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Leaked Federal Climate Report Finds Link Between Climate Change, Human Activity (washingtonpost.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report from The New York Times (Warning: source may be paywalled; alternative source): The average temperature in the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years, according to a sweeping federal climate change report awaiting approval by the Trump administration. The draft report by scientists from 13 federal agencies, which has not yet been made public, concludes that Americans are feeling the effects of climate change right now. It directly contradicts claims by President Trump and members of his cabinet who say that the human contribution to climate change is uncertain, and that the ability to predict the effects is limited. "Evidence for a changing climate abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans," a draft of the report states. A copy of it was obtained by The New York Times. The authors note that thousands of studies, conducted by tens of thousands of scientists, have documented climate changes on land and in the air. "Many lines of evidence demonstrate that human activities, especially emissions of greenhouse (heat-trapping) gases, are primarily responsible for recent observed climate change," they wrote. The report was completed this year and is a special science section of the National Climate Assessment, which is congressionally mandated every four years. The National Academy of Sciences has signed off on the draft report, and the authors are awaiting permission from the Trump administration to release it. "The report concludes that even if humans immediately stopped emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the world would still feel at least an additional 0.50 degrees Fahrenheit (0.30 degrees Celsius) of warming over this century compared with today," reports The New York Times. "The projected actual rise, scientists say, will be as much as 2 degrees Celsius." Given the Trump administration's stance on climate change, some of the scientists who worked on the report are concerned that the report will be suppressed.

452 comments

  1. Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "science" by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 0, Insightful

    "The average temperature in the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years"

    Ok, and there were glaciers down to what like Ohio less than 10,000 years ago. Pretty sure humans had nothing to do with the warming of the last 9900 years, where is the evidence that we affected the last 100 years of warming? (Hint: CO2 levels are flat if you don't cherry pick the historical data). What would the temperature rise be without humanity? Unless you can show me the science that explains the non AGW of the last 10,000 years, you don't really have a case for AGW at all. The globe gets warmer and cooler and has since it formed, life goes on.

    Downmodding or calling me names does not validate AGW, just an FYI to all my friends in the pro AGW side of the fence.

    --
    If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
  2. "Leaked?" by cirby · · Score: 5, Informative

    The press keeps calling it "leaked," but it's been freely available for months, if you were paying attention.

    They're still working on it, which is why it hasn't been released.

    1. Re:"Leaked?" by artetheres · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The media machine is now pushing "leaked" as a synonym for "definitely true no need to ask questions"

    2. Re:"Leaked?" by ckatko · · Score: 0

      What's next?

      BREAKING NEWS: Deep anonymous Trump department insider leaked new information by directly releasing info on Trump's Twitter. In fact, the leaker may have been the President himself, proving the administration is corrupt all the way to the top.

      The leaks indicate that Trump has "plans" to continue his presidency instead of voluntarily resigning, proving that he is worse than Hitler.

      Fake News at 11.

    3. Re:"Leaked?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It amazes me how the mainstream media keeps on digging that "fake news" hole and doubling down on lies over and over again. it's insanity.

    4. Re:"Leaked?" by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      The media machine is now pushing "leaked" as a synonym for "definitely true no need to ask questions"

      Let me remind you that the story today about North Korea's imminent attack on the United States was also "leaked", but this time it was leaked by the White House on purpose.

      We are told that everything that's leaked by Wikileaks is true and good and anything that's leaked to the New York Times is bad and fake.

      The "media machine" has always worked on leaks and people talking anonymously and letters slipped under the door. Always. And there's always been bias in the media. There are still 100 year-old newspapers in the United States with the name "Republican" or "Democrat" right at the top. Newspapers in the 1700s were incredibly biased. Much more so than today. William Randolph Hearst started a war for headlines, for chrissake.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    5. Re:"Leaked?" by phantomfive · · Score: 2

      We are told that everything that's leaked by Wikileaks is true and good

      I see your point, but so far everything they've released has been surprisingly reliable.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    6. Re:"Leaked?" by artetheres · · Score: 1
      I see no evidence of anything you're saying

      We are told

      By who? Everyone is being told the same thing? What about the internet "choose your own reality"/"fake news" blahblahblah? I'm talking about "leak" being appropriated as a buzzword.

      Much more so than today.

      This is probably an illusion caused by the massive centralization of power. Pretty sure they're always fulfilling their role of warping reality to people who don't have access to first-hand information of events.

    7. Re:"Leaked?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But you have to watch/read non-fake news to know that it's a fake leak.

    8. Re:"Leaked?" by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      I see your point, but so far everything they've released has been surprisingly reliable.

      According to them.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    9. Re:"Leaked?" by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      There's a huge chunk of stuff that has neither been verified nor debunked, but pretty much everything we know has been verified, not debunked.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    10. Re:"Leaked?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, they used leaked because that's the only way to get information out of the Trump administration these days. They can't even talk about crowd sizes without lying their asses off. I seriously hope you don't believe that tripe.

      Although it is sad that the media these days has been so reduced by the 24/7 news cycle that they do often jump to incorrect conclusions. Some people like CNN actually retract things they get wrong. Fox does it too although much much more rarely. They are usually more of a lie of omission as they shows crowds from other events while talking about current events.

    11. Re:"Leaked?" by Orgasmatron · · Score: 2

      Wikileaks defies the narrative and must be destroyed. Like a good comrade, you are trying to do your part, but the best you can do is "according to them". In other words, you've got nothing and you know it.

      If, or more likely, when, Wikileaks releases something false, everyone on the planet will know about it within 5 minutes. It will cross the SJW hivemind in about 2 seconds and then you lot will be going door to door telling people. And then you'll pretend that the one error discredits the terabytes of verified leaks until the heat death of the Universe.

      "Billy, let you tell you about old Earth, where our ancestors came from. Way, way back at the dawn of the third millennium, Wikileaks once published something that turned out to be fake, and that is why you must always swallow everything I tell you without question. There are more genders than there are stars in the sky, and people are evil, which is why we must make a few of them very powerful so they can rule over us and control every aspect of our lives."

      So no, it isn't reliable "according to them". It is reliable according to you.

      Oh, and also according to all those people explicitly or implicitly confirm the authenticity of the leaked documents. Have you seen the press conferences where someone is claiming that they are fake one second and wondering how someone could have stolen all of their documents the next? I always look for the lawyer that coached them for an hour before the interview to deny, deny, deny but now has to sit and watch them confirm, confirm, confirm.

      --
      See that "Preview" button?
    12. Re:"Leaked?" by ThatsLoseNotLoose · · Score: 1

      Quick! Everybody download it before Trump deletes it from the internet archive!

    13. Re:"Leaked?" by argStyopa · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Leaked, in this case, means leaked 'around' the Trump administration.

      As the draft report (I understand) would require the last "OK" from the White House before becoming a final report, it's widely understood that this wouldn't be forthcoming from the current administration so (as is the practice in Washington) it was 'leaked' in really its final version pursuant to its authors' or the leakers' personal agenda, not really as a "government" report (insofar as the "government" is those elected to office).

      I suspect that this practice - widely regarded as reasonable and fair during this administration considering the scathing disregard held for the President by many of the mandarins in Washington and the Press Corps - is going to become the norm that will eventually come back around and bite them in the ass.

      --
      -Styopa
    14. Re:"Leaked?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Orgasmatron:
      Using reason and honest critical opinion against a Dunning-Kruger data points is a futile exercise. Confirmation biased motivated Appeals to Authority will always be the refuge of those who only understand the Cliff Notes version of reality.

      I mean, really, what kind of purely ego driven, pseudo-clever, man-child chooses a screen name like Pope Ratzo? My money is on the premise that he has a Supreme-being boner for Duztin Hoffman. I'm assume that Superstud and 13inches were just too jejune to represent his particular flavor of self-importance.

      PS
      FWIW
      I randomly peruse /. and I almost never post as this forum's moderation is just an echo chamber for political opinion, personal agendas and spite. That's just fine, everyone needs an outlet. But you gotta visit the parade and see the SJW's magical wardrobe on occasion for a chuckle.
      After all, there's nothing more empowering than saving all mankind from the evils of the capitalists and SUV owners. The Al Gore posse are the neo-alchemists of the 21st century.

    15. Re:"Leaked?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes but the NY Times breathlessly reported it as leaked and that the Trump administration was trying to deep six it. All false.

      The report authors debunked that story themselves. In fact one of them scolded people for not even paying attention to the public comment period earlier this year.

      The deadline for WH review is August 18th. They have already stated they have no plans to keep it from being published.

      Finally, those who have actually been reviewing it (you know, actual scientists) have said it doesn't say anything different than we already knew and in fact it debunks quite a few theories on changing climate affecting extreme weather patterns. If you read it and if you know what you're talking about here.

      Unlike reporters at the NY Times who couldn't be bothered to do actual journalism by double checking their sources.

    16. Re:"Leaked?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did he borrow Hillary's cloth?

    17. Re:"Leaked?" by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      The Al Gore posse are the neo-alchemists of the 21st century.

      Isaac Newton was an alchemist.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    18. Re:"Leaked?" by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      If, or more likely, when, Wikileaks releases something false, everyone on the planet will know about it within 5 minutes.

      Actually, all those leaks from Wikileaks about Russian incursion into Ukraine and the leaks of Russian cybersecurity malware and the leaks of documents regarding money laundering by Trump and the Russians have turned out to be false.

      Oh wait, none of those exist because Wikileaks is a partisan organization that uses illegally-obtained information in a selective manner.

      Now, how do you feel about the people leaking stuff from the White House? They've also got a great record.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    19. Re:"Leaked?" by _Sharp'r_ · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I think what you're missing is that the whole report was published during the normal public comment period 7 months ago and is still available from https://archive.org/details/CS... . You can't "leak" a document 7 months after it was published publicly with the intent for everyone to read it and credibly claim that there is an evil conspiracy to suppress it ever getting out.

      Doesn't this appear to be a lot of confirmation bias on the part of the NY Times reporters when they go on and on about the supposed future Trump Administration conspiracy to never release a document which has been released for 7 months already?

      --
      The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
    20. Re:"Leaked?" by pipingguy · · Score: 1

      But 'leaked' sounds dramatic and if there's one issue that's drama-filled, it's the pending destruction of humanity by anthropogenic climate change.

    21. Re:"Leaked?" by Orgasmatron · · Score: 1

      Your first "rebuttal" was better, you should have let it ride. It was short, simple, and offered your allies hope that you had something in reserve backing it up. Now even your closest friends are groaning because you've dashed their hopes.

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

      And Margaret Sanger was an ardent Feminist while advocating for weeding out the underclass gene. So what? Martin Luther king probably had more pussy than you could ever dream, does that make his propositions any less worthy of discussion?
      The tactic of deconstructing language and offering up anecdotal and self-defined refutations or using linguist tongue twisting as a tactic to "win" a discussion is absolutely repugnant to the advancement of human knowledge. It is a new low being foisted on the Dunning Krugers so they can feel even more self important and knowledgeable. I actually feel for these throngs of humanity who fall for the classic "New and Improved" platitude. But that nuanced understanding of human behavior and using it for manipulation is what lets sociopaths come to power. Just read history rather than the cliff notes version to arrive at this same conclusion.
      Wake up and think for yourself. Don't just blindly accept the "What this Story Means" as analyzed and interpreted by reigning unrepresentative experts as they pretend to "discuss" the issue in a televised timeframe. Your own mind is capable of arriving at juat as sound a conclusion, given all the evidence, which unfortunately, is you responsibility to acquire . Read "Public Opinion" by Walter Lippmann sometime on the ease of herding opinion by those so inclined -- or even some of Noam Chomsky on the subject of media manipulation.

      Have a pleasant day!

    23. Re:"Leaked?" by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      And Margaret Sanger was an ardent Feminist while advocating for weeding out the underclass gene. So what? Martin Luther king probably had more pussy than you could ever dream, does that make his propositions any less worthy of discussion?
      The tactic of deconstructing language and offering up anecdotal and self-defined refutations or using linguist tongue twisting as a tactic to "win" a discussion is absolutely repugnant to the advancement of human knowledge. It is a new low being foisted on the Dunning Krugers so they can feel even more self important and knowledgeable. I actually feel for these throngs of humanity who fall for the classic "New and Improved" platitude. But that nuanced understanding of human behavior and using it for manipulation is what lets sociopaths come to power. Just read history rather than the cliff notes version to arrive at this same conclusion.
      Wake up and think for yourself. Don't just blindly accept the "What this Story Means" as analyzed and interpreted by reigning unrepresentative experts as they pretend to "discuss" the issue in a televised timeframe. Your own mind is capable of arriving at juat as sound a conclusion, given all the evidence, which unfortunately, is you responsibility to acquire . Read "Public Opinion" by Walter Lippmann sometime on the ease of herding opinion by those so inclined -- or even some of Noam Chomsky on the subject of media manipulation.

      Can anyone tell me what this dude is on about? I've read it a couple of times and I've no clue, and I'm published expert at interpreting complex texts.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    24. Re:"Leaked?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BREAKING NEWS: Donald Trump snuck into the bathroom at the white house, not to defecate, but to confrecate with the Russians. Using terms such as "log" and warning employees to "NOT go in there" shows that the president cannot be trusted to be open and transparent with who he brings to the white house. When asked about the logs he made, the President stated that he flushed them down the toilet. Our men are combing the sewers as we speak in an attempt to find Donald Trump's logs.

    25. Re:"Leaked?" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Much more so than today. William Randolph Hearst started a war for headlines, for chrissake.

      From "America: The Book" (paraphrased as I don't have it hear in front of me):

      They called it Yellow Journalism, later shortened to Journalism.

  3. What about the USCRN, USHCN? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is from last year:
    https://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/slide21.png

  4. It's no longer climate change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This administration has changed it to "weather extremes," because that's the most true "scientific" name for it.

    1. Re:It's no longer climate change by bugs2squash · · Score: 5, Funny

      No, the new title will be: Make America Sweat Again

      --
      Nullius in verba
    2. Re:It's no longer climate change by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

      That would be a Richard Simmons campaign promise

      --
      “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    3. Re:It's no longer climate change by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, the new title will be: Make America Sweat Again

      Or more likely: Make America Seriously Sweat Again, Homies. Or Massah, for short.

  5. It's time to let Trump leak into a prison. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Troll

    The man is a stain.

  6. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The globe gets warmer and cooler and has since it formed, life goes on.

    So prove that the current warming is natural. You've made a statement that can be proven, but it never is. You can't just say the earth has been warmer therefore it's natural. That's like if my car breaks down with smoke pouring from under the hood I think it's just out of gas, because it's happened before. I could check gauges and see, but I'm relying not on current data but instead an historical anecdote. Really, the only evidence you have is that the earth was warmer at periods before. Yeah, no shit, no scientist has ever said it wasn't. What the research shows is that this warming is unprecedented in the earth's history. So your statement is nothing but an unproven guess with no evidence of support. What natural processes are at work here that do account for the warming?

  7. Fake News by Tulsa_Time · · Score: 2
    --
    5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
    1. Re:Fake News by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      [foxnews.com]

      You betcha.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    2. Re:Fake News by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 1

      “It's not clear what the news is in this story,” Robert Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University who is listed on the report as among the lead authors, said on Twitter.

      Another scientist who authored the report, Katharine Hayhoe, a professor at Texas Tech who leads the school’s Climate Science Center, also emphasized that the report is already publicly available.

      “Important to point out that this report was already accessible to anyone who cared to read it during public review & comment time,” she tweeted. “Few did.”

      This is not some "leaked report". New York Times reporting at its finest, trying to drum up controversy where none exists. The report isn't fake. Just the reporting.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    3. Re:Fake News by PopeRatzo · · Score: 1

      This is not some "leaked report". New York Times reporting at its finest, trying to drum up controversy where none exists. The report isn't fake. Just the reporting.

      So, it's your belief that "leaked" and "publicly available" are mutually exclusive?

      Everything on Wikileaks is "leaked" and everything is also publicly available. So a leaked report could also be publicly available.

      All this according to a Fox News story. Why would you even believe the "quotes" from the "scientists" are real? The entire thing could have been made up. See? This "fake news" thing can work both ways, and that's the point. We have entered an age where nothing is true and this is by design. This what the entire purpose of all the mentions of "fake news" by the alt-Right and the Trump administration. Make people doubt everything except the words of the leader.

      The minute I see someone accusing a story on CNN or MSNBC of being "fake news", it invariably means the story is absolutely 100% true.

      --
      You are welcome on my lawn.
    4. Re: Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh no. I clearly cannot choose the wine in front of me.

    5. Re:Fake News by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Continuing skepticism in the face of overwhelming evidence doesn't make you look clever or thoughtful. It makes you look like a partisan zealot refusing to admit when you're wrong. Here, you can read it right on their own Twitter feed:

      https://twitter.com/KHayhoe/st...
      https://twitter.com/KHayhoe/st...

      https://twitter.com/bobkopp/st...
      https://twitter.com/bobkopp/st...

      The scientists who authored the report are confused as to why this is a story, and you're going to quibble over "publicly available" semantics? No, it was put up on public sites for "public comments". That's hardly equivalent to a "leak", and you damn well know it. I can't believe you're seriously making that argument. Or else, you're doing an awesome job of trolling me right now.

      And seriously, "fake news" is an alt-right conspiracy? Are you kidding me? That was a narrative started by the left/mainstream media to explain how Hillary could have possibly lost the election. But the left gets hoist by their own petard whenever something like this happens, as reporters occasionally demonstrate a complete disregard for the most basic fact-checking before they breathlessly run a story that just happens to show the current administration in a bad light. We saw it happen with the Washington Post and the "Russians hacking the electrical grid" nonsense (they didn't even bother contacting Burlington Electric for a statement), and we see it now again with the non-existent fact-checking of the New York Times before publishing a completely made-up story.

      Would I call that "fake news"? No, not really. Just plain bad journalism. But in the end, it really amounts to the same thing - misinformation presented as news.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    6. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The NYT never used the word "leak". They said they'd "obtained" it, which was true, and some of its authors were "afraid" that the Trump administration would not allow it to be released in its present form, and I for one don't doubt that you could, if you tried, find some scientists who shared that fear.

      It's Slashdot that's inserted the word "leak".

      Both the NYT and Fox News haven't hesitated to slur, innuend and pre-emptively smear anyone who has the temerity to identify with the opposite side in their little quasi-political feud. Even so, there's still a difference: the NYT is smearing the government, while Fox is smearing the media. I'm not even going to guess which of those you think is more deserving.

    7. Re:Fake News by sg_oneill · · Score: 1

      From best I can work out, its actually a bit of both.

      This "leak" apparently is just a slightly revised version of the public comment version. So not really a "leak" but its not exactly the same as "Was already publically available", and its entirely plausible the scientists interviewed do believe it will be buried. Having worked in climate research theres incredible pressure on scientists to bury results that confirm just how bad its getting, particularly when goverments start putting faux-conservative barbarians in charge hell bent on silencing scientsts. I'm out of govt too, and a lot of other australian researchers are looking for outs due to the culture of silence the govt has tried to enforce on the CSIRO.

      --
      Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
    8. Re:Fake News by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 1

      The NYT never used the word "leak". They said they'd "obtained" it, which was true,

      Are you sure? Did you read the first version of the story that was posted, or just the updated version that admitted the report was available for six months?

      --
      If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
    9. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would I call that "fake news"? No, not really. Just plain bad journalism. But in the end, it really amounts to the same thing - misinformation presented as news.

      No, it doesn't amount to the same thing. One is a mistake, which will on average balance out. The other is an agenda trying to manipulate others.

      Case in point:
      1) Grocery Store A: 5% of the time the product rings up as a different price than it is displayed on the shelf. Half of the time it is more expensive than it should be, and half of the time it is less expensive. I would say they are sloppy with their pricing.
      2) Grocery Store B: 5% of the time the product rings up as a different price than is displayed on the shelf. Every time this happens, it is listed as being more expensive than it was listed on the shelf. I would say this grocery store is trying to defraud the customer.

      "Honest mistakes," "systemically sloppy reporting," and "fake news" are different. Just like how "mistakes," "white lies," and "damn lying liar" are different.

    10. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Point of contention - I don't think everyone defines "fake news" as misinformation presented as news. I think many people would define it as deliberate misinformation presented as news. The distinction seems small, but it's important. Which is why "bad journalism" != "fake news". Fake news is more like "Sharia Law is spreading all across the US." It's misinformation that someone in charge of posting knows is misinformation but posts as "news" anyway to galvanize political support for a topic.

    11. Re:Fake News by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This. The reactionary "FAKE NEWS" response is now a trigger that means the news is actually verifiably true, and they don't want you to see it because it's true.

      I love it when a dumb plan backfires on the right!

  8. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by gfxguy · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Actually, while I'm not some rabid environmentalist (not that they are all like that), I think there's a lot to both sides of the equation, here - the earth has trends - it's been a lot warmer than it is now (without humankind), and it's been a lot colder. But I certainly do think we're at least acting as a catalyst, and that our presence is certainly having some effect, even if the overall temperature increases are not entirely human made.

    But here's the rub - as the article points out, we can completely stop emitting greenhouse gasses (no we can't, but as the story goes) and we're still getting a 0.5c increase in temperature. What do people want? They are talking about 10% here, maybe 20% there... in other words, you're still talking like 1.75c increase in temperature. Instead of inflicting trillions of dollars in economic damage making the world stop producing, stop progressing, putting millions, if not billions out of work, we should be focusing on dealing with it rather than stopping it, because it's coming even if we cut emissions in half.

    I'm not saying we shouldn't pursue "green" technology, I'm all for it. I'm certainly not for companies getting government grants of our tax dollars, then having the CEOs cut and run and the company goes bankrupt, but there's definitely the need for research, and the practical application of that research. I cannot afford to cover my roof with solar panels even though I wish I could. I can't afford it, and I wouldn't recoup my investment because I certainly won't own the house long enough. Maybe there should be more incentives there... .too bad we let the monopolies manipulate legislation that makes it harder for homeowners to do things like that instead of easier (In Sunshine State, Big Energy Blocks Solar Power).

    Anyway, people need to get a grip on this subject and meet in the middle instead of allowing the politicians and media divide and conquer us. Anyone with a brain can admit humans have an impact on their environment; anyone with a brain can admit that we can't completely stop greenhouse emissions (unless you can "cure" farting, or the need to eat in general). So let's stop the hyperbole and have some reasonable discourse about how to deal with it instead of pointing fingers and name calling.

    --
    Stupid sexy Flanders.
  9. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by chromaexcursion · · Score: 0

    You don't post Anonymously, and your score is 0.
    You start with a score of 1. You have to do something to do something to get to 0.
    Your pseudo science is utter bullshit. It only proves you have no idea what you're talking about.
    I mod occasionally, so I read at -1. Most normal /. readers will never see you posts.
    find a different forum.

  10. Re:Science by BouncingBob · · Score: 2

    No. In the natural course of things, CO2 follows warming. Now, for the first time in the record, CO2 is leading temperature while temperature changes faster then ever recorded, AND in the opposite direction from the trend prior to the use of fossil fuels.. So this is literally unprecedented, Perhaps you should pay attention to the people who actually gather the data instead of the people who deliberately misstate it?

  11. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 4, Funny

    Because the earth has been hotter than now prior to the industrial age.

    QED

    Every time I see this, I want to reply, "And during the Hadean, it was hot enough that most of the Earth's surface was molten lava..."

    This time, I did.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  12. I hope the NYT didn't pay too much for this 'leak' by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It will just make them fail that much faster, as they appear to be chumming the waters with loose change to buy clickbait. Sooner or later they will get caught at this with a real leak, and the First Amendment will not cover their collusion and conspiracy to steal classified information.

