Scroll down to figure 3... "Global mean sea level from 1870 to 2006 with one standard deviation error"
What is the first thing that you notice about the character of this plot? Is is linear? Does your statement make sense from what you know of trends and basic algerbra?
Looks pretty close to linear from where I sit. For absolute certain it's slight acceleration is grossly slower than temperature rise, so that's hopefull we aren't facing any grossly non-linear sea rise. Bonus is that in the IPCC latest report they graph instrumental to projected and it has tracked at the low end of projections.
The only way to declare the temperature since 1990 is warmer than any temperature in the proxy reconstructions, is to go out and take data from an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT dataset!
According to your paper, the MWP was about as warm as the '50s, and possibly as warm as the '90s. It is now much warmer than the '90s. It will continue to warm as long as we continue to release CO2. None of this is controversial.
Everything you say is based on accepting it as fair to compare instrumental temperature to proxy reconstructions.
Within the proxy reconstruction the MWP is warmer than the 1950's and the 1990's. declared this). Mann states this as a systematic problem as when calibrating his reconstruction to 1900-1950 data, the proxy reconstruction after 1950 grossly underestimated recent warming.
It is accurate to state that instrumentals since 1950 are warmer than reconstructions of the MWP. It is also accurate however to state that instrumentals since 1950 are warmer than reconstructions of temp since 1950. Holding up one without the other isn't precisely great science IMO.
if quoting actual scientific papers and having the support of the climate scientist community, and having them work with you to ensure you report on and get the science correct isn't good enough for you then I don't know what to say.
but Skeptical Science is an absolutely valid source due to its exhaustive attribution, scientifically correct interpretation of the papers, and the affirmation of the climate scientists themselves.
There's a difference between valuable resource and citable references. You do not see anybody publishing research with citations to Skeptical Science. Nobody should be accepting fact X is correct because of a citation to Skeptical Science.
Using Skeptical Science to find common false arguments and corresponding references to papers refuting those false arguments is what it is good for. It's what it's stated purpose is. I'm even cool with including links to Skeptical Science interpretation of something. I am NOT cool with using Skeptical Science as an equivalent source to refute direct quotations for peer-reviewed journal articles. That's what the GP did, and it is simple not acceptable and degrades the entire debate into one of opinion and rhetoric instead of provable fact as science is supposed to be.
Form my perspective the dishonesty here is entirely yours. The divergence between proxies and actual temperatures is an actual area of study within climate science. Your claims display a shocking level of ignorance and bias. It is a simple fact that we must compare the two because we don't have any temperature records from before the invention of the thermometer for reasons that should be obvious. Sure, temperature reconstructions are a poor substitute for actual measurements, but we can only use the best tools available.
Think for your own self. Of course we can't use thermometer records to look at temperatures from 1000AD. Using proxy records is one of the only methods we have to try and pull those out, and you'll note I never contested that. I contested the notion of blindly comparing results from one method to the other as though they are a single dataset. Seeing as how we can not compare directly measured temperatures back that far, we need to use proxy records. The catch is that if we want to make an honest and realistic comparison between temperature today and in 1000AD, we don't have to use two disparate datasets from separate methodologies. We can compare the proxy reconstructions of 1000AD to the proxy reconstructions of 1990AD. As I already pointed out, Michael Mann himself observes that when you do this there is a systematic underestimation of recent warming. Which you ignored when reading Mann's figure and observing:
The figure you cited clearly shows recent temperatures exceeding the peaks around 1000 AD. The summary even states:
Our results extend previous conclusions that recent Northern Hemisphere surface temperature increases are likely anomalous in a long-term context.
Now is where the Phil Jones CRU leaked comment regarding "hide the decline" comes into play. The big red line that clearly shows recent temp exceeding 1000 AD is the instrumental record. Phil Jones referenced using Mike(Mann)'s trick to "hide the decline". It was not scientific fraud in the manner of twisting or manipulating their data sets or analysis. Read Jones in defence of the usage and it is instead the same use Mann has here again. It is in the presentation of the data, by using a large bold plot of the instrumental record on the end of the graph, literally hiding beneath it the reconstructed record for recent temperatures.
So here is the point I already made laid out for I don't know how many times now. Within the dataset of temperature reconstructed from proxies, the recent temperatures were matched and exceeded in 1000AD. If you specifically ping Mann, or Jones, or Ljungqvist to the wall with exactly that question and make them answer exactly that they will agree to it. They've all published several papers repeating that finding again and again. More over, the further they refine their methods and proxy data, the stronger that result has become. Just compare Mann's early hockey stick to his most recent EIV method in his last paper.
The only context in which one can say that recent temperatures are unrivalled in the last 1k years, is if you compare two disparate datasets(proxy and instrumental). If the proxy didn't extend into the 90's you might be able to forgive that, but the fact is the proxies have started being extended into that time, and the results don't fit the narrative that some people want.
Our two-millennia long reconstruction has a well defined peak in the period 950–1050 AD with a maximum temperature anomaly of 0.6 C. The level of warmth during the peak of the MWP in the second half of the 10th century, equaling or slightly exceeding the mid-20th century warming, is in agreement with the results from other more recent large-scale multi-proxy temperature reconstructions
does not in any way contradict this:
Since AD 1990, though, average temperatures in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere exceed those of any other warm decades the last two millennia, even the peak of the Medieval Warm Period”
In fact, the second sentence is from the very paper that you seem to want to use as proof that temperatures 1000 years ago exceed those today. it is curious that the blogger you follow omitted the second sentence... possibly not a trustworthy source.
Within the proxy data reconstructions, the peak temperatures are almost exclusively during the MWP. Most proxy data reconstructions do NOT extend past 1990. Of the proxy data reconstructions that DO extend past 1990, Michael Mann(author) observes a systematic underestimation of recent warming. The only way to declare the temperature since 1990 is warmer than any temperature in the proxy reconstructions, is to go out and take data from an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT dataset! But that's OK to many people. It would seem that finding that an unprecedented change begins at the EXACT moment where you change datasets is no problem at all...
Skeptical science says exactly would you did, and most of what they say is sourced against another blog(RealClimate.org) which was at least started by a pair of actual scientists, but is still itself not subject to peer review either... That's why I think the actual science must trump blogging by scientists.
You will be happy to note that the skeptical science articles in question reference Murphy 2009 Domingues et al 2008. Nuccitelli et al. (2012), Cowtan & Way (2013), Moberg et al. 2005, Mann et al. 2008, and Ljungqvist 2010 as well as NOAA and the AGU, but do not reference realclimate. Not bad if you think the actual science is important.
And wouldn't you agree that referencing those articles themselves would be a whole lot more valuable than instead referencing a blogger's interpretation?
Also of note, the author of the very paper that you give as proof that temps 1000 years ago were warmer than today says their paper shows: "Since AD 1990, though, average temperatures in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere exceed those of any other warm decades the last two millennia, even the peak of the Medieval Warm Period." Do you think that the analysis of your blogger is more accurate than the authors own?
I dunno who my 'blogger' is seeing as I've never referenced one?
As for the 1990 comparison, it's the same stunt Michael Mann has pulled time and again. Moreover, as I noted in my post Mann's latest paper observes that the proxy reconstructions systematically underestimate recent warming. That is to say, the 1990 temperatures that exceed even the MWP are NOT found in the same data set. Instead, they are from using an entirely different methodology of recording temperatures from thermometers and direct measurement. If you look at the work of each of the authors you cited, none of the proxy reconstructions extend out past 1990. The argument is essentially the declaration that when you change methods and datasets suddenly their is an unprecedented change.
Go look at Mann's construction I linked. He covers the last couple of decades of his graph with a big fat red line for the instrumental record to "Hide the decline", which IS exactly the reason and meaning of the much maligned phrase. Phil Jones specifically defends the usage for this purpose this way, referencing it as Mike(Mann)'s trick.
I leave it to the reader to decide if that really is particular good practice or not...
Oh how I wish people would stop quoting skepticalscience as if a blog is a scientific resource.
It's kind of sad that you can make so many errors in one sentence. I referenced Skeptical Science because they have articles explaining in more detail exactly what I was explaining. I quoted one of the authors of the paper used by the parent to that post explicitly contradicting the view presented based on that's author's paper. How I wish you wouldn't ignore things that were inconvenient to you.
You only ever linked to Skeptical Science. Your italicized quote of Ljungqvist has no reference to anywhere to prove he stated, or more importantly backed it up with anything. In Ljungqvist's peer reviewed published article that your opponent linked the article declares: Our two-millennia long reconstruction has a well defined peak in the period 950–1050 AD with a maximum temperature anomaly of 0.6 C. The level of warmth during the peak of the MWP in the second half of the 10th century, equalling or slightly exceeding the mid-20th century warming, is in agreement with the results from other more recent large-scale multi-proxy temperature reconstructions
Sorry, I must forgive the person you responded to for thinking the science suggested that the MWP warming in 950-1050AD equalled or exceeded mid-20th century warming, seeing as it says exactly that in the scientific journal article he linked to!
