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New Analysis Shows Lamar Smith's Accusations On Climate Data Are Wrong (arstechnica.com)

Layzej writes from a report via Ars Technica: In 2015, NOAA released version 4 of their marine temperature dataset called ERSST. The new dataset accounted for a known cooling bias introduced when ocean temperature measurements transitioned from being taken in ship engine intake valves to buoy-based measurements. The warming of the last couple decades increased ever so slightly in NOAA's new analysis. This was a red flag for U.S. House Science Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX), who rejects the conclusions of climate science -- like the fact that the Earth's climate is warming. Suddenly he wanted to see the researchers' e-mails and echoed the accusations of contrarian blogs about scientists' supposedly nefarious adjustments to sea surface temperature measurements. Rather than invoking scientific conspiracies, issues like this should be settled by analyzing the data. A new study, led by University of California Berkeley's Zeke Hausfather, does just that -- and Rep. Smith won't like these results, either. To test the NOAA dataset, Zeke's team created instrumentally homogeneous temperature records from sensors available only over the last couple decades. As it happens, the Argo float data, the buoy data, and the satellite data each hew closer to the updated dataset that NOAA used. The older version (3b) gives a global average that is too cool in recent years, growing to an offset of about 0.06 degrees Celsius. The researchers repeat this same analysis for two more major sea surface datasets that are used by the UK Met Office and the Japanese Meteorological Agency for their global temperature records. Both of those datasets also drift cooler than the comparison data, but less so than NOAA's old dataset.

502 comments

  1. instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by mwvdlee · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You're not going to convince an idiot by providing evidence that he doesn't understand.

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    1. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by burtosis · · Score: 3, Insightful

      You're not going to convince an idiot by providing evidence that he doesn't understand.

      Due to climate science being too complicated to wrap up in one or two security blanket statements consisting of a pithy statement, we are all doomed to suffer the consequences. How many sheep carcasses, wolf tracks and turds do we need to find before people start actually doing something about the wolves, despite not seeing them personally?

    2. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's not that he's an idiot, it's that he will never - ever - admit human caused global warming is real. The 'R-TX' should be a hint. He's being bribed with campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry to be a denier. And his base has been fooled into thinking that Global Warming is some how a back door way to be taxed more and for the US to lose freedom or sovereignty or some other such nonsense that doesn't stand up to the tiniest bit of examination.

      And the fact that China is currently the World leader in solar technology should give everyone pause. And while the rest of the World is forging ahead with other energy sources - well the advanced nations - we in the US are clinging to 19th century energy technology like it's somehow the American thing to do.

      It should also give us pause that after OPEC stopped its market manipulation of oil, gas prices didn't fall that much. You'd think we'd be back down to $0.75/gallon gas, but it leveled off at around $2.00. Meaning as more nations industrialize and use more oil, oil prices are going to head up again. While the modern countries will have various energy solutions, we in the US will be stuck to the whims of the oil markets and subsequently be less secure: energy, geo-politically and militarily.

    3. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Fragnet · · Score: 0, Troll

      Why should he? Climate scientists haven't established Human caused global warming is real. So far we just have a gently upward trend starting about 400 years ago, very similar to the previous upward trends that were entirely natural.

    4. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      +1 . This whole discussion is irrelevant. They just won the White House, Congress, and the Senate in one swoop. Facts do not matter. We can be here debating the minutiae of this data until the cows come home.

      We need a different way to communicate the threat.

    5. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by geekmux · · Score: 1

      You're not going to convince an idiot by providing evidence that he doesn't understand.

      Much like when you hand a Representative a copy of the Constitution...

    6. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Facts? Pfah. I don't need no fucking facts. I know truth from Bible.

      Idiot.

    7. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by dywolf · · Score: 5, Informative

      200 years ago, and at roughly 330,000x faster than all previous known trends it's nothing like previous trends.
      go peddle your paid shilling somewhere else.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    8. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Heed your own advice and stop calling people homogeneous.

    9. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You're not going to convince an idiot by providing evidence that he doesn't understand.

      Due to climate science being too complicated to wrap up in one or two security blanket statements consisting of a pithy statement, we are all doomed to suffer the consequences. How many sheep carcasses, wolf tracks and turds do we need to find before people start actually doing something about the wolves, despite not seeing them personally?

      But is it really that hard to understand?

      Once you accept that the greenhouse effect is real - and grade school children have been showing this at science fairs, and greenhouse owners have proven it for years, it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that taking the Carbon that was removed from the atmosphere and putting it back in the atmosphere is going to have some effect.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    10. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by admin7087 · · Score: 2

      The simultaneously funny and sad thing about your statement is that even if that were true, it would be very wise and smart to invest in renewable energy for a long list of other reasons. Oil reserves will run out eventually, that's 100% sure, and so will natural gas. On a side note, most of the latter is produced by Russia, so if you want to be almost completely dependent on that country, please go ahead. Putin would be delighted to deliver large quantities of compressed liquid natural gas to the US. He wrote his final thesis at the then inofficial and secret KGB school on how to strategically influence and dominate other countries by exporting mineral and raw material resources including natural gas.

    11. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      In fairness to Lamar Smith, it's difficult to get a politician to understand something, when his campaign contributions depend on his not understanding it.

    12. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Fragnet · · Score: 1

      What about integrity? If you want to be taken seriously in future stop being a fucking shill today. Be circumspect. Emphasise uncertainty.

    13. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Once you accept that the greenhouse effect is real - and grade school children have been showing this at science fairs, and greenhouse owners have proven it for years, it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that taking the Carbon that was removed from the atmosphere and putting it back in the atmosphere is going to have some effect.

      The greenhouse effect in greenhouses isn't caused by carbon dioxide so it's kinda hard to use that as proof for anthropomorphic climate change.

    14. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by silentcoder · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Or to quote Neil De Grasse Tyson: "It's basic physics. If you keep adding energy to a system, but you slow down the rate at which the energy can leave the system then the system gets hotter".

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    15. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      Not just the advanced nations. Even in South Africa solar is the fastest rising source of new power, and that's despite a government that refuses to engage with it - and is forging ahead with an unaffordable nuclear build plan that won't yield results for decades - all because the key decision makers took bribes from (get this) the owners of the largest Uranium mine in the country - who would love to have more nuclear plants they could sell to locally (shipping nuclear fuels for exports is very expensive due to all the safety considerations and rules and South Africa only has a single nuclear power plant - which can only buy so much).

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    16. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Maritz · · Score: 2

      You're not going to convince an idiot by providing evidence that he doesn't understand.

      We're pretending that he cares about the evidence are we?

      No. Like everyone else over there, he decided it wasn't true the moment he decided he didn't like it. End of fucking story.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    17. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Maritz · · Score: 1

      How many sheep carcasses, wolf tracks and turds do we need to find before people start actually doing something about the wolves, despite not seeing them personally?

      Too many. Specifically, an infinite amount is not enough.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    18. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      Citation needed.

      Actually ditto for your previous post.

      Please provide me with links to peer reviewed scientific articles to support your claims that these figures are inline with past observed GLOBAL warming trends.
      No you don't get to count the medieval warm period - it was confined to such a tiny area that the global average barely changed *AT ALL* during the entire thing. In fact - there is NO previous GLOBAL warming trend that looked anything like this. Some local ones in very specific regions, but nothing like this on the global averages.
      Hell even the ends of ice ages didn't happen this fast (or anywhere close actually).

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    19. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Maritz · · Score: 1

      Yeah and the devil put the fossils in the rocks. That's where you're at now, climate denying twats. Your position is not sufficiently ridiculed.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    20. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Maritz · · Score: 1

      You are exactly the same as anti-vaxxers, intelligence design pricks, paleo-diet gimps, anti-GMO cranks, etc. Climate science denialism. It's you. Enjoy it.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    21. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by dehachel12 · · Score: 2

      solar and wind are crushing all other energy forms on cost, and EV will be cheaper to run/buy//maintain ... which is the only thing those people understand; so we WILL combat agw, whether they like it or not :D

    22. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by pipingguy · · Score: 0

      There's no convection in a greenhouse.

    23. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "But is it really that hard to understand?"

      That depends on the size of the lobby check you can write to the idiot.

    24. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "But is it really that hard to understand?

      Once you accept that the greenhouse effect is real - and grade school children have been showing this at science fairs, and greenhouse owners have proven it for years, it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that taking the Carbon that was removed from the atmosphere and putting it back in the atmosphere is going to have some effect."

      Why is it hard to understand? Just look at this simple example.

      Science fairs show that extra Co2 can increase the retention of sunlight and backyard Greenhouses show that retaining sunlight makes things hot.
      These are simple examples in relatively closed, somewhat understood and quantified systems.
      'Greenhouse Effect' is a label for the application of the above two principles in a world wide climate system.
      Removing the simplicity constraints of closed and quantified are why I'm having a problem with accepting that anybody has an understanding.

      Things on the yet to quantify interactions list include ocean circulations, chemical and organic reactions, stored energy, thermal reservoirs, chemical reservoirs, and human interactions. This thread is about scientists literally beginning to scratch the surface of quantifying ocean circulations.

      Climate science has a long way to go before it has the data to form more than a superficial understanding of how the climate system works.

      So, for these measurements, don't ships still have engine intake temp? Seems like they could continue to plot temperature the old way and then plot the new buoy data separately. This would separate the question of measurement adjustments from measurement.

    25. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by dywolf · · Score: 5, Informative

      while not large, yes actually it does have an effect, even on greenhouses.

      greenhouses work because glass (or plastic sheeting) does not well transmit infrared radiative energy. IE, its an insulator that blocks the transmission of radiative heating, or radiative transfer. visible and ultraviolet light passes through the glass and strikes the surface of the objects inside, including the molecules of air. some of this energy is then re-radiated as infrared light energy, ie, heat. Because the glass blocks the infrared from exiting the structure, the system becomes unbalanced.

      In thermodynamics terms, the greenhouse is an enclosed system with 1 input and no output.
      And therefore because Ei > Eo, the total energy of the system must increase, and this results in increased temperature inside.

      Now, it is completely possible to create a greenhouse (or simply, enclosed system) and control the gases inside, then measure the effect different compositions have on the total temperature increase when exposed to a source of radiative energy that can enter but not escape.

      In fact, that's exactly how it's been proven that CO2 is in fact a greenhouse gas as early as the 1800s by scientists studying the radiative effects of various gases, such as john Tyndall.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    26. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Once you accept that the greenhouse effect is real - and grade school children have been showing this at science fairs, and greenhouse owners have proven it for years, it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that taking the Carbon that was removed from the atmosphere and putting it back in the atmosphere is going to have some effect.

      The greenhouse effect in greenhouses isn't caused by carbon dioxide so it's kinda hard to use that as proof for anthropomorphic climate change.

      You need to read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    27. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by msauve · · Score: 1
      This discussion is irrelevant because because the summary conveniently ignores facts to make a political troll. As the article itself summarizes:

      ...it's important to note that we're actually talking about very small differences between global temperature datasets---too small to have real implications for our understanding of global warming.

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    28. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Or to quote Neil De Grasse Tyson: "It's basic physics. If you keep adding energy to a system, but you slow down the rate at which the energy can leave the system then the system gets hotter".

      Pretty basic indeed.

      And presumably the denialists have learnd to go back to sticking their heads in the sand. This business of using facts and figures and measurements backfires on them every time. Time to get back to faith based physics.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    29. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by burtosis · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Or to quote Neil De Grasse Tyson: "It's basic physics. If you keep adding energy to a system, but you slow down the rate at which the energy can leave the system then the system gets hotter".

      Sadly you lose most people at basic physics. I know it's hard for most slashdotters to wrap their heads around it but many people were brought up believing science and math will never amount to anything except a lack of dates and "cool" friends. Most people tune out science and all they hear is the teacher from peanuts going "whanana naaa naa whwahna".

    30. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      Oh, there was a similar global warming trend, one that was even steeper than the current one. Roughly 65M years ago. Followed almost immediately by a significant cooling event. There was also the warming event roughly 130 years ago following the cooling event of Krakatoa, but honestly nothing like this sustained increase over time over the intervening mean.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    31. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 4, Informative

      There's no convection in a greenhouse.

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

      From the article:

      The possibility of using carbon dioxide enrichment in greenhouse cultivation to enhance plant growth has been known for nearly 100 years.[18][19][20] After the development of equipment for the controlled serial enrichment of carbon dioxide, the technique was established on a broad scale in the Netherlands.[21] Secondary metabolites, e.g., cardiac glycosides in Digitalis lanata, are produced in higher amounts by greenhouse cultivation at enhanced temperature and at enhanced carbon dioxide concentration.[22] Commercial greenhouses are now frequently located near appropriate industrial facilities for mutual benefit. For example, Cornerways Nursery in the UK is strategically placed near a major sugar refinery,[23] consuming both waste heat and CO2 from the refinery which would otherwise be vented to atmosphere. The refinery reduces its carbon emissions, whilst the nursery enjoys boosted tomato yields and does not need to provide its own greenhouse heating.

      Go figure, eh?

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    32. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      unfortunately this has nothing at all to do with science. It has everything to do with politics and religion.

      republicans generally (this days) appear to want to say 'x isn't happening' if x is something that they do not see as 'good for business' or 'written in the bible'.

      It has nothing to do with whether or not they personally believe or disbelieve, can be educated/are educated. it has everything to do with their predisposition and desire to promote what they perceive as 'good for big business'.

      Like deregulation, for example: allowing businesses to throw toxic waste into my drinking water is good for business (in the short term) because it allows big business to avoid costs related to treating said toxic waste or disposing of it somewhere else other than my drinking water.

    33. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're not going to convince an idiot by providing evidence that he doesn't understand.

      I'm not convinced that many republicans don't have a sickness where any information outside of their worldview is automatically filtered until it fits their worldview. It is like republicanism is a type of religion, but whereas most religions takes some things on faith that cannot be proven, republicanism takes provable things and just assumes on faith that the proof that is contrary to their beliefs is incorrect. In short, many republicans believe that reality is wrong and they are right. It is not just arguing with an idiot. It is arguing with something that I'm not entirely sure would pass a turing test, which is odd considering that they can be smart in many other ways. I work with people that are smart enough to understand all of this. They simply either don't care, find excuses, take comfort in platitudes like the changes won't really matter, etc, etc..

      I can't see any particular way to have a rational discussion with those that are not, well, rational. It always ends badly. Of course some are better than others, and not everyone is this blind. Many are though.

    34. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by oh_my_080980980 · · Score: 0

      You do realize where the term "greenhouse" gases come from don't you. It's because certain gases act like a greenhouse to trap heat. Moron.

    35. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      330,000x faster than all previous known trends it's nothing like previous trends.

      No, check out this graph, which contains historical temperature reconstructions. You'll find other spots in (relatively recent) history where the speed of the change is quite rapid.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    36. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

      The Republicans didn't really win all three in the sense that Americans voted for Republican candidates because these voters liked the Republican candidates. The Republicans won because the voters disliked the Democrat candidates far more, and their only practical option was to vote Republican.

      Your attitude is a great example of why so many average Americans have come to despise the Democratic Party and the people associated with it.

      Facts do not matter.

      Facts do matter to average Americans. But what they've gotten from Democrat environmentalist sorts is anything but facts. These average Americans are presented with questionable climate data, full of "adjustments" and other shenanigans like that, going back only a very short amount of time when it comes to geophysical time scales. Worse, time and time again we've heard doom and gloom scenarios from environmentalists that never come to pass, even as the situation allegedly gets worse and worse.

      Environmentalists were loudly warning us about "global cooling" and an upcoming ice age during the 1960s and 1970s. Major cities were supposedly soon going to be under many feet of ice. When that failed to happen, then they switched to "global warming" in the 1980s and 1990s. Major cities were supposedly soon going to be under many feet of water from melted ice caps. When that didn't happen, they switched to the more general "climate change" in the 2000s and 2010s. For many Americans, especially older ones who have seen this whole thing play out, Democrat environmentalist sorts are crying wolf, and can't be trusted.

      We need a different way to communicate the threat.

      The first thing to do would to present actual facts. Avoid using data that has been massaged. Avoid making disastrous claims that don't come to pass. Avoid calling average Americans "idiots" and "retards" just because they don't implicitly believe everything you're claiming. Don't just ignore past climate change that was far more drastic than what we're seeing now, that happened tens of thousands if not millions of years before humans were capable of making any significant impact. Instead of showing total arrogance, try admitting that you don't have all of the facts, and stop claiming with certainty that humans are somehow responsible when they likely aren't.

      Democrats should be smart enough to realize this on their own, but here's how it works, in case you guys can't figure it out on your own: if you treat average Americans like shit, especially when they're actually being quite reasonable, then you shouldn't expect them to like you, and you shouldn't expect them to support you, and you surely shouldn't expect them to trust you.

      Average Americans don't like the Republicans. But when the only other viable choice is the Democrats, the Republicans look so much more appealing.

    37. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Layzej · · Score: 1

      Oh, there was a similar global warming trend, one that was even steeper than the current one. Roughly 65M years ago.

      That similar global warming event didn't go so well for contemporaries of the period: "The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event, also known as the Cretaceous–Tertiary (K–T) extinction, was a mass extinction of some three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth that occurred over a geologically short period of time approximately 66 million years ago."

      I hope our current event isn't actually that similar...

    38. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Burn baby burn.

    39. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      "But is it really that hard to understand?

      Once you accept that the greenhouse effect is real - and grade school children have been showing this at science fairs, and greenhouse owners have proven it for years, it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that taking the Carbon that was removed from the atmosphere and putting it back in the atmosphere is going to have some effect."

      Why is it hard to understand? Just look at this simple example.

      Science fairs show that extra Co2 can increase the retention of sunlight and backyard Greenhouses show that retaining sunlight makes things hot. These are simple examples in relatively closed, somewhat understood and quantified systems. 'Greenhouse Effect' is a label for the application of the above two principles in a world wide climate system. Removing the simplicity constraints of closed and quantified are why I'm having a problem with accepting that anybody has an understanding.

      Things on the yet to quantify interactions list include ocean circulations, chemical and organic reactions, stored energy, thermal reservoirs, chemical reservoirs, and human interactions. This thread is about scientists literally beginning to scratch the surface of quantifying ocean circulations.

      Climate science has a long way to go before it has the data to form more than a superficial understanding of how the climate system works.

      So, for these measurements, don't ships still have engine intake temp? Seems like they could continue to plot temperature the old way and then plot the new buoy data separately. This would separate the question of measurement adjustments from measurement.

      Removing the simplicity constraints of closed and quantified are why I'm having a problem with accepting that anybody has an understanding.

      Will we ever have a complete and total understanding of the effect on a global scale? Probably not. But the "it fails" team is behind pretty badly, and will need about 25 "Hail Mary" passes in quick succession to catch up.

      Things on the yet to quantify interactions list include ocean circulations, chemical and organic reactions, stored energy, thermal reservoirs, chemical reservoirs, and human interactions. This thread is about scientists literally beginning to scratch the surface of quantifying ocean circulations.

      And the surface we are scratching won't ever actually get smaller. You are making perfect the enemy of good. Ocean circulations -very interesting and might even produce cooling in some areas. Cae in point - The British Isles. Around the Latitude of Montana in the US. Much warmer than Montana due to the Gulf Stream. Palm trees even grow in Ireland. But Greenland Ice melt might distrupt the Gulf stream or re-direct it, and The British Isles become a much colder place.

      And all these other things - side effects, not negating factors.

      Climate science has a long way to go before it has the data to form more than a superficial understanding of how the climate system works.

      So, for these measurements, don't ships still have engine intake temp? Seems like they could continue to plot temperature the old way and then plot the new buoy data separately. This would separate the question of measurement adjustments from measurement.

      Engine inlet temp is a measurement of just that. It isn't specifically a measurement of ambient air temps. A lot of stuff going on there, corners with compression and expansion, proximity to other heat sources. With each ship again a different setup, it would make any measurements taken that way of little use.

      Scientists are not infallible. There is a non-zero chance that they are wrong, that human released Carbon Dioxide and methane for some reason act differently than naturally released versions of the same. But just because it is a non-zero chance doesn't mean it is not vanishingly small.

      It is now time for the deniers to step up to th

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    40. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by swell · · Score: 1

      "You're not going to convince an idiot by providing evidence that he doesn't understand."
        - It would be more correct to say that 'he chooses not to understand'.

      There are Believers and there are Skeptics. Scientists are almost entirely Skeptics. They test and test and test their theories, and if they can't prove them wrong they publish and invite others to prove them wrong. If nobody can prove a theory wrong, they tend to accept it as true (for the moment). Always doubt, uncertainty. Not everyone can live with that.

      Believers instinctively 'know' what is wrong or right. They require no evidence, tests or reassurance from unBelievers. Their lives are much easier, partly because they have no shades of grey to muddy their thoughts- things are either good or bad; black or white; up or down; etc. Such people are capable of powerful rhetoric that wraps their simplistic beliefs into a convincing model for other Believers. They can win elections, even as far as the White House.

      --
      ...omphaloskepsis often...
    41. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Layzej · · Score: 2

      There was also the warming event roughly 130 years ago following the cooling event of Krakatoa, but honestly nothing like this sustained increase over time over the intervening mean.

      Krakatoa erupted in 1883. The 30 year trend leading up to that event is only 0.04/decade compared with 0.17/decade now: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/h...

      Not comparable.

    42. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's right, CO2 which is 100-fold less important than water vapor is somehow determinant of Earth climate.... on a planet covered with 80% oceans...

    43. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by dywolf · · Score: 1
      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    44. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by pr0fessor · · Score: 1

      There have been multiple, over a dozen glaciations in the past 1 million years if your estimate of 330,000 times faster was remotely true then it would have happened while we were still debating it.

    45. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Don't lump anti-GMO into your crackpot category. There are very valid and very significant ecological issues with GMOs. They may be generally safe for humans to eat, but are most definitely not generally safe for the planet.

    46. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by RoccamOccam · · Score: 1

      You'd think we'd be back down to $0.75/gallon gas, but it leveled off at around $2.00.

      With $0.49/gallon taxes (average)? That would be amazing! In Pennsylvania, the tax is almost $0.70/gallon!

    47. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by admin7087 · · Score: 1

      Says who? The reality-denial troll? Maybe that gives you some integrity in your delusional mind, but not in reality.

    48. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      You're on the wrong side of it. Krakatoa blew its top and created a cooled down effect. There was a temporary dip, which had a year over year warming trend afterwards that was rather steeper than at any other time in history. If you're going to average temps over a decade, the effect will certainly be minimized.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    49. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by tempo36 · · Score: 1

      We should just invest in renewables anyway?!? Oh wait, can I pretend to be an idiot?

      "There's controversy about whether oil is really non-renewable. Some very smart people are challenging this hypothesis! http://lmgtfy.com/?q=oil+is+re..." /end sarcasm

      Sigh.

    50. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by RavenousRhesus · · Score: 1

      ... that he doesn't understand.

      Do you honestly believe he doesn't understand it? No, no, he understands it perfectly well.

      The problem is that there is sooooo much money and power available to him to continue trying to subvert the data.

      Not to sound like too big of a pessimist, but none of these political games are going to change until renewable energy sources start challenging (or even beating) fossil fuels on economic viability and scale. And, knowing politicians and how they always try to make the situation seem rosier for "their side", then we'll be at the point where we start getting on to them for trying to subvert data on how much wildlife our renewable sources impact and the like. Obviously it would still be a net positive from a total environmental impact aspect to use renewables over fossil fuels, probably regardless of how many birds are killed by windmills and solar arrays, but the point is that once the money gets to be on the renewables side then the politicians will try to make renewables seem even better than they are.

    51. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're not going to convince an idiot by providing evidence that he doesn't understand.

      Evidence? What is this "evidence" you speak of?

      We fortunates live in an era where reality is whatever we say it shall be, getting our information from the news sources that please us and denouncing those which do not.

      Oceana has ALWAYS been at war with EastAsia and allies with EurAsia.

      Now how many fingers am I holding up, Winston?

    52. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The idiots are not the questioners. The idiots are those who blindly accept. I'm not saying man does not contribute to GW, but here is an image of CO2 and Glacial cycles over the last 650,000 years: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/48906345922953602/. It looks like our own spike in CO2 is part of the normal earth cycle. Judging by the width of the preceding glacial period, the current high CO2 levels look both normal and somewhat overdue, and would be occurring whether man existed or not.

      Skeptics challenge data. Idiots berate the presentation of data.

    53. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Layzej · · Score: 1

      There was also the warming event roughly 130 years ago following the cooling event of Krakatoa, but honestly nothing like this sustained increase over time over the intervening mean.

      Looks like I misread. You're talking about warming following the cooling event of Krakatoa (1883). So I think you must be talking about 1910-1040? Yes that looks comparable, but it's not a separate event - it is really just the early part of the modern warming trend plus natural variability . http://woodfortrees.org/plot/h...

    54. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Layzej · · Score: 1

      You're on the wrong side of it.

      Yes. Sorry about that.

      If you're going to average temps over a decade, the effect will certainly be minimized.

      Usually we'd want to look at 30 years or more to see what the climate is doing rather than focusing in on annual variability.

    55. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That's right, CO2 which is 100-fold less important than water vapor is somehow determinant of Earth climate.... on a planet covered with 80% oceans...

      Where on earth did you come up with a ridiculous statement like that? Yes, Water vapor is the biggest greenhouse "gas" out there. But that doesn't mean that CO2 has no effect Or methane. That coal you might be fond of? That is not sequestered water is it? It is the sequestered carbon from the appropriately namedCarbiniferous age. This was an interesting time, with Average global temperatures of around 68 degrees - much warmer than today.

      Oxygen levels were a lot higher than today composing over 32 percent by volume. This is why the insects of th eage were so large. CO2 was around 800 ppm.

      Now here's where it gets interesting. Trees had developed Lignin which allowed them to grow very large, and a waxy substance developed that delayed decomposition. These trees were armed for bear Forests covered much of the land. These forests pulled a lot of CO2 out of the atmosphere, which over time cooled the planet. Finally by the end of the Pennsylvanian age, the earth had cooled enoughh that these tropical forests could no longer sustain themselves.

      But in the meantime, as the trees went through their life cycle, the dead trees would drop, and when the conditions were correct, they would be covered, compressed, and turned into coal. Sequestered Carbon it was. Millions of years worth, and finally ended when the planet had cooled to the etent that the tropical climate couldn't be continued.

      So fast forward to today. At the beginning of the industrial Revolution - generally attributed to 1750, we started digging up and using this sequestered material. And we've gone through a lot of it. In less than 300 years, we've re-introduced 800 terawatts worth of radiative forcing worth of Carbon that was sequestered over millions of years.

      That's a lot, in a very short time.

      So yeah Water vapor acts as a greenhouse "gas" that's really a very good thing. We need the Greenhouse effect to exist, as the Earth would be Arctic without it.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    56. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Since all data from before last Thursday is false memories implanted by God when he created the Earth, I concur with your conclusion that science has not proven anything conclusively.

    57. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're not going to convince an idiot by providing evidence that he doesn't understand.

      Due to climate science being too complicated to wrap up in one or two security blanket statements consisting of a pithy statement....

      It would also help if they stopped revising the historical data.

    58. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by budgenator · · Score: 1

      What exactly do you believe we are not doing and what effect do you believe will be achieved if we start doing what you believe we should be doing?
      Oh I know, I bet you believe we should cut emissions, Right? well the

      • US has cut emissions,
      • EU has cut emissions,
      • Russia has cut emissions,
      • Japan has cut emissions,
      • Indonesia has cut emissions,

      Global Carbon Budget 2016.
      What would happen if we cut emissions to zero in the US? well by the models used by climatologiists, it would decrese the warming of the planet from a projected 4-6C to a much cooler 3.5-5.5C!
      How could we make a real difference? well China and India is putting out almost as much CO2 as The US and India combined, and both are increasing their emissions as well, so obviously the real answer would be to either have India and China fall on their swords or start massive ocean fertilization.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    59. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      "Once you accept that the greenhouse effect is real - and grade school children have been showing this at science fairs, and greenhouse owners have proven it for years, it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that taking the Carbon that was removed from the atmosphere and putting it back in the atmosphere is going to have some effect."

      The greenhouse effect is correlation, not cause. Raise the temperature and CO2 will go up. Raise the CO2 and temperature will go up.

      If you truly believed in the greenhouse effect, you'd move out of the city and become a farmer- sucking Carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it in plant material.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    60. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 2

      Or to quote Neil De Grasse Tyson: "It's basic physics. If you keep adding energy to a system, but you slow down the rate at which the energy can leave the system then the system gets hotter".

      Neil has the best geek pick-up lines.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    61. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      "Because while we don't know everything"

      That was not the point. It's not about climate science not knowing everything. Everything is an unobtainable and unnecessary goal. I don't see much point in it except as a retorical distraction to make ignoring deniers acceptable.

      This is not about if climate science knows 99, or 100% of the story. (I wish it were.)
      It's more about pointing out that they know only a small percentage of the story.

      The deniers point here is that climate science
          1) does not know much compared to the complexity of the system
          2) is not very upfront in it's limitations

      BTW:
      The engine inlet temps this article is about are not air. They are measuring the cooling water drawn from the sea to cool the engine.
      The measurement point is a bit back in the plumbing in a hot engine room.
      So the measured temp might be a small bit ( 1degree?) higher that the actual ocean temp.
      The article appears to be about a disagreement on how to correct for this small difference in reading.

    62. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by johannesg · · Score: 0

      This is a question to everyone who is arguing so passionately in favor of AGW... What have _you_ done? Have you started to drive less? Buy a smaller car, maybe? Heat your house less? Put in led lights?

      Or are you only arguing on the internet that something should be done, by other people, paid for by other people - anything really, as long as you don't have to change your way of life?

    63. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      The greenhouse effect is correlation, not cause. Raise the temperature and CO2 will go up. Raise the CO2 and temperature will go up.

      So what you are saying is that it is an instant positive feedback loop, ehhh, no.

      If you truly believed in the greenhouse effect, you'd move out of the city and become a farmer- sucking Carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it in plant material.

      Growing crops is a null, except for whatever Carbon is emitted in the planting, fertilizing, growing and harvesting of those crops.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    64. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by budgenator · · Score: 1

      The greenhouse effect that is in the realm of science fair projects, isn't the same as the unfortunately named Greenhouse Effect in the atmosphere, and saying it is only make your ignorance obvious. The warming experienced in greenhouses is caused by the simple obstruction of convection of warm air. The greenhouse effect in the atmosphere is caused by the scattering of a narrow portion of the infra-red light radiated by the surface of the Earth as it is heated by visible light. This scattering is caused primarily by water vapor and secondarily by CO2 and an insignificant role can be ascribed to methane. This heat retentive effect is also negated by water vapor carrying the heat of entropy to be released as the vapor condenses into clouds and by changes in albedo caused by the clouds.

      Please try and keep up and do something interesting like learn on your own rather than parroting the stupid shit some other moron dumped into your head.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    65. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Are you fucking seriously comparing an extinction event to what's happening now like that's a good thing?!

    66. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      "Because while we don't know everything"

      That was not the point. It's not about climate science not knowing everything. Everything is an unobtainable and unnecessary goal. I don't see much point in it except as a retorical distraction to make ignoring deniers acceptable.

      Deniers need to come up with something other than simply denying. Or using apparent anomalies as disproof, especially years after the anomalies have been proven to no longer be anomalies, or calling Michael Mann an asshole.

      I'll pay serious attention to the deniers when they can point to some research that independently disproves AGW.