  13. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by EzInKy · · Score: 0

    You don't post Anonymously, and your score is 0.

    WTF does that have to do with content of the post? All real slashdot readers browse at -1 so as to avoid the political bullshit that has taken over the moderation system.

    --
    Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
  14. Re:I feel ashamed to admit that I'm a scientist. by PopeRatzo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    My academic training was in computer science, and I work as a computer scientist. But these days I'm somewhat ashamed to publicly use the term "scientist", after how people calling themselves "climate scientists" have brought politics into science, thus ruining science's reputation.

    I hate to break this to you, bro, but actual scientists are also a little bit ashamed when you call yourself a "scientist" with your associate's degree in CS from DeVry.

    While scientists may not realize what's going on, or may not want to admit it, the reality is that average people do see and understand what has happened.

    You could take everything "average people" know and understand about science and fit it in a Fox & Friends chyron. Don't believe me? When you're on the bus going to the call center tomorrow morning, ask them the difference between "average" and "mean" and see what the average answers are. If we're going to start using "average people's" knowing and understanding as any kind of metric in science, we might as well just give up as a species and elect a reality TV host as president.

    --
    You are welcome on my lawn.
  15. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well yes, during epochs like when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. But the issue here isn't that the Earth has been hotter, the issue is that it has never been so hot and supported human civilization. You understand the patterns of where civilizations have developed over the last 10,000 is intrinsically tied to post-glacial climate, and now that we're seriously fucking that up, there are going to be significant impacts on the descendants of those civilizations. In other words, pretty much everyone alive today, and over the next century.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  16. Solved problem? by Kohath · · Score: 1

    Isn't climate change more-or-less a solved problem now?

    Non-carbon energy sources are trending towards being cheaper than fossil fuels sources before 2040. Maybe long before. Until then, cheap natural gas is displacing coal.

    Gasoline usage in the developed world has largely leveled off and a large percentage of future vehicles will be electric. The majority of local trips may be electric long before 2040. More cities in developing countries are pushing electric vehicles to solve air quality problems.

    Measured rates or warming are coming in at or below the low end of predictions.

    So it will warm slowly for a couple decades, carbon emissions will peak and then start falling faster than they rose. It should all add up to a very limited amount of warming.

    1. Re:Solved problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Are you delirious? Without incredibly focused forward thinking action and significant sacrifice in quality of life, we are going to see horrible chaos and destruction.

      With incredibly focused forward thinking action and significant sacrifice in quality of life, we are going to see much less horrible, but still pretty horrible chaos and destruction.

      Coastal capitals underwater, hundreds of millions dead, bio-collapse of the acidifying oceans causing mass famine and marine animal extinction.

      Seriously apocalyptic events will occur.

    2. Re:Solved problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Technology eventually solves problems.

      Fracking cheapened natural gas and cheap natural gas greatly reduced carbon... if it was a crisis, then that is definitely a good thing. But its somehow a crisis and that is a bad thing because it involves non-renewable resources (and its very hard to graft an emerging industry you don't control.)

      The climate doomsayers have already moved onto the next racket, just like they did when ice cream caused polio, we were going to reach peak coal, there was going to be a population bomb, etc, etc. Its all about controlling people through guilt and assigning some form of crime to justify controlling others. The "PC" crowd is just the climate change movement leaches who are moving into a new racket. Climate diversity offices at every major company just get re-labeled as diversity offices, the leaders get to be VPs in the private sector with no discernible skillset and the world moves on.

      They do seem to be running out of causes, I'm not optimistic about how crazy the next one will be.

    3. Re:Solved problem? by superwiz · · Score: 0

      "acidifying" of the ocean is not Oceans turning into acid. It's a slight (very, very slight) change in ph levels of the ocean. Which, incidentally may create environmental bias towards algae species which consume more CO2 (because the acidification is really due to higher levels of CO2 in the ocean water). As higher levels of CO2-voracious algae spread, we may very well see the problem correct itself because these larger algae will fix CO2 and provide more feed higher up the food chain in the oceans. Until there is an explanation of why ice ages happen, don't dismiss the possibility that there is an evolutionary cycle which forces uptake and release of CO2 over long periods of time.

      --
      Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
    4. Re:Solved problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Coastal capitals underwater, ...

      When I was in school in the early 60s, the communists claimed New York City would be underwater by 1990. That didn't happen, but of course that didn't stop the socialist scammer Al Gore from making millions with that same lie in the 1990s. As recently as 2001 from what I remember, he claimed more than a million people would die in NYC from rising waters. Again, that hasn't happened. It's hard to take that claim seriously when so many people have spewed that lie in the past just to make money.

    5. Re: Solved problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NYC will be uninhabitable by 2030 unless we spend more money.

    6. Re:Solved problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Very, very slight changes in ocean pH tend to dissolve the Calcium Carbonate shells of marine animals. You can see the effects of this in a number of ways; the core is that it cuts out the bottom of the ocean food chain. Eventually, the mechanism you suggest may come into play, but that clearly isn't happening on time scales that are important, because ocean pH is dropping *now* and the impacts on calcification are also happening *now*.

    7. Re:Solved problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "acidifying" of the ocean is not Oceans turning into acid. It's a slight (very, very slight) change in ph levels of the ocean. Which, incidentally may create environmental bias towards algae species which consume more CO2 (because the acidification is really due to higher levels of CO2 in the ocean water). As higher levels of CO2-voracious algae spread, we may very well see the problem correct itself because these larger algae will fix CO2 and provide more feed higher up the food chain in the oceans. Until there is an explanation of why ice ages happen, don't dismiss the possibility that there is an evolutionary cycle which forces uptake and release of CO2 over long periods of time.

      Yes the slight change in ph of the planets oceans might very well trigger an event that more rapidly takes up C02, however in the short term of a few thousand years we are going to see environmental chaos. It might very well be that our increases in C02 might trigger an environmental pressure relief valve and the Oceans might within a few thousand years actually over take the C02 production change atmospheric conditions and cause an ice age. Either way we are screwed as a species at the current population levels. Just maybe nutjob dictators and war are our way of taking care of population problems, after all Russia loves their current "fearless leader" and if Trump could somehow have the same powers as him he would refuse to go and rig the next election. Who knows by 2020 he might just pull it off the way Hitler, Stalin, Putin and quite a few others have.

      Either way I have no faith in us changing things in time to avert either a US dictatorship or environmental collapse if the anti-science crowd of right wing nutjobs keep holding the reigns of power in the US and elsewhere. And in this crowd of nutjobs I include North Korea and elsewhere. The one place that might have the political and scientific foresight to change things is China, they are leaning towards education and their population is slowly but surely becoming more educated than anywhere else on earth except perhaps places like Canada where they send there kids to college. Funny but you don't see them sending their kids to the New York military academy like John Gotti and Fred Trump did LOL

    8. Re:Solved problem? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, most of the times it makes the problems it produces worse... like nuclear waste... yo know that small thing produced that are relatively small (relatively is the key word) but that will stick around for a very very very very long time.

      Every time someone points out that "Technology will find a solution soon as is profitable" I remember that with all the technology today and titanic ammounts of money moved by the petroleum business and yet their bleeding edge technology used to clean oil waste still is a bucket and a sponge.

    9. Re:Solved problem? by PoopJuggler · · Score: 1

      I don't think that all the species that went extinct because of the acidification of the ocean will feel any consolation that the problem "corrected itself" in a million years.

    10. Re:Solved problem? by superwiz · · Score: 1

      Either way I have no faith in us changing things in time to avert either a US dictatorship or environmental collapse if the anti-science crowd of right wing nutjobs keep holding the reigns of power in the US and elsewhere.

      I think genetically engineered crops which will fix more carbon in the roots will solve the issue if it ever becomes a real issue. There is a lot of crops which are grown which don't even make it into the food chain (trees for paper production, for example).

      --
      Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
    11. Re:Solved problem? by superwiz · · Score: 1

      Species are always going extinct and new ones emerge. For small cell-count organisms, evolutionary changes are very rapid. As for how they "feel", spare us the anthropomorphisms, please. Poetic license does not contribute much to this debate which already so much contribution from the humanities that it drowns out all the voices from the sciences.

      --
      Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
    12. Re:Solved problem? by superwiz · · Score: 1

      but that clearly isn't happening on time scales that are important

      How do you know that exactly? I repeat, the mechanisms responsible for ice ages are not understood. If the mechanisms which cause the warmings which end the ice ages can be expedited, then you have no way of knowing that the mechanism which cause the cooling can or cannot be expedited. 25% of the algae species have increased in population according to the only study (that I know of) published on the subject. And they were the algae which preferred the more acidic (technically more carbon-rich) environments.

      --
      Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
    13. Re:Solved problem? by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

      Climate change is "solved" in the sense that taking no action could eventually lead to our extinction (and that of many other species), but the earth will chug along for another few million years, life will come back, and then boom, no more man-made climate change.

      I'm happy to see the massive solar farm being built in the Sahara though, that's a step in the right direction. It's unfortunate that the US isn't taking as much advantage of its own desert areas to do the same though. Others in Australia and the Gobi desert could go a long way towards providing enormous amounts of peak-time power generation.

      --
      "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  17. Climate change theory problem by artetheres · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Out of all the forces of nature we have first-hand experience of, not necessarily of all the forces we have seen evidence of, the greenhouse gas theory is the most likely.

    This is the best argument that can be made for human-caused climate change.

    We aren't talking about some simple system here. We can't just jump to conclusions. This is the ENTIRE WORLD weather system. It may be governed by forces we are not totally aware of or are totally ignorant of.

    What exactly is the proof that global warming is due to human carbon emissions rather than a natural warming cycle with all the fermentation products in the soil and water from the beginning of the last ice age to present that are being released?

    "Climate change" theorists do not seem to be able to answer this question, but it is the crux of the validity of their point of view.
    Do they realize that the ice age literally just happened on a geological time-scale? That geological science just sprouted out of nowhere in the last 150 years and it's mostly been used to exploit coal, gas, oil, and minerals? There is only so much we have experience with, and only so much our theories can tell us. We simply do not know much about the planet's long-term weather/climate cycles, there is only so much the geological record has told us, it has only been looked into for so much.

    Just everybody chill out.
    There are much bigger and more immediate problems related to human presence that are objectively proven in cause and effect that are ravaging our not only our planet's natural state, but our own lives.

    Honestly this "climate change" issue seems like a distraction from these issues, manipulating people into guilt over something that they have a very indirect influence on. Sorry but your efforts to 'go green' mean absolutely nothing in the face of industrial pollution, the most immediate and terrible effects of which would not be climate change even if that were proven to be the cause.

    We need to worry about our society, the centralization of power: mass surveillance, automation, wealth disparity, human rights (especially freedom of speech and quality of education), the list goes on.
    You cannot do ANYTHING about climate change until you deal with these problems. Stop kidding yourself.

    1. Re:Climate change theory problem by tsa · · Score: 1

      That's a chilling display of ignorance but unfortunately not chilling enough to compensate for global warming.

      --

      -- Cheers!

    2. Re:Climate change theory problem by artetheres · · Score: 0

      Yeah just call everything you don't agree with ignorance and never provide citations or argue back, and ESPECIALLY never answer the question.

      If my point of view is so ignorant, surely you could clear it up with a simple sentence or two?

      "STUDIES" TOLD ME IT'S TRUE

      Not an argument, appeal to authority, the fact is you're much more ignorant than you accuse me of being. You have no comprehension of the point of view you evangelize, you just chose it to fit in.

      This is an example of the brainlesslessness, caused by over-centralized education, that is destroying our society.

    3. Re: Climate change theory problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Funny thing is the solution probably will come from some worldwide populous effort (Earth Day to the extreme). Here we are expecting the "leaders" of the modern world to improve the planet...

    4. Re:Climate change theory problem by tsa · · Score: 1

      That's an argument religious people use a lot to 'prove' their point. They ask you: "Were you there?" when you talk about dinosaurs or other things that are older than 6000 years. I'd rather trust experts in their field than someone who tells me I'm ignorant without giving any proof.

      --

      -- Cheers!

    5. Re:Climate change theory problem by artetheres · · Score: 1
      You're fucking retarded, seriously, what the fuck are you even talking about. There's something called a GEOLOGICAL RECORD that we can read to gain information about climate history, from sediments, rocks, ice, and more.

      trust experts

      so why do you even need a brain then if you just sign it over to anyone who claims to be official you are scum

    6. Re:Climate change theory problem by vux984 · · Score: 1

      What exactly is the proof that global warming is due to human carbon emissions rather than a natural warming cycle

      3 words: "Rate of change"

      Look at the 1st derivative.

      Look over the last 20,000 years of natural cycles and the rate of change has never been close to what it is right now. Natural cycles have never moved more than 1 degree over a 500 years, and usually moved 0.5 degrees or less. In the last 150 years we've moved nearly 1.5 degrees.

      That's 5x the maximum rate change seen over the last 20,000 years.

      But you probably stopped listening a long time ago.

    7. Re:Climate change theory problem by tsa · · Score: 0

      My opponent has started using profanity. That means I have won the argument.

      --

      -- Cheers!

    8. Re:Climate change theory problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You have thermometer recordings for the last 2000 years? amazing.

    9. Re:Climate change theory problem by pipingguy · · Score: 1

      "Honestly this "climate change" issue seems like a distraction from these issues"

      I think you just hit a home run.

    10. Re:Climate change theory problem by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      That you personally are unaware of the bulk of geophysical research over the last two centuries does not mean that we are wandering adrift in a sea of unknown forces. We've known since the 19th Century that many human activities produced large amounts of "carbonic acid", and after Tyndall's experiments in the 1860s we knew the thermal properties of the various atmospheric gases. The CO2-mediated theory of climate change was proposed in 1896. The idea was arguably obvious then, and remains equally obvious: an increase in the amount of a greenhouse gas will, ceteris paribus, raise the equilibrium temperature. If you don't like it, find another way to transfer heat off this rock.

      I do not know what your confusion is between hydrocarbon exploration and science generally. One has to assume that you know nothing about how either is done. You will likely be surprised to know that for the last century one of the most important drivers of atmospheric and oceanographic research has been the US military -- which you'll note is the opposite of a left-wing hippie organization, one that has an extremely keen interest in the world and little tolerance for bullshit. Which would be why the Pentagon keeps trying to insist that Republicans take climate change seriously.

      Your argument that, "because individuals cannot meaningfully affect the climate, we should not collectively care about the issue," is very amusing, but you're probably going to want another one.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    11. Re:Climate change theory problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You might not know this: you are a totally insane animal not a human being. The capacity you have for rationality, which is what defines a human, has been filled in with brainwashing. You. Are. An. ANIMAL. Not a human being.

      let's recap your idiotic arguments
      >'RESEARCH SHOWS'
      >'it's obvious'
      >'it's obvious'
      >latin phrase
      >One has to assume that you know nothing
      >appeal to authority
      >'very amusing'

      "I do not know what your confusion is between hydrocarbon exploration and science generally."
      What is your confusion?? I'm pointing out that the growth of geology as a science has been fueled by greed/politics like none other.

      "Your argument that, "because individuals cannot meaningfully affect the climate, we should not collectively care about the issue," is very amusing"
      This is where you really prove that your insanity is complete. You are totally and completely insane. You are a crazy, crazy animal. Completely subhuman. You see something you don't understand and you just rewrite reality to make it easy for you to address.
      I more or less EXPLICITLY said we MUST care about the state of pollution on our planet, and that in order to control the entities that are actually responsible, we need decentralize power and take governance into our own hands.

      I'm serious, you need to buy yourself a leash and find some one responsible to hold it for you. You may have the validation of a job and family, maybe not, but you are an utterly brainless slave beast, and if you don't find a way to start behaving like a human being, you are going to be put down without any argument from anyone. Automation is coming, global revolution is coming, and there will be no room for dead weight like you no matter who wins.

    12. Re:Climate change theory problem by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      Projection, ad hominem and threats. I suppose I should have expected as much. There are a number of freely available textbooks on earth and atmospheric science, and MIT as well as other institutions have most of their course materials available online. Additionally, the notable primary sources are also typically available online in PDF form. This site provides a basic overview of the chronology of the science, which may better help you understand how we know what we know. If at some point you acquire some foundational knowledge of the subject, I am sure I would be happy to discuss it.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    13. Re:Climate change theory problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You need to look at the following chart.

      https://ixquick-proxy.com/do/spg/show_picture.pl?l=english&rais=1&oiu=https%3A%2F%2Fqph.ec.quoracdn.net%2Fmain-qimg-8f3f42b64089491a0fbeb1b522b673b6&sp=52bdf2889bda17ece87392acf05c430c

    14. Re:Climate change theory problem by vux984 · · Score: 1

      Why exactly?
      a) That chart is local temperature in antarctica not a global average. So it's doesn't really argue for or against what i said.

      b) That chart if anything just shows that the concentration of carbon is reaching levels not seen in 300,000 years (we're at 400+ ppm right now) which also argues strongly against 'natural cycles'.

    15. Re:Climate change theory problem by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I just want people to be honest, that way I can better respect them for their views. If you are worried that you won't be able to drive your gas guzzler anymore just say so, but don't try to argue with facts and observations which have been shown to be true again and again. I for one am tired of hearing the same old excuses by the deniers, volcanoes which contribute a tiny fraction of what humans spew in the air, binary choices in lifestyles where it is either business as usual pretending the problem does not exist or having to live like the Amish or better yet stone age peoples. You know, I think these binary thinking folks might be onto something, lets apply these ideas to the real world. For instance, in education you either get an A or an F, there is no in between. For IQ test you either score as a genius or a moron. You either live in gated communities or the ghetto, ( if you don't qualify to live in an exclusive gate community then your only other choice is the ghetto). You either earn a 6 figure+ salary or minimum wage. You either drive luxury vehicles or take public transportation ( or walk or ride a bike ). You either shop at high end boutiques or thrift stores. If you commit a crime you are either acquitted or receive the death penalty. See how much fun binary choices can be!

    16. Re:Climate change theory problem by werepants · · Score: 1

      What exactly is the proof that global warming is due to human carbon emissions rather than a natural warming cycle with all the fermentation products in the soil and water from the beginning of the last ice age to present that are being released?

      You seem to be confident in your belief that the last ice age "just happened" on a geological time scale. What exactly is the proof? Is there any possibility of error or uncertainty in your claim?

      We need to be thoughtful about the standard of evidence we require for information that impacts policy decisions. I see a lot of people who are utterly unquestioning when it comes to the economic dogma supporting their biases. To pick on both sides, the idea that lower taxes on the rich will improve the economy, or that a higher minimum wage will improve the economy are both highly suspect and have little evidence in their favor, but you will find partisans ardently fighting for one concept or the other.

      On the other hand, we have situations such as that involving climate change, where we have just about the strongest evidence that we could ever hope to have, and yet there's an obtuse determination to ignore and denigrate that evidence. Remember, you can't really "prove" anything outside of the field of mathematics, although falsifying a claim is very easy by comparison. Some would even say that we can't really prove that the electron exists - we just have a series of extremely sophisticated experiments and technologies that are based on a theoretical model of a particle called the electron, and as it turns out the model has held up extremely well across all of them.

      So, a reasonable bar for "proof" in a world of unprovable claims is to see if there's a correlation that exists, look for a plausible mechanism that could explain the correlation, and then, if possible, do some experiments to attempt to falsify the claim. If you have a strong correlation, if you have a plausible mechanism, and if you fail to falsify the claim, then that claim has a good chance of being somewhat accurate, or at least useful to consider.

      For global warming, we have all three. There's a very strong correlation, both in the near-term, and geologically (from what limited evidence we have) that shows atmospheric CO2 levels being tied to higher global temperatures. There's a very well-tested and well-understood mechanism, the greenhouse effect, to explain why that relationship might exist. So far, the simulations that have been done, and the small-scale experiments (all that is possible in this context) have failed to falsify the claim of global warming, and indeed, models that do NOT include the greenhouse effect of CO2 end up being inaccurate, and suggest the Earth should be much cooler than it actually is.

      So, is our information perfect? No. Is it good enough that we should take it into account in our planning for the future, and our setting of policy? Absolutely.

      What's more, you set up impossible standards of proof for global warming, but then make a series of totally unjustified claims that have far less evidence to support them. What data to we have to show that there will be negative impacts from your list of other concerns?

      mass surveillance, automation, wealth disparity, human rights (especially freedom of speech and quality of education), the list goes on.

      I agree that these are all concerning, but where's your proof that these will cause grievous harm? After all, you can find people who will tell you to "just chill out" about every one of these topics, and very vocal arguments about why these concerns are non-issues. What's more, there's no reason that these must be solved before we can think about global warming - mass surveillance, for instance, is pretty orthogonal to CO2 generation.

      And, the big doozie:

      You cannot do ANYTHING about climate change until you deal with these problems.

      Prove it. That's what you have asked climate change proponen

    17. Re:Climate change theory problem by Uberbah · · Score: 1

      Same old pile of denialist hand waiving, FUD, and gaslighting. Different day.

  18. Correlation_does_not_imply_causation by peterofoz · · Score: 0
    1. Re:Correlation_does_not_imply_causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Simple is too simple. I think the correct saying is Correlation does not *necessarily* imply causation, not that it never implies causation.

      And no need to over-think things, or make up excuses either. I mean, in a closed system if there is a lot of X, and A is in the system and produces a lot of X, then there probably is a correlation between A's production of X and the amount of X in the system. Simple, right?

    2. Re:Correlation_does_not_imply_causation by ArhcAngel · · Score: 1

      To date there is ZERO proof climate change is affected by humans. And yet the scientific community which keeps reminding us that "correlation does not imply causation" keep saying the "evidence" is overwhelming (again there is none). Is the climate rising? There is evidence to support that claim but it is hardly overwhelming and there is also research that seems to contradict (no I'm not talking about THAT "research") these findings. So without any factual research to tie humans to the research supporters of the theory turn to name calling anyone who calls them on their BS "climate-deniers". While there are a select few who simply deny climate is changing the vast majority do not. We simply refute the CONCLUSION that it is caused by human action. And rightly so. Show me some proof and I'll listen. When there is money to be made and politicians involved take everything you hear with a ton of sodium. Take a look at how much money Al Gore made buying and selling carbon credits which weren't even a thing in the US until his inconvenient lie prompted congress and the EPA to create them.

      --
      "A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
    3. Re:Correlation_does_not_imply_causation by Eunuchswear · · Score: 1

      To date there is ZERO proof climate change is affected by humans.

      Oh, god, this is so boring.

      1. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising.

      2. All of this rise is due to human activity.

      3. All things being equal a rise in atmospheric CO2 will cause a rise in temperatures.

      4. The temperature is rising.

      If you think the temperature rise is not being caused by human activity you have to find two unknown effects, one that prevents the CO2 rise from causing a temperature rise and another that is causing the temperature to rise despite the first unknown effect.

      Or, you could pull your head out of your arse.

      [1. Keeling curve
      2. rise in CO2 is less than human emissions, as established by simple book keeping and chemistry-- we know how much concrete we're pouring and how much fossil fuel we're burning.
      3. Tyndal, Arrhenius, Fourier.
      4. BEST, NOOA, HADCRUT, UAH, RSS]

      --
      Watch this Heartland Institute video
    4. Re:Correlation_does_not_imply_causation by bravecanadian · · Score: 1

      To date there is ZERO proof climate change is affected by humans. And yet the scientific community which keeps reminding us that "correlation does not imply causation" keep saying the "evidence" is overwhelming (again there is none). Is the climate rising? There is evidence to support that claim but it is hardly overwhelming and there is also research that seems to contradict (no I'm not talking about THAT "research") these findings. So without any factual research to tie humans to the research supporters of the theory turn to name calling anyone who calls them on their BS "climate-deniers". While there are a select few who simply deny climate is changing the vast majority do not. We simply refute the CONCLUSION that it is caused by human action. And rightly so. Show me some proof and I'll listen. When there is money to be made and politicians involved take everything you hear with a ton of sodium. Take a look at how much money Al Gore made buying and selling carbon credits which weren't even a thing in the US until his inconvenient lie prompted congress and the EPA to create them.

