accomplish nothing.

    You, me and most of us are going to lose.

    Our way of life is over unless we can stop global warming.

    1. Re: One way or another it's going to cost us. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "folks are afraid that their standard of living will decline"

      That's basically what drives Trump supporters. The majority are insecure white men who can't accept the fact that they're not top dog anymore socially and economically and fear losing their white privilege and lifestyle.

    2. Re:One way or another it's going to cost us. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have some horrible news - our standard of living is guaranteed to go down.

      You, me and most of us are going to lose.

      Sheez. Maybe you should stand under a crystal while smoking a joint. Your outlook may turn a tiny bit more positive. Sure you're about to be lorded over by Trump for the next 4-8 years and to a Progressive this is a horrible prospect, but you gotta get yourself together. The left has made some positive contributions to society but when it collectively has these hyper emotional tantrums (by grown adults) your influence will erode further and further away.

    3. Re: One way or another it's going to cost us. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and like climate deniers (who strangely enough overlap a great deal with Trump supporters), instead of doing something about it, they would rather just ignore the problem.

      They dont realize that if we man up and try to make changes, like develop new technology, we would be in a better position to maintain our standard of living and be better off than other countries. Similarly, if Trump supports get off their asses and study, re-train, or learn anything new they might get a better life. But no, its too easy to bitch and complain about other people taking stuff.

    4. Re:One way or another it's going to cost us. by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      I have some horrible news - our standard of living is guaranteed to go down.

      Only because people were too stupid to do something about getting off fossil fuels. For what the U.S. spends every 12 months to subsidize the fossil fuel industry, we could have converted the entire world to green energy. During the Carter Administration.

  20. Re:All climate research data and modelling should by Freischutz · · Score: 2

    I do think there is a legitimate problem with our climate and that us humans are more than capable of influencing it for good or for worse even if it was an entirely natural cycle, if nothing else we should be able to ensure our survival.

    The problem I see is indeed the politicized parts of it. We are donating large swaths of money in the form of carbon credits to the very nations that should be improving their situation, but instead we export our "dirty air" and allow them to make it worse even though Chinese smog particles are now affecting coastal cities in the US. In the end it's just a taxation to offset debts and improve their economy and when it comes time for "them" to pay up they'll just back out of whatever agreement they signed, just like Trump wants to do.

    The United States with 318 million citizens produces something like 16% of global greenhouse gas emissions with an upward trend that is set to become even sharper now that Trump is president, persecuting climate scientists and promoting fossil fuels process that looks set to continue for the next eight years since there is little reason to believe that Trump won't be re-elected. The EU 28 with 508 million citizens manages to produce 10% of Greenhouse gas emissions with a downward trend. Pundits in the US likes to blame China for emissions and makes the case that China is a bigger emissions sinner than the US and that people should stop unfairly picking on the US which ignores the fact that China emits less per capita than the US. This is not to say that China should be exempt form emissions reduction but it is worth keeping in mind, when American Conservatives start whining about China's emissions and how the US is being treated unfairly by people demanding a decrease in US emissions, that compared to Europe the US should be producing about 6% of Global emissions in stead of 16%. The way I see Trump, Tillerson the entire US coal and oil lobby, Putin, Rosneft and the rest of the Trump administration's buddies in Moscow the Gulf states and the rest of OPEC is the they diehard holdouts of a dying energy industry. People can go on endlessly about nuclear which is alway going to be a leper in any discussion about energy production reform and they can pin their hopes on fusion but the countries that will dominate the energy production in the future are those that are working on renewables and perfecting related technologies (unless fusion finally pans out after being just around the corner for half a century).

  21. Re:All climate research data and modelling should by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well spoken ... USA globalists are pimping the chi.com dragon to pollute the earth at the expense of (among others) American workers. EDEP fanatics & wealthy globalists HATEHATEHATE well-paided American workers and will do anything to crush them out. Historians advise putting-down with-all-due-malice a few dozen over-wealthy globalists and eco-freaks.

    Historians speculate if mangled Rolex-laden bodies are kicked into the gutter for dogs to eat bet the singsong changes fast. Kinda like what Sulla did to the lubricious Roman Senate.

  22. Build an ark by goombah99 · · Score: 1

    I think they need two build an ark before the great flood comes..

    --
    Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
    1. Re:Build an ark by j-b0y · · Score: 1

      I suggest they build three arks.

      --
      Please remain calm, there is no reason to pani... wait, where are you all going?
    2. Re:Build an ark by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      I suggest a whole flotilla like in Snow Crash. Everybody re-read your Neal Stephenson, it might be a survival manual.

    3. Re:Build an ark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Step 1: Hack rat things.

      Step 2: Take over world in less than a second.

    4. Re:Build an ark by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, but we have to make the animals pay for it.

    5. Re:Build an ark by Tesseractic · · Score: 1

      Not 3 arks, you use 3 but you make 4 and put one into storage.
      Maybe one of the 3 won't pass acceptance testing.

      - I used to be a perfectionist; now I am much better: I know how to compromise.

  23. Maternitiy wards scrambling to protect newborns? by sciengin · · Score: 0

    You never know after all, Donald "Satan" Trump might start to eat a few newborn. Any time now.

    Dont get me wrong he is a hack and a buffoon however he is not evil incarnate as some would like to portray him.
    I honestly thought that this kind of demonizing was reserved for the right against their opponents like they did to Obama, but apparently the left can play this game too.

  24. Server space by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hillary's private server in her bathroom might have some space.

  25. #triggered by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >You are just a hysteric drama-ridden latte-sipping liberal.

    Someone just got #triggered - time to grow up. May I suggest attending and paying attention in science class on your second stroll though childhood?

    1. Re: #triggered by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      How's the new fedora fitting?

  26. Re:Maternitiy wards scrambling to protect newborns by Overzeetop · · Score: 0

    >however he is not evil incarnate as some would like to portray him.

    Indeed. However, the people he is putting in charge of major departments of the government ARE evil incarnate, and that's what worries those who value scientific freedom.

    As for eating the newborn - nobody is worried about that. They can fend for themselves. What we have to worry about is him going after the unborn, for they are more important than their mothers under the new rules the hard core right wingers will propose over the next 4 years.

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  27. The lady doth protest too much, methinks by nicoleb_x · · Score: 1

    TLDR: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks" is a quotation from the c.â1600 play Hamlet by William Shakespeare. It has been used as a figure of speech, in various phrasings, to describe someone's overly frequent and vehement attempts to convince others of some matter of which the opposite is true, thereby making themselves appear defensive and insincere.[not verified in body] In rhetorical terms, the phrase can be thought of as indicating an unintentional apophasisâ"where the speaker who "protests too much" in favor of some assertion puts into others' minds the idea that the assertion is false, something that they may not have considered before."

  28. Scientific Denial vs. Financial Impact by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 1

    Widespread "Consensus" is not the measure of scientific fact; if it were, we'd all still believe that the Earth is flat, etc.

    True but widespread consensus amongst scientists working on the problem has historically been shown to be the absolute best indication of scientific fact. When the ancient greek philosophers first suggested that the world was a sphere and then managed to measure its radius the population listened, learnt and based on the scientific consensus changed their mind. So the exact reverse is true: had there been an ancient greek Donaldus Trumpus opposing the idea that the world was a sphere we might still believe that the world was flat (although probably not because at some point the evidence is just too overwhelming).

    The problem with global warming being caused by green house gas emissions is that there is a huge impact on the economy from doing something about it. Hence the debate now is really a political one about what should we do about it. Those who stand to lose financially want to do nothing and just deal with the issues of rising temperatures. However they know that people will not go for this if they know we are causing global warming so the only way they can achieve the goal of doing nothing is to deny the science motivating action. I don't for a second believe that Mr. Trump and his friends really disbelieve in global warming, it's just the only argument they have to achieve their goal.

  29. Send it all to Wikileaks by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

    They should send all their data to Wikileaks, or otherwise put it somewhere on the public Internet not hosted on a U.S.-based server, then let the general Internet public know it's there so it can all be copied and diseminated widely and freely. We all know that once you post something on the Internet it's never, ever going completely away, and I believe this is their best strategy to preserve and protect the products of their research. Between that data being released and data from scientists in other countries, climate change research should be safe.

    I'd also like to point out that if the Trump administration actually did literally destroy the data from climate change research, in my opinion that would be roughly equivalent to burning books -- and I'm morally offended by the idea -- and I don't get 'morally offended' very easily or very often; this is one of those deal-breakers for me.

    1. Re:Send it all to Wikileaks by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Another thought I just had on this subject, which I'm surprised I didn't think of when writing the original comment (I have a cold today, not totally awake yet :-/ ): They should bundle all their data up and send it to their colleagues in other countries, assuming that is that they haven't already done so. Who better to safeguard the products of their research than their fellow scientists? Seems to me that any real scientist, understanding the situation, would scruplously guard and protect another's work, even if they don't necessarily agree with it.