      And I won't hold my breath, just the same as I won't hold my breath for creationism science or tobacco industry lawyers.

      Meantime, stand firm in your faith, and deny deny deny. Denial is your core value, the source of your strength, and your Raison d'être, I would never deny your denial. Carry on. Fund some research.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    67. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Says the fucking retard who doesn't think AGW exists

    68. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What would happen if we cut emissions to zero in the US?

      The American people would burn down the capital and hang their leaders for forcing them to live like dark-age peasants.

    69. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by budgenator · · Score: 1

      Russia exporting LNG to the US Please, that's just stupid talk, while Russia is the #1 exporter, we're #7, and we just keep finding more and more; we just found 20 billion barrels of oil, 16 trillion cubic feet of associated natural gas, and 1.6 billion barrels of natural gas liquids, in the Midland Basin Wolfcamp shale.
      What gives Putin nightmares is Qatar, the #2 exporter building the Qatar-Turkey pipeline. I'd say Russian export are more of an existential thing than a imperialistic thing; and people are more dangerous when you threaten their existence than they are for the ambitions.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    70. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      Depends on the crop. Some weeds sequester more carbon than others. Some crops are not consumed, but end up as building material.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    71. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There may not be a cause and effect proof between global warming and CO2, but the graph at https://www.pinterest.com/pin/48906345922953602/ certainly shows a connection.

      Judging by the width of the preceding glacial period, the current high CO2 levels look both normal and somewhat overdue, and would be occurring whether man existed or not. Man does not want to be adding any on top of that.

    72. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by oobayly · · Score: 1

      " very similar to the previous upward trends that were entirely natural.", but it's not. I know others have posted this, but this XKCD does show what the current trend is in comparison to the previous 20,000 years.

    73. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by mattwarden · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You appear to be taking the straw man arguments too literally. Very few people say there is no effect from human greenhouse emissions. I have heard Lamar say this in hearings (something like "No one here would disagree that human greenhouse gas emissions affect climate innsome way."). Here are some questions to which we do not know the answer (though people will reply with claims that we do):

      1) How big is the effect of human greenhouse emissions compared to natural temperature variation?
      2) On climate time scale, is the net impact of human greenhouse emissions throughout all systems negative, neutral, or positive, and on what dimensions should we measure that?

      My beef with the climate change people is the attitude of omniscience about a complex topic that nobody actually understands. We have pieces of the puzzle, and the climate change folks overcompensate for uncertainty with a condescending attitude and bullshit vending. The "98% scientific consensus" talking point is a great example. It's garbage, but because climate change people feel vulnerable with normal levels of uncertainty in scientific subjects, they exaggerate and fearmonger in substitution for fact based discussion about what we do and dont know.

      There is another way to deal with this uncertainty: risk. Argue that yes, we might be wrong about our cost-benefit analysis of certain policy prescriptions because like any field of science, especially relatively new ones, there is a lot we don't know. But the risk is hugely asymmetrical. If we are wrong, we probably spent money on stupid projects and increased poverty levels and income inequality relative to what would have otherwise been. If we are right, human life will confront existential threats. So logically we should err on the side of the uncertainty that minimizes downside.

      This is the sane argument, but I won't hold my breath (pardon the CO2 emission)

    74. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Well, that's a dumb fucking question. Obviously, the answer will be: some have done lots, some have done something, and some have done nothing at all. We personally didn't own a car till I was past 40, and then bought a little electric car. We have LED lights, our electricity comes from a supplier using 100% renewables, and yes of course there's lots more we can and should be doing. Still, every little counts, and better to do something than nothing.

    75. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by admin7087 · · Score: 1

      Oh wait, can I pretend to be an idiot?

      You don't have to pretend that...

    76. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by mbkennel · · Score: 1

      > Environmentalists were loudly warning us about "global cooling" and an upcoming ice age during the 1960s and 1970s.

      No they weren't. And scientists certainly weren't.

      http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1

      The Myth of the 1970s Global Cooling Scientific Consensus

      Climate science as we know it today did not exist in the 1960s and 1970s. The integrated enterprise embodied in the Nobel Prizewinning work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change existed then as separate threads of research pursued by isolated groups of scientists. Atmospheric chemists and modelers grappled with the measurement of changes in carbon dioxide and atmospheric gases, and the changes in climate that might result. Meanwhile, geologists and paleoclimate researchers tried to understand when Earth slipped into and out of ice ages, and why. An enduring popular myth suggests that in the 1970s the climate science community was predicting “global cooling” and an “imminent” ice age, an observation frequently used by those who would undermine what climate scientists say today about the prospect of global warming. A review of the literature suggests that, on the contrary, greenhouse warming even then dominated scientists' thinking as being one of the most important forces shaping Earth's climate on human time scales. More importantly than showing the falsehood of the myth, this review describes how scientists of the time built the foundation on which the cohesive enterprise of modern climate science now rests.

    77. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There is a non-zero chance that they are wrong, that human released Carbon Dioxide and methane for some reason act differently than naturally released versions of the same.

      Actually, there really is a zero chance.

    78. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Rob+Y. · · Score: 2

      Kind of like those assholes that say "there's nothing preventing you from paying more taxes than is asked". Sidesteps the collective moral issue - and doesn't really provide you with anything solid to fall back on. Unless you think the reason you're not doing those things is that they don't need to be done. Having allowed our greed-driven political system to turn this into a political issue - given the idiotic tribalism of our politics - has guaranteed nothing will be done until it's too late, and the Koch Brothers have retreated to their inland estates behind their high security fences.

      By the way, plenty of people voluntarily do all the things you mention - and it's not enough. Yes, people sometimes need to be compelled (or at least prodded - or flattered) into doing the right thing. And it doesn't help to have people profiting off of telling them that they don't need to do anything.

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    79. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      In this case, I was making year by year statements, because the Krakatoa effects was sudden and of limited time effect. While it had a large impact, that impacted was dissipated by time relatively quickly. That actually makes me wonder how long the Chicxulub impact (500K times more powerful and threw 8000 times more material into air) took too clear.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    80. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      Due to climate science being too complicated to wrap up in one or two security blanket statements consisting of a pithy statement, we are all doomed to suffer the consequences.

      The world is warming. 99.999% of scientists say so.

      There we go. Was that so hard to understand? Or are you proposing a global conspiracy reaching every corner of the globe, a conspiracy that shows not national boundaries and respects no international disagreements between nations? A conspiracy that would involve every country's scientific institutions agreeing on a common topic with only a handful of dissenters who are proven wrong time and time again by that nasty thing call math?

    81. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by apoc.famine · · Score: 2

      One major issue is that we're talking about global climate change. And the bulk is happening at the poles right now. One person or group of people or country even isn't going to consistently see clear evidence of climate change. It's 5F/-15C right now where I live. Last summer was mild and pleasant. Are we still trending higher year over year? Yep. But it's minor enough that we just don't notice it. This isn't "sheep carcasses, wolf tracks and turds" level impacts around here - it's a stray hair on the ground every few months.
       
      To carry the analogy forward, a few of us did DNA testing on the hairs and it's 100% wolf. And the sheep industry is putting up "missing dog" posters around here.
       
      Now, this isn't true everywhere on earth, and some places are definitely seeing clear evidence. The problem is that it will take a large percent seeing this before we do anything, and at that point, there won't be much to do.

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
    82. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by tempo36 · · Score: 1

      Wow. Sarcasm totally lost on you apparently. Deep breath there buddy.

      Just pointing out that apparently nothing, even the limited supply of fossil fuels, is unchallengable if your head is far enough up your science-denying ass.

    83. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by publiclurker · · Score: 1

      ... That he doesn't want to understand.

    84. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by rochrist · · Score: 1

      Jesus. How are you considered competent to be left on your own?

    85. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by blindseer · · Score: 2

      Greenhouses don't work like that. Sure, some of the effect is due to radiative transfer and so on like you describe but the primary effect is by restricting convection. A greenhouse is warm because the warm air cannot rise away and allow cooler air to replace it. It's warm primarily because it is an enclosed space. A greenhouse would be just as warm, perhaps warmer, if it was made of sheet metal instead of glass, but plants need light just as much as heat so glass it is.

      There is no similar "greenhouse effect" on Earth since CO2 does not restrict this airflow. Warm air still rises from the surface of the Earth and releases the heat into space.

      People "proving" this greenhouse effect with enclosed spaces containing differing concentrations of CO2 have been shown to be poorly done, outright falsified, or the effects were much smaller than models suggest. The primary heat trapping gas in the Earth atmosphere is actually water. This is an effect much too complex to show with a laboratory experiment.

      --
      I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
    86. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Once you accept that the greenhouse effect is real - and grade school children have been showing this at science fairs, and greenhouse owners have proven it for years

      The warming in an actual greenhouse is not caused by the greenhouse effect, you realize?

    87. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by admin7087 · · Score: 1

      Oops, my apologies! I admit that with all this pizzagate nonsense and whatnot it has sometimes become increasingly hard for me to distinguish sarcasm and satire from real opinions. :/ (Shouldn't have resorted to cheap wordplay insults anyway...)

    88. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by budgenator · · Score: 1

      Sorry, The US and India combined, should have been The US and European Union combined,

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    89. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by budgenator · · Score: 1

      However, R. W. Wood in 1909 constructed two greenhouses, one with glass as the transparent material, and the other with panes of rock salt, which is transparent to infrared. The two greenhouses warmed to similar temperatures, suggesting that an actual greenhouse is warmer not because of the "greenhouse effect", but by preventing convective cooling, not allowing warmed air to escape. Greenhouse

      No need to deny it, CO2 is now added to greenhouses to fertilize the plants, not add to the heat inside, in fact the entire planet is being ferrtilized.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    90. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Another fucking religion thread on /.

    91. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Solandri · · Score: 4, Interesting

      greenhouses work because glass (or plastic sheeting) does not well transmit infrared radiative energy. IE, its an insulator that blocks the transmission of radiative heating, or radiative transfer. visible and ultraviolet light passes through the glass and strikes the surface of the objects inside, including the molecules of air. some of this energy is then re-radiated as infrared light energy, ie, heat. Because the glass blocks the infrared from exiting the structure, the system becomes unbalanced.

      In thermodynamics terms, the greenhouse is an enclosed system with 1 input and no output.
      And therefore because Ei > Eo, the total energy of the system must increase, and this results in increased temperature inside.

      This is the oversimplified explanation of climate change which I have problems with. Unfortunately, it is the argument parroted by nearly all the armchair climatologists as the reason why global warming is real and we must do something about it Right Now.

      From a thermodynamics standpoint, the rate of heat radiated by a black body is proportional to the fourth power of its temperature. The Ei > Eo state is a transitory state - it is only temporary. The temperature increases causes Eo to (quickly) increase, until Eo is large enough to match Ei.. So we end up with Ei = Eo again, but at a new, higher T. In other words, the system stabilizes at a new, higher temperature. This is why glass greenhouses don't continue to increase in temperature until the inside is hot enough to melt the glass. T^4 is a huge number. It only takes a small temperature increase to offset a large Ei increase (actually Pi would be more accurate - the rate of energy coming in, or power coming in).

      Unstable "runaway" systems are extremely rare in nature. The reason is simple - anything that's unstable tends to, over billions of years, destroy itself. So the overwhelming majority of things remaining in the universe are stable systems. There is no "delicate balance" of nature. There is no "runaway" greenhouse effect - all we're doing is shifting the equilibrium point. We know this to be true because global CO2 concentrations and temperatures have been higher in the past than they are today, and the Earth did not self-destruct - it is still around with life intact.

      Now, from all I've read, that new equilibrium temperature point is high enough to cause massive problems for human civilization if we don't address it. But the alarming layman's explanation of the greenhouse effect that you've given is just as wrong and misleading as the climate change deniers' explanations.

    92. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... spent money on stupid projects and increased poverty levels ...

      So projects that use less (carbon-producing) finite resources, which is the current policy for global warming, are stupid! One doesn't have to know much about economics to see that is unsustainable: It was an issue back in the 1980s, it's that obvious. One can even go back to the erroneous 'Future shock' written 1970, as evidence that it's been a problem for a long time.

      Poor people bear the brunt of any economic system but choosing policies that deliberately increase poverty makes them scapegoats for everybody else and means they lose their voice in government. Then rich people have a monopoly on setting policy and they can continue business as usual since it's already decided that poor people are expendable.

      If the global warming alarmists are wrong, anti-warming policies are an opportunity to improve modern life, not declare people expendable.

    93. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      What I find interesting about this is that Einstein had some of the characteristics of the Believer. He knew that bases of Special and General Relativity were true. He also knew that the Universe is deterministic, including at the quantum level. His convictions about relativity advanced science greatly. His convictions about determinism helped by forcing physicists to think hard about his arguments, which were wrong.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    94. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're not going to find any evidence an idiot can understand if it goes against something the idiot already knows.

    95. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Greenhouses don't work like that. Sure, some of the effect is due to radiative transfer and so on like you describe but the primary effect is by restricting convection. A greenhouse is warm because the warm air cannot rise away and allow cooler air to replace it. It's warm primarily because it is an enclosed space. A greenhouse would be just as warm, perhaps warmer, if it was made of sheet metal instead of glass, but plants need light just as much as heat so glass it is. There is no similar "greenhouse effect" on Earth since CO2 does not restrict this airflow. Warm air still rises from the surface of the Earth and releases the heat into space.

      Um ... wrong. Convection does not release heat into space, by the definition of convection and its lack of compatibility with this minor detail called a vacuum.

    96. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      The greenhouse effect is correlation, not cause.

      But there is a very good causal link between the two. The radiative absorption spectrum of CO2.

    97. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      1) How big is the effect of human greenhouse emissions compared to natural temperature variation?

      The latest IPCC report has a whole chapter on that:

      Chater 8: Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing (PDF)

      The upshot is that without human greenhouse emissions there would be a slight cooling trend.

      My beef with the climate change people is the attitude of omniscience about a complex topic that nobody actually understands.

      How do you know nobody understands? It's true that the climate system is very complex and I'll admit that nobody completely understands it but that's not the same as having no understanding at all. In studying an area of science you generally start off with the big things. For climate the big things are the energy coming in from the Sun, the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that keep the planet warmer than it would otherwise be and the geophysical state of the Earth*. After that you start getting into details that just modify things without changing the general direction. I think we have a pretty good handle on the big things and a lot of the more important details. Usually if you're studying something and you're missing something important it will show up as a hole in your work. I'm not aware of any such holes in climate science.

      * The geophysical state of the Earth includes things like the amount of water on the surface, the location of continents and mountain ranges, the topology of the ocean basins and a myriad of other things. It generally doesn't change fast enough to be a significant factor on century time scales but a supervolcano eruption or asteroid strike can change things rather suddenly.

    98. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by riverat1 · · Score: 2

      There's nothing pristine about the historical data. In the case of sea surface temperatures they first used wooden buckets thrown over the side then hauled to the deck to have a thermometer stuck in it, then they switched to canvas buckets that have some issues with evaporative cooling. Then they started using engine cooling water intake ports, those have a problem of producing slightly warm readings due to their proximity to the engine room. Nowadays we have buoys and Argo floats. Since each of those methods produces its own biases you have to do something to bring them together for a complete record.

    99. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by silentcoder · · Score: 2

      - Oceans are not "water vapour".
      - They are 70% of the surface, not 80%
      - The average time a water molecule spends in the atmosphere is 11 days. For CO2 it's 80 years. The CO2 makes up the difference in impact by doing it for a crap load longer.
      - Heating from CO2 leads to more evaporation which increases the amount of water vapor.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    100. Re: instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      If you talked to some climate scientists you would discover that they don't consider themselves omniscient, in general. The position they have is based on research, but things like the distribution of positive and negative effects are not known in detail and are the subject of debate and research. A complicating factor in the latter is that human development continues and specific new varieties of crops resistant to higher temperatures* might be developed.

      * It seems to be common to assume new crops will be grown in high latitudes, but it's worth comparing land mass in the tropics and high latitudes on a globe, not a Mercator projection, and then comparing against regional population trends.

    101. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      a green house warms due to it restricting convective losses, please show how the planet is surrounded in glass due to Co2.

    102. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      lol

      the major heating component is restricting convection...

      Radiative is minor in comparison..

      so how the fuck does Co2 stop convection..

      either explain that or stop calling it greenhouse effect dumb fuckers

    103. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah if you like sitting in the dark and paying a fucking fortune for the privilege.

      You in your comfortable well paid do fuck all job, are forcing more and more of the poor into poverty due to sucking subsidies and raising their cost of energy.

      If you install solar without banks of fucking batteries, you are a subsidy sucking fucking jerk, get off the fucking grid stop making the poor pay for your power!.

    104. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by dywolf · · Score: 2

      CO2 is the driver of a positive-feedback loop involving the water vapor portion of the water cycle, as it relates to water vapors heat trapping abilities.

      There, you've been edumicated.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    105. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by dywolf · · Score: 1

      you need to re-read the definition of correlation.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    106. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by dywolf · · Score: 1

      They call it the greenhouse effect because they, smart men like John Tyndall and Alexander Graham Bell, realized that the atmosphere of the earth functions and acts much the same way as the glass or plastic sheeting of a greenhouse, and the planetary system we call earth thus functions much like a greenhouse as it drifts through space: it prevents the energy from escaping the system into the surrounding medium.

      the precise mechanics are more nuanced:
      -in a greenhouse both convective and radiative loss are prevented by the glass/sheeting.
      -in the earth system, convective loss is prevented by the vacuum of space...ie, no molecules for convection to act up. and radiative loss is prevented by the molecules of atmosphere as they absorb energy of one wavelength and re-radiate at other wavelengths, chiefly infrared, ie heat.

      but the effect is the same, so the analogy holds.

      and, as ol oscoc points out, pumping CO2 into greenhouses not only directly affects the plants, but also affects the thermal properties of the greenhouse, increasing its heat efficiency.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    107. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why should he? Climate scientists haven't established Human caused global warming is real. So far we just have a gently upward trend starting about 400 years ago, very similar to the previous upward trends that were entirely natural.

      Coming from someone who considers Pascal's Wager a valid argument for endorsing the Magic Skydaddy, the denial of AGW is unfathomably stupid. Well unfathomably stupid until we ready the second statement about upward trend; which is so far from accurate that it's an outright lie.

    108. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The Republicans didn't really win all three in the sense that Americans voted for Republican candidates because these voters liked the Republican candidates. The Republicans won because the voters disliked the Democrat candidates far more, and their only practical option was to vote Republican.

      Your attitude is a great example of why so many average Americans have come to despise the Democratic Party and the people associated with it.

      Facts do not matter.

      Facts do matter to average Americans. But what they've gotten from Democrat environmentalist sorts is anything but facts. These average Americans are presented with questionable climate data, full of "adjustments" and other shenanigans like that, going back only a very short amount of time when it comes to geophysical time scales. Worse, time and time again we've heard doom and gloom scenarios from environmentalists that never come to pass, even as the situation allegedly gets worse and worse.

      Environmentalists were loudly warning us about "global cooling" and an upcoming ice age during the 1960s and 1970s. Major cities were supposedly soon going to be under many feet of ice. When that failed to happen, then they switched to "global warming" in the 1980s and 1990s. Major cities were supposedly soon going to be under many feet of water from melted ice caps. When that didn't happen, they switched to the more general "climate change" in the 2000s and 2010s. For many Americans, especially older ones who have seen this whole thing play out, Democrat environmentalist sorts are crying wolf, and can't be trusted.

      We need a different way to communicate the threat.

      The first thing to do would to present actual facts. Avoid using data that has been massaged. Avoid making disastrous claims that don't come to pass. Avoid calling average Americans "idiots" and "retards" just because they don't implicitly believe everything you're claiming. Don't just ignore past climate change that was far more drastic than what we're seeing now, that happened tens of thousands if not millions of years before humans were capable of making any significant impact. Instead of showing total arrogance, try admitting that you don't have all of the facts, and stop claiming with certainty that humans are somehow responsible when they likely aren't.

      Democrats should be smart enough to realize this on their own, but here's how it works, in case you guys can't figure it out on your own: if you treat average Americans like shit, especially when they're actually being quite reasonable, then you shouldn't expect them to like you, and you shouldn't expect them to support you, and you surely shouldn't expect them to trust you.

      Average Americans don't like the Republicans. But when the only other viable choice is the Democrats, the Republicans look so much more appealing.

      Congratulations on successfully completing gaslighting 101 you lying sack of shit.

    109. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by budgenator · · Score: 1

      John Tyndall FRS (2 August 1820 – 4 December 1893) well before R. W. Wood's experiment in 1909, Alexander Graham Bell (March 3, 1847 – August 2, 1922) would have been around 59 and may have been unaware or uninterested in wood's experiment.
      I'll grant you that air composition may have some slight effects on greenhouse temperature,but the vast majority of the effects achieved in greenhouses are due to the restriction of convection, and any effect measured in science fair experiments is more likely to be due to poor experimental controls or instrument error that due to real effects.

      "R. W. Wood demonstrated the misconception experimentally more than 60 years ago (Wood, 1909) and recently in an analytical manner by Businger (1963). Fleagle and Businger (1963) devoted a section of their text to the point, and suggested that radiation trapping by the earth’s atmosphere should be called ‘atmosphere effect’ to discourage use of the misnomer. Munn (1966) reiterated that the analogy between ‘atmosphere’ and ‘greenhouse’ effect ‘is not correct because a major factor in greenhouse climate is the protection the glass gives against turbulent heat losses’. In one instance, Lee (1966), observed that the net flux of radiant energy actually was diminished by more than 10% in a 6-mil polyvinyl enclosure. " Richard Lee in The Journal of Applied Meteorology, 1973:

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    110. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They guy forgot to add that CO2 is Vital for Life! That's my favorite argument.

    111. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      is proportional to the fourth power of its temperature.

      Right there you lost the poor congresscriter. Do you really think he knows what the "power of 4" is? Do you really think he passed math in school?

      Math is hard.
      or at least for some.....
      Why do you think he is a Congressman. He couldn't get a real job he's to dumb and lies too much.

    112. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or to quote Neil De Grasse Tyson: "It's basic physics. If you keep adding energy to a system, but you slow down the rate at which the energy can leave the system then the system gets hotter".

      Simplify: Add calories, don't burn them - you get fat ... and hot.

    113. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      Or to quote Neil De Grasse Tyson: "It's basic physics. If you keep adding energy to a system, but you slow down the rate at which the energy can leave the system then the system gets hotter".

      "Greenhouses don't work by the so-called 'greenhouse effect!'"
      "Yeah, the greenhouse effect is more like the way a blanket works"
      "What? That's ridiculous!"
      "No, they both reduce the rate of loss of heat"
      "That's totally different"
      "How?"
      "If you don't understand, you're so dumb I can't explain it to you"
      -Every comments column, everywhere, always

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
    114. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      That's right, CO2 which is 100-fold less important than water vapor is somehow determinant of Earth climate.... on a planet covered with 80% oceans...

      you understand that the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere depends on the temperature, right? Your argument is analogous to arguing that the furnace coming on has nothing to do with the temperature in the house dropping, because it's obviously determined by the thermostat.

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
    115. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by HornWumpus · · Score: 1

      And the positive feedback coefficient (between CO2 and H2O vapor) is the single biggest fudge able number in all climate models.

      Pulled from a dark place, can be used to get the model to tell you anything you want it to.

      --
      John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
    116. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by GPS+Pilot · · Score: 1

      the attitude of omniscience about a complex topic that nobody actually understands

      There's one environmental scientist who has shown some humility in this regard:
      "The problem is we don't know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books -- mine included -- because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn't happened." - James Lovelock

      If we are right, human life will confront existential threats.

      Just a few tens of millions of years ago, natural CO2 levels were "thousands of parts per million" (cf. the current level of 405 ppm). At that time, Antarctica was covered with lush beech forests. As you know, today Antarctica is a barren wasteland, so the subsequent CO2 decrease was NOT good for life.

      Also note that there is no scenario of fossil fuel usage that could ever get us back to thousands of parts per million.

      Climate change may be a financial threat to those who own beachfront real estate, but given the above facts, "existential threat to human life" is the kind of alarmism Dr. Lovelock is decrying these days.

      --
      That that is is that that that that is not is not.
    117. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      You're not going to convince an idiot by providing evidence that he doesn't understand.

      Due to climate science being too complicated to wrap up in one or two security blanket statements consisting of a pithy statement, we are all doomed to suffer the consequences. How many sheep carcasses, wolf tracks and turds do we need to find before people start actually doing something about the wolves, despite not seeing them personally?

      "CO2 absorbs energy at the frequencies the earth emits." If that was enough for Svante Arrhenius, it should be enough for anybody else who feels qualified to have an informed opinion.

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
    118. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      You're not going to convince an idiot by providing evidence that he doesn't understand.

      We're pretending that he cares about the evidence are we?

      No. Like everyone else over there, he decided it wasn't true the moment he decided he didn't like it. End of fucking story.

      "What you're saying may paint a overwhelmingly convincing picture, however I am being paid to believe it is not true"

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
    119. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      actually you can never convince anyone by facts alone

      and again this continues to ignore the real discussion - what to do about it - if anything.

    120. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If unstable things destroy themselves then what is the future for humans? The human race seems to be quite unstable.
      So, maybe we can ignore the whole temperature thing.
      George

    121. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      Of course, who even CARES how greenhouses work ? The greenhouse effect describes what happens in the atmosphere, what hapens in your bloody panting shed is about as relevant as the exact chemical formulation that produces methane in your bowel and makes you fart when you eat beans.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    122. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Termites didn't evolve until after the Carboniferous. This matters because the primary reason fossil fuels made it to fossilization is that plants laid on the ground uneaten. Barring the extermination of termites, the planet, no matter how long it lasts, will never see another donation of ancient sunlight like the one we're burning through today.

    123. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You (and the OP) forget the part where the Sun continuously sends heat. It's not only heat radiated from inside the greenhouse, but the portion of the heat that does not make it back out, continues to heat the greenhouse.

      Glass does not completely block IR, it allows a good portion of it through. That part then either converts to heat or is reflected back off objects inside the greenhouse. But when it goes back out, only a part of it is transmitted back to outside, and the rest is either absorbed or reflected back inside.

      This over time means a net substantial increase that is not necessarily stabilizing at a reasonable temperature. It is fine in cold winters because glass conducts heat to the outside, but that's why greenhouses in the summer (if they are even used) are always partially shaded and vented to remove the heat via air.

    124. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by dave420 · · Score: 1

      And the sea levels dropped, making more land for wildlife. Your argument is severely limited in scope, which makes it less than useful, and misleading.

    125. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by tingentleman · · Score: 1

      Interesting points (contradicting to my own thoughts to now), and helpfully visualised - thanks. The big question then, is what will the equilibrium temperature be?

    126. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by dave420 · · Score: 1

      China is working massively to reduce its emissions. Your point is based on out of date, or just incorrect, information.

    127. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by dywolf · · Score: 1

      Oh F off troll.
      The relationship is well documented and well understood.
      Just because YOU don't understand the relationship or acknowledge the accuracy of the models, doesn't mean they don't exist.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    128. Re:instrumentally homogeneous temperature records by budgenator · · Score: 1

      The rate of increase is tapering off slightly, I have little faith in the Chinese Dog and Pony show, and you completely missed the point. The point is using the currently used models and their fallacious values for Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity, we can't do enough to keep the temperature increase below 2K by the end of the century. No US or EU emissions period would result in a 3-4K temp increase.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
  2. Re:Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This. Citizens of the world and California are calling for the US and EU to lead on this but nobody, NOBODY, is doing their part. Somebody (else) do something.

  3. Re: Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are you addressing a collection of countries as a single individual? Do I need to point out how .. Uh .. Dumb that is?

  4. Re:Who cares? by mwvdlee · · Score: 5, Informative

    Bullshit.
    It's the kind of obvious, blatant, easily disprovable but nonetheless convenient lie that leads to electing bullshit presidents.

    http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/w...

    http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/s...

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  5. Republican from Texas by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why am I so not surprised by this?

  6. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by DarkOx · · Score: 2

    Right an what is more likely? A sensor on a mostly passive buoy reads cold or sensor on a ship with people, heaters, engines, and everything else near by reads hot?

    --
    Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
  7. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1. I do. And yes they have.
    2. No.

    Climate science has become like medicine: people read shit on the internet and think they know more than the experts.

  8. Re:Who cares? by locofungus · · Score: 4, Informative

    From where are you getting your figures?

    http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/s...

    That claims they're down 22% from 1990 levels.

    Those exclude LULUCF (land use changes) - perhaps you have inclusive figures? (Although I'd be surprised if LULUCF could be bigger than the significant reductions in everything else.)

    --
    God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
  9. Harness economic self interest by sjbe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Suddenly he wanted to see the researchers' e-mails and echoed the accusations of contrarian blogs about scientists' supposedly nefarious adjustments to sea surface temperature measurements. Rather than invoking scientific conspiracies, issues like this should be settled by analyzing the data.

    Most people wouldn't understand the data if you clubbed them over the head with it. Doubly so for politicians with no scientific training. The problem in the argument is that one side of this argument isn't arguing with facts and is actually incentivized to demonize any data that contradicts their pre-determined conclusions. They see the argument in one of two ways (sometimes both). A) They see climate change data as a threat to their personal interests - usually financial ones. If you are a politician sponsored by a fossil fuel company, this threatens your self interest. B) They see the climate change argument as something coming from the Other. It's a tribal thing - that Other group supports it ergo it must be bad. Often they frame it as a conspiracy despite the absurdity of that statement.

    So in either case you have people who have no incentive whatsoever to acknowledge the data because it threatens what they hold dear. Rationality plays no role in it. The best way to combat this is to frame the argument in such a way as to align their incentives with the data. Point out how much money there is to be made/saved by working on the problem. Put it front and center as an economic issue. Figure out how to align solutions to the problem with economic and political self interest. Until you do that you're going to have this problem of certain politically powerful factions sticking their fingers in their ears and getting in the way.

    1. Re:Harness economic self interest by dcollins · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't that strategy play directly into the "it's a money grab conspiracy" argument? Other fields of scientific research -- paleontology, astronomy, etc. -- don't have to sell themselves with economic windfall arguments.

      At some point, the economic strategy of limitless growth simply must come to an end. This seems the mostly likely phenomenon on which it breaks.

      --
      We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
    2. Re:Harness economic self interest by asylumx · · Score: 2

      The problem in the argument is that one side of this argument isn't arguing with facts and is actually incentivized to demonize any data that contradicts their pre-determined conclusions.

      In other words, it's politicized. Also, I would argue that neither side is actually arguing with facts. The facts may lean to one side, but that doesn't mean that the people arguing it actually have considered those facts.

    3. Re:Harness economic self interest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've long argued that the right dug in their heels and let the left dictate ideas and solutions. The notion of self reliance is very friendly to those on the right and furthering green energy enables that in an economical way. (It's much more economical AND self reliant to have your own wind turbine or solar panels than it is to run your own generator with fuel.) It also achieves this long sought after energy independence, which is impossible when you're buying something from a global market. Domestic supply ensures you don't have to invade and topple regimes in other parts of the world, not that you'll have low prices.

      It doesn't matter. Eventually, at some point in the future, it won't make sense to extract the stuff. If you have to burn 1.01 barrels of oil to extract 1 barrel of oil it isn't worth doing anymore. That is EROI (energy return on investment) which can dictate financial ROI. The EROI for shale oil is below firewood, natural gas, wind power, and nuclear power. The only thing that has a worse EROI is biodiesel. That's pretty bad.