      You're an idiotic partisan hack. Do you really think that the people working on these studies don't know the stats 101 meme you're using as a crutch?

      The effects of CO2 etc. are very well understood.

  19. Re:I feel ashamed to admit that I'm a scientist. by MightyMartian · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You're not a scientist. You're a victim of the Salem Hypothesis.

    If you have some special knowledge of climatology, then perhaps, just perhaps, you can pontificate, otherwise, you're just another fucking engineer (and a software engineer at that, so some might not even consider you an engineer in any meaningful sense) on a topic for which you have no fucking qualifications whatsoever. What you're trying to do is assert a fallacious appeal to authority, asserting because you had training in "computer science" that that makes you a scientist, and further that that allows you to lecture on the nature of a specific science.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  20. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "The average temperature in the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years"

    Ok, and there were glaciers down to what like Ohio less than 10,000 years ago. Pretty sure humans had nothing to do with the warming of the last 9900 years, where is the evidence that we affected the last 100 years of warming? (Hint: CO2 levels are flat if you don't cherry pick the historical data). What would the temperature rise be without humanity? Unless you can show me the science that explains the non AGW of the last 10,000 years, you don't really have a case for AGW at all. The globe gets warmer and cooler and has since it formed, life goes on.

    Downmodding or calling me names does not validate AGW, just an FYI to all my friends in the pro AGW side of the fence.

    As per usual the magic fly in the ointment of your logic is the current rate of global temperature change relative to very recent human activities. Take off the goggles Charley, by increasing CO2 at an accelerated rate which is higher than what would be normal without unchecked fossil fuel consumption we are simply accelerating the rate of change. It will take a massive human die off to change this factor and it will happen sooner than we expect as a great many places become uninhabitable because of climate. And NO the tundra of the Northern Hemisphere is not going to suddenly turn into a garden of eden as some religious right wing American nut job pseudo scientists are preaching. What we will see instead is a drastic slow down in the jet stream and radical changes in Ocean currents leading to the rapid desertification of the more northernly areas of the continents. It will take many thousands of years before areas of perma-frost to become viable grass lands. By which time our agriculture, sea harvest and food base will have been decimated to such an extent that only a fraction of our current population will survive. We are at the tipping point with our protein harvest in oceans right now. Instead what we will see is wars over what little viable land and food production is left.

    Our greed as a species is going to spell our down fall because we do not really care for the planet which made us. With the US electing a self centered moron for President it clearly shows that an anti intellectual and science leaning is going to prevail in the long run making it impossible for us to truly advance cooperatively as a species. Hell with popular dictators like Putin in charge of the vast lands of Northern Asia there is not a smoke stacks chance in hell of things improving.

  21. Re:Science by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Informative

    You're either a liar or an fucking moron . CO2's absorption properties and the consequences of increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have been known for over a century. And your "20 year claim" is nothing more than cherry picked nonsense that is, on the face of it false. So I'm leaning towards lying troll, but low IQ moron is also possible.

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  22. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    The GP is practicing science properly. He's asking perfectly legitimate questions, yet is being attacked for it. Even worse, nobody is providing reasonable answers to his reasonable questions. Global temperatures did start to rise thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution started. This observation does prove wrong the hypothesis that humans are responsible. But instead of doing proper science and reworking this hypothesis that has been proven wrong, we see so-called 'scientists' desperately trying to keep this broken and sinking hypothesis afloat. It's pathetic, and it's not science.

  23. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by cdsparrow · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    What I don't understand overall is that warming isn't necessarily bad. Higher temps and higher CO2 levels? Better food production. Humans at current population and technology levels can handle getting warmer a lot better that we can handle getting colder.

    And looking down the road at technology mitigating it, pretty sure it's easier to cool the earth on a global scale than it is warming it up.

    Nuclear winter FTW!

  24. Re:I feel ashamed to admit that I'm a scientist. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's true. Before universities, there were no scientists in humanity. Paper degrees from the right place are everything. Scientific Method and Reasoning require a license to use.

  25. Re: Science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Wait, are you saying that the hand-drawn xkcd graph showing increasing temperatures over time is wrong?!

  26. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Absent proof of man's forcing of warming - we're left with only one conclusion: it's natural.

    Nonsense. Lack of proof for X does not mean "not X" must be true. It just means that X is unproven.

    Also, outside of mathematics, there is no such thing as "proof". Just evidence.

  27. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Informative

    In some areas better food production, in other ways much worse. While in the medium term you could see more precipitation in the American Midwest, in the long term it will mean higher precipitation in winter and much less in summer, with much higher temperatures. In other words, one of North America's major bread baskets will become less conducive to agriculture. So yes, while they may be growing wheat in the Northwest Territories, for the US it could, in a hundred years mean less food security and more reliance on imports. Rinse and repeat for several grain-growing regions around the world. And understand that the patterns of civilization are still largely based on climactic conditions that came into place at the end of the last glacial period, so we're talking about billions of people living in regions that may, in a century, be far less capable of sustaining those populations.

    Oh, and let's talk about the collapse of fisheries because the other really bad side effect of higher concentrations of CO2 is significant alterations of pH levels in the oceans, meaning more dead zones and large algal blooms which are going to choke out a lot of ocean life.

    I'd say we can't really handle getting warmer any better than we can handle getting colder. In either case, there are a whole lot of people who are going to find food costs rising, and while the developed world may be able to absorb those higher costs, more marginal populations may have a harder time. The other thing to factor in is that people just don't sit on their chunk of land now being turned into an inhospitable desert where they can't grow crops or raise livestock, or where rising sea levels and more powerful storm systems wipe out their crops. They get up and move, so you'll see more large scale migrations, so if you think Syria's disintegration is bad, wait fifty years.

    Trying to extol some modest benefits to climate change without mentioning the significant economic and social costs seems at best naive, and at worst disingenuous to me.

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

    Oh my, what an angry reply, full of vitriol. While others might get angry at your posts, I find them incredibly sexy and far better than any porn site. Every time I read you angrily yelling at someone for denying climate change, I get incredibly turned on. This is some of your best material yet, and makes me want to drop my pants right now to rub out the massive boner that your post gave me. I'm going to make more posts that deny global warming and refute it with facts. When you get really mad at me and curse in your replies, I'll be having some of the most incredible self pleasuring experiences I've ever had. Thank you for continuing to produce such high quality content. I'd say more but I'm incredibly horny right now and I need to go pleasure myself right now. Thanks, MightyMartian!

  29. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fortunately, your opinion is meaningless.

  30. what's a heat-trapping gas? by superwiz · · Score: 0

    If we can use some gas to trap heat, can we use it to maintain extremely hot conditions? Sun-level temperatures? Not questioning the report here (not agreeing with it). But the way summary was posited is dumb. Neither CO2, nor methane trap heat. they slightly increase the drag on the outflow of the heat from the planet surface.

    --
    Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
    1. Re:what's a heat-trapping gas? by BouncingBob · · Score: 1

      No one is claiming that greenhouse gasses trap all the heat, only that they reduce the heat flow. The term "heat trap" is not intended to imply that all heat is trapped, it is neither insightful not useful to pretend to be confused on the subject.

    2. Re:what's a heat-trapping gas? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What a retarded argument.
      Just because your fridge can cool, doesn't mean it can reach 0K.
      Just because CO2 is a greenhouse gas doesn't mean you can use it to raise the temperature by 2000K.

    3. Re:what's a heat-trapping gas? by conquistadorst · · Score: 1

      No one is claiming that greenhouse gasses trap all the heat, only that they reduce the heat flow. The term "heat trap" is not intended to imply that all heat is trapped, it is neither insightful not useful to pretend to be confused on the subject.

      Easy, he's just ignorant on the topic. He wasn't pretending to be confused, he was confused! Instead, attack his real mistakes which was not only his ignorance of the topic, followed up by arrogance to spontaneously know the topic better than the original authors (because of course he didn't know enough to know he didn't know). Classic Dunning Kruger stuff, which effects us all lol.

    4. Re:what's a heat-trapping gas? by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      it is neither insightful not useful to pretend to be confused on the subject.

      Unless, of course, your goal is to troll.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    5. Re:what's a heat-trapping gas? by conquistadorst · · Score: 1

      If we can use some gas to trap heat, can we use it to maintain extremely hot conditions? Sun-level temperatures? Not questioning the report here (not agreeing with it). But the way summary was posited is dumb. Neither CO2, nor methane trap heat. they slightly increase the drag on the outflow of the heat from the planet surface.

      Yes you can actually, *if* you have enough of it and keep adding enough energy going fast enough to keep accumulating heat. Is it going to happen? No, not unless you're God playing minecraft. But yes, you're exactly right that we're talking about *slowing* heat escape, so are the authors. What's essentially happening on almost every planetary bodies in the solar system is balance of energy between multiple sources. While heat is escaping from the planet's core, which warms the surface a little as the body core cools, additional heat is being added to the planet via the sun. The temperate of the planet, or more importantly for us the *surface* temperature of the Earth, is essentially the balance between the two. However this is further complicated by atmospheres, which many but not all planetary bodies have, whose effects work in both directions. Atmospheres mute the drastic changes and also help trap heat, slowing its escape. Our moon doesn't have an atmosphere which is why it sees such extreme variations in temperature. Just another interesting note, the Earth's core temperature is about the same as the surface of the sun (but not the sun's core, which is much hotter). However we don't burn up alive because all that stuff between us and our sweltering core is also trapping heat, i.e. slowing its escape before it reaches us.

      If you're picking a bone over the "trap" terminology you can supply your own term but that is already a commonly used term by most people in the community to describe exactly that process. It almost seems like you were accusing experts of making a trivial mistake, but really it was the other way around.

    6. Re:what's a heat-trapping gas? by Eunuchswear · · Score: 1

      Neither CO2, nor methane trap heat.

      So in your universe the average temperature of the Earth is -18 Celcius?

      --
      Watch this Heartland Institute video
    7. Re:what's a heat-trapping gas? by superwiz · · Score: 1

      The fridge analogy is actually pretty good. But calling something a "trap" does not create the same impression as calling it a "drag". Anyone who doesn't understand the topic (and most people who discuss it don't) would be much more frightened at the idea of gasses completely disallowing heat to escape rather than slowing it down. And you do have to understand that popular audience has zero understand of these subtleties so they take these words at their value.

      --
      Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
  31. Re:Science by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 2

    Explain the temperature pause from 1998 to 2015.

    The explanation is that you cherry-picked the singularly hot year of 1998 as a basis.

    Try running the same analysis from 1997 or 1999, or nearly any other year in recorded history.

  32. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    (it has to be either natural or man-made).

    Wrong. You haven't proven that it can't be some other agency.

    Since you are the one making that claim, it is incumbent upon you to provide proof.

  33. I will save you! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm willing to save you.

    All that I ask for in return is at least 4 mansions with heated pools to help me relax and think. My travel will be exclusively by private jet so I don't have to associate with, well, I call you all "troglodytes."

    You'll have to give me complete control to decide whether to proceed on all private research and I'll retask money to technologies that already exist and companies that my friends will all run, of course, we'll need government backing 100% on all our loans.

    Finally, I'll need complete control of your personal life and that of all other people, I decide whether you have sex (due to possibility of pregnancy of course) and all other personal decisions.

    My only other request is a 20 foot blender where you will constantly funnel taxpayer money so that I may puree it and swim in it, this is critical in ways you cannot possibly understand.

    Act now and I'll upgrade your leash to leather.

    Sincerely,

    Al Gore

  34. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I sincerely hope a criminal court is involved to bring justice to those that are eventually proven correct.

  35. Re: I feel ashamed to admit that I'm a scientist. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well done, you got this whole issue figured out. Way to go. Spread your knowledge to the corners of the Earth and prepare for your inevitable rewards for such a forward thinking mind. If someone disagrees they must be willfully ignorant.

  36. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 2

    You wouldn't want to live inside your refrigerator, but I'm betting that you'd prefer that it stay cold in there.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  37. Re:Science by BouncingBob · · Score: 5, Informative

    Pretty simple - there WASN'T a "pause" from 1998 to 2015. 1998 was well above the trend - an outlier, with both 1997 and 1999 significantly lower. 2015 was the first year that was higher than 1998, but the preceding and following years were not much lower - so the 3 year (or 5 year, or 10 year) average for the late 90s was significantly lower than the average for the last few years.

    So at best you could say "There was a huge drop from 1998 to 1999, then steady warming, temperatures have been rising since 1999." Which sounds pretty odd, but is much more accurate than any so-called "pause".

    If you are on this page, you probably understand something about signal processing and statistics -ask yourself why people have been saying there was a "pause" when the data - whether statistically analysed or just plain eyeballed - shows no such thing.

  38. Just saying. by NormanHaga2580 · · Score: 0, Informative

    I was not going to say anything at all, but I figure this is worth more bad Karma.

    I have not seen a single comment by one fucking person that has read the report. This is lines 31 through 34 of page two of the report:

    "The findings in this report are based on a large body of scientific, peer-reviewed research, as well as a number of other publicly available sources, including well-established and carefully evaluated observational and modeling datasets. The team of authors carefully reviewed these sources to ensure a reliable assessment of the state of scientific understanding."

    In other words there is absolutely nothing new in the report and it is a rehash of information previously known, using questionable data sets, and information which has been shown to be biased.

  39. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 0

    Only in your binary world.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  40. Re: Science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You seem to enjoy reading misinformation or its refutation. I suggest ancient astronauts theories; they excel at bringing interesting questions to the table with lots of paranoia.

  41. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Frank+Burly · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No one is making a criminal accusation; there is no innocence or guilt to be presumed.

    However, a preponderance of evidence according to the scientific community, and the governments of nearly every country on Earth, is that humans are causing global warming and that it has the potential to do catastrophic harm to civilization.

    If you were genuinely interested in the truth on this subject you would have found it out rather than raising spurious, discredited arguments on an internet forum for casual geeks, and thinking that the rhetorical turd you have dropped has an intimidating perfection because people would rather step around it than sweep it up.

    You have chosen to be wrong on the internet, and more damning, chosen to be proud of it. You have a great future in politics or the 'chan. But the quality of your future IRL still depends largely on remaining above sea level.

  42. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Anyway, people need to get a grip on this subject and meet in the middle...

    Silly attempts to look "fair & balanced" on the climate is a big part of the problem--as soon as you start doing that, you've caved to the anti-science crowd who think that, if they tell themselves enough fairy tales, they'll become true.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  43. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He doesn't have to prove it. The scientific method states the AGW hypothesis (it has not met the definition of a theory) assumes the burden of proof is on those who make the claim human activity affects the weather (i.e., the hypothesis is not null). How can this be tested while excluding all natural factors? Where is the control? Take a look at the IPCC carbon balance and prove convincingly beyond reasonable doubt that the small fraction of carbon humans add seriously disrupts the carbon balance. Not to mention the energy balance in the ocean.

    As a practicing scientist, it is frustrating to see the conclusions get a pass, where areas where I work have extremely detailed criticisms about one extra degree of freedom.

    Posting AC because the politics of this is detrimental to careers.

  44. Re:HELP I BURNT MY GIRLFRIENDS COOTER by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Use dry ice. This is NOT regular ice found in your freezer. You have to buy it from a supplier, but since you live in a big Cali city, you'll be able to find it easily. You got your driver's license, right? You're going to need at least half a bag. Dry ice is not made of water. It is formulated to quickly reverse the problems associated with overheating. The butter will instantly congeal, and the nerve endings will be frozen off so they won't be a problem anymore.
     
    Good luck, Beau.

  45. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    To be honest, these are people that surround themselves with successful people and then proclaim that success is easy and everywhere. Only bad people who deserve it are losers. Sad.

  46. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Bartles · · Score: 1

    Someone who criticizes an unproven hypothesis, or data integrity issues, or propietary data practices is not anti-science. If anything they are the opposite.

  47. Re:HELP I BURNT MY GIRLFRIENDS COOTER by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    DON'T DO IT!
     
      WARNING!
     
    DO NOT DO IT!
     
      DANGER!
     
    Dry ice is a substance known to consist almost entirely of carbon dioxide. Do the world a favor and do not purchase dry ice. Warming and ocean acidification WILL kill us sooner or later. If you have "canned air" you can get the same cold temperatures by turning the can upside down and spraying it on her (or his???) clit.
     
    Good luck, Beau.
     
    (captcha: consent)

  48. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Bartles · · Score: 0

    Every time "scientists" tweak the temperature record, the rate changes. The past gets cooler, and the present gets warmer. They are not practicing science anymore, they are just manipulating data to reach a desired outcome.

  49. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "sci by Bartles · · Score: 2

    You provided absolutely zero arguments in your fisking of the ops post. Just attacks. I'm inclined to believe op is correct, and you feel threatened that maybe the "consensus" isn't really as stong as you first thought.

  50. Re:HELP I BURNT MY GIRLFRIENDS COOTER by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Air dusters contain CFCs or HCFCs. You are going to burn a hole in the ozone, idiot.
     
    Instead, BeauHD should get a dewar of liquid nitrogen and pour it all over her baby cannon.
     
    That'll do the trick.

  51. Re:HELP I BURNT MY GIRLFRIENDS COOTER by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Use dry ice. This is NOT regular ice found in your freezer. You have to buy it from a supplier, but since you live in a big Cali city, you'll be able to find it easily. You got your driver's license, right? You're going to need at least half a bag. Dry ice is not made of water. It is formulated to quickly reverse the problems associated with overheating. The butter will instantly congeal, and the nerve endings will be frozen off so they won't be a problem anymore.

    Good luck, Beau.

    Remember this is slashdot. You should be suggesting a peltier cooler or CPU water manifold which he might have on hand.

  52. Re:HELP I BURNT MY GIRLFRIENDS COOTER by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    so i grab some butter from the fridge, but its cold, it wont melt - so I microwaved it for 8 minutes, and then i put it in a glass and poured it on her cooter, now shes saying i burned it.
     
    Pics or it didn't happen!

  53. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by multi+io · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "The average temperature in the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years"

    Ok, and there were glaciers down to what like Ohio less than 10,000 years ago. Pretty sure humans had nothing to do with the warming of the last 9900 years, where is the evidence that we affected the last 100 years of warming?

    It's in the report. And in many other reports. You're simply saying that because there's natural warming, there can't be man-made warming. Are you also saying that because there's natural fires, there can't be man-made fires?

  54. One of the problems by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 1, Insightful

    While in the medium term you could see more precipitation in the American Midwest, in the long term it will mean higher precipitation in winter and much less in summer, with much higher temperatures. In other words, one of North America's major bread baskets will become less conducive to agriculture.

    The climate issue has a lot of actual problems, and here's the one that counter's your position.

    Climate prediction is based on mathematical models which are trained on historical data and then carried forward to predict the future.

    This process has never worked in any other human endeavour.

    For example, the same process is used by many people in an attempt to predict the stock market. Does that ever work out?

    The same process is used to predict the effect of changes in the economy, such as raising the interest rates. Has that ever gone horribly wrong(*)?

    The same process is used to predict disease outbreaks, product viability, and the effect of importing cane toads in Australia.

    There is no instance where a mathematical model with the complexity of Earth's climate has made reliable predictions in any way.

    Furthermore, there are a multitude of models, scientists discount out the ones that don't seem right, and hand-tune some of the parameters to make the outcomes more reasonable.

    So saying that "such-and-so" will happen is simply the output of an elaborate random generator, tuned and selected for the outcome that fits the narrative.

    This is one of the real problems with the climate science debate: no model of that complexity has ever been accurate, therefore it's incorrect to be making decisions based on their results.

    (*) It was used as a justification for the bank bailouts, offshoring, free trade, and easy immigration. All of these were predicted to make our economy stronger.

    1. Re:One of the problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The stock market is in no way comparable to modelling the climate. The stock market is subject to human sentiment and human generated events, climate primarily to a few forcings which do not change rapidly. The main projections made by Arrhenius at the end of the nineteenth century are still broadly true, and those by Hansen in 1988 for the CO2 emissions scenario we've seen have been pretty damn accurate even given the simple model. Since then we've basically seen repeated confirmation, and more regional detail.

    2. Re:One of the problems by Kiuas · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Climate prediction is based on mathematical models which are trained on historical data and then carried forward to predict the future.
      This process has never worked in any other human endeavour.
      For example, the same process is used by many people in an attempt to predict the stock market. Does that ever work out?
      The same process is used to predict the effect of changes in the economy, such as raising the interest rates. Has that ever gone horribly wrong(*)?

      You do realize what you're doing is comparing the global climate, an actual physical planetary wide system that's been here for millenia before any man was ever born, to man made social constructs and saying that because we cannot predict the latter we surely can't predict the former.

      This is not sound logic. The climate and the stock market are both extremely chaotic systems meaning that small changes in some values can have huge impacts on the stability of the whole system. However what you and others making this argument always conveniently forget is that underlying the study of climate and the mathematical models themselves are actual natural sciences like chemistry. We don't have to 'guess' how the greenhouse effect works, or how much heat is absorbed/reflected by different gasses, these are all things that can be measured and tested in a lab.

      Obviously because the amount of metrics that needs to be factored in to model something as vast as the global climate is so high that the models cannot be 100 % certain, and obviously there are human components in the equation that increase this uncertainty but the core of your argument is still not correct. The stock market can crash at any given time due to any number of actions and the prices plummet. For you to be able to argue that the climate is the same way, you'd have to argue that at any given moment way may spontaneously enter into an ice age, which is clearly not true.

      There is no instance where a mathematical model with the complexity of Earth's climate has made reliable predictions in any way.

      There's also never been a time in the history of the species when we've had access to as much computing power, machine learning and actual hard data about the state of the climate.

      This is one of the real problems with the climate science debate: no model of that complexity has ever been accurate, therefore it's incorrect to be making decisions based on their results.

      No. You see, the thing with the climate is: we have to make predictions because the future state of the climate has a direct impact on the survival of the species. The models that we do have reflect our current, best understanding of the climate, and they're getting better as more data come in and machine learning steps in.
      If you ignore the models there's essentially nothing to base our decisions on and you could argue that it's just fine for us to start burning up all the remaining oil and gas because 'who knows what's going to happen'. But that's just BS. We obviously don't know the future of the climate with certainty, but we do know enough to know that certain actions are going to make things a lot worse.

      You also mentioned disease outbreak models, so think about it in this light: should we throw out our current understanding of epidemiology because the outbreak models are not (yet) all that precise? Should the doctors stop wearing gloves, should we stop vaccinations, sanitation and all these things which have a demonstrable and proven effect on lowering the rates of outbreak and infection because we're not 100 % omniscient about the time and place of future outbreaks? Huh?

      So either you can listen to the people with the most information and understanding about the climate and its current state, or you can keep telling yourself that corporations and atmospheric gasses are equally unp

      --
      "It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead
    3. Re: One of the problems by Entrope · · Score: 1

      We have great models for the physics and chemistry in human bodies, so why can't we produce an artificial human brain? What makes global climate so much more tractable to simulation than a single human body?

