It does seem a bit strange that the late 1800's are most definitely the ideal global temperature we should achieve for peace and love and whatever. Who's to say a slightly warmer planet won't have as many benefits as downsides?
It's not per-se the "ideal" temperature. It is, however, the temperature to which we've adapted our current society and land use. Changing the temperature will entail massive disruptions, and that will be expensive.
If nothing else, 32 percent of the world's population lives within 37 miles of the coast-- having three billion people migrate due to rising sea levels is going to be pretty disruptive. Not to mention the trillions of dollars of real estate value submerged.
If you really are interested in the current thinking about what the effects of climate change will be, the best summary is in the IPCC Working Group II report, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. You can download it here:
www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml
BUT, we do know full well that crops will grow, oceans will harbor life, and weather phenomenon will be mostly survivable at those temperatures, so why mess with a good thing?
We have an agricultural system pretty well adapted to present climate. If, say, the desert zones of the planet moved even five degrees north, this would wipe out about half of the world's food supply. Yes, that could be compensated by new agricultural areas opening up, in Canada and Siberia and Scandanavia. But, again, it will entail massive disruption.
I'm hardly on the doom and gloom side, but this just doesn't seem like something you mess with willy nilly because 'fuck it, why not.'
Exactly. "Fuck it, why not change everything about our climate, because why not" is not a very good reasoning. We have things working pretty well now.
"settled" is an odd word. I'm not sure what it means. If new data comes in that contradicts the theories we have now, the science will change. This is the way science works: science is "settled" until it is overturned by data, or by better understanding of the old data.
What is "settled" about climate is that the null hypothesis-- that human-produced carbon dioxide doesn't produce warming-- has been rather convincingly rejected by data.
If you want to overturn the current consensus, you need to come up with a mechanism by which carbon dioxide won't produce warming... and show that it fits the data (and there is a lot of data. Those curves you see are only the tiniest bit of it). A lot of people have been looking for that theory for a very long time, and so far have been unable to come up with any plausible mechanisms.
But to be fair, the article leaves it very unclear what Dyson's actual position on climate is. His position seems to be that although there is some decent evidence for warming (melting of long-term ice) the climate models suck, which is borne out by the total inability of the models to predict long-term weather changes - you know, the very definition of climate.
The models have been shown to be pretty good at predicting long-term weather changes, if by long-term you mean decade scale. The results are right on predictions, so far; while models that don't include anthropogenic global warming have been consistently wrong.
The models don't predict short term weather, but then, they're not supposed to.
In 1979, carbon dioxide (annual average) was 336.8 ppm; in 2014 concentration was 398.6 ppm... That's an increase of 118%
No, that's an increase of 18%.
for the pedants among us, please strike the word "of" and substitute "by a factor of."
The prediction of 0.81 plus or minus 0.4
Ok, even if the Math is correct, it really, is not much of a prediction though, is it? I mean, with the "error bars" being so huge and the predicted delta — so small...
This is something that the denier community doesn't really want to acknowledge: the predictions come with large error bars. That's the way science works. A notable thing, however, is that the error bars do not extend to include zero.
So small, in fact, it is just on the border of the other "error bar" — that of the measuring apparatus...
When you look at the data, seems like the error bar in each measurement is about plus or minus about 0.1 (and the error in the trendline much lower, of course). Here's the graph: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...
The rise between 1980 and 2014 is well above the measurement error.
And so small, one can be forgiven for wondering, what the heck the whole brouhaha is about — especially considering the much more profound climate phenomena in Earth's recent history (like Ice Age).
I don't think anybody is worried about the 0.6. They're worried about what happens if the trendline continues to be rise for another century.
Reminds me of Al Gore's speech back in 2007, when he was accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo:
Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is "falling off a cliff." One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years.
OK. That quote gives a prediction of 22 years. The statement "could happen in as little as" isn't any sort of an actual prediction, but you could say that it adds that the error bars in that number includes 7 years. So, the prediction is 22 years, plus or minus 15.