For those that read this and wonder how Ljungqvist can write this in a paper yet still post the quote you gave to a blog some place, it's because he's pulling on Michael Mann's stunt of comparing apples to oranges. You use a thermometer to measure temperatures since 1900AD and you use proxy records to estimate the temperature from before and declare that the thermometer measurements are an unprecedented trend change... Or maybe, like statisticians corrected Mann on, the proxy records lack the sensitivity and precision of thermometers and comparing the two is dishonest so you save that part for your blog postings...
Skeptical science says exactly would you did, and most of what they say is sourced against another blog(RealClimate.org) which was at least started by a pair of actual scientists, but is still itself not subject to peer review either and really does not belong in your exhibit of evidences.
Isn't this just an ad hominem attack?
No just stating science is about evidence and data, not votes or opinions...
It's interesting, but I don't see the relevance here. It does not address the actual issue which is that no actual reconstructions show warming to actually have been higher in the past
Maybe because you can't be bothered to read the journal article I already linked. It's even written by Michael Mann, a very vehement AGW activist in addition to being a scientist so you should like him. I'll save you the trouble of reading the whole thing and note you can skip to Figure 3. As I pointed out, Mann chose note to plot the SH because the data wasn't as good. But even he acknowledges the best reconstruction(EIV) shows peaks around 1000AD, as did Ljungqvist's work...
I did not posit anything of the kind. I merely pointed out that your impossible consequence has happened a bunch of times. I didn't say it happened because of what you described... but when your argument for something being wrong is that it would lead to x that argument only works if x is impossible or at least highly unlikely. It doesn't work when x is common. It's as if I claimed "blah blah can't be true because if it was lots of people would die in car crashes all the time"
And if you read anything I've said, the example of our ice ages is NOTHING like the consequence of a strong positive feedback from water vapor. It would not lead to millenial ice age cycles, it would be hitting and permanently remaining in one within a century. But I'm sure you won't read that the third time if you didn't the first or second already.
It has, numerous times. On one occasion the evidence suggests the polar ice caps actually met at the equator. A snowball earth. And what ends these glacial periods is probably mostly co2.
So, you are going to straight faced posit that positive feedback from water vapor was the cause of the ice ages? That's a new one.
With water vapor being as potent and short lived as it is, and with the suggestion that even a small cooling from volcanic aerosol is enough to cause it to respond, our planetary ice-age cycles look NOTHING like what should be happening. The ice ages should be abrupt and permanent, or alternatively, the boiling of the oceans should have been abrupt and permanent. As it has stood, our planet's history for hundreds of million years has been one where the average global temperature has been well below 100C and well above -100C.
Except we don't know that interaction with near the confidence you claim. The prevailing theory is that Water Vapor, which accounts for ~80% of the greenhouse effect, is short lived and there for NOT an important long term feedback mechanism.Observation however shows that after volcanic eruptions shift the global energy balance abruptly, the decreasing temperature leads to rapid feedbacks bringing the global energy balance back to 'normal'. The predominant mechanism being water vapor. So at a minimum we have witnessed repeatedly that in response to lowered temperature, water vapor acts as a negative feedback to warm things up. Luckier still for us, it doesn't continue on as a warming feedback as we approach the current global norms, it tapers off.
Large volcanic eruptions shift the global energy balance by injecting aerosols (primarily SO2) into the stratosphere where they reflect more sunlight increasing the albedo of the Earth. The reason the effect doesn't last long is that the aerosols are short lived and come back out of the atmosphere in 2 or 3 years. It has nothing to do with water vapor feedback. By cooling the atmosphere large volcanic eruptions reduce the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.
sigh, let's start with the things I think we agree on. Agreed: Volcanic aerosols are a negative feedback and cool the earth. Those aerosols are short lived.
Uncertain: Water vapor dominates the greenhouse effect, trapping upwards of 50% of energy by it's lonesome. I am going to presume you agree with the climate scientists on this point with me, but correct me if I'm wrong.
Now for the disagree: You claim that cooling reduces the water vapor in the atmosphere:By cooling the atmosphere large volcanic eruptions reduce the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.
If a volcano erupts, we agree it emits aerosols into the atmosphere. We agree that these aerosols contribute to cooling. We disagree on what water vapor does. If water vapor does as you say, and contributes to cooling, how does the atmosphere recover?
We agree in the short term the aerosols will go away. In that time though, you claim water vapor will have been contributing to more cooling. By this point the planet is considerably cooler than the few years ago the eruption occurred. That means that water vapor will be contributing to more continued cooling and a runaway cycle.
It is on you to point out why the planet hasn't been either a block of ice or burning inferno from millenia ago when the 50% contribution from water vapor went wild cooling a cooling planet or warming a warming one.
When people point to a 15 year stabilization of temperatures as evidence in the climate change debate, the frequent response is "that's not climate, that's weather" or "that's normal variation."
The problem is those responses are actually reasonably true. In a noisy data set like yearly temperatures, we expect there to be periods of slow temperature growth and periods of fast temperature growth due to short term variability so "that's not climate, that's weather" is true, 30 year averages are generally used to minimize year-to-year variability that can drown out the long term trend. We have had a confluence of natural factors working together to slow the surface air temperature growth over that period. Perhaps more importantly it's important to look at more than just the air temperature since the atmosphere only contains a small fraction of the heat content the earth can store.
That's a northern hemisphere temperature reconstruction, so it only covers half the world, and one of the authors of that paper, F. C. Ljungqvist, doesn't agree with your analysis:
Since AD 1990, though, average temperatures in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere exceed those of any other warm decades the last two millennia, even the peak of the Medieval Warm Period”
But then there are those on the same side who will mention a 20-100 year period because it suits their argument.
Potentially, but those are periods that are long enough to cancel out year-to-year variability, though, I can't actually remember seeing anyone use a period that was longer than 30 years. Maybe it's not that the period suits the argument but that when you look at periods longer than 20 years, the evidence strongly supports one side in this debate? If that's the case, then the people who look at and accept the evidence have little choice but to end up on the same side of this debate?
Oh how I wish people would stop quoting skepticalscience as if a blog is a scientific resource.
Skeptical science says exactly would you did, and most of what they say is sourced against another blog(RealClimate.org) which was at least started by a pair of actual scientists, but is still itself not subject to peer review either and really does not belong in your exhibit of evidences. This is is what is WRONG with the whole 'debate'. Way too many folks believe themselves to be protecting and promoting the science while waving their hands at blogs and re-hashing the summaries from them.:(
One of the scientists that started RealClimate is Michael Mann, here is his latest article on historic temperatures. Mann is (in)famous for the hockey stick graph. In his latest work here he's gone a long ways to trying to improve upon his original paper and although he only graphs the NA trend(citing that the SA data is of much lower quality), it very clearly shows temperatures as measured by proxy records matched or exceeded todays temperatures on multiple occasions in the last 2k years. He tries to down play this, but the data speaks for itself. Mann even notes himself that However, in the case of the early calibration/late validation CP
This argument of yours have been completely debunked by science over and over. The main thing you're ignoring is how long things stay in the atmosphere. If your reasoning was correct we would already be boiling because water vapor leads to greenhouse, leads to more evaporation leads to more greenhouse etc. etc.
We aren't because there is a massive negative feedback system that counter-acts the effect of water vapor as a greenhouse gas almost entirely. That system is called "rain"... so the impact of water vapor on temperature is aggravated by CO2 - not independent there-off.
Except we don't know that interaction with near the confidence you claim. The prevailing theory is that Water Vapor, which accounts for ~80% of the greenhouse effect, is short lived and there for NOT an important long term feedback mechanism.Observation however shows that after volcanic eruptions shift the global energy balance abruptly, the decreasing temperature leads to rapid feedbacks bringing the global energy balance back to 'normal'. The predominant mechanism being water vapor. So at a minimum we have witnessed repeatedly that in response to lowered temperature, water vapor acts as a negative feedback to warm things up. Luckier still for us, it doesn't continue on as a warming feedback as we approach the current global norms, it tapers off.
Ah, but you don't care about interpreting observed scientific evidence, you'll want some links to articles.
We don't know that water vapor can truly be ignored in the long term as a feedback mechanism, it's just been the prevailing theory. In current state of the art climate models, scientists are still testing our theories on what the components of the atmosphere actually do in given scenarios. One of the steps in those model runs though is still setting parameters that approximate cloud behaviour, because we still can't afford the CPU cycles to simulate them with accuracy. Those parameters though are NOT always tuned for better cloud simulation, but INSTEAD are tuned for better TOA energy balance results. We do this because without doing that, the global energy imbalance runs off into an "unrealistic state", which is a direct quote from the IPCC. It's a better alternative to simply straight up adding/subtracting energy as we used to so it's at the moment a necessary evil. It ALSO is a clear and touchy example of where we absolutely can NOT point to our understanding of clouds and water vapor and say see, our climate models show that water vapor does X or Y. We hand tuned water vapor to autocorrect for an unknown number of errors and misunderstandings in our model. It's hardly fair or accurate to say we really understand water vapor's roll so well when our simulation of it is still so poor.
Slashdot is normally science-aligned. But I am surprised at how Slashdotters suddenly seem to become something akin to flat-earthers when it comes to *scientific consensus* on climate change. I don't recall this community always being like this.