    4. Re: One of the problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Great answers a possible here. But I will keep it simple:

      Because nobody is going to predict the temperature and rainfall in your 6m2 backyard. Instead, we want global (or regional) averages.

      I am sure some scientist could model your brain (especially if given past data and being allowed to monitor you 24/7 in an MRI) to the extend of roughly predicting what you are thinking about *on average*.

    5. Re: One of the problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am sure some scientist could model your brain

      I was sure there was going to be a follow on comment about the task being easier than normal human's brain.....it is nice to see not everyone sinks to insults in their posts...but what a missed opportunity ;-)

    6. Re:One of the problems by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 2

      All models are wrong, some are useful. You do not know enough to know whether these models are useful. You have a disdain for truth and no interest in science.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    7. Re:One of the problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No. You see, the thing with the climate is: we have to make predictions because the future state of the climate has a direct impact on the survival of the species. The models that we do have reflect our current, best understanding of the climate, and they're getting better as more data come in and machine learning steps in.

      "re state of the climate has a direct impact on the survival of the species" - opinion

      If you ignore the models there's essentially nothing to base our decisions on and you could argue that it's just fine for us to start burning up all the remaining oil and gas because 'who knows what's going to happen'.

      Yes- correct. So much time and energy wasted on models that have no use and have been incorrect over and over.

      "Should the doctors stop wearing gloves," - seriously, please a four year old with a microscope can see germs.

      Pathetic fallacies and biases. Try again. And far too emotional.

    8. Re:One of the problems by pipingguy · · Score: 1

      Warmists won't listen to logic or reason because this is an emotional issue that currently provides a lot of juicy taxpayer dollars as well as an effective tool to bash political opponents with.

    9. Re:One of the problems by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Translation: I have no real clue how either climatology or economics work, but if I use the words "problem", "mathematical" and "model" enough times, somehow that wins the argument for me.

      The real problem here, sir, is you don't have the vaguest idea what the fuck you're talking about. If you have some alternative explanation as to where the energy increased CO2 concentrations will inevitably trap in the lower atmosphere are going, then by all means provide it. But this rambling word salad only demonstrates your ignorance.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    10. Re:One of the problems by greythax · · Score: 1

      The same could be said about the human body. Your doctor can't tell you when or what you will die of, but that doesn't mean you should stop listening to him. And if he tells you that you are diabetic, you better damn sure take the insulin.

    11. Re: One of the problems by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      idiot

  55. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by multi+io · · Score: 3

    What I don't understand overall is that warming isn't necessarily bad. Higher temps and higher CO2 levels? Better food production. Humans at current population and technology levels can handle getting warmer a lot better that we can handle getting colder.

    And looking down the road at technology mitigating it, pretty sure it's easier to cool the earth on a global scale than it is warming it up.

    Nuclear winter FTW!

    We're kinda adapted to current temperature levels. For example, we've built our coastal cities where the coasts are currently, not where they would be if sea levels were a few meters higher.

  56. Re: I feel ashamed to admit that I'm a scientist. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lick my balls, man!

  57. Re:HELP I BURNT MY GIRLFRIENDS COOTER by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  58. There was no pause by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The "pause" existed only in the minds of denialists, i.e. those who do not understand statistics.

  59. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Oblig xkcd for you: https://xkcd.com/1732/

    --
    Dc (posting from mobile and didn't want to login..)

  60. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Oh dear, "short sighted", that made me laugh. So how long did you think that humans can survive in space or in the ocean before they need to return or top up from their natural environment, or before serious health problems kick in?

  61. haha by schleimkeim · · Score: 2

    It's hilarious that this is still considered 'news' on an American website.

  62. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since 97% of published climate science supports one side, meeting in the middle gives undue weight to the minority opinion. At most we should be meeting 3% towards the middle, but more likely we should be dismissing the 3% as the raving lunatics who value the grants they get from their oil industry sponsors more than the scientific method that they are.

  63. Re:I feel ashamed to admit that I'm a scientist. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Its a bit like the average person who understands Genesis I dismissing scientists for believing in evolution really, except that at least they have a millennia old book of mythology that has been mistranslated through Greek, Latin and into English to "support" them. The anti-warming crowd don't even have that.

  64. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "sci by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Of course, the machines themselves can run for years. Unfortunately, you aren't going to survive more than 60 days on a sub unless someone on the outside sends you food. Theoretically the ISS can store some bland food for a year before the vitamins lose their effectiveness, but you still need food ferried in from the planet several times a year. I think it's hilarious that skippy is talking about the people thinking centuries ahead as "short sighted" when he can't think ahead more than a few months.

  65. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Please...just stop already. A blind Monkey could see the climate is changing, all one needs to do is go outside.

  66. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

    ALL THE MODELS ARE WRONG
    THAT MEANS THE THEORY IS WRONG

    This is known as an Argument from Fallacy, and it is illogical. You should try to learn the basics of critical thinking.

  67. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Warming in the past was natural, right?"

    "Natural" is not a cause. Try giving one.

    " And we just had a big pause from 1998 to 2015"

    Nope. Never was a pause.

    "You're the one claiming that man is causing warming, meaning it is incumbent upon YOU to make the proof."

    It's been given. Over 150 years, the proof has been given. Denial of reality is why you shitheads are called deniers.

    "Absent proof of man's forcing of warming "

    Absent proof that CO2 is not causing it, we should not emit more of it outside the carbon cycle.

  68. Re:HELP I BURNT MY GIRLFRIENDS COOTER by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Choosy Parents choose Jiff!!!

  69. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why not create jobs to restore the earth?

  70. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >small fraction

    your bias is showing.

  71. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by ls671 · · Score: 1

    You don't need to be on any side of the fence to understand that, of course, humans have an effect on so called "global warming". After all, we live in a very small sandbox. Nevertheless, the real hard problem to solve is exactly what effect we have and what is the importance of it compared to the completely hypothetical scenario where we wouldn't be present.

    Of course, this is not a justification for not doing our best to reduce potentially unwanted impacts we have on our environment.

    --
    Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
  72. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How dare you pretend that climate science isn't real science.

    It's real. It's true. It's settled. Just like it's settled on whether jumping off a tall building will cause you to fall down to your death when you hit the sidewalk.

    Feel it's not settled? Leap off a tall building.

  73. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ShangaiBill speaking to others about critical thinking, using wikipedia as a source, and not knowing the difference between formal and informal fallacies.

    That needs a funny mod right there.

  74. Re:Science by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

    Great! Well then, let's look at 1200 to current time? Oh, is that cherry picking again? Then why do we start in 1970, instead of 1930? Oh wait - cherry picking?

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  75. Re: Science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Aids has deserving victims sometimes. Thanks for demonstrating.

  76. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    > What I don't understand overall is that warming isn't necessarily bad. Higher temps and higher CO2 levels?

    That means sea levels rising ever higher as well. For example over a hundred million people in Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest countries, live in a river delta that is barely knee height over the level of Indian Ocean. They will either drown or have to mass migrate to survive. Where exactly do you migrate them, considering that Asia is already the most populated continent?

    Consider that they are the world's poorest people, most of them lack electricity and survive on the equivalent of a dollar or two per day, so they are NOT the people who caused AGW by either consuming or producing excessive amounts of commercial goods and energy for hedonism. They are victims the world has forgotten. Similarly, many atoll islands in the Polynesia-Micronesia region will sink like Titanic, as the Pacific ocean levels rise. Florida will also face huge problems, so kiss US pensioners goodbye!

  77. Re:Science by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 1

    Ahh, so "cherry picking". What about the Medieval Warm Period? It was global, and it was warmer than today. What caused the warming from 1910 to 1940 (warming that is greater than 1980 to today)? What caused the global cooling from 1945 to 1975? Perhaps using 1980 to today is the cherry pick as well?

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  78. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 0

    Science demands proof. The theory is that man's CO2 output causes global warming. When facts don't fit, you cannot ignore them. It is incumbent upon you to either change your theory, or figure out a mechanism that explains why observed reality does not match your model. In the scientific method, it's the person who is pushing the theory that has to provide the proof.

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  79. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by LynnwoodRooster · · Score: 0

    True, it could be god. It could be aliens. So I guess it should be either man-made or not. Since it's not shown to be man-made (temperature fell or was paused whilst CO2 increased), then it must be "not". So let's start talking about those theories, rather than obsessing on one that seems to not really work in that it does not fit the empirical data.

    --
    Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
  80. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Economic damage from not reducing emissions is likely to fall on nations less historically responsible for emissions and less able to cope with the consequences, which brings in an ethical dimension. Should wealthier countries potentially accept economic pain to reduce emissions, endure economic pain to help other nations cope, or invest heavily in low carbon technology, which may involve subsidy. It's hard to get agreement.

  81. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by doctorvo · · Score: 1, Troll

    You understand the patterns of where civilizations have developed over the last 10,000 is intrinsically tied to post-glacial climate.

    You apparently don't understand that the patterns where civilizations developed over the last 10000 years have radically shifted over the past 10000 years. Your ignorance of this fact alone illustrates how irrelevant climate change is to human civilization.

    and now that we're seriously fucking that up

    And how do you believe we are "seriously fucking that up"? Do you even understand what the effects of climate change are going to be? You don't add 2C uniformly to every temperature on the globe. Before you spread such FUD, I suggest you familiarize yourself with the facts.

  82. Venus runaway greenhouse effect by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Venus is said to have a runaway greenhouse effect, has atmospheric concentration 96% CO2 at 90 times earths atmospheric pressure. While the temperature at Venus' equator is 460 degrees centigrade, it's poles were recently recorded to be colder than -150 degrees centigrade, far colder than any place on earth and yet Venus is closer to the sun and has a runaway greenhouse effect.

    If I allow for adiabatic expansion, the atmosphere around the equator (below the stratosphere) equal to Earth's atmospheric pressure is about 38 - 39 degrees centigrade. Ever been in an underground mine and wondered why it gets hotter? Adiabatic compression due to gravity's effect on the column of air above you.

    What is Venus lacking?

    Water.

    Some scientists say Venus' water was blown away by solar wind, if Venus has water, wouldn't it accumulate at the poles?

    Earth has a lot of water, other planets close to the sun don't. The inner solar system is rocky, the outer is icy. Where did Earth's water come from? Earth's water moderates the planets temperature fluctuations.

    Anyway, having had to model the thermodynamic cycles of a power station in computer software, and knowing how difficult it was to get that to converge properly (required manually calculating each part of the cycle to find where the software was going wrong), I doubt the validity of the current statistical models and our understanding of the earth. I think climate scientists need to study thermodynamics more, their degree's don't cover it in sufficient depth. What if Climate scientists are wrong?

    It's worth remembering:
    At 380 PPM, CO2 is a depleted gas, the carbon in limestone and coal came from the atmosphere.
    Plants evolved for environments of 800 to 1500 PPM CO2 (look into actual green houses).
    Photosynthesis requires at least 200PPM of atmospheric CO2.
    Life requires at least 100PPM of atmospheric CO2 .
    One day Carbon based life forms will become extinct as will CO2.
    The earth was much hotter in geological history than it is today.
    How do we make Steel, Copper, Aluminum and Concrete without Coal?

    What about the microplastics and heavy metals in our oceans and antibiotics in our food chains, I think we should worry about what we can control and put contingencies in place for things we can't. Sorry, if the oceans rise, which they have done before, we will need to move.

  83. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by houghi · · Score: 5, Funny

    I was on a sinking ship. We had two holes. Some people said it was punishment from God and we should die. Others said it was because the ship hit some rocks.

    Now I am not a rabid religious (not that they are all like that), I think there's a lot to both sides of the equation, here.
    [snip a lot that could be compared]

    Anyway, people need to get a grip on this subject and meet in the middle. So we should just leave one hole open and close the other one.

    So let's stop the hyperbole and have some reasonable discourse about how to deal with it instead of pointing fingers and name calling.
    That way we will all be happy.

    --
    Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
  84. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by hackertourist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Instead of inflicting trillions of dollars in economic damage making the world stop producing, stop progressing, putting millions, if not billions out of work, we should be focusing on dealing with it rather than stopping it,

    You're using a straw man here. Most people aren't advocating anything like that.

    If anything, combating climate change means more work (creating and building new technology), not less. And yes, that's worthwhile. One extra degree of warming (if we don't do anything vs. if we do try to stop climate change) may not sound so much, but it translates to a lot of sea level rise, putting hundreds of millions of people at risk. It means weather extremes get more extreme.

    Stopping the increase in emissions has other advantages. Cleaner air means fewer people die. Reducing reliance on fossil fuels means less power to those who produce the fossil fuels.
    And we're going to have to transition to other fuels anyway as coal, gas and oil run out, so why not now?

    meet in the middle

    There is no middle. One one side you have science, on the other you have people denying the science while not backing up their assertions with facts.

  85. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    your bias is showing.

    Yeah his scientific bias towards the full scientific method being employed as opposed to hand-waving and appeals to "authority"!

    When did the Left become so anti-science?

    Oh yeah!...When the actual science turned out to not support their political/ideological propaganda!

    Just keep cranking that reality-distortion field past eleven and keep screaming at reasonable people how they're stupid and worse than Hitler for questioning AGW and wanting to be able to afford their electric bills, especially since the ACA raised health insurance premiums through the roof for the vast majority of people. That'll bring people to your side for sure!

  86. Re:Science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Reversing through a data set, finding a trend then noting the point that trend changes is not cherry picking. Saying that you can't include 1998 absolutely is cherry picking.

    Going completely clear of 1998, from 2000 to 2014 was also a flat line and there are no outliers in there.

  87. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by TeknoHog · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'd say we can't really handle getting warmer any better than we can handle getting colder.

    In a certain fundamental sense, it is much easier to handle getting colder. Heat is easily generated by various processes, but it cannot be destroyed. It can be moved around, but that won't help if it's hot everywhere.

    --
    Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  88. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by TeknoHog · · Score: 5, Funny

    Anyway, people need to get a grip on this subject and meet in the middle...

    Silly attempts to look "fair & balanced" on the climate is a big part of the problem--as soon as you start doing that, you've caved to the anti-science crowd who think that, if they tell themselves enough fairy tales, they'll become true.

    For a practical example, let's meet in the middle with the Flat Earth crowd, and agree that the Earth is a very oblate spheroid.

    --
    Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  89. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Whibla · · Score: 1

    Interesting article, and graphs, for all that they're 4 to 5 years old now, but so much wrong with what you wrote...

    So the theory has no proof

    So the graphs* you're citing as evidence (or lack of evidence, w/e), which clearly show a trend of warming over the last 30 years, albeit not in line with the climate models of the time, aren't evidence of warming? I'm puzzled, how is a graph showing warming not evidence of warming?

    ALL THE MODELS ARE WRONG
    THAT MEANS THE THEORY IS WRONG

    I have a model of the solar system, an orrery. It shows the relative position of the planets and moons as they orbit. The strange thing is, over time the position of the planets and moons in the model cease to exactly mirror their positions in reality. Does this mean the theory of gravity, or general relativity, is wrong**? Or is it that the solar system is complex, while the orrery is a simple model, and over time errors will accumulate?

    That aside, your premise does not support your conclusion. The model being wrong doesn't, in itself, say anything about the underlying theory. Even the article you linked to doesn't say that, merely that (the NASA scientist quoted suspects that) some of the feedback effects, specifically that of water vapour, are being incorrectly modeled.

    IF GLOBAL WARMING WAS CAUSED BY HUMAN INDUCED CO2 EMISSIONS THE MODELS WOULDN'T BE COMPLETELY FUCKING WRONG

    If only the atmosphere were as 'simple' as your arguments, I suspect the models would match recorded data (even those data that disagree with each other) perfectly.

    retards

    Does a retard know he's a retard? I don't feel particularly stupid, not in isolation nor in comparison to most people I meet. Projection? Pfft, not important, and not particularly nice, either way!

    *Graphs show tropospheric temperatures for an area to 20 degrees either side of the equator. They don't show warming for the rest of the atmosphere, nor sea temperatures.

    **Yeah, so some scientific theories aren't 'right' (Newtonian gravity for example) per se, but they do provide us with a 'good enough to be getting on with' idea, that mirrors reality closely enough for most purposes. Knowing it's not the entire story doesn't stop us not falling off the planet...

  90. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by dave420 · · Score: 1

    You're still incorrect. There was no pause. You seem to not really understand this.

  91. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by PoopJuggler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Humans aren't the only, or most important things, on the planet. We're fucking up ecosystems that have taken millions of years to stabilize and balance, and cannot react fast enough to survive the rapid changes we are causing.

  92. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For your perusal:

    https://www.skepticalscience.c...

    https://skepticalscience.com/c...

    https://www.skepticalscience.c...

    There's a lot more there and at realclimate.org

    One important point to remember: drawing inferences using periods of less than 30 years is widely recognized as a bad idea because of all the natural variations that happen within that period. CO2 concentration isn't the only thing that affects global climate. You also have cycles of the Sun, El Ninos and La Ninas and so on.

    Also, it is important to factor in other human influences. In the 1940-1980 period, for example, you had an unusually high concentration of aerosols in the atmosphere, due to the post-war rapid re-industrialization of various parts of the world, and the over reliance on said aerosols. This caused a global cooling effect - despite the continued increase in CO2 concentrations - since aerosols reflect sunlight. Good in theory, but it also wrecked the Ozone layer, which is worse news.

    My point? Climate is complex. Simplistic analyses that draw conclusions without looking at the big picture help no one.

    Our current best understanding of the matter says that CO2 is a major driver of global warming, CO2 concentrations are increasing, and it is our fault. There's very strong evidence that this is correct, and only a major upset would challenge these assertions (and scientists have been trying to prove this wrong!). You'll find a lively - and more importantly, evidence based - debate at the sites I pointed out, including links to the raw and processed data from multiple sources, satellite data, papers, and so on.

    This, however, is the science. The politics - basically, how do we deal with that - is a whole other can of worms.

  93. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by PoopJuggler · · Score: 0

    Well we should be on trial because we're destroying the entire fucking planet with our addiction to food and shiny things. But go ahead and keep shoveling hamburgers into your fat face while you drive around in your Hummer, because your gratification is the most important thing on Earth.

  94. Re:Science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Google has clear answers to your first question about the Medieval Warm Period:

    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=medieval+warm+period

    Ditto for the 40s-70s: https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-cooling-mid-20th-century.htm

  95. No leak at all by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This doc was publicly available since Jan 2017. There has been no leak.

  96. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    have some reasonable discourse about how to deal with it instead of pointing fingers and name calling

    Silly attempts to look "fair & balanced" [...] anti-science crowd [...] fairy tales

    Do you see the problem here?

    We should be able to have a grown-up conversation about the trade-off between climate change and economic development, as the GP said. But people like the parent poster - and equivalents on the other side - spoil it for everyone.

  97. Honestly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This is not up for debate anywhere other than in the US.
    The greenhouse effect has been well understood for several decades now.
    We know that we are releasing greenhouse gasses.
    We can measure acidification of the ocean, and temperatures.
    You can compare winters now to winters 50 years ago and see that the temperatures don't go anywhere near as low.
    The only things that aren't settles are how much effect, and what to do about it.

  98. Correction now in the article by myid · · Score: 5, Informative

    The New York Times has added a correction to their article. At the end of the article, a paragraph now states

    Correction: August 9, 2017
    An article on Tuesday about a sweeping federal climate change report referred incorrectly to the availability of the report. While it was not widely publicized, the report was uploaded by the nonprofit Internet Archive in January; it was not first made public by The New York Times.

  99. Re:Science by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 4, Informative

    What about the Medieval Warm Period?
    Which of them? There where three.
    It was global, and it was warmer than today.
    How global they were is still depabet. None of them was warmer thn today. That is a /. myth.
    What caused the warming from 1910 to 1940
    I'm mot aware about a particular warming, besides the warming caused by CO2 during that period. Compared to today it was actually relatively cold, at least in winters.
    What caused the global cooling from 1945 to 1975?
    The sulfur emmissions from coal power plants. Don't you learn anything in school at your place?

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  100. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Seriously? You're advocating a return to the dark ages as you type on a computer in an air conditioned room. Arguing progress of the human condition vs a scientific theory written by zealots is ridiculous. Throwing a large number of agencies behind a report makes it about as true as "9 out of 10 doctors agree that..." please, if you want to return to the dark ages, sign off the internet now and stop enjoying conveniences of modern life.

  101. Re:I feel ashamed to admit that I'm a scientist. by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    The climate scientists I know have diploma, master or PhDs in meteology or physics, some in chemistry.
    Many in the other hand are mathematicians.

    You must hang out with pretty weird climate scientists if you believe they are no scientists.

    I studied computer science, too. Btw.

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  102. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Climate science is about as settled as a generalized closed form of navier stokes or quantum mechanics. There is something there in finite conditions, but the number of assumptions and approximations make specific generalizations with a high degree of accuracy seemingly impossible. Just because you want it to be true doesnt make it so.

  103. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    And you are fortunately smart enough to have figured that.
    Thank you!

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  104. 1500 years isn't much by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Going back 1500 years isn't a lot given most believe the Earth is millions of years old. We have enough evidence to go back further, but it would expose that the Earth has had many cycles of extreme temperatures. In fact we could also assume this was the cause of some of the animals that existed at that time. Is it possible, this is simply a fact of life living on planet Earth that we must adapt to these changes to survive. I think its impossible to make such changes by man alone to reverse what may in fact be a natural course for Earth.

  105. The gun and how to jump it by sabbede · · Score: 1
    Why was this leaked? Because somebody thought it might be suppressed? How about giving the administration a chance before assuming it will be suppressed and breaking the law? Why publish it right away instead of waiting to see if it does get suppressed? This is just like Reality Winter's dumb-ass move.

    This is a problem, and it indicates there's a huge problem in the Federal bureaucracy with paper-pushers deciding for themselves how to run the government. If the administration was hiding something, that would be one thing, but if nobody gives them the chance to do the right thing then that sets up a self-fulfilling prophesy.

    1. Re:The gun and how to jump it by hyades1 · · Score: 1

      Maybe it has something to do with stuff like this:

      "Trump Administration Orders EPA to Remove Its Climate Change Web Page

      The move adds to concerns that the administration will promote a denial of fundamental science within its agencies"

      - Scientific American, January 2017 -

      --
      I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
    2. Re:The gun and how to jump it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What a world we live in where Republicans are begging, in droves, for the government to give us less information.

      Also, this report was publicly available, legally; the headline was just clickbait. Maybe do a little research rather than jumping to conclusions next time.

    3. Re:The gun and how to jump it by sabbede · · Score: 1

      So? If you have concerns your boss might do something wrong, does that mean you preemptively stab them in the back? Of course not! You raise your concerns internally.

    4. Re:The gun and how to jump it by hyades1 · · Score: 2

      I guess you weren't aware that the option you mention has already been taken away in a fashion clearly intended to send a message. People who don't toe the Trump line have either been shuffled off to irrelevant jobs, pushed into resigning the way they tried to do with Priebus and Sessions, or just fired.

      https://www.thenation.com/article/donald-trump-and-ryan-zinke-are-purging-climate-scientists-for-telling-the-truth/

      http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/05/politics/trump-battle-science-epa-energy-climate/index.html

      --
      I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
    5. Re:The gun and how to jump it by sabbede · · Score: 0

      Okay... Does that justify leaking in response to suppression that hasn't happened?

  106. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by jenningsthecat · · Score: 4, Interesting

    All real slashdot readers browse at -1 so as to avoid the political bullshit that has taken over the moderation system.

