Well, large amounts of data are available now so it's a moot point. And the BEST study provides even more evidence that there was nothing to be found anyway. Phil Jones may have a prickly personality but there is little evidence his science is wrong.
If you're interested in a rebuttal to the NOAA paper you can find it here. It basically says the NOAA paper did not properly account for the Moscow urban heat island effect. It used a yearly average for the UHI rather than computing it by the month. The UHI has a greater effect on temperatures in the winter than it does in the summer.
I would be very interested to see a refutation of the idea that grant money has in fact been spent preferentially for pro-global-warming ideas.
I would be very interested to see a confirmation of the idea that grant money has in fact been spent preferentially for pro-global-warming ideas. I see the meme repeated all the time but I've never seen any real evidence of it.
Turning Siberia and Canada into fertile temperature zones will take centuries. Most of that area has poor soil that takes time to become better soil. Deserts will remain deserts although the may move some. Greenland has never been ice free in human history. Back when CO2 and global temperatures were higher the Sun was also cooler. The Sun has warmed about 25% in the last 3 billion years. Yes, we'll have to adapt but it may not be easy and will be quite expensive.
Since NOBODY, so far, has been able to quantify ANY specific effects that are due specifically to greenhouse warming,...
Water vapor in the atmosphere has increase about 4% from greenhouse warming. The stratosphere has cooled due to greenhouse warming. Many natural phenomena such as the range of a species or the dates of migration have been documented as changing due to warming.
Consensus is what happens when scientists in a field stop arguing about an issue. It's not something they decide they're going to have and then they go around recruiting people. Recent surveys show that 98% of climate scientists agree that AGW is a problem. That's a good enough consensus for me.
If you increase the concentration of CO2 in a mixture of gases like the atmosphere with infrared radiation passing through it it will warm up by capturing more of that IR. That's simple physics. Human burning of fossil fuels has put more than twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere as it takes to raise the level from 280 ppmv in 1830 to 390 ppmv in 2011. You're going to need some pretty extraordinary evidence to show the increase in CO2 is not the primary cause of global warming and humans are not the primary cause of the increase in CO2. Good luck with that.
That was pretty much my point. It was the GP that said ".. in fact cutting taxes is basically the governments only tool to increase production". In a recession government deficit spending can help to keep the economy running. Now if we could just eliminate the deficit spending when we aren't in a recession. Although I don't think taxes necessarily remove excess currency from circulation. If the government turns around and spends the tax money on infrastructure and welfare/unemployment it goes right back into circulation. If they are used to pay off debt then they do remove the money from circulation though.
I'm curious, how will cutting taxes will increase production? Corporations are sitting on over $2 trillion in cash and the wealthy are desperately searching for ways to invest their money. Giving them more money won't help if there isn't the demand to make investments worthwhile. Around 70% of the US economy is consumer spending and nearly half of consumers already don't pay any Federal income tax. I'm mostly a capitalist at heart but when the wealth disparity gets skewed to the point it has in the US lately those on the lower end of the scale are forced to cut back their spending to just the basics. That's not helpful to the overall economy. Better if the wealth was spread more widely. The health of an economy has more to do with the rate that money moves through it than it does with the total amount of money in it.
That's got to be one of the funniest things I've read on/. in a while. They may not make the laws in the strict sense but they have far more influence on lawmaking than the rest of us, that is until the rest of us get tired enough of it to make an issue of it. That may be happening now.
That's an important point. When 70% of the US economy is consumer spending how can the wealthy expect to keep raking it in if people are reduced to spending only on the bare necessities? There aren't enough people in the 1% to spend enough to keep the economy going by themselves.
I'm sorry but you are wrong. To quote the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article on climate (emphasis added):
Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods. Climate can be contrasted to weather, which is the present condition of these elements and their variations over shorter periods.
What you're talking about is weather.
Climate science is entirely statistical. It's inherent in the definition of climate. Climate is the envelope within which chaotic, naturally variable weather operates. If you're going to define it as something else it's your problem, not mine.
There have been 24 leap seconds added since 1972 including 1 each from 1991-1995 so your claim sounds a little bogus to me. Maybe it was a change in the official actual length of a day rather than a leap second. That would cause computers internal clocks to stray. To adjust for a leap second you just have to reset the clock.