    4. Re:Harness economic self interest by radl33t · · Score: 1

      The problem is not economic. It has been shown for some time that 1) the fastest conversion to a low-carbon economy is the cheapest path and 2) most conversions will increase global economic prosperity within a generation and for all time.

      The issue is that there is no conceivable way for existing fossil fuel interests to do anything but forestall progress for their own temporary benefit. They could have been harbingers of change and subsequently vacuumed up a large controlling portion of economic prosperity. But they didn't and now they probably can't (absent massive, as in 100b's of investment). This is the sad and usual shape that these power struggles take. Idiots in power resist change too long until it becomes too late for them. In this case they are harming the economic prosperity of most other people and are responsible for the cumulative damage their resistance causes.

      China is now the de facto renewable energy supplier of the world. Even as the proportion of equipment cost to total cost declines, they will continue to capture increasing fractions of global energy expenditures. This is -already- a multi 100 billion dollar industry growing at 20% on its way to become a multi-trillion dollar industry, which will put it among the top 10 industries on earth. If transportation goes electric, it will eat into the oil industry and become the single largest energy industry on earth and potentially rival the 5-6 trillion dollar agricultural industry. China has a decade lead and while competitors retreat, they accelerate.

      Solar power is already several times cheaper than oil for electricity production. A modest rate of 6% cost of battery reduction (half recent rate) and sufficient resources supply to create ~100 TWh of storage and solar powered electric vehicles will be cheaper than all gasoline [pure capex, they'll hit this point early when opex is also considered].

      There is nothing to refute here. The visionaries understood this trajectory in the 60s. Smart guys recognized it in the 80s/90s. The barely competent (myself) recognized in the early 00s. It will become clear to everyone, at their own time. Those who stand to lose power and control will be the last.

    5. Re:Harness economic self interest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      your statement shows no bias whatsoever. good grief.

    6. Re:Harness economic self interest by argStyopa · · Score: 0

      Data: there is a (in geologic terms) near instant pulse of CO2 and temperature apprx every 120k years. This goes back at LEAST the last 3 million years, arguably back 5+ million years.

      Data: the last such pulse was about 120k years ago. So we're due.

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

      Clearly, none of the previous pulses was caused by SUVs and nasty humans. If we observe a cycle happening dozens of times, but assert that THIS TIME it's somehow being driven a different mechanism, certainly the onus is on us to explain conclusively how & why the previous mechanism stopped and a new mechanism took over.

      Data: The bulk of earth's history has been at ambient temperatures higher (sometimes much higher) than the Pleistocene and Holocene. If one was to predict a planetary 'norm' over history, we're certainly currently far below it.

      Data: There have been countless FUD-alerts since the 1970s identifying the bane of the human species for any number of reasons, ALL of which have been proved either completely false or grossly overblown: peak oil, nuclear power, fresh water, DDT, overpopulation, food shortages, etc. The 'Cry Wolf' effect is a real thing. Things blamed on global warming: http://www.whatreallyhappened....

      Data: the promulgators of AGW have been repeatedly 'caught' massaging data (hockey sticks), creating data ('interpolation' of missing stations), adjusting data (http://realclimatescience.com/2016/12/100-of-us-warming-is-due-to-noaa-data-tampering/), and when called to produce it, saying "the dog ate my homework" (https://climateaudit.org/2009/08/11/cru-responds/). Hell, they've flat-out lied about the "97% of climate scientists agree" line for years (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/425232/climate-change-no-its-not-97-percent-consensus-ian-tuttle).
      To be clear, AGW deniers have /at least as long/ a record of misleading, data manipulation, out of context interpretation, or outright lying.
      The "data" here is that reliable, objective interpretation of this information - much less policy formulation - is no longer reasonably possible.

      --
      -Styopa
    7. Re:Harness economic self interest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...
      China is now the de facto renewable energy supplier of the world. Even as the proportion of equipment cost to total cost declines, they will continue to capture increasing fractions of global energy expenditures. This is -already- a multi 100 billion dollar industry growing at 20% on its way to become a multi-trillion dollar industry, which will put it among the top 10 industries on earth. If transportation goes electric, it will eat into the oil industry and become the single largest energy industry on earth and potentially rival the 5-6 trillion dollar agricultural industry. China has a decade lead and while competitors retreat, they accelerate. ...

      ... Supplier isn't user. http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/19/...
      Air doesn't stay in one place. It circulates.

      So you're saying that because China produces products that are eco-friendly for the rest of the world, the money and smog that it produces in generation of these eco-friendly products is lower than the benefit of the use of said products?

      People like you who don't account for "energy is neither created or destroyed; it only changes form" when looking at "global footprints" and "per-capita this-and-that jazz" are ignorant of science that is all around you and within you right now - the ONLY way to reduce the Human "footprint" in the biosphere is to remove Humans or lower the count. Other animals don't burn coal, oil, or generate heat from nuclear fission/fusion; they convert energy from food and sunlight and TURN IN TO COAL AND OIL when they die.

      You want to have an argument? Argue the use of preservatives in dead Humans for presentations at funerals having a major impact on the reuse of the matter Humans consumed before they died. See? You think it's stupid to even look at it because your mind is already directed toward the popular opinion and data sets and models. Self-worth, short-term gain selfishness and education-related bias. That's what's preventing progress in becoming more eco-friendly. And guess what? That's natural. Every plant and animal is selfish and wants to consume resources. Humans are manually and externally using resources and preventing themselves from being recycled. Intelligence kills. Let's start a movement in schools all over the world.

      Wait, that's been tried already. Guess who/what won in making people uneducated and stupid? The powerful and intelligent that made them that way.

      See? This can just go on and on and on and on....... Give up already. It isn't going to happen unless the method to make it happen is FREE and falls right in our laps (global warming resulting from Humans' contribution, that is). That's how most discoveries that got us here happened - oops. Accidents. Coincidences.

    8. Re:Harness economic self interest by mbkennel · · Score: 2

      > If we observe a cycle happening dozens of times, but assert that THIS TIME it's somehow being driven a different mechanism, certainly the onus is on us to explain conclusively how & why the previous mechanism stopped and a new mechanism took over.

      Sure, that is very true.

      And the answer is the following:

      The evidence is geological, that when humans mined coal, there were no coal shafts and evidence of previous mining and combustion from 120,000 years ago. Instead, the isotopic and geological analysis shows that the carbon which is being emitted now is from human activities which didn't exist 120,000 years ago.

      Something new is definitely happening: human mining & combustion.

    9. Re:Harness economic self interest by budgenator · · Score: 1

      The bottom line is U.S. House Science Committee Chair Lamar Smith, subpoenaed Kathryn Sullivan, Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to produce documents, Sullivan is probably lucky she refused under Obama because there's a good chance a Trump administration DOJ would be far less tolerant of Contempt of Congress . Regardless, while congress doesn't sign NOAA's paycheck, they do however write the amount that is written on it, and going out of your way to piss off Congressman rarely is a good strategic career move for government bureaucrats.

      You should know with all of the crappola over Emails, hacked Emails, Russians hacking Email, and all of the ducking and dodging of subpoenas and FOIA requests, that its highly likely that Government and Government sponsored researchers are going to lose responsibility for managing their communications and communications security at the departmental level and below.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    10. Re:Harness economic self interest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The problem in the argument is that one side of this argument isn't arguing with facts and is actually incentivized to demonize any data that contradicts their pre-determined conclusions.

      In other words, it's politicized.

      Not politicized - weaponized. The Left and the crunchies took climate change and incorporated it into their anti-big-business political agenda while the science was still wavering. (Something was clearly happening, but what and why wasn't entirely clear.) This left a gaping hole in their defenses... Now that the science is clear, the Left has an established record of dancing and handwaving on the issue and relying on weak science. A record the Right continues to exploit because it leaves the Left sputtering and handwaving (again).

      Basically, we're fucked because the Left chose to use climate change not as an issue of it's own - but as part of different agenda. We're fucked because the Left chose to weaponize something (at the time) not unequivocally supported by the science.

    11. Re:Harness economic self interest by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Figure out how to align solutions to the problem with economic and political self interest.

      It might be good to start with framing the existence of the problem in such a way. Clearly these people are not opportunists and capable of innovating in the changing environment, which frames them into future financial failures. Showing them the way out of the fear-of-death mindset is a start.

  10. Foxes by Orgasmatron · · Score: 0

    I'm shocked, just shocked!, to hear that the foxes have declared the henhouse to be perfectly safe under their watch.

    Unless I'm missing something, the graph in the Ars article is hilarious. The red and blue lines agree no better in the "new and improved" fiction than they do in (what I hope is) the actual data, but now they point in the right direction, and that's what really matters.

    Is this the end then? The last uncorrupted dataset has fallen now? Are we finally ready to start executing the unbelievers?

    --
    See that "Preview" button?
    1. Re:Foxes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, you're missing understanding of what the data is, and what it shows. The data is showing temperature differences between ship-based temperature measurements and bouys (red) or satellite (blue). Ship-based measurements aren't particularly accurate - it depends a lot on how exactly the measurement is done, where the sensor is located etc. But the first thing to note is that the differences are *small*. Even the biggest difference is about 0.06 degrees (the older NOAA data is a bit more than this, but not sure how much as it is off the bottom of the graph). This is much smaller than the average warming so far (about 1 degree), so not at all significant for the wider 'debate' on global warming. The second thing to note is that the bouy and satellite data agrees fairly closely - as it should; both should be well-calibrated and free from significant systematic errors. So the point of the article is really about how to properly calibrate ship-based measurements. If the calibration is good, then the difference between ship-based and bouy/satellite data should be small. In the new analysis, the maximum deviation is about 0.03 degrees, so its certainly an improvement.

  11. Re:Or skeptics by mwvdlee · · Score: 2

    Exactly what I mean.
    The numbers weren't "fudged" in any way.
    They were corrected to eliminate a bias, but because you don't understand what that means, you can only label it "fudging".
    If you disagree with the method used for correction of the valitidy of the bias claims, then attack those on their merits.

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  12. It might be warming by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But not fast enough, I'm freezing here dammit!
    We need to figure out how to accelerate this process.

  13. I'm ready by wbr1 · · Score: 1
    I got some popcorn for the ensuing slashfight.

    It popped automatically in the warming ambient air! WIN!

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
  14. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I agree. Flooding Florida will be greatly beneficial to mankind.

  15. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Request granted.

    A philosophical question from the modder: At what point does contrarianism for its own sake become just trolling?

  16. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1) Have you ever heard of the Arab Spring? The crisis caused by the droughts in the Sahel (Boko Haram anyone)? The Syrian Civil war causes?

    And from this point I will not comment the rest of the bullshit that you just said.

    (Deniers of Climate Change: people that doesn't know how to, properly, go to f*ck themselves. So, they have to f*ck the rest of us).

  17. Not even a debate by sjbe · · Score: 5, Informative

    Climate scientists haven't established Human caused global warming is real.

    You are wrong. It's not even really a debate among climate scientists at this point. So far all the data seems to clearly show that humans are a key factor in recent climate change. And even just on the face of it the notion that we could be dumping so many billions of tons of CO2 and other pollutants into the atmosphere without any effect or consequence is just absurd. If you want to argue that we are still pinning down the exact extent of the effect of our activities then you might have an argument. But to pretend that our activities have had no effect on global climate is ridiculous.

    That said, it doesn't really matter anyway. Even if hypothetically speaking humans weren't responsible at all for climate change we still would need to take action to deal with the reality of it. It's going to affect food supplies, energy resources, ecosystems, pollution, geopolitics, etc. The US Department of Defense (hardly a bastion of liberal thinking) considers it real and a significant threat to national security.

    So far we just have a gently upward trend starting about 400 years ago, very similar to the previous upward trends that were entirely natural.

    Yeah sorry but the data is just a tad more complicated than your little made up and cherry picked sound bite.

    1. Re:Not even a debate by sjames · · Score: 1

      Let me guess, you'll make that very same claim about anyone or anything that contradicts your personal preference that there is nothing to it. You're going to shit where you eat till you die, just like your pappy and his pappy before him...

    2. Re:Not even a debate by Fragnet · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Oh no, I'm very picky. I have an excellent antenna for bullshit. I can smell it from a long way off. That's why I love Slashdot comments so much. I'm extra happy to not be with the in-crowd on this. I realise I won't get tenure but I don't care.

    3. Re:Not even a debate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If there is any rent-seeking going on here, it is the trillion dollar industry that requires the status quo (including $72 billion in subsidies per year) to be maintained or else their business model will collapse. Environmentalists live in vans and shower monthly. What do they need to rent seek for?!

    4. Re:Not even a debate by Maritz · · Score: 0

      Oh no, I'm very picky. I have an excellent antenna for bullshit. I can smell it from a long way off. That's why I love Slashdot comments so much. I'm extra happy to not be with the in-crowd on this. I realise I won't get tenure but I don't care.

      You've apparently gone nose blind from the overwhelming odour of shit coming out of your own ignorant fucking mouth.

      "Antenna for bullshit"... LOL. You're fucking knee deep in it.

      --
      I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
    5. Re:Not even a debate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The research cited on that site is not done by "environmentalists", "rent seeking" or otherwise. They're scientists, and what they produce is called "science".

      Your mention of "trust in science" is just delicious. I bet in 20 years you're going to be blaming scientists for not convincing you, even though they were right, and 99% of the planet was convinced they were right.

      If you're serious and not just trolling hard you need to seriously re-evaluate how you get your information. I mean, do you seriously distrust all science this much? Do you check whether gravity still works before getting out of bed? What the fuck.

    6. Re:Not even a debate by dywolf · · Score: 1

      I suspect you have no clue what the terms "shill", "front organization", or "rent-seeking" even mean.

      Skeptical Science presents,in a manner more easily understood by those who don't hold phds in the field, including ignorant (actual) shills like yourself, the actual peer reviewed science, along with full citations and links to all peer reviewed referenced scientific data and papers presented.

      you meanwhile present specious and fallacious arguments backed by nothing.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    7. Re:Not even a debate by Fragnet · · Score: 0

      I know what rent-seeking is, yes. You don't, clearly.

    8. Re:Not even a debate by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      I know I'm feeding the troll. So, what's your excellent bullshit antenna say about the Maldives, Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands?

      They've all been above water for millions of years through several Ice Age cycles. Yet now, suddenly, while we're still supposedly in an Ice Age, they're going under water.

      I'd also like you to explain your theory on why CO2 levels not seen in recorded history and only thought to have existed 100+M years ago (when the earth was warmer, btw) are not affecting the current temperatures. If you agree that CO2 is affecting temperature, why that is not an anthropogenic effect given that we've dug/pumped a large amount of historically sequestered carbon in various forms out of the ground and burned it releasing, yep you guessed it, CO2.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    9. Re:Not even a debate by Fragnet · · Score: 1, Funny
      I'm not trolling. I'm being a contrarian. I'm doing that because the shilling is shockingly bad - and getting worse, as is the publicity seeking from the rent-seeking class.

      Maldives, Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands suffer from high surface erosion + sea level rise. But sea level has been rising for hundreds if not thousands of years - pretty much with the same trend throughout. If you're going to blame man for that I'm going to call BS on it because, you know, it's completely ridiculous.

      But anyway if you're determined on this you should probably read, for example this.

      Not necessarily, according to a growing body of evidence amassed by New Zealand coastal geomorphologist Paul Kench, of the University of Auckland's School of Environment, and colleagues in Australia and Fiji, who have been studying how reef islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans respond to rising sea levels. They found that reef islands change shape and move around in response to shifting sediments, and that many of them are growing in size, not shrinking, as sea level inches upward. The implication is that many islands—especially less developed ones with few permanent structures—may cope with rising seas well into the next century.

      You see the problem here is that these nations are seeking rent, mostly from the west. "climate justice" I think it's called. They may be able to persuade enough gullible twats to give them a few billion $. I mean if you could do that you would, wouldn't you? You'd engage in mind-fumblingly stupid stunts like holding cabinet meetings under water. Sheeeesssssshhh. I'd love break from all the climate bs. It's driving me nuts.

    10. Re:Not even a debate by dywolf · · Score: 1

      then you should have no problems explaining how it applies to environmentalists or Skeptical Science.
      again: I rather suspect you cannot.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    11. Re:Not even a debate by hey! · · Score: 1

      This is known as an ad hominem.

      Skeptical Science may have the wrong conclusion, but they provide the factual basis for that conclusion, right down the literature citations. They make it easy as possible to prove their reasoning wrong, yet for some reason the best you can come up with amounts to name-calling.

      That discrepancy should disturb you.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    12. Re:Not even a debate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No really, stop tickling my sides. Skeptical Science, a shill front organisation for rent-seeking environmentalists.

      Calling people names does not make them wrong:

      * https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem
      * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

    13. Re:Not even a debate by slashrio · · Score: 0

      It's not even really a debate among climate scientists at this point.

      This really is funny. Very funny.
      Ever heard of Darwin? Natural selection?
      There's some kind of natural selection going on that exactly causes the phenomenon you just described, it's called funding.
      Most climate scientists would immediately 'select' themselves out of funding, hence out of existence (as a climate researcher) as soon as they don't preach the AGW gospel anymore. Or worse: writing a counter-AGW research proposal, good luck with that!
      This, and only this, is why you see so many AGW followers among the climate scientists and it has little to do with science.

      --
      "Trump!!", the new Godwin.
    14. Re:Not even a debate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That's... not the issue... at all...

      Climate models are built from many, many measurements of the ocean temperatures, composition (salinity, sublimated gases etc) and flow direction and rate at different depths, and the same for atmospheric measurements. These days we have very good tools for this (satellites, balloons, buoys and drones) and an absolutely staggering amount of data.

      That data, along with as much historic data as we can make usable, is used to construct models of how the various major heat cycles of the planet work. Then we check whether those models make any weird or interesting predictions, and then we go look whether the real world matches those predictions: el Nino events, changed flow rates or temperatures of major oceanic currents and so on. We've been doing this for quite a long time, and bottom line: we're fairly convinced we've worked out how it works now, or at least well enough to determine what is and is not a major factor. There's just no more room to hide big unknowns in the models anymore. Absolutely none.

      And all these models agree that man-made CO2 output must be, and is, warming the planet at a much faster rate than any of recorded history and much much farther back than that (everything we have been able to find such as information from ice core samples agrees with that as well). Some of the effects are rather trivial to predict (i.e. some ice will melt), but the climate is full of systems that stop working the same way when conditions change too much. Climate models disagree about some systems whether this will be the case and at which point that will happen, but in many cases we have enough information.

      For example, theory predicts that at some point when a glacier melts, the process will start to accelerate itself by a huge amount. We have seen this play out already, again and again, in Greenland and Antarctica, with multiple massive glaciers completely disappearing in less than 10 years.

      So sea levels will rise, and yes, we are certain they will rise by an amount that is concerning even if you DON'T live on a pacific island. The scary part is what we don't know. In fact some models that are entirely reasonable and consistent with everything we know about our planet predict up to 13 meters of sea level rise in the next 100 years. But nobody (not even the scientists!) wants to focus on that too much, partially because we'd just get ignored and called "alarmists". So we just try to get people to understand THE BARE MINIMUM that is CERTAINLY going to happen.

      Note that such a sea level rise would not be that big of a deal for our planet, it's seen much worse and more terrifying changes of climate. But our modern society has come up during a very, very short time of that history, and we have insisted on building so many of our major cities on the coasts near sea level it's frankly terrifying.

    15. Re:Not even a debate by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      Maldives, Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands suffer from high surface erosion + sea level rise. But sea level has been rising for hundreds if not thousands of years - pretty much with the same trend throughout. If you're going to blame man for that I'm going to call BS on it because, you know, it's completely ridiculous.

      You're making a blanket statement there. Yes, sea levels vary. During the peak of the ice age they were quite a bit lower than they are now. However, over the past 50 years, the levels have been rising faster than they have previously, in fact, there's debate whether the levels were largely stable since Roman times and perhaps earlier. In any case, it seems the last major rise related to the ending of the last significant Ice Age ended about 5000 years ago.

      They found that reef islands change shape and move around in response to shifting sediments, and that many of them are growing in size, not shrinking, as sea level inches upward. The implication is that many islands—especially less developed ones with few permanent structures—may cope with rising seas well into the next century.

      You see the problem here is that these nations are seeking rent, mostly from the west. "climate justice" I think it's called. They may be able to persuade enough gullible twats to give them a few billion $. I mean if you could do that you would, wouldn't you? You'd engage in mind-fumblingly stupid stunts like holding cabinet meetings under water. Sheeeesssssshhh. I'd love break from all the climate bs. It's driving me nuts.

      Personally, I don't want to send them a dime. That's not going to solve anything but their immediate problems. It would be much better to deal with the cause of the rising temperatures, at least those pieces that are definitely related to us. I note that you totally skipped responding to the actual questions, and only side-stepped the rising sea reference to cast it as a money grabbing conspiracy without addressing the fact that yes, the seas are rising recently and may actually have been at stable levels for thousands of years. Prior to that they definitely rose since the low in the last Ice Age, which no one disputes, at least I hope not.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    16. Re:Not even a debate by haruchai · · Score: 2

      Perhaps the analysis of the Berkeley Earth http://berkeleyearth.org/ project will be more to your liking?
      They did a complete re-examination of all available datasets and looked at more data than any other single project to date.
      This included taking raw data, not just analyzed data sets that had already been sanitized as that seems to be a particular sticking point for skeptics.

      Their conclusions are at http://berkeleyearth.org/summa...

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    17. Re:Not even a debate by mean+pun · · Score: 1

      You are really arguing that it is impossible to get funding from counter-AGW research? Even assuming that it is completely impossible to get money from mainstream research sources, surely not all those deniers are completely broke? Just crowd-fund it, you bunch of whiners. Start with Mr. Lamar Smith himself, he must have a few dimes to spare.

      And do you really think that if some solid research would topple mainstream climate science, it would be possible to suppress is, even if people would try?

      Try to come up with some decent counter-arguments, and not just this lame conspiracy theory again, ok?

    18. Re:Not even a debate by dryeo · · Score: 1

      Environmentalists also get quite a bit of money from industry. For example, once global warming became obviously true about 40 yrs back, Exxon funneled tons of money to the anti-nuclear environmentalists as the obvious response to global warming is to build more nuclear plants, which is bad for the fossil fuel industry. They were pretty successful as well. If we had gone o a nuke building binge 40 years back, especially with lots of research into alternate methods of building reactors, things would be a lot better now.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
    19. Re:Not even a debate by slashrio · · Score: 0
      Of course not all funding will be terminated, but most of it, and researchers looking for funds will surely go for the more secure way.
      Every population has a bell-like curve at the ends of which one can find out-layers. Also here.

      If one owns and/or controls enough of the news agencies and communication channels then yes, it is possible to suppress and/or manipulate the majority of the news you don't want the general populace to hear/read about. That's being proven all the time, so that's no issue, see the Fake news vc. 'fake' news 'debate'.

      And of course it's not possible to suppress every bit, although the fact that the last 20 years there hasn't been any significant global warming isn't well known is proof of a good attempt at it. You hear about climate deniers and about their claims, don't you?

      ...conspiracy theory...

      sigh...
      Why not call me an anti-semite or Hitler adept, the same shitty non-argument from someone who knows he's at the wrong end of the discussion but can't give up out of cognitive dissonance...

      --
      "Trump!!", the new Godwin.
    20. Re:Not even a debate by slashrio · · Score: 1

      And sorry about the consistent italic

      --
      "Trump!!", the new Godwin.
    21. Re:Not even a debate by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      But sea level has been rising for hundreds if not thousands of years - pretty much with the same trend throughout.

      Your bullshit detector failed to work on your own bullshit. Sea level had been very stable over the last several thousand years varying up and down by less than 3 inches over that time period. In the last 150 years though there has been 8 inches of SLR and the rate of rise has increased being about 1.4 mm/year in the early 20th century but over 3 mm/year in the past 25 years.

    22. Re:Not even a debate by mean+pun · · Score: 1

      And of course it's not possible to suppress every bit, although the fact that the last 20 years there hasn't been any significant global warming isn't well known is proof of a good attempt at it.

      The claim that there has been any significant global warning got plenty of press, but the claim has been convincingly refuted as cherry picking of the available data, so it is not surprising that the mainstream press does not make this claim. That's not suppression, that's journalistic integrity.

      Again, if there was any scientific research that would solidly prove your `fact', it would be available online. As you say yourself, this supposed suppression of the facts can in practice not be perfect, so surely somebody would publish it?

    23. Re:Not even a debate by dywolf · · Score: 2

      Go re-read your Adam Smith.
      Or this handy copy pasta:

      How Rent-Seeking Works
      Rent-seeking occurs when an individual or business attempts to make money from its resources without using those resources to provide a benefit to society or generate wealth for everyone. One of the most common ways companies in the 21st century engage in rent-seeking is by using their capital to contribute to politicians who influence the laws and regulations that govern and industry and how government subsidies are distributed within. If the company succeeds in receiving subsidies or in getting laws passed that restrict competition and create new barriers to entry into the industry, it has increased its share of existing wealth without increasing the total of that wealth. Moreover, it has earned income without actually producing anything or putting its capital at risk.

      Rent-Seeking Examples
      Lobbying for occupational licensing requirements represents a perfect example of rent-seeking. Airline pilots and doctors require rigorous licensing for obvious reasons, but in many U.S. states, expensive and onerous licensing is required for taxi drivers, florists and interior decorators. Often, these regulations exist as a result of lobbying efforts from existing industry participants. [[dywolf note-- Note that if environmental groups lobby for this, they don't gain any material benefit, ie, "share of the wealth" by doing so]] When licensing requirements prevent newcomers from competing, the revenue generated within an industry is divided between fewer players, resulting in a larger share of wealth accruing to each without any additional economic benefit. Furthermore, since competition drives down prices and lack of competition keeps them high, consumers pay more than they would in a truly efficient market unfettered by rent-seeking.

      If or when environmental groups do succeed in lobbying, they are not the only ones that benefit. When they benefit, not only yheir benefit not in the form of gaining a larger "share of the wealth", but we all benefit, whether its national parks that continue to exist, or pipelines that have sufficient safety standards that leaks and accidents are reduced to minimum or swiftly cleaned up.

      Rent seeking doesn't even apply. You have equated lobbying or non-productiveness (relative to the "market") with rent-seeking, and that is wrong.
      Worse, your example is "not even wrong". The concept does not even apply to your example.

      You example only reveals your own ignorance, about both rent-seeking, and how most environmental groups meet their funding needs.

      As I said: No, you don't know what rent-seeking is.

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    24. Re:Not even a debate by EmptyHead · · Score: 1

      No really, stop tickling my sides. Skeptical Science, a shill front organisation for rent-seeking environmentalists. It does matter though, imho. It matters for reasons of integrity, especially public trust in science. Who's going to believe the next big scare and impress on their politicians to do something about it when the previous 120 scares proved to be shite.

      The moderators must be a bit left leaning and annoyed today. I would have at least modded you +1 funny.

    25. Re:Not even a debate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Truth: AGW was completely discredited until the mid 1950s. In the space of 15-20 years scientific opinion completely reversed itself, and no one lost tenure over it. Because it's not a political issue. Or at least, then it was not, now your political masters have decided to make it one. Also do note there are several prominent skeptics who continue to hold important academic positions. Specifically, we must note the work of Dr. Roy Spencer, who wrote portions of the IPCC reports. The reason his ideas (and yours) are not being considered is because they are wrong. Unless there is some strong hidden negative feedback effect, basic radiation calculations show that the Earth must be warming. And yes, clouds have been considered.

      BTW it's hilarious to watch you guys cry up how this is "politicized science", and using political arguments to try to argue against it.

  18. v4 vs v3b by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You don't really seem to understand how the data works, they collect some data and missing data is filled in statistically. For v3b they exclude a whole bunch of under-sampled areas, effectively ignoring the data that was there and creating it all statistically. This was done because that data from the sparse sensors in many of those areas was questionable and without other nearby sensors you had no sanity check. And they refused to use the satellite data because it was biased toward the cool side. For v4, they decided to include data from the under-sampled areas, excluding any individual "anomalies" (i.e. things that didn't fit in with their expected analysis models).

    The ERSST should be viewed as pre-cleaned data to help produce reliable results, but bias can easily creep in by how the data is scrubbed. I'm not saying it did, and certainly not intentionally, the NOAA folks are awesome to work with and I would never question their motives. But I think it is great we have "dissenters", both educated and not, who are questioning the data, the analysis techniques and the conclusions. I just wish the constructive debate that you see among the bulk of the community would overtake the mass media and few select loud mouths on both sides who want to declare something as done/fact/decided when everyone knows it is still a work in progress to understand both the magnitude and the outliers to improve the existing models.

  19. Hug a climate denier today by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

    The "fudged data" is a core belief in the Church of Climate Denial. The fact that it wasn't fudged could cause serious cognitive dissonance among some of the most devout members. Although to be fair, it won't be reported at Breitbart or InfoWars, so maybe they'll stay blissfully insulated from this information.

    It's probably for the best that they be left that way.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
    1. Re:Hug a climate denier today by Citizen+of+Earth · · Score: 1

      Explain how every "adjustment" manages to cool the past and warm the present. This happening one is a 1-in-6 random chance; this happening 12 times in a row is a 1-in-2.2-billion chance.

    2. Re:Hug a climate denier today by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Reminds me of the old joke about there being a one-in-a-million chance the flight you're on has a bomb. There's about a one-in-a-billion chance that fight has two bombs.
      So always take a bomb with you.

    3. Re:Hug a climate denier today by sjames · · Score: 1

      For the same reason that the harder I look at the data, the closer the number of released hammers on earth hitting the ground approaches 100%

    4. Re:Hug a climate denier today by radl33t · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And the odds of a global conspiracy with thousands (if not 10s of thousands) of actors? LoL

    5. Re:Hug a climate denier today by moeinvt · · Score: 2

      "The fact that it wasn't fudged ..."

      Bullshit.
      I guess it depends on what you mean by "fudged". If you're claiming that the data sets being used by climate scientists are raw, non-adjusted data, then you're in denial. The data is definitely "fudged", but there are compelling reasons for this "fudging".

      They have more than 100 years of temperature measurements from various weather stations around the world. Over that time period, most of the stations have been relocated numerous times. The early data were collected with mercury thermometers while later measurements were done with electronics. Stations have also changed the time of day at which they recorded the temperature readings. Areas around many stations have been gradually "urbanized" etc. etc.

      The data sets are very deliberately adjusted/fudged to attempt to account for these differences. That doesn't necessarily mean there is some conspiracy going on to perpetuate a hoax, but questioning the methods used to do the fudging is entirely reasonable.

    6. Re:Hug a climate denier today by PopeRatzo · · Score: 2

      The data sets are very deliberately adjusted/fudged to attempt to account for these differences. That doesn't necessarily mean there is some conspiracy going on to perpetuate a hoax, but questioning the methods used to do the fudging is entirely reasonable.

      Try to explain data science to a climate denier. They're totally invested in the idea that climate data is bogus because George Soros paid all the climate scientists to fake data in order to destroy freedom.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    7. Re:Hug a climate denier today by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just because a great deal of people believe something and act with intent towards proving it does not make the belief true, a conspiracy, nor correct.

      Scientists once thought that large undiscovered mammals like Gorillas couldn't possibly exist. Scientists once believed in ether and humors. Scientists once believed that Newton's laws were infallible under any circumstance.