    Hmm... I'd call myself a real Slashdot reader. Until recently I've always browsed exclusively at -1, and I often upmodded -1 posts even when I disagreed with them, because I felt that they contributed something to the discussion. But just within the last few days I stopped doing so, because now the overwhelming majority of -1 comments are racist, or sexist, or childish name calling, or Trump non-sequiturs, or other toxic crap that have made this place like a birdcage in which the newspaper never gets replaced. I totally get your desire to "avoid the political bullshit" - but for me, satisfying that desire currently requires that I don't browse at -1.

    --
    'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
  107. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "So prove that the current warming is natural."

    I would say the onus is entirely on the AGW proponents to prove their case since it involves drastic changes to our economy and way of life. I'm not arguing for one or the other but the reverse onus AGW proponents try to put on skeptics makes no sense since their position does not require any action at all.

  108. Reliability by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This "leaked report" has been available as public information, available for public comment, since January 2017, according to the report's authors.

    Oops...

  109. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The GP is practicing science properly. He's asking perfectly legitimate questions, yet is being attacked for it. Even worse, nobody is providing reasonable answers to his reasonable questions. Global temperatures did start to rise thousands of years before the Industrial Revolution started. This observation does prove wrong the hypothesis that humans are responsible. But instead of doing proper science and reworking this hypothesis that has been proven wrong, we see so-called 'scientists' desperately trying to keep this broken and sinking hypothesis afloat. It's pathetic, and it's not science.

    No one is denying that the Earth temperatures did go up and down in the past. However, the current speed of climbing (or severity) is abnormal. Even though CO2 may not be the culprit (but I still think it is), it shows that he isn't going to do anything (being denial) because he believes it is natural. Has he ever thought of why this abnormality is occurring and what should we do to at least slow down and/or eliminate the issue?

    Thus, the GP is NOT practicing science properly but rather demonstrates ignorance. It is much easier to sit back and do nothing but still call themselves "scientist"...

  110. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You fell for the troll.

    The proof is there in CO2 emissions and their known effects.

    Any time they say there's no proof, that's literally the proof.

  111. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by thegarbz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I can't afford it, and I wouldn't recoup my investment because I certainly won't own the house long enough.

    Why? Having just sold my house the solar panels paid for themselves in the added house value. Additionally while renting it out for a year I jacked up the rent by the average cost of electricity for people so even while not living there I was getting the rewards.

    If you find it valuable, chances are other people will as well and pay accordingly.

  112. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Enough with the 97% bs. That was disproven years ago. It was 97% of a select subset. It was by no means an inclusive study and the number is bogus.

  113. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 2

    So prove that the current warming is natural.

    Because the earth has been hotter than now prior to the industrial age.

    QED

    Try telling a judge that you can't possible have committed this crime because such crimes have been committed long before you were born.

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  114. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bravo Sir, spoken with all the foresight of your species and your own condition as a bacterium in a petri dish! The "uncontrolled spread until all your resources are depleted and you naturally die off" faction has spoken!

  115. Re:Science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Perhaps you should pay attention to the people who actually gather the data instead of the people who deliberately misstate it?"

    You mean like Michael Mann? A guy that smears and sues anyone that questions his (very questionable) hockey stick analysis that was the very basis of the vast majority of climate change reports and papers over the last 15 years? Nah, I think it's best we have an open discussion and listen to both sides instead of just handing over the keys to our way of life to an asshole like that.

  116. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by conquistadorst · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What I don't understand overall is that warming isn't necessarily bad. Higher temps and higher CO2 levels? Better food production.

    If you would have said warming isn't necessarily *all* bad, you'd be a lot more accurate. There will be some benefits, for sure. But overall the bad is expected to outweigh the good. It's easier to measure the impact in terms of costs, rather than "cans" and "can'ts". Because yes, of course we *can* survive it all and do all sorts of technological wonders combating the negative effects, but what is it going to cost? We're going to having rebuild/retrofit/move our coastal areas which encompass many major cities. We're going to have to shift our agricultural production regions, not just crops but livestock too. "Hot spots" might become quite inhospitable where susceptible people may not leave the house for more than a few hours (infants/elderly) or impede outdoor day jobs for everyone else. Then the oceans, oh the oceans. Don't know where to start on that one, let's just leave it at wild seafood may become a delicacy.

    I'm going to throw a dart and say we're talking about not 10's but 100's of trillions of pure USD. Not counting the impact in human costs. That's the problem.

  117. Re:I feel ashamed to admit that I'm a scientist. by hord · · Score: 1

    "... we might as well just give up as a species and elect a reality TV host as president."

    "We" elected a cartoon from the 80s. And in the 80s we had a movie actor from the 30's. My kingdom for a fiddle...

  118. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What kind of asinine stupid modded up comment is this?

    So by your own "logic" -
    There's no proof that ShanghaiBill is a pedophile - but that doesn't mean ShanghaiBill is NOT a pedophule - ShanghaiBill just hasn't been proven to be one yet.

  119. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Entrope · · Score: 2

    That is unwisely reductionist.

    In a very practical sense, Snowball Earth is a harder scenario to escape than Greenhouse Earth. Both have high albedos (due to snow and clouds, respectively), which helps reduce temperature. It's pretty impractical to replace much of the energy contribution of solar loading by burning terrestrial sources of energy: sunlight is too bright, and the Earth has too big a cross-section.

  120. Re:I feel ashamed to admit that I'm a scientist. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My academic training was in computer science, and I work as a computer scientist. But these days I'm somewhat ashamed to publicly use the term "scientist", after how people calling themselves "climate scientists" have brought politics into science, thus ruining science's reputation.

    I hate to break this to you, bro, but actual scientists are also a little bit ashamed when you call yourself a "scientist" with your associate's degree in CS from DeVry.

    While scientists may not realize what's going on, or may not want to admit it, the reality is that average people do see and understand what has happened.

    You could take everything "average people" know and understand about science and fit it in a Fox & Friends chyron. Don't believe me? When you're on the bus going to the call center tomorrow morning, ask them the difference between "average" and "mean" and see what the average answers are. If we're going to start using "average people's" knowing and understanding as any kind of metric in science, we might as well just give up as a species and elect a reality TV host as president.

    I think you meant "median" ... mean and average are fundamentally the same thing.

  121. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by drinkypoo · · Score: 2

    we should be focusing on dealing with it rather than stopping it, because it's coming even if we cut emissions in half.

    There is no "dealing with it". The chart goes all hockey stick for a reason. The last time CO2 levels were this high, we couldn't have lived here. The only way to deal with it is to stop the runaway condition before it goes that way again. It might even be possible, if we not only stopped CO2 release but also did everything humanly possible to fix CO2. And even then, thanks to the warming of the ocean, we're still going to have a lot to do. We'll still need to artificially institute some kind of global cooling to make up for what we've already done.

    Anyway, people need to get a grip on this subject and meet in the middle instead of allowing the politicians and media divide and conquer us.

    You are nowhere near the middle. You are way the hell off in "rape the corpse" territory.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  122. Re:Science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So the overwhelming majority of the climate scientist all over the world didn't notice this and found it not relevant? Oh, but wait. They are in a global conspiracy and are faking all the data and statistics. Wow, if 1000's of climate scientist can setup such a conspiracy across the world, across vastly different governments, organisations and cultures, fairly consistent and with little dissent. They must be geniuses. But wait, if they are geniuses, maybe they are correct with the original claim? (global warming is real)
    I have no problem with questioning authority but as Carl Sagan said: "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". The evidence of the scientist is quite solid (it appears) both in statistics and in what we know about the physical processes. And no pointing to some years is not "extraordinary evidence".
       

  123. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What I don't understand overall is that warming isn't necessarily bad. Higher temps and higher CO2 levels? Better food production.

    Better food production in limited areas. However, the land will be devastated in many regions that are currently relied upon. More volatile weather will result in extreme drought followed by extreme rainfalls. Some plants will do well but many will not.

    So what is the real effect of this? Mass extinctions of wildlife both on land and the ocean. Untold millions will perish from die from famine while others will migrated. It won't always be migrating for refuge either, wars will be fought over land for food production.

    But hey, if you like mass extinctions, mass migration, war, genocide and famine, the future is looking rosy.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  124. Re: I feel ashamed to admit that I'm a scientist. by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    I am quite certain global warming isn't occurring, and even if it were, humans couldn't make it occur.

    And you're so sure about that, you needed to post anonymously to a website that allows you to use a psuedonym, because these ideas are so damaging to credibility that they are not worth associating with even a throwaway identity.

    --
    "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  125. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by mi · · Score: 1, Insightful

    No one is making a criminal accusation

    vs.

    Well we should be on trial

    Funny, how these guys never argue with each other...

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
  126. Re:Science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    CO2's absorption properties and the consequences of increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have been known for over a century.

    Yup, we know exactly the consequences of increased CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere because we can observe the boiling hellhole of atmospheric CO2 that is Mars.

  127. World is flat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How long did the "scientists" all agree that the world was flat? Every year I hear that scientists are 'learning' new details about climate, the sun, oceans, etc, etc..

        Kids at play in a world they don't truly have the ability to understand yet.

    1. Re: World is flat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You actually need decent measuring equipment to directly measure curvature of the earth. It amounts to about an 8 inch drop over a mile. So flat can be a great model depending on your needs. Most homes are built assuming the foundation is flat but that is not true. It is just as curved as the earth and for a house or building it doesn't matter. As better measurement tools developed, and new challenges like navigation came up, it became necessary to ditch the flat earth model because I'd didn't solve the problems being faced. All models are inaccurate. Calling it a model indicates that is it an approximation of a real world phenomena and will necessarily be inaccurate. The question is how big is the error.

      The climate models are accurate enough now to tell that continued greenhouse emissions are not a good idea.

  128. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yep I can just say that ... nope it's not like your auto analogy at all. Nope the current warmth is NOT unprecedented and yep lots of natural process have produced greater warming in the past. Any questions ?

  129. Data was faked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    broken stations across the country had data inserted into the set to MAGICALLY match what they wanted. Its a giant money grab and slave pen plan. You all should watch George Carlin a LOT more, you know its a lie, because the WMD government said it.

  130. Not good enough by Roodvlees · · Score: 2

    I fully agree that humans influence the environment but the uncertainty in models is larger than the supposed influence.
    Even if you fully accept that all climate warming is due to human influence you still have to answer two important questions.
    1. Is a warmer planet bad?
    2. Can government do something without destroying the economy

    It's clear the establishment assumes yes to both answers by default but they haven't even asked the supposed 97% about this.
    On the first question they do fear mongering all the time, predicting distopian futures that turn out to be false every time and blaming every negative weather event on human influence.
    On the second question; their beloved Paris accord only promises to reduce the increase in temperature by a tiny amount.
    But then they'll say it's only the first step, basically admitting there will be an endless stream of agreements that do almost nothing.
    It's important to keep the economy intact because in a bad economy people care less for the environment.

    All of this reveals a distinct anti-human attitude.
    It's like asking a termite: Q: Does termite behavior change the environment? A: Yes. Conclusion: The termite hill should be destroyed.
    Fossil fuels are what make our quality of life possible, without it we would degrade 100 years.
    "Renewable energy" is shit. Because it's unreliable and too expensive.

    --
    Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!
    1. Re:Not good enough by Black.Shuck · · Score: 1

      ... you still have to answer two important questions.
      1. Is a warmer planet bad?
      2. Can government do something without destroying the economy

      One of those questions is more important than the other.

      I think a better question view would be: "Do we have another Earth with which to re-run the experiment?"

    2. Re:Not good enough by nobdoor · · Score: 2

      1. Is a warmer planet bad?

      Yes. Examples: 1) The most severe drought that Syria has ever seen, providing the catalyst for the Arab Spring. 2) The bleaching of the Barrier Reef. 3) The loss of coastal cities and infrastructure.

      2. Can government do something without destroying the economy

      Destroying the economy? There's obviously a lot that we can do without obliterating all financial institutions and currencies in the world. I think the question you're trying to ask is:

      Can we do something without impacting the economy?

      To which the answer is no. However we have to ask ourselves, what strategy from this point will have the least impact on the economy? Losing coastal cities, and even entire nations (Kiribati) is surely going to impact the economy more than curbing emissions ahead of time.

    3. Re:Not good enough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      1. When we use up all fossil fuels the economy will be destroyed anyway
      2. At the rate we are going in 100 years quality of life will be severely degraded anyway.
      Those new-fangle "computers" are shit. Because they are too expensive and take up entire rooms.

  131. It never ceases to amaze me by bravecanadian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How a generally pro-science forum like slashdot can have a good chunk of its posters revert to fox news talking points on politically charged issues.

    The same, tired, debunked, denier arguments again and again..

    1. Re:It never ceases to amaze me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fox News is mainstream trash for old people. Now, we have a groundswell of "alternative" sources for this type of stuff. Suddenly it's perceived as hip and edgy. Gather together a group of these hip, edgy people... Possibly seeded with a few hip, edgy bots and shills... And the appearance of a consensus emerges. Rational and free thinkers will segregate themselves automatically from these places, so its not hard for these ideas to perpetuate themselves after the initial seeding. This approach is way more sinister than the old school "top-down" propaganda approach utilizing the TV and radio media.

    2. Re:It never ceases to amaze me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If you can't stand to leave your CNN echo chamber, don't.

    3. Re:It never ceases to amaze me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Off the top of your head, what is the present estimate for TCR and ECR according to the IPCC? How have those changed in the past 25 years? Are there other estimates of TCR/ECR that differ from the IPCC published estimates? If so, by how much?

      If you cannot answer those, your need to stop insulting people and start reading.

      I suspect I read a crapload more studies about AGW than you do.

    4. Re:It never ceases to amaze me by eaglesrule · · Score: 2

      Because the topic is climate change. Not surprisingly most of the deniers are AC, and it seems like the disinformation and trolling tactics are just as predictable as always. It leads me to think that people are spending their time responding to bots, which lack the creativity to come up with any kind of new argument.

    5. Re:It never ceases to amaze me by apoc.famine · · Score: 2

      I'm a little less amazed. /. has traditionally had a lot of fairly intelligent people posting here. Unfortunately, it's had a lot of specialists, and in general, smart specialists tend to assume that their expertise in one narrow niche is applicable to others. (Spoiler, it's generally not.) If you've spent any time working with university professors, this becomes abundantly clear.
       
      "I'm really good at X, and I don't understand Y, so Y must be wrong, because I can understand anything, because I'm an expert at X." Add in a small amount of overlap between X and Y, and you've got a nice recipe for rather smart people assuming something they don't understand is wrong. Throw in some political indoctrination, some very good trolls, and possibly some paid shills, and you have a nice recipe for the stupid shit that plagues any post here about climate change. On the flip side there are some really impassioned people with deep knowledge willing to engage and change minds, and that just ramps the shitposting up to 11.

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
    6. Re:It never ceases to amaze me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where the hell have you been?!?!

      This place has been inundated with trolls, some of whom are likely paid for their services, for several years now.

      Any comment thread having to do with anything political is damn well festering...

    7. Re:It never ceases to amaze me by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've been on Slashdot since the late nineties (haven't bothered with creating an account) and what I used to enjoy were the comments written by experts, or at least very knowledgeable people who are at least well read in the sciences. These days all I am reading are comments from people who would be more at home on fox news, or yahoo news. Anti-science is not news for nerds, it is news for the religious, the willfully ignorant, and those with vested interests.

    8. Re:It never ceases to amaze me by RyoShin · · Score: 2

      The Dunning-Kruger effect is well known on /., and I call what you point out as the "Carson Corollary"[1]: someone actually is intelligent in a specific field, but they mistakenly believe this makes them intelligent in all fields.

      Regardless of where they get their talking points, if they sound good and/or come from a "trusted" source someone suffering the Carson Corollary won't bother to do any research or give measured thought to contrary points or evidence, they presume their own knowledge of a subject is sufficient.

      Exercise for the reader: Am *I* suffering from the Carson Corollary by making this post?

      [1] Named for current US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson, who by all accounts and records is a brilliant neurosurgeon but has made some statements that suggest he is not as brilliant in other fields while still feeling confident enough to publicly comment on them.

  132. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    In earth's history? Did you even read the summary before posting? They said "since 1980".

    That's the problem with climate change zealots, you're so busy pretending to quote "science" that you miss the key facts.

    You people are more dangerous than the deniers because you make so much noise about nothing that you destroy all chances of having the real situation handled. Fuck you very much.

  133. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    anyone with a brain can admit that we can't completely stop greenhouse emissions (unless you can "cure" farting, or the need to eat in general)

    We need to emit less than the amount that plant life can absorb and process. We can also extract greenhouse gasses from the atmosphere.

    There is one thing you need to remember more than anything though: the laws of physics will never yield regardless of how much you beg and plead.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  134. Re: HELP I BURNT MY GIRLFRIENDS COOTER by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I don't understand. Could you provide a car analogy?

  135. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    True, it could be god. It could be aliens.

    Oh, these are your claims?

    So I guess it should be either man-made or not.

    Well, you certainly seem to be "guessing" a lot, but that isn't the proper term, you need to admit your error and revise your assertion. And you still need to do it, as you're STILL going about it wrong.

    Since it's not shown to be man-made (temperature fell or was paused whilst CO2 increased), then it must be "not".

    That's an interesting fallacy for you to adopt. Not to mention a false premise, and even beyond that, poor articulation on your part.

    So let's start talking about those theories, rather than obsessing on one that seems to not really work in that it does not fit the empirical data.

    Sorry, but you're the one who has made a claim, now it is incumbent upon yourself to provide the proof, otherwise you are simply being hypocritical. The demand is now upon you. You'll have to stop obsessing and start delivering. No cherry picking either.

    I await your attempt. Well, not really, as there is no evidence you will make the endeavor, rather that is a sufficient amount of countervailing evidence to indicate otherwise.

  136. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by archer,+the · · Score: 1

    No one's proposing we destroy millions of jobs. We're proposing we replace millions of jobs, say coal mining to lithium mining for batteries. Oil and gas production to solar panel/wind turbine production and installation. ICE vehicle manufacturing to EV manufacturing. And we still need a truckload of infrastructure improvements: decaying bridges, new power lines for the increase in renewable electricity demand due to EVs.

    As for the question of "who pays for all of that?", the answer is the rich people and corporations. They've made their billions because they got to dump their waste into the atmosphere. Now it's time for them to clean it up.

  137. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by rtb61 · · Score: 0

    'ER', natural unnatural, who gives a fuck, our coastal cities are going nowhere except fucking underwater. Climate change and permanent human habitation, do not go fucking hand in had, in fact one destroys the other. No matter the fucking cause, we have to strive to mitigate the harm and avoid in the most insane fashion, making it even worse. Look, cities go under water and I want to see prosecutions for crimes against humanity and the morons who lied, cheated and stole to be fucking hung and make no mistake. You can fuck around all you want but make no mistake their will be a real harsh price to pay for fossil fueller bullshit and that price will be paid in the courts and then on a gibbet, with the rich and greedy, kicking in the wind. They think they can get away with whoops tee hee, we destroyed your cities and killed millions, they need to think again.

    --
    Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  138. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    "The average temperature in the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years"

    Ok, and there were glaciers down to what like Ohio less than 10,000 years ago. Pretty sure humans had nothing to do with the warming of the last 9900 years, where is the evidence that we affected the last 100 years of warming? (Hint: CO2 levels are flat if you don't cherry pick the historical data).

    Hint, no they are not

    That, at least, is the story told by a new paper published in Nature on April 5 that reconstructs the end of the last ice age. Researchers examined sediment cores collected from deep beneath the sea and from lakes as well as the tiny bubbles of ancient air trapped inside ice cores taken from Antarctica, Greenland and elsewhere. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) The research suggests that—contrary to some prior findings—CO2 led the prior round of global warming rather than vice versa, just as it continues to do today thanks to rising emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

    "We find that global temperature lags a bit behind the CO2 [levels]," explains paleoclimatologist Jeremy Shakun, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fellow at Harvard and Columbia universities, who led the research charting ancient CO2 concentrations and global temperatures. "CO2 was the big driver of global warming at the end of the Ice Age."

    IOW (non-anthropogenic) CO2 played a major role in the end of the last Ice Age, but in the 10,00 years before your cherry picked 10,000 years-ago starting date for that end.

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  139. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The claim that the Earth has never been so hot and supported human civilization is hard to prove. The report says that this is the hottest it has been in 1500 years. Yet human civilization has been around for much longer.

    In fact, some of the most amazing achievements have been made in some of the hottest regions of the planet (Pyramids, Sphinx, etc). And at that time, civilization did not know nearly as much in terms of dealing with heat as we do now.

  140. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Lol, discrediting a source just because reasons!

    If you don't believe a wiki article, you know there's sources you can check noted at the bottom. Many of those link to reputable sources like various universities, dictionaries, etc

  141. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by elistan · · Score: 1

    The real doomsday scenario for climate change isn't some places becoming dryer, or wetter, or hotter, or colder, or fish and coral dying off, or sea levels rising and displacing coastal communities - it's changes in the composition of our atmosphere. 50 to 80% of the oxygen we breathe comes from oceanic phytoplankton. Imagine a scenario driven by climate change where increasing carbon dioxide dissolved into the oceans and creates carbonic acid, increasing the oceanic acidity level; then increased temperatures cause ice melts that mess up salinity levels of the ocean and disrupt the great conveyer belt; finally due to these disruptions the phytoplankton experiences a massive die-off and the atmospheric oxygen levels are reduced to levels similar to, say, the top of Everest today. NYC and London and Hong Kong being under meters of water would be a disaster, but wouldn't be unsurmountable. Humanity being unable to breathe could make us extinct. (Disclosure - I'm not climate or biology scientist. This is all just person supposition.)

  142. Re:HELP, I BURNED MY GIRLFRIENDS COOTER by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Use one of the PS4 controllers that vibrates.

  143. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, (S)he is right. Science does not prove, and to think it does is to misunderstand science.

  144. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    10 gigatons a year for 50 years is 500 gigatons, and quite a small fraction of the 37,000 gigatons in the ocean alone. So yeah, a small fraction.

  145. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unfortunately, your statement is incorrect.

    They are not questioning the data saying "maybe this is incorrect, let's fix this data point and see if it holds up". They're saying the whole thing is a Chinese conspiracy (even though they're doing things to reduce emissions too, which is odd)

  146. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    It's astounding to me how short sighted climate alarmists are. The only people who should be concerned about warming is land developers in Russia and Canada. There's a whole lot of Earth's surface which is about to become prime real estate for agriculture and growth.

    I'm astounded how generous you far sighted climate "laissez-faire"-ists are - because obviously you must be willing to pay for the means to let every single human on this planet (and of course outside of it) to "survive in the vacuum of space, underwater aboard submarines, as well as in some of the most inhospitable places on Earth". But please pay your dues before you turn Earth into a vacuum under-water inhospitable world.

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  147. Leaked? by kenh · · Score: 1

    This report wasn't leaked, it is a near verbatim copy of a DRAFT report put out for public comment in Dec. 2016 and pulled from the site at the end of the review period, as is normal. We know this because several of the authors of the report said so on Twitter after the 'explosive leak of this blockbuster report.'

    See, this is fake news, taking something no one noticed, and then pretending like it never happened before.

    The NYT didn't bother to do a basic fact-check before publishing it's 'leaked' gov't report.

    --
    Ken
    1. Re:Leaked? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The news is in the content of the report and that it's now essentially completed, and pending release. Good job at trying to gloss over the content of the report. Actually... No, it was a piss-poor job. A transparent attempt to turn news about a climate study into a referendum on the media. Try peddling it on Facebook, you'd have more luck there.

  148. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is vs ought. Both statements are true.

  149. And what about 1998-2013? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Temperatures hovered without any increase for 15 years while yearly CO2 emissions increased from 24 to 35 billion metric tons . That's a pretty good indicator that CO2 isn't the driving force behind climate change. It's hard to see this as any more correct than the certainty of human caused global cooling sending us into an ice age in the 70's.

