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User: riverat1

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  1. Re:What about the rest of the world? on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    Why don't you take something scientific he's said and try to debunk it if you can. Mostly he's been on the conservative side with his predictions.

  2. Re:Hopefully it's an outlier on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    Hah, I hoped you'd come up with something more recent than 24 years ago. That doesn't have anything to do with science. Why don't you come up with an actual scientific point that you think he's exaggerated. There are a few things he's said that seem a bit extreme to me but they all involve predictions for sometime in the far future (50-300 years out) so it's impossible to judge them yet. I've followed what Hansen has said fairly closely over the years and as I said he's been pretty much a bit on the conservative side with is actual scientific predictions.

  3. Re:Can we swap? on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    Who is saying 1 meter in 500 years?

  4. Re:Heatwave Center was SIXTH hottest on record on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    There were 3,135 new hot records set in July for the continental US. They outnumbered cold records by 16.6 to 1.

  5. Re:Test equipment calibration? on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    Maybe.. just maybe... scientists are well aware of the issues with changing instrumentation and the potential for that to introduce errors. Maybe that's one of the main reasons to make adjustments to the raw temperature data. Also, for most climate studies an accuracy within 1 degree is plenty good.

  6. Re:I'm ready. on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    Maybe nothing will change until it has to. By then the change that is forced on you will be at best extremely unpleasant and could be catastrophic as far as any individual is concerned.

  7. Re:I'm ready. on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    What makes you think anyone is asking you to turn off your computers and air conditioner?

    I'll agree that there are a few extremists who would say that but that's not most people including Al Gore.

  8. Re:I'm ready. on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    If global warming is real your lifestyle is going to change whether you like it or not. Wouldn't it be better to proactively try to change it in a way that makes things better rather than try to cope with changes forced on you unwillingly by global changes?

  9. Re:AGW Converts on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    Lovelock did not become a skeptic, just a realist. He was way over the top before.

  10. Re:AGW Converts on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    No, Richard Muller was a skeptic in the true sense of the word. He was willing to change his opinion once he examined the evidence in detail. A person who is unwilling to change their opinion regardless of the the evidence is not truly a skeptic but instead is an ideologue.

  11. Re:A new cherry-pick start on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    The Escalator graphic illustrates this point perfectly.

  12. Re:Can we swap? on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    There is no 20 foot sea level rise prediction for the end of the century, just maybe 3-6 feet. The 20 foot SLR comes from how much sea level would rise if all of the ice on Greenland melted but that will take several hundred years under any realistic scenario.

  13. Re:Choose, denialists on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    The 1936 record was only for the continental US, not the globe.

  14. Re:Choose, denialists on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    In 1936 perhaps there was a 0.1% chance of those hot temperatures occurring but now is 2012 perhaps the chances of the same heat occurring are 1.0%. That's what illustrates global warming is occurring, the shift in the chances of some weather event happening. Climate science is statistical in nature so you have to look at it in those terms. (Numbers were made up by me but I'll bet they're in the right ballpark).

    A few people may have said those things but most scientists did not believe that at the time. I pay attention to what scientists say but take it with a grain of salt until I see further confirmation.

  15. Re:What about the rest of the world? on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    I keep hearing about the "nomenclature" change from global warming to climate change but if that's true they why did they call it the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change when it as created in 1988 instead of the Intergovernmental Panel on Global Warming? I guess you could say global warming is a subset if climate change.

    Also, the big global climate models don't predict weather, weird or not but climate. They project possible climate changes based on different scenarios and their main output is a 30 year running mean of global temperatures for a given scenario.

  16. Re:What about the rest of the world? on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    Do you ever wonder why people giggle at you and your complete misunderstanding of what Hansen is saying?

  17. Re:Hopefully it's an outlier on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    Maybe it would be helpful if you cited an example of Hansen's exaggerated claims. Then we could talk about something of substance rather than you attacking Hansen for perceived character flaws.

  18. Re:Hopefully it's an outlier on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    You can denigrate Hansen all you want but most of his predictions have proven to be on the conservative side.

  19. Re:Hopefully it's an outlier on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    Well, my cite would be James Hansen's recently published paper. He specifically discusses the shift of the normal distribution of temperatures toward the hot end of the scale due to global warming. The numbers I used were just pulled out of my ass but temperatures are distributed in a normal distribution (aka bell curve) with average temperatures most common and extreme temperatures the least common. It doesn't take much of a shift in the normal distribution to significantly increase the chances of a specific extreme temperature occurring.

    This post on Hansen's Sunday Op-Ed in the Washington post lays it out fairly well. Look down the page a bit at the graph titled "Shifting Distribution of Summer Temperature Anomalies" for an illustration of what I was talking about in the GP post.

  20. Re:All except Washington on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    You are obviously not a native if you're wearing a coat when it's warmer than 50 F.

  21. Re:Hopefully it's an outlier on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    It's not surprising that record cold temperatures are still being set when the record is only a bit over 100 years old. Since the 1980's however the number of hot records being set has outnumbered the number of cold records being set by a considerable margin. If there were no global warming you'd expect the number of hot records and number of cold records to be approximately equal.

  22. Re:Hopefully it's an outlier on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 0

    Maybe in the 1930's there was a 0.1% chance of a heat wave like that happening. Maybe now there is a 1% chance. Maybe in 20 or 30 years there's a 10% chance of it happening. If you raise the average temperature that's how the odds change out near the end of the bell curve.

  23. Re:Hopefully it's an outlier on July Heat Set U.S. Record · · Score: 1

    For now it's still an outlier but in 10 or 20 years it may be the new normal.

  24. Re:Before the trolls start on NASA Scientist: Heat Waves Really Are From Global Warming · · Score: 1

    Even out in the Mojave Desert or Palm Springs? Here in Western Oregon we had our for 100F+ day since 2009 recently.

  25. Re:Before the trolls start on NASA Scientist: Heat Waves Really Are From Global Warming · · Score: 1

    I think "predicted" is too strong a word. His full statement was "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions." He just said it could happen at the current rate, not that he thought it would.