It would be worth finding the actual references, not the paraphrases, but that prediction as quoted is that the north polar ice cap "could be" gone by 2029. We have a long time to wait before seeing if this happens.
Al Gore's work in climate change was inspired by his Harvard professor Roger Revelle... In a July 14, 1988, letter to Congressman Jim Bates, [Revelle] wrote that: "Most scientists familiar with the subject are not yet willing to bet that the climate this year is the result of 'greenhouse warming.' As you very well know, climate is highly variable from year to year, and the causes of these variations are not at all well understood. My own personal belief is that we should wait another 10 or 20 years to really be convinced that the greenhouse is going to be important for human beings, in both positive and negative ways."
So, he said in 1988 that we needed to wait until 1998 or 2008 before we are convinced that greenhouse warming is going to be important. That's about when the data on the greenhouse warming started being pretty compelling, so I'd say: quite accurate.
Before his death in July 1991 Dr. Revelle said in a paper, "the scientific baseis for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time."
"at this time" meaning 1991. And, in fact, we didn't take any drastic action in 1991.
The truth remains — there have not been many climate-related predictions published, that came true in due time. In fact, I can't find even a single one such prediction
Actually, an interesting question. The oldest "scientific consensus" I can find that gives a number that can be used as a prediction is the 1979 National Academy of Sciences report. This predicted that the climate sensitivity was between 1.5 and 4.5C per doubling: that is, 3 plus or minus 1.5.
Citation: Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 1979. http://www.nap.edu/catalog/121...
(you can go back earlier than this, but this is the first one where a panel of scientists came together to evaluate all the models available at the time, and not just a single team making a model.)
That's 36 years ago, so it's long enough to compare prediction to reality.
In 1979, carbon dioxide (annual average) was 336.8 ppm; in 2014 concentration was 398.6 ppm. citation: http://co2now.org/Current-CO2/...
That's an increase of 118%, log(2) of that is 0.243. So given that CO2 increase, the predicted temperature rise between 1979 and 2014, if the NAS value was correct, is 0.81 plus or minus 0.4.
Actual temperature rise, according to the GISS temp, is 0.17 above datum in 1979, 0.75 above datum in 2014, for a temperature rise of 0.58C.
citation: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...
The prediction of 0.81 plus or minus 0.4 is within the error bars of the actual measurement, 0.58. So I will rate this as a correct prediction.
Dyson is a smart guy, and worth listening to-- but being smart does not mean he is always right. He tends to be a contrarian-- but being contrarian, although an interesting philosophy, unfortunately doesn't make you right.
The denialists want to claim him as one of them, but if you read what he actually says (and not what other people rephrase what he says), he's not; he's a skeptic, all right, but not a denier, or, at least, he doesn't parrot the deniers' (mostly stupid) talking points. His arguments are more complicated than that.
He does, however, think that climate models are not reliable. When you dig down into why, you see that he admits taht he hasn't actually studied them, he's just distrustful of numerical models in general.
A large part of his argument, however, is that global warming just isn't a problem, and if it is, it's one we can solve. (In the very short interview referenced, for example, he says that we should look at ways of increasing snowfall in Antarctica as a solution.)
I think, unfortunately, that there is a complete contradiction here. You can't solve a problem if you don't have a model that tells you the effect of your prposed actions. So-- if you don't believe the models, then you can't model what the effect of your solution is. Contrawise, if you are asserting that you can solve the problem (by, for example, increasing snowfall in Antarctica), this means that you think that you can model the problem, and be confident that your solution the effect of solving the problem. So: you can assert that you don't believe the models, or you can assert that we can solve the problem, but you can't logically assert both.
There is no such thing as "anonymous"; there is merely a spectrum from known identiy to arbitrarily strong pseudonymity, and it is possible under Bitcoin to achieve arbitrarily strong pseudonymity.
Somebody mark that insightful!