    2. Re:Send it all to Wikileaks by lxs · · Score: 2

      Wikileaks would be the worst place to send it, given their recent actions.

    3. Re:Send it all to Wikileaks by Reziac · · Score: 1

      Oh, but they don't WANT their data out there for all to see, because then manipulations of said data to reach the desired conclusions will also be visible...

      BTW Trump is reportedly a voracious reader of anything he can lay hands on, which isn't typically contiguous with a desire to burn books.

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    4. Re:Send it all to Wikileaks by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      Note that I said the Trump administration, not President Pussy-Grabber personally. Some of the appointees might not be at all above the idea of destroying 'inconvenient' data. And since I'm pretty sure you're a Trump supporter and a climate-change denier, I really aren't all that interested in debating anything with you, so don't bother replying.

  30. Let's get back to science vs politics. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    C'mon slashdot - some person in the world has a concern about the incoming administration hiding data and it warrants this silliness?

    I personally think people understand things are getting warmer - especially over the last 50 or so years. The question is why is it getting warmer? What is the cause and effect? Can spending trillions of dollars make any real difference other than an emotional one?

    When I sense the political, university, and Hollywood crowd all bashing anyone with doubt, shaming people, blackballing non-compliant researchers, mocking, playing cute with the data and trying to unlock the government coffers it gives me large pause. I don't line up against their view. However, it makes me want to equally hear opposing views.

    It is now so political, and this article re-affirms the political based go-forward approach, I can't see the solution to global warming through the trees. Have we crossed into 'agree or else' or science as a religious cause?

    Now, where did we leave those scientific principles?

  31. C'mon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are you just going to keep posting this story over and over again hoping it will stick? This is the 3rd one in a week. It's old news and also just dumb as well

  32. Re:Maternitiy wards scrambling to protect newborns by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A few things to remember:

    1. Trump has pledged to defund NASA's "politicized" climate science
    2. Trump has put a climate conspiracy theorist in charge of the EPA transition team
    3. Many on the right believe that Obama and Hillary are literal, supernatural demons, who emit a sulfurous stench.

  33. Torrents? by Midnight+Thunder · · Score: 1

    Does anyone know if torrents are being set up for replication?

    --
    Jumpstart the tartan drive.
  34. My, how the tables have turned... by Jester998 · · Score: 0

    I love it when liberal hippies are hypocritical (read: always). I thought it was only the gun-loving rednecks that believed paranoid conspiracy theories about the ill intent of government.

    1. Re:My, how the tables have turned... by hyades1 · · Score: 0

      Nobody whines like a conservative. Take their guns off them, and they run like rabbits.

      --
      I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
    2. Re:My, how the tables have turned... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Which is why the Founders enshrined the right to keep and bear arms.

      It's hard to fuck with people when they've got weapons.

    3. Re:My, how the tables have turned... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Take their guns?
      Uh... you first, ok?

    4. Re:My, how the tables have turned... by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      I love it when liberal hippies are hypocritical (read: always). I thought it was only the gun-loving rednecks that believed paranoid conspiracy theories about the ill intent of government.

      You were saying?

    5. Re:My, how the tables have turned... by hyades1 · · Score: 0

      Toddlers kill more Americans every year than terrorists. Nobody needs to fuck with armed Americans. They fuck with themselves. ROFL.

      --
      I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
    6. Re:My, how the tables have turned... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I love it when liberal hippies are hypocritical (read: always). I thought it was only the gun-loving rednecks that believed paranoid conspiracy theories about the ill intent of government.

      Oh no, Liberals always knew that the pandering politicians who gun-loving rednecks vote for in swarms are quite ill-intended.

      No hypocrisy there, they just don't think the government is always out to get them because of communists and homosexuals.

      We also know there are scarier things out there than the government trying to help.

      Serving the interests of a power-man oligarch for example.

    7. Re:My, how the tables have turned... by hyades1 · · Score: 1

      Actually, it's ridiculously easy to "fuck with people when they've got weapons". Look at the number of Americans who get shot every year by friends, relatives, toddlers, dogs (yes, dogs) and just about anything else that can somehow manage to pull a trigger. The people fucking with you are the people making millions of the Americans' childish fascination with guns. And you love it.

      --
      I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  35. Lysenkoism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If those scientists were doing real science, they'd be proud to have their names associated with their actions. Instead, they're ashamed and trying desperately to hide.

    Yeah. Just like those cowardly geneticists hid in the shadows rather than stand proud of their fake science during the era of Lysenkoism.

    1. Re:Lysenkoism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So this incoming administration is both Hitler and Stalin?

      Present a reasoned discussion. When the right said Hilary wanted to ban guns that was "nutty conspiratorial talk" but when the left says Trump wants to round up and execute climate scientists that is a warning of things to come??

      Stop pushing me onto his side!

  36. BS by s.petry · · Score: 0, Troll

    Your analogy is wrong. You believe that somehow "Global" warming only impacts America? You must similarly believe that the US is the only ones that can, and need to, somehow solve the problem. I have no idea how you ignore China, India, Pakistan, and Russia, and quite frankly the majority of what we call "Developing Nations" (most of the planet) who have been increasing pollutants and industrialization over the same time the West has done the opposite. Governments of the West want their populaces to pay into Tax systems with no Government plans to address anything.

    Sure, the problems are vast. No, demanding taxes and a halt of productivity in the West is not the answer. Hillary is not for fixing global climate issues, she is anti American. The same can be said for numerous politicians who despise the US Constitution and believe somehow their socialist plans will be better than any other socialist plan ever conceived. No, it's not just a R versus D issue. Both sides have people with similar beliefs demonstrated by the current state of Politics in the US.

    --

    -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

  37. What's the big deal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Couldn't they just make it all up again? The whole thing is a powergrab by nanny-state socialists.
    --
    roman_mir

    1. Re:What's the big deal by toadlife · · Score: 1

      Couldn't they just make it all up again? The whole thing is a powergrab by nanny-state socialists.

      Yeah, you'd think if it were all made up they could just make it all up again. This just serves to demonstrate the unpresidented level of detail they are taking this climate change simulation simulation thing.

      --
      I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
    2. Re:What's the big deal by caferace · · Score: 1

      Yeah, you'd think if it were all made up they could just make it all up again. This just serves to demonstrate the unpresidented level of detail they are taking this climate change simulation simulation thing.

      Still not an actual word.

    3. Re:What's the big deal by toadlife · · Score: 1

      My post was sarcasm and the use of the word was intentional.

      --
      I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
    4. Re:What's the big deal by caferace · · Score: 1

      My post was sarcasm and the use of the word was intentional.

      Hence the simulation simulation?

  38. It's all our fault. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    -- These guys are using weird units nobody else uses.
    -- Oh, come on, everybody has quirks... at least, they're paying for research.
    -- But they're paywalling everything.
    -- Well, I suppose it's a way to keep the infrastructure working.
    -- But what about the exchange of knowledge?
    -- Listen, it won't be safer behind totalitarian regimes, isn't it?
    -- Now they're locking up everything just like those regimes!
    -- We shouldn't have put all our eggs in one basket... it's all our fault!

  39. You mean.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    they are scrambling to protect their sorry arses, doing everything they can to delete any incriminating evidence they have been lying or at the very least distorting facts to serve their political agenda.

  40. Re: by srichard25 · · Score: 1

    Scientific theories need to be proven as true before anyone can try to disprove them.

    I suggest you take a look at the Steps of the Scientific Method: http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_scientific_method.shtml

    Which step is the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW) on?

  41. Back That Sh*t Up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Anybody got an extra Peta-byte hard drive?

  42. "legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And there's where climate 'activist' are just idiots. They think an emotional appeal somehow countermands the need for people who question a controversial scientific subject with a snide comment on social media. Contrary to those 'the debate is settled' ass holes there is no such thing as a settled scientific debate that can never be questioned. That's not science. That's called a religion.

    Yeah, it's not like evolution, gravity, or the shape of the planet is settled. There's no point in making decisions about life and determining public policy on those three items because just because there's "only" a consensus, because who knows, the science may change on the (e.g.) shape of our planet. NASA should stop following the Hollywood actors saying the earth is spherical and keep studying things to make sure the supposed reality doesn't change. /s

    Seriously: there are two possibilities
    a) humans are the cause of climate change
    b) humans do NOT cause climate change

    What's the worst that can happen if we assume (a) and are wrong? We become more efficient at using energy and diversity our energy sources. What's so bad about?

    What's the worst that can happen if assume (b), and do nothing? A whole lot of pain and suffering for millions of people.

    So from a risk perspective, why not side with the 95% of climate scientists and start planning for the worst? If the science is wrong we still get a bunch of good benefits.