A great deal of the push back from people to articles like this is that it's not a scientific journal. It's a summary of an article written by Vice, which itself references an article in Slate, which references an, at the time, unpublished discussion paper still pending peer review...
So, for the sake of those interested in the words of the actual scientists, a link to theactual discussion paper.
After bypassing all the propaganda, fud and none sense added by the journalists and going straight to the discussion paper, you STILL have a major hurdle here to people skeptical of the apocalypse now scenario.
We still have the claims from educated scientists like Michael Mann and James Hansen about the scientific consensus and how the debate is ended. The science is settled!
Now comes the twist, the IPCC that represents the global scientific 'consensus' on climate change, already made predictions for 2100 sea level rise that span from 0.2m to 0.98m. Hansen's claims of levels up to 9.0m in the recent article run against the scientific consensus on climate change, which he's championed in the past.
What do we do with the scientific consensus now? Well, hopefully we can kill the stupid idea that our universe cares about our theories and opinions and go back to evidence based reasoning. We just a name for this method to distinguish it...
I have a problem with the science of GMO because I don't think that humanity is nearly as smart as we think we are...FUD FUD FUD
We've been creating and eating genetically modified food since the beginning of agriculture. Old Method: Allow untold numbers of random mutations to happen to our food. The food with random mutations and the properties we most like is the one we artificially select and keep. This is how we artificially created Canola from Rapeseed. If you want to go further back, all of our crops and livestock have undergone countless rounds of that same process for not decades, not centuries, but millennia. All along the way just ignorantly trusting that amongst the countless random mutations we've been choosing nothing is gonna go horribly awry. New Method: Specifically and almost surgically induce only the genetic change we want to get the improved property we want.
Please, please explain how one can scientifically come to the conclusion that the safer method and the one less likely to carry unexpected and unknown side effects is NOT the method with uncounted unknown random mutations.
So far, for the most part all GMO has done for us is create new strains of food that is resistant to poisons that have ended up creating more resistant weeds. We keep hearing about all of the wonderful things that GM can do but it just doesn't get past the laboratory.
Look at Canadian Canola yields. About the year 2000 is when GMO canola started to really take hold. Average yield prior to 2000 was 24bu/ac and after 2000 has been 30.5bu/ac. Since 2005 only a twice have yields been below 30bu/ac and prior to 2000, not a single year ever reached that mark.
What you mean is that traits already existing in rapeseed were enhanced via a particular selection process.
Genetically engineered canola has only one 'useful' property - herbicide resistance.
I mean they are BOTH genetically engineered. One was genetically engineered by using an unknown number of completely random mutations to get a desired result. The other was genetically engineered by using a specifically selected DNA change to get the desired result. The obvious follow on is that it's kinda absurd to demand that the higher fear of unexpected consequences is with the specifically chosen DNA change versus the unknown number of random mutations method.
Your faith in the testing regimen is kinda cute. The fact is that it isn't rigorous by any measure. E.g., no human trial has ever been conducted on the safety of GMO foods. And, GMO testing has been completely non-existent for long-term effects.
But I'm sure you'll come right back declaring see, no long term human studies, to which I might observe that a 10 generation human study doesn't look much different than an outright eternal and perpetual ban for no reason at all except your own fear born of the ignorant belief that specifically choosing a mutation by hand is somehow terrifically more dangerous than the more traditional use of entirely random mutations instead.
BT corn, potatoes, etc. have every cell in the "food" containing the BT toxin (these "foods" must be registered with the FDA as pesticides).
But, then why did the FDA state on their site: FDA has concluded that the presence of Bt 10 corn in the food and feed supply poses no safety concerns. and Foods from genetically engineered plants that have been evaluated by FDA through the consultation process have not gone on the market until the FDA’s questions about the safety of such products have been resolved.
Wait a minute, are you just making stuff up again?
We also know that herbicides like Roundup are carcinogens, and that GMO is mostly used to spray larger volumes of herbicides on crops. And, that record quantities of herbicides are now being sprayed throughout the life cycle of these crops.
Quick question for you, don't worry I'll provide answers for you too. First, kudos for having heard someone pass on to you that studies did find that eating pure roundup for generations DID increase the risk of certain cancers in rats. Q. When Roundup is sprayed on a crop, how long does the residue last before newly planted crops won't die? A. Many seeds can be planted the day after, some more sensitive ones though you might be better to wait 3 days though.
Q.How many insects and animals in the field die? A.Only the ones that were caught under the sprayer's tires.
Q.How much roundup is still present in the crop when it comes off the field? A.It's already virtually unmeasurable.
Q.How much is still left when the product hits the market? A.See above.
Oh and the fear of record quantities of herbicides being sprayed on farms? Sorry, that's more F
I have the right to know if what I'm buying with my money is the result of a combination of genes that have undergone thousands of years of 'safety testing' known as evolution, or something concocted in a lab by people who don't even understand fully the basics of what they're doing, but whose employers are in a rush to make a quick buck while they have the patent; something, which is only 'tested' against the interpretation of the safety rules of the said employers for a year or two.
Even if there was a working thorough safety testing procedure and no cause of concern (which isn't the case just yet), if I'm buying something with my money, I still have the right to know what it is made of, just like I have the right to know what's on the ingredient list, where something was manufactured, what color is the item in the package, what is the CPU inside and how many points are there per inch, and just like I tell my clients what's in the product that I ship to them.
If you're against labeling on the ground that it creates 'fear', let's remove the country of origin stuff too, after all, the importers have done all the testing and it is quite certain there's no harm to the consumer. Let's remove info about nutritional value, because high calories or weird ingredients scare the consumer. Finally, let's get rid of the pesky expiry date stuff, we all know that businesses will thoroughly test and that they won't put something spoiled on the shelves.
The thousands of years of 'safety testing' known as evolution was being bypassed long before the discovery of DNA, let alone the ability to directly manipulate for crops. Canola is one of the biggest 'GMO' crops after corn, and Canola itself is not a natural occurring plant formed from thousands of years of evolution. It is a hand bred variety of rapeseed invented in the 70's about 2 hours drive from where I'm typing this. Demanding GMO or not GMO labelling on crops makes about as much sense as demanding that the exact subspecies and variety of every crop be included on the label. For reference, in the just the last 10 years over 200 different varieties of canola alone were registered. If you want a label on your canola oil that requires a 3 page booklet on the front, that's the road your asking to head down. I somehow doubt that's off great benefit to the consumer.
So the next time the West decides to punish a country, at least that country knows there is a way out if they do something to change.
Except that Saddam Hussein agreed to disarm, and then we killed him.
Gaddafi also agreed to disarm, and turned over the Lockerbie bomber. We killed him too.
Historically, there has not been much benefit to acceding to American demands.
Do you really just care so little about your world that spending ten minutes learning about it and thinking about it is too much for you?
Saddam committed genocide against his own people, Iraqi Kurds, in the 80s. Saddam committed genocide against his own people, Iraqi Shia, in the 90s. Saddam, far from agreeing to disarm, was disarmed by force and at gunpoint at the end of the first Gulf war. He agreed to allow inspections to confirm he didn't restart his WMD programs, and then proceeded to continually refuse the inspectors access and kick them out of the country. Then we killed him. If you ask me, we were 2 wars and 2 genocides too late in finally doing the reasonable thing.
Gaddafi did agree to disarm. It was shortly after the time that Saddam was removed from power for refusing to do the same. Gaddafi then made the mistake of going ahead and declaring his intention of purging his nation of the cockroaches of the arab spring, house by house. He then proceeded on a wildly successful military campaign to enact his promised genocide. At the last minute, and at the urging of the Arab League the United Nations authorized the use of force to protect the Libyan people. Yes, we participated in air support to the Libyans the Gaddafi had sworn to kill. Then the Libyan people killed him.
I'm not sure the word historically really even belongs your vocabulary, I think the word you were looking for was propaganda...
... boldly declared its intention to wipe out both Israel and the United States.
Please.
That's just political posturing and propaganda. Even IF Iran gets nukes, they would be no threat to the US. And as far as Israel is concerned, they have plenty for retaliation. And it will never get that far. Israel will violate international law like they always do and just bomb the shit out of Iran's nuke labs and stir up a shit load of trouble and then come crying to the US to bail them out of their dickishness.
Sorry, it sounds an awful lot like you are referencing the Israeli bombing of Saddam's Osirak reactor and declaring it as Israeli dickishness. I'm not sure it's really such a bad thing Saddam's nuclear weapons program was taken out 10 years before he invaded Kuwait.
We have given concessions to a country that has repeatedly lied, hidden, deceived,...
That statement can be applied to Israel. I cannot count how many times she has double crossed and screwed over the US.
As an American, I am sick and tired of my government aligning our interests with a rogue state that has no interest in peace in the Middle East - or at least peace by Israel's terms which from her actions means Israel has total domination over the Middle East.
Frankly, with "allies" like Israel, who the fuck needs enemies.
Boo hoo, the world is a bad place and people are mean in it, let me get a tissue for you.
Like it or not, the global economy runs on oil. All the food we grow, the clothes we wear, the homes we live in and the transportation of all of it to where we live depends upon oil for the last couple decades.