This is something bitcoin enthusiasts somehow don't want to notice. Bitcoin is not an inherently anonymous currency! Every bitcoin transaction goes through the internets. Every single one. The "pseudonymous" assertion is "well, nobody would ever want to do all the datamining needed to backtrack the information and back out who bought what...."
If you're an American (or frankly, any innocent person) anywhere in the world who isn't an active member of a foreign terrorist organization or an agent of a foreign power, the Intelligence Community DOES NOT CARE ABOUT and actually DOES NOT WANT your data. Sounds crazy and bizarre for foreign intelligence agencies to care about things like foreign intelligence, I know, but it's true.
You would think. And, if the government lived up to our ideals for it, that would be true. Why would a government want to spy on their own citizens?
But in the real world, history shows us that sometimes governments decide that they do want to spy on their own citizens. They decide that some citizens are "dissenters" and need to be spied on. They decide that court orders and civil rights don't apply to them. They make "enemy lists" and try to dig out dirt to discredit the enemies. They wiretap reformers and try to blackmail them.
The oldest paper I know of on the topic was presented to 4th Annual Mars Society Convention at Stanford University on August 24th, 2001 and has far more content. The pdf http://palermoproject.com/Seep... is from this page
Yes, what is interesting about this is who wrote it-- this is one of the first detailed analyses of the methods and costs of dealing with global warming that I've seen that is not from an advocacy group, and is written by people who actually have a clue about real world economics.
"...climate change will produce more extreme weather situations..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So, explain to me why Florida's last hurricane was ten years ago???
"It is premature to conclude that human activities--and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming--have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane activity."
"It’s unclear whether climate change will increase or decrease the number of hurricanes, but warmer ocean surface temperatures and higher sea levels are expected to intensify their impacts."
In "American Civil Liberties Union v. National Security Agency" (2007), the United States Court of Appeals held that the plaintiffs did not have standing to bring the suit against the NSA, because they could not present evidence that they were the targets of the so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
ON the other hand, they could easily lose that damn caps lock key.
Who invented that anyway? When I get my time machine I'm going to go back in time and strangle them as a baby.
I'm not also completely sure I need function, control, option and command keys. That seems like some of those functions could be consolidated.
There was a time I understood this during the PPC era of mac, but now that macs run on commodity, non specialized CISC based x86, I have no idea why they retain their value. A lot of PC makers are starting to make machines that look *almost* as nice as a MBP.
Because Windows machines are a commodity. A Windows box is a Windows box, what you get is pretty much all the same, so the vendors are in a "race to the bottom"-- who can make it the cheapest? They don't expect brand loyalty, and for the most part they don't get it-- most customers buy on price. And nobody is saying "I like my Dell machine so much I'll buy a telephone from them, and also a MP3 player, and I'm thinking about the Dell watch."
Apple, on the other hand, does rely on brand loyalty. They count on it. And they count on that when people like their Macbook Air, they'll buy a phone, and a MP3 player, and -- who knows-- maybe even a watch. They don't dare race to the bottom... and they don't have to.
Interesting link, but note that the reference you're citing is Nature Climate's "Opinion and Comment" section, not a scientific paper.
Basically, they are arguing that the "pause" in global warming centered around the early 2000s can't be explained by models and is not a statistical noise. I'm not convinced-- they have selected out just a small period of the full record-- but that's their opinion. Even so, in their analysis the "pause" was a slow-down, not a stop of global warming.
Here's a nice link somebody posted elsewhere in the commentary, where you can graph the data and cherry-pick what period you want to show:
I kind of misspoke when I wrote that. The 0.2% is the difference between maximum solar forcing and minimum solar forcing in a Maunder Minimum scenario given the Sun's variability so the potential change is more like half of that.
Less than that. That's 1360 W/m**2 at solar noon on a black sun-facing surface at the top of atmosphere. The actual solar radiation--accounting for the fact that the Earth is a sphere, and is somewhat reflective-- input to the Earth is 340 W/m^2.
http://missionscience.nasa.gov...