  43. You know it's too bad by NotSoHeavyD3 · · Score: 2

    It's too bad that there's no massive network of interconnected computers that researchers could have release all their research in all sciences over the past 20+ years openly for all of mankind to benefit from instead of having to keep it at the mercy of scientific journals. If something like that existed then it would basically be impossible to censor as it would spread and be archived all over the world. Oh well, back on the internet to watch cat videos.

    --
    Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
  44. what is this mysterious data? by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    The data for reproducing climate model predictions and published research already should be fully released, and as a practical matter, archived. Here is a set of links:

    http://www.realclimate.org/ind...

    So what is this other data that they are trying to rescue from Trump?

    If there is data missing, then that should be published. The climate research community might also want to update their computational tools from the dusty Fortran decks to something more modern. Everybody should be able to reproduce climate models on a modern desktop computer with a GPU and check for themselves.

    1. Re:what is this mysterious data? by frank_adrian314159 · · Score: 1

      Everybody should be able to reproduce climate models on a modern desktop computer with a GPU and check for themselves.

      Do you know how much computational power it takes to run climate models? Anyone with a desktop and GPU is not going to be able to replicate many of these models' results. You need supercomputers on the scale of the Top 500 to do that sort of thing, you idiot.

      --
      That is all.
    2. Re:what is this mysterious data? by ooloorie · · Score: 1

      Do you know how much computational power it takes to run climate models?

      Why yes, as a matter of fact, I do!

      Anyone with a desktop and GPU is not going to be able to replicate many of these models' results. You need supercomputers on the scale of the Top 500 to do that sort of thing

      A GTX 1080 Ti has about 10 TFLOPS performance; that's what the Top 10 supercomputers in the world had 10 years ago, the kinds of supercomputers that a lot of climate models were developed and run on, and that most of the important predictions have been made with.

      you idiot

      You're welcome. Let me know if you have any other questions.

  45. Re:Ha! by CaptainDork · · Score: 4, Informative

    Really?

    In a section titled “Patterns of Immigration,” a speech bubble pointing to a U.S. map read: “The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.

    "This is erasure,” Dean-Burren said in an interview with The Washington Post. “This is revisionist history — retelling the story however the winners would like it told.”

    In calling slaves “workers” and their move to the United States “immigration,” she noted in viral Facebook posts Wednesday and Thursday, the textbook suggests not only that her African American ancestors arrived on the continent willingly, but also that they were compensated for their labor.

    If you lived in Texas, which I do, you'd be aware of the right wing Evangelical Christian batshit crazy supremacist white trash bitches like former governor Rick Perry.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  46. Got to move fast. by skoony · · Score: 0

    Climate scientists are scrambling to hide,obscure,change,alter and otherwise manipulate he data to protect their lying butts.

    1. Re:Got to move fast. by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Climate scientists are scrambling to hide,obscure,change,alter and otherwise manipulate he data to protect their lying butts.

      Starting with the props used in faking the moon landing, right? Remember to wash the tin foil, after it sits on your head long enough you might get a rash if you don't.

    2. Re:Got to move fast. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just go request climate data from any scientific research group... lemme hint you, its general practice that data sets are destroyed in any field of science and only few scientists actually bother to backup those datas to their personal devices, no institution is holding them. they got just the mangled data... and it should be pretty obvious after CRU, that such fooling doesnt work in reality... but standards are low because silly folks need their precious funding....

    3. Re:Got to move fast. by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Riiiight. In the same way the CIA will assassinate five year olds who ask too many questions about Santa. Don't forget to wash your tin foil.

  47. Walmart by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When you're 35 and can't get another engineering job in Silicon Valley because you're too old, come back here and tell us all how you're retraining to be a Walmart greeter to maintain your lifestyle.

  48. Then why the rush to back up anything? by SuperKendall · · Score: 0

    there's tons of raw data out there.

    If that is try why the rush to "back it up"?

    More than likely what they are doing is hard-coding in changes they want to make to cook the data, back THAT up, then destroying the real raw data.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
    1. Re:Then why the rush to back up anything? by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      If that is try why the rush to "back it up"?

      So it's not destroyed by an incoming right-wing government.

      More than likely what they are doing is hard-coding in changes they want to make to cook the data, back THAT up, then destroying the real raw data.

      You don't need the maximum dosage of horseshit pills, the regular dose is more than enough.

    2. Re:Then why the rush to back up anything? by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1

      well basically you would think that because you're a paranoid minute loonie. How do I know? Well, basically your post just proved it.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
    3. Re:Then why the rush to back up anything? by vel-ex-tech · · Score: 1

      Damn it! Foiled! You heard it here first from SuperKendall himself! He's figured out that all the raw data that's just a Google search away is all lies. TransSEXuals are raping the real data in the bathroom! Lizard people! We can't trust anything! IT'S ALL FAKE NEWS!eleven!1!!

  49. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by ooloorie · · Score: 0

    Yeah, it's not like evolution, gravity, or the shape of the planet is settled. There's no point in making decisions about life and determining public policy on those three items because just because there's "only" a consensus,

    The only consensus we have on climate change is that in 2100, it will be a couple of degrees warmer, and that human emissions may contribute to this. That's it. Science has nothing to say about what we can or should do about it; that's a question of economics, values and preferences.

  50. Re:Maternitiy wards scrambling to protect newborns by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have yet to see anyone worried that he might eat newborns (other than in jest).

    I see a LOT of people scared about stuff that I would ordinarily consider paranoia, except for the fact that they're based 100% on things the man has done or said he's going to do. He's really quite a train wreck.

  51. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Nothing to say? Really?

    The scientific consensus is pretty clear on what we need to do, and the consequences of not doing it.

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

    Send it all to Trump's twitter accont 140bytes at a time.
    Perhaps he will learn what 'Big Data' is all about. Or at the very least, he can't rule by tweet.

    If he starts to do this then the exodus of scientists from the USA will be huge. A veritable tsunami.
    That won't help make America great again now will it?

  53. Re:All climate research data and modelling should by colin_faber · · Score: 1

    >16% of global greenhouse gas emissions
    Citation please? Human caused or total?

  54. Re:Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Besides, I seriously doubt Trump would do that even if he could. He's a lot of bluster and hot air.

  55. Re: Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Maybe if you use he full 280 bytes available for a tweet, then? Would that help?

  56. Re: "legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being w by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Really all a human problem. The earth will survive. Maybe not inhabitable by humans, but if climate change doesn't get us overpopulation will. No matter.

  57. Re: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Telling that this comment gets no response.

  58. Wrong two possibilities by hackwrench · · Score: 2

    1. Climate change is something we need to do everything about ASAP.
    2. Climate change is something we can take time to figure out more about.
    And even those may not be entirely accurate. If climate change is a problem we need to do something immediately about, it doesn't matter if humans caused it until you get to talking about remedies.

    In fact, two positions could be:
    1. Man should do everything to gain control of himself and his environment.
    2. Man should leave everything up to forces not under his control, and not play God.

  59. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by phantomfive · · Score: 1, Interesting

    The scientific consensus is pretty clear on what we need to do, and the consequences of not doing it.

    It's actually not.

    There are some scientists who say we need to replace coal immediately, otherwise civilization could be destroyed. Most scientists are more moderate, and consider that too rash, but there's no broad consensus on what we should do.

    In one survey of climate scientists, for example, half of scientists said mitigation was the approach we should take, and half said we should favor adaptation in the face of climate change. So clearly there's no consensus there, I don't know why you even thought there was.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  60. Fixed it for you by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "There is a very short window for when the new administration will come in and that's why there's a lot of anxiety. There's a lot of information to save." should read There is a very short window for when the new administration will come in and that's why there's a lot of anxiety. There's a lot of information to manipulate.

  61. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

    Who?

    Name over of these scientists claiming civilisation will be destroyed if we don't immediately stop using coal.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  62. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by lgw · · Score: 1

    So climate scientists are economists now? Sorry, I don't follow your religion. The climate models are barely predictive - still not outperforming the null hypothesis. The idea that you could use them to predict precisely what's going to happen to sea levels and weather patterns around the world 50 years from now, contrasting with and without a change in human activity, is farcical.

    Climate science is still in it's infancy. It's useless for problems like "if humans reduce CO2 emissions by X, the economic impact will be $Y" to even one significant digit.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  63. Re:All climate research data and modelling should by Uberbah · · Score: 1

    we saw that data was being falsified in advance of a vote to establish an international agreement on carbon taxes during the climategate scandal, by interests positioned to profit from the creation of a carbon tax credits trading exchange (who funded the falsification).

    Repeating stupid bullshit doesn't make it true - just ask the lunar conspiracy theorists that have been trying for half a century.