Like it or not, the largest supply of easily drilled and refined oil is in the Middle East.
Name a single country in the Middle East that really looks like a great ally based upon it's ideology and past behaviour. None the less, without access to that oil our economies collapse and our people get cold and go hungry. As a result, alliances are made with people that aren't ideal, but none the less enable oil to flow out of the Middle East and into the global economy. Far worse than Israel though would have to be Saudi Arabia's banking of billions in oil dollars and converting into military spending and spreading of Sunni fundamentalist ideology across the region.
It's really, really easy to point how many terrible consequences and actions 'allies' represent in global politics. Try taking the next step though and proposing better alternatives. Most specifically, is the Middle East situation better or worse if Iran acquires nuclear weapons? For bonus points, give a decent assessment of whether continued sanctions against Iran is a better alternative to this deal.
Or you could just stay in your corner masturbating about how everything is terrible, your choice.
Well, I do not know how meaningful this really is. When you delay things that much everyone knows you are doing something fishy. For whatever, you can always pile excuses the one after the other. But the trust in the actors is quickly lost when you do that.
And yet Saddam pulled that delay and deny plan for more than a decade and yet when America finally said enough is enough the whole world cries about letting inspections do their work and how the process was working...
Your argument is that Iran is a threat because they allow freedom of speech and that they have directly contributed to a terrorist group. Unless you also think that the CIA and US military are the GREATEST threats the world has ever seen, you seem to be lacking some simple logic and common sense.
Is it propaganda, ignorance, or simply bigotry that guides your misjudgment?
I suppose you didn't read my argument then, I'll repeat it for you to ignore a second time: 3. Hezbollah was more or less founded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Hezbollah is to this day heavily trained, funded, equipped and armed by Iran. Hezbollah absolutely has launched multiple direct assaults on Israel and is eternally stockpiling weapons and arms on Israel's border aimed in on it.
1. Holocaust denying kills or maims no one. It's stupid propaganda but that's all 2. Israel has called for the destruction of Iran, to wipe it off the map. look it up
Let's just go ahead and pretend we are you, and accept your above beliefs. Between Israel and Iran, which nation has launched more direct attacks on the others nation with rockets, and soldiers with guns? Iran's Hezbollah proxy has directly launched multiple attacks on Israel. The last direct actions Israel took within Iran's borders was probably during the Iran-Iraq war, when they sent arms and logistic SUPPORT to Iran...
3. USA has funded plenty of terrorists, revolutions, despots, mass murder (example providing money and dual use tech to Saddam for WMD) more than Iran has.
I wish you anti-American rhetoric folks could make up your mind about Saddam. Listening to your ilk it would seem that Saddam was evil incarnate back in the day when America was propping him up. On this point I actually agree with you. However, when America finally smartens up, changes course and removes Saddam, your ilk again decry America for it's unprovoked aggression. The point were Saddam went from genocidal despot to innocent victim of the evil America is an exercise left to the insane.
Foreign policy is not some black and white world where actions must have a lovely outcome to be better than the alternatives. Plenty of times we face a world where ALL options have some very sad outcomes, including the option of sit back, do nothing, and claim 'innocence' through inaction. Rwanda should make clear that not even pure straight up pacifism can be defended as the clear and obvious moral choice. In the middle east, for all the faults with Iran's leadership, if we could trade western support for Saudi Arabia to Iran would be far ahead, as the Saudi state is much worse as a whole, most importantly in it's treatment and rule of it's own population. It's terribly tempting to abandon Saudi Arabia outright given the terrific amount of support they directly provide to terrorist sunni extremists throughout the world, most importantly ISIL and the Taliban in Pakistan. Of course, if America withdraws support to Saudi Arabia, Russia or more likely China just steps in to take our place and will almost certainly do even less to keep the worst elements of Saudi Arabia in check.
In summary the world is a mess, and pointing out America's many, many ills doesn't negate the problems in other countries like Iran and the fact that an Iranian nuclear program isn't a great thing for the region or the world.
Wow, the overreaching race to make Iran a saint and America the devil. You're overzealous approach led you to spout a lot of utter nonsense. Let's review indeed.
Iran: Never invaded anyone, never used weapons of mass destruction against anyone, never posed a serious threat to anyone except Hussein's Iraq.
1.Their official head of state, and until recently their president beneath him, were holocaust deniers. Plenty of FUD has been spread to try and deny this denial, but the fact is plain that both Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have both openly questioned how many Jews were really killed in the holocaust and called for that to be restudied and questioned by scholars more generally. It's just the new face of denial, what is the holocaust after all without millions of victims singled out for their ethnicity alone? It's just some people that died in a war again, so questioning if millions really died IS absolutely denial of the holocaust. 2. Ali Khamenei called for Israel to removed from the map, and Ahmadinejad called this a very wise statement. Somehow that seems at least a bit threatening to Israel, no? Move on to 3 before crying how Iran's never put action to those words... 3. Hezbollah was more or less founded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Hezbollah is to this day heavily trained, funded, equipped and armed by Iran. Hezbollah absolutely has launched multiple direct assaults on Israel and is eternally stockpiling weapons and arms on Israel's border aimed in on it.
U.S.: Invaded Iraq with no provocation,
Saddam's Iraq invaded and seized Kuwait with no provocation first. Upon Saddam's elimination of a UN member state, the US kicked him out and returned sovereignty back to Kuwait. They additionally set out and dismantled Saddam's programs for weapons of mass destruction that he very much DID have then. They additionally setup a no-fly zone over northern Iraq to protect Iraqi Kurds from a second genocide, as Saddam had previously done against them after the Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. did however listen to world opinion and stopped there. They left Saddam in power, and stood outside Iraq's borders and watched Saddam commit a second genocide, this time against Shia Iraqi's who foolishly rose up when Bush Sr. suggested they do just that.
So since the end of the original Gulf War, which Saddam surely instigated, he committed genocide, for at least the second time in his reign. Meanwhile all the signatories to the convention on genocide stood back and had done nothing. Saddam additionally kicked out international inspectors trying to confirm his compliance with his agreement to not restart his WMD programs, and he had done this repeatedly. He repeatedly violated the no-fly zone over Kurdish Iraq. But yes, aside from the genocide and refusal to abide by inspection of his old WMD sites, there was no provocation at all for removing Saddam from power...
only country in the world to use nuclear weapons,
This has to be the cheapest shot in your quiver. Even the Japanese, the only country in the world to have nuclear weapons used against it, agree that the nukes probably saved lives, even if you only value Japanese lives, versus an inevitable ground invasion otherwise. And don't compound your folly by declaring how the nuclear bombs where unneeded because Japan was going to surrender anyway. Merely the fact that a second bombing of Nagasaki was required proves that Japan wasn't even prepared to surrender AFTER Hiroshima had been nuked.
have overthrown countless democratically elected governments (including the one in Iran).
So remind me, WHO'S the threat to world peace again?
Much as has Britain, and France, and China, and Japan and Russia and any nation that has ever gotten large enough to ply it's powers globally. America is no saint, but that hardly changes Iran's nature.
I have no problem with a course teaching about what anti-vaccine supporters claim if it helps doctors debunk it in person and helps them dismantle it in person. I hope this is what it is about.
That was exactly my hope. I could see the legitimacy of inoculating students to all the half truths and outright lies that alternative fruitcakes are trying to pitch the public. It's even important to have our medical students versed in some of it just so they can be prepared to counter the fear mongers.
Regrettably, the course outline reveals otherwise. It goes as far to say the course will delve into a quantum physics’ understanding of disease. So it's a course teaching the very worst of the lies. The instructor is listed as Beth Landau-Halpern. Here's an undercover video CBC caught her and others in where she tells the parent that vaccines are causing allergies and other stupidity that is entirely counter to scientific evidence. She even has a blog post here confirming it was her and pleading that her advice was devoid of context, as if there is some context in which suggesting vaccines like that for MMR is really far worse for a child than a homeopathic placebo she was willing to sell...
This is as about as bad as it can get. We have the U of T willing to run a course taught by someone this loony, and then to review the course material and find it acceptable even! Of course, they are not going to be offering the course next year, and hopefully never again. But for it to get this far is a sign of some very, very deep rot in institutions that seriously needs to be cleaned up.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.skepticalscience.co...
Scroll down to figure 3... "Global mean sea level from 1870 to 2006 with one standard deviation error"
What is the first thing that you notice about the character of this plot? Is is linear? Does your statement make sense from what you know of trends and basic algerbra?
Looks pretty close to linear from where I sit. For absolute certain it's slight acceleration is grossly slower than temperature rise, so that's hopefull we aren't facing any grossly non-linear sea rise. Bonus is that in the IPCC latest report they graph instrumental to projected and it has tracked at the low end of projections.
The only way to declare the temperature since 1990 is warmer than any temperature in the proxy reconstructions, is to go out and take data from an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT dataset!
According to your paper, the MWP was about as warm as the '50s, and possibly as warm as the '90s. It is now much warmer than the '90s. It will continue to warm as long as we continue to release CO2. None of this is controversial.
Everything you say is based on accepting it as fair to compare instrumental temperature to proxy reconstructions.