    8. Re:Hug a climate denier today by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here's a challenge for you:

      1. Decide what it would take to convince you that the global temperature is increasing at a rate more than it has previously. Write down that statement and don't change it. If you can't think of anything, you're not imaginative enough - after all, thousands of climate scientists follow such a statement, even if subconsciously.
      2. Make a good faith effort to find evidence that the statement is true.
      3. If you can't find such evidence, see if you can find evidence that the statement is an unrealistic expectation (cannot be proved or disproved, there isn't enough data, or is simply not correct). If it is, go back to step 1.

      To date, I haven't seen a climate change denier actually take these simple steps. It's almost as though they're afraid of finding out that they're wrong.

  20. Re:Or skeptics by Layzej · · Score: 5, Informative

    Right. During the late 20th century, ocean temperatures readings were primarily taken mechanically through an “engine-intake valve.” Ships pump water into their hull in order to cool the engine room, and a thermometer measures its temperature on the way. This can introduce bias to the numbers, though: Because engine rooms get hot, engine-intake-valve readings are skewed warmer than the actual ocean.

    Whereas 95 percent of NOAA’s readings came from ship engine rooms in the early 1990s, 85 percent now come from buoys, which provide a more accurate reading. It turns out that if you don't account for that known bias you get a result that is less accurate.

  21. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by jandersen · · Score: 1

    Who gives a fuck? Seriously. Nobody has demonstrated the small amount of warming we've had and can expect in future isn't beneficial to mankind and the biosphere - especially the biosphere, which quite likes CO2 and expends a lot of energy trying to keep itself warm above and below certain lines of latitude.

    It is hard to imagine where you get the impression from, that "the biosphere quite likes" CO2. All we know is that a moderate increase in CO2 concentration and temperature makes certain plant species from certain climate zones grow faster; but I don't think there is anything like agreement about whether that translates into some sort of universal benefit for us all. In fact, it seems to be quite the opposite: the sea-levels will rise, and more importantly, the weather will be more variable - which will cause increased, coastal erosion. Dry areas, like Sahel, Southern Europe and the American Plains, will most likely become drier, which will cause significantly increased migration away from these areas, and it will probably happen faster than, say, Canada's and Siberia's tundras will become able to sustain a large, human population. Coral reefs will be under severe strain and may die - unfortunately this is where far the most of commercial fisheries take place, if I remember correctly (something like that - they are important is the bottom line). All in all, it doesn't sound good to me.

    And of course, this is just when we look at a 2 degrees rise; there are serious concerns that if we go above 4 degrees or so, we may start run-away effects, where the warming drives significant rises in greenhouse gases, which may well have been what happened on Venus. This is still speculative, of course, but even the possibility, that we might be not all that far away from such a tipping point ought to warn us to be less stupidly smug about not giving a fuck.

  22. Re: Two questions before I call BS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    there is no flooding in Florida. besides you could walk to Cuba a thousand years ago.

  23. Re:Or skeptics by Mashiki · · Score: 0, Troll

    If you disagree with the method used for correction of the valitidy of the bias claims, then attack those on their merits.

    People have. They're labeled "deniers" and then told by the ivory tower elitists that they're "backwards rednecks." That does wonders to ensure that people will actually listen now doesn't it? It's just like the 15 odd years of the progressive left screaming that anyone who's for immigration law enforcement are racists. Or that anyone deviating from orthodoxy and Obama's policies are automatically a racist. Or demand that people who rape children in child grooming gangs are charged as rapists, and the law enforced. Instead the politicians pussyfoot around it for fear of being labeled racists, so do the police, so do crown offices and so on.

    The left and academia dug their own fucking pit on this, people warned them. They doubled down, now they get to reap the rewards of it.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  24. Re: Two questions before I call BS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Do you not care about the suffering of the freezing animals? I found a frozen spider just the other day who, in a much warmer world, could have lived a long and prosperous life.

  25. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by locofungus · · Score: 5, Informative

    (2) Aren't they talking about data taken on ships by physically reading thermometers to an accuracy less than the claimed effect? As I was taught: If you don't know your error, you haven't made a measurement. In this case the error could be even greater than the effect itself!

    No.

    Over time the proportion of data contributed by taking measurements on ships has decreased.

    NOAA said "hey guys, this has introduced a systematic error into the data and we need to adjust for it"

    Other scientists were skeptical.

    This group decided to test it. So they took several independent data sets that each used just one measurement so that each dataset is internally consistent.

    They then discovered that all the data sets matched the NOAA adjusted combined data better than the previous unadjusted data.

    What their work indicates is that the slow migration from ship thermometer to buoy, satellite etc has hidden an extra 0.06C/decade of warming - and that the warming rate over the last several decades is much closer to the rate over the previous decades than was thought.

    (It should be pointed out that some statisticians don't accept that there was any statistically significant change in the warming rate over the last several decades even when using the pre NOAA (3b) data. My statistical knowledge isn't sufficient to be able to independently do the changepoint analysis necessary to confirm or refute this)

    --
    God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
  26. Re: Or skeptics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The data needs to stand on its own. No adjustments are needed. Once you begin to "adjust" data, anything can happen and it can't be trusted. If this was a criminal court case which would you trust. The factual items like someone's finger prints or some police officer's adjusted finger prints.

  27. Judith Curry disagrees by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who is Judith Curry?

    She a real-life climate scientist who dares to be skeptical of the current climate "science" diktats.

    She just quit.

    Why did I resign my tenured faculty position?

    I’m ‘cashing out’ with 186 published journal articles and two books. The superficial reason is that I want to do other things, and no longer need my university salary. This opens up an opportunity for Georgia Tech to make a new hire (see advert).

    The deeper reasons have to do with my growing disenchantment with universities, the academic field of climate science and scientists.

    ...

    A deciding factor was that I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science. Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment — funding, ease of getting your papers published, getting hired in prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious committees and boards, professional recognition, etc.

    How young scientists are to navigate all this is beyond me, and it often becomes a battle of scientific integrity versus career suicide (I have worked through these issues with a number of skeptical young scientists).

    Let me relate an interaction that I had with a postdoc about a month ago. She wanted to meet me, as an avid reader of my blog. She works in a field that is certainly relevant to climate science, but she doesn’t identify as a climate scientist. She says she gets questioned all the time about global warming issues, and doesn’t know what to say, since topics like attribution, etc. are not topics that she explores as a scientist. WOW, a scientist that knows the difference! I advised her to keep her head down and keep doing the research that she thinks interesting and important, and to stay out of the climate debate UNLESS she decides to dig in and pursue it intellectually. Personal opinions about the science and political opinions about policies that are sort of related to your research expertise are just that – personal and political opinions. Selling such opinions as contributing to a scientific consensus is very much worse than a joke.

  28. More climate fake news from /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    When will you give up the fraud, guys?

    1. Re:More climate fake news from /. by Barsteward · · Score: 1

      when will you cure your ignorance?

      --
      "The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
    2. Re:More climate fake news from /. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      when will you cure your ignorance?

      Got the intellectual balls to read this and learn what a real-life climate scientist thinks of the AGW alarmists that have taken control of climate "science"?

      And cure YOUR ignorance?

      I'm guessing the answer is NO.

  29. Intentional ignorance by sjbe · · Score: 2

    Nobody has demonstrated the small amount of warming we've had and can expect in future isn't beneficial to mankind and the biosphere

    Nobody who is actually informed about the issue agrees with you. Heck the US Department of Defense disagrees with you. Please explain how even the more modest of predicted consequences such as rising sea levels, food supply disruptions, extreme weather events, melting ice caps, etc are beneficial to earth.

    especially the biosphere, which quite likes CO2 and expends a lot of energy trying to keep itself warm above and below certain lines of latitude.

    Umm, what? The biosphere "quite likes CO2"? Are you trolling or just ignorant? We're releasing billions of tons of CO2 that has been sequestered out of the atmosphere for millions of years and you're arguing that's somehow a good thing? Support your (absurd) statement with a viable hypothesis and actual data.

    Aren't they talking about data taken on ships by physically reading thermometers to an accuracy less than the claimed effect?

    It isn't about the accuracy. It's about what is actually being measured. It's like the difference between trying to do astronomy in the middle of a light polluted city versus doing it in a dark and remote desert with calm dry air. You're trying to look at the same thing but the noise in the measurements is quite different and has to be accounted for.

    1. Re:Intentional ignorance by Fragnet · · Score: 1

      The US Department of Defense is getting the same bad advice as everybody else. Just because the US Department of Defense has spoken up about it does not mean the advice is any less shite. But as you seem to think being informed is important, I'm quite fond of the ice core records. Specifically Vostok. This is a magnificent record that really puts today into context.

      If you want to talk energy and CO2 please be aware that relatively speaking the amount of CO2 we've put into the atmosphere should affect warming in the same way that lighting a single match in your lounge increases the temperature of your lounge.

      Strange but true. I'm with Freeman Dyson on this.

    2. Re:Intentional ignorance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please post the details of your match metaphor, in enough detail for a climate scientist to assess its accuracy.

      Better yet, publish it. A Nobel Prize, fame, and fortune all await.

    3. Re:Intentional ignorance by gtall · · Score: 1

      BS. The U.S. Department of the Navy rather keeps close tabs on the ocean. The fact that the Arctic and Antarctic are warming hasn't escaped their notice even if it has escaped yours. Owning floating and submersible weapons platforms tend to make one very interested in that which they are floating and submersing.

    4. Re:Intentional ignorance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think if you worked for the D.O.D. and disagreed with the president you would find yourself fired and replaced with one of his commissars.

    5. Re:Intentional ignorance by Fragnet · · Score: 1

      The U.S. Department of the Navy rather keeps close tabs on the ocean

      What, you mean the Northwest Passage is now open just like it was in 1854? Shocking.

      Arctic and Antarctic are warming hasn't escaped their notice

      Again, so what? Who gives a fuck? Man-made or natural variation. Change is permanent. It's always happening. Why are you getting into a funk about it? There's nothing you can do. Next you'll be telling me man-made climate change will increase volcanism. Which would be, you know, the most fucking retarded conclusion ever published in the history of science.

    6. Re:Intentional ignorance by dywolf · · Score: 2

      JFC your grasp of thermodynamics is weak.

      you may not notice your room heating because it's not a perfectly enclosed system. it has substantial losses to the surrounding house via convection.

      the earth in contrast is much closer to the ideal enclosed system for the same reason that heat sinks don't work very well in space: no convection.

      note however that in fact burning a candle in your living, if it were sealed and approximated an enclosed system, would in fact warm it measurably.
      because thermodynamics.

      some of these folks were kind enough to actually do some of the thermo math and work it out: https://www.reddit.com/r/asksc... , but the gist is, yes, actually, a candle can raise the temp of your room by roughly 1 degree, which is a significant or measurable amount.

      similarly the human output of CO2, which is over 40 billion tons annually, does has a measurable impact despite its relatively small proportion of the atmosphere, in no small part due to a positive feedback loop involving water vapor (increase temp a lil bit via co2, more h20 in air, which is also a GH gas, which causes more warming, which causes more h2o in the air, which causes more warming....until the system reaches equilibrium and the warming stops...which right now cannot happen because were are still pumping several orders of magnitude more CO2 and methane into the atmosphere than the planetary system is capable of adjusting to.)

      further readings: "It's only a trace gas."

      Also note, that you are actively choosing to side with a nuclear physicist in the belief that he knows more bout climate science than actual climate scientists.
      Do you also then get home repair quotes from your car mechanic, or vice versa? How about heart surgery from a pediatrician? Steak tartare from your plumber? How deep does your silliness of valuing non-subject-matter-experts over subject-matter-experts go?

      --
      The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
    7. Re:Intentional ignorance by budgenator · · Score: 1

      Umm, what? The biosphere "quite likes CO2"? Are you trolling or just ignorant? We're releasing billions of tons of CO2 that has been sequestered out of the atmosphere for millions of years and you're arguing that's somehow a good thing? Support your (absurd) statement with a viable hypothesis and actual data.

      All you had to do was follow his link.

      From a quarter to half of Earth’s vegetated lands has shown significant greening over the last 35 years largely due to rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Climate Change on April 25.

      An international team of 32 authors from 24 institutions in eight countries led the effort, which involved using satellite data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectrometer and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer instruments to help determine the leaf area index, or amount of leaf cover, over the planet’s vegetated regions. The greening represents an increase in leaves on plants and trees equivalent in area to two times the continental United States. Carbon Dioxide Fertilization Greening Earth, Study Finds

      or was that a too inconvenient of a truth?

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    8. Re:Intentional ignorance by shilly · · Score: 1

      I'm guessing he voted for Brexit, ie ignoring experts is core to his identity

    9. Re:Intentional ignorance by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Exactly. Unfortunately for us, there is no other method of heat transfer other than conduction and convection. If only there was a way for energy to "radiate" away from an object even if there was a complete vacuum surrounding that object. Unfortunately, as a person with an excellent grasp of thermodynamics, you know that such a pathway is impossible.

  30. Re: Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Luckily, a bunch of overtly stupid billionaires, former US military hardliners, and bankers from Wallstreet and Goldman Sachs will fix this in a jiffy together with a sizable number of ostensively corrupt Republican career politicians. I mean, let's face, who else could help the US middle class if not these people? You must obviously be completely deluded if you don't agree that they are the best people for helping the proverbial 'small man', right?

    Not! ROTFL

  31. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Fragnet · · Score: 0

    I get that impression from the fact that plants absorb it and in current times they're starved of it (compared to paleo history). That's why people who run greenhouses artificially increase it to between 1 and 2,000 ppm. I think NASA did a study about biosphere greening didn't they? It concluded the biosphere is... greening. But nobody really discussed it all that much because it doesn't fit the catastrophic global warming narrative. I mean it's a very positive indicator. This is all about narrative isn't it. Narrative = Rent for all those concerned.

    I think the only thing you can accuse me of here is cherry picking. I think Schmidt's "adjustments" of instrumental records are bollocks but then I'm quite happy to select the greening article for the very same NASA to prove my point.

  32. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Fragnet · · Score: 0

    But they're literally saying the pause was caused by a splice between ship based temperature measurements (the very inaccurate ones) and the buoys. I know climate scientists are very happy to splice two data sets together if it fits the narrative but in this case for some reason they've decided it needs adjustment, presumably because there's a pause and pauses are completely unsuitable for grubbing grants.

    Still see no reason not to call BS on this.

  33. Is this how it goes?? by beheaderaswp · · Score: 2

    Interesting thought...

    What if the actual end of humanity is caused, because as an aggregate, we are smart enough to understand and avoid it, but the majority of our biomass isn't smart.

    Perhaps, we've got too much of a spread in ability between intelligent folks and those who are constitutionally incapable of understanding the complexities of a large data set. Or the mathematics needed to interpret it. Or lack the desire to do the work that leads to understanding.

    There's so many factors involved.

    --
    Another consultant who stuck it out.

    "We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
    1. Re:Is this how it goes?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think it is unfair to blame lack of intelligence. The active trolling is willful disbelief motivated by self interest or identity politics. Skepticism is fine and healthy. Data quality is really, really important. In my area the main urban weather station showed obvious warming trends in heating degree days that weren't reflected in outlying areas. Some said it was an urban heat island, but the deviation from the other sites wasn't a trend. It was a discrete change that start in a particular year that coincided with the weather station moving when the new airport control tower was put in. It would surprise me if mistakes haven't been made at various points.
      That's science. But after decades of careful scrutiny, to volubly challenge how data is processed without specific new issues is tiring. I hope every denier troll has someone trolling them.

    2. Re:Is this how it goes?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Read the book: "The Logic of Failure" by Dorner for a discussion of exactly this.

    3. Re:Is this how it goes?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You bring up mathematics. So how would you interpret that the tolerance of accuracy for the "warmest year ever!" claim is bigger than the amount claimed it was hotter by? A machinist with even little training would realize that there is no way the number or the claim could be accurate, yet we are supposed to ignore this and simple math telling us it's not even close to the truth?

    4. Re:Is this how it goes?? by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

      The statement makes sense if instead of using the dictionary definition of intelligent, and think of it more as Dunning-Kruger Effect.

      The fact is we are LOOOOONG past the point where science has been easy enough for a lay person to understand. An Apple falls on your head and you can shout "OMG Gravity!". The rest is just figuring out the details. At no point would anyone argue against you that Gravity exists.

      But science in general is a hell of a lot more complex now. Now we're working with sub-atomic particles. We're using gravitational lensing to discover planets in far off star systems. The knowledge we are now gaining isn't even remotely within the grasp of the average person, but the average person by definition doesn't have the skill and knowledge to understand just how lacking in skill and knowledge they are. Hell, science is so complex now that you have no choice but to specialize up the wazoo just to avoid information overload. (Hint: Scientists in Joss Whedon TV shows are bullshit).

      Unless an appropriate number of scientists that have *specialized in climate science* go out and say "Wait, no, AGW is wrong." I have to trust that the science was done to the best of their ability and concluded that AGW is real. If a biologist, chemist, mathematician, or heaven forbid an economist, stands up and waves their arms and says AGW is a hoax, their opinion means absolutely jack for the same reason that you wouldn't trust a heart surgeon to diagnose and treat pancreatic cancer. Experience and knowledge is not magically transferrable across even similar fields, let alone wildly different ones.

      I see climate change deniers being no different from people who are evolution deniers. They refuse to trust in the science because they have their own ulterior motives for not doing so, whether it's money, pride, or whatever. Evolution for example, is unequivocally true. There is so much overwhelming evidence that is corroborated by pretty much every field of science from biology to chemistry to geology, that to believe otherwise can only be considered a mental illness. And yet you have millions of people who refuse to "believe" in evolution. Because they don't want to.

      If people can deny evolution is real just like that, despite the overwhelmingly solid evidence, I have zero hope that they "believe" in AGW since the science is so much more complex.

      Which basically means there is no hope that we will collectively take the necessary actions to do anything about it.

  34. Re:Or skeptics by locofungus · · Score: 1

    If you disagree with the method used for correction of the valitidy of the bias claims, then attack those on their merits.

    People have.

    Indeed. This latest paper was from people who were skeptical about the NOAA corrections.

    But when they did their own independent analysis they were forced to admit that the NOAA data actually looked better than the previous data.

    They're labeled "deniers" and then told by the ivory tower elitists that they're "backwards rednecks."

    Ermmmmm. I'm pretty sure these guys aren't being labeled deniers.

    --
    God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
  35. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by bentcd · · Score: 1

    We have many trillions of dollars sunk into infrastructure that depends on the local environment being what it was when the infrastructure was designed and built. If the environment changes significantly in its average or peak temperature levels, or its humidity, or its solar radiation, or any of a range of other environmental factors, then the infrastructure may see reduced functionality, increased wear, or outright failure. As climate changes start to make themselves known in earnest we will have to start chasing them to patch up all of this infrastructure which imposes a tremendous cost on us. Instead of maintaining our existing bridges, road systems and hospitals we will need to come up with a hasty plan to relocate the Netherlands, build sea walls around Manhattan, allocate new areas and develop them to house everyone who needs to leave their old homes on the Equator, etc.

    While the Antarctic may eventually become habitable, relocating e.g. a hundred million displaced Chinese there is going to be tremendously expensive and a huge drag on the global economy that we might have avoided with relative ease by simply stopping coal subsidies and letting market forces phase in solar for us.

    --
    sigs are hazardous to your health
  36. Re:Or skeptics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Outstanding comment!

    You've perfectly parodied the "belligerent climate change denier asshole" tone and messaging, right down to calling scientists "ivory tower elitists" and accusing them of calling deniers "backwards rednecks" with zero proof. I've seen a lot of people try to pull off this kind of mockery online without anywhere near your level of success.

    Thanks for helping point out just how absurd the deniers are. Well done!

  37. "Rep. Smith won't like these results" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Therefore this will be yet more "evidence" that there's a conspiracy among scientists, and Smith will demand THEIR emails too.

    But don't you ask for HIS emails.

    And don't set up any body to investigate HIM for corruption, either. They're both "proof" that he's being persecuted by the NWO scientists.

  38. Funny how by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Funny how corrections always show more warming, not less. QUICK, stop correcting!

    1. Re:Funny how by hey! · · Score: 4, Informative

      Not so funny if you know how scientists think and communicate.

      Most of us live in a world where overstatement and oversimplification rule. Politicians certainly do it, but don't forget advertisers. Take that advertisement that says "Four out of five dentists recommend Trident for their patients who chew gum." We know it's bullshit, which is not quite the same as saying it is untrue. Four out of five neurosurgeons probably recommend .22 caliber bullets for their patients that shoot themselves in the head.

      Scientists don't communicate that way. My wife is a geophysicist who's believed in AGW since the mid 80s. Yet she's never been happy with the state of the data. Her trained response to something clear as night and day is to point out you've neglected to mention civil and nautical twilight. Although she expected the warming trend of the 90s to happen, the unequivocal nature of the data really irked her because data is supposed to be more contradictory than that.

      So it boils down to this: a politician won't change his mind unless the evidence is unequivocal, a scientist is reluctant to change his mind unless there is data to support both sides of a question.

      This means there is a huge incentive for a scientist to understate their results and make them seem more equivocal. Faced with a very large and dramatic effect, initial scientific reports will almost always understate it. That's because you have to give every possible benefit of the doubt to the null hypothesis.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    2. Re:Funny how by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Keep in mind, how politicians are elected. This is true in the US and most other places with "representative democratic" systems.

      A congressman is elected to represent the interests of their constituency.

      Now, if their constituency happens to be, say, New Orleans - then it's in their interests to be concerned about the sea level rising and hurricanes striking. But on the other hand, greenhouse gases are only one of many long-term threats to their constituents' interests, and they'll rarely be the most urgent one. So it's an issue, but it will seldom be the most pressing thing on your mind - compared with, e.g., prison policy, health insurance, employment etc.

      If, on the other hand, your constituency is the 21st congressional district of Texas, then there may be tens of thousands of people in your constituency whose jobs depend on oil. They'll only get pay rises, and promotions, and rising property values, and jobs for their kids, if oil continues not only to hold its own, but to grow in importance. And your chances of re-election are directly dependent on how well your constituents think that you've supported them. Compared with vague, largely untraceable threat posed by climate change, the threat of job losses in the oil industry is immediate and pressing. Your constituents want you to resist all talk of global warming. By fighting tooth and nail against it, you are being a good democratic representative.

      In the second case, "evidence" or "personal conviction" have nothing to do with it. To quote Bill Clinton, in brighter days: "It's the economy, stupid".

  39. Thrid party review by Layzej · · Score: 4, Informative

    The evaluation was performed by a third party that is not associated with NOAA. In fact, lead author Zeke is associated with the Berkeley BEST skeptics that were once the darlings of the climate contrarian movement - until the results of their audit were released and ended up confirming the consensus position.

    Regarding the graph, what you are looking at is the difference between the reference and the reconstruction. A negative trend means the reconstruction is lower than the reference. A positive trend means that the reconstruction is higher than the reference. A zero trend means that the reconstruction is bang on. You'll notice that the ERSSTv4 matches the instrumentally homogeneous reference datasets quite well. That's a good thing!

  40. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Fragnet · · Score: 1

    We have many trillions of dollars sunk into infrastructure that depends on the local environment being what it was when the infrastructure was designed and built

    Yes we do. So what? Given we like building on flood plains or on the coast it seems to me we don't really care that much. I mean if there's on thing you can guarantee it's that the coast will erode and a flood plain will flood, all else being equal.

  41. And without adjustments, trend is higher. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But when there aren't adjustments, you complained it was all "Urban Heat Island Effect", and that the data needed to be adjusted downward.

    Now they ARE adjusted, you complain that they're adjusted.

    So your complaint is self-defeated by your refusal to accept any data unless it gives an answer you like.

    1. Re: And without adjustments, trend is higher. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Proper science doesnt adjust. It provides a range of error/uncertainty for a specific measurement that becomes an eigenvalue in the partial derivative equation to determine error bounds for the entire experiment. Climate "science" skips parts 2 - 4 of the method.

      Give me a statement of, "its going to warm by 1.5C +/- X degrees" and maybe Ill start listening to your bullshit.

    2. Re: And without adjustments, trend is higher. by mwvdlee · · Score: 2

      Uncertainty is an unknown error.
      Bias is a known error.

      If the range of uncertainty is not "+/- 10" but, for instance, "+ 19/-1", you might as well just add 9 to the data and state uncertainty as "+/- 10".
      (I'm aware this example is over-simplified, just trying to explain that bias is not the same as uncertainty).

      --
      Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
  42. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Fragnet · · Score: 0

    I don't know and neither do you. Neither do they. It's quite likely that because they don't know they shouldn't start fucking about with the data to smooth away the "problem". I mean I may be thick as a stick in a bucket of pig-shit but I do at least know these kinds of statistical shenanigans are usually bollocks.

  43. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Fragnet · · Score: 1

    OK smart-arse, please tell me what the replication rate is for studies in medicine?

    Oh dear.

  44. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by minogully · · Score: 2

    You miss the point. It's not the planet we need to save. The planet will be fine. It's like how forest fires are great for forests in the long run. But don't tell that to the animals who die from habitat loss while they're waiting for the forest to regrow.

  45. Re: Two questions before I call BS. by Fragnet · · Score: 1

    This is the kind of thing I'm talking about. Florida is a massive swamp anyway but regardless, these things vary over time and always have. Sod the channel tunnel, I would have been able to walk to France 12,000 years ago.

  46. I don't have to, because it isn't true. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And moreover the raw unadjusted data gives a higher trend than the adjusted data.

  47. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Fragnet · · Score: 1

    You've been reading the bollocks on this subject then. They weren't caused by droughts, they were caused by an increase in global commodity prices - mostly food prices. That's what happens when the biggest grain producer in the world is run by credulous fucktard politicians who start mandating a certain percentage of the crop be turned into biofuel rather than bread. People like you probably supported it.

    Here's a curvball for you: The Sahara Desert has been greening.

    Buttfucked. Bend over more sonny.

  48. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    (1) Who gives a fuck? Seriously. Nobody has demonstrated the small amount of warming we've had and can expect in future isn't beneficial to mankind and the biosphere - especially the biosphere, which quite likes CO2 and expends a lot of energy trying to keep itself warm above and below certain lines of latitude.

    (a) Farmers, (b) people who live in hot climates, (c) people in northern european countries where air conditioning is rare but summer temperatures have been increasing, (d) venetians.

    OK I'm done. Start down-voting my comment.

    Gladly. Have a -1.

  49. Re: Or skeptics by mwvdlee · · Score: 1

    The length of a foot used to be anywhere between roughly 250mm and 335mm. Currently a foot is 304.8mm. Do you trust both measurements equally?
    Assuming you don't, then why would you trust two temperature measurements equally, even thought the old one is known to be incorrect by a certain amount?

    --
    Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
  50. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Fragnet · · Score: 1

    I don't really care about every individual pea hen. They will evolve and change. The ones well suited will survive and succeed. The ones not well suited will die out. We've had, you know, something like 4 billion years of this crap and suddenly we're scared of change. Imagine that. Your ancestors were little shrews. Your cousins are currently schooling in the Pacific. Strange but true.

  51. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by dywolf · · Score: 1

    1) Lamar Smith for one. He's the one who raised the issue, an issue also known about by everyone involved in the science. And they've now completed their work accounting for it, and presenting their finding back to him.

    See, you (and Lamar Smith) are trying to do this:

    Skeptic (Denier): What about X? Does X not disprove your entire conclusion?
    Scientists: We are aware of X, and studying its impacts on the data so that it can be accounted for.
    ~~time passed~~
    Scientists: We have finished studying X and have accounted for it. However it's effect is negligible, and our original conclusion still stands.
    Skeptic (Denier): Well who gives a s*** ?! You're all liars and the climate is fine.

    Also:
    No, it's not a small amount of warming
    No, more CO2 isn't necessarily the boon to the environment you think it is. Problems associated with increased heat and/or CO2 include reduced agricultural output, increased pest infestation of crops, and crops that turn toxic , and others.

    2) No, they are not. The devices used to measure have accuracy in the range of 0.001 degree, or better. And even less accurate devices (say, +/-0.1) can still show a trend. The accuracy of the device relates more to each individual reading in a vacuum, not to a series of readings. That is to say, errors are typically linear or progressive in measurement equipment; non-linear or random inaccuracy does occur, but is uncommon (has a lot to do with the type of instrument too....geared instruments, like dial indicators, can more easily appear non-linear if the multiple errors are on a gear that only rotates a single time; note that if the gear rotated twice, you would see the error as cyclical). IE, say your thermometer is rated as +/-0.1 degree accuracy. So when measuring 20.1C, the "true" could be between 20.0 and 20.2. Then say you take a 2nd measurement, of 21.6. The true value is between 21.5 and 21.7. BUT, assuming the true value of measurement 1 was 20.2....it would be very unlikely that the true value of the 2nd measurement is below the indicated value. IE, the trend is still visible. (source: several years of metrology and instrumentation experience)

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  52. Judith Curry is playing to the crowd by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    To be specific, the denier crowd, since they are uncritical of anything that "disproves" AGW. She was lackluster in her job and found that she could get the adulation she "deserved" by playing up for the deniers.

    And your quote says fuck all about this news, so is 100% irrelevant.

    She's "cashing out" for one or both of these reasons:

    1) Her work was so poor she was asked to resign
    2) Leaving lets her cash in on the denier crowd. See the appearance fees.

  53. Re:Who cares? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 0

    The EU has increased their CO2 output EVERY YEAR since Climate Change was discovered. So who really cares at this point? Obviously the EU doesn't, even with all their blather.

    Because Germany is continuing its transition from nuclear to coal baseload. If Trump does reopen the US coal mines, that's probably where the output will go.

  54. Re: Or skeptics by Maritz · · Score: 1

    Stop using medieval measures, for a start.

    --
    I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
  55. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by locofungus · · Score: 1

    (the very inaccurate ones)

    You do realize we're talking about a correction in the trend of .06C/decade over recent decades?

    The error bars on the measurements are huge compared to this.

    If you plot a graph from 1998 up to 2015 using the best estimate and no error bars without this change, then people will tend, when eyeballing, to say that there's no trend. (the trend is statistically indistinguishable from zero - but it's also statistically indistinguishable from the trend in the prior decades)

    I haven't seen an equivalent graph that includes this correction but I'm assuming that people will no longer eyeball "no trend" (although the trend using just these years will still be statistically indistinguishable from zero)

    Include more data, at either end, and they no longer come to the conclusion of no trend regardless of whether you include this correction.

    Whether this additional .06C/decade is real or imaginary has absolutely zero impact on the science of climate change.

    It will make a small difference in where we can expect to be in 50 years time in a BAU scenario but as no climate scientist was saying we can afford BAU for another 5 decades even with the unadjusted data then that's a moot point.

    --
    God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
  56. Re: Who cares? by Notabadguy · · Score: 5, Informative
  57. Re:Or skeptics by silentcoder · · Score: 2

    These people can't tell the difference between "correcting for a known measurement problem" and "lying".

    Lets use a car analogy (this is slashdot after all). A car's speedometer is never completely accurate, in fact it has a margin of error of about 10 km/h. This is because it cannot actually measure the distance travelled, and it has to get this value by a proxy: the number of wheel rotations times the circumference of the wheel. Trouble is wheel circumference is not a constant. People put on tyres of different sizes, and the tyres themselves change shape as you drive - stretching and relaxing and all this introduces known errors in the measurement.
    Now to prevent this from introducing major safety risks (and getting lots of people undeserved fines) car manufacturers deliberately calibrate speedometers to overestimate speed. This way, if you drive at what the meter says is the speed limit you can be reliably sure that your actual speed is below the limit (by up to 10km/h).