... if the earth is tilting, then maybe AGW isn't the elephant in the room we think it is...
The Earth definitely is tilting. That has been known empirically for over 1000 years (Abu-Mahmud Khojandi). It varies from 22.1 degrees to 24.5 degrees and back on an approximately 41,000 year cycle. Right now the tilt is 23.44 degrees and is decreasing. A quick and dirty calculation reveals the Arctic Circle and the others are moving by about 13 meters per year* [ (2.4 degrees/20,500 years) * 111 kilometers per degree {of latitude} =.012995 kilometers per year ]. That's something that is easily measured. Decreasing tilt tends to make winters warmer and summers cooler with an overall cooling trend so it's not helping global warming.
*So I was wrong, it's not millimeters per year, it's meters per year.
But, we're just talking past each other. No doubt a waste of our time.
Climate is a statistical science. One temperature measurement is a weather report. The average of temperature over several decades is a climate report. The data does show the variance but when you're dealing with 1.6 billion data points as the BEST study did you're not going to search the individual records for that variance, you're going to use statistical methods. If a study such as BEST which had two statistical scientists on its team and two known climate skeptics (Muller and Curry) is willing to express their results in fractions of a degree then I accept that they know what they are doing and the results are valid.
I can't even begin to imagine the data sources by which geologists are contriving these age numbers...
Just because you don't know enough about geology to imagine how they came up with the numbers doesn't mean they aren't valid. Events like the raising of the Isthmus of Panama leave clues to their age that geologists can interpret. Cutting off the currents between the Atlantic and Pacific as the Isthmus did leads to evolutionary divergence of the species in the area. Radiometric dating can tell you how long ago a particular formation was formed. I'm sure there are any number of other clues the geologists used. I guess you don't believe the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago either.
Science isn't about TRVTH. You're asking for a level of exactness that seldom if ever exists in science. 24 hours in a day is a useful average but it's not exact. The earthquake in Chile changed the length of a day by nanoseconds. Should we all go out and get new clocks because of that? The tilt of the Earth varies over time. Should we get new maps every year because the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn and the Arctic and Antarctic Circles are constantly changing by millimeters per year?
Statistically speaking when you combine a large number of measurements it's justified to use a higher precision than the original measurements. It helps show when there is a change in the measurements. For example if you had 3 measurements: 62, 63, 64 the average is 63. If instead you measure 62, 63, 65 the average is 63.33... If you limit yourself to the precision of the original measurement the average for both is 63 and you would never know that something had changed. I think even chemical engineers would accept that.
BTW, I did a little research and I was wrong about 2.5 million years. The Isthmus of Panama arose more like 3 million years ago (+/- some number). And just for the record, 3 million years isn't all that precise. An example of precise would be 2,956,210 years, a precision that isn't possible for events in prehistory.
Should I have written "2.5 million years ago +/- 0.5 million years"? Would that have made you happy? I don't think that kind of precision is called for here.
There have been 7 LANDSAT satellites so far although one failed to reach orbit. Two of them are still functioning. The next one is scheduled to be launched in 2012. To quote Wikipedia They "...are a unique resource for global change research and applications in agriculture, cartography, geology, forestry, regional planning, surveillance, education and national security." I guess you can call them a hobby but I wouldn't. Over the years they've returned a tremendous amount of information about the Earth.
The temperature aberration from the 1940's-1970's is explained largely by the rapid industrialization without pollution controls that we experienced during that period. Particularly the aerosol pollution including SO2. Once we started enforcing pollution controls the aberration went away.
If you've ever spent much time in a place that gets plenty of snowfall you would know that in general you get more snow when it's warmer, until it becomes warm enough to change to rain. The reason being that the colder air is the dryer it is. Colder air can't hold as much water vapor and so can't snow as much.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, large amounts of data are available now so it's a moot point. And the BEST study provides even more evidence that there was nothing to be found anyway. Phil Jones may have a prickly personality but there is little evidence his science is wrong.