This is where I have an issue. ANY piece of science than, in any way, might somehow make someone question the global warming dogma is immediately attacked and discredited.
Agreed: if this work was identical in every respect but said nothing about climate, no one would pay any attention to it.
Exactly! And the work in question in fact didn't say any thing about climate.
The only reason the original story made headlines is because the media wasn't interested in a story about new models of the solar dynamo... it wanted to hype it up into something exciting. Grab those reader's eyeballs!
"Nothing to see here, move along" is a pretty accurate summary of the work.
Ironic that the "Little Ice Age" was triggered by enourmous quantities of CO2 emitted by volcanic erruptions.
No, actually, triggered by enormous quantities of volcanic ash and sulfate aerosols ejected into the atmosphere, reflecting sunlight and thus reducing the amount of energy reaching the Earth's surface.
This is a well-documented effect.
Volcanoes, ironically, don't emit all that much carbon dioxide. That is, they emit a lot... but not compared to the cubic miles of coal we burn.
Slashdot Mirror
It does seem a bit strange that the late 1800's are most definitely the ideal global temperature we should achieve for peace and love and whatever. Who's to say a slightly warmer planet won't have as many benefits as downsides?
It's not per-se the "ideal" temperature. It is, however, the temperature to which we've adapted our current society and land use. Changing the temperature will entail massive disruptions, and that will be expensive.
If nothing else, 32 percent of the world's population lives within 37 miles of the coast-- having three billion people migrate due to rising sea levels is going to be pretty disruptive. Not to mention the trillions of dollars of real estate value submerged.
If you really are interested in the current thinking about what the effects of climate change will be, the best summary is in the IPCC Working Group II report, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. You can download it here: www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml
BUT, we do know full well that crops will grow, oceans will harbor life, and weather phenomenon will be mostly survivable at those temperatures, so why mess with a good thing?
We have an agricultural system pretty well adapted to present climate. If, say, the desert zones of the planet moved even five degrees north, this would wipe out about half of the world's food supply. Yes, that could be compensated by new agricultural areas opening up, in Canada and Siberia and Scandanavia. But, again, it will entail massive disruption.
I'm hardly on the doom and gloom side, but this just doesn't seem like something you mess with willy nilly because 'fuck it, why not.'
Exactly. "Fuck it, why not change everything about our climate, because why not" is not a very good reasoning. We have things working pretty well now.
one-tenth scale replica spacecraft
it's not a spacecraft! It's not going to space!
was carried by high-altitude ballon to a height of 100,475 ft (30,624 m)
30 km is not space!
Memorize this: if you can float in the air, you are still in the air.
So, if you can float in the air, it's not space.
"settled" is an odd word. I'm not sure what it means. If new data comes in that contradicts the theories we have now, the science will change. This is the way science works: science is "settled" until it is overturned by data, or by better understanding of the old data.
What is "settled" about climate is that the null hypothesis-- that human-produced carbon dioxide doesn't produce warming-- has been rather convincingly rejected by data.
If you want to overturn the current consensus, you need to come up with a mechanism by which carbon dioxide won't produce warming... and show that it fits the data (and there is a lot of data. Those curves you see are only the tiniest bit of it). A lot of people have been looking for that theory for a very long time, and so far have been unable to come up with any plausible mechanisms.
But to be fair, the article leaves it very unclear what Dyson's actual position on climate is. His position seems to be that although there is some decent evidence for warming (melting of long-term ice) the climate models suck, which is borne out by the total inability of the models to predict long-term weather changes - you know, the very definition of climate.
The models have been shown to be pretty good at predicting long-term weather changes, if by long-term you mean decade scale. The results are right on predictions, so far; while models that don't include anthropogenic global warming have been consistently wrong. The models don't predict short term weather, but then, they're not supposed to.
No, that's an increase of 18%.
for the pedants among us, please strike the word "of" and substitute "by a factor of."