    I don't think this is a Trump issue, but a general issue, and while there's so much FUD going about, at least it's bringing attention to the problems inherent in the climate change issue.

    It's a reasonable precaution based on what other right-wing incoming administrations have done.

    public information if it is being used to justify legislation.

    And generally it is - but there's a lot of it. You going to get a bunch of your winger pals together and store all this stuff when a single study can involve terabytes of data, and checksum the shit out of it to make sure none of it is altered?

  64. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

    Okay, I present for my case the most recent IPCC report. It's peer reviewed, data published, methodology widely reviewed.

    What do you have?

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  65. Circular Reasoning by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    So it's not destroyed by an incoming right-wing government.

    If the data were really "out there" as claimed how could the government destroy it? That's the issue to me. Either they did publish the data in which case the government cannot possibly destroy it. Or they never did in fact publish the data, in which case the government could possibly destroy it, but it hardly matters since what they were doing was not science.

    You don't need the maximum dosage of horseshit pills

    Well I guess you'd be the expert to talk to on horseshit. since you seem to be shoveling quite the load yourself.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  66. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    James Hansen. He must believe it too, because he is willing to go out and protest, and even be arrested to try to change things. So good on him for being sincere.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  67. Re:All climate research data and modelling should by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >16% of global greenhouse gas emissions

    Citation please? Human caused or total?

    <colin_faber is a lazy shill>
    global greenhouse gas emissions first result from google.com is:
    https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/global-greenhouse-gas-emissions-data

    </colin_faber is a lazy shill>

  68. A massively different tune... by hsthompson69 · · Score: 1

    ...than the "good old days". In the words of head CRU scientist Phil Jones:

    I should warn you that some data we have we are not supposed to pass on to others. We can pass on the gridded data – which we do. Even if WMO agrees, I will still not pass on the data. We have 25 or so years invested in the work. Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it
    -Phil Jones email Feb. 21, 2005

    Maybe make all the data and code open source, for anyone to peruse, and you won't have to worry about it being "saved".

    Of course, if you make it too open, maybe someone will find something wrong with your grid cell adjustments...

  69. Other consequences of change by hsthompson69 · · Score: 1

    Climate change can also reduce sunburn and skin cancer, and drownings, and freezings, and blunt force trauma, and starvation, and any other number of health benefits.

    Not all change has negative consequences.

  70. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Five seconds with Google shows you lied. In his latest paper states that we are close to the point of no return, i.e. the moment when we can't undo the damage. That's a long way from the end of civilisation.

    He recommends a 6% emissions reduction per year. Doesn't specifically say we need to stop all coal use immediately, only 6% across the board.

    Anyone else you want me to debunk?

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  71. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    Five seconds with Google shows you lied

    You couldn't find something said by someone in 5 seconds in Google, and conclude it wasn't said? Do you also think the universe disappears if you close your eyes?

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  72. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    wikipedia says that he actually called for coal to be phased out by 2030. So, no, you lose. Try again?

  73. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by AmiMoJo · · Score: 0

    I found something that contradicts what you claim his position is. Your argument uses a straw man.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  74. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    He wrote, quote, "coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet." He said, "The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death. They need to be shut down." He wants to reduce the CO2, not stop its increase.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  75. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    Hansen wrote, quote, "coal is the single greatest threat to civilization and all life on our planet." He said, "The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death. They need to be shut down."

    Hansen pretty clearly wants CO2 emissions to be reduced so much that CO2 levels drop, not remain level.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  76. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    So therefore he supports specifics different than the specifics he actually supports?

    No, using strongly worded but very general hyperbole is not the same as supporting very specific policy ideas like immediately stopping the use of coal. He supports phasing it out by 2030. Stop failing so hard.

  77. Re: by khallow · · Score: 1

    Scientific theories need to be proven as true before anyone can try to disprove them.

    "Proof" is very different matter in the empirical world. There one would look for data and tests that allow one to distinguish between rival hypotheses.

    Which step is the anthropogenic global warming theory (AGW) on?

    Which AGW theory? We actually have strong evidence that there is an AGW effect. For example, isotope concentrations of carbon isotopes (C14 having a short half life, is not present in fossil fuels, but is present in surface carbon due to solar radiation) indicate that in the last couple of centuries, there has been a considerable increase in atmospheric carbon from geological sources like fossil fuels or volcanoes (with human generated sources overwhelming all other known sources of geological carbon). It's varies in difficulty to determine the human contribution of some other greenhouse gases, methane tends to be harder since geological carbon contributes far less to that, but CFCs are easier (since non-human contributions are very low).

    This demonstrates the first pillar of any AGW theory, that humans have made a significant contribution to the growing CO2 concentrations in Earth's atmosphere.

    Second, we can directly observe the radiative and reflective properties of default atmosphere (excluding clouds and other weather effects). These indicate that CO2 does indeed block certain infra-red spectrum gaps of water vapor and thus, causes the atmosphere to retain heat. That demonstrates the second important part of any AGW theory, namely, that increased levels of CO2 do result in some degree of warming of the Earth.

    There are plenty of issues with determining the human contribution past that, but it remains that the key two aspects of any AGW theory are pretty much nailed down qualitatively.

    The real problem comes in with what the effects of increased concentrations of greenhouse gases are and how much harm those effects will cause. There, I think climate research has gone off the rails completely. For example, short term warming from a doubling of CO2 is around 1.5 C per doubling, based on the actual temperature changes of the past century and a half and the actual changes in the concentration of CO2. The IPCC claims that the long term warming from a doubling of CO2 is 3 C per doubling (actually 1.5 C to 4.5 C per doubling due to the huge errors in the estimate) due to positive feedback mechanisms, most which have not been demonstrated as existing while simultaneously downplaying negative feedback such as weather.

    There there's the accounting games played with estimating the harm of global warming. For example, a common ploy is to greatly deflate time value via a discount rate. For example, the Stern Review, an early attempt to calculate the cost of global warming used a 1.4% discount rate (I believe derived from the historical growth rate of UK GDP at the time the report was issued) versus roughly 3% discount rate (derived from the growth rate of world GDP over a similar time frame), if we assume that GDP is roughly proportional to the size of an economy and that the current global growth rate continues for a century (aside from climate change-related adjustments), we get roughly that a 10% reduction of the global economy now is equivalent in the Stern report to a 5% reduction in the global economy in 50 years or a little over a 2% reduction in 100 years.

    Other sorts of harm are similarly exaggerated such as rising sea levels, movement of agriculture, or extreme weather. The last is particularly notorious for being a textbook confirmation bias thing, in particular with the moral hazard of US public flood insurance (which has long encouraged humans to live in flood zones and is responsible for a huge increase in US property damage from floods and hurricanes to the extent that it swa

  78. Just poppycock by MoarSauce123 · · Score: 1

    Trump declared that climate change is a hoax from Gina (as Trump pronounces it. like vagina just without the va). After making that up there is no need for any hard researched facts. Trump rejects reality and substitutes his own...especially when it makes a lot of money....unless of course the opposite is the better option, then he flip flops on what he said yesterday. It appears as that there are way more places with lead in the water than Flint, otherwise there is no explanation for that many ridiculously....oh, sorry, rediculously stupid people who voted for Trump. And lastly, a shoutout to Putin for effectively destabilizing the US, nicely done!

  79. Lib.comz aca-warmists save save save ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... those hockey pucks ... er hockey sticks ... er blue-lines ... er ... er ... Molson ! And WTF is offsides about a long pass? New England throws them every week !

  80. Re: Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Whatever. What scientist in their right mind would leave over a hypothetical that is inconsistent with current time law? Government funded research is open. Period. OSTI is the clearinghouse and everything, paid journal articles included after 1 year, are stored there according to law. Unless the work is classified, which is doubtful is this case, it is publicly indexed. If the work is restricted, then it's still there but, as the name suggests, it is restricted. Don't just assume that click bait is right and the president will ignore law.

  81. Fears of Trump appear Russian-whipped... by mi · · Score: 0

    Most Slashdotters may not know about the minute details of Russia's propaganda-war on Ukraine, but it had salvos like "When Ukrainians enter cities, they crucify little children".

    Trump administration could seek to wipe government websites

    Trump could seek to rape every woman too, should these "scientists" not attempt to hide their wives and daughters instead of some data?

    Some worry the information could only be retrieved with a taxing Freedom of Information Act request.

    OMG! Now we are learning, FoIA-requests are undully taxing...

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  82. Re:All climate research data and modelling should by colin_faber · · Score: 1

    Okay, so the reference is to human caused activities vs other? I can't seem to locate the total green house gas production, only the total "human caused". The numbers are big, relativity, but meaningless without proper context? If it's 16% of 0.0000001% of the total, then who cares? If it's 16% of 100% then that's concerning.

  83. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since when did it become science to predict unpredictable things?