  150. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by ddtmm · · Score: 1

    As well, it may be that the earth has been hotter at times in the past but never has the temperature risen at such an alarming rate. It's not just the temperature rising, it's the rate that it's changing.

  151. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "sci by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The alternative you speak of is called genocide. Is that really your solution?

  152. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 2

    And we just had a big pause from 1998 to 2015

    Nope

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  153. Re:Science by Waffle+Iron · · Score: 1

    You have to start somewhere. But unsurprisingly, deniers usually prefer to start at the top of this one random spike that sticks out like a sore thumb to even the most casual observer.

  154. Global warming - on Mars? by peterofoz · · Score: 1

    I still don't see how humans and CO2 are causing warming on Mars. https://www.space.com/33001-ma...

    1. Re:Global warming - on Mars? by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      Probably because those two things aren't causally linked.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
  155. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by gfxguy · · Score: 1

    But that's not what I'm talking about -I'm talking about that, even if you accept AGW, what do you do about it? If humans completely disappeared from the planet this very second, the temperature still rises (according to the article) 0.5c. They also say if we do nothing it rises 2.0c. So what do you do? They suggest future emissions are going to cause an additional 1.5c rise, so even if you cut our emissions in half, we still rise a total of 1.25c (maybe - I'm doing math using a direct correlation, but that may not be how it works). What people are discussing now is like 10 or 20% reductions... even 25%... that means we STILL need to prepare for what's coming, because you can't stop it.

    As far as "deniers" go - first of all, questioning the science isn't "denying." But take the first step - admit that animals influence the environment they live in, and move on from there. If they can't acknowledge that, then it is pointless.

    --
    Stupid sexy Flanders.
  156. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    If you don't even understand that the concentration of Co2 in the atmosphere(not in the oceans) is the culprit, you should do some research. We know that in the past 2 centuries CO2 levels have nearly doubled, do you call that small fraction ?

  157. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by gfxguy · · Score: 1

    Exactly... step 1: get people to admit animals impact their environments. If you can't get that, then you've got a flat earther, so move on and skip the fringe.

    The way I see, both sides have valid points: the earth is in a warming trend, and would be with or without us. But this warming trend is accelerated because of the impact of humankind - our emissions are acting as a catalyst. People like simple explanations.... why did some guy shoot up a daycare center? The answers are not simple, they are complicated and intricately woven through myriads of factors... so when one side shouts "the earth is in a warming trend," the other side turns their brains off and says "no, it's humankind!" And when that side says "but the warming trend in unprecedented," the former side says "no! It's all natural!" If you can admit that both may true, you can start to move on from there.

    The bulk of us won't agree entirely, but you can at least nudge people together... like most politics, on most important issues, we actually largely agree on what we want: we don't want homeless people, we don't want people to go without necessary healthcare, we don't want people to without food/shelter/clothing, we don't want people to go without education. The disagreement is on how to solve these issues. Instead, we let the politicians and the media divide us to keep the conflict going... maybe it's human nature? After all, Christians, Jews, and Muslims have been killing each other over the "right way" to worship God for thousands of years.

    --
    Stupid sexy Flanders.
  158. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by sycodon · · Score: 1

    You people and you Rube Goldberg Disaster scenarios.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  159. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Myrdos · · Score: 2

    Reminds me of another one: "Scientists" say the ship is sinking. Then why is my end 200 feet in the air?

  160. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "drastic changes"

    BS. by cutting out oil and coal we can go a long way, without any change in our lifestyle.

  161. Re:I feel ashamed to admit that I'm a scientist. by Myrdos · · Score: 1

    ask them the difference between "average" and "mean" and see what the average answers are

    I see what you did there.

  162. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by sycodon · · Score: 1

    You are a good argument for euthanasia.

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  163. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "sci by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    God I will not miss idiots like you when this whole thing goes tits-up.

  164. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by sycodon · · Score: 1

    I believe it was a Nobel Winning Physicist who said, "if your data doesn't agree with your theory, it's your theory that is wrong, not the data. " (paraphrased)

    --
    When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
  165. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are you equally in favor of criminal prosecution should the whole AGW turn out to be a huge money/control grabbing scam?

    Would you be in favor of putting Hansen and Gore and the rest of them in a real "fuck youmup the ass" prison?

    If not then logout and go home.

  166. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hint: you're on the internet from a first world country. You ARE the rich people!

  167. Fake news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As Fox news reported days ago this report was NOT leaked. It has been available online since January. The NY Times is trying to create hype over a non-event. The report had been online since January for review by anyone.

    Can anyone actually verify their source before putting out fake news on this site?

  168. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 1

    Pretty sure humans had nothing to do with the warming of the last 9900 years

    Not necessarily, land use changes were still a thing even before the industrial revolution.

    Hint: CO2 levels are flat

    Flat where? Surely not in the last century. Not to mention that CO2 is not the only possible cause of temperature changes. Different instances of such change can have different causes.

    The globe gets warmer and cooler and has since it formed, life goes on.

    It does. At what rate, though? Fast changes in a short period of time are problematic for adaptation of settled peoples.

    --
    Ezekiel 23:20
  169. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by dpilot · · Score: 1

    At some level, one doesn't have to care if global warming is human-induced or natural. If a given area is too hot and too humid, like places in the Persian Gulf are now, people will die without air conditioning fed by electric power. If either the air conditioner or its power source fails, they're equally dead, whether the environmental conditions were caused by nature or man.

    It doesn't matter the slightest whether the planet has survived the conditions we're now heading into. The fact is, our civilization hasn't been through this before, and it's not clear that we'll make it through now.

    So what if warming is natural. It's going to be hard on us, and if there are things we can do to mitigate its effects, we should be doing so. Here's the issue - if we accept AGW, then we accept that we should be doing something about it. Then saying that because it's natural we don't have to do anything is like saying that you have to dodge a truck heading at you, but don't have to dodge a charging bear - because the charging bear is natural.

    If the "natural warming" crowd were to propose mitigating actions, that might be one thing, but so far they haven't. Hot is hot, storms are storms, droughts are droughts, floods, are floods, whether AGW or natural.

    --
    The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
  170. Keeling 1960 by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

    You have no idea what is or is not proven about AGW and you've actively avoided that information. The scientific debate has been over for decades, essentially since Keeling. The best part about debating deniers is that they have no idea what they're even saying. That's also the worst part.

    --
    Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    1. Re:Keeling 1960 by Raenex · · Score: 1

      The scientific debate has been over for decades, essentially since Keeling.

      That's nonsense. Even the IPCC reports, which have their own biases, don't make idiotic statements like that.

      The best part about debating deniers is that they have no idea what they're even saying. That's also the worst part.

      Maybe you should look in a mirror.

    2. Re:Keeling 1960 by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      The IPCC does absolutely say that the overwhelming majority of CO2-induced climate change is due to human influence, and this fact has not been scientifically controversial for several decades. Previously, of course, it was extremely controversial, at least up until the early 1950s. Arrhenius' 1896 paper on CO2-induced warming was considered debunked for decades and you can find atmospheric science textbooks of that era which explicitly assign a negligible role to carbon dioxide. The overall consensus shifted over a period of two decades, depending on how you want to interpret various currents in the research. We can certainly say that by the time that the IPCC was founded AGW was "settled science", but Keeling's work was more or less the final nail in the coffin. I am sure that I would be interested in an argument to the contrary which was strongly supported by citations.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    3. Re:Keeling 1960 by Raenex · · Score: 1

      The IPCC does absolutely say that the overwhelming majority of CO2-induced climate change is due to human influence, and this fact has not been scientifically controversial for several decades.

      You're narrowing your claim from the very big topic AGW to "CO2-induced climate change". The question isn't just about "CO2-induced climate change", it's about overall climate change, and how much of climate change is due to human activity, and what the climate will be in the future based on human activity.

      The first IPCC, in the Executive Summary, made "certain" statements that there was a natural greenhouse effect and human activities were enhancing it via greenhouse gases. It then made statements "with confidence" that includes: "Carbon dioxide has been responsible for over half the enhanced greenhouse effect in the past, and is likely to remain so in the future".

      It then goes on to make predictions involving possible scenarios. It includes the caveat, "There are many uncertainties in our predictions particularly with regard to the timing, magnitude and regional patterns of climate change, due to our incomplete understanding of [..]"

      The Executive Summary also includes the statement: "The size of this warming is broadly consistent with predictions of climate models, but it is also of the same magnitude as natural climate variability. Thus the observed increase could be largely due to this natural variability, alternatively this variability and other human factors could have offset a still larger human-induced greenhouse warming. The unequivocal detection of the enhanced greenhouse effect from observations is not likely for a decade or more."

      All this talk about "settled science" is bullshit.

    4. Re:Keeling 1960 by Bartles · · Score: 1

      This is an excellent example of someone who is swayed by dogma rather than science.

    5. Re:Keeling 1960 by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      How would you know? What of the major papers on the topic have you read? Where exactly did all these researchers go wrong?

      I've read textbooks and primary sources. The climate papers pre-1950 are a small enough set to read exhaustively, and the more recent important papers will tend to be available freely online. Your ad hominems carry little scientific weight, but feel free to support your position with citations from the scientific literature.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    6. Re:Keeling 1960 by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      You're narrowing your claim from the very big topic AGW to "CO2-induced climate change".

      To a first approximation, these terms are synonymous.

      All this talk about "settled science" is bullshit.

      The effect of an increased partial pressure of CO2 on equilibrium temperatures has been settled for decades. The H2O feedback effect has also held up over the same period of time. The exact rate of change is an interesting question, especially as it needs to account for human activity. That the Earth will warm is as certain as sunrise, and that this CO2-induced warming is overwhelmingly caused by human activity is similarly not in dispute. If you disagree, do be specific about which part of the chain of evidence you take issue with and we will find you the appropriate citations.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    7. Re: Keeling 1960 by Bartles · · Score: 1

      My ad hominems?

    8. Re:Keeling 1960 by Raenex · · Score: 1

      To a first approximation, these terms are synonymous.

      It's the details that matter, as I laid out in my extensive reply which quoted from the IPCC.

      If you disagree, do be specific about which part of the chain of evidence you take issue with

      I've already told you I disagree with your simplistic, "the science is settled". Ignoring the entirety of my quotes from the first IPCC, which shows that the science of AGW is not settled, turns you into the denier.

    9. Re:Keeling 1960 by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      Science consists of multiple claims with multiple levels of support. I've been quite specific about which claims are considered settled. Your quotes did not address these. That you do not know why they are irrelevant is because you've never studied the subject. The theory is not unshakable, but you do not know the evidence and therefore cannot say which parts are solidly supported and which are less so. The good news is that there are a number of observations which would invalidate the theory completely. The bad news is that most of them have been ruled out already. Which brings us back to the subject line.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    10. Re:Keeling 1960 by Raenex · · Score: 1

      I've been quite specific about which claims are considered settled.

      No, that was only after I called out your, "The scientific debate has been over for decades, essentially since Keeling." You had to vastly narrow your scope to avoid the uncertainties documented by the first IPCC report. Climate science is not a black and white issue.

    11. Re:Keeling 1960 by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      The scientific debate over the theory of AGW is over. There is no competing explanation for AGW and it is unlikely that any will ever be advanced. The central tenets can be considered proven. That you think that there has been some inconsistency in my position is your misconception. Statements about modeling are not in themselves statements about the theory used to construct the model. If I have an epidemiological model of the spread of Ebola which happens to be inaccurate, this does not mean that the germ theory of disease is wrong. There has been nearly twenty years of research into modeling since the first IPCC report, and on the empirical side the warming signal is now strongly established. Your quotations therefore continue to be irrelevant to the topic.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    12. Re:Keeling 1960 by Raenex · · Score: 1

      That you think that there has been some inconsistency in my position is your misconception.

      There is no misconception. You said, "The scientific debate has been over for decades, essentially since Keeling" on the broad topic of AGW. It was a false statement. The first IPCC report even explicitly stated that the warming for the past 100 years was within the realm of natural variability. That was in 1990, decades after Keeling.

    13. Re:Keeling 1960 by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      You continue to be incorrect about the nature of scientific debate. Scientific debate is not "this measurement isn't accurate," nor is it "our models aren't accurate". Scientific debate is an issue with the theory, and it's almost always expressed as a competing theory. The creation of the IPCC represents the academic community being sufficiently convinced that there would be catastrophic warming to do something about it.

      . The first IPCC report even explicitly stated that the warming for the past 100 years was within the realm of natural variability

      That was true at the time. Since then the warming signal has become clearly evident in the temperature record. The lag in the signal was expected, although at the time of Keeling's publication the computer power really didn't exist to be able to give strong estimates about what would happen, several predictions were made along the lines of "n degrees in 50 years" that have proved accurate. But why don't you demonstrate that you know who Keeling was, why his work was important, and if you don't think that it was a conclusive statement on the subject, maybe you can say why not. Hopefully with references to primary sources.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    14. Re:Keeling 1960 by Raenex · · Score: 1

      You continue to be incorrect about the nature of scientific debate.

      And you continue to be narrow minded and engaging in binary thinking over a broad topic. There are many issues of scientific debate surrounding climate science. What you're trying to do is sweep away all dissent, debate, critique, or controversy with a broad brush, while paradoxically using a very narrow claim to do so.

    15. Re:Keeling 1960 by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      You actually have no idea whether or not I'm making a broad statement. Which is why you're strenuously avoiding discussing the evidence for this theory. I would be ecstatic to engage in some critique of the subject, or even fanciful speculation about what might invalidate AGW -- aliens sucking energy from the stratosphere is unlikely, but that at least would be some kind of alternate explanation. You have instead seized on the first set of vaguely-applicable quotations you could find, and you pretend that this represents a real understanding of the topic. If you want to critique the science, let's by all means examine the evidence. We can talk about, for instance, the many reasons why AGW was considered debunked between 1896 and 1950, and why those were overturned, and speculate about what observations might reverse the balance of evidence. You bring the objections, I'll bring the citations, and we can split the bar tab, how's it sound?

      And by the way, someone telling you that you are wrong is not trying to "silence you". I'm sure I would prefer if you would find more substantiative arguments, but your evasions are pretty transparent.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    16. Re:Keeling 1960 by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      Someone has no idea what they are talking about, that is for sure...

      AGW "scientists" cherry picked the CO2 data to justify their lies: http://drtimball.com/2012/pre-...

      AGW fraudsters falsified data to support their AGW lie: https://science.house.gov/news...

      AGW is on the ropes, the drip drip drip of facts is slowly tearing it apart. Global warming happens, but evidence for AGW simply doesn't exist. The fact that you think it does just highlights the fact that you are clueless, or you worship "science" instead of practicing it.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    17. Re:Keeling 1960 by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      CO2 already blocks 100% (it is opaque) in the bands of IR that it interferes with at 440PPM (and down below 100PPM) which is below the historical scientifically measured CO2 levels of 250-550PPM pre-industrial revolution... http://drtimball.com/2012/pre-... It has always blocked 100% of IR radiation in those bands (but IR outside those bands can still escape). Care to try again?

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    18. Re:Keeling 1960 by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

      "That the Earth will warm is as certain as sunrise, and that this CO2-induced warming is overwhelmingly caused by human activity is similarly not in dispute. If you disagree, do be specific about which part of the chain of evidence you take issue with and we will find you the appropriate citations."

      Is that why global temperatures change was essentially flat between 1998 and 2013 and NOAA had to falsify data to make it look otherwise? https://science.house.gov/news...

      What is settled science is that the atmosphere is and always has been IR opaque in the frequency bands that CO2 blocks. Adding more or removing 100PPM does not change that. Anyone who tells you otherwise is full of shit and speculation, in that order.

      --
      If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
    19. Re:Keeling 1960 by Raenex · · Score: 1

      You actually have no idea whether or not I'm making a broad statement. Which is why you're strenuously avoiding discussing the evidence for this theory.

      Funny, because I'm the one that managed to quote extensively from the Executive Summary of the first IPCC report.

      And by the way, someone telling you that you are wrong is not trying to "silence you".

      You can't even quote right. I said, "sweep away all dissent, debate, critique, or controversy with a broad brush". In others words, handwave away or summarily dismiss valid critique with this "the science is settled" bullshit.

    20. Re:Keeling 1960 by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      The atmosphere is indeed opaque at the IR band. The effect of an increased partial pressure of CO2 is to raise the effective top-of-atmosphere by increasing the extent of the CO2-rich region of the atmosphere. This lengthens the mean path taken by a given photon leaving the Earth, which has the effect of trapping heat near the surface. Your objection was valid before ~1950, before we made better observations of the upper atmosphere. Generally speaking you might want to consider that any objection you can think of has probably occurred to other people. Cherry-picking outlier years like 1998 is juvenile. And no, I'm not terribly impressed by another one of Lamar Smith's witch hunts. If you have a journal citation which examines the issue do provide it.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    21. Re:Keeling 1960 by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      You have not offered valid critique. We've discussed why your quotations were irrelevant. My position is really not controversial here. This is like saying that Einstein 1905 ended the scientific debate on aether theory. There is no cosmic incompressible light-bearing medium, and any aspiring replacement theory will need to account for all the same observations. Similarly, we have ruled out scenarios which do not include AGW, and any competing theory will need to account for a large amount of excess heat being retained by the Earth's atmosphere. If you cannot specifically identify the unproven element of the CO2 hypothesis then you have no substantiative criticism to make. Again, if you want to say it's aliens, at least that would be some sort of argument. Even a dishonest argument would be something. Refusing to even take up the issue is cowardly, intellectually dishonest, and boring.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    22. Re:Keeling 1960 by Raenex · · Score: 1

      You have not offered valid critique.

      I've offered concrete evidence that the science of AGW is not "settled" as you originally claimed by quoting the first IPCC report, which clearly laid out what was considered "certain", what was considered "confident", and what was less certain and awaiting more research.

      Even as late as 1990, decades after AGW science was supposedly "settled", the report acknowledged the warming for the past 100 years was within the realm of natural variability, and it would take more time, more observations, and more science to verify the signal of AGW.

      We've discussed why your quotations were irrelevant.

      We've discussed why your broad claim, followed by retreating to a narrow claim to back the broad claim, was bullshit. Since this conversation is clearly going in circles, I will no longer reply.

    23. Re:Keeling 1960 by Tenebrousedge · · Score: 1

      This conversation is going in circles because you think that semantic arguments are more worthwhile than debating facts.

      --
      Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
    24. Re:Keeling 1960 by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      To a first approximation, these terms are synonymous.

      It's the details that matter, as I laid out in my extensive reply which quoted from the IPCC.

      You could start by comparing how much more we know since the first IPCC report (just look at the most recent one) - and how little those details have changed the overall picture in the direction of "it's not man made".

      How much longer are you going to pretend that Achilles can't possibly pass that tortoise?

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    25. Re:Keeling 1960 by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      >

      Is that why global temperatures change was essentially flat between 1998 and 2013 and NOAA had to falsify data to make it look otherwise? https://science.house.gov/news...

      You should not blindly believe what the science hater (aka "Christian Scientist") Lamar Smith claims. He has proven time and again that the only thing he knows less about than science is honesty.

      http://www.factcheck.org/2017/...

      But in interviews with the Associated Press and E&E, an online energy and environmental news outlet, Bates said he had not accused his colleagues of data manipulation.

      Bates told the AP on Feb. 6 that there was “no data tampering, no data changing, nothing malicious” involved with his colleagues’ study. “It’s not trumped up data in any way shape or form,” he said.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    26. Re:Keeling 1960 by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      CO2 already blocks 100% (it is opaque) in the bands of IR that it interferes with

      https://skepticalscience.com/s...

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
    27. Re:Keeling 1960 by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

      Citing two known liars who should be in jail for defrauding the public perfectly proves how wrong your argument is.

      --
      Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  171. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Its not that its getting hotter. It is the rate at which the planet is getting hotter. Yes the climate has gotten really hot, and it has gotten really cold. This cycle typically takes thousands of years to swing. We have swung the scale massively towards warmer in a very short period of time.

    https://xkcd.com/1732/

    scroll to the bottom. see the sharp log leg right? thats what people are concerned about.

    Citation for the graphic is on the right at the top.

  172. Re: I feel ashamed to admit that I'm a scientist. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He posted some random ass silly nonsense for humor's sake but you're so deadly stupidly serious you felt it was important to reply to note he posted anonymously? Really? Thankfully you're the only one here out of thousands of reading dumb enough to feel his amusing rant about AGW and masturbation required a response. Get over your big bad ridiculously overwrought self.

  173. Re:Science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I'm not sure who you are replying to, but resorting to name calling tells me that you can't back up your positon.

    "Over a century": citation needed.

  174. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Crosshair84 · · Score: 1

    You clearly don't live in the Northern Midwest.

    Handling cold is FAR more difficult than heat for humans.

    There is a reason the DOT talks about winter survival kits and not summer survival kits.

  175. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    move

  176. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, I've done years of modeling the relationship between the aqueous concentration of carbonic acid and the pH, temperature, and salinity (ionic strength) and the vapor phase. The link I"ve shown is the simplified model. I've also done a lot of work in gaseous mass transfer.

    I've also looked quite hard for a molar absorptivity of the infrared spectrum for CO2, but I can only find the cross sections.

    So the relationship between the ocean and atmosphere is most definitely a significant factor.

  177. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  178. Radiative Transfer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or that other inner planet that is much less supportive of your argument.

    But in point of fact we do use the temperature profiles of extraterrestrial atmospheres to test our atmospheric physics equations. The results are consistent with all observed atmospheres to date, including the solar atmosphere. Radiative transfer: it works.

    1. Re:Radiative Transfer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      While Mars's climate has similarities to Earth's, including periodic ice ages, there are also important differences, such as much lower thermal inertia.

      96% CO2 to our 0.04%. Doesn't seem like much of a greenhouse gas if Mars has lower thermal inertia. Care to explain how that 96% leads to lower thermal inertia than 0.04%? And if Mars isn't boiling with 96%, how is an increase of 0.01% going to make to Earth such a terrible place? Particularly when it has been as high as 0.6-0.8% on Earth and life thrived at the time?

  179. Re: HELP I BURNT MY GIRLFRIENDS COOTER by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Make popcorn to cover you melting butter. Also bury her body in the yard. Also your a doosh.

  180. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by someone1234 · · Score: 1

    https://xkcd.com/1732/

    Notice, the speed of change, when it is not natural.
    Natural changes are glacially slow.

    --
    Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
  181. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Shotgun · · Score: 1

    That Kevin Costner movies was NOT a documentary, you know.

    --
    Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
    Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
  182. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Shotgun · · Score: 1

    It doesn't work that way.

    Try telling the jury that I committed this crime. You'll need actual proof that I committed it. Not just that it happened.

    --
    Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
    Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
  183. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Joce640k · · Score: 2

    "The average temperature in the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980, and recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years"

    Ok, and there were glaciers down to what like Ohio less than 10,000 years ago. Pretty sure humans had nothing to do with the warming of the last 9900 years, where is the evidence that we affected the last 100 years of warming? (Hint: CO2 levels are flat if you don't cherry pick the historical data). What would the temperature rise be without humanity? Unless you can show me the science that explains the non AGW of the last 10,000 years, you don't really have a case for AGW at all. The globe gets warmer and cooler and has since it formed, life goes on.

    Downmodding or calling me names does not validate AGW, just an FYI to all my friends in the pro AGW side of the fence.

    a) None of that means it's OK to dump billions of tonnes of CO2 into the air.
    b) CO2 levels are NOT flat - check your facts.
    c) Greenhouse gases aren't difficult to understand, it's basic science.
    d) WRT point c, human greenhouse gas production ties nicely with both the predicted and the observed sharp temperature rise in the last few decades.

