Another bloody story about global warming, or is it climate change, or is it climate disruption. If anyone lives in New York or New Jersey, they should be royally pissed at this. Because Sandy was NOT a hurricane strength storm when it hit. What would the effects of Sandy have been if she had the strength of Hazel? But because of the "global warming" debate as epitomized by this story, no one is asking Bloomberg or Christie why a storm that was NOT a design event (as engineers understand the term) resulted in so much destruction. Politicians are using global warming as cover. They don't have to answer for the catastrophe that has happened in New York and New Jersey because it is "global warming". And the useful idiots here and the media are letting them succeed. So Bloomberg and Christie will not be held to account. A catastrophe that was predictable, certain to occur, is accepted as "the new normal". NO it isn't the new normal. It is LESS than the old normal. If you live in an affected area in NY or NJ, sue your government because they have failed you. This was NOT anything larger than a design event. OK. Stopping my rant now.
Now, if anybody can present real evidence, that would be different.
I believe most of the people "fighting disinformation" have been banned from editing at Wikipedia. As for real evidence, what do you need? How about this?
Wow! Have you told Dr. Mann that? Because most of his evidence that the MWP didn't exist comes from a very few regional proxies. And those proxies failed to calibrate. If you don't believe that, google "divergence problem". There is a lot about the divergence problem at RealClimate. Then "hide the decline". The temperature, as measured by the proxies, has been dropping while the temperature, as measured by modern instruments, has been increasing. This isn't some "denier conspiracy" thing either. The divergence problem is accepted by all climate scientists. They know that during the period when we have highly accurate means of calibrating the "proxies", they do not reflect actual temeprature. THAT is the "decline" that was hidden. The proxies tell us that the world has been cooling while the world has been warming. There is NO basis for assuming that this did not also happen during the MWP.
I take it you haven't read UPDATING after all. Honestly, if you don't know about/usr/ports/UPDATING you shouldn't even play with FreeBSD. I assume you haven't spent any time on reading about Ports system before using it. So basically this breaks down to a RTFM case.
There are rare occasions when some libraries are upgraded to a more recent release, time when you need to recompile/upgrade applications that depend on it too. It *does* make sense, isn't it ? Otherwise you may end up with broken applications due to changes in those libraries they depend on.
Another situation is when some app/library has a security update. Usually few people provide patches for older versions, so if you want the patch you upgrade to the most recent version. Kind of natural if you think about it. FreeBSD is not RedHat and doesn't have the same financial support to spend time on backporting patches for instance.
I take it you don't like this system. You are free to stick with Windows or Fedora then, but there are people that prefer systems such as FreeBSD and Gentoo (yes, amazing, Gentoo Linux functions in a similar fashion, so it's not even a FreeBSD vs Linux issue here, it's a matter of packaging philosophy).
I don't claim FreeBSD is better then Linux or vice-verse, but your comments show an amount of ignorance that I generally disregard.
I stopped reading UPDATING more than a year ago when I gave up entirely on this POS operating system and the people in the community. Before then, I spent WAY too much time reading UPDATING. Based on my hourly billing rate I could have purchased a full version of Win7 Professional a month. So now I run Windows. I haven't had to read UPDATING in a very long time. I spent a lot of time on the mailing lists. I was able to help a lot of people over the years. The problem isn't just the system. The problem is the community. It is elitist, obnoxious and rude. FreeBSD is a nice hobby. Fewer and fewer people who have to do real work are using it. Anonymous Cowards, such as yourself, who epitomize that community, are assuring that the trend will continue.
If you've got any real experience (like a week of use...) with FreeBSD, you know that FreeBSD is dead simple to use, has amazing documentation, and a very helpful user community. However, you literally can't install your first port without discovering that system tuning is automatic/done at compile time. Xorg is also the same between Linux and FreeBSD, again something that any real experience would teach.
No longtime BSD user would have made any mistakes as the thread starter did with wasting hours tweaking the graphics card or the system. In fact, not even a week old newbie would make those mistakes. The thread starter poster revealed himself as a clueless, FUD-spreading troll.
I've got nine years experience with FreeBSD. I started at 4.7