So the supposed sins of Phil Jones prove that all climate scientists are lying? That's pretty scientific./sarcasm
If you're interested in a rebuttal to the NOAA paper you can find it here. It basically says the NOAA paper did not properly account for the Moscow urban heat island effect. It used a yearly average for the UHI rather than computing it by the month. The UHI has a greater effect on temperatures in the winter than it does in the summer.
I would be very interested to see a refutation of the idea that grant money has in fact been spent preferentially for pro-global-warming ideas.
I would be very interested to see a confirmation of the idea that grant money has in fact been spent preferentially for pro-global-warming ideas. I see the meme repeated all the time but I've never seen any real evidence of it.
Turning Siberia and Canada into fertile temperature zones will take centuries. Most of that area has poor soil that takes time to become better soil. Deserts will remain deserts although the may move some. Greenland has never been ice free in human history. Back when CO2 and global temperatures were higher the Sun was also cooler. The Sun has warmed about 25% in the last 3 billion years. Yes, we'll have to adapt but it may not be easy and will be quite expensive.
There is little evidence that there were any times in the last two millenia were warmer than it is now.
Since NOBODY, so far, has been able to quantify ANY specific effects that are due specifically to greenhouse warming, ...
Water vapor in the atmosphere has increase about 4% from greenhouse warming. The stratosphere has cooled due to greenhouse warming. Many natural phenomena such as the range of a species or the dates of migration have been documented as changing due to warming.
Consensus is what happens when scientists in a field stop arguing about an issue. It's not something they decide they're going to have and then they go around recruiting people. Recent surveys show that 98% of climate scientists agree that AGW is a problem. That's a good enough consensus for me.
If you increase the concentration of CO2 in a mixture of gases like the atmosphere with infrared radiation passing through it it will warm up by capturing more of that IR. That's simple physics. Human burning of fossil fuels has put more than twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere as it takes to raise the level from 280 ppmv in 1830 to 390 ppmv in 2011. You're going to need some pretty extraordinary evidence to show the increase in CO2 is not the primary cause of global warming and humans are not the primary cause of the increase in CO2. Good luck with that.
Groan...
That was pretty much my point. It was the GP that said ".. in fact cutting taxes is basically the governments only tool to increase production". In a recession government deficit spending can help to keep the economy running. Now if we could just eliminate the deficit spending when we aren't in a recession. Although I don't think taxes necessarily remove excess currency from circulation. If the government turns around and spends the tax money on infrastructure and welfare/unemployment it goes right back into circulation. If they are used to pay off debt then they do remove the money from circulation though.
I'm curious, how will cutting taxes will increase production? Corporations are sitting on over $2 trillion in cash and the wealthy are desperately searching for ways to invest their money. Giving them more money won't help if there isn't the demand to make investments worthwhile. Around 70% of the US economy is consumer spending and nearly half of consumers already don't pay any Federal income tax. I'm mostly a capitalist at heart but when the wealth disparity gets skewed to the point it has in the US lately those on the lower end of the scale are forced to cut back their spending to just the basics. That's not helpful to the overall economy. Better if the wealth was spread more widely. The health of an economy has more to do with the rate that money moves through it than it does with the total amount of money in it.
The 1%'ers do not make laws ...
That's got to be one of the funniest things I've read on /. in a while. They may not make the laws in the strict sense but they have far more influence on lawmaking than the rest of us, that is until the rest of us get tired enough of it to make an issue of it. That may be happening now.
That's an important point. When 70% of the US economy is consumer spending how can the wealthy expect to keep raking it in if people are reduced to spending only on the bare necessities? There aren't enough people in the 1% to spend enough to keep the economy going by themselves.
If their vision is compromised by a laser they may even have difficulty setting up the instruments.
It sounds like a prime candidate for asteroid mining.
It's not cold, it's just un-hot.
Citgo is owned by the national oil company of Venezuela. Hugo Chavez is the leader of Venezuela.
I'm sorry but you are wrong. To quote the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article on climate (emphasis added):
Climate encompasses the statistics of temperature, humidity, atmospheric pressure, wind, rainfall, atmospheric particle count and other meteorological elemental measurements in a given region over long periods. Climate can be contrasted to weather, which is the present condition of these elements and their variations over shorter periods.
What you're talking about is weather.