Ok, even if the Math is correct, it really, is not much of a prediction though, is it? I mean, with the "error bars" being so huge and the predicted delta — so small...
This is something that the denier community doesn't really want to acknowledge: the predictions come with large error bars. That's the way science works. A notable thing, however, is that the error bars do not extend to include zero.
So small, in fact, it is just on the border of the other "error bar" — that of the measuring apparatus...
When you look at the data, seems like the error bar in each measurement is about plus or minus about 0.1 (and the error in the trendline much lower, of course). Here's the graph: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist... The rise between 1980 and 2014 is well above the measurement error.
And so small, one can be forgiven for wondering, what the heck the whole brouhaha is about — especially considering the much more profound climate phenomena in Earth's recent history (like Ice Age).
I don't think anybody is worried about the 0.6. They're worried about what happens if the trendline continues to be rise for another century.
Reminds me of Al Gore's speech back in 2007, when he was accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo:
Last September 21, as the Northern Hemisphere tilted away from the sun, scientists reported with unprecedented distress that the North Polar ice cap is "falling off a cliff." One study estimated that it could be completely gone during summer in less than 22 years. Another new study, to be presented by U.S. Navy researchers later this week, warns it could happen in as little as 7 years.
OK. That quote gives a prediction of 22 years. The statement "could happen in as little as" isn't any sort of an actual prediction, but you could say that it adds that the error bars in that number includes 7 years. So, the prediction is 22 years, plus or minus 15. It would be worth finding the actual references, not the paraphrases, but that prediction as quoted is that the north polar ice cap "could be" gone by 2029. We have a long time to wait before seeing if this happens.
Al Gore's work in climate change was inspired by his Harvard professor Roger Revelle... In a July 14, 1988, letter to Congressman Jim Bates, [Revelle] wrote that: "Most scientists familiar with the subject are not yet willing to bet that the climate this year is the result of 'greenhouse warming.' As you very well know, climate is highly variable from year to year, and the causes of these variations are not at all well understood. My own personal belief is that we should wait another 10 or 20 years to really be convinced that the greenhouse is going to be important for human beings, in both positive and negative ways."
So, he said in 1988 that we needed to wait until 1998 or 2008 before we are convinced that greenhouse warming is going to be important. That's about when the data on the greenhouse warming started being pretty compelling, so I'd say: quite accurate.
Before his death in July 1991 Dr. Revelle said in a paper, "the scientific baseis for a greenhouse warming is too uncertain to justify drastic action at this time."
"at this time" meaning 1991. And, in fact, we didn't take any drastic action in 1991.
The truth remains — there have not been many climate-related predictions published, that came true in due time. In fact, I can't find even a single one such prediction
Actually, an interesting question. The oldest "scientific consensus" I can find that gives a number that can be used as a prediction is the 1979 National Academy of Sciences report. This predicted that the climate sensitivity was between 1.5 and 4.5C per doubling: that is, 3 plus or minus 1.5. Citation: Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 1979. http://www.nap.edu/catalog/121... (you can go back earlier than this, but this is the first one where a panel of scientists came together to evaluate all the models available at the time, and not just a single team making a model.)
That's 36 years ago, so it's long enough to compare prediction to reality. In 1979, carbon dioxide (annual average) was 336.8 ppm; in 2014 concentration was 398.6 ppm. citation: http://co2now.org/Current-CO2/... That's an increase of 118%, log(2) of that is 0.243. So given that CO2 increase, the predicted temperature rise between 1979 and 2014, if the NAS value was correct, is 0.81 plus or minus 0.4.
Actual temperature rise, according to the GISS temp, is 0.17 above datum in 1979, 0.75 above datum in 2014, for a temperature rise of 0.58C. citation: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...
The prediction of 0.81 plus or minus 0.4 is within the error bars of the actual measurement, 0.58. So I will rate this as a correct prediction.