    So if I want to know the ACTUAL speed at which I drove, and I don't have a way of measuring the exact distance and time - my best bet is to take the speed that was on the speedometer and subtract 10km/h from it.
    It isn't perfectly accurate but it's a lot more accurate than using the number directly (idiots of course, when learning this, subvert this by driving 10km/h ABOVE the speed limit - which would be fine if that margine of error was exact, you have no idea how close you actually are, or even if you are over when you do that).

    This is an adjustment like that. You have a measuring device, you know it has a deviation, and you correct for that deviation to get a more accurate answer than the raw device could give.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  58. Re:Or skeptics by Mashiki · · Score: 0

    Thanks for helping point out just how absurd the deniers are. Well done!

    Gee, so you're saying that 40+ years of the sky is falling, it's cooling, it's warming, no wait it's cooling. Wait a sec it's warming, that warming is going to cause the end of all life we know it. Storms are going to be more frequent, and worse. No wait, they're going to be less frequent and less severe. No wait, they're going to be less frequent and more severe. That's been pushed by: Academia, media, environmentalists, mouth pieces, flappyheaded gravy train riders. Hasn't caused any problems at all.

    Good job. Sure explains why there's such a backlash against the left, academia, the media and so on. Nope, gotta double down it can't be *our fault* for decades of extravagant lies and feel-good politics that does absolutely nothing. While standing in the way of things like nuclear power, protecting a minnow in a hydro-electric project, and requiring 200 environmental impact studies to go through a swamp to put in a road for a remote community.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  59. Re:Or skeptics by Mashiki · · Score: 0

    Ermmmmm. I'm pretty sure these guys aren't being labeled deniers.

    These guys aren't. However, quite often when anyone who questions the orthodoxy? Quite often they are. Never notice it? That's okay. People who were in charge of the Catholic Church didn't notice it either when Martin Luther nailed his proclamation to the door either.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  60. Re:Or skeptics by svc00 · · Score: 1

    But the weird thing is, in order to make the buoy data match the engine water intake data, they decided to "warm" the buoy data rather than "cool" the intake data. That's hard to understand. They could have split the difference, but no. It's all a warming adjustment which makes skeptics wonder why that was chosen when the best guess is that the intake data was too warm, not the buoy data too cool.

  61. Sorry by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As a citizen within Lamar Smiths congressional district, on behalf of all voters here who voted against Lamar Smith I apologize. I've been trying for years to make people aware of how awful this guy is. but he still wins by a land slide very time. I hate it.

  62. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by silentcoder · · Score: 3, Informative

    >I don't know and neither do you
    Yes... we do... because only one of the two options is even POSSIBLE. The other is literally declared impossible by Newton's first law and ALL THREE laws of thermodynamics. Put a ship engine intake thermometer and a buoy thermometer in the same water - it's physically impossible that the ship will NOT measure hotter than the buoy. Because those heaters, engines, people - all those things PRODUCE ENERGY. And energy cannot be destroyed, it cannot dissapear. It's there and it WILL affect the measurement.
    Luckily we DO know exactly by how MUCH it affects it - because we DO have buoy's to compare it with.

    > I mean I may be thick as a stick in a bucket of pig-shit
    There's no may be about it, but congratulations on the closest to true thing you've said all day (it would have been entirely true if you replaced 'may be' with 'am').

    >I do at least know these kinds of statistical shenanigans are usually bollocks.
    There was nothing statistical about this - and besides which, no they NEVER are - but professional liars like Steve Mcntyre will write screeds declaring the statistics invalid. Not because it is - because he is flat out lying to you about what the numbers mean (or even, on occasion, what those numbers ARE). It's not that he doesn't understand the statistics, he has the training and he does. It's that he knows YOU DO NOT. So he knows if how to tell a convincing lie. And you fall for it.
    Probably because of the above stated stick in a bucket of pig-shit problem.

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    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  63. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by silentcoder · · Score: 2, Informative

    Okay fucknuckle - please educate yourself on why medicine is one of the hardest scientific fields to study - and why that low replication rate tells you NOTHING about other sciences.

    Hint: because experimenting on people is very difficult to do ethically and there are a lot of things you OUGHT to do to get reliable scientific results which you CANNOT do because doing them would be considered mass murder.

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    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  64. Do greenhouses create their own heat? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    No. Therefore DESPITE NO HEATING FROM THE GLASS, the greenhouse heats up.

    And therefore one of the simplest and dumbest denier memes "how can it make"things warmer? That breaks the 2nd law of thermodynamics!" is shown to be bollocks.

    You see, if it were NOT proposed as an ANALOGY (look the word up, moron), your "complaint" that greenhouse glass isn't made of CO2 would stand up. But it isn't and it doesn't.

    The proof of AGW is

    1) CO2 causes heat to be trapped
    2) If the sun's output remains the same, the earth will warm
    3) We are burning fossil fuels, increasing the CO2 content of the atmosphere

    The greenhouse is an analogy.

    The greenhouse effect is the effect, and no greenhouses are required.

    1. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I once pointed out how we had a ready-made carbon sequestration process in place already. Yard waste in landfills.

      Sadly, this was killed by a competing environmentalist impulse based on innumeracy: We are running out of space for landfills. So now many areas ban yard waste in landfills. And what landfills there are often are areated so they can continue to rot away underground, also releasing that CO2.

      Do your duty -- compost the yard waste to get the CO2 back into the atmosphere!

      When I pointed this out to the environmentalist, he immediately said, well, CO2 wasn't that important as a greenhouse gas.

      You have to pick and choose your environmentalist impulse values and pooh pooh any contrary ideas.

      --
      (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
    2. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by locofungus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I despair.

      CO2 from biological matter doesn't directly matter. (Land use changes that destroy biological matter and don't replace it are a different matter)

      If it's plant based then all that CO2 that is released will have been recently extracted from the air to be incorporated into the plants tissues.

      If it's animal based then any and all CO2 that is released will, ultimately, have come from the C in plants which, in turn, will have come from CO2 in the air.

      it's really, really, easy to tell the difference between CO2 that has its source as the carbon cycle and "fossil" CO2 that has been sequestered for significant lengths of time. "Biological" CO2 will have been recently part of the atmosphere. Because C14 has a moderate half life (6Kyear), it will have needed to be sequestrated for tens to hundreds of millenia before all the (detectable) C14 will have decayed.

      Almost all C14 is generated in the upper atmosphere (by thermal neutron capture by N14). Therefore, if the material you are burning, composting, digesting, gives off CO2 that contains C14 then the carbon that it contains (recently) came from the atmosphere.

      --
      God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
    3. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      3 is incorrect. Mankind is not the only source of burning fossil fuels.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    4. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by kimvette · · Score: 1

      Where did GP claim that mankind is the only source of burning fossil fuels?
      Yes, we are aware of coal pits that a burning as result of lightning strikes or other natural phenomena.

      But, the CO2 released is miniscule compared to how we're willfully fucking up the only known habitable planet.

      --
      The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
    5. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by haruchai · · Score: 1

      I once pointed out how we had a ready-made carbon sequestration process in place already. Yard waste in landfills.

      Sadly, this was killed by a competing environmentalist impulse based on innumeracy: We are running out of space for landfills. So now many areas ban yard waste in landfills. And what landfills there are often are areated so they can continue to rot away underground, also releasing that CO2.

      Do your duty -- compost the yard waste to get the CO2 back into the atmosphere!

      When I pointed this out to the environmentalist, he immediately said, well, CO2 wasn't that important as a greenhouse gas.

      You have to pick and choose your environmentalist impulse values and pooh pooh any contrary ideas.

      Adding in large amounts of carbon that was removed from the natural cycle a very long time ago or was never part of it.is the real problem.
      Trying to sequester carbon by burying yard waste is like jogging to burn off the extra six slices of pizza, 1/2 gallon of ice cream and box of cookies you're eating every day - it'll do more harm than good and what you should have done was eat less.

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    6. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by IWannaBeAnAC · · Score: 1

      I was going to reply, but logging on half-way through writing the reply caused the edit box to clear and I lost it. But nevermind, the comment from haruchai sums up what I was going to say anyway. Trying to store biomass doesn't work, it decomposes and releases the CO2 anyway. Trying to 'plug' it is basically impossible, it amounts to basically artificially reproducing the same effect that happens in the production of coal or oil. The natural rate of fossil fuel production, across the entire planet, is something like 1 barrel of oil per day. (yes that fits - the rate of oil usage currently about 20 million barrels per day; it formed over the course of 300 million years).

    7. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 2

      All of mankind's greenhouse gas emissions combined are now, post 2004 tipping point, completely minuscule compared to what is released by melting tundra. We're already fucked up past any point of coming back- so it's time to ADAPT to changing conditions instead of trying to stick a finger in the bolt hole while the dam crumbles around you.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    8. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by IWannaBeAnAC · · Score: 2

      Sorry, the rate of natural oil production is actually about 10 barrels per day.

    9. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by Rob+Y. · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why it's almost as if fossil fuel-funded pols wanted us to reach a tipping point so that they could then say - there's no point attempting to stop it now. Party on and build those big seawalls. I wonder if they're investing in seawall technology now...

      Nothing in that tipping point argument says that it's useless to stop throwing fuel on the fire. Yes, the tipping point means that we've got our work cut out for us, and we should be preparing in addition to trying our best not to add to the problem, but based on how well we 'prepared' for preventing getting to this point, I don't see much happening there either.

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    10. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      Why should they invest in seawall technology when the predicted increase is now only in centimeters per century? Or haven't you gotten the latest updates to the model yet?

      A more complete history of the planet suggests than 400ppm CO2 is actually quite close to the mean still. Talk to me about cutting back when we reach 800ppm and need a machette to get to the car after a day of work.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
    11. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by david_thornley · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Ah, yes, the stages of denialism:

      1. It's not happening.

      2. It's not our fault.

      3. Our contribution isn't significant.

      4. It's not going to be that bad..

      5. It's too late to do anything useful, so there's no point in doing anything.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    12. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by Rob+Y. · · Score: 1

      Well Miamians may not feel that way when it rains hard, but I guess you have a point. A valid one if you happen to think "oh, fuck it, humanity's not going to be around in a hundred years anyway..."

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    13. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by Ol+Olsoc · · Score: 1

      Ah, yes, the stages of denialism:

      1. It's not happening.

      2. It's not our fault.

      3. Our contribution isn't significant.

      4. It's not going to be that bad..

      5. It's too late to do anything useful, so there's no point in doing anything.

      6. Its the liberal's fault.

      We had a Highway go througha local area where there were likely to be problems. Pyritic rocks, which make for pretty orange acidic water. Unfit to drink, kills all life in streams it flows into untill it gets buffered out by dilution. Well, those fucking tree huggers were taught a lesson.

      They exempted the project from an environmental impact study.

      So after they tore off the top of a mountain and built the highway, the water started running orange. At first they tried to claim that no one knew it was there. A local geology professor exposed that lie, as he showed that the pyritic rock exposure had already been cut through once before in that area - just a minor exposure.

      Then it was found out they had plopped half of the shit they excavated in other areas as well. A hell of a mess, with the taxpayers funding a huge cleanup, running water lines to the houses that had their wells permanently destroyed, and possibly will lose a productive muni water well in the future. I sat at a meeting where one of these geniuses, blamed the whole thing on Liberal tree huggers. Because they had to oppose the tree huggers and eliminate the impact statement, and had to lie about it. So the tree huggers who wanted the highway to go in elsewhere were teh problem because well, you know you have to make certain that you don't listen to them.

      --
      The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
    14. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by riverat1 · · Score: 2

      Last time CO2 was at 400 ppm sea levels were over 20 meters (70 feet) higher than they are now. Just sayin'.

    15. Re: Do greenhouses create their own heat? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Composting produces methane, a far more interesting problem.

    16. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      No. Therefore DESPITE NO HEATING FROM THE GLASS, the greenhouse heats up.

      And therefore one of the simplest and dumbest denier memes "how can it make"things warmer? That breaks the 2nd law of thermodynamics!" is shown to be bollocks.

      You see, if it were NOT proposed as an ANALOGY (look the word up, moron), your "complaint" that greenhouse glass isn't made of CO2 would stand up. But it isn't and it doesn't.

      The proof of AGW is

      1) CO2 causes heat to be trapped 2) If the sun's output remains the same, the earth will warm 3) We are burning fossil fuels, increasing the CO2 content of the atmosphere

      The greenhouse is an analogy.

      The greenhouse effect is the effect, and no greenhouses are required.

      [parody] No! silicon has 4 valence electrons, like carbon! silicon dioxide is just like carbon dioxide, with a higher molecular weight! glass is silicon dioxide! therefore, it should act just like CO2! [/parody]

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
    17. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah, yes, the stages of intellectual arrogance:

      1. I'm right so I don't have to explain myself again.

      2. I'm right so I don't have to explain myself again.

      3. I'm right so I don't have to explain myself again.

      4. I'm right so I don't have to explain myself again.

      5. Why isn't anyone listening to me?

    18. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by gzuckier · · Score: 1

      Sorry, the rate of natural oil production is actually about 10 barrels per day.

      Mostly in kids going through puberty.

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
    19. Re:Do greenhouses create their own heat? by gzuckier · · Score: 2

      Ah, yes, the stages of denialism:

      1. It's not happening.

      2. It's not our fault.

      3. Our contribution isn't significant.

      4. It's not going to be that bad..

      5. It's too late to do anything useful, so there's no point in doing anything.

      And the stages of metadenialism:

      1. It's not happening.

      2. Nobody's saying it's not happening, just that it's not our fault.

      3. Nobody's saying it's not our fault, just that our contribution isn't significant.

      4. Nobody's saying our contribution isn't significant, just that it's not going to be that bad.

      5. Nobody's saying it's not going to be that bad just that it's too late to do anything useful, so there's no point in doing anything.

      6. Nobody's saying it's too late to do anything useful so there's no point in doing anything, just that the liberals and scientists are to blame for politicizing the issue.

      The fun part is that they are currently saying all of these, simultaneously; in the apparent belief that they all agree with each other and form a coherent plan.

      --
      Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
  65. Re: Two questions before I call BS. by silentcoder · · Score: 1

    You're right, thanks to global warming we are already seeing mosquito born illnesses like Zika and Malaria massively expanding the ranges where they occur. Think about the poor human killing mosquitos ! Do not let the cold keep them confined to small areas. Let them spread and live long prosperous lives killing babies !

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  66. I'm an R-TX and I look at the evidence by raymorris · · Score: 1

    > The 'R-TX' should be a hint.

    I'm an R-TX and I look at the evidence. Evidence indicates:
    a) There's been some warming.
    b) The rate of warming has been at least twice as fast on earth than on Mars and Venus (meaning solar changes are probably NOT the primary cause on earth).
    c) San Francisco was not underwater in 2010
    d) San Francisco probably won't be underwater in 2025 either.

    > He's being bribed with campaign contributions from the fossil fuel industry to be a denier.

    There's some truth to that, and the hyperbole from the left, the utter bullshit about "X will be underwater by 20yy" hasn't helped. It's easy to call AGW "bullshit" when some people spout so much bullshit in the name of AGW.

    In a poll, I bet most people would say jolly old Saint Nick isn't real. He's actually a real guy, but all the fiction layered on top for various reasons has plenty of people thinking the whole Saint Nick thing is fake. There is some similarity to global warming there. If you want peopel to take it seriously, don't make BS claims like San Francisco will be underwater in five or ten years - because five or ten years later, when SF is still there, people think everything you say is complete bollocks.

  67. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Fragnet · · Score: 1
    So why didn't you read the post above, needle-dick? It was said that,

    Climate science is like medicine

    It could also have said (and would have been equally true), climate science is like economics. Oh no...

  68. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by silentcoder · · Score: 2

    It's not entirely speculative - some are already happening. For example - there are vast swaths of methane (one of the worst greenhouse gasses) trapped below the alpine glaciers. As the glaciers are melting - this methane is escaping.
    This is already happening at such a fast rate that the Swedes are using the methane escaping from melting glaciers to burn in power plants.

    And they can't even burn it all - there's too much escaping over too wide a region.

    When you have CO2 induced melting of glaciers releasing formerly trapped methane which will trigger more severe warming, that's a perfect exanple of a feedback-loop effect, and it's happening right now.

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  69. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Fragnet · · Score: 1, Interesting

    because only one of the two options is even POSSIBLE

    No, there's another possibility here: (3) the accuracy of the measurement gives us an error that dwarfs the change, therefore comparing the measurements is completely meaningless. That would be my preferred option, mostly because it's the only option that requires you to forgo your grant funding and demonstrate a little scientific integrity.

    Knock yourself out with it though.

    Btw Steve McIntyre is a mathematician who won the national high school mathematics competition when he was a nipper. He's forgotten more about mathematics than most of the shills working in climate science ever learned. You can have that little factoid for free by the way.

  70. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by silentcoder · · Score: 1

    No, They aren't. Because there WAS NO PAUSE.

    They ARE saying the warming that DID happen was worse than we thought. Nobody is trying to explain "the pause" for the same reason no scientist is currently publishing theories about unicorn flight dynamics.
    Scientists do not write theories to explain things that have never been observed. The pause was a fantasy, made up by a wellfunded team of propaganda artists employed by the fossil fuel industry to tell a lie to the world, and you swallowed their lie hook line and sinker.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  71. Get yer data here. by hey! · · Score: 5, Informative

    On one hand the per capita CO2 emitted HAS increased from 4.3 tons per person in 1990 to 4.9 tons per person in 2014. This suggests that the world doesn't care.

    On the other hand the world is far wealthier than it was twenty-five years ago. If you look at CO2 per dollar of purchasing power (PPP GDP), the world reduced it's CO2 emissions per dollar by fifty-six percent. The per dollar of GDP emissions have declined most markedly in ... Europe. The major industrial countries of Europe scored per dollar reductions on the order of 60% - 80%. (UK 600 g/$ --> 200; France 367 g/$ --> 129; Germany 560->208; Denmar 597->148; UK 557->182). Most European countries emit less CO2 per person, in the cases of the largest industrialized countries (UK, France, Germany) dramatically so. Italy is the only industrialized country to score large increases in C02 over that period.

    SO here's the TL;DR: the world has tried and succeeded at becoming dramatically more carbon efficient -- about 2x as efficient on a dollar basis. That efficiency gain have not kept up with a Gross World Product that has more than doubled, and a population increase of over 1/3.

    There's a world of difference between doing nothing and not doing quite enough to solve the problem. What we have done is push a number of climate change consequences further into the future, and that makes a big difference. For many of us it means not living to see those changes.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    1. Re:Get yer data here. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's just a start. We should be able to reduce the rate of carbon emission growth even as we bring more of the world out of abject poverty.

      Isn't going to be easy, but progress never is.

    2. Re:Get yer data here. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      I don't think the Average Person, regardless of where they live in the world, thinks far enough ahead to really care about the subject of climate change, no. The Average Person is too busy every single day trying to make a living, take care of their family, and maybe find a little joy in life, assuming they have any time left over to do that. In some places the Average Person is too busy every day trying to not get killed to even care. Meanwhile, business people, by large and far, are too busy every day in their myopic pursuit of money. Deeply religious types talk about it being "God's will" and "He has a plan for all of us" and/or "The End is coming so it won't matter", so no help from them, either. Sadly, I think we're screwed. The relatively few people there are in the world who both understand the problem, and care what happens enough to do something about it, are such a small minority that they can't really do anything themselves, even if they weren't constantly shouted down and prevented from actually doing anything anyway.

    3. Re:Get yer data here. by hey! · · Score: 1

      Sadly, I think we're screwed.

      Actually, the logical conclusion of your argument is somewhat different: some of us are going to be screwed.

      I believe many of us will do quite well out of global warming. If you make your money out of a portfolio of financial investments, regular rebalancing of that portfolio means your exposure to the downside of change is limited.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    4. Re:Get yer data here. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1
      The word 'we' in my context is meant to imply all of humanity, and perhaps all life on Earth, not any particular subset of humans.

      I believe many of us will do quite well out of global warming. If you make your money out of a portfolio of financial investments, regular rebalancing of that portfolio means your exposure to the downside of change is limited.

      If you're being sarcastic, then bravo, sir, I approve. If you're serious, then, sadly, you're representative of a major part of the problem: the 'to hell with everyone else so long as I get mine' segement of the population.

    5. Re:Get yer data here. by hey! · · Score: 1

      I am quite serious, which is not the same as saying I approve. I'm just pointing out that you are implicitly assuming that if people just knew, they'd care.

      While wishful thinking is clearly a big part of most rank-and-file denialists' positions, at least some of the organizations behind them know better -- particularly Exxon.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    6. Re:Get yer data here. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      I'm just pointing out that you are implicitly assuming that if people just knew, they'd care.

      No, actually, you're demonstrating that you either didn't read my entire original content, aren't capable of comprehending all of it's meaning, or don't care to comprehend the entire meaning (perhaps only wishing to understand what you want to understand) -- or perhaps you're trolling me. If it's not the latter, then go back and read it again, I assure you there is mention of a group that doesn't care.

    7. Re:Get yer data here. by hey! · · Score: 1

      Sure. You're too profound for me. Enjoy.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    8. Re:Get yer data here. by Cl1mh4224rd · · Score: 1

      If you look at CO2 per dollar of purchasing power (PPP GDP)...

      That's a fucking bullshit metric if I ever saw one...

      --
      People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
    9. Re:Get yer data here. by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 1

      You know what? I think I was a bit harsh with you when I wrote that, and I'd like to apologize for that. I do get really annoyed laterly, though, when I write out a comment and someone misses part of the content, but that doesn't mean I should be taking it out on you. We good?

    10. Re:Get yer data here. by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      Sadly, I think we're screwed.

      Actually, the logical conclusion of your argument is somewhat different: some of us are going to be screwed.

      I believe many of us will do quite well out of global warming. If you make your money out of a portfolio of financial investments, regular rebalancing of that portfolio means your exposure to the downside of change is limited.

      Of course that presumes that the effects of climate change don't cause our civilization including the financial system to collapse. Civilizations have collapsed before due to climate change and just because our current civilization is global doesn't mean it can't happen to us.

    11. Re:Get yer data here. by hey! · · Score: 1

      Sure. Take care.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  72. Re:Or skeptics by gtall · · Score: 1

    Brilliant, you have discovered the world is complicated. Any other wisps of wisdom fizzing around in your head?

  73. Neither side can tell the difference, they skew by raymorris · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    > These people can't tell the difference between "correcting for a known measurement problem" and "lying".

    Unfortunately, neither side can. That's what's so frustrating - half the time the adjustments are lies, or at least intentionally skewed toward "raising awareness". Various researchers have admitted that in emails that leaked or other documents over and over again, a few publicly and openly. It's really, really difficult to get objective information. 90% of the researchers will tell you their objective is to "raise awareness of AGW" or similar, or they are funded by organizations with that as part of their stated agenda. That doesn't mean they are WRONG, of course. It just makes it difficult to get information you can trust to gauge the scale of the issue. Pretty clearly there *is* an issue, and pretty clearly San Francisco won't actually be underwater by 2020. In between the most extreme claims, it's very hard to know where reality is.

    1. Re:Neither side can tell the difference, they skew by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      at least intentionally skewed toward "raising awareness". Various researchers have admitted that in emails that leaked or other documents over and over again, a few publicly and openly.

      Woah, do you have an actual quote for that?

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:Neither side can tell the difference, they skew by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      Nope. That never happened. Those "leaked emails" never said that. The bits you were shown which were quoted out of context meant something ENTIRELY different to what you think when read in the context those words were actually written in. Something entirely non-controversial. Which is why the scientists accused in those cases were exonerated by not one but three different independent inquiries.

      Your claim has literally been disproven in court. Do you know what it's called when you keep fielding an accusation after somebody has been exonerated ? It's called slander, and it's not free speech, it's not "skepticism", it's not "being critical" - it's a crime.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    3. Re:Neither side can tell the difference, they skew by silentcoder · · Score: 0

      Oh and while there has been excessive alarmism in reporting - scientist have called that out consistently.

      If anything climate scientists are notoriously prone, in their public statements, to grossly underestimate their findings for fear of being called alarmist. When an actual climate scientist says "My analys shows X meters of sea level rise in 20 years" he is NOT telling you the top range possibility. He is not telling you most likely MIDDLE of the range either.

      He is telling you the lowest possible value supported by the data -and maybe rounding down a bit.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    4. Re:Neither side can tell the difference, they skew by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, you argue that if the (legal) burden of proof was not met, that therefore the alleged behavior didn't occur? Have I got that right? You are saying that legal innocence is identical to ethical or moral or factual innocence? Yup, OJ didn't do it. The emails I read show clearly that some of the scientists involved were highly (and in my judgement, unacceptably) biased. And acted in a manner which should have been (and in some cases was) sanctioned.

    5. Re:Neither side can tell the difference, they skew by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Any so-called "scientist" who gives a value rather than a "most likely" range, isn't working in the real world. Any scientist who biases his/her results down (minimizes them) is just as guilty of "spin" as those who bias them up (maximize their potential impact). Read the IPCC reports, they report RANGES and assign them likelihoods.

    6. Re:Neither side can tell the difference, they skew by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      Unless you read ALL the emails AND had the PHD to understand htem - you haven't read ANY.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  74. Where did c and d come from? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They aren't the predictions, and even if they were, they wouldn't disprove AGW or the ~3C/doubling climate sensitivity.

    "There's some truth to that, and the hyperbole from the left, the utter bullshit about "X will be underwater by 20yy" hasn't helped."

    [citation needed]

    It's not hard to call bullshit on "skepticism" like yours because of all the bullshit claims you make.

    In a poll, even in the USA, more than half the people wanted MORE done to combat AGW than was currently done. And it's not that "most people are too dumb to get the science", because the majority of those people ARE NOT POSTING BULLSHIT LIKE YOURS, but accept it, even if it's less important to them than feeding and clothing their family, which means they need a coal mining job. They get it.

    Where you get that asinine claim from is that people who understand and accept the science can't work out how someone doesn't, without it being "they're too dumb", because they believe

    a) people are honest
    b) they're trying
    c) they're as numerous as the volume they produce

    and none of those have to be real, but if they were real, then the only conclusion WOULD be "most people are too dumb". The truth is they're not, it's just the shills and trolls and idiots make more noise than their numbers deserve, and being highly motivated, their vote counts for more than most people's, so the politicians pander to them (because it aligns to their financial interests too)

  75. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Fragnet · · Score: 0

    massively outpaces historical change

    There's absolutely no evidence for this whatsoever. Indeed the converse is true.

    You think the biosphere will benefit from change

    Yes. Any evidence it won't? Don't include computer models, which diverge greatly from actual measurements. Oh sorry, if you do that you've got nothing. That's a shame.

  76. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by gtall · · Score: 1

    As important, CO2 levels in the oceans are rising making them more acidic. So regardless of whatever the anthropomorphic climate change deniers claim this week, the fact that the food chain disappearing might make them a bit more cautious....hehehehehe...just kidding, nothing could make them change their minds, even hunger.

  77. Re: Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Neck deep in Colorado?

    I think I'll be ok.

  78. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Fragnet · · Score: 0

    They ARE saying the warming that DID happen was worse than we thought

    Duh. Of course they are. That's the standard trope for a climate science paper that gets (a) published and (b) lots of publicity. Why you so gullible bro? Shocking.

  79. Re: Or skeptics by mwvdlee · · Score: 1

    They did. Now what do you do if you still need to know something about measured lengths when they still used medieval measures? You're just going to pretend those measurements were equally accurate as modern measurements or are you going to adjust those measurements to correct known measurement errors?

    --
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  80. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by silentcoder · · Score: 2

    I can't believe I have to explain this to a person who has learned to read and write but okay...

    O -- This is an apple. It is red.

    o/--\o -- This is a truck, it is red.

    The apple is like the truck: they are both red.

    BUT You can't drive the apple to work and you can't eat the truck. Just because one thing is like another thing in ONE way it does not mean it's like the other thing in ANY OTHER WAY.

    The above poster said climate change was like medicine only in one very specific way - you cannot conclude anything else from that.

    And you may also want to learn that DESPITE the difficulties in medical science it is still a thousand times more accurate than any other approach we have. Imperfect science is still MUCH better than non-science.

    Climate science is - ultimately - most like physics (in fact, about 90% of the time it IS nothing BUT physics), and anybody who tells you differently is deliberately trying to deceive you.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  81. Re: Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    But, you should care. Did you ever look at the homogenized data set? It assumes that the ocean temperature set stays the same all year. No movement of the sun, no wave action differences, just a set temp all year long. No warm breeze to file the surface, no fish traversing the area. No day, no night. All wrong, and you and I are being blamed, so they can tax you, for co2. Hen increases in temperature are created.
    Only problem, the weather systems create the mixing. The earth causes the weather systems, and that bright ball in the sky, creates our localized heating. Where does man fit in this?

  82. Alternate method? by Layzej · · Score: 1

    The new study shows that the NOAA method works quite well. It may be worth trying an alternate and seeing how well it matches the instrumentally homogeneous reference data, but since we're dealing with temperature anomalies and not absolute temperatures It's not clear to me that it would make any difference.

    1. Re:Alternate method? by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      The new study shows that the NOAA method works quite well.

      Why? How could it possibly make sense to "warm" the buoy data rather than "cool" the intake data? We know that the intake data was artificially warmed, that isn't even a question.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:Alternate method? by locofungus · · Score: 1

      Why? How could it possibly make sense to "warm" the buoy data rather than "cool" the intake data? We know that the intake data was artificially warmed, that isn't even a question.

      Because they're measuring a trend, not absolute temperatures.

      it would make no difference if they used kelvin or celsius. The offset isn't important.

      I would assume that they are cooling the intake data (I'm pretty sure I saw that when the original v4 data was created but I could be misremembering as there are also adjustments to satellite data as sensors degrade with time) but it makes zero difference when estimating the trend.

      --
      God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
  83. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Fragnet · · Score: 0
    I have absolutely no fucking clue what you're talking about except this:

    most like physics

    Just a brief pause here: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

    Sorry, I'll continue: experimental physics has a 5-sigma standard.

  84. Prove the data wrong by sjbe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    No really, stop tickling my sides. Skeptical Science, a shill front organisation for rent-seeking environmentalists.

    Even if that is true it doesn't mean the data they are presenting is wrong. Prove the data wrong or shut up and go away.

    It does matter though, imho. It matters for reasons of integrity, especially public trust in science.

    The only lack of integrity is coming from the climate change deniers. They refuse to engage in a honest debate about or honest analysis of the evidence. Many of them have clear conflicts of interest (fossil fuel industry ties, etc) and don't even pretend to hide them. All the scientists are doing is presenting the evidence which is mountainous in volume at this point and growing all the time. If the climate deniers had an actual evidence based case they could easily cut through the BS by presenting actual evidence contradicting the current science models. They have no such evidence so they are making a political argument instead of a scientific one.

    1. Re:Prove the data wrong by Fragnet · · Score: 0

      They refuse to engage in a honest debate

      I think you'll find it's the climate shills who aren't showing up to debate "deniers". It's policy. You know, if you show up to debate them you give them legitimacy. So you're probably 99.9% wrong about that (I'll give you 0.1% doubt because you know, there's always a possibility I'm wrong here).

      Many of them have clear conflicts of interest

      Why do you think energy companies are depressed about "climate change"? They can hoover up huge subsidies from government from their "green" initiatives. Goldman Sachs can trade carbon credits! Yes, the giant vampire squid on the face of Humanity is on your side on this. Muggins like me pay the costs of course, when we get our bills.