    We can call it science after the fact, but global events like humans extincting themselves have no presedence, so is unscientific.

  84. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

    The scientific consensus IS that humans are causing it. What politicians, ACs on /. and bloggers think is utter irrelevant.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  85. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

    Can you define "barely predictive"? They all point to warming, which confirmed by the data. This appears to be one of those goal post moving arguments.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  86. Fear of nuclear power is hurting the environment by blindseer · · Score: 1

    I saw this quite interesting video on TED Talks:
    https://www.ted.com/talks/mich...

    The speaker makes a rather compelling case for using nuclear power. We've been making great gains in wind and solar world wide but that growth is overshadowed by gains in fossil fuel use. The one energy source that has had the greatest reductions in CO2 emissions is nuclear power and we're shutting them down at a rate greater than we're opening new ones.

    Those that think we can reduce our carbon footprint without nuclear is just plain fooling themselves. We simply cannot. This includes the current administration. Trump is far from the biggest advocate for reducing carbon output but he might actually be someone that would actually create the carbon reductions that Obama has failed to do.

    Sure, Obama gave some lukewarm support for nuclear power at the end of his administration, but he had eight years with his pen and phone and failed to merely allow nuclear power to grow. These nuclear power companies aren't looking for a handout like wind and solar, they are just looking for permission to build. Obama from the beginning only made happy mouth noises for nuclear power, talking about "funding research" which never came.

    I am optimistic now with Trump coming into office that the government might actually do something about climate change and build some nuclear power plants. Obama's policies of funding solar panel companies that didn't build any solar panels, and electric car companies that didn't build any cars, did nothing. If Trump starts handing out licenses to build nuclear power plants at a rate greater than replacement then he'd be doing more in building just one new nuclear power plant than what Obama has done in his entire eight years in office. Mr. Michael Shellenberger did the math in his speech, just a handful of new nuclear power plants could do more to reduce carbon output than wind or solar could ever do.

    Words mean nothing to me. It's action that counts. Obama might have said a lot about how we need to stop global warming but he did next to nothing to stop it. Trump might be nothing more than a carnival barker in a trucker hat but if he puts people in the EPA, Energy, and NRC that will make nuclear power grow then he could do more to stop global warming in his first 100 days than Obama did in his entire political career.

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  87. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by dbIII · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So climate scientists are economists now

    That's what the deniers say. They keep on wheeling out economists to deny the arguments of actual scientists.

    Climate science is still in it's infancy

    It has been more than a century since the El-Nino/La-Nina cycle was identified by climate scientists. When Scott went on an expedition to Antarctica just over a century ago he took some climate scientists with him.

    You have been conned by very expensive PR so it's not your fault, but it is somewhat pathetic.

  88. Nuclear power is hurting the environment by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    Check out some uranium mining sites sometime

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    1. Re:Nuclear power is hurting the environment by tomhath · · Score: 1

      All the more reason to recycle the spent fuel into more fuel.

    2. Re:Nuclear power is hurting the environment by blindseer · · Score: 2

      Check out some uranium mining sites sometime

      As opposed to a rare earth mine? Aren't they the same thing?

      Wind and solar requires mining. They actually require more mining than nuclear power for the same energy output. Wind requires over 500 tons of steel and concrete for every MW of installed capacity, about ten times that of nuclear, coal, and gas.

      Morgan Stanley did a study and concluded that to replace coal with wind worldwide would require 10 billion tons of steel and concrete annually. Current world wide production is 1.5 billion tons.

      People have done the math and we simply do not have the resources to replace coal with wind and solar. A person's lifetime supply of energy would amount to a lump of uranium of about the size of a beer can. We'd certainly have to move a lot of rock to get that uranium but it'd be much less mining than digging up enough steel to make the windmills to get the same energy.

      I have a feeling you didn't even watch the video.

      There are other TED Talks on this where people have done the math, I'll have to link to more of them.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    3. Re:Nuclear power is hurting the environment by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Wind and solar requires mining. They actually require more mining than nuclear power for the same energy output.

      It's not about the fact that there's mining. It's the fact that they never seem to actually keep the operation clean, and they're doing uranium mining.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    4. Re:Nuclear power is hurting the environment by blindseer · · Score: 1

      Uranium is not a rare element. If people are mining then they are digging up uranium. There is nothing inherently "dirty" about mining uranium and unique to uranium. Keeping uranium mining clean is trivial compared to the level of mining needed to build out enough wind power to replace coal.

      You also seem to have missed the point where we simply do not have enough mining capacity to replace coal with wind and solar. We'd have to dig up more than 10 times current output to meet the demand for materials. The level of mining needed to get enough uranium is trivial compared to the rare earth mining needed for wind power. Even less of a problem if we'd get the federal government to okay thorium reactors. In fact the current rare earth mining produces more than enough uranium and thorium. We're already mining it, but we're throwing it back in the hole we dug and pretending we didn't disturb it.

      If you want to see an environmental disaster then go ahead without nuclear. We'll be mining like mad to get enough steel. You think making concrete is "clean"? Sure, I'll look at uranium mining, if you go look at iron and limestone mining.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  89. Just a bunch of FUD (Re:You sow the wind ...) by blindseer · · Score: 1

    This time never really existed. Some scientists might have said that laymen cannot understand the raw data, because most of them can't, but the data is and has been publicly available on many places for a long time.

    That does not explain the rush to preserve the data. If it was publicly available, and people have been asking for it, then would not the desire to assure the data was preserved be a mere matter of making some phone calls to make sure the people that retrieved the data kept their copies?

    The university I attend offers degree programs in topics related to climate change and I know that there are students in these programs that would love to have this data. This is just one university of hundreds that has the facilities and interest to preserve this data. If they are frantic about preserving this data now then what were they doing with the data before? Should this data not already have been preserved in multiple locations by now? In places that even a "book burner" like Trump would be unable to seek out and destroy?

    This all sounds like a bunch of FUD to me to get some headlines. Congrats, mission accomplished.

    Oh, right, even "mission accomplished" is now a right wing conspiracy or something.

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  90. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by lgw · · Score: 1

    "Warming"? A random guess has a 50% chance of predicting "cooling" or "warming" correctly.

    Barely predictive as in 2 sigmas, statistically. Given there are hundreds of models, you'd expect several models that predictive if they were all random. Of course, they actually do better than random guessing, but not to the point that any given model would be accepted in most fields - heck, even some social science models do better.

    The discussion here is not about "warming", in case you missed the point, but about economics. How much will it cost to reduce CO2 by X, and how much economic benefit will we accrue by doing so. Do you get that?

    It would be very impressive for a climate model to be that usefully predictive, but then many fields of science are very impressive.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  91. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by lgw · · Score: 1

    You've avoided the question entirely.

    If we reduce CO2 emission by X, how much does that save us in damages, measured economically, by decade. That's the interesting question, and it's one that climate science could indeed make predictions about, if it were far more mature and predictive than it is now.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  92. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by dbIII · · Score: 0

    That's a question for economists you goose and a distraction from the physics.

  93. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sorry, I don't follow your religion.

    Yeah, they don't even have a Jesus.

  94. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by lgw · · Score: 1

    It's the interesting question, politically: should we reduce CO2 emissions, and, if so, by how much. We need far better climate models to even start on such a discussion, but also economists to finish the discussion. You've stumbled on my entire point upthread: when scientists start making such claims, they are speaking as unqualified economists.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  95. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by dbIII · · Score: 1

    Now you've called people in politics "scientists". You are using the disgusting little high school debate trick of pretending a huge number of unconnected groups is a single person - shame on you!

  96. Hmm by mitkey · · Score: 1

    I think the deniers don't like to admit (whether consciously or unconsciously) that GW/AGW is happening because the mitigation would be in conflict with their ideological or moral beliefs (turns out there is a correlation between opinion on GW and political beliefs). I wish they rather followed the example of George Carlin, who said fair and square that he doesn't care about humanity (anymore), rather than doubt the science.

    If that was the case, perhaps we'd find out that people who don't care about the future of humanity are in a majority, and perhaps I shouldn't be concerned about the future of humanity in the first place. At least I'd feel better when reading discussions about climate on Slashdot.

  97. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by lgw · · Score: 1

    Actual scientists also make such claims, you know.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  98. Re:Fear of nuclear power is hurting the environmen by blindseer · · Score: 1

    Another interesting TED Talk on the subject:
    https://www.ted.com/talks/davi...

    Dr. MacKay goes through the math on what it would take to replace fossil fuels with carbon free energy. A couple notable statistics is that it would take a 5x increase in nuclear power or a 20x increase in wind power for the UK to provide current energy needs carbon free. This is an older video, and a nuclear reactor or two have been shut down since so it's likely closer to 6x now.