    --
    No sig today...
  184. drastically, I say, drastically by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "The average temperature in the United States has risen rapidly and drastically since 1980..."

    TFA has lots of numbers about predictions, but somehow the historical numbers that are called "rapidly and drastically" have been mysteriously omitted. I looked up "rapidly and drastically" in the dictionary of climatology and did not find a definition. So, apparently this is the opinion of the English major who wrote the article.

  185. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by tlhIngan · · Score: 3, Informative

    As well, it may be that the earth has been hotter at times in the past but never has the temperature risen at such an alarming rate. It's not just the temperature rising, it's the rate that it's changing.

    From human records, that is false - the earth has not be hotter than it is now. It may be hotter prior to human civilization, but all the records we have (and proxies) indicate that today it's the hottest it's ever been. And it will be even if we halt all activity right now.

    Granted, it USED TO BE hotter in the past, but we've already beat that record (recently).

    In fact, XKCD has a very nice graph of the earth's temperature through history. The 0 degree mark is chosen as the 1961-1990 average temperature, but it's arbitrary. There was a period where it was about a half a degree warmer than that line, but at the very end, you can see we've exceeded that. It only happened about 5 years ago, at that.

  186. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by pipingguy · · Score: 0

    I am amused but not surprised that your reply is currently at 0, Troll. Also amused at how the Warmists think they don't have to provide extraordinary evidence for their extraordinary claims. There are too many people making too much money from the whole climate scam for it to go away quickly.

  187. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by pipingguy · · Score: 1

    I think the point there was that it has been hotter and CO2 levels have been higher and there was no runaway global warming during those times.

  188. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by umafuckit · · Score: 1

    Hint: CO2 levels are flat if you don't cherry pick the historical data

    So what cherry picking is producing this non-flat graph? What should the graph look like and what is the basis for your answer? Include your citations.

  189. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Fine. Earth has been hotter during times of flourishing life than it has now.

  190. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by pipingguy · · Score: 2

    Do we know what the perfect climate would be for everywhere and how that could be achieved and maintained?

  191. Dumb fucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    We had 15 times the CO2 in the last ice age.

    1. Re:Dumb fucks by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      Bullshit. Provide your citation.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
  192. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Since I'm sure that you advocate taxing based on greenhouse gas emissions, I would say that the burden of proof lies with those that want to take my money.

  193. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hmm.. let's see what we lose if the coastal cities go underwater.. Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Boston. Looking at that list, I can kinda see how middle-American conservatives might not only want to ignore current warming trends but perhaps, even, accelerate those trends. I bet they are even scheming to make global warming happen so fast as to cause the water to rise faster than leftists can run. Learn to swim.. see you down at Arizona bay!

  194. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Humans changing the climate, contrails or Chem trails ? I would say if chem trails the answer would be definitely.

  195. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    >Also, outside of mathematics, there is no such thing as "proof". Just evidence.

    Also, since we're using bullshit definitions of bullshit philosophy, words are meaningless because of a lack of objectivity.

  196. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "sci by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You obviously don't live the the Sahara handling cold is far easier than handling heat

  197. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I suspect there was human civilization 1,500 years ago. FTA

    '...recent decades have been the warmest of the past 1,500 years'

    Either you can't read, you are a young earth enthusiast or you just freak any time anyone says Global WARMING IS GONNA KILL US ALL.

  198. Re:I feel ashamed to admit that I'm a scientist. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I hope you were going for a trick question, I had to search cause I thought I was going senile.

  199. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Nope, then they would just move here, bringing their liberal cesspools with them, no thanks! Maybe we should build the "wall"s around those cities instead?

  200. Re:I feel ashamed to admit that I'm a scientist. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Mean, mode, and median are all different ways to get an average of a set.

  201. Horse hockey! by p51d007 · · Score: 0

    The "modern maximum" period of around 1950-2008 is where all this so called man made global warming came from. Nobody talks about the period BEFORE the industrial revolution, from around 1750 to 1800 that was about as hot as the period between 1950-2008, or the SUPER COLD period known as the Maunder minimum, where the Potomac river in the USA (before it was the USA) and the Thames River were frozen over during the winter. The sun, cycles in typically an 11 year cycle. We are in cycle 24. Cycle 23 started around 2008-09 and since that period, the sun has been VERY quiet. Lack of solar activity (sunspots, CME's etc), decreases the solar wind striking earth, and limits the ebb & flow of the weather patterns via the geomagnetic bubble around our planet. "Man made" global warming, is nothing more than another attempt to limit what man can do, corral him, and (here comes the conspiracy crap), pull the world into the "new world order" where you have ONE all powerful centralized government, controlling the entire planet, which we all know, would NEVER work.

  202. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

    You clearly don't live in the Northern Midwest.

    I live in central Finland, I'm pretty sure it gets roughly as cold here, and I think the winters are longer here. For a nice example, during my military service we had a two-week camp in the North, living in tents with temperatures around -30 C (-22 F). The record lowest temperature from that time was -45 C (-49 F).

    --
    Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  203. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by TeknoHog · · Score: 1

    That is unwisely reductionist.

    In a very practical sense, Snowball Earth is a harder scenario to escape than Greenhouse Earth. Both have high albedos (due to snow and clouds, respectively), which helps reduce temperature. It's pretty impractical to replace much of the energy contribution of solar loading by burning terrestrial sources of energy: sunlight is too bright, and the Earth has too big a cross-section.

    Agreed. I guess I was thinking of a more local scenario and heat engines; in a Snowball Earth, you have a very nice cold reservoir for running your power plants. With a larger temperature delta they are more efficient.

    --
    Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  204. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by gfxguy · · Score: 1

    It's true, I admit it.... I'm addicted to food. I've tried to quit cold turkey, but the withdrawal symptoms are terrible.

    --
    Stupid sexy Flanders.
  205. Re:I feel ashamed to admit that I'm a scientist. by amicusNYCL · · Score: 1

    While scientists may not realize what's going on, or may not want to admit it, the reality is that average people do see and understand what has happened. They've come to associate "science" with "political agendas". Average people are rapidly losing trust in scientists and science in general.

    That statement is generally correct, but not because scientists have politicized science. It's correct because politicians have politicized science, for some reason. Some politicians think that if you get enough votes, then pi equals exactly 3. Thankfully, the scientific method doesn't require specific political beliefs.

    Let's talk about "average people", though. 77% of Americans believe that angels literally exist. 55% of Americans believe that the founders of the United States founded it as a Christian nation in the Constitution. 25% of Americans think that the sun revolves around the earth (I'll also point out that those 25% of people also probably don't trust scientists, which is not the fault of scientists). 40% of Americans don't believe in evolution, which is something so trivially obvious that I don't understand how someone can't find it to be self-evident. 51% of Americans were not confident that the Big Bang happened, and only 27% of Americans think the earth is 4.5 billion years old. 44% of Americans - that's less than half - are confident that vaccines do not cause autism. I'll take this opportunity to point out that the study which showed a link between vaccines and autism was retracted for fraudulent data, and its author lost his medical license because of it. Still, that retracted study causes confusion among your "average people". For some reason they'll believe a fraudulent study, but not believe that it's fraudulent, and you're trying to suggest that the problem is scientists with a political agenda. 36% of Americans think that Donald Trump is honest. A disturbing amount of people think the planet is flat, using "logic" leaps where I can't even understand the mental gymnastics they used to get from point A to point B.

    Anyway, those are your "average people", probably the same kind of people who seem really impressed when you tell them you're a "computer scientist."

    --
    "Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
  206. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by conquistadorst · · Score: 1

    Do we know what the perfect climate would be for everywhere and how that could be achieved and maintained?

    Pretty sure that answer wouldn't fit into slashdot post lol. Actually I lied, yes it would. How's this?

    It depends.

  207. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

    I believe it was a Nobel Winning Physicist who said, "if your data doesn't agree with your theory, it's your theory that is wrong, not the data. " (paraphrased)

    1. Models are not "data". If the model is wrong, that means the model is wrong. But it doesn't disprove the underlying theory.
    2. It was Richard Feynman.

  208. Re:Science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What caused the global cooling from 1945 to 1975?
    The sulfur emmissions from coal power plants.

    Looks like we just found the solution to global warming, boys!

  209. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Raenex · · Score: 1

    I browse at 3 or above to get the best arguments, which keeps the top-level view manageable, but I always browse at -1 when looking at the replies.

  210. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You are 100% wrong. Earth has had multiple ice ages followed by multiple periods of tropics as far north as Canada. Earth sciences have shown we are due for another major climate change, and even if you took man completely out of the equation, it would still be getting warmer as it is going to do.

    All these claims that man is somehow responsible is nothing but a way to convince you and everybody else to pay a carbon tax, of which i will not pay.

  211. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by greythax · · Score: 1

    I don't know what it is for everywhere, but I can tell you what it is for a farm that is producing well. That would be "whatever it currently is." I'm pretty sure the answer will never be hotter. In fact, in my neck of the woods, the peach crop was ruined this year because we didn't get enough cold hours. Provided this is a trend, it will destroy the entire industry here. Take that, and multiply it times every field everywhere, and then you can see the true "cost" of global climate change.

  212. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by painandgreed · · Score: 1

    In some areas better food production, in other ways much worse.

    Yep. And in the several maps that I've seen so far, the only places that have widespread better production will be the US and Canada. Pretty much everything else is hit hard (along with Texas to Kansas of the US). I always wonder if that has something to do with the US's denial of global warming.

  213. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Um maybe the climate that affords the least disruption to our current civilization?

  214. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Pakistan and India are being hit hard by 'warming' and it will be worse if we stick to business as usual. Both are nuclear states. The flight time of nukes between them is around 12 minutes. So when the other side 'thinks' that radar blip 'could' be a first strike, the leader in the threatened country has seconds to decide to retaliate or not (It's well under a minute). Oh, and they don't have a 'red phone' like the US and Russia did to help avoid big oopsie-daisy momets (even with that, we've come shockingly close many times). Even a small environmental refugee crisis in that area could be very bad for EVERYBODY.
    We've already seen a little warming and it gave Syria a five hundred year drought. That hasn't played out very well. Move that scenario to India and Pakistan and repeat... Nobody knows how much more it will take destabilize India or Pakistan but starving people will try to find food. Authoritarian governments can't jail or kill their way out of that problem. If India and Pakistan Trade nukes, does it get out of control? Human Civilization is in a precarious position and we've been lucky so far. If you keep taking risky bets eventually your luck runs out. Even if there was a 99% chance that the scientists were wrong about climate change we should act quickly to reduce it because a 1 in 100 chance of wiping out everyone are not odds I want to play with. Heck, 1 in 10,000 or one in a million still sucks considering what we could lose. Are you more than 99% sure the (over quoted) "97% of climate scientist" are all wrong?

  215. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by pastafazou · · Score: 1

    Professor Quansheng Ge of the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, did a reconstruction of the past 2000 years of temperatures in China. Prof. Ge’s team found that the most rapid warming in China occurred over AD 1870-2000, at a rate of 0.56 ± 0.42C (100 yr); however, temperatures recorded in the 20th century may not be unprecedented in the last 2000 years, as reconstruction showed records for the period from 981 to 1100, and again from 1201 to 1270, were comparable to those of the present warm period, but with an uncertainty of ±0.28C to ±0.42C at the 95% confidence interval. Since 1000 CE–the period covering the Medieval Climate Anomaly, Little Ice Age, and the present warm period–temperature variations over China have typically been in phase with those of the Northern Hemisphere as a whole.
    The study is published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. https://link.springer.com/arti...

  216. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Your topic choice:
    > Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "science"

    Your text:
    > calling me names does not validate AGW

    Seems a little inconsistent.

  217. Hurrah!! Someone Woke Up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I have been watch the weather for over 50 years. And as famous comedian Lewis Black said: 'The climate used to be temperate'. He was in New York. I was in Chicago. And the summers for both of us were Great!! When we were young.. Hot in the daytime. Cool at night. Plenty of rain to keep the lawn watered most of the time. Then came the mid 80's. and the weather got a little strange. We started to have heat waves in the summer, less rain, and darn cold winters. Fast forward to the 2000's and it got worse. Fast forward to about 2016 and the polar vortex on the north pole splits up. Now we got totally crazy weather. Spotty rain. Hot one day cold another. Good thing the leaked it before some attorney general *ahem* , passed the law about leaks. I wonder why a certain *ahem* president wasn't prosecuted for leaking on twitter after he passed that? ..Ah the benefits of being in the White house > immune to the law.

  218. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by guruevi · · Score: 1

    Drown? In knee high levels of water? You need an instant, catastrophic rise in water to have people drown. There have been those people living in boats for all other situations.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  219. Re:Science by Neuronwelder · · Score: 1

    Yup! And in 2016 the polar votex broke up and now we have chaotic weather. They can kind of predict it.

  220. Re:Science by Neuronwelder · · Score: 1

    Thank you!!!!

  221. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You clearly don't live in the Northern Midwest.

    You clearly didn't read carefully.

    Handling cold is FAR more difficult than heat for humans.

    In a certain fundamental sense, it is much easier to handle getting colder. Heat is easily generated by various processes, but it cannot be destroyed. It can be moved around, but that won't help if it's hot everywhere.

    What you didn't read. We're talking about technology, not human bodies.

    There is a reason the DOT talks about winter survival kits and not summer survival kits.

    That's because relatively few people get stuck in a summer heat storm. On the other hand, a snow storm can trap vehicles for days.

    Also what exactly can you do with a summer survival kit?

  222. What's the economic change model? by guruevi · · Score: 1

    Most agree on the facts, the question is what do you do about it. Scenario 1: Let nature take its course, many will die off and/or find technological solutions to the problems that do arise. Scenario 2: Massive changes now in the way we live by benevolent governments which may or may not help the cause, worst case you end up with gorillas freezing to death in winter after they ate the mongooses that ate the snakes, best case is still questionable and you end up in scenario 1 again. Scenario 3 which is most likely is governments like the US and China eradicating the most "problematic" areas of the world in order for their populations to survive, that will quickly halt the growth of the problem, not sure if everyone will agree with that especially if they end up being wrong anyway.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  223. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yeah - i've been browsing /. anonymously for about 15 years, and it was never good, but some time in the last year shit really fell off a cliff. The commentariat here is toxic.

  224. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by MoarSauce123 · · Score: 1

    I follow your statements...it is all a hoax invented by the Chinese. OK, I bite: By the time reliable temperature data was collected industrialization was already in full swing. I can understand that some might consider any measurements of the past 150 years as tainted. Sure, there were glaciers in Ohio, but over the past thousands of years the climate and ice sheets were stable. That can be clearly shown with examination of rocks, earth, trees, fossils, etc. In the past 100 years temperature rise has significantly accelerated and the only real change is indeed human activity. While there might not be a hard linked cause and effect to be demonstrated (that would require stopping pollution and waiting another 200 years) a strong correlation is clearly there. It is quite naive to burn oil and coal and think it has absolutely no impact on anything. Cause or not, I think we can agree that burning less fossil fuels is generally better. It might or might not do anything about the climate, but we surely will have cleaner air and less sour rain. So let's ditch the latest crazy talk about opening more coal mines and hurry up with becoming a leader in renewable energy. Currently, the Chinese are leading, they make money with renewables and close their coal mines at a rapid pace.

  225. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Bartles · · Score: 1

    I'm smart enough to realize that the effect of data corrections should be more or less random. In the case of climate science it is nowhere near random.

  226. It's a war. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What country, in what era, just came forward and said openly to the population "Yeah, indeed, we're losing the war. Stop fighting and start learning the enemy's language"?

    They know it, they don't know what to do, how to stop it, how to reverse it, how to manage it -- they even don't know how to talk about it.

    So they deny it.

    And a lot of cowards decided to vote for them with perfect ostrich tactics: let's pretend it doesn't exist. Great idea.

    But the war is there outside, anyway. And it won't go away. And when things get rough, being on the guilty side, having had the chance to at least mitigate the problem and having done zero total efforts... well, let's say no weapons can stop an angry world.

  227. Re:Science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Its called being willfully ignorant. Maybe he is too young to have heard of acid rain destroying the forests which was a big problem at that time. You should see the photos of the San Gabriel Mountains in California in the early 20th century showing the trees dying from the air pollution. Now those mountains are bare rock.

  228. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    And you know that: how?
    Can you point out two data points? The originally recorded one and the 'corrected' one?
    You see ... you are not as smart as you think but just repeating stupid myths.

    --
    Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
  229. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by Bartles · · Score: 1

    Sure I could, but you'll just attack the source and ignore it.

  230. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

    Fine. Earth has been hotter during times of flourishing life than it has now.

    Advertising posters notwithstanding, do you really think polar bears just put on shades and pour themselves an ice-cold Coca-Cola when it's 45C?

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  231. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Zontar+The+Mindless · · Score: 1

    I'm sorry, I forgot I was responding to a likely idiot, so let me give you that in Fahrenheit: 113.

    --
    Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
  232. Re:Fake News - Follow Up by Tulsa_Time · · Score: 1
    --
    5 out of 6 people enjoy Russian Roulette & 6 out of 7 Dwarfs are not Happy
  233. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by KGIII · · Score: 1

    They will move south and mix with brown bears. They have already started doing so. I think they call them growler or groler bears. Grizzlies are brown bears, it's the same species.

    The truth is, life will go on. Life will adapt.

    It's going to suck, but many species will survive. Life is amazingly adept at finding a way to survive, some life will even thrive.

    However, it's gonna suck.

    --
    "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  234. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "sc by KGIII · · Score: 1

    More people, globally, die from cold, as opposed to death by heat.

    --
    "So long and thanks for all the fish."
  235. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Stephan+Schulz · · Score: 1

    Innocent until proven guilty, right? Until you can prove, my car is killing the life on planet, kindly keep the screeching to the confines of your safe space. Thank you.

    You are playing semantic games and build straw men. First, the standard of "proof" in law is very different in law, science, and logic. In criminal law, it's "beyond reasonable doubt". In civil law it's "preponderance of evidence".In logic, its "undeniable in all imaginable worlds". I don't want you to go to prison, I want you to stop polluting the planet. That's a civil matter. That standard was met long before. The "beyond reasonable doubt" standard was met, arguably, 15 years or so ago. The logic standard will never be met (see Descartes' Evil Demon), so demanding that just means you are a useless obstructionist. If you were serious about that, you would demand "logical proof" that breathing is worth the effort, and then die a quick death when our reality reasserts itself over hypothetical ones.

    --

    Stephan

  236. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by sciengin · · Score: 1

    Thats odd, why does this timeline start only at 20000 bc when earth and therefore weather is billions of years old (well, granted weather might be a bit younger).
    We know of multiple ice ages and of multiple "hot periods", some of which were indeed hotter than today, fruit trees were found near the arctic circle for example. Those would not have grown there if it had not been much, much warmer than today.

    Yes, the warming in our time is almost surely man-made, nonetheless this graphic reeks of intellectual dishonesty.

  237. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by conquistadorst · · Score: 1

    I don't know what it is for everywhere, but I can tell you what it is for a farm that is producing well. That would be "whatever it currently is." I'm pretty sure the answer will never be hotter. In fact, in my neck of the woods, the peach crop was ruined this year because we didn't get enough cold hours. Provided this is a trend, it will destroy the entire industry here. Take that, and multiply it times every field everywhere, and then you can see the true "cost" of global climate change.

    This was a better response than mine!

  238. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    It doesn't work that way.

    Try telling the jury that I committed this crime. You'll need actual proof that I committed it. Not just that it happened.

    And then I prove it and and then we are at the point this thread started. And then you'l plead insanity.

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  239. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    That Kevin Costner movies was NOT a documentary, you know.

    And this isn't Rotten Tomatoes, so stay on topic.

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  240. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "sc by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    More people, globally, die from cold, as opposed to death by heat.

    And even more people die from exposure to the bullshit you keep posting without evidence.

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  241. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    however, temperatures recorded in the 20th century may not be unprecedented in the last 2000 years

    You may not be aware, but we are living in the 21st century, and so far that has been warmer than the 20th.

    --
    Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
  242. From the "awaiting-approval dept". by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's really good. I shall check the dept phrase more often.

  243. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    Not a hoax invented by the Chinese (nice strawman though), a hoax invented by the climate "scientists" to drum up funding. Look at US governmental funding of climate studies from the 1960s vs today (hint: we spend over $2,000,000,000 per year on AGW research and another $4,000,000,000 per year on climate technology research. That is a shit ton of cash and a business that extorts about the same amount of money from the American people as Comcast; at least Comcast provides a semi-useful service... It is exponentially larger because these "scientists" have convinced a decent segment of the population (mostly liberals lacking in a hard science education who are looking to virtue signal their fellow liberals) and enough politicians (also looking to virtue signal) that there is a crisis...

    We should already be dead and the earth a ball of fire based on their computer models, which were wildly wrong, but the AGW crowd still call it "science" and keep believing because they have no clue and no background in hard science. I am one of those mythical scientists who do not accept AGW (another lie pushed hard by the AGW crowd, the 97% number is a joke and only surveyed 160 "climate scientists". http://www.nationalreview.com/...

    Everyone is a "genius" on the internet, but as background, I hold a PhD in applied thermodynamics and have worked in applied thermodynamics for nearly twenty years, along with teaching for several years at university. I work/design with the underlying physics every day and have thoroughly investigated the AGW claims and the so called "science" and most of it is hand waving, computer modeling with thousands of fudge factors not based on first principles and flat out speculation by PhDs who have never done anything in the real world (100% theoretical work). If they were in any of my Thermo classes, most of the jokers would fail outright.

    Let me lay out a few facts for you. If you are truly interested in science, they should be informative:

    Fact: there were higher measured CO2 levels 150 years ago before the ICE and the industrial revolution: http://drtimball.com/2012/pre-...

    Fact: current global CO2 levels are a myth, "global" CO2 levels are measured at a single recording station in Hawaii where levels can vary 600PPM or more in a single day (the smooth graphs you see are computer generated lies created by averaging and smoothing algorithms.

    Fact: global temperature is a myth. Temperature on the planet varies dramatically from the equator to the poles, day and night, season to season, elevation, ocean depth, surface temperature, atmospheric temperature, cloud cover, vegetation type, rainfall levels, regional geography, etc. Any of those factors plus others can cause the local temperature to vary 20-40C. Global temperature is an estimate based on fallible computer models that try to compensate and calculate using many local measurements and a bunch of fudge factors (numbers pulled out of someone's ass). Satellite measurements are also factored in to this model, but again, at a single site, temperatures can swing 20C in a single day night cycle, and easily double that from season to season. However, somehow we are supposed to believe them when they assure us that the planet has warmed 0.1C in the last 17 years (well within the margin of error, which has never been well defined, let alone validated for their global temperature model). http://ete.cet.edu/gcc/style/i...

    Far too many people worship "science" instead of understanding it and practicing it, probably because they are too emotional and not intelligent enough to do the later, so my posts get mod-bombed by ignorant, self righteous idiots looking to virtue signal with mod points... Regardless how accurate they are.

    --
    If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
  244. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    The ice age CO2 levels (i.e. not directly measured) contain assumptions (AKA educated guesses or SWAGs). Those assumptions can easily be wrong and there is no science to support those assumptions, they are just out there, yet to be proven or disproved. Thus, at best they are very weak and speculative evidence of historic CO2 levels.