      If the climate deniers had an actual evidence based case they could easily cut through the BS

      Well there are 1,000 scientists here that you would call "deniers" but they don't get the same mountain of publicity and support, mostly because this is a political cause, not a scientific one. I like this comment:

      They have no such evidence

      Yes you see the problem here don't you. Are there contrarians who're going to survive graduate school and end up with tenure? It must be very hard to argue against the paradigm when the big ticket studies are funded by a government determined on the point. It's called bias. There's a lot of it about.

    2. Re:Prove the data wrong by haruchai · · Score: 1

      I think you'll find it's the climate shills who aren't showing up to debate "deniers"

      A few years back, Anthony Watts of the Climate Denier Central Clearinghouse known as Watts Up With That, hosted an online debate between Christopher Monckton and Peter Hadfield. Nearly all of the resident regulars were expecting His Lordship to deliver a proper trouncing to the impertinent plebe who dared to suggest that Monckton was full of bunkum.
      It didn't go according to plan.
      At some point, perhaps a day or two in, Monckton found more important challenges than defending his denialism.
      He went looking for Obama's birth certificate - https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

      --
      Pain is merely failure leaving the body
    3. Re:Prove the data wrong by apoc.famine · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think you'll find it's the climate shills who aren't showing up to debate "deniers".

      Thank you for very clearly pointing out that you have absolutely no fucking clue what you're talking about. This isn't a fucking debate. That's your problem. That you think this is a debate shows a marked detachment from reality and how the world works.
       
      The reason nobody is showing up for a debate is that there's nothing to debate, and debating facts is something only stupid shills do.
       
      I'm sorry you don't like the fact that the battles fought to understand and quantify climate change are fought on a battleground you don't have access to. That battleground isn't on a debate floor where you can rant and scream that it's not climate change because this winter was cold. It's being fought with data sets and analysis in peer reviewed journals where qualified experts are welcome to tear any such research apart. And they do on a regular basis. The problem that you're having is that what they're tearing apart are techniques and reanalysis that changes the outcome by hundredths or tenths of degrees, and doesn't disprove climate change.

      Are there contrarians who're going to survive graduate school and end up with tenure?

      No. Because if you're still a contrarian, you're being one based on a belief not supported by the data. And grad school in the sciences is not about what you feel, it's about what you can prove or disprove. The battle to disprove climate change is over, and has been for a long time. That's not the battle being fought now, no matter how much you want it to be fought. You might as well rail against gravity.
       
      Again, I'm sorry that the facts aren't lining up with your worldview. But everything you think should be done is either a) not how you prove things or b) has been done and it proved climate change. You need to get over it.

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
  85. Re:Or skeptics by Mashiki · · Score: 0

    Brilliant, you have discovered the world is complicated. Any other wisps of wisdom fizzing around in your head?

    Did you ever learn the parable "The Boy who cried wolf?" No? Time to learn the stuff that most people did back before Dr. Spock got his hands on child-rearing.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  86. Re: Two questions before I call BS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Several years of meterology"= not smart enough for engineering school.

    Dont try to lecture us on numbers big guy. Youre not as good at it as you think you are.

  87. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by minogully · · Score: 1

    No one thinks that this is the first time that the earth's climate has changed. What's new this time is the rate at which the change is happening. If you're expecting evolution to solve this problem you're wrong. Evolution doesn't come in leaps, but in small changes with each successive generation.

    So there is an actual limit to how fast a species can evolve directly related to how quickly they can produce the next generation from their birth. If you have a fast enough change in climate, species will go extinct. The faster the climate changes the more species will go extinct, depending on how long it takes for them to reproduce from birth, bacteria will most certainly be fine. The only thing that will save any particular species is if they are already able to survive the new stressors via migration or inherent adaptability.

    So our species could be fine because of our adaptability, but how many other species will make it? And how many of those do we need for our species to survive? We can't live off of bacteria.

  88. If you live in Austin, contact him at this link by xyankee · · Score: 1

    He's 1 of 5 Congressmen that represents the heavily gerrymandered city of Austin.

    You can reach him at: https://lamarsmith.house.gov/c...

    I just sent him this message: https://cl.ly/3y18020T1A3t

    1. Re:If you live in Austin, contact him at this link by BECoole · · Score: 1

      Thank you. I'll send him a thank you note.

  89. hew? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems I've learned a word today.
    But is it correct?

  90. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by DarkOx · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Exactly, just because you are doing science does mean you abandon common sense. Most would call me a climate skeptic, but even I will admit there has been a warming trend over the period we have been taking actual measurements. Its not credible to assume a massive conspiracy exists to distort measurements. When the was suggestion of such it was investigated and debunked.

    I also know based on other day to day encounters with the observable universe that at least on the atomic/chemical scale I occupy thermodynamics is a reality. Finally I know trends are well trends, they continue unless there is a reason for them them to not continue. So when someone argues there as a been a pause in the warming trend the correct response is actually skepticism. A pause would be caused by something, so there are two possibilities we don't know the cause of the pause or the measurements are not correct. Since the measurement methodology was changed that should be the FIRST place we look. Here the interesting thing isn't the absolute values but the deltas. Allowing for some noise in the older measurements we see similar deltas in the data gather in the new measurements, the correct conclusion is the older absolute values are off but the deltas are probably still accurate.

    Think of this way, you have two thermometers in a room, one reads 68F the other 70F you turn the heat on and observe the readings again 30min later. The first now reads 70F the second now reads 72F. You can be pretty certain the room is 2F warmer than before, you might guess the actual temperature is 71F but your confidence in that should be low.

    There is a reasonable debate to be had about:
    1) Are human activities the primary driver of climate change or are other factors playing a more significant role
    2) Are these changes really outside the normal range our planet and ecosystem have experienced in the past
    2a) if no, is the rate of change outside the normal range
    3) Is this a good or bad thing, in terms of our own best interest?
    3a) how do you define 'our'

    Those are the real questions where climate change is concerned, not that it has changed since the start of the industrial era or that it is changing.

    --
    Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
  91. Re: Who cares? by Sloppy · · Score: 1

    because its a giant scam you imbecile.

    Duh? That's why everyone wants something done about it. Externalizing pollution to get an easy subsidy isn't merely a scam, it's an old and obvious scam.

    The trouble is, everyone does it. If I tell you to stop scamming everyone, then you'll tell me to stop scamming everyone. It's all well and fine for me to try to stop paying for your subsidy, but you better keep on paying mine!

    --
    As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
  92. Wagering with lives by DoctorNathaniel · · Score: 1

    It does matter. Even if you believe, incorrectly, that global warming is mythical, you should still pause to consider the implications if you're wrong.

    Massive droughts in some places.
    Massive floods in others.
    Global upset of food supplies, leading to unrest and possibly war.
    Hundreds of thousands of refugees.
    Major cities being taken out by storm surges. (NYC and New Orleans are early examples.)

    CO2 concentrations have been going up; this is incontrovertible. Temperatures have been rising, which is also unchallenged by any thorough study. There exists a simple and well-understood mechanism why the two should be causally related. There exists geological data showing the two ARE related.

    There are subtleties, to be sure, but these are the bare facts, well established past any reasonable doubt.

    1. Re:Wagering with lives by Fragnet · · Score: 1

      I don't believe global warming is mythical. I believe it's happening but that it's only partly man's activity causing it and that on the whole it's beneficial. Droughts, floods, food supplies, refugees, storm surges? I have absolutely no idea where you get that from. These things have happened throughout the ages and there's no evidence whatsoever they're increasing in frequency. It may be that the jepordy has increased alongside the population and increasing urbanisation - with many growing cities on coasts and near flood plains. But that is a mitigation argument related to population pressure. It's an argument for increasing civil engineering budgets not CO2 taxes.

    2. Re:Wagering with lives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bullsit:

      Massive droughts in some places.
      Massive floods in others.
      Global upset of food supplies, leading to unrest and possibly war.
      Hundreds of thousands of refugees.
      Major cities being taken out by storm surges. (NYC and New Orleans are early examples.)

      CO2 concentrations have been going up; this is incontrovertible. Temperatures have been rising, which is also unchallenged by any thorough study. There exists a simple and well-understood mechanism why the two should be causally related. There exists geological data showing the two ARE related.

      There are subtleties, to be sure, but these are the bare facts, well established past any reasonable doubt.

      Followed by a truth:

      "CO2 concentrations have been going up; this is incontrovertible. Temperatures have been rising, which is also unchallenged by any thorough study. There exists a simple and well-understood mechanism why the two should be causally related. There exists geological data showing the two ARE related."

      Don't conflate the two. THIS is why the entire narrative pisses people off; because someone says "AWG will kill us all", and someone else rightly calls BS they're labeled deniers.

      Total bullshit, with no backing: More powerful hurricanes, sea level rising (over centuries or minutes?), angry polar bear armies.
      -OR-
      Also total bullshit, with no backing: Longer growing seasons, more arable land, more moisture in the air stopping desertification, ice-free shipping lanes allowing for expedited world trade, preventing or lessening the next ice age from happening at all.

    3. Re:Wagering with lives by hey! · · Score: 1

      I have several problems with your argument.

      First is your unsupported claim that non-anthropogenic climate factors have produced most of the change. What exactly are these non-anthropogenic drivers and how much of climate change do they account for?

      Second, the assertion that climate change will be beneficial is simplistic and naive. What will happen is that some people will win and others lose; an that will be strongly correlated to income. If you can rebalance your portfolio and a quarterly basis you will make money coming (causing the problem) and going (dealing with the problem). If you're a Bengladeshi subsitence farmer you will take it on the chin.

      Third, you seem to have no idea what the civil engineering costs of something like rising sea level will be. Venice just spent $7 billion dollars on a flood control system -- that's because of subsidence mainly, but it gives you a benchmark for what it costs to protect a city against a 21 cm rise when you can do it with a compact barrier. Estimates to protect Boston against the coming 50cm rise are on the order of $10 billion, but again you can see for yourself that Boston is an easy case; all the seaward parts of the region are protected by marine bluffs.

      Protecting a city like Miami from 50cm sea level rise would cost many times that.

      Finally, you seem to be taking a strawman standard of climate change: that things have to happen that are unprecedented in human history. The simple fact is that temperature in the last century has risen at a rate that is unprecendented in the lifetime of our species and it is the rate that determines how species and ecosystems will respond. It is hardly an extraordinary claim to say that if temperature rises 4C globally that rainfall patterns and sea level will change.

      There is no such thing as a "natural" disaster. Disasters are things that happen that we're not prepared for. You can easily imagine a 4C warmer world people were quite content to live in, but that's not the same as being prepared for a 4C change over the course of a century. That's something we as a species won't have a problem adapting to, but which will be traumatic for many, many individuals.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    4. Re:Wagering with lives by mpercy · · Score: 1

      Hypothesis and Disproof

      “2006: Expect Another Big Hurricane Year Says NOAA”—headline, MongaBay .com, May 22, 2006

      “NOAA Predicts Above Normal 2007 Atlantic Hurricane Season”—headline, National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration press release, May 23, 2007

      “NOAA Increases Expectancy for Above-Normal 2008 Atlantic Hurricane Season”—headline, gCaptain .com, Aug. 7, 2008

      “Forecasters: 2009 to Bring ‘Above Average’ Hurricane Season”—headline, CNN, Dec. 10, 2008

      “NOAA: 2010 Hurricane Season May Set Records”—headline, Herald-Tribune (Sarasota, Fla.), May 28, 2010

      “NOAA Predicts Increased Storm Activity in 2011 Hurricane Season”—headline, BDO Consulting press release, Aug. 18, 2011

      “2012 Hurricane Forecast Update: More Storms Expected”—headline, LiveScience, Aug. 9, 2012

      “NOAA Predicts Active 2013 Atlantic Hurricane Season”—headline, NOAApress release, May 23, 2013

      “A Space-Based View of 2015’s ‘Hyperactive’ Hurricane Season”—headline, CityLab .com, June 19, 2015

      “The 2016 Atlantic Hurricane Season Might Be the Strongest in Years”—headline, CBSNews, Aug. 11, 2016

      “NOAA: U.S. Completes Record 11 Straight Years Without Major Hurricane Strike”—headline, CNSNews, Oct. 24, 2016

      Thanks James Taranto...

    5. Re:Wagering with lives by dave420 · · Score: 1

      We already saw what happened in Syria - a drought caused a massive shortfall in food production, forcing people into cities. That, along with some political turmoil, destabilised the country, causing the exodus of people (or 'refugees' in common parlance). So you are incorrect. Shocker.

  93. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Fragnet · · Score: 2

    There's no evidence the rate of change is higher (or indeed lower) than it has been in the past. The difficulty here is there's a divergence between what the models say and what the actual data says (notwithstanding the numerous and highly dubious "adjustments" made to the data).

    btw with respect to living off bacteria, we do of course (it's busy in your gut right now), but you'll note with interest the increase in agricultural productivity as the planet has warmed and there's more CO2 about. Now you're free to argue that we're going to reach a "tipping point" and the Earth is going to implode but that would be speculation (modelling) and more than likely completely wrong. Or at least open to debate and question (hence not worthy of the term "denial" - just disagreement).

  94. We don't need data by ilsaloving · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    No amount of data will ever be able to satisfy anti-AGW people. They're just like the anti-vax people, or pretty much any other religious group that prides ignorance over reality.

    They are emotionally dependent on their POV, and attempts to prove them wrong just make them dig their heels further. That has been proven as well.

    1. Re:We don't need data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No amount of data will ever be able to satisfy anti-AGW people.

      Yes, it will. We need the raw data underlying all these analyses. Let's see those e-mails.

    2. Re:We don't need data by mean+pun · · Score: 1

      The emails are the raw data now? WTF?

    3. Re:We don't need data by apoc.famine · · Score: 4, Insightful

      All of that data is freely available. Why aren't you doing your own analysis on it?
       
      And if you ask me where to find it and how to analyze it, you can just fuck off. Because you are obviously not smart enough to do it, no matter how much you want to. The data is easy enough to find, but it turns out that science and statistics are hard, and the vast majority of the population isn't smart enough and doesn't have the skill-set to do anything meaningful with the data.

      Let's see those e-mails.

      Oh yes, right, those emails that have the tens and hundreds of gigabyte data sets attached to them. That's how scientists transfer their data, right? Just like I transfer my spreadsheets.

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
    4. Re:We don't need data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      OCTOBER 1997 N O T E S A N D C O R R E S P O N D E N C E 1237

      Hull-Mounted Sea Surface Temperatures from Ships of Opportunity
      W. J. EMERY, K. CHERKAUER,* AND B. SHANNON
      Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado
      R. W. REYNOLDS
      Coupled Model Project, National Centers for Environmental Prediction, Washington, D.C.
      13 March 1996 and 2 August 1996

      Page 1242
      "The second installation was on the NOAA R/V Malcolm
      Baldridge. This ship was selected specifically because
      of the thermosalinograph (TSG), which takes water
      samples from the bow bubble, several meters below
      the ocean surface, and records temperature and salinity."

      Page 1246
      "The intake temperature series observations
      are indicated by boxes that show a very early
      distinct bias from the hull sensors of about -2 to -4 degrees C.
      As shown by later comparisons in this series, the bias
      in the early part of the record was not constant and later
      dropped to about zero with the intake temperatures corresponding
      closely to the hull temperatures at least for
      the northbound leg of the trip. Thus, the problem with
      the intake temperatures was lack of consistency over
      time."
      .
      ~~~~
      Comment:

      Fascinating. I thought intake temperatures were supposed to be consistently registering too high.
      In this tabulation of actual data with the empirical manifestation of the empirically verified laws of thermodynamics this is not the case.

      Perhaps the historical record shows a consistently lower intake temperature and that data should be -- cough -- 'adjusted' upwards?
      I am sure the literature is replete with similar observations and recommendations based on the empirical evidence as it stands and not where we wish it be.

      I hope we are scientists and not cooks.

  95. Framing the debate by sjbe · · Score: 1

    Wouldn't that strategy play directly into the "it's a money grab conspiracy" argument?

    Not if you show them how THEY can be the ones to grab the money.

    Other fields of scientific research -- paleontology, astronomy, etc. -- don't have to sell themselves with economic windfall arguments.

    They don't have to because they don't threaten anyone's meal ticket.

    Framing this as a moral argument is understandable but ultimately futile in my opinion. If we really do need to act in a short amount of time then you have to convince people that either they are in imminent danger (difficult in this case) or that they can profit from solving the problem. Point out how all those displaced coal workers can make even more money building wind turbines. That sort of thing. Work on making distributed solar so economically attractive that people stop caring about the oil companies. Work on their economic incentives to move things in the right direction.

    1. Re:Framing the debate by Layzej · · Score: 1

      Most scientists are more interested in investigating the nature of the universe than in framing debates. They are probably largely shocked when they become the subjects of conspiracy theories and are issued congressional subpoenas.

  96. Arguing with facts by sjbe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    In other words, it's politicized.

    The climate deniers are the one's making it political. But because they have that's the reality we have to deal with. We can pretend it isn't political or we can deal with the fact that it is and get on with fixing the problem.

    Also, I would argue that neither side is actually arguing with facts.

    Nonsense. The scientists are arguing with almost nothing BUT facts. The fact that a bunch of mostly right wing fossil fuel shills are standing in the way of those facts is plain enough to see. One side has facts and scientific data. The other has economic self interest and little else. The notion that both sides aren't arguing with facts is just nonsense.

    1. Re:Arguing with facts by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And yet YOUR the one using the phrase " climate deniers". If that is not a deliberate political slur that has fucking nothing to do with the science then i don't know what is. Your all bringing the whole thing into the fucking gutter. And you know what.. in the end you will ALL be wrong.

  97. Self reliance by sjbe · · Score: 1

    I've long argued that the right dug in their heels and let the left dictate ideas and solutions.

    Probably a good point. If the political right REALLY believed in self reliance then they should be pushing for distributed renewable power. Why depend on the power company and government regulators when you can have a solar array or wind turbine and a battery pack and provide most/all of your own power? But instead they persist in acting as thralls to large corporations. Makes very little sense until you realize they don't really believe in self reliance at all.

  98. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by silentcoder · · Score: 1

    Right... so you won't show any actual evidence they are wrong, you'll just dismiss this and pretend your completely blatant lie about what the paper said never happened.
    Typical denier - get cornered, get your argument disproven - and pretend you never made it.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  99. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by silentcoder · · Score: 1

    All of which would have to be false for climate change theory to be false.

    EVERY SINGLE FINDING IN THE HISTORY OF PHYSICS.

    None of it can be true, if climate science isn't ALSO true.

    Because for climate science to be false, Newton's first law must be ENTIRELY AND ABSOLUTELY FALSE. Human induced climate change is nothing BUT a restatement of newton's first law. It's impossible for one to be true and the other false because they are SAME THING.

    Aristotle's first law of logic: the law of identity - a thing cannot be other than itself.
    Newton's first law cannot be both true and false. And climate change is JUST Newton's first law applied to a specific system.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  100. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    (1) Who gives a fuck? Seriously. Nobody has demonstrated the small amount of warming we've had and can expect in future isn't beneficial to mankind and the biosphere - especially the biosphere, which quite likes CO2 and expends a lot of energy trying to keep itself warm above and below certain lines of latitude.

    (2) Aren't they talking about data taken on ships by physically reading thermometers to an accuracy less than the claimed effect? As I was taught: If you don't know your error, you haven't made a measurement. In this case the error could be even greater than the effect itself!

    A comment: This paper is getting so much publicity I'm going to call BS on it for now. I expect someone like Steve McIntyre will rock up in a few months time after having analysed the data to show where they fucked up their analysis. By then nobody will care of course.

    OK I'm done. Start down-voting my comment.

    Of course, realism is down-voted. Sorry to see that. Thanks for your attempt to waken minds. :(

  101. Re:Or skeptics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are as marvelously and deliberately uninformed on matters of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation as you are on Science. Luther did not nail a "Proclamation" on the Church Door, he nailed his "95 Theses" on that "Church Door", (This is not reliably documented...), as was the custom of the time, as a call for an Academic Disputation. Traditionally these things were done around All Saint's Day. The Disputation never actually took place, as Luther went right into open Protestation against Church Practices; Indulgences were the most controversial of these but not the most important to Luther. Rome was hardly unaware.
    Luther's "Proclamations" came much later, as he refined his Theology; among them was the insistence, quite popular at the time and for some time after, that the Jews be driven from the Holy Roman Empire.
    Listen, you blabbering baboon, at least attempt to get your Church History right before you _dare_ take on anything more intellectually demanding.

  102. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Fragnet · · Score: 0

    If I had £100 for every time I'd read "it's worse than we thought" from a rent-seeking shill institution, I'd probably be as rich as Al Gore. God, he's an embarrassment isn't he.

  103. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Fragnet · · Score: 1

    All of which would have to be false for climate change theory to be false.

    Ah, the Spherical Cow argument. I thought you'd come back with something a little more convincing.

  104. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    wow..
    my opinion is your an idiot:

    "Put a ship engine intake thermometer and a buoy thermometer in the same water - it's physically impossible that the ship will NOT measure hotter than the buoy."

    "ship engine intake thermometer" notice the word INTAKE, as the water comes in, not after the water has been around the ship getting warm.

    Therefore it is physically possible.

    Would you like some alovera for that!

  105. Re:Or skeptics by hyades1 · · Score: 1

    I think what's really funny is that moronic scumbags with the intellect of a fruit fly and the integrity of a rabid weasel like to pretend there was ever the slightest chance that they'd be convinced of anything by scientific evidence.

    Seriously, dude, calling them "backward rednecks" is flattery. They'd have to study for 10 years to reach that lofty plateau.

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  106. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by silentcoder · · Score: 1

    > Are human activities the primary driver of climate change or are other factors playing a more significant role

    Science is based on observation. If you want that debate - show us some observable phenomenon, ANY observable phenomenon other than human activities than can account for the change. We KNOW human activities are causing the CO2 rise (unless nuclear physics is also wrong about literally everything) because fossil fuel CO2 has notable isotopic differences from the carbon in living creatures. We can see that most of the CO2 in the atmosphere now comes from fossil fuels - we have done the tests over and over. This also fits in with the American Geophysical union's results. They studied the CO2 output of the next biggest culprit: volcanoes. It turns out all the volcanoes in the world in an average year output a mere 0.25% of the CO2 from coal power plants alone. But even if we suppose that there is no greenhouse effect (which means a lot of physics and chemistry must be wrong) - and the CO2 doesn't matter - then where is the heating coming from ? It's not the sun - if anything the sun has been cooling over the last two decades (so if the sun had been like it was in the 1980s it would be even warmer).

    >Are these changes really outside the normal range our planet and ecosystem have experienced in the past
    Every piece of data, proxy data or indication we have says it is, by a massive margin. Again - science is based on observation, if you want to have this debate show us any data that suggests otherwise. And even if you do - keep in mind, you're at best giving us some interesting information about a past climate event. You're saying nothing at all about the impact this one is likely to have on our civilization.

    > if no, is the rate of change outside the normal range
    See above.

    > if no, is the rate of change outside the normal range
    See above. It really doesn't matter for any practical purpose. It would be valuable as pure knowledge - but it says nothing about the major questions of impact on human civilization.

    >Is this a good or bad thing, in terms of our own best interest?
    There is absolutely no conceivable "good" outcome for our interests here. None. Having diseases like Malaria and Zika spread to far wider ranges than before ? Not a good thing.
    Desertification of formerly good agricultural land? Definitely not a good thing.
    Flooding and mass death in island countries and low-lying areas ? Can't see a good thing there.
    Resulting mass migration - well look what the fear of a few Mexicans did in America in November... can you imagine if a billion humans suddenly had to migrate ? That's pretty much a guaranteed world war right there.

    >how do you define 'our'
    The only sensible definition is the entire human race - because there is no impact this can have anywhere that will not also cause negative impacts for everybody else. (for example by suddenly having a good chunk of several billion people demanding you give them refugee status and willing to kill you if you don't let them in because the alternative is to die themselves).

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  107. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by silentcoder · · Score: 2

    No. Basic physics.

    There is energy entering the system all the time (because we haven't turned off the sun).
    If you have energy entering a system, and energy leaving the system.

    What happens if you reduce the rate at which it can leave ?

    It gets hotter.

    It's impossible for this to be wrong - unless Newton's first law is wrong. Because this IS Newton's first law.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  108. Repeat Upton Sinclair... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    'It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.'

  109. Re:Or skeptics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Outstanding comment!

    You've perfectly parodied the "belligerent climate change denier asshole" tone and messaging, right down to calling scientists "ivory tower elitists" and accusing them of calling deniers "backwards rednecks" with zero proof.

    Well, thank you for providing at least one proof! Unless I'm incorrect in my understanding that "belligerent climate change denier asshole" is functionally equivalent to "backwards rednecks", at least for all intents and purposes.

    Well done cleaving to the moral high ground and avoiding all of the childish name-calling! Go you!

  110. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by silentcoder · · Score: 1

    You need to look up the meaning of 'rent-seeking' since it doesn't mean what you think it means.

    In fact... fossil fuel companies fit the actual definition more closely than any of the organisations to which you are referring. Though the best example in the US would be cable companies (and this is why they hate the idea of net neutrality as it threatens their rent-seeking capacity).

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  111. Re: Who cares? by slashrio · · Score: 1

    Got alu-hats?
    Then put one on, now.

    --
    "Trump!!", the new Godwin.
  112. Retarded ass Republicans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are fucking us to the point of doom.

  113. Re:Or skeptics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh, it's _you_ again. "The Boy who cried wolf?" was a Fable, not a Parable; it predates Christianity by hundreds of years and was an analysis in Judgment rather than a Moral Lesson. The initial Lie wasn't the problem, it was the continuous repetition of it against all evidence to the contrary. Nowadays it's been refined into The Big Lie, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."*, a common technique, not necessarily ineffective, used among Deniers and Republicans.
    Time to learn the stuff that most people did back before Cracker Jack issued Diplomas.

    *J. Goebbels

  114. Re: Or skeptics by getuid() · · Score: 1

    did you ever heard the parable of the guy who jumped off the roof of a skyscraper, and as he blasts by the windows and balconies, nearing the asphalt, everyone tells him "brace for impact!". finally, about the time he flies past the 2nd story, he's fed up with it and screams back "oh shut up already, you ivory tower bastards, you people've been telling me to 'brace for impact' since I've jumped, but guess what: everything' going peaches so far and i'm having fun - so you're all lying idiots with an agenda to trick me! ever herd the story of the boy who called out wolf?"

    no? well now you have.

  115. Climate Change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The correct term now is "Climate Change", not "Global Warming", as climate change encompasses both hot and cold fluctuations.
    The main concern isn't just an increase or decrease in temperature, but really is the increase in variability of temperature.

  116. No true Scotsman, eh? by raymorris · · Score: 0

    > When an actual climate scientist says ...

    Some of the well known climate scientists (apparently not "actual climate scientists") told us that San Francisco would be underwater by now.

    Richard Tol, professor of the economics of climate change, was coordinating lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report Working Group. As you may know, the IPCC is about the most credible group there is, to those who advocate for AGW policy. Professor Tol resigned his position while writing the UN's Summary for Policy Makers because the IPCC insisted on a report that was "too alarmist" and refused to report on possible adaptations and even benefits of warming. That's one of IPCC's lead scientists saying that his own team was spinning the report to be alarmist.

  117. UN IPCC lead author says his report is alarmist by raymorris · · Score: 1

    I don't want to get too much into the leaked emails because that'll just cause arguments without accomplishing anything. When the head of the climatic science unit says "I used this trick to hide the reduction in temperature" apparently that's proper scientific procedure. Whatever. Here's an example that's out in the open, there's no argument about taking things out of context:

    Richard Tol, professor of the economics of climate change, was coordinating lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment Report Working Group. As you may know, the IPCC is about the most credible group there is, to those who advocate for AGW policy. Professor Tol resigned his position while writing the UN's Summary for Policy Makers because the IPCC insisted on a report that was "too alarmist" and refused to report on possible adaptations and even benefits of warming. That's one of IPCC's lead scientists saying that his own team was spinning the report to be alarmist. You can read Professor Tol's full and complete statements in articles he has written.

  118. Re: Or skeptics by dywolf · · Score: 1

    The data needs to stand on its own. No adjustments are needed

    Actually no.
    Context matters.

    consider for example Napoleon.
    the age old myth is that Napoleon was short, and stems partly from the fact (verifiable historical fact) that at his death his height was listed as 5ft 2in.

    but the reality is that he wasn't, and it arises from an error or mismatch in units used.
    specifically, those were French units on his death certificate.

    using modern units, we would say he was 5ft 7in tall, which is actually somewhat above the average height for a Frenchman at the time of 5ft 5in (again in modern units). http://www.todayifoundout.com/...

    So no.
    Data cannot stand always on its own.
    Context matters and can change the entire meaning of the "raw data" you present.

    Now relate that to climate data.
    You have 4 measuring stations within a small radius, say, on an acre of land
    small enough that we can consider them to all be measuring the same area.
    yet their data doesn't match up.

    why?

    well, upon examination you discover:
    -One sits in an under a lean too (open side, but shaded from above) among some trees.
    -One is on the east side of a tree.
    -One is on the west side of a building.
    -One is on top of a small hill.

    Q: which data set is correct?
    A: All of them, and none of them.

    Because each is biased by different factors.
    the first one experiences no direct sunlight. it also experiences no wind, due to the trees.
    the second one experiences direct sunlight from sunrise til noon, at which point it becomes shaded by the tree.
    the third one experiences no direct sunlight until the afternoon, having been shaded by the building all morning.
    the last one experiences direct sunlight all day. its also at a different elevation being on a hill, and being exposed on that hill, it also experiences wind, if its windy.

    And that's reality. Different stations will have different biases depending on their installation.
    IE, context.

    And it matters.
    If a direct sunlight on a hill station is replaced by one under a leanto next to a building, the two sets of readings are not directly comparable.
    Thus, calibrations of the data so that they are.

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  119. Re:Or skeptics by Kernel+Kurtz · · Score: 1

    Some of the numbers are being continuously corrected. They are still correcting numbers from decades ago. Some of them have been corrected so many times it is hard to know when they are, ahem, correct.........

  120. The sky is falling !! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nobody wants pollution.

    Yet without it we all die.

    Would not even be able to light a campfire to cook food.

    No logic in the global warming crowd, just a wish for more government control.

  121. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by dywolf · · Score: 1

    translation: "my ignorance is as good as and disproves your knowledge"

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  122. Re:No true Scotsman, eh? by j-beda · · Score: 1

    > When an actual climate scientist says ...

    Some of the well known climate scientists (apparently not "actual climate scientists") told us that San Francisco would be underwater by now.

    If I wanted to use this information in a discussion, could you provide me with a reference so I am not accused of talking out of my ass?

  123. Irony much? by Texmaize · · Score: 1

    The thesis of your argument is that other people base their opinions on something other than fact. But if we examine what you wrote:

    1. A. "This whole discussion is irrelevant. " This is purely your opinion. Other people may have read some of the honest parts of this discussion an found something new. Even if you are very smart, you simply can't determine relevancy for all people.