Within the proxy reconstruction the MWP is warmer than the 1950's and the 1990's. declared this). Mann states this as a systematic problem as when calibrating his reconstruction to 1900-1950 data, the proxy reconstruction after 1950 grossly underestimated recent warming.
It is accurate to state that instrumentals since 1950 are warmer than reconstructions of the MWP. It is also accurate however to state that instrumentals since 1950 are warmer than reconstructions of temp since 1950. Holding up one without the other isn't precisely great science IMO.
if quoting actual scientific papers and having the support of the climate scientist community, and having them work with you to ensure you report on and get the science correct isn't good enough for you then I don't know what to say.
but Skeptical Science is an absolutely valid source due to its exhaustive attribution, scientifically correct interpretation of the papers, and the affirmation of the climate scientists themselves.
There's a difference between valuable resource and citable references. You do not see anybody publishing research with citations to Skeptical Science. Nobody should be accepting fact X is correct because of a citation to Skeptical Science.
Using Skeptical Science to find common false arguments and corresponding references to papers refuting those false arguments is what it is good for. It's what it's stated purpose is. I'm even cool with including links to Skeptical Science interpretation of something. I am NOT cool with using Skeptical Science as an equivalent source to refute direct quotations for peer-reviewed journal articles. That's what the GP did, and it is simple not acceptable and degrades the entire debate into one of opinion and rhetoric instead of provable fact as science is supposed to be.
Form my perspective the dishonesty here is entirely yours. The divergence between proxies and actual temperatures is an actual area of study within climate science. Your claims display a shocking level of ignorance and bias. It is a simple fact that we must compare the two because we don't have any temperature records from before the invention of the thermometer for reasons that should be obvious. Sure, temperature reconstructions are a poor substitute for actual measurements, but we can only use the best tools available.
Think for your own self. Of course we can't use thermometer records to look at temperatures from 1000AD. Using proxy records is one of the only methods we have to try and pull those out, and you'll note I never contested that. I contested the notion of blindly comparing results from one method to the other as though they are a single dataset. Seeing as how we can not compare directly measured temperatures back that far, we need to use proxy records. The catch is that if we want to make an honest and realistic comparison between temperature today and in 1000AD, we don't have to use two disparate datasets from separate methodologies. We can compare the proxy reconstructions of 1000AD to the proxy reconstructions of 1990AD. As I already pointed out, Michael Mann himself observes that when you do this there is a systematic underestimation of recent warming. Which you ignored when reading Mann's figure and observing:
The figure you cited clearly shows recent temperatures exceeding the peaks around 1000 AD. The summary even states:
Now is where the Phil Jones CRU leaked comment regarding "hide the decline" comes into play. The big red line that clearly shows recent temp exceeding 1000 AD is the instrumental record. Phil Jones referenced using Mike(Mann)'s trick to "hide the decline". It was not scientific fraud in the manner of twisting or manipulating their data sets or analysis. Read Jones in defence of the usage and it is instead the same use Mann has here again. It is in the presentation of the data, by using a large bold plot of the instrumental record on the end of the graph, literally hiding beneath it the reconstructed record for recent temperatures.
So here is the point I already made laid out for I don't know how many times now. Within the dataset of temperature reconstructed from proxies, the recent temperatures were matched and exceeded in 1000AD. If you specifically ping Mann, or Jones, or Ljungqvist to the wall with exactly that question and make them answer exactly that they will agree to it. They've all published several papers repeating that finding again and again. More over, the further they refine their methods and proxy data, the stronger that result has become. Just compare Mann's early hockey stick to his most recent EIV method in his last paper.
The only context in which one can say that recent temperatures are unrivalled in the last 1k years, is if you compare two disparate datasets(proxy and instrumental). If the proxy didn't extend into the 90's you might be able to forgive that, but the fact is the proxies have started being extended into that time, and the results don't fit the narrative that some people want.
I hope you realize that this:
Our two-millennia long reconstruction has a well defined peak in the period 950–1050 AD with a maximum temperature anomaly of 0.6 C.
The level of warmth during the peak of the MWP in the second half of the 10th century, equaling or slightly exceeding the mid-20th century warming, is in agreement with the results from other more recent large-scale multi-proxy temperature reconstructions
does not in any way contradict this:
Since AD 1990, though, average temperatures in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere exceed those of any other warm decades the last two millennia, even the peak of the Medieval Warm Period”
In fact, the second sentence is from the very paper that you seem to want to use as proof that temperatures 1000 years ago exceed those today. it is curious that the blogger you follow omitted the second sentence... possibly not a trustworthy source.
Within the proxy data reconstructions, the peak temperatures are almost exclusively during the MWP.
Most proxy data reconstructions do NOT extend past 1990.
Of the proxy data reconstructions that DO extend past 1990, Michael Mann(author) observes a systematic underestimation of recent warming.
The only way to declare the temperature since 1990 is warmer than any temperature in the proxy reconstructions, is to go out and take data from an ENTIRELY DIFFERENT dataset!
But that's OK to many people. It would seem that finding that an unprecedented change begins at the EXACT moment where you change datasets is no problem at all...
Skeptical science says exactly would you did, and most of what they say is sourced against another blog(RealClimate.org) which was at least started by a pair of actual scientists, but is still itself not subject to peer review either ... That's why I think the actual science must trump blogging by scientists.
You will be happy to note that the skeptical science articles in question reference Murphy 2009 Domingues et al 2008. Nuccitelli et al. (2012), Cowtan & Way (2013), Moberg et al. 2005, Mann et al. 2008, and Ljungqvist 2010 as well as NOAA and the AGU, but do not reference realclimate. Not bad if you think the actual science is important.
And wouldn't you agree that referencing those articles themselves would be a whole lot more valuable than instead referencing a blogger's interpretation?
Also of note, the author of the very paper that you give as proof that temps 1000 years ago were warmer than today says their paper shows: "Since AD 1990, though, average temperatures in the extra-tropical Northern Hemisphere exceed those of any other warm decades the last two millennia, even the peak of the Medieval Warm Period." Do you think that the analysis of your blogger is more accurate than the authors own?
I dunno who my 'blogger' is seeing as I've never referenced one?
As for the 1990 comparison, it's the same stunt Michael Mann has pulled time and again. Moreover, as I noted in my post Mann's latest paper observes that the proxy reconstructions systematically underestimate recent warming. That is to say, the 1990 temperatures that exceed even the MWP are NOT found in the same data set. Instead, they are from using an entirely different methodology of recording temperatures from thermometers and direct measurement. If you look at the work of each of the authors you cited, none of the proxy reconstructions extend out past 1990. The argument is essentially the declaration that when you change methods and datasets suddenly their is an unprecedented change.
Go look at Mann's construction I linked. He covers the last couple of decades of his graph with a big fat red line for the instrumental record to "Hide the decline", which IS exactly the reason and meaning of the much maligned phrase. Phil Jones specifically defends the usage for this purpose this way, referencing it as Mike(Mann)'s trick.
I leave it to the reader to decide if that really is particular good practice or not...
Oh how I wish people would stop quoting skepticalscience as if a blog is a scientific resource.
It's kind of sad that you can make so many errors in one sentence. I referenced Skeptical Science because they have articles explaining in more detail exactly what I was explaining. I quoted one of the authors of the paper used by the parent to that post explicitly contradicting the view presented based on that's author's paper. How I wish you wouldn't ignore things that were inconvenient to you.
You only ever linked to Skeptical Science. Your italicized quote of Ljungqvist has no reference to anywhere to prove he stated, or more importantly backed it up with anything. In Ljungqvist's peer reviewed published article that your opponent linked the article declares:
Our two-millennia long reconstruction has a well defined peak in the period 950–1050 AD with a maximum temperature anomaly of 0.6 C.
The level of warmth during the peak of the MWP in the second half of the 10th century, equalling or slightly exceeding the mid-20th century warming, is in agreement with the results from other more recent large-scale multi-proxy temperature reconstructions
Sorry, I must forgive the person you responded to for thinking the science suggested that the MWP warming in 950-1050AD equalled or exceeded mid-20th century warming, seeing as it says exactly that in the scientific journal article he linked to!
For those that read this and wonder how Ljungqvist can write this in a paper yet still post the quote you gave to a blog some place, it's because he's pulling on Michael Mann's stunt of comparing apples to oranges. You use a thermometer to measure temperatures since 1900AD and you use proxy records to estimate the temperature from before and declare that the thermometer measurements are an unprecedented trend change... Or maybe, like statisticians corrected Mann on, the proxy records lack the sensitivity and precision of thermometers and comparing the two is dishonest so you save that part for your blog postings...
Skeptical science says exactly would you did, and most of what they say is sourced against another blog(RealClimate.org) which was at least started by a pair of actual scientists, but is still itself not subject to peer review either and really does not belong in your exhibit of evidences.
Isn't this just an ad hominem attack?
No just stating science is about evidence and data, not votes or opinions...