    The resources needed for wind or solar to meet current energy needs for nations like the USA or UK are mind boggling. On the other hand we know we have enough manufacturing capacity to build up enough nuclear power to meet all our energy needs. The resources needed might still be mind blowing but it is manageable.

    Near the end of Dr. MacKay's talk he speaks of energy conservation in a way that reminds me of Amory Lovins talks on "negawatts". Lovins likes to give these very convincing talks on how we can solve the world's energy problems with energy efficiency and "green" energy but the difference is that after thinking about MacKay's talk you don't get the feeling that you've just been shoveled a bunch of BS. Lovins will give a talk with a lot of optimism but in the end he lacks any real numbers and a lot of hope that new technology can save us. Dr. MacKay gives real numbers and after doing the math with him it seems quite obvious that nuclear power must be part of the energy solution or we will end up with some very expensive energy that relies on favorable weather, favorable relations with neighboring nations (since there would be a reliance on freely buying and selling of energy), and technological developments favorable to wind and solar.

    --
    I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
  99. Websites are not meant to archive data by acoustix · · Score: 1

    All of this data should be archived somewhere else. Only a fool would keep one copy of data and have that one spot a web server.

    --
    "A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
  100. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    The scientific consensus IS that humans are causing it.

    I agree.

    What politicians, ACs on /. and bloggers think is utter irrelevant.

    And what scientists think is utterly irrelevant when it comes to deciding what to do about climate change. And, yes, doing nothing is a reasonable decision.

  101. Newborns? Oh, no. Nothing so limited. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have yet to see anyone worried that he might eat newborns

    I'm not concerned he might eat newborns.

    I'm concerned that he's not too unlikely to nuke them, and all the adults, pets and wildlife anywhere near them, as he escalates from his spoiled-four-year-old-like behavior on Twitter to spoiled-four-year-old-like behavior in the White House. When he "Rosie O'Donnell's" some foreign leader - China seems like a likely target at the moment - and the war of words escalates, his words from March 30, 2016, may come back to haunt us (for about 15 minutes):

    Matthews (interviewer): They`re hearing a guy running for president of the United States talking of maybe using nuclear weapons. Nobody wants to hear that about an American president.

    Trump (interviewee): Then why are we making them? Why do we make them?

    The man is an immature, habitually dishonest, narcissistic putz prone to knee-jerk reactions, and that's the nicest thing I can say about him. The people who elected him were duped - no judgement on why any particular person was duped, but overall, that's exactly what happened. Because in no alternate universe, anywhere, much less this one, is that man qualified in any sense at all to hold the presidency of the United States.

    It's going to be a tremendous four-to-eight years. Tremendous.

  102. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    The scientific consensus is pretty clear on what we need to do, and the consequences of not doing it.

    The scientific consensus only says "if you want to keep temperature increases below X, you need to reduce carbon emissions to Y".

    Scientists have no legitimacy determining what consequences society is willing to live with, or how we go about reducing carbon emissions.

  103. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    Okay, I present for my case the most recent IPCC report. It's peer reviewed, data published, methodology widely reviewed.

    I have the IPCC report. It says "if you do nothing, then in the worst case, this will happen..." And to that I say: I can live with that, so let's do nothing. Lots of other people are saying the same thing.

    Now, what do you have?

  104. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    No, using strongly worded but very general hyperbole is not the same as supporting very specific policy ideas like immediately stopping the use of coal. He supports phasing it out by 2030. Stop failing so hard.

    I don't need to use hyperbole lol, his actual statements are extreme enough.

    The actual point is that there is no consensus on how to address AGW. I hope you didn't miss that point while you were attacking a strawman.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  105. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by dbIII · · Score: 1

    In reality or in your lumped together strawman?
    Citation needed. Context is also important.


    Considering how you declare century+ old climate science is "new" your word is not going to be enough.

  106. Re:Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm pretty sure "worker" is an accurate term though. I don't think it implies monetary compensation. Just that they worked. Laboured. Picked cotton. Whatever.

    "Immigration", however, may not be.

  107. It has already happened, kinda... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When Jimmy Carter was President he had some solar energy panels installed on the roof of the White House. It was, of course, symbolic as opposed to practical or cost effective. When Regan became President, those solar panels where ripped out, also a symbolic act.
    Meanwhile, the Energy Department had been working on a problem with large electrical generating wind turbines. The mechanical gearing could not keep up with the fast changing spin from no wind to gusts of wind, and they burned out frequently. The Energy Department solved that issue by skipping a mechanical transmission and using electrical smoothing of the generated energy. But, the Regan Administration shut that program down and locked away those inventions. It took a decade or more and lawsuits to pry that info loose.
    Next:
    "Between 1992 and 1996, the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (now the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) sponsored development of a series of 19 clinical practice guidelines." Here is a link to see them; note that they are out of date: http://www.ahrq.gov/professionals/clinicians-providers/guidelines-recommendations/archive.html

    I happen to be a chiropractor. Guideline #14 on acute low back pain caused a bit of a ruckus; it said that a fair percentage of back surgery being done at that time was not warranted, supported by any evidence or improved outcomes. (It also had about 1/2 a page saying manipulation gave some benefit. Us chiropractors where ecstatic!)
    According to some poobahs in the chiropractic field, the AMA responded to this guideline and others by lobbying Congress to stop funding any more studies!
    Healthcare was entering a new era, where entities, government, researchers, academics, leaders in the fields, where becoming players in deciding what was reasonable care. Prior to that it was left up largely to the individual practicioner.
    Anyway, the AMA lobbying paid off, and no more guidelines were published after #19.
    However, #20 on headaches had been nearly completed. Some chiropractors requested the release that information, suspecting there may be a few lines in there supporting manipulation as having some benefit in treating some headaches. Eventually, it escalated to a lawsuit and years later that information was released. And yes, there were some tidbits supporting manipulation as being beneficial in some people with headaches.
    I believe this is a common game in governments in general, playing politics with the release of information.
    In my two examples the raw data was not erased, but locked away.
    But, we have the recent example of the CIA report on Torture, or the CIA destroying almost everything on the MK Ultra program. So, yeah. Do I think some of Trump's appointees would like to erase scientific date on climate control. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if they wanted to erase everybody's Social Security and Medicare Records to try to get out of paying either, and everyone's IRS data because they don't like the income tax, and that would really go a long way in defunding the Federal Government. Another one of their goals.

  108. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

    Ah, okay, so you accept the science, you just don't give a shit. As long as we are clear about that I don't think I need to comment any further.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  109. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by khallow · · Score: 1

    Plus the IPCC is notorious for exaggerating things. Just not feeling the urgency either.

  110. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    Ah, okay, so you accept the science, you just don't give a shit. As long as we are clear about that I don't think I need to comment any further.

    I do give a shit. I think objectively, our best choice is to do nothing. Climate activists, on the other hand, are willing to sacrifice millions for self-aggrandizement.

  111. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1

    our best choice is to do nothing

    For values of "our" that don't include the people who suffer to save you a few bucks in the short term. Maybe you are old and will be dead before it gets really expensive where you live too.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  112. All that phony data took time to generate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When I saw the "renormalized" data from earlier in the 20th century and it was all a degree or two less than what was actually recorded, it pretty much put the nail in the coffin of the "global warming" BS. After all, I remember back in the 70's when everyone was screaming about the impending Ice Age and scientists were talking about how the globe was cooling. The problem was that Al Gore wasn't making money off that - now he owns the software company that produces the "only" authorized software for calculating carbon-emissions. (That's why he's now a billionaire.)

    Yes, the "climate" is changing - its been changing for 4.5 billion years, and will continue to do so. Humans have as much impact as a piss-ant... Volacanos and other natural phenomena dwarf everything we can do. It is as simple as that. The "climate alarmists" over played their hand and that is why Trump was elected - among all of the other abuses from the left. He has a mandate to tear it back to reality - so all of the "cooked" numbers should be trashed. The REAL numbers tell the truth - upticks and downticks - with no statistically significant variance. Too many useless people are making money producing non-sense data - get them back to work on reality...

  113. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yes - it's BS... Plain, simple. You can spout BS all you want, doesn't make it true...

  114. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by dywolf · · Score: 1

    "just a couple of degrees"

    when talking about global averages, that's a fuckton.

    just a couple degrees cooler and we had snowball earth, with ice sheets that extended south beyond new York city.
    ice sheets 2 miles or more thick.
    for reference, that also meant that all of Europe , except for the very southern tips of spain and Italy and turkey were covered by those ice sheets.
    the only continents left unscathed were Africa (incidentally the period when hominids evolved, and homo sapiens spread across the land), the Indian subcontinent, china, and Australia. South America's southern tips would have been covered too.
    oceans were also 400 feet below where they are today.

    a couple degrees the other way, and we're back in dinosaur land, with a tropical Antarctica, and seas 200+ feet above current levels.

    so yeah...its "just a couple of degrees".
    what does it matter?

