Slashdot Mirror
Climate Change Is Altering Global Air Currents (independent.co.uk)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Independent: One of the scientists who demonstrated conclusively that global warming was an unnatural event with the famous "hockey stick" graph is now warning that giant jetstreams which circle the planet are being altered by climate change. Jetstreams are influenced by the difference in temperatures between the Arctic and the equator. But the Arctic has been warming much faster than tropical climates -- the island of Svalbard, for example was 6.5 degrees celsius warmer last year compared to the average between 1961 and 1990. The land has also been warming faster than the sea. Both of those factors were changing the flow of these major air currents to create "extreme meanders" which were helping to cause "extreme weather events", Professor Michael Mann said. In a paper in the journal Scientific Reports, Professor Mann and other researchers wrote that evidence of the effect of climate change on the jetstreams had "only recently emerged from the background noise of natural variability." They said that projections of the effect on the jetstreams in "state-of-the-art" climate models were "mirrored" in "multiple" actual temperature measurements. The jetstream normally flows reasonably consistently around the planet, but can develop loops extending north and south. The researchers, who studied temperature records going back to 1870 as well as satellite data, said these loops could grow "very large" or even "grind to a halt" rather than moving from west to east. The effect has been most pronounced during the past 40 years, they found.
Your house is on fire. Do you:
A. Call the fire department?
B. Accuse the neighbor of telling you your house is on fire that "Fire is just somebody's religion!"
C. Convene a study to determine if the house really is on fire, and if so, if it was due to spontaneous combustion or if there's a arsonist about?
D. "Blame Liberals!"
E. Post to Facebook or instagram?
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Of course some probably are more easily convinced than others.
While others are fatally slow to appreciate danger and take evasive action ... In this particular case, however, so well publicised and so overwhelming is the evidence that a failure to be convinced more likely reflects a studied ignorance than any natural lack of perspicuity.
I've been modded down already
Well it wasn't one of your more accurate contributions was it? Oooops.
Beside the confusion between Penn State and the University of East Anglia, to say Dr Mann is "really really bad at statistics" is perhaps to overstate the actual criticism leveled at his now infamous 1998 paper. In any case subsequent reconstructions, --and the last word, I presume, goes to Marcott et al. 2013 --more or less confirm the original conclusions of Mann et al.. I'm would assume you (and I genuinely respect your intelligence and erudition phantom) are already aware of that.
it's also worth mentioning that this paper is using computer models
And, invaluable though they may be, we would certainly exercise caution when considering the findings of simulations. In any case, we would naturally be sceptical of any only recently published paper. It's the weight of the extant literature of course, including the examination and perhaps replication by the entire profession of newly published work, that forms the best available science.
I realise that the plural of anecdote is not data, and I realise that warming here in Australia is occurring at a faster rate than globally, but this summer just gone has been truly alarming. Driving my family through 46C heat on the NSW South Coast in Feb was the first time I was literally scared of the temperature (not just uncomfortable but frightened that the vehicle and air-con might give out).
Better to be despised for too anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too confident a security. --Edmund Burke
Question is, though, what if the police comes and finds out that the houses actually ARE on fire. Will you at least then agree to call the fire department? Or are you too upset that you were wrong that you'd rather see your house burn down than admit you were wrong?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You and I see this: here is a theory with a lot of evidence. The deniers make a claim, it gets debunked so they make another claim and the cycle repeats endlessly as one bullshit claim after the other gets debunked.
But the people who believe the deniers don't see that. They see "For everything the scientist say the deniers make a counter-argument that sounds convincing to me".
At least part of the reason they see it so differently is that it's a helluva lot easier to sound convincing when you don't try to be accurate. Explaining complex science so laymen can understand it is hard - to do it convincingly as well is very hard. Reality doesn't care about your individual biases. It's the same reason people are scared of investing in long-term proven ways to grow your money - but will give their life savings to a conman after one meeting.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Yeah, why work for oil corporations and say everything's great when you can get a fraction of the money predicting doom.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If your work in climate prediction is accurate or wildly wrong, nobody knows in your lifetime
I see you've never looked into climate science, research or peer reviews before.