    Our best evidence for or against AGW is direct measurements made by real scientists before the industrial revolution. If AGW is real, and CO2 is the culprit, then CO2 must substantially rise from pre industrial revolution levels. However, if you look at the historical and non-smoothed data, CO2 levels haven't risen from what we observed pre-industrial revolution. http://drtimball.com/wp-conten...

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  245. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by pastafazou · · Score: 1

    So you're saying that all the warming of the 20th century was NOT unprecedented, but the little bit of extra warmth in the 21st century IS?

  246. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    Pre-industrial revolution CO2 levels measured by real scientists. http://drtimball.com/wp-conten... The circles are the values cherry picked by "climate scientists" to support their AGW farce.

    You are factually incorrect that CO2 levels are higher today than they were pre-industrial revolution. The ONLY reason that CO2 levels fit nicely into the predicted and observed temperature changes is because the data has been cherry picked to support the hypothesis, which is flat out bad science. I failed more than one student for cherry picking data like this. I am sorry, but you have been mislead. It might be worth you while to listen to a real scientist and update your knowledge and undo some of the brainwashing.

    CO2 is plant food. Many scientists, myself included, believe there is strong evidence that plant growth is limited by CO2 levels, and CO2 levels are limited by plant growth (mostly plants in the ocean, but on land as well to a lesser degree) in a self balancing relationship (living and dead organic mater captures something like 99% of carbon on the planet). CO2 is a critical component for life on earth.

    AGW nuts point to Venus as a cautionary tale of greenhouse effects, but FFS Venus atmosphere is like 90% CO2. CO2 in earths atmosphere is around 400PPM or 0.04% or 1/2,500 the concentration on Venus (not to mention the higher radiative intensity of the sun on Venus due to being closer. Try asking a climate "scientist" what the temperature of the planet should be right now without their supposed AGW and watch them flop around with no evidence or science. http://insider.foxnews.com/201... How can you say AGW is a real thing if you don't know where the baseline should be?

    The greenhouse effect is basic science, but only one small part of the radiation equation, which is the basic physics that drives the radiative losses of the planet into space. CO2 already blocks 100% of the IR bands where it comes into play, so adding more CO2 has no demonstrable effect on global warming. Additionally CO2 only blocks small bands of IR, not the entire spectrum and blocks less radiation losses than cloud cover (FYI).

    You give a bunch of people with no background in hard science a 5th grade level explanation of greenhouse gasses and suddenly they think they have all the answers. You mix in some good old fashioned virtue signaling and anyone who disagrees with them is not only wrong, but evil...

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  247. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    Realize that your "scientific" argument is a comic strip, regardless of how popular on slashdot. Also note that everything before around 1850 is a dotted line because it is not scientific evidence, but pull it out of your ass guesswork based on secondary or even tertiary factors with a lot of built in assumptions. An educated guess by a PhD is still a guess.

    Beyond the problems above, global temperature is a myth as you think of it. Temperature on the planet varies dramatically from the equator to the poles, day and night, season to season, elevation, ocean depth, surface temperature, atmospheric temperature, cloud cover, vegetation type, rainfall levels, regional geography, etc. Any of those factors plus others can cause the local temperature to vary 20-40C or more. Global temperature is an estimate based on fallible computer models that try to compensate and calculate using many local measurements and a bunch of fudge factors (numbers pulled out of someone's ass). Satellite measurements are also factored in to this model, but again, at a single site, temperatures can swing 20C in a single day night cycle, and easily double that from season to season. However, somehow we are supposed to believe them when they assure us that the planet has warmed 0.1C in the last 17 years (well within the margin of error, which has never been well defined, let alone validated for their global temperature model). http://ete.cet.edu/gcc/style/i...

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  248. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    It makes a huge difference. If global warming is a natural phenomena, all the "green" solutions are wrong, and a huge, massive mistake and we should immediately stop pissing away hundreds of billions of dollars globally on "green" projects, products, etc. and start doing what is most economical, efficient and safe for humanity (Teraforming, local climate control, backup power generation, inherently human safe buildings, etc.)

    There have always been un-livable regions of the world, and those regions have grown/shrunk/started/stopped. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... We used to call them deserts and this is nothing new. If it is too inhospitable where you live, move.

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  249. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    CO2 levels have been flat since we have been scientifically measuring the atmospheric gas (within the ranges that have been observed pre-industrial revolution). The AGW climate scientists have lied to you by cherry picking historical values to fit their agenda. The circled data in the first graph are the values that the AGW cherry picked as historical CO2 levels. http://drtimball.com/2012/pre-...

    Beyond that, global CO2 levels are a lie. "Global" CO2 levels are actually just a single measurement station in Hawaii where levels can CHANGE 600PPM in a single day.

    Land use 200 years ago and back was literally less than 1% of the planet's land mass surface area, and that doesn't even factor in that 95% plus of plant mass on the planet is in the ocean. So you are talking about 1% of at best 5% or 0.05% impact on plant mass, assuming other plants didn't grow 0.1% more due to the ever so slightly greater availability of CO2, totally wiping out any effect.

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  250. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    Sorry, you have been lied to. CO2 levels have been the same since we started to scientifically measure them pre-industrial revolution. The AGW liars cherry picked the data to support their lie, and you have swallowed it hook line and sinker. http://drtimball.com/2012/pre-...

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  251. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Dread_ed · · Score: 1

    "And it will be even if we halt all activity right now."

    And apparently if we stop all industrial activity immediately the Earth will get even hotter than it is now.

    https://www.nasa.gov/centers/l...

    Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

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  252. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by lsatenstein · · Score: 1

    Palentologists are the ones who can best prove that climate change is not sinusoidal or repetative over long periods of time.
    So enjoy the 120 heat in Texas and Arizona, and he parched land in Navada and the melting ice in Alaska and the flooding in Florida and ....

    All that must be the will of nature. Its like saying, put on a coat. Do you feel warmer? Its not your body, its nature that is making you warmer.

    --
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  253. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    True, but conversely, we have already dealt with nearly all real pollution in the US (we have clean air and clean water and real laws to protect against real pollution), and now we are faced with some minor temperature fluctuations; about 0.1C in the last 17 years) http://ete.cet.edu/gcc/style/i... and the radical AWG crowd are trying to convince us to spend massive amounts of money on ineffective mitigation of a natural phenomenon, go back to the stone age and live in mud huts like the third world, or kill ourselves to "save the planet"...

    Alternatively, the rational person asks first why we should spend 20% of our GDP on ineffective mitigation when AGW based on rising CO2 levels is demonstrably false (historical SCIENTIFICALLY MEASURED CO2 levels pre-industrial revolution) are on par with what we see today http://drtimball.com/2012/pre-... and global warming is much more easily, economically and effectively countered with technology (climate control systems, sea walls, better building designs, etc.)

    The earth is a massive sandbox, and we occupy only 10% of the land mass with everything that we do (farming, dwellings, dwellings, etc.) The rest is wild. Land only makes up 30% of the total area. All the humans on the planet could fit inside the county of Jacksonville, Florida. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... If you are crowded where you are, you should move.

    Regardless of the SJW AGW crusaders here on slashdot, AGW is on the ropes in the collective consciousness of society because they have been wrong far too often and been caught violating scientific methods and ethics (faking and cherry picking data, etc.) to be taken seriously anymore. The era of "feeling" that something is right and virtue signaling is in it's death throes, welcome to a new age of enlightenment.

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  254. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    I'm saying if you find a fire burning the forest, you can't assume that it was man made. I don't exclude the possibility, but the AGW "climate scientists" have yet to show anyone real proof that the 0.1C rise in the last 17 years was man caused or indicative of a coming apocalypse. If it wasn't, we are pissing away $7,000,000,000 a year in the US alone that could be better spent on health care for the poor, job training for the unemployed (literally just about anything). And that doesn't even consider all of the private sector spending that could be better spent elsewhere...

    AGW crowd: "CO2 levels are increasing" Nope, they lied and the cat is out of the bag. They cherry picked the scientific measurements made pre-industrial revolution to fit their narraive instead of including all the data, which agrees well with what we see today regarding CO2 levels. http://drtimball.com/2012/pre-...

    AGW crowd: "CO2 blocks IR from escaping, more is bad!" Nope, CO2 in the atmosphere already blocks 100% of the IR in the bands that it reflects IR and the 100% reflection happens well below 100PPM (current levels are maybe 440PPM with historic SCIENTIFIC pre-industrial measurements between 250-550PPM)...

    AGW crowd: "All scientists believe in AGW!" Nope, that lie was based on a survey of 160 climate scientists, of which 77 responded. That is hardly all scientists.
    http://www.nationalreview.com/...

    AGW crowd: "You are evil and you want everyone to drown from sea level rise!" Nope, sea levels are projected to rise between 0.5 feet and 6 feet. It is trivial for us to build 20 ft sea walls, and they could already be built around all endangered, inhabited coastline for what we have spent on AGW research and development in the last 5 years in the US alone ($35,000,000,000). If global warming really will continue as AGW nuts project and they really were concerned, then they should encourage the redirection of their funding to start building the sea walls.... but it is not real, it is just a cash cow for the AGW green industries and research grant industry.

    AGW crowd: "But, but, it feel AGW is real, and I'm terrified!" The rest of society: STFU already http://insider.foxnews.com/201...

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  255. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    I got down modded by trolls who masquerade as actual humans. I have excellent karma, regardless of a few shitstorms like this caused by ignorant SJW libtards who can't formulate a coherent response due to excessive froth in their mouths so they just downmod instead. Feel free to check out my replies to other thoughtful humans who posted to this thread. You might learn something beyond your echo chamber.

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  256. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    In general I also browse at higher levels, but I also add modifiers to other intelligent slashdoters that I come across so that when reasonable posts are made and get immediately nuked by some jackass SJW, I can see them and upmod them back. There are a lot of butt hurt little fascist libtards looking to dish out some "justice" to anyone who doesn't conform to their narrative, now that they have completely lost their shit over the last election.

    Feel free to check out all of the detailed, sourced replies that I have made to other non-troll posts on this thread and tell me again how wrong my original post was and how it was a troll exactly. This is the same shit that just got that guy fired over at Google. Fascist little SJW can't tolerate opposition because they don't have the facts on their side, so they must silence all outside their groupthink.

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  257. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    And there are the SJW mod points. I get blasted to -1 and you have +4 for for your facist little screed. Your display name is well suited.

    Meanwhile AGW has cherry picked the CO2 data to justify their lies: http://drtimball.com/2012/pre-...

    AGW fraudsters have falsified data to support their lies: https://science.house.gov/news...

    So I agree, no more fair and balanced hearing of both sides. We know that the AGW "climate scientists" lied their asses off to "prove" AGW. Defund all AGW research, development, mandates, etc. and anything related to AGW. If it is really a thing, the SJW can fund it out of their own pockets and we will see how long that lasts.

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  258. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    Thank you

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  259. Re:Science by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Svante Arrhenius, in Worlds in the Making (1908):

    "If the quantity of carbonic acid [ CO2 + H2O H2CO3 (carbonic acid) ] in the air should sink to one-half its present percentage, the temperature would fall by about 4; a diminution to one-quarter would reduce the temperature by 8. On the other hand, any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth's surface by 4; and if the carbon dioxide were increased fourfold, the temperature would rise by 8." (p53)

    Citation provided, you lazy bastard.

  260. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    Or to further your analogy, I have 20 years experience in applied Thermodynamics and a PhD in the field. The science is far from settled. I have done a lot of research on the topic and there is good, hard science that CO2 levels are not rising from historic, pre-industrial levels: http://drtimball.com/2012/pre-...

    Since that is the main argument of AGW, I (and a lot of other scientists) are saying that there is only one hole, from natural causes not yet well understood, and rather than throwing our engine overboard, which will do nothing but cost us our engine, we should use our scientific knowledge and our engineering skills to wall/seal off the affected parts of the ship, pump the water out and patch the hole from the outside. Some people will have their rooms flooded, but that's tough shit, at least the ship doesn't go down and we can relocate the affected people or reclaim those rooms if we want (we are only talking about between 6 inches and 6 feet of sea level rise... the 1000% margin of error tells you just how inexact climate "science" really is, if it is to be believed at all, remember, these guys can't predict if it will rain a week from today with any reasonable accuracy.)

    Once we remove the AGW facet of global warming, it becomes a much simpler engineering problem to solve by mitigation until the earth enters its next cooling phase. And you also remove the moralistic virtue signaling BS the SJW have been swinging around for the last 20 years.

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  261. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    The US has just had 8 years of "green jobs" which turned out to be BS. https://www.bloomberg.com/news... AGW mitigation work is the same as bureaucracy, not only does it waste the life energy of the worker trying to solve the wrong problem, it places an unnecessary burden on the rest of us.

    We already have clean air and clean water, and those were as you say valuable improvements, but that is not the topic at hand. Trying to mitigate CO2 in the atmosphere is like removing Nitrogen from the atmosphere, there is no benefit because there is no problem. CO2 levels measured scientifically pre-industrial revolution are the same as today: http://drtimball.com/2012/pre-...

    The expected sea level rise is somewhere between 6 inches and 2 feet IF warming continues. The wildest projections have it at 6 feet. That is not millions of people displaced. In the modern world, we will just build seawalls, in the third world, people will just move, as this change is not like a tidal wave, it is gradual. There is a lot of evidence that sea levels have been rising for millennia: http://thechive.com/2016/11/03... Those people didn't have gills, they built on dry land and as the sea levels rose, they moved and the stuff they didn't take went under, that's just historical fact and a part of our world.

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  262. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    You might what to stop making a fool out of yourself and read the facts about pre-industrial revolution CO2 levels measured by real scientists and how they stack up with current CO2 levels. http://drtimball.com/2012/pre-...

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  263. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    So lets take the $6,000,000,000 we piss away each year on AGW research and pipe water from rivers to the biggest deserts on the planet and start terraforming them, first with more desert species and eventually more biodense species of plants. Lets have a true green initiative for everyone who lives in the desert or high desert and start paying them to grow trees, grass and other plants. We could probably capture all of the CO2 we are generating within a few decades. Let me know how the AGW industry likes that idea.

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  264. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 1

    First of all, $6B is very little in the scheme of things. Consider the $500B we piss away on the military. Second, it's geoengineering, not terraforming. We already live on Earth (Terra). Third, diverting large amounts of water to sustain deserts is a poor plan, just ask California how it's working out for them. Fourth, the sheer volume of CO2 being emitted is far beyond what a few new forests could absorb even if we could sustain them (which we cannot). Thus far we have put 400 years worth of what trees can absorb into the atmosphere. Fifth, even if we so how managed to remove it, it's only being sequestered within the tree until the tree dies at which point it's released. This wouldn't actually solve the problem.

    The only way to solve this is to use a lot of machines to extract the hundreds of billions of tons of CO2 that we've already put into their air.

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  265. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

    If you stop reading the MSM and get some real news you'd see it - http://www.washingtontimes.com... . Look at pictures of any planet from 30 years ago and today and you can see changes with your own eyes. They are actually visible and show warming.

    Not man, nature. Only the brainwashed still think Man is causing it.

  266. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scie by angel'o'sphere · · Score: 1

    Depends on the source.
    And actually, I would be to lazy to attack anyone.

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  267. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    Sorry, you have been lied to. CO2 levels have been the same since we started to scientifically measure them pre-industrial revolution.

    Bullshit. One retired geologist claims thousands of sites measuring CO2 levels are faked. What are the chances you fell for "it", swallowing the whole trawler?

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  268. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    So you're saying that all the warming of the 20th century was NOT unprecedented,

    Nope. Learn to read, that might help with your life problems.

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  269. Re: Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "sc by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    More people, globally, die from cold, as opposed to death by heat.

    Wait till a few more heat waves hit, it'll push the margins considerably.

  270. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

    You posted that jerkoff link as a citation and you think I need to worry about credibility? Remove the log from your own eye, sir.

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  271. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by toddestan · · Score: 1

    I assumed his main point was the sudden change in the rate of how fast the temperature is changing rather than the absolute numbers. That is what is unprecedented (except for perhaps events like Chicxulub), and going back further isn't going to change that. Also I doubt the data we have past 20000BC is that granular anyway.

  272. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    Please feel free to discredit the pre-industrial revolution scientists who created the data that I linked to, if you have an actual evidence to back them up. If CO2 levels were measured between 250 and 550PPM at that time, and we see the same levels today (which we do) then you cannot rationally argue that CO2 levels are rising because of human industrialization. Sorry.

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  273. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Uberbah · · Score: 1

    Prolific troll is prolific. Do you give lead painted toys, asbestos mittens and DDT spray bottles to kids as Christmas stocking stuffers, to stick it to those librul scientists who are just making shit up? If not, why not?

  274. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    Please feel free to discredit the pre-industrial revolution scientists who created the data that I linked to,

    I'd gladly do. Too bad you and Ballsy don't actual provide the data you "use" your graph. Do you have anything to hide? Like what and how was actually measured? Maybe because those measurements not only include the gaseous CO2 that is actually greenhouse effect relevant, but also CO2 soluted in the air humidity, which isn't relevant, and ignored today? Heck, the huge variation for data from the same time should show you something is wrong with the data.

    But others digged up the facts and already debunked that graph from your link years ago: http://www.somesnarksareboojum...

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  275. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    If you stop reading the MSM and get some real news you'd see it - http://www.washingtontimes.com... . Look at pictures of any planet from 30 years ago and today and you can see changes with your own eyes

    Errm, the news you linked to talks about "larger variations over thousands of years", not 30.

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  276. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    The way I see, both sides have valid points: the earth is in a warming trend, and would be with or without us.

    That's an odd claim considering that one side predominantly proclaims there is no warming trend. Even if what you claimed were true, it would obviously not be a compromise position.

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  277. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Or to further your analogy, I have 20 years experience in applied Thermodynamics and a PhD in the field. The science is far from settled. I have done a lot of research on the topic and there is good, hard science that CO2 levels are not rising from historic, pre-industrial levels: http://drtimball.com/2012/pre-...

    As long as you are quoting Dumball, we know you have no PHD.

  278. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

    That's right. We're seeing some big changes in our planet in the past 30 years. So big that you could see it from another planet. The point I'm making is we see these same type of changes on other planets from our own planet. No "evil" humans there destroying those planets. The point I'm making is it's not us doing it. It's nature. We just happen to be at a point where it's noticeable. Sky is not falling, we've been here before and not that long ago really. Romans grew grapes in England when they occupied it and that's just right around 2000 years ago. You can look that up, it's a fact that they can't lie to you about. Had to be warmer to grow grapes. The sea was at least 30' higher than it is today, though that's a lot tougher to find. I also found that while researching English/Roman history. So we're returning to where we were. No need to pay guys like Al Gore a bunch of money. Al has made over 500 million on his global warming crusade, some people would say scam.

    Have to know when you're being lied to. Something a large part of the US doesn't know about. Google Debbie Wasserman Shultz. That's not fake news. That's probably the biggest story since Watergate, probably the biggest since the Tea Pot Dome scandal. The MSM is barely covering it at all. That should be front and center, talked about and investigated like crazy. They don't want to because it'll expose them. Their lies. The press corp in general aren't that bright either. When I was in college, anyone could be a journalist. Dumbest of the dumb and were still in college.

  279. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    All the humans on the planet could fit inside the county of Jacksonville, Florida. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

    And they'd all get wet feet in a few years.

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  280. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by Plumpaquatsch · · Score: 1

    That's right. We're seeing some big changes in our planet in the past 30 years. So big that you could see it from another planet. The point I'm making is we see these same type of changes on other planets from our own planet.

    That's not what your article says. You need to read it again, and again, and again, until you understand that.

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  281. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by ebvwfbw · · Score: 1

    That was a start. I see I have to supply the supplemental material. Fair enough.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...
    https://www.newscientist.com/a...

    Physics behind it - http://www.earth-climate.com/

    A site that has put together a whole lot of research - https://realclimatescience.com...

    How did we get here? A D science student from Harvard -

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

    Once you look at this stuff, it's hard to not see he fraud that has been put upon us at great expense. So the question is - will you allow yourself to be fooled again by guys like Al Gore?

  282. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by dpilot · · Score: 1

    Let's pretend for the moment that you're right, and global warming IS a natural phenomenon. That doesn't immediately indicate that all of the "green" solutions are wrong - except in one respect - and that is if CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. Except in that scenario, the "green" solutions are good ones, and are actually the least intervention.

    I've read of scientists talking of "geoforming", with various proposals, notably aerosols to reflect more light. But universally they're afraid of trying that kind of thing, and want to try the lesser interventions of CO2 reduction first. They consider "active geoforming" to be a last-ditch measure.

    Your assertion that "green solutions are wrong" is likely based on the assertion that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas. Most of the scientific community asserts that it is. Since you don't trust them, who are you trusting for your geoforming science, and why the heck should I trust them?

    Or try something else... Since you say global warming is part of a natural cycle, then PREDICT! So far the global warming side is doing a decent job of predicting - each of at least the past four years has been the warmest year on record, each surpassing the last. On the global warming side, the prediction is that that will continue for some years, even with intervention.

    What does you natural cycle "theory" predict?

    Make a prediction, let's TEST.

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    The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
  283. Re:Leaked Political hit job masquerading as "scien by LeftCoastThinker · · Score: 1

    I don't trust any scientists. I have a PhD in applied science, and am fully capable of reviewing the data myself, which I have been doing for over 20 years. I believe and trust hard facts, and have a very low opinion of climate "scientists" who have been shilling for grant money and wildly wrong for the last 20 plus years with their computer models and predictions, http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp... AGW "scientists" have been caught repeatedly faking numbers, http://www.washingtontimes.com... and even they will agree that the science is far from settled (the only people arguing that the science is settled and all scientists believe in AGW are Bill Nye and the idiot politicians and those who worship at their feet). Further, your assertion that being right that the temperature is going up somehow validates the AGW "scientists" is ludicrous. Is it rational, as the AGW "scientists" argue, to destroy our civilization, and kill millions of people (even unintentionally, they are still dead, and rolling back civilization in favor of nature always costs lives, just ask the 45 million Africans who have died of Malaria to "save the birds" after we stopped using DDT http://www.discoverthenetworks... http://www.who.int/malaria/med... )

    If the global temperature will rise another 0.3C in the next 100 years before falling 2C in the following 500 years is it in any way rational to divert funds from the most efficient and economical solutions to problems like energy, transportation, heating and AC? I will answer for you: No, it is not. Is there any moral, legal or rational justification for redistributing by force natural resources or money to countries more affected by global warming if AGW is not real? No there is not. There are some very key results if AGW is real or not that come into play.

    Scientific fact says CO2 levels pre-industrial revolution were measured between 250 and 550 PPM. Therefore, our measurements today do not indicate much, if any, change in CO2 concentrations globally. The simplest and most reasonable explanation is that plant growth is limited primarily by CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and that is where all the CO2 has been going as we produce it. This theory has been thoroughly tested and proven scientifically (if you increase CO2 concentrations locally, keeping other factors constant, plant growth is more rapid, more dense and the overall carbon capture rate increases.) This is scientific fact, not pull it out of your ass speculation.

    Furthermore, hard science says that the earth's atmosphere is already 100% opaque in the 3 IR bands that CO2 absorbs. Thus, arguing more CO2 in the atmosphere contributes to global warming is wild speculation at best and at worst irrational/disingenuous.

    Unlike your (incorrect) assertions, I do not follow others, I have and will continue to evaluate the evidence myself. I am happy to make a prediction for you: The climate will change. It will be either hotter or cooler than it is today. Glaciers will either grow or shrink. Sea levels will either rise or fall. The one constant that we know is that the climate is never constant. To assert that what we see today is atypical and caused by humans based on the last 300 years of observation is irrational and completely ignores the facts at hand. https://static.skepticalscienc...

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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