    2. B. "They just won the White House, Congress, and the Senate in one swoop." This is just wrong on several levels.

    C. In 2008, the democrats had control of all 3 parts of the U.S. government. The republicans won the house in 2010, not 2016. D. The republicans won the senate in 2014 not 2016. This is not one swoop, but three. One could argue that an increasing number of people seem to be growing very angry at something the democrats had done. The republican presidency is clearly not a random hiccup. E. "Facts do not matter." As it turned out, for the election, facts DID matter. Any intelligent person would acknowledge that there has been a disturbing trend of the U.S. press to hide negative facts about the democrat party. When some of these escaped via wikileaks, people's perception on Hillary and some of her policies began to chance. So, the facts really did matter. The question is, why are you so sure you have all the facts when so many indicators show that you probably do not.
    F. "We can be here debating the minutiae of this data until the cows come home." In a post about people not examining facts, you make the absolutely hilarious assertion that facts should not be debated....
    G. In your argument of facts should not be debated, you also make the amazing assertion that doing so would be a bad thing. In effect, you made a single emotionally charged statement that you feel all should obey.
    ."We need to a different way to communicate the threat" For all the reason stated above, you say the word communicate, but it seems you actually mean that other thing.

    H. The use of the word THEY means that you committing the sin of tribalism, which is generally bad. This has a tendency to limit ones world view and biases their perception of all ideas. In choosing a tribe, you are setting up an us versus them mentality. Sadly, the history of the world shows us that there are no perfect human institutions or movements. When you zealously identify with a group/cause/idea you lose the ability to deal with criticism or new ideas. In fact, someone usually will come along and warp the message and use the zealots to their own end. With this one word, you are demonstrating that you guilty of exactly what you are protesting about.You may have weighed arguments and decided democrats tend to be more correct, but if you can't see any flaws in any of their ideas or candidates, then you are a zealot.

    --
    "Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
  124. Re:No true Scotsman, eh? by silentcoder · · Score: 1

    I pointed at a trend, examples to the contrary are not evidence against a trend. Or do you not know the meaning of the phrase "notoriously prone" ?

    So no, a few scientists predicting to high is not evidence against my claim that most of time, most the scientists choose to underestimate when speaking to the public or the press. To disprove my claim of such a trend you would have to show evidence that such underestimations are rare, at the very least that the majority of public statements by active climate scientists have made predictions more severe than supported by the data or previous events.

    Secondly - science is a group activity. did it ever occur to you that Richard Tol may have been wrong ? That in his dissagreement with the IPCC team - they were representing the findings fairly and he was just wrong about his interpretation ?
    More-over do you GET that an IPCC report is NOT an example of "speaking to the public" at all ? Those reports are given to policymakers and the like - they DO tend to use the middle-of-the-range "most likely" figures. They are nothing like press releases - hell they aren't even like the press releases about themselves.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  125. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by dywolf · · Score: 1
    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  126. Re: Or skeptics by hyades1 · · Score: 1

    Beautifully said. I fear, however, that you may be casting pearls before swine.

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  127. Re: Who cares? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

    Yep, but that comic now needs to be revised using the new dataset.

    Which are the "corrected" numbers to match observation, because no climate model yet devised fits the observed data.

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  128. Re:Or skeptics by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In reading the comments I am astounded by the ignorance and stupidity displayed by the "true believers" camp. I've seen almost no criticisms of the nonsense they've spewed -for instance greenhouses warm by the same mechanism as greenhouse gasses do. Or that when your "data" is inconsistent with what you've been claiming for it, a satisfactory way to answer the problem is to "adjust" the data. Post-hoc data adjustment is *exactly* the same as fudging. Or are you claiming that the people responsible for the data didn't know that "engine rooms are hot" or that data was coming from both intakes and buoys? Rubbish. I do agree that "it's simple physics": the increase in energy is exactly equal to the energy in minus the energy out. Anyone seen those numbers? If you think you have, think again - they're not available, they've never been determined except (approximately) by models - which don't work. We can monitor the Sun's emr output fairly easily. I'm not sure if we use that data in the models. It's a lot more difficult (and isn't being done well, yet) to monitor the amount of emr reflected by clouds, atmosphere, water, ground, plants, ice, snow, especially as so much of the arable ground is agricultural (meaning under human control). The error involved in subtracting two large (variable) values is well known, input and output are two large numbers. Do the math. Here's what the true believers seem to believe is rational, unbiased "science": Q: Where's the literature which predicted that there would be a 15 year pause in the rate of warming? Give me the citations. A: Well, it was due to deep ocean changes and once we corrected the data we got the discrepancy between the model and the data to disappear! Q: So, you changed the model? A: No, of course not! We changed the data! And by the way, the oceans of the world hold about 100 times more energy than the Earth's atmosphere. Despite our models being completely inadequate in modeling our oceans, we're sticking with our predictions - and please give me more money and by the way impose additional costs and prohibitions on global economic growth while you're paying us to get it settled. According to the most recent research I've read - and unlike most of you, I do read (some of) the primary research, the "problem of (atmospheric) particulates" is only starting to be answered - and it is by far the most critical component of AGW. This stuff IS complicated. You want simple, study quantum mechanics.

  129. Re: Or skeptics by hyades1 · · Score: 1

    Game. Set. Match.

    --
    I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
  130. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Its rather easy to test the CO2 impact on a plant -- put it in a air-tight greenhouse and supply it with your chosen mix of gases. People have done this. The effect is rather variable between different plant species, in many cases it actually decreases their use as a food crop. It certainly doesn't explain any of the 2x - 3x increase in farm productivity that your plot shows since 1948. May I hazard a guess that improved farm equipment, automation, better fertilizers, new chemicals for weed control, are responsible for 99% of the improvement in farm productivity?

  131. Re:Or skeptics by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 1

    These people can't tell the difference between "correcting for a known measurement problem" and "lying".

    They're politicians; they can't tell the difference between "lying" and "_____________________".

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  132. Re: Who cares? by johannesg · · Score: 0

    Externalizing pollution to get an easy subsidy...

    It would already be massively helpful if people stopped using the word "subsidy" incorrectly. A subsidy is when the government pays a 3rd party for some kind of activity. The government is not paying money to people to pollute, is it? So there is no subsidy, easy or not, either.

    This kind of new-speak is exactly why people like me believe that people like you are hiding something. Clearly you feel your argument is not strong enough to stand on its own, so you need to it this sort of BS to support it.

  133. Re: Two questions before I call BS. by dywolf · · Score: 1

    Metrology. IE, the science of measurements.
    Not meteorology, or the study of weather.

    As far as "not being smart enough for engineering school"...
    My engineering degree would beg to differ.

    And if you don't realize the importance of the science of measurements as it relates to engineering, then it is you who isn't smart enough for engineering.

    --
    The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
  134. It's quite simple really.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...if the words coming out of Lamar Smith's mouth have anything vaguely to do with science then you can assume he's wrong (again... still...).

    Now if only the idiots that keep voting him into office would quit that we'd have a much better world (until the next idiot republican comes along).

  135. Re: Who cares? by IWannaBeAnAC · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ignoring all other points but just focusing on one: The 'corrections' in this data set are, at most, 0.06 degrees C. That is only a couple of pixels on the XKCD comic. Do you know what a pixel is? Hint: it is really small. If you looked at the original comic, and the 'corrected' comic, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference, unless you looked very very closely.

  136. IPCC lead author upset by Layzej · · Score: 2

    Richard Tol, professor of the economics of climate change, was coordinating lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

    I think he may have been upset when they pointed out that that he'd swapped a minus sign for a plus sign in his study. When you use the correct sign the economic outlook is less rosy. He ultimately admitted to the mistake and issued a correction to the original paper.

  137. Re: Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Advantage, cost-savings, benefit, whatever you want to call it. Large corporations are able to reduce costs by not taking actions to protect the environment we all live in. Humanity suffers the consequences and the corp keeps the profits.

  138. Re: Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    National borders now determine if you are human or not? We truly are screwed.

  139. Cheap, easy mod pints? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is linking to this comic strip in an article on climate change the latest way to get some cheap, easy mod points?

  140. F.U.D. 101 by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    FUD usually "works" successfully in sales and politics. That's life.

  141. Nothing compared to major asteroid hit by mpercy · · Score: 1

    In fact, humanity is almost certain to not survive even a largish asteroid hit unscathed. Billions could die in the immediate aftermath and most of the rest probably die in the long-term due to starvation.

    It's a real possibility that cannot be ignored.

    We should be spending our trillions of dollars to prevent that from happening! The argument is the same "Bad things might happen--or will certainly happen if other things happen first--so we should *do* *something* *about* *it*".

    Some of us agree with the notion that pollution is bad, that humans have negatively affected the environment, and that human activities are probably (or even almost certainly) affecting the climate with AGW.

    But we're still branded as "deniers" becuase we take strong issue with is the proposed "solutions". Few of which are science-based and almost all of which are based not on environmentalism but communism--wealth redistribution and punishment of the West. The elites preach about reducing carbon footprints while they drive a fleet of SUVs 200 yards to get from their hotel to their film festival, after arriving there in their private jets dumping untold tons of carbon into the atmosphere, having left their mansions that consume more resources than 20 of normal citizens' homes. But the rest of us need to live in caves and eat dirt, while they spend trillions. They want the population of the earth to be 500,000 people, assuming that they and theirs constitute the chosen half-million and the rest of us need to be gone.

    Most of AGW "solutions" is that they are not science based, e.g. seeking to pump CO2 into subsea sequestration, but simply socialist wealth redistribution efforts, as clearly evidenced by the public statements of any number of high-profile AGW climateers...

    Ottmar Edenhofer: "One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with the environmental policy anymore, with problems such as deforestation or the ozone hole...We redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy...the next world climate summit in Cancun is actually an economy summit during which the distribution of the world’s resources will be negotiated."

    Christiana Figueres: "This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution...This is probably the most difficult task we have ever given ourselves, which is to intentionally transform the economic development model for the first time in human history.

    Naomi Klein: "What if global warming isn’t only a crisis...What if it's the best chance we’re ever going to get to build a better world?"

    1. Re:Nothing compared to major asteroid hit by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Got any evidence that we'll get hit by a large rock in the next century? I'm figuring about one in fifty million years (please correct me if you have better figures) which gives a chance of about one in five hundred thousand. If you figure it will do a trillion dollars of damage, that's still an expected $20K/year, so it's worth spending some effort on. Global warming is known to be happening, we can make good predictions of some of the effects, and we have very good reason to think it will continue.

      But we're still branded as "deniers" becuase we take strong issue with is the proposed "solutions".

      Nope. If you think AGW is happening and will have some bad consequences you aren't a denier. If you ignore the physical evidence because it's politically inconvenient, then you're a denier.

      Feel free to argue about what we should do about AGW. There's options, and we're almost certainly going to have to go with more than one of them. Nobody's going to call you a denier for that. Of course, if you argue that carbon sequestration is socialist rather than scientific you're going to be called a crackpot and idiot, but that's your problem for acting stupid.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    2. Re:Nothing compared to major asteroid hit by mpercy · · Score: 1

      If it wasn't clear, my intent was to say that sequestration is a science-based approach, but demanding Western countries to hand over $100B/year to developing countries is just wealth redistribution. The former may or may not be feasible, but it at least attempts to mitigate the problem. How does the later "solve" AGW?

      MUNJURUL HANNAN KHAN: I'm hopeful that at the end of the [U.N. climate talks in] Warsaw talk, we'll get outcome on legally binding agreement process, that we are hoping to develop a good text by 2015. The second thing, we're asking for $70 billion for three years. And by 2020, they will mobilize $100 billion for long-term financial support for the developing nations.

    3. Re: Nothing compared to major asteroid hit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With respect to the Klein quote, an analogy might be if the doctor tells you to lose weight or risk diabetes, and you take up more cardiovascular activity and also improve heart health, is that a bad thing? Of course, what you want to avoid is a crash diet that stresses the heart and kills you (see Mama Cass).

      To me, the hope is that methods that can help with respect to climate change can also improve quality of life, e.g. improved insulation in homes leading to more even winter and summer temperatures that are more pleasant and lead to lower heating and cooling bills and, because of a reduction in plant required, means no higher new home construction costs. If the cost of retrofitting existing homes is less than the cost of mitigation for the effects caused by the increase in CO2 from not putting it in, then the extra insulation is very much worth it from a cost benefit analysis perspective, even excepting lower bills for homeowners, especially given most major civil engineering are paid from taxes. If the CBA is ahead just on mitigation costs then it can even be worth paying "foreigners living abroad", to enhance insulation in their homes to reduce your own mitigation costs, although it is politically difficult to sell that

      However, the CBA studies aren't always totally clear at this point, as consequences on a regional are only just becoming computable (thus B is hard to compute) and costs for projects are also notoriously hard to calculate.

    4. Re:Nothing compared to major asteroid hit by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      But we're still branded as "deniers" becuase we take strong issue with is the proposed "solutions".

      If you don't like the solutions propose some of your own. Just don't dismiss the science out of hand because you don't like the implications.

    5. Re:Nothing compared to major asteroid hit by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      Western civilization got where it is by being almost completely uncaring about the environment. We're asking less developed countries to advance economically while being careful about the environment. It seems to me that, unless we provide help, we're asking them to do what we were unwilling to do.

      Suppose that a developing country needs a new power plant, and the cheapest available that will work is coal-burning. If we expect them to go to something less destructive, shouldn't we pay them for it?

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  142. Perhaps we can agree in this much by raymorris · · Score: 1

    > most of time, most the scientists choose to underestimate when speaking to the public

    Many scientists try to do a good job. Some scientists think (maybe correctly) that raising awareness and advocating for action is a good thing to do, and they try to do it thoroughly. I don't suppose either of us has evidence of what "most climate scientists" do, so maybe we can agree on this much:

    Many climate scientists try to do a good job.
    All climate scientists are human.
    Some high-profile climate scientists are passionate about these issues.
    When humans (including me) are passionate about issues, that affects our judgements.
    Some (most?) climate scientists are employed by organisations which advocate political positions.

    Agreed?

    1. Re:Perhaps we can agree in this much by silentcoder · · Score: 2

      All but the last one. Unless you count "universities, museums, private research centers, thinktanks and organisations like the national geographic society and the American Geophysical Union" as "organisations which advocate political positions".

      In case you were wondering, I do not. In fact, what all those organisations have in common is that their prestige is almost entirely built upon being politically independent and loyal only to what the evidence says - regardless of whether politicians like that. Science, ultimately, is a protection mechanism - it is a tool for human minds to protect themselves.
      It protects us from a number of very grave threats:
      - The tendency of authority to try to define truth according to their interests
      - The strong tendency of humans to believe whatever makes us feel good
      - The absolutely atrocious abilities most humans have at risk assessment (since our savannah evolved skills don't work in this world).

      And that's just the top 3.

      Indeed, I pointed out a reason for the trend: when you have a massively well funded propaganda machine trying to convince the world you're just a mad doomsaying prophet it is incredibly bad for your career, status and survival to be alarmist. It's much safer a proposition to undersell your ideas when talking to the lay public. By being as uncontroversial as you can be without actually lying the problem away - you give that massive propaganda machine less ammunition.

      I think it's fairly obvious that most scientists in any field should at least be smart enough to do such an elementary calculation as that. Now knowing something is a bad idea doesn't always stop (even smart) people from doing it anyway, but it does have a deterring effect on most people.

      --
      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    2. Re:Perhaps we can agree in this much by shilly · · Score: 1

      By all means, when you get cancer, go find yourself an oncologist who isn't passionate about treating cancer. Find one who doesn't give much of a shit, secure in the knowledge that their lack of passion means they'll be dispassionate in their judgements.

  143. In other words by mpercy · · Score: 0

    If you cry wolf enough times, you may eventually (finally) get it right once!

    1. Re:In other words by shilly · · Score: 1

      Except it happened. Every fricking year. So this was actually crying wolf and a wolf showing up each time.

  144. Re: Who cares? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

    The point is more that no model is accurate- ever. NONE of our scientific models are accurate with respect to reality, certainly not climateology.

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  145. Re:Or skeptics by djinn6 · · Score: 1

    A car's speedometer is never completely accurate, in fact it has a margin of error of about 10 km/h.

    I don't think this is true, at least for newer cars. A quick search of various articles online indicates the error should to be about 1-2%, which is only 1-2 km/h at a 100 km/h speed. You can use your phone GPS to corroborate your speedometer. You can also time your car by driving a known distance at a known speed. So if it your car just happened to have a wildly inaccurate speedometer you can find out.

    Practically speaking, if you want to avoid a ticket, just drive a bit slower than the guy passing you on the left, and keep an eye out for any cop cars behind you. If they do ticket you, they'd have a hard time proving their radar didn't pick up the other guy.

  146. Re:Or skeptics by budgenator · · Score: 1

    Even with the Argo buoys, the readings are too sparse for anything other than a cursory survey to see where real monitoring may be needed, 3800 to cover the oceans isn't enough to even worry about.

    --
    Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
  147. The planet doesn't give a rat's behind by mpercy · · Score: 1

    It'll keep right on orbiting the sun, and may eventually evolve different life forms long after we're gone.

    Yeah, we might kill ourselves off and any number of our contemporary species with us, but the planet doesn't care and will not be put out at all.

    The planet went along just fine when the cyanobacteria wiped out almost all other life on the planet by spewing toxic oxygen into the atmosphere.

    The planet went along fine after the asteroid wiped out the dinosaurs.

    The planet went along fine through multiple "snowball earth" cycles.

  148. Come on by fyngyrz · · Score: 2

    But at least, one day, you're be a drowned dopey cunt.

    Quite aside from the hyperbolic name-calling, this is precisely the kind of nonsensical rhetoric that makes people turn from considering any case for warming.

    Sea level rise, even if it is profoundly more than predicted, will "drown" no one. Because it is an extremely slow effect. You could have two broken legs, a large dog sitting on your back, and have your hands slipping in the mud when you tried to pull yourself along and you could still get away from sea level rise without any concerns of drowning. You can see it coming years, even decades, in advance, and you can step back at any time.

    The ocean related problems to be concerned with are ocean environmental changes such as acidification and temperature change; the land-related problems to be looking into are temperature change and rainfall pattern change. The data is leading, fairly obviously, to effects in both areas.

    Barring technical solutions (likely, frankly) or some forcing that isn't notably in play and is not accounted for, either some action will eventually have to be taken WRT greenhouse gas output, or eventually, there will in fact be serious problems. Which again, will not include drowning.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    1. Re:Come on by rochrist · · Score: 1

      You realize that he didn't think anyone was actually going to drown, right? You've heard of hyperbole?

    2. Re:Come on by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

      Yep. And I'm absolutely against it (and blatantly nasty remarks) when it pushes people away from a subject they should be paying attention to. You've heard of consequences?

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    3. Re:Come on by Shadowkahn · · Score: 1

      Not to defend the nonsensical rhetoric, because you're right, no one's gonna drown (though many will lose property), what makes people turn from considering any case for warming is stupidity.

      Global warming is real. The science is solid. The book is closed. Not "believing" in global warming is like not believing that the Earth is round. Sure, some people still refuse to believe, but it's not because they got their feefees hurt by mean people on the internet, it's because they're dumb.

    4. Re: Come on by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah sure. When I was in grade school, the coming ice age was also 'settled'. Then and now, stupid hysteria.

  149. Re: Two questions before I call BS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yep, we just need more bats.
    Problem solved.

  150. Re:Or skeptics by silentcoder · · Score: 1

    Do the slashdot denier crowd count as politicians... mmm... now you mention it...

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  151. Show only adjustments by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Amazingly enough, if you remove the original data and ONLY show the adjustments it maps exactly to the warming that they show.

    Whats that? Someone took their data, compared it to the original data, and mapped their adjustments? And they got the warming trend shown EXACTLY?!?! That must be unpossible.
    Story
    So if we remove the adjustments, there is no warming at all and we have a stable temperature. I wonder what that means?

    I brought up a tough point to counter. I bet its time for some name calling and down modding. I'm willing to bet you never knew this and deep down you are beginning to wonder which side is the denier of science.

  152. Hen ce my reply by fyngyrz · · Score: 2

    Hen increases in temperature are created.

    What a cock-up. I'm afraid your typo has come home to roost. No, the fact is, hen temperature differences are inherent in the environment. I live in Montana, and I can almost guarantee that my hens aren't at the same temperature as your hens. If you even have any hens. You're probably just another non-hen-having Internet recliner pilot / warrior. Bet you're having trouble even trying to coop with this reply, aren't you? Well, relax. I'm only egging you on. Sitting quietly by the sidelines just isn't the happy spiritual experience it was cracked up to be. So I've hatched a few replies like this one. In the hopes of incubating some laying-about to push out some remarks. Pretty hard-boiled, eh? C'mon, shell out some appreciation. That'd be pretty white of you, actually.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    1. Re:Hen ce my reply by Reziac · · Score: 1

      Bah. Down here in Billings, we count the number of turkey feathers left behind the previous spring. Only then can we know how to incubate ourselves come the next winter, when we hatch our nefarious schemes.

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
  153. The public will get shafted by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If Trump does reopen the US coal mines...

    ...he'll probably throw all the poor people down the shafts, figuratively speaking. Including, of course, the miners.

  154. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by budgenator · · Score: 1

    If you look honestly at the Minoan warm period (Minoan warm period approximately 3500 years ago was 4C warmer) , the Roman warm period and the Medieval Warm Period(The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) just 1000 years ago was 2C warmer than today), you'll see humans and human civilization did pretty good during the warm periods.

    --
    Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
  155. Re:Or skeptics by silentcoder · · Score: 1

    My data is from when I first started driving (about 16 years ago) and I haven't really kept up. It's possible they've gotten better, but the analogy works even if the specific numbers don't. It is meant to illustrate the idea that compensating for a known imperfect measurement device does not equal dishonesty.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  156. It doesn't work that way. by mbkennel · · Score: 2

    > Because it is an extremely slow effect. You could have two broken legs, a large dog sitting on your back, and have your hands slipping in the mud when you tried to pull yourself along and you could still get away from sea level rise without any concerns of drowning. You can see it coming years, even decades, in advance, and you can step back at any time.

    What happens is that a large storm at high tide, which would normally have been an unpleasant day, is now a Katrina-like $100 billion disaster as miles of coastline is flooded and destroyed.

    1. Re: It doesn't work that way. by fyngyrz · · Score: 2

      What happens is that a large storm at high tide, which would normally have been an unpleasant day, is now a Katrina-like $100 billion disaster as miles of coastline is flooded and destroyed.

      No, absolutely not. Same answer. That same large storm, at the same high tide, would be only centimeters different (in a hundred years... not yet, certainly.) If you're only centimeters away from "miles of coastline is flooded and destroyed" disaster, you're too close to disaster. You should move. Not because the ocean is rising; but because where you live is inherently unsafe. If you stay, and something comes along that overwhelms your centimeter(s)-high threshold of disaster, it wasn't ocean rise that did you in; it was poor decision making on your part. If you're within centimeters of disaster, you should move. Now.

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    2. Re: It doesn't work that way. by Layzej · · Score: 1

      That is complete nonsense. We're on track to have between half a meter and 1.5 meter sea level rise by the end of the century. That's on average - there will be less SLR near Greenland and more near USA. And we're currently tracking at the very high end of IPCC projections - so it looks like that number may be underestimated.

    3. Re: It doesn't work that way. by fyngyrz · · Score: 1

      Accepting the estimate you cite (only for the sake of making the point even more thoroughly - in fact, the estimate you cite is absurd; there's been barely any deviation in rate of sea level rise at all - most estimates are looking at 1/3 meter or so, it's only been about 25 cm in the last 140 years), let's say we have a meter and a half of sea level rise by the end of the century. That's 150 centimeters (5x-ish the actual estimates, BTW). The end of the century is 83 years away. Now. Here comes the sea. At what point do you imagine this raging, foaming, salty encroachment, (averaging about .000206 cm/hour: 150/83/365.25/24) is occurring at a rate so steep you couldn't out-crawl even if your crutches floated away? Or, at what point do you imagine being surprised by a switch from "not vulnerable to coastal events" to "vulnerable to coastal events"? Do you plan to live with your head literally in the sand?

      Drowning from "sea level rise threat" == purest hysteria. Living where you're going to get flooded or swamped by coastal events is stupid. Likewise staying there if you are suddenly made aware of same. Yes, lots of people are stupid. Any other points you'd like to help me make?

      --
      I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    4. Re: It doesn't work that way. by riverat1 · · Score: 1

      Of course depending on slope along the shore vertical centimeters can translate into horizontal meters.

      And don't dismiss rapid sea level rise. It has happened in the past. If the West Antarctic Ice Sheet were to go into rapid collapse (something that can't be ruled out) it could mean a meter or more of SLR in a matter of a decade or two. Yes the rise wouldn't be so fast that you can't walk away from it but it could be faster than we could rebuild the infrastructure that it affects.

    5. Re: It doesn't work that way. by Layzej · · Score: 2

      - in fact, the estimate you cite is absurd;

      We've been tracking at the very highest end of that projection for the last few decades. Perhaps reality is also absurd.

      you couldn't out-crawl even if your crutches floated away?

      How fast do buildings run? The real question is "What is the cost of adapting to projected sea level rise?", or worse, as you are suggesting, "what is the cost of abandoning the beach front properties?"

    6. Re: It doesn't work that way. by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      If sea level increases by half a meter (a reasonable estimate for 2100), storm surges will be half a meter higher. Depending on the topography, that can mean quite a bit if additional flooded land, and the stuff near the coast tends to be the most valuable. Sandy wasn't a particularly strong hurricane, but it had a large storm surge that had very unpleasant effects in New York. Raise it by half a meter and the effects will be even less pleasant.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    7. Re: It doesn't work that way. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The controversy will continue until the raw *unfiltered*, *unprocessed*, and *unbiased* data is released to the general public for analysis. You can lie with statistics all you want.

  157. A few examples "entire nations wiped off the earth by raymorris · · Score: 1

    James Hansen director of Goddard Institute, NASA, 1988 by 2008 the West Side Highway will be underwater".

    California Energy Commission, 1989 predicted sea level rise of 1.6 to 4.9 feet. Based on this, the National Environmental Trust published a map showing that 3 feet rise puts much of the bay area underwater. The "flooded San Francisco" map "went viral", to use today's terminology.

    Some oldies but goodies:

      Harvard biologist George Wald claimed that âoecivilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action.

    Stanford University professor Paul Ehrlich April 1970 âoeat least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.â

    Professor Kenneth E.F. Watt at the University of California in 1970:
    "The world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but 11 degrees colder by the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age."

    More recently:

    2005 United Nations Environment Programme:
    2010, some 50 million "climate refugees" will flee the Caribbean as islands are inundated with water. (In fact the opposite has occurred - people are moving TO the Caribbean, making it among the fastest growingb regions in the world.)

    Also from United Nations Environment Programme, director of the New York office:
    "entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if global warming is not reversed by the year 2000."

    October 2015:
    Benjamin Strauss, proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, says Hollywood is a goner by 2025.

    2008:
    James Hansen (NASA/Al Gore Science Advisor) says New York will be flooded in 2015, as portrayed by ABC News (this is probably a case of hyperbole on top of hyperbole, with ABC says stretching what Hansen had already stretched).

    2006
    You may recall Al Gore's ten-year "Doomesday Clock", which expired last year. Gore is not a scientist, he was the number one leader of the global warming movement.

  158. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by mbkennel · · Score: 2

    In any case, the whole question here is about sea surface temperatures.

    Looking further deeper into the oceans (which has a higher heat capacity of course and therefore shows trends better) always showed an unremitting upward trend with no pause.

    https://www.nodc.noaa.gov/OC5/3M_HEAT_CONTENT/

  159. Sea level rise complaints are hysteria by fyngyrz · · Score: 2

    Climate change aside, any island that "drowns" from the centimeter-class sea level rise we're actually talking about here was an incredibly poor place to set up shop.

    There's no "environmental imperative" that says you can build or live any bloody unsafe place you want without taking the environment carefully into account. Try building your home on the edge of a swamp and complaining about the alligators on your porch. Or over a massive live cave system and then complaining about sinkholes.

    The environment happens. Planning is called for. And if planning won't cut it, or wasn't really part of the original settlement circumstance, then moving is called for. Not whining about the water lapping a tiny bit further up the beach. Anyone who tries to float (hah) the argument that "but the islands are drowning" is an uninformed twerp.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    1. Re:Sea level rise complaints are hysteria by Gr8Apes · · Score: 1

      Climate change aside, any island that "drowns" from the centimeter-class sea level rise we're actually talking about here was an incredibly poor place to set up shop.

      From the linked article:

      "Estimates for the 20th century show that global average sea level rose at a rate of about 1.7 mm yr"

      so 100 years = 170 mm, which is a little over half a foot. That's a global average, which turns out to be significantly higher near the equator than the poles. What's interesting is that this is not merely affecting islands, there's some land perhaps close to you that's also affected.

      --
      The cesspool just got a check and balance.
    2. Re:Sea level rise complaints are hysteria by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      LOL, yeah. That's exactly why nobody should ever give a fuck when New York is flooded and ultimately drowned in water, right? Because who would be so stupid to build skyscrapers just above sea level?

  160. Laws of physics by mbkennel · · Score: 1

    It's not every adjustment, but the ones which make the news.

    It's also not surprising that the cleaner and more reliable the dataset, the more the data matches what is understood from laboratory-confirmed laws of physics.

  161. Re: Or skeptics by shilly · · Score: 1

    What a pile of horsecock. Science uses adjustments to account for systemic error such as in measuring instruments the entire frigging time.

    To give one example from another unrelated field:
    https://www.sfu.ca/colloquium/...

    You people who think you know something about science. You really are pathetic.

  162. Re:Classic Tempest in a Teapot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's like the wife adjusting the thermostat when she has a hot flash.

    Yes, the earth wants us to burn its coal. That's what god made coal for, right?

  163. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by shilly · · Score: 1

    I have absolutely no fucking clue what you're talking about

    You really didn't need to explain that. It was perfectly apparent. I assure you, this is to do with your lack of intellect, not his lack of communication skills, what with everyone else understanding him very well.

  164. Re:A few examples "entire nations wiped off the ea by j-beda · · Score: 1

    Great quotes!

    But no references. So I have too find them myself? You're not saving me much work!

    What am I supposed to say when someone like this guy claims the first Hansen quote "doesn't mean what you say it means"?

    https://www.skepticalscience.c...

  165. Are you sure you are not just seeing inflation ? by aepervius · · Score: 1

    PPP from what I read in the wiki sounds more like you are measuring inflation and difference of production ,say , between the US and germany, adding confusing factors. PPP is used generally to comapre countries productions/consumptions... In fact there is this sentence in the middle "When PPP comparisons are to be made over some interval of time, proper account needs to be made of inflationary effects". It sounds to me that in constant dollar or constant Euro, inflation removed, the difference is actually not as great as you indicate. Taking the GDP in constant euro ( or whichever currency http://www.tradingeconomics.co...) I get a rise from 500 to 700. Granted this is still good in efficiency, but it is not the meteoric rise you indicate.

    --
    C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
    visit randi.org
  166. Re: Who cares? by rochrist · · Score: 1

    Look at the Internet Idiot calling somebody else an imbecile!

  167. and as a former US Navy man... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'll tell you that anybody with stars on his collar is likely to be highly political. Promotions at the top levels of the military require approvals from politicians.

    The Navy takes its orders from the Command in Chief (Obama for the past 8 years) so when the CinC says "Run your ships on $60+ per gallon biofuels and write reports justifying that" the flag officers salute and say "Aye aye, sir!". This has been happening on a limited basis in the Obama years.