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  115. What's the worry? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The government is required to maintain its research. The problem is flaws in the data which decisions have been made from would invalidate regulations. Climate scientists have been playing a wack-a-mole game with the truth.

  116. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by dywolf · · Score: 1

    reality is not a religion.
    but apparently ignorance is.

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  117. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by dywolf · · Score: 4, Insightful

    no, you don't think.
    that's the problem.
    you aren't objective.
    youre just stupid.

    3/4 of the worlds population lives in areas where they will be displaced by rising seas.
    that's 5 billion people.

    where are they supposed to go?
    who takes them in?
    how do you avoid conflicts as a result of mass migration of such numbers of people?

    so no.
    you don't think.

    and if you did, you wouldn't then have the gall to state that its the climate activists who are willing to sacrifice millions.

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  118. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by dywolf · · Score: 1

    The climate models are barely predictive - still not outperforming the null hypothesis

    Blatantly false BS.

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  119. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by dywolf · · Score: 1

    There's a train a coming.
    You're on the tracks.
    It's a long ways off.
    But you can see it.
    And people are telling you to get off the tracks.

    And you're stating that staying on the tracks is a reasonable decision.

    You're an idiot.

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  120. LOL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Because it'd be harder than hell to have to manipulate all that data again and come up with the same results.

  121. How can we help? [Seriously] by corando · · Score: 1

    Let's not wait for a "Ask Slashdot" on how to retrieve large amounts of deleted research.... Anyone have good ideas / suggestions on what individuals should focus on if they would like to help? #ThinkOfTheData

  122. Re:US Scientists Scramble To Protect Mythology On. by tbannist · · Score: 2

    To quote the first sentence in the above link:

    The brain-dead leftist media isn't really in the news business anymore.

    Clearly, this site is a paragon of objective reporting...

    --
    Fanatically anti-fanatical
  123. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    There's a train a coming.
    You're on the tracks.
    It's a long ways off.
    But you can see it.
    And people are telling you to get off the tracks.

    That isn't what the IPCC says or the scientific consensus says. What the science actually says is that society will incur some significant costs $X from climate change 50-100 years ago, and that we could theoretically prevent that if we were able to institute massive economic changes that cost $Y now.

    Your analogy is misleading because it assumes that $X is infinite (death) while $Y is small (getting off the track). But that's not what "the science" or the IPCC say. According to the IPCC, $X and $Y are comparable in magnitude and, neither of them is lethal, and each just amounts to a small cost relative to GDP.

    To bring this down to a smaller scale, assume we're just talking about a family. What you're advocating is that your family spend $10000 right now so that your great-grandchildren in 80 years may avoid having to spend $20000 (in real dollars). To use your words, "you're an idiot". The rational thing to do is to leave the maximum amount of money you can to your grand children; instead of paying $10000 right now, if you just safely invest $1000 in the economy, your great-grandchildren will have $20000 to deal with whatever you fear.

  124. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    3/4 of the worlds population lives in areas where they will be displaced by rising seas.
    that's 5 billion people. where are they supposed to go?

    About 3 million Dutch are living below sea level and doing quite well. After WWII, West Germany accepted massive numbers of German returnees, is it doing poorly economically? Israel is built in an inhospitable country mostly from displaced people, is it hurting economically?

    We can't stop sea level rise or climate change; it's already a done deal. So these people will have to deal with the consequences no matter what. And the best way of dealing with it is by helping the rest of the world develop economically as rapidly as possible. The only proposals on the table result in massive economic costs for only a slight slowdown.

    you don't think, that's the problem.

    No, you don't think, and that's your problem. You keep advocating action on climate change as if any action could stop it; it cannot.

    and if you did, you wouldn't then have the gall to state that its the climate activists who are willing to sacrifice millions

    I certainly do have that gall, because self-righteous pricks like you need to understand the harm you are advocating.

  125. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    just a couple degrees cooler and we had snowball earth, with ice sheets that extended south beyond new York city.

    "Snowball earth" refers to a climate state more than half a billion years ago; global average temperatures weren't "a couple of degrees lower", they were -50C/-74F. What you actually seem to be referring to is the last glacial period (110000 to 15000 years before present) of the current ice age (5-7 million years ago continuing until the present). Temperatures were about 6C lower than they are now. We are currently in a warm period; without AGW, we'd be returning to that state again. Cold is bad. With AGW, we may avoid that fate.

    a couple degrees the other way, and we're back in dinosaur land, with a tropical Antarctica, and seas 200+ feet above current levels.

    Yes, and that would still be far preferable to the frozen wastelands that the glaciation cycle would return us to. Temperatures would be mild pole to pole, there would be more precipitation and fewer deserts, and plenty of new arable land would open up for people displaced by sea level rise. And sea level rise would be gradual enough (a thousand years or more) for human populations to adapt without even noticing.

  126. Re: Ha! by kenh · · Score: 0

    The entire point of articles like this is for politicized scientists to draw attention to themselves and their imagined plight under an administration full of political 'others'.

    They've likely lost easy funding reproving climate change using reams of carefully hand-edited climate data, and they are afraid they might slip into obscurity under Trump.

    Let's imagine their worst fears are realized, and the next administration wipes their data from public resources - so what? Weren't these 'experts' smart enough to make backups?

    --
    Ken
  127. FOIA was not always 'taxing' by kenh · · Score: 1

    Some worry the information could only be retrieved with a taxing Freedom of Information Act request.

    Until the current administration FOIA requests were trivial, under the current administration it too-frequently requires a federal judge to order the timely release of information from the self-declared 'most transparent administration ever'...

    --
    Ken
  128. But the sky is falling (again) by Shalhav · · Score: 0

    We gotta worry about the end of civilization in 1000 different ways. At a minimum, what would Slashdot report on?

  129. Junk Science? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What does Bill Nye, the science dogma guy, think of this?

  130. Re: Ha! by LinuxLuver · · Score: 1

    Why is it that America is so susceptible to the climate denier lies while most of the rest of the world just gets on with dealing with it? Is there a special be-dumb additive in the water?

    --
    Only boring people are ever bored.
  131. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    You apparently can't read.

    Go above and read what you wrote.

    You said,

    There are some scientists who say we need to replace coal immediately, otherwise civilization could be destroyed.

    AmiMojo called you on your bullshit and demanded you name the people you were trying to slander. You took up the challenge, even though you knew you made it up, and named James Hansen.

    So I looked it up and found out you're full of shit. He's saying the same as everyone else, that it should be phased out. He says by 2030. That refutes your claim.

    Then you respond by quoting his hyperbole. You don't even comprehend the words that were said; you can't even tell what is being called hyperbole. But you're arguing anyway; after you've been totally refuted. Pathetic. And then you yackity-yack about a strawman, look, you made the original accusation, and that's what I'm still on. I didn't even make an analogy, where is there room for a straw man accusation? You're failing harder and harder by your irrational insistence on being right even after being caught making a factually incorrect intentional statement. (also known as a lie)

  132. You mean Bush II, dont you? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Remember him? Deleted, what, 25,000 emails SPECIFICALLY ASKED TO RETAIN. Such short memories you rightwingers have when it's Hilary to pillory.

  133. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There are four possibilities

    a) humans are the cause of climate change
    b) humans do NOT cause climate change
    c) The surface data WAS tampered with
    d) The satellite data is wrong

    If c is True and d is False then what we need is a good housecleaning, also known as draining the swamp.

  134. its not the science the problem is the solution by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When people question the solution to climate change they are immediately labeled as deniers.

    I hate these stories that talk about "climate change" without offering any solution ideas to discuss. It is a waste of time.

  135. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    For values of "our" that don't include the people who suffer to save you a few bucks in the short term. Maybe you are old and will be dead before it gets really expensive where you live too.

    Well, whatever your on preferences in this matter may be, it's not a scientific decision, which was my point. Hence, scientists are neither qualified nor empowered to make that decision.

  136. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by phantomfive · · Score: 1

    You're an idiot. See? I can insult you too. Actually, I've been watching you for a while on Slashdot, and you don't say anything sensible.

    Do you feel better? My point was, that there is no consensus on what should be done about climate change. You got caught up on a stupid argument on whether one scientist says coal should be phased out by 2030 or immediately. You proved that right, good job, but it's a side issue. You completely missed the major point.

    --
    "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
  137. "Out there" vs "Readily Available" by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    as has already been pointed out in this thread there's terabytes and terabytes of data. After the initial fervor over a new study is over It's often stuffed on tape archives and the like. Available on request and with little fanfare.