It's interesting, but I don't see the relevance here. It does not address the actual issue which is that no actual reconstructions show warming to actually have been higher in the past
Maybe because you can't be bothered to read the journal article I already linked. It's even written by Michael Mann, a very vehement AGW activist in addition to being a scientist so you should like him. I'll save you the trouble of reading the whole thing and note you can skip to Figure 3. As I pointed out, Mann chose note to plot the SH because the data wasn't as good. But even he acknowledges the best reconstruction(EIV) shows peaks around 1000AD, as did Ljungqvist's work...
I did not posit anything of the kind. I merely pointed out that your impossible consequence has happened a bunch of times. I didn't say it happened because of what you described... but when your argument for something being wrong is that it would lead to x that argument only works if x is impossible or at least highly unlikely. It doesn't work when x is common.
It's as if I claimed "blah blah can't be true because if it was lots of people would die in car crashes all the time"
And if you read anything I've said, the example of our ice ages is NOTHING like the consequence of a strong positive feedback from water vapor. It would not lead to millenial ice age cycles, it would be hitting and permanently remaining in one within a century. But I'm sure you won't read that the third time if you didn't the first or second already.
It has, numerous times. On one occasion the evidence suggests the polar ice caps actually met at the equator. A snowball earth. And what ends these glacial periods is probably mostly co2.
So, you are going to straight faced posit that positive feedback from water vapor was the cause of the ice ages? That's a new one.
With water vapor being as potent and short lived as it is, and with the suggestion that even a small cooling from volcanic aerosol is enough to cause it to respond, our planetary ice-age cycles look NOTHING like what should be happening. The ice ages should be abrupt and permanent, or alternatively, the boiling of the oceans should have been abrupt and permanent. As it has stood, our planet's history for hundreds of million years has been one where the average global temperature has been well below 100C and well above -100C.
That's why I think the actual science must trump blogging by scientists. The final response [cusersklas...r1a0205pdf]
This link is very broken. Do you have a better link?
Ugh, sorry for that. Try here instead for the full McShane team rebuttal.
Except we don't know that interaction with near the confidence you claim. The prevailing theory is that Water Vapor, which accounts for ~80% of the greenhouse effect, is short lived and there for NOT an important long term feedback mechanism.Observation however shows that after volcanic eruptions shift the global energy balance abruptly, the decreasing temperature leads to rapid feedbacks bringing the global energy balance back to 'normal'. The predominant mechanism being water vapor. So at a minimum we have witnessed repeatedly that in response to lowered temperature, water vapor acts as a negative feedback to warm things up. Luckier still for us, it doesn't continue on as a warming feedback as we approach the current global norms, it tapers off.
Large volcanic eruptions shift the global energy balance by injecting aerosols (primarily SO2) into the stratosphere where they reflect more sunlight increasing the albedo of the Earth. The reason the effect doesn't last long is that the aerosols are short lived and come back out of the atmosphere in 2 or 3 years. It has nothing to do with water vapor feedback. By cooling the atmosphere large volcanic eruptions reduce the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.
sigh, let's start with the things I think we agree on.
Agreed:
Volcanic aerosols are a negative feedback and cool the earth.
Those aerosols are short lived.
Uncertain:
Water vapor dominates the greenhouse effect, trapping upwards of 50% of energy by it's lonesome. I am going to presume you agree with the climate scientists on this point with me, but correct me if I'm wrong.
Now for the disagree:
You claim that cooling reduces the water vapor in the atmosphere:By cooling the atmosphere large volcanic eruptions reduce the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.
If a volcano erupts, we agree it emits aerosols into the atmosphere. We agree that these aerosols contribute to cooling. We disagree on what water vapor does. If water vapor does as you say, and contributes to cooling, how does the atmosphere recover?
We agree in the short term the aerosols will go away. In that time though, you claim water vapor will have been contributing to more cooling. By this point the planet is considerably cooler than the few years ago the eruption occurred. That means that water vapor will be contributing to more continued cooling and a runaway cycle.
It is on you to point out why the planet hasn't been either a block of ice or burning inferno from millenia ago when the 50% contribution from water vapor went wild cooling a cooling planet or warming a warming one.
That applies to both sides.
Potentially, but not as much as you seem to think
When people point to a 15 year stabilization of temperatures as evidence in the climate change debate, the frequent response is "that's not climate, that's weather" or "that's normal variation."
The problem is those responses are actually reasonably true. In a noisy data set like yearly temperatures, we expect there to be periods of slow temperature growth and periods of fast temperature growth due to short term variability so "that's not climate, that's weather" is true, 30 year averages are generally used to minimize year-to-year variability that can drown out the long term trend. We have had a confluence of natural factors working together to slow the surface air temperature growth over that period. Perhaps more importantly it's important to look at more than just the air temperature since the atmosphere only contains a small fraction of the heat content the earth can store.
Or when they point out evidence that it was just as warm 1000 years ago as today, it will be derisively dismissed.
That's a northern hemisphere temperature reconstruction, so it only covers half the world, and one of the authors of that paper, F. C. Ljungqvist, doesn't agree with your analysis:
But then there are those on the same side who will mention a 20-100 year period because it suits their argument.
Potentially, but those are periods that are long enough to cancel out year-to-year variability, though, I can't actually remember seeing anyone use a period that was longer than 30 years. Maybe it's not that the period suits the argument but that when you look at periods longer than 20 years, the evidence strongly supports one side in this debate? If that's the case, then the people who look at and accept the evidence have little choice but to end up on the same side of this debate?
Oh how I wish people would stop quoting skepticalscience as if a blog is a scientific resource.
Skeptical science says exactly would you did, and most of what they say is sourced against another blog(RealClimate.org) which was at least started by a pair of actual scientists, but is still itself not subject to peer review either and really does not belong in your exhibit of evidences. This is is what is WRONG with the whole 'debate'. Way too many folks believe themselves to be protecting and promoting the science while waving their hands at blogs and re-hashing the summaries from them. :(
One of the scientists that started RealClimate is Michael Mann, here is his latest article on historic temperatures. Mann is (in)famous for the hockey stick graph. In his latest work here he's gone a long ways to trying to improve upon his original paper and although he only graphs the NA trend(citing that the SA data is of much lower quality), it very clearly shows temperatures as measured by proxy records matched or exceeded todays temperatures on multiple occasions in the last 2k years. He tries to down play this, but the data speaks for itself. Mann even notes himself that However, in the case of the early calibration/late validation CP
This argument of yours have been completely debunked by science over and over. The main thing you're ignoring is how long things stay in the atmosphere. If your reasoning was correct we would already be boiling because water vapor leads to greenhouse, leads to more evaporation leads to more greenhouse etc. etc.
We aren't because there is a massive negative feedback system that counter-acts the effect of water vapor as a greenhouse gas almost entirely. That system is called "rain" ...
so the impact of water vapor on temperature is aggravated by CO2 - not independent there-off.
Source:
http://scholarsandrogues.com/2...
Except we don't know that interaction with near the confidence you claim. The prevailing theory is that Water Vapor, which accounts for ~80% of the greenhouse effect, is short lived and there for NOT an important long term feedback mechanism.Observation however shows that after volcanic eruptions shift the global energy balance abruptly, the decreasing temperature leads to rapid feedbacks bringing the global energy balance back to 'normal'. The predominant mechanism being water vapor. So at a minimum we have witnessed repeatedly that in response to lowered temperature, water vapor acts as a negative feedback to warm things up. Luckier still for us, it doesn't continue on as a warming feedback as we approach the current global norms, it tapers off.
Ah, but you don't care about interpreting observed scientific evidence, you'll want some links to articles.
We don't know that water vapor can truly be ignored in the long term as a feedback mechanism, it's just been the prevailing theory. In current state of the art climate models, scientists are still testing our theories on what the components of the atmosphere actually do in given scenarios. One of the steps in those model runs though is still setting parameters that approximate cloud behaviour, because we still can't afford the CPU cycles to simulate them with accuracy. Those parameters though are NOT always tuned for better cloud simulation, but INSTEAD are tuned for better TOA energy balance results. We do this because without doing that, the global energy imbalance runs off into an "unrealistic state", which is a direct quote from the IPCC. It's a better alternative to simply straight up adding/subtracting energy as we used to so it's at the moment a necessary evil. It ALSO is a clear and touchy example of where we absolutely can NOT point to our understanding of clouds and water vapor and say see, our climate models show that water vapor does X or Y. We hand tuned water vapor to autocorrect for an unknown number of errors and misunderstandings in our model. It's hardly fair or accurate to say we really understand water vapor's roll so well when our simulation of it is still so poor.
references to Cloud tuning in a coupled climate model: Impact on 20th century warming in Geophysical Research Letters and Tuning the climate of a global model by Mauritsen et al. These are THE two most thorough papers from climate modellers on the model tuning methodology and use many more words than I did to essentially say the same thing.
Slashdot is normally science-aligned. But I am surprised at how Slashdotters suddenly seem to become something akin to flat-earthers when it comes to *scientific consensus* on climate change. I don't recall this community always being like this.
A great deal of the push back from people to articles like this is that it's not a scientific journal. It's a summary of an article written by Vice, which itself references an article in Slate, which references an, at the time, unpublished discussion paper still pending peer review...
So, for the sake of those interested in the words of the actual scientists, a link to theactual discussion paper.