The denialists want to claim him as one of them, but if you read what he actually says (and not what other people rephrase what he says), he's not; he's a skeptic, all right, but not a denier, or, at least, he doesn't parrot the deniers' (mostly stupid) talking points. His arguments are more complicated than that.
He does, however, think that climate models are not reliable. When you dig down into why, you see that he admits taht he hasn't actually studied them, he's just distrustful of numerical models in general.
A large part of his argument, however, is that global warming just isn't a problem, and if it is, it's one we can solve. (In the very short interview referenced, for example, he says that we should look at ways of increasing snowfall in Antarctica as a solution.)
I think, unfortunately, that there is a complete contradiction here. You can't solve a problem if you don't have a model that tells you the effect of your prposed actions. So-- if you don't believe the models, then you can't model what the effect of your solution is. Contrawise, if you are asserting that you can solve the problem (by, for example, increasing snowfall in Antarctica), this means that you think that you can model the problem, and be confident that your solution the effect of solving the problem. So: you can assert that you don't believe the models, or you can assert that we can solve the problem, but you can't logically assert both.
Why do people, or should I say companies and governments, keep trying to use it ?
Because this is the way actual human beings identify each other-- by looking at each other.
There is no such thing as "anonymous"; there is merely a spectrum from known identiy to arbitrarily strong pseudonymity, and it is possible under Bitcoin to achieve arbitrarily strong pseudonymity.
Somebody mark that insightful! This is something bitcoin enthusiasts somehow don't want to notice. Bitcoin is not an inherently anonymous currency! Every bitcoin transaction goes through the internets. Every single one. The "pseudonymous" assertion is "well, nobody would ever want to do all the datamining needed to backtrack the information and back out who bought what...."
If you're an American (or frankly, any innocent person) anywhere in the world who isn't an active member of a foreign terrorist organization or an agent of a foreign power, the Intelligence Community DOES NOT CARE ABOUT and actually DOES NOT WANT your data. Sounds crazy and bizarre for foreign intelligence agencies to care about things like foreign intelligence, I know, but it's true.
You would think. And, if the government lived up to our ideals for it, that would be true. Why would a government want to spy on their own citizens?
But in the real world, history shows us that sometimes governments decide that they do want to spy on their own citizens. They decide that some citizens are "dissenters" and need to be spied on. They decide that court orders and civil rights don't apply to them. They make "enemy lists" and try to dig out dirt to discredit the enemies. They wiretap reformers and try to blackmail them.
The pope’s astronomer said he’d baptize an alien if given the chance http://www.religionnews.com/20... http://www.amazon.com/Would-Yo...
The oldest paper I know of on the topic was presented to 4th Annual Mars Society Convention at Stanford University on August 24th, 2001 and has far more content. The pdf http://palermoproject.com/Seep... is from this page
That's a year after the Malin and Edgett paper in 2000, "Evidence for recent groundwater seepage and surface runoff on Mars", which was published in Science and got a lot of attention. Or this one, from 2002, which suggested that the reason the water carving the gullies was liquid was due to salt content suppressing the freezing point: http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/n...
Yes, what is interesting about this is who wrote it-- this is one of the first detailed analyses of the methods and costs of dealing with global warming that I've seen that is not from an advocacy group, and is written by people who actually have a clue about real world economics.
"...climate change will produce more extreme weather situations..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... So, explain to me why Florida's last hurricane was ten years ago???
Because Florida isn't the world.
Can we just have science instead of hysteria?
OK. Here's a summary of number of hurricanes and tropical storms, as of 2011 (about the latest good data I can find):
www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/tropical-cyclones/201113
I'm not sure I can distinguish a trend from the noise.
But on the other hand, I haven't ever seen a prediction telling me that I should be able to see the trend. Here's what NOAA says:
www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes
"It is premature to conclude that human activities--and particularly greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming--have already had a detectable impact on Atlantic hurricane activity."
And here what the Center for Climate and Energy Impacts says:
www.c2es.org/science-impacts/extreme-weather/hurricanes
"It’s unclear whether climate change will increase or decrease the number of hurricanes, but warmer ocean surface temperatures and higher sea levels are expected to intensify their impacts."