    When decades of Navy experience says 12 carriers are needed to cover all the duties the navy has been assigned, but the CinC says to the Navy "you only need 10", those flag officers go to congress and testify that they do not need the additional ships. (Then people say "See! even the navy says it does not need those ships!", when in reality the navy flag officers are not expressing facts r personal opinions but the things they have been ordered to say). We currently have 10 carriers and will be back up to 11 when the Ford becomes active.

    So, yeah, the navy keeps close tabs on sea conditions, but no, you cannot trust a damned thing the navy says to the public about sea conditions while the commander in chief is a global warming alarmist. Just look at what's become of NASA. They are wasting huge piles of space agency money on Earth climate research. NOAA is the proper agency for that work, but it does not have the same political/PR value to say to the public "NOAA says..." so there is a strong pressure from the left to keep distracting NASA with this garbage (and using NASA funds on it) rather than shifting it to the agency that actually has this stuff as its core mission. NASA was created from NACA and its charter refers to studying the atmosphere (NOT the climate). This is the fig leaf that AGW people hang their hat upon, but the NACA/NASA atmosphere study role was to enable the core mission of improving flight through, out of, and back into, the atmosphere.

    In the Obama era, the executive branch of government was weaponized and used as a weapon in partisan political fights like never before. The IRS was (and still is being) used as a weapon against the TEA Party. The FBI, EPA, and ATF were used to supplement the IRS in attacking TEA Party people (the "friendly visits" these agencies paid to TEA Partiers coincided too closely with the IRS abuse to be pure chance). The EPA and BLM were used against rural people who tend to vote Republican. The immigration authorities were ordered to NOT enforce immigration laws in order to change the ethnic makeup of the nation for long-term political effect. The DoJ was used to punish any state that differed from the President on policies (Now with Trump coming in of course the people who supported that suddenyl seem to be afraid HE might follow their example). The military was ordered to embrace all sorts of policies (not just gay stuff) its leadership disagreed with, but they went along (so clearly they DO say things they do not agree with when so ordered).

  168. ARGO coverage is quite good! by Layzej · · Score: 1

    The coverage is quite good and more than sufficient for evaluating global temperature trends (and much more besides!). In fact, the ARGO buoys are of sufficient resolution to be used in the study of mesoscale eddies!

    1. Re:ARGO coverage is quite good! by budgenator · · Score: 1

      For ocean currents, that are likely a long-term phenomena they're very good, for short term phenomena like "The Ocean ate my Heat" over an 18 year time frame, sorry I just don't see it. The amount of temperature difference they are looking for is too fine for the accuracy of less than 3800 sensors spread over the world's oceans for that short a period.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    2. Re:ARGO coverage is quite good! by Layzej · · Score: 1

      You are only offering your own incredulity as evidence. This is not convincing.

    3. Re:ARGO coverage is quite good! by budgenator · · Score: 1

      361.9 million square kilometers / 3800 = 95,237 Km^2/ buoy; that's pretty sparse by most reasonable metrics.

      --
      Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
    4. Re:ARGO coverage is quite good! by Layzej · · Score: 1

      Can you show me one of the reasonable metrics you are referencing? Otherwise it seems you are going by nothing more than feelings

  169. You and they disagree about their objectives by raymorris · · Score: 1

    Sounds like we agree on a lot.

    > Unless you count "universities, museums, private research centers, thinktanks and organisations like the national geographic society and the American Geophysical Union" as "organisations which advocate political positions".

    I do count them, in many cases, often based on their written objectives. It's interesting to me you started with "universities". You don't think the ivory towers of academia ever have just a bit of a political bent? Enjoy your safe space, I guess. ;)

    You only mentioned two organizations by name, so let's look at one those. Here's what the National Geographic Society says their goals are:

    ABOUT THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY
    The National Geographic Society is a global nonprofit organization committed to exploring and protecting our planet. We fund hundreds of research and conservation projects around the world each year

    Which do you think an organization "committed to protecting our planet [through) conservation projects" is likely to weigh more heavily, protecting the planet or protecting the economy from the costs of misguided policies based on overblown rhetoric? If National Geographic and the Chamber of Commerce issued a joint report on climate change, I would expect that to be fairly balanced between the two concerns.

    1. Re:You and they disagree about their objectives by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      >I do count them, in many cases, often based on their written objectives. It's interesting to me you started with "universities". You don't think the ivory towers of academia ever have just a bit of a political bent? Enjoy your safe space, I guess. ;)

      Not in the hard sciences. In the humanities - sure - but that is part of the reason the humanities exist. The human sciences are the birthplace off and bastions for liberalism and have been since at least the renaissance. That's not bias - that's what they are FOR. It's not so much that universities are biassed against conservative ideas as that conservative ideas are fundamentally unfit for purpose in a university. The very reason they were INVENTED was liberalism.

      >Which do you think an organization "committed to protecting our planet [through) conservation projects" is likely to weigh more heavily, protecting the planet or protecting the economy from the costs of misguided policies based on overblown rhetoric?
      That is not a political issue. No really it's not. It's a reality issue. You can't eat, drink or breath money. The world is ALWAYS the more important of the two. Because without a healthy natural world - the economy is doomed ANYWAY. It cannot EXIST without one. A healthy planet is literally a fundamental prerequisite for having an economy in the first place.

      > If National Geographic and the Chamber of Commerce issued a joint report on climate change, I would expect that to be fairly balanced between the two concerns.
      So you would only take a report seriously... if half of it was written by people with absolutely ZERO expertise in the topic it's about ?

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      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    2. Re:You and they disagree about their objectives by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      The hard sciences on the other hand are, fundamentally, apolitical - but that doesn't mean they can't have political consequences. It just means that whenever they don't agree with the politics- it's the politics that are wrong.

      Einstein was just trying to understand the universe. And deep inside his paper was a little equation - a tiny and simple one compared to what else is in there. For two decades entirely overlooked - and then somebody realized what that little equation meant ! E=mc^2 ... the energy in matter is equal to it's mass times the speed of light squared - and the speed of light is a very big number. Squared it's a truly massive number.
      A little matter contains an enormous amount of energy.

      At that moment - it became clear that, thanks to Einstein (and quite unintentionally on his part) - we had the means to build the most powerful weapon in history. But the Germans knew it too. The NAZIs were trying to build one. And then, Einstein - the great Pacifist went to see the President of the United States and encouraged him to develop a program to build that bomb before the NAZIs can do it.

      Einstein wasn't concerned with politics when he wrote his theory. He was just trying to explain why Mercury's orbit wasn't where Newton said it should be. But his work ended up having political consequences - and unleashed a terrible threat to humanity. So he did a political thing -and encouraged the good (or at least "less evil") side to pursue that power so they could have it before the other side did.

      Hard science isn't political - but sometimes, it's discoveries have urgent consequences which require political action. Einstein's activism that day helped save the free world from one of the gravest threats it had ever faced. There is a time for scientists to engage in political activism - there is a time for them to say to the politicians "What we have discovered represents a grave threat to humanity - and we need you to do the right thing to avert that". There is nothing wrong with that. So - I see Michael Mann right now as far more akin to Einstein that fateful day he requested an audience with the white house, and I see that as a good thing. The science would say the same - regardless of his political beliefs - but he has a duty when what he discovers is a grave threat requiring political action - to become an activist for that action. This does not diminish his work as a science - it merely augments it with his responsibility as a human being.

      Politics and science may not often see eye to eye - but they are always, and unfortunately this cannot change, at least somewhat intertwined. The greatest scientific achievement in history - the moon landing, would never have happened if not for the US's desperate desire to outdo the Soviets and prove capitalism superior to communism. Purely political/economic ideas locked in a conflict was why we were willing to give up the massive resources required that led to that achievement.

      You can't demand scientists be entirely apolitical. Science should be. Scientists cannot be. They are human beings first, and more importantly - even the most apolitical science can nevertheless have enormous political consequences. That won't change because somebody dislikes those consequences. A lot of so-called skeptics engage in the appeal to consequences fallacy - saying things like "it's a sham to establish a global authoritarian rule and set humanity backwards" and stuff like that. But that's a false argument. Even if a global authoritarian rule or setting humanity backwards was the only way to deal with the threat (and it decidedly is not - on the contrary the best way is to abandon outdated 19th century technology for 21st century technology") - that wouldn't change whether the science is true or not. The truthfulness of an argument has no connection whatsoever with the appeal (or lack there-off) of the consequences of that argument.
      One libertarian once declared that the kind of massive global cooperation required here would be, in

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      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
    3. Re:You and they disagree about their objectives by raymorris · · Score: 1

      > So you would only take a report seriously... if half of it was written by people with absolutely ZERO expertise in the topic it's about ?

      Suppose a proposal would delay AGW global warming by five years, and cost 80% of your income. Is that a proposal you would support? If so, we're too far apart and we should stop here. If you wouldn't support such a proposal, you recognize that each proposal is a balance between maybe having some benefit re AGW vs the economic costs. If the only people talking are climatologists (and no economists), you're ignoring half of the problem!

    4. Re:You and they disagree about their objectives by silentcoder · · Score: 1

      >Suppose a proposal would delay AGW global warming by five years, and cost 80% of your income. Is that a proposal you would support?

      Of course not. But no scientist I've read has suggested "delaying" is even a goal. If 80% of my income can PREVENT it ? Yes - take it. I'd rather live in squalor but my daughter gets to LIVE.

      > If you wouldn't support such a proposal, you recognize that each proposal is a balance between maybe having some benefit re AGW vs the economic cost
      No, that does not follow. Not least because reductio et absurdium is a fallacy - it's not a valid argument. But even if I overlook that it still does not follow. Because your example was mere delay. Delay or mitigation isn't the aim. Solving the problem is. The only point where you could argue a solution for THAT isn't worth it - is if the impacts from that solution (which could be consequences of economic impact) are MORE SEVERE than the impacts of the problem being stopped. Lets say there's a real risk of unleashing a massive resource war as people struggle due to the financial impact. Will this resource war be bigger than the global resource war (for which "World War III" would be a seriously euphemistic name) that would be unleashed if even the more moderate potential impacts of climate change happens ? When you add in all the people about to die from massive enlargements to the range of disease carrying mosquitos ? Right now the anestopheles mosquito is the most dangerous animal on the entire planet. It kills millions of people every year - and it's confined to a single continent and even there only about 25% of that continent. Imagine if it is suddenly able to survive in New York ? So the problem with your 'cost-benefit analysis' approach is that it loses. You fear some may starve due to cost increases ? A valid concern - more than would starve if most of our best agrarian land is lost to agriculture ? Considering that the new temperate zones won't have fertile soil magically replacing the tundra overnight - you'll have dead soil with low yields, probably for centuries. Besides, we've got people starving due to costs NOW. We can manage that problem - sure our management of it is atrocious since a good system would eradicate it - but there is actually any evidence that the economic shifts involved would be severe enough to greatly increase the small number of those who can't find *some* way to survive - it is more likely to just redistribute hunger a bit more evenly about the world. Which would make it easier to deal with actually - since most of the new hungry people would be located in countries with lots of resources to help them with.
      We're going to have to deal with that issue REGARDLESS of what we do with climate change anyway - the gap between rich and poor in the wealthy countries is growing so rapidly that a massive increase in hunger in those countries is utterly unavoidable already. We'll have to sort it or we'll have all the issues you worry about - regardless of what we do or don't do about climate change. So we may has well solve that too.

      But I'm going to point out - that if you accept that money is a proxy for resources, then it's unconscionable to not oppose severe wealth inequality to the greatest extent possible. Because control of money is then control of resources. Since people need resources to survive - it represents absolute, dictatorial power over them. When 95% of the world's wealth is in the hands of just 5% of the people - those 5% are the most absolute and horrifying dictators history has ever known.

      >. If the only people talking are climatologists (and no economists), you're ignoring half of the problem!
      Talking about science ? It SHOULD be only scientists. I won't pay much creedence to an economists ideas about evolutionary biology either. That doesn't mean that insights (often great ones) from outside a field can't happen, or should be ignored - but they aren't done from within the person's original field. When a person makes a great contribution to a field from outside it

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      Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  170. Cancer? Shit. I was supposed to be scared of AGW! by raymorris · · Score: 1

    If a cancer doctor writes an article saying "everybody needs to eat more, and avoid sun exposure", a phys ed coach says "make time to be outdoors more", a pastor says "make more time for prayer and meditation", a self-defense expert says "make more time to learn self-defense", and a financial expert says "make time to write a monthly budget each month, and to review your investments", I won't be surprised, and I won't magically have an extra 8 hours each day to do all of these things. All of those people are trying to be helpful, and they are all focused on what they care about, what THEY think is important. It may be that where I need to spend more time is cuddling with my young child.

  171. Wow, you're getting nicer to her now by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Before she finally resigned, being exorcised as a heretic by the high priests of the religion of global warming, she was being called all sorts of names by you sciencey purists. Calling the woman a slut was one of the most scientific arguments her opponents had against her, not that they were being mysogenists or anything, oh no...

    The treatment of critics of AGW by supporters of AGW is one of the biggest bits of evidence the whole thing is a scam. Real, solid science does not require the rigging of the peer review process or the paper publishing process nor does it require protesters demanding that the heretics be fired, nor does it demand the de-funding of people who disagree, nor does it require females or minorities who disagree to be attacked based on their gender or skin color, nor does it demand that people getting funded by some sources supposed to align with one side be ignored as biased and tainted while people funded by the opposing interests are presumed pure as the wind-driven snow....

    oh...

    and real science does not require continual "re-calibration" and ongoing "adjustments" to measurements to smooth-out any data points that critics point to as counter-evidence. If all this massaging of data was truly valid and correct then why was it not done initially? Were the initial presenters of the data incompetent? Actually the answer is more simple - the entire thing is based on a mountain of invalid scientific practice: mixing data from dissimilar instruments without common traceable calibration. Even if done with the best motives and intentions, it's still totally invalid and there's just no honest way to fix this original sin.

  172. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There is a reasonable debate to be had about:

    Reasonable Debate? What you are saying is you haven't been keeping up with the work being done. The debate was there. You are missing it (or, really, you missed it).

    1) Humans. Baring some new observations the debate is all but done. Not in the blogs, not in the news, in the journals.
    2) Wrong question. Try this one: How readily can we adapt to what is about to happen?
    2a) Normal? The planet was once a molten blob. What is normal?
    3) Hmmm, the group who thinks business as usual or the group who say change or risk peril. Who has your best interest in mind?
    3a) Again, wrong question. Try this one: Who's interest you are really serving?

  173. I appreciate your very diplomatic approach by raymorris · · Score: 1

    I appreciate the tone of your posts.

    If James Hansen wants to dispute that quote, fine. You'll notice I included another quote from him, not from the same article. He's very well known, serving on many high-profile committees over many years, and he has a tendency to make predictions that turn out to be wildly incorrect.

    Obviously this doesn't mean that everything anyone ever said about AGW is wrong. It just means that there has been some scare-mongering.

    Unfortunately, when I removed this section ("Overcoming skepticism due to past hyperbole"), from my paper, I didn't keep the formal references in a place I'm easily able to find them now. I'm sure if you plug any of the quotes above, for which I've named the sources, you can find the formal reference in seconds.

  174. Just in by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This just in.

    At a press meeting in Austin Texas, Lamar Smith claimed the square root of 5 is equal to 2 for small values of 5.

  175. Bow to the global warming religion or else by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 0

    Lets see how many "tolerant" progressives show how enlightened they are by down modding as Troll and then AC posting a very unpersuasive F-U to my post because they "feel" so strongly that they must be right. Just remember that ad homonym is the last bastion of a dying argument.

    The entire CO2/anthropogenic global warming argument is a canard, and is only believed by the climate "scientists" whose jobs/grants depend on it and those without a degree in hard physical science or those who just believe whatever their told. The "all scientists believe global warming" bullshit came from a cherry picked poll with no scientific methodology and therefore no accuracy and they are following the Nazi path that a lie told long enough and loud enough will be believed. Truth is many climate scientists do not agree with global warming; I can point to dozens, and that is not an exhaustive list by any means, those are just people willing to be abused in the name of truth by the fascist global warming nuts. The rest of us would like to keep our day jobs.

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

    The reality is that plant growth on land/in oceans is limited by atmospheric/free CO2. Right now environuts are running around with their hair on fire because they say CO2 is at 400 PPM (parts per million) or 0.04%, which in and of its self is debatable (cities and power plants among others create localized plumes of elevated CO2, if your monitoring is anywhere near a plume, then you are measuring the plume instead of true ambient levels).

    Here are a few facts: Every fossil fuel that is burned today was once living matter, either plant or animal (undisputed fact). Thus it was once part of the natural CO2 planetary cycle and at a time when life was flourishing. But somehow, re-adding that carbon to the planetary system after being trapped in coal or oil or natural gas deposits will throw the world out of balance and make the world too hot to be habitable? Completely irrational on the face of it.

    More facts: The oceans contain 37.4T tons of suspended carbon, land biomass has 2000-3000B tons. The atmosphere contains 720B tons of CO2 and humans contribute only 6B tons additional load on this balance. The oceans, land and atmosphere exchange CO2 continuously so the additional load by humans is ~0.0146% of the overall global exchange. A 1% change in the balance between oceans and air would cause a CO2 change 71 times larger than anything we could produce. Anyone who thinks that natural interchanges like this don't vary over time by more than 0.015% is an idiot and no student of history. We know for a fact that the planet has been both much hotter and much cooler than current day.

    http://www.climate4you.com/ima...
    https://noconsensus.wordpress....

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    If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    1. Re:Bow to the global warming religion or else by david_thornley · · Score: 1

      is only believed by the climate "scientists" whose jobs/grants depend on it and those without a degree in hard physical science or those who just believe whatever their told.

      In other words, you believe that grants and funding are handled, worldwide, by people who insist on a particular specific outcome and won't fund anything else? Also, how do you explain all the other physical scientist associations who believe in it (having seen the evidence)? Members of societies of chemists and physicists do tend to have degrees in the hard physical sciences. You're referring to one unidentified study of the number of scientists who think AGW is going on, and there have been several.studies pointing that out.

      Your list of scientists who don't agree is short, and many are not talking about their field of expertise. (Where does being former president of Greenpeace Canada count as scientific credentials?) The article also points out that there is an overwhelming consensus that these people don't agree with.

      That atmosphere weighs about 5 quadrillion tons, so one part per million is 5 billion tons. Except that carbon dioxide is about half again as heavy as the nitrogen-oxygen mix, so figure about 7.5 billion tons. Multiply that by 400 and that's about three billion tons. When I was looking this up, I found that 7.5 billion tons of coal were mined in 2010, and that would, if burned, produce well over 20 tons of carbon dioxide, enough to raise the atmosphereic concentration by roughly 3 parts per million. Obviously, burning one year's coal production isn't going to do much, but the concentration over about the last 165 years has gone from 280ppm to 400ppm, one ppm at a time. You'll understand why I don't pay attention to your quantitative estimates, because they're seriously wrong where I've checked.

      And, yes, this was all in the atmosphere and ocean tens of millions of years ago, when the climate was very significantly different. The Sun has gotten a bit brighter since then, so it would stabilize at a warmer temperature with the same amount of CO2. This is pretty much irrelevant, since our civilization and domesticated plants and animals have evolved in much different circumstances. The planet will adapt. The biosphere will eventually adapt. Bad things (from the human point of view) will happen in the meantime.

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      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
    2. Re:Bow to the global warming religion or else by djinn6 · · Score: 1

      Truth is many climate scientists do not agree with global warming; I can point to dozens, and that is not an exhaustive list by any means.

      Dozens out of how many thousands?

      Every fossil fuel that is burned today was once living matter, either plant or animal (undisputed fact). Thus it was once part of the natural CO2 planetary cycle and at a time when life was flourishing. But somehow, re-adding that carbon to the planetary system after being trapped in coal or oil or natural gas deposits will throw the world out of balance and make the world too hot to be habitable?

      Yes, life was flourishing. But what kind of life? And how many of them are still around today? The world was 30 F hotter back in the Cretaceous, and no humans were around. Think about it: if the hottest day in the summer is 100 F, then you'd be baking at 130 F with the Cretaceous climate.

      And by the way, even if humans didn't cause global warming, it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to stop it. When lightning sets your house on fire, do you say, "I didn't start it, it's a natural fire," or do you try to put it out?

      The rest of us would like to keep our day jobs.

      Ah I see, so you work in the fossil fuel industry and are obligated to spout denialist nonsense. I guess there's no point trying to convince you then.

    3. Re:Bow to the global warming religion or else by eaglesrule · · Score: 1

      The "all scientists believe global warming" bullshit came from a cherry picked poll with no scientific methodology and therefore no accuracy and they are following the Nazi path that a lie told long enough and loud enough will be believed.

      Says the guy who cherry picks the exception to the norm as proof that the premise is faulty, and Godwins on top of it. Likewise, perhaps you believe that heaping up a steaming pile of logical fallacies and declaring it 'truth!' that you can convince anybody you're right if you keep at it long enough.

      Here are a few facts: Every fossil fuel that is burned today was once living matter, either plant or animal (undisputed fact). Thus it was once part of the natural CO2 planetary cycle and at a time when life was flourishing. But somehow, re-adding that carbon to the planetary system after being trapped in coal or oil or natural gas deposits will throw the world out of balance and make the world too hot to be habitable? Completely irrational on the face of it.

      Here is a fun experiment you should try: start at the top of a 10 story building, and walk down to the ground floor via the stairwell. Now, from the top of the same building, jump over the side. You start with the same potential energy and are traveling the same vertical distance, but there is a difference in the rate of change in energy levels that may be of interest to you.

      Meanwhile, on the west coast, enjoy eating oysters while you still can as the oceans absorbing atmospheric CO2 has already altered the ph of the water to the point their shells dissolve. So it's not just about the potential for disrupting human civilization as we know it by the alteration of habitable areas and crop viability, or making it 'too hot to live' as you put it, but also the massive die off of species for which they are not able to adapt fast enough to the changing conditions that is a problem.

      Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent, and discerning if he holds his tongue. -Proverbs 17:28

      But do go on trying to convince anyone that releasing billions of tons of CO2 every year for more than a century couldn't possibly have an accumulative effect, that the numbers are all wrong and that the majority of scientists are all lying merely for their own benefit.

  176. Re:Classic Tempest in a Teapot by BECoole · · Score: 1

    The increase in biomass seems to indicate that burning coal has a positive effect.

  177. Re:Classic Tempest in a Teapot by BECoole · · Score: 1

    BTW, I'm still trying to figure out what the negative effects of warming are (the real ones that are happening now, not the predictions). Everything has been positive so far.

  178. This has nothing to do with the greenhouse effect. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    They're heating the greenhouse with waste heat from the refinery. They're enriching the air in the greenhouse with CO2 from the refinery. These are unrelated except they both come from the refinery.

    The CO2 doesn't significantly affect the temperature in the greenhouse. It makes the plants grow faster.

    Greenhouses work by preventing convection of heat (generated by absorption of sunlight which entered through the transparent walls) away into the higher atmosphere. A square meter of full-on sunlight provides about a kilowatt of heating.

  179. House Science Committee Chair Lamar Smith (R-TX) by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    Should read Lamar Smith (R-TX, not a scientist, Christian Scientist, believes that reality is purely spiritual and the material world an illusion)

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    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  180. Sorry, but Climate Change is still crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And your straw-man of the congressman's math is... just pathetic.

  181. Re: Who cares? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

    Thank you, I did not know that essay was online. I'll be sure to link to it the next time somebody claims their model is accurate.

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  182. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by koreanbabykilla · · Score: 1

    wow..
    my opinion is your an idiot:

    LOL

  183. Re:Are you sure you are not just seeing inflation by hey! · · Score: 2

    This isn't just true of PPP GDP, any kind of GDP or price comparison over time needs to take inflation into account. I used a World Bank analysis prepared from ORNL data and presumably the bank knows to adjust for inflation. The reason to use PPP is what matters is the amount of consumption enabled per CO2 emitted. If a bushel of wheat costs 10x in Syria what it costs in Russia, should we value a bushel of wheat produced in Syria 10x as much as one produced in Russia? For some purposes, yes, but for this purpose no.

    It's impossible to do a precise comparison of standards of living across time periods because things change. How do you compare the value of computers from 1990 to the value of computers today? However if you look at the major industrial countries of Europe in general they've reduced per capita CO2 while increasing per capita GDP, often dramatically. So it's safe to say they're getting more CO2 efficient, even if we can't be entirely sure how to precisely calculate that.

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    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  184. MOD PARENT SIDEWAYS by serviscope_minor · · Score: 2

    Not really sure why your post is modded funny. Seems insightful, and not in the least bit amusing?

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    SJW n. One who posts facts.
  185. Re: Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    -1

  186. 92% agree by raymorris · · Score: 1

    You wrote a lot of good stuff in these last two posts. I'm going to focus on the one point where we don't see eye-to-eye.

    > It's a reality issue. You can't eat, drink or breath money. The world is ALWAYS the more important of the two

    Money (and more generally, resources) does in fact buy food, clean water, and less directly clean air. You know those commercials for charities that say "just a dollar a day will feed a hungry child"? They're not lying. They spin, of course, but it's basically true. One example, fertilizers and pesticides help crops grow. If the world used no fertilizers or pesticides, many people would starve. On the other hand, they havev varying degrees of environmental impact. Good policy is about balancing those things.

    Washing out a greasy paper towel so you can recycle it would have some benefit to environment, but it's not worth it. Recycling a clean aluminium can *is* worth it. It would be better for the environment if you weren't using electricity to read this, but you've decided that the minor environmental impact isn't worth giving up Slashdot.

    With AGW, there is a meta-issue. As discussed, the lead authors of the UN papers on climate change disagree significantly, with one lead author saying the paper is alarmist. We don't KNOW quite what the environmental impact, or the economic impact, of some of these proposals might be. You wouldn't give up half your annual income in order to recycle a bag of cans, the benefit wouldn't be worth the cost. It's all about balancing costs and benefits.

    We must be careful about this common pattern:
    X is a problem. Something must be done!
    Proposal Y is something.
    Therefore, Y must be done.

    Very often, Y isn't a good way of solving X, sometimes it has nothing to with problem X. (Frequent example: high profile shooting, using a handgun. Proposed solution: ban RIFLES.) Other times, proposal Y may mitigate problem X by $z worth, but cost $z,000. That makes it a bad idea.

  187. Re:Or skeptics by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    I haven't done this in a while, but with my wife pegging the speedometer at about 60mph I'd time the passing of milestones to the second, usually taking the observation over five miles when possible. The speedometer was pretty darn accurate.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  188. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

    "fucknuckle"
    "needledick"

    I hope this argument keeps going. I'm learning all sorts of amazing and creative new curses that I've never heard before!

  189. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    You think the biosphere will benefit from change that massively outpaces historical change. That makes you a stupid twat.

    Actually, if we burn most of the fossil fuels, the world will eventually settle into a reasonably stable state, and the biosphere is likely to catch up in a few million years, and it may well be better in some ways than what we have now. This isn't very comforting for those wondering how their grandchildren and great-grandchildren will do, barring stupendous advances in longevity.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  190. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by david_thornley · · Score: 1

    2) Are these changes really outside the normal range our planet and ecosystem have experienced in the past

    Define "past".

    If you're thinking of the past as a hundred million years, then, no, we're well within those limits. From my petty human perspective, though, I don't see that as being immediately relevant.

    --
    "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  191. Re: Who cares? by riverat1 · · Score: 1

    The point is more that no model is accurate- ever. NONE of our scientific models are accurate with respect to reality, certainly not climateology.

    So are you claiming because climate models aren't up to your standards of accuracy we should just ignore them? Do you know of anything else that is more accurate than current climate models? They're not perfect but they're better than anything else we have.

  192. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    energy is not only stored as heat...

  193. Science isn't a religion. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So there are no priests, no heretics,none of that crap. if you are manufacturing such entities, then this is because you don't know what science is and have a problem with it,both of which indicate you are not able to judge what is going on in science.

    PS The scientists who pushed the piltdown man were also treated just like Judith was. As far as you know, for the same reason.

  194. Re:Or skeptics by silentcoder · · Score: 1

    Well "cars" is a very wide concept - and "speedometers" technology isn't all made equal. Some are definitely more accurate than others. Saying there can be a margin of error (and there are regulations limiting how big it can be) does not lead to the conclusion that YOUR car is at the edges of it. Even so - your measurement is based on the best-case scenario. The kind of road with milestones is generally a good condition open road like a highway, which is what they are calibrated against. They get a lot less accurate when you deal with things like dirt roads or wet roads. When the friction levels change significantly the distance the CAR moves per rotation is significantly less correlated to the circumference of the wheel.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  195. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by silentcoder · · Score: 1

    >my opinion is your an idiot:

    Thanks for this brilliantly clarifying demonstration of the difference between an opinion and a fact.

    --
    Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
  196. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by jandersen · · Score: 1

    I get that impression from the fact that plants absorb it and in current times they're starved of it (compared to paleo history).

    I think "some plants" is a more accurate term, since it not only depends on whether they have adequate access to water, nutrients etc, but as I understand it, it is not actually all plants that benefit from this, even if all other needs are met. Here's an article about this subject: https://www.newscientist.com/a...

    I think the only thing you can accuse me of here is cherry picking.

    Is that not bad enough? Climate change - as indeed science in general - is far to important to be dragged down to the level of politics.

  197. Re:Cancer? Shit. I was supposed to be scared of AG by shilly · · Score: 1

    If a cancer doctor tells you "stop smoking" and you respond by saying "I don't have time! I'm gonna cuddle my young child instead" -- you're a muppet.

  198. Can't do one without the other by raymorris · · Score: 1

    > If a cancer doctor tells you "stop smoking" and you respond by saying "I don't have time! I'm gonna cuddle my young child instead" -- you're a muppet.

    If I'm cuddling the kid, I'm not smoking. Just sayin'. :)

    Funny thing is, for me, the next first step to stop smoking is spending time with my daughter - motivation.

    1. Re:Can't do one without the other by shilly · · Score: 1

      If I'm cuddling the kid, I'm not smoking. Just sayin'. :)

      If only that were universal...

  199. Re: Who cares? by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

    Just to start an argument- Windows is more accurate than most climate models.

    --
    SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
  200. Re:Two questions before I call BS. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And, questions 4a) and 4):

    4a) What is the global CO2 level "supposed" to be?
    4b) What is the global temperature "supposed" to be?

  201. The data has been available for decades by Layzej · · Score: 1
  202. Re: Who cares? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Look up "ocean acidification". Regardless of global warming or climate change, let's focus on an irrefutable set of facts. Atmospheric co2 influences ocean acidity. A significant portion of the oceans' ecosystems fail when organisms that have shells of one kind or another is taken away. With already observable effects ocean acidification is a great reason to focus on reducing co2 emissions. Just a couple of Google searches will show that everything I've stated is fact.

  203. GCMs are irrelevant by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is cute but completely irrelevant. Global warming due to a higher partial pressure of CO2 is an inevitable consequence of basic physics. Then we have a strong feedback effect from H2O. There are no known negative feedbacks strong enough to prevent warming from happening (and yes, clouds have been examined in detail). Ergo, the Earth must be warming, no matter whether the GMS are right or wrong. The models are based on physical laws, you need those laws to be wrong in order for AGW to not be a thing.

    Also, as I keep pointing out, rejecting climate science because you think the GCMs are wrong is like rejecting the germ theory of disease because your epidemiological model wasn't sufficiently predictive.

    1. Re:GCMs are irrelevant by Marxist+Hacker+42 · · Score: 1

      None of that says *anything* about the complete supposition that all the CO2 comes from manmade sources.

      --
      SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.