After bypassing all the propaganda, fud and none sense added by the journalists and going straight to the discussion paper, you STILL have a major hurdle here to people skeptical of the apocalypse now scenario.
We still have the claims from educated scientists like Michael Mann and James Hansen about the scientific consensus and how the debate is ended. The science is settled!
Now comes the twist, the IPCC that represents the global scientific 'consensus' on climate change, already made predictions for 2100 sea level rise that span from 0.2m to 0.98m. Hansen's claims of levels up to 9.0m in the recent article run against the scientific consensus on climate change, which he's championed in the past.
What do we do with the scientific consensus now? Well, hopefully we can kill the stupid idea that our universe cares about our theories and opinions and go back to evidence based reasoning. We just a name for this method to distinguish it...
I have a problem with the science of GMO because I don't think that humanity is nearly as smart as we think we are...FUD FUD FUD
We've been creating and eating genetically modified food since the beginning of agriculture.
Old Method: Allow untold numbers of random mutations to happen to our food. The food with random mutations and the properties we most like is the one we artificially select and keep. This is how we artificially created Canola from Rapeseed. If you want to go further back, all of our crops and livestock have undergone countless rounds of that same process for not decades, not centuries, but millennia. All along the way just ignorantly trusting that amongst the countless random mutations we've been choosing nothing is gonna go horribly awry.
New Method: Specifically and almost surgically induce only the genetic change we want to get the improved property we want.
Please, please explain how one can scientifically come to the conclusion that the safer method and the one less likely to carry unexpected and unknown side effects is NOT the method with uncounted unknown random mutations.
So far, for the most part all GMO has done for us is create new strains of food that is resistant to poisons that have ended up creating more resistant weeds. We keep hearing about all of the wonderful things that GM can do but it just doesn't get past the laboratory.
Look at Canadian Canola yields. About the year 2000 is when GMO canola started to really take hold. Average yield prior to 2000 was 24bu/ac and after 2000 has been 30.5bu/ac. Since 2005 only a twice have yields been below 30bu/ac and prior to 2000, not a single year ever reached that mark.
It is a hand bred variety of rapeseed invented
What you mean is that traits already existing in rapeseed were enhanced via a particular selection process.
Genetically engineered canola has only one 'useful' property - herbicide resistance.
I mean they are BOTH genetically engineered. One was genetically engineered by using an unknown number of completely random mutations to get a desired result. The other was genetically engineered by using a specifically selected DNA change to get the desired result. The obvious follow on is that it's kinda absurd to demand that the higher fear of unexpected consequences is with the specifically chosen DNA change versus the unknown number of random mutations method.
Your faith in the testing regimen is kinda cute. The fact is that it isn't rigorous by any measure. E.g., no human trial has ever been conducted on the safety of GMO foods. And, GMO testing has been completely non-existent for long-term effects.
This is me calling you out for just inventing your concerns out of shear blind ignorance. Here's just a couple results from a quick look with google you could've done too if you cared about the issue like you seem to.
A 38-d feeding study evaluated whether standard broiler diets prepared with transgenic Event 176-derived "Bt" corn (maize) grain had any adverse effects on male or female broiler chickens as compared to diets prepared with nontransgenic (isogenic) control corn grain... it was clear that the transgenic corn had no deleterious effects in this study.
That led to a 3 generation study in rats: ...long-term consumption of transgenic Bt corn throughout three generation did not cause severe health concerns on rats. Therefore, long-term feeding studies with GM crops should be performed on other species...
Followed on by a 10 generation study of quail:
A ten-generation experiment with growing and laying quails were carried out to test diets with 40 (starter) or 50% (grower, layer) isogenic or transgenic (Bt 176) corn. Feeding of diets containing genetically-modified corn did not significantly influence health and performance of quails nor did it affect DNA-transfer and quality of meat and eggs of quails compared with the isogenic counterpart.
But I'm sure you'll come right back declaring see, no long term human studies, to which I might observe that a 10 generation human study doesn't look much different than an outright eternal and perpetual ban for no reason at all except your own fear born of the ignorant belief that specifically choosing a mutation by hand is somehow terrifically more dangerous than the more traditional use of entirely random mutations instead.
BT corn, potatoes, etc. have every cell in the "food" containing the BT toxin (these "foods" must be registered with the FDA as pesticides).
But, then why did the FDA state on their site: FDA has concluded that the presence of Bt 10 corn in the food and feed supply poses no safety concerns. and Foods from genetically engineered plants that have been evaluated by FDA through the consultation process have not gone on the market until the FDA’s questions about the safety of such products have been resolved.
Wait a minute, are you just making stuff up again?
We also know that herbicides like Roundup are carcinogens, and that GMO is mostly used to spray larger volumes of herbicides on crops. And, that record quantities of herbicides are now being sprayed throughout the life cycle of these crops.
Quick question for you, don't worry I'll provide answers for you too. First, kudos for having heard someone pass on to you that studies did find that eating pure roundup for generations DID increase the risk of certain cancers in rats.
Q. When Roundup is sprayed on a crop, how long does the residue last before newly planted crops won't die?
A. Many seeds can be planted the day after, some more sensitive ones though you might be better to wait 3 days though.
Q.How many insects and animals in the field die?
A.Only the ones that were caught under the sprayer's tires.
Q.How much roundup is still present in the crop when it comes off the field?
A.It's already virtually unmeasurable.
Q.How much is still left when the product hits the market?
A.See above.
Oh and the fear of record quantities of herbicides being sprayed on farms? Sorry, that's more F
Nope. The labels are about informed choice.
I have the right to know if what I'm buying with my money is the result of a combination of genes that have undergone thousands of years of 'safety testing' known as evolution, or something concocted in a lab by people who don't even understand fully the basics of what they're doing, but whose employers are in a rush to make a quick buck while they have the patent; something, which is only 'tested' against the interpretation of the safety rules of the said employers for a year or two.
Even if there was a working thorough safety testing procedure and no cause of concern (which isn't the case just yet), if I'm buying something with my money, I still have the right to know what it is made of, just like I have the right to know what's on the ingredient list, where something was manufactured, what color is the item in the package, what is the CPU inside and how many points are there per inch, and just like I tell my clients what's in the product that I ship to them.
If you're against labeling on the ground that it creates 'fear', let's remove the country of origin stuff too, after all, the importers have done all the testing and it is quite certain there's no harm to the consumer. Let's remove info about nutritional value, because high calories or weird ingredients scare the consumer. Finally, let's get rid of the pesky expiry date stuff, we all know that businesses will thoroughly test and that they won't put something spoiled on the shelves.
The thousands of years of 'safety testing' known as evolution was being bypassed long before the discovery of DNA, let alone the ability to directly manipulate for crops. Canola is one of the biggest 'GMO' crops after corn, and Canola itself is not a natural occurring plant formed from thousands of years of evolution. It is a hand bred variety of rapeseed invented in the 70's about 2 hours drive from where I'm typing this. Demanding GMO or not GMO labelling on crops makes about as much sense as demanding that the exact subspecies and variety of every crop be included on the label. For reference, in the just the last 10 years over 200 different varieties of canola alone were registered. If you want a label on your canola oil that requires a 3 page booklet on the front, that's the road your asking to head down. I somehow doubt that's off great benefit to the consumer.
So the next time the West decides to punish a country, at least that country knows there is a way out if they do something to change.
Except that Saddam Hussein agreed to disarm, and then we killed him.
Gaddafi also agreed to disarm, and turned over the Lockerbie bomber. We killed him too.
Historically, there has not been much benefit to acceding to American demands.
Do you really just care so little about your world that spending ten minutes learning about it and thinking about it is too much for you?
Saddam committed genocide against his own people, Iraqi Kurds, in the 80s.
Saddam committed genocide against his own people, Iraqi Shia, in the 90s.
Saddam, far from agreeing to disarm, was disarmed by force and at gunpoint at the end of the first Gulf war. He agreed to allow inspections to confirm he didn't restart his WMD programs, and then proceeded to continually refuse the inspectors access and kick them out of the country.
Then we killed him. If you ask me, we were 2 wars and 2 genocides too late in finally doing the reasonable thing.
Gaddafi did agree to disarm. It was shortly after the time that Saddam was removed from power for refusing to do the same. Gaddafi then made the mistake of going ahead and declaring his intention of purging his nation of the cockroaches of the arab spring, house by house. He then proceeded on a wildly successful military campaign to enact his promised genocide. At the last minute, and at the urging of the Arab League the United Nations authorized the use of force to protect the Libyan people. Yes, we participated in air support to the Libyans the Gaddafi had sworn to kill. Then the Libyan people killed him.
I'm not sure the word historically really even belongs your vocabulary, I think the word you were looking for was propaganda...
... boldly declared its intention to wipe out both Israel and the United States.
Please.
That's just political posturing and propaganda. Even IF Iran gets nukes, they would be no threat to the US. And as far as Israel is concerned, they have plenty for retaliation. And it will never get that far. Israel will violate international law like they always do and just bomb the shit out of Iran's nuke labs and stir up a shit load of trouble and then come crying to the US to bail them out of their dickishness.