In "American Civil Liberties Union v. National Security Agency" (2007), the United States Court of Appeals held that the plaintiffs did not have standing to bring the suit against the NSA, because they could not present evidence that they were the targets of the so-called "Terrorist Surveillance Program". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
ON the other hand, they could easily lose that damn caps lock key. Who invented that anyway? When I get my time machine I'm going to go back in time and strangle them as a baby. I'm not also completely sure I need function, control, option and command keys. That seems like some of those functions could be consolidated.
There was a time I understood this during the PPC era of mac, but now that macs run on commodity, non specialized CISC based x86, I have no idea why they retain their value. A lot of PC makers are starting to make machines that look *almost* as nice as a MBP.
Because Windows machines are a commodity. A Windows box is a Windows box, what you get is pretty much all the same, so the vendors are in a "race to the bottom"-- who can make it the cheapest? They don't expect brand loyalty, and for the most part they don't get it-- most customers buy on price. And nobody is saying "I like my Dell machine so much I'll buy a telephone from them, and also a MP3 player, and I'm thinking about the Dell watch."
Apple, on the other hand, does rely on brand loyalty. They count on it. And they count on that when people like their Macbook Air, they'll buy a phone, and a MP3 player, and -- who knows-- maybe even a watch. They don't dare race to the bottom... and they don't have to.
Interesting link, but note that the reference you're citing is Nature Climate's "Opinion and Comment" section, not a scientific paper.
Basically, they are arguing that the "pause" in global warming centered around the early 2000s can't be explained by models and is not a statistical noise. I'm not convinced-- they have selected out just a small period of the full record-- but that's their opinion. Even so, in their analysis the "pause" was a slow-down, not a stop of global warming.
Here's a nice link somebody posted elsewhere in the commentary, where you can graph the data and cherry-pick what period you want to show:
Here's the data from 1950 to 2012: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/g...
and here's the subseta of that data that they chose to analyze, 1993-2012: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/g...
and 1998-2012: http://woodfortrees.org/plot/g...
I kind of misspoke when I wrote that. The 0.2% is the difference between maximum solar forcing and minimum solar forcing in a Maunder Minimum scenario given the Sun's variability so the potential change is more like half of that.
Less than that. That's 1360 W/m**2 at solar noon on a black sun-facing surface at the top of atmosphere. The actual solar radiation--accounting for the fact that the Earth is a sphere, and is somewhat reflective-- input to the Earth is 340 W/m^2. http://missionscience.nasa.gov...
This is where I have an issue. ANY piece of science than, in any way, might somehow make someone question the global warming dogma is immediately attacked and discredited.
Agreed: if this work was identical in every respect but said nothing about climate, no one would pay any attention to it.
Exactly! And the work in question in fact didn't say any thing about climate.
The only reason the original story made headlines is because the media wasn't interested in a story about new models of the solar dynamo... it wanted to hype it up into something exciting. Grab those reader's eyeballs!
"Nothing to see here, move along" is a pretty accurate summary of the work.
A correlation... but not one large enough to offset global warming, even if the solar activity dropped to zero
An "ice age" in the age of "global warming".
Ironic that the "Little Ice Age" was triggered by enourmous quantities of CO2 emitted by volcanic erruptions.
No, actually, triggered by enormous quantities of volcanic ash and sulfate aerosols ejected into the atmosphere, reflecting sunlight and thus reducing the amount of energy reaching the Earth's surface. This is a well-documented effect. Volcanoes, ironically, don't emit all that much carbon dioxide. That is, they emit a lot... but not compared to the cubic miles of coal we burn.
Actually oil doesn't get subsidies, you are confusing tax breaks with government giving them money....
Oil is one of the most heavily taxed items you can buy.
You are aware that these two sentences contradict each other? If oil gets tax breaks, that means lower taxes.