Climate science is entirely statistical. It's inherent in the definition of climate. Climate is the envelope within which chaotic, naturally variable weather operates. If you're going to define it as something else it's your problem, not mine.
There have been 24 leap seconds added since 1972 including 1 each from 1991-1995 so your claim sounds a little bogus to me. Maybe it was a change in the official actual length of a day rather than a leap second. That would cause computers internal clocks to stray. To adjust for a leap second you just have to reset the clock.
The Earth definitely is tilting. That has been known empirically for over 1000 years (Abu-Mahmud Khojandi). It varies from 22.1 degrees to 24.5 degrees and back on an approximately 41,000 year cycle. Right now the tilt is 23.44 degrees and is decreasing. A quick and dirty calculation reveals the Arctic Circle and the others are moving by about 13 meters per year* [ (2.4 degrees/20,500 years) * 111 kilometers per degree {of latitude} = .012995 kilometers per year ]. That's something that is easily measured. Decreasing tilt tends to make winters warmer and summers cooler with an overall cooling trend so it's not helping global warming.
*So I was wrong, it's not millimeters per year, it's meters per year.
But, we're just talking past each other. No doubt a waste of our time.
Climate is a statistical science. One temperature measurement is a weather report. The average of temperature over several decades is a climate report. The data does show the variance but when you're dealing with 1.6 billion data points as the BEST study did you're not going to search the individual records for that variance, you're going to use statistical methods. If a study such as BEST which had two statistical scientists on its team and two known climate skeptics (Muller and Curry) is willing to express their results in fractions of a degree then I accept that they know what they are doing and the results are valid.
I can't even begin to imagine the data sources by which geologists are contriving these age numbers ...
Just because you don't know enough about geology to imagine how they came up with the numbers doesn't mean they aren't valid. Events like the raising of the Isthmus of Panama leave clues to their age that geologists can interpret. Cutting off the currents between the Atlantic and Pacific as the Isthmus did leads to evolutionary divergence of the species in the area. Radiometric dating can tell you how long ago a particular formation was formed. I'm sure there are any number of other clues the geologists used. I guess you don't believe the dinosaurs were wiped out 65 million years ago either.
Science isn't about TRVTH. You're asking for a level of exactness that seldom if ever exists in science. 24 hours in a day is a useful average but it's not exact. The earthquake in Chile changed the length of a day by nanoseconds. Should we all go out and get new clocks because of that? The tilt of the Earth varies over time. Should we get new maps every year because the Tropic of Cancer and Capricorn and the Arctic and Antarctic Circles are constantly changing by millimeters per year?
Statistically speaking when you combine a large number of measurements it's justified to use a higher precision than the original measurements. It helps show when there is a change in the measurements. For example if you had 3 measurements: 62, 63, 64 the average is 63. If instead you measure 62, 63, 65 the average is 63.33... If you limit yourself to the precision of the original measurement the average for both is 63 and you would never know that something had changed. I think even chemical engineers would accept that.
BTW, I did a little research and I was wrong about 2.5 million years. The Isthmus of Panama arose more like 3 million years ago (+/- some number). And just for the record, 3 million years isn't all that precise. An example of precise would be 2,956,210 years, a precision that isn't possible for events in prehistory.
Should I have written "2.5 million years ago +/- 0.5 million years"? Would that have made you happy? I don't think that kind of precision is called for here.
There have been 7 LANDSAT satellites so far although one failed to reach orbit. Two of them are still functioning. The next one is scheduled to be launched in 2012. To quote Wikipedia They "...are a unique resource for global change research and applications in agriculture, cartography, geology, forestry, regional planning, surveillance, education and national security." I guess you can call them a hobby but I wouldn't. Over the years they've returned a tremendous amount of information about the Earth.
The temperature aberration from the 1940's-1970's is explained largely by the rapid industrialization without pollution controls that we experienced during that period. Particularly the aerosol pollution including SO2. Once we started enforcing pollution controls the aberration went away.
If you've ever spent much time in a place that gets plenty of snowfall you would know that in general you get more snow when it's warmer, until it becomes warm enough to change to rain. The reason being that the colder air is the dryer it is. Colder air can't hold as much water vapor and so can't snow as much.