Sorry, it sounds an awful lot like you are referencing the Israeli bombing of Saddam's Osirak reactor and declaring it as Israeli dickishness. I'm not sure it's really such a bad thing Saddam's nuclear weapons program was taken out 10 years before he invaded Kuwait.
We have given concessions to a country that has repeatedly lied, hidden, deceived,...
That statement can be applied to Israel. I cannot count how many times she has double crossed and screwed over the US.
As an American, I am sick and tired of my government aligning our interests with a rogue state that has no interest in peace in the Middle East - or at least peace by Israel's terms which from her actions means Israel has total domination over the Middle East.
Frankly, with "allies" like Israel, who the fuck needs enemies.
Boo hoo, the world is a bad place and people are mean in it, let me get a tissue for you.
Like it or not, the global economy runs on oil. All the food we grow, the clothes we wear, the homes we live in and the transportation of all of it to where we live depends upon oil for the last couple decades.
Like it or not, the largest supply of easily drilled and refined oil is in the Middle East.
Name a single country in the Middle East that really looks like a great ally based upon it's ideology and past behaviour. None the less, without access to that oil our economies collapse and our people get cold and go hungry. As a result, alliances are made with people that aren't ideal, but none the less enable oil to flow out of the Middle East and into the global economy. Far worse than Israel though would have to be Saudi Arabia's banking of billions in oil dollars and converting into military spending and spreading of Sunni fundamentalist ideology across the region.
It's really, really easy to point how many terrible consequences and actions 'allies' represent in global politics. Try taking the next step though and proposing better alternatives. Most specifically, is the Middle East situation better or worse if Iran acquires nuclear weapons? For bonus points, give a decent assessment of whether continued sanctions against Iran is a better alternative to this deal.
Or you could just stay in your corner masturbating about how everything is terrible, your choice.
Well, I do not know how meaningful this really is. When you delay things that much everyone knows you are doing something fishy. For whatever, you can always pile excuses the one after the other. But the trust in the actors is quickly lost when you do that.
And yet Saddam pulled that delay and deny plan for more than a decade and yet when America finally said enough is enough the whole world cries about letting inspections do their work and how the process was working...
Your argument is that Iran is a threat because they allow freedom of speech and that they have directly contributed to a terrorist group. Unless you also think that the CIA and US military are the GREATEST threats the world has ever seen, you seem to be lacking some simple logic and common sense.
Is it propaganda, ignorance, or simply bigotry that guides your misjudgment?
I suppose you didn't read my argument then, I'll repeat it for you to ignore a second time:
3. Hezbollah was more or less founded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Hezbollah is to this day heavily trained, funded, equipped and armed by Iran. Hezbollah absolutely has launched multiple direct assaults on Israel and is eternally stockpiling weapons and arms on Israel's border aimed in on it.
1. Holocaust denying kills or maims no one. It's stupid propaganda but that's all
2. Israel has called for the destruction of Iran, to wipe it off the map. look it up
Let's just go ahead and pretend we are you, and accept your above beliefs. Between Israel and Iran, which nation has launched more direct attacks on the others nation with rockets, and soldiers with guns? Iran's Hezbollah proxy has directly launched multiple attacks on Israel. The last direct actions Israel took within Iran's borders was probably during the Iran-Iraq war, when they sent arms and logistic SUPPORT to Iran...
3. USA has funded plenty of terrorists, revolutions, despots, mass murder (example providing money and dual use tech to Saddam for WMD) more than Iran has.
I wish you anti-American rhetoric folks could make up your mind about Saddam. Listening to your ilk it would seem that Saddam was evil incarnate back in the day when America was propping him up. On this point I actually agree with you. However, when America finally smartens up, changes course and removes Saddam, your ilk again decry America for it's unprovoked aggression. The point were Saddam went from genocidal despot to innocent victim of the evil America is an exercise left to the insane.
Foreign policy is not some black and white world where actions must have a lovely outcome to be better than the alternatives. Plenty of times we face a world where ALL options have some very sad outcomes, including the option of sit back, do nothing, and claim 'innocence' through inaction. Rwanda should make clear that not even pure straight up pacifism can be defended as the clear and obvious moral choice. In the middle east, for all the faults with Iran's leadership, if we could trade western support for Saudi Arabia to Iran would be far ahead, as the Saudi state is much worse as a whole, most importantly in it's treatment and rule of it's own population. It's terribly tempting to abandon Saudi Arabia outright given the terrific amount of support they directly provide to terrorist sunni extremists throughout the world, most importantly ISIL and the Taliban in Pakistan. Of course, if America withdraws support to Saudi Arabia, Russia or more likely China just steps in to take our place and will almost certainly do even less to keep the worst elements of Saudi Arabia in check.
In summary the world is a mess, and pointing out America's many, many ills doesn't negate the problems in other countries like Iran and the fact that an Iranian nuclear program isn't a great thing for the region or the world.
Wow, the overreaching race to make Iran a saint and America the devil. You're overzealous approach led you to spout a lot of utter nonsense. Let's review indeed.
Iran: Never invaded anyone, never used weapons of mass destruction against anyone, never posed a serious threat to anyone except Hussein's Iraq.
1.Their official head of state, and until recently their president beneath him, were holocaust deniers. Plenty of FUD has been spread to try and deny this denial, but the fact is plain that both Ali Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have both openly questioned how many Jews were really killed in the holocaust and called for that to be restudied and questioned by scholars more generally. It's just the new face of denial, what is the holocaust after all without millions of victims singled out for their ethnicity alone? It's just some people that died in a war again, so questioning if millions really died IS absolutely denial of the holocaust.
2. Ali Khamenei called for Israel to removed from the map, and Ahmadinejad called this a very wise statement. Somehow that seems at least a bit threatening to Israel, no? Move on to 3 before crying how Iran's never put action to those words...
3. Hezbollah was more or less founded by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Hezbollah is to this day heavily trained, funded, equipped and armed by Iran. Hezbollah absolutely has launched multiple direct assaults on Israel and is eternally stockpiling weapons and arms on Israel's border aimed in on it.
U.S.: Invaded Iraq with no provocation,
Saddam's Iraq invaded and seized Kuwait with no provocation first. Upon Saddam's elimination of a UN member state, the US kicked him out and returned sovereignty back to Kuwait. They additionally set out and dismantled Saddam's programs for weapons of mass destruction that he very much DID have then. They additionally setup a no-fly zone over northern Iraq to protect Iraqi Kurds from a second genocide, as Saddam had previously done against them after the Iran-Iraq war. The U.S. did however listen to world opinion and stopped there. They left Saddam in power, and stood outside Iraq's borders and watched Saddam commit a second genocide, this time against Shia Iraqi's who foolishly rose up when Bush Sr. suggested they do just that.
So since the end of the original Gulf War, which Saddam surely instigated, he committed genocide, for at least the second time in his reign. Meanwhile all the signatories to the convention on genocide stood back and had done nothing. Saddam additionally kicked out international inspectors trying to confirm his compliance with his agreement to not restart his WMD programs, and he had done this repeatedly. He repeatedly violated the no-fly zone over Kurdish Iraq. But yes, aside from the genocide and refusal to abide by inspection of his old WMD sites, there was no provocation at all for removing Saddam from power...
only country in the world to use nuclear weapons,
This has to be the cheapest shot in your quiver. Even the Japanese, the only country in the world to have nuclear weapons used against it, agree that the nukes probably saved lives, even if you only value Japanese lives, versus an inevitable ground invasion otherwise. And don't compound your folly by declaring how the nuclear bombs where unneeded because Japan was going to surrender anyway. Merely the fact that a second bombing of Nagasaki was required proves that Japan wasn't even prepared to surrender AFTER Hiroshima had been nuked.
have overthrown countless democratically elected governments (including the one in Iran).
So remind me, WHO'S the threat to world peace again?
Much as has Britain, and France, and China, and Japan and Russia and any nation that has ever gotten large enough to ply it's powers globally. America is no saint, but that hardly changes Iran's nature.
Oh, and if you're going to say t
I have no problem with a course teaching about what anti-vaccine supporters claim if it helps doctors debunk it in person and helps them dismantle it in person. I hope this is what it is about.
That was exactly my hope. I could see the legitimacy of inoculating students to all the half truths and outright lies that alternative fruitcakes are trying to pitch the public. It's even important to have our medical students versed in some of it just so they can be prepared to counter the fear mongers.
Regrettably, the course outline reveals otherwise. It goes as far to say the course will delve into a quantum physics’ understanding of disease. So it's a course teaching the very worst of the lies. The instructor is listed as Beth Landau-Halpern. Here's an undercover video CBC caught her and others in where she tells the parent that vaccines are causing allergies and other stupidity that is entirely counter to scientific evidence. She even has a blog post here confirming it was her and pleading that her advice was devoid of context, as if there is some context in which suggesting vaccines like that for MMR is really far worse for a child than a homeopathic placebo she was willing to sell...
This is as about as bad as it can get. We have the U of T willing to run a course taught by someone this loony, and then to review the course material and find it acceptable even! Of course, they are not going to be offering the course next year, and hopefully never again. But for it to get this far is a sign of some very, very deep rot in institutions that seriously needs to be cleaned up.