    I'll put it in nerd terms: Remember the crappy port of FF7 for PC? That's because square didn't keep the data around. This is like that, but since you can't emulate the environment we're all going to die of starvation because we didn't save the data needed to fix crap.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  138. Earth's Axis Changing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I tried to find an earlier Slashdot news report on actual factual measurable change of the Earth's Axis. Funny. The news report is now gone. The Earth's changing axis doesn't get a thousandth of the coverage that global warming gets. Very interesting.

  139. Re:If the models were at all accurate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If the global climate models were at all accurate at predicting things, then they should be listened to. For now, that kind of prediction is still science fiction. Ergo, developing public policy on those models wouldn't be a wise thing. Reducing KNOWN pollutants would. We've got several hundred novel chemicals created each year with no idea of the long-term environmental impacts of them before they get released into the wild in products. We have nano-particle car exhaust pollution crossing the blood-brain barrier, linked to neurological problems...we can all tackle these things first..and ignore boogey men set up by partisan journalistic companies.

  140. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The best way to make a change is to attack problems that folks on all sides of the political issues agree on. There is broad support for reducing chemical pollution. There is strong market demand for an electric vehicle at price-parity with an ICE vehicle, which would shift pollution to central sites that could handle the waste more effectively. Some of these things will happen when the technology is there, others when we agree that we ought to stop giving out farm subsidies, so that organic farms can effectively compete, and we can reduce the nitrogen fertilizer runoff that has burned the Mississippi river delta...personally, I'll start believing the global climate models when the climate models are accurate at predicting SOMETHING. Until then, we don't know enough about how to solve the problem other than to be more efficient with our materials (cradle to cradle) and introduce restrictions on novel man-made chemicals with unknown long-term environmental effects.

    Remember, the IPCC summaries were originally written by politicians and filled in with cherry picked info. That should be enough to cause pause for anyone.

  141. Re: Ha! by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    Is there a special be-dumb additive in the water?

    No.

    It's much easier to explain than an off-the-wall guess like that.

    The fossil fuel industry is in its death throes and putting up a fight.

    Your first clue would be Trump's proposed nomination for Secretary of State, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson.

    The second would be his choice for Energy Secretary, former governor of Texas Rick Perry.

    Third up: Head of EPA, Scott Pruitt.

    So ... it's not the water.

    It's the money.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  142. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by dbIII · · Score: 1

    As I thought - you have nothing - take your propagandist bullshit to a fucking political site.

  143. Re: Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    True, unless they explicitly weren't compensated. Then the only appropriate term would be slave.

    Oh wait...

  144. Re:Ha! by CaptainDork · · Score: 1

    "Slavery" sure as goddam hell would be accurate.

    What
    The
    Simple
    Fuck?

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  145. Re: Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't want to insult but I think you are naive. Doesn't matter what I think. Judy sayin'

  146. Re:Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sure, but it doesn't fit into the sentence, does it?

    The Atlantic Slave Trade between the 1500s and 1800s brought millions of slavery from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.

    It's pretty obvious that they're referring to "slave worker" anyway, if that's any common as a collocation.

  147. Re: Ha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The current President ignores the law, perhaps they are concerned that the next President will follow suit, but in different ways.

    Anyway, if worst comes to worst and the data is lost I'm sure they can just make it up again when the Democrats get reelected. ;)

  148. Climate Changeroo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh boy, I suppose that since Trump eats ethnic babies and is going to destroy the world it makes no difference. Honestly hasn't this bash Trump nonsense gone far enough. I know it hasn't gone as far as the lefty's greatest fears and hallucinations, but apart from the political wrangling and fake news networks I've just about given up on anything I read or hear. I cannot think of a time when people were acting just so plain stupid.

    Fear mongering on mostly the left but on the right as well is totally out of control. The "disinformation" highway is pressing on to new levels of absurdity. Social media has people hiding in their closets and barricading the door. Get a life people.

  149. Judging by the UNCC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Face it, people. "Climate change" research has always rested in the hands of true believers and they have meddled with it. The NOAA has changed the way it records sea temperatures but failed to document what corrective adjustments it made (if any) when amalgamating this data with older data, and the UNCC was caught outright twiddling their data in the raw to make it reflect global warming when it inconveniently failed to do so - their internal emails documented this unequivocally. This lead to a UN internal "investigation" that whitewashed the whole affair and left the same people in charge of the data.

    Admit it, "global warming" is big business and there are billions to be made if you're in a position to fake data or might be in the future - or if you pretend to have a "solution" to it. When you changed the name of it from "global warming" to "climate change" because the globe wasn't warming you admitted in no uncertain terms you weren't doing science any more! If "warming" proves "climate change" and "cooling" proves "climate change" and "neither warming nor cooling" proves "climate change" - it isn't science! It's religion masquerading as science! Liberals claim they aren't religious but they will spout all kind of Gaia nonsense if you ask them about Earth Sciences. YOU HAVE NO CREDIBILITY!

    Not one of the catastrophic global warming models has worked out. ALL of them predicted far, FAR too much warming. Also, the predictions of what "bad things" could happen is relentlessly negative, and fails utterly to point out that the people most at risk for it are RICH PEOPLE who OWN BEACHFRONT PROPERTY! Don't give me the bleeding-heart routine about the "poor islanders", no one in government LEFT or RIGHT cares whether THEYhave land left or not, but you can BET that every hotel in Miami Beach is worried about losing it's slice of beach. You can bet the rich people in the Hamptons are FAR more worried about losing their cheap flood insurance on their expensive beachfront homes - homes that SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN BUILT WHERE THEY ARE IF YOU REALLY BELIEVED IN GLOBAL WARMING!

    If the Democrats really believed in global warming, why did they vote to rebuild New Orleans just where it was, instead of relocating it inland? Raising the dykes a couple of feet won't stop the NEXT cat 5 hurricane from wiping it out all over again. The same with the recent flooding. IF GLOBAL WARMING IS REAL WE SPENT A FORTUNE TO LEAVE THESE PEOPLE STILL PERCHED ON THE TAILGATE OF FATE HEADING FOR THE VERY NEXT POTHOLE!

    And in the final analysis, people, we ARE IN AN INTERREGNUM period between glaciations. There is ZERO evidence the next one is either delayed or coming early, and we KNOW that the height of these warm periods inevitably see the Earth WITH NO ICE CAPS. And, by the by, global warming IF and WHEN it comes, will convert tens of millions of square miles of land from useless tundra into arable land - or do we not worry about people STARVING any more?

    When the Federal government's "solution" to global warming is Solyndra and other rip-offs of the American taxpayer, it's LONG PAST TIME to smell the rat! The Democrats demagogue the issue UNMERCIFULLY, but the only real data we have DOESN'T JUSTIFY SENDING TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS IN PUBLIC POLICY! It DOES justify HONEST monitoring, and HONEST attempts to develop better models, and MAYBE, SOMEDAY, those models will help guide policy - but that day is not this one. Trump understands that, Democrats refuse, BECAUSE THEY DON'T LIKE THE SCIENCE. And THAT is their REAL problem with Trump! He offered to prioritize US - the people who SUFFERED under the Democrats - BEFORE he did the fat cat executives of Solyndra and their ilk.

    You want to understand what the "problem" is in the American election system? It's putting a CROOK up as a candidate! It's DELIBERATELY knocking down your only other candidate - a POPULAR candidate - in favor of someone who is just as comfortable in the muck as the UNCC is, a woman who has made a FORTU

  150. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by aberglas · · Score: 1

    We also need to remember that Trump lives in the umpteenth floor of a skyscraper. So even in the worst case he will remain good and dry.

  151. Re:"legitimate" dispute vs consequence of being wr by ooloorie · · Score: 1

    We also need to remember that Trump lives in the umpteenth floor of a skyscraper. So even in the worst case he will remain good and dry.

    Whereas the Democrats supporting action on climate change live in their government-insured multi-million dollar beach homes while their "green energy businesses" that do nothing to prevent climate change rake in billions in subsidies and "grants". Let's not forget that too.

  152. Willful obtuseness by Uberbah · · Score: 1

    If the data were really "out there" as claimed how could the government destroy it?

    These aren't 1 mb comma separated values files that can easily be shared between you and your Randian study group. A single dataset from a single study can take up terabytes of storage - and how are you going to ensure that none of it is tampered with? Try to copy Bitcoin's chain-of-custody verification process?

    Well I guess you'd be the expert to talk to on horseshit. since you seem to be shoveling quite the load yourself.

    I'm not the one engaging in conspiracy theories so lame that they would have anti-vaxxers and lunar conspiracy theorists shaking their heads in disdain.

  153. Expectation management - Let me help by eric_harris_76 · · Score: 1

    The Trump fans and the Trump haters will, once he's been in office office a while, be all disappointed and relieved to learn he wasn't all they had hoped and feared he was going to be, respectively.

    Or maybe they'll both be disappointed. Seems like some of them really enjoy being afraid of The Next Hitler (sm).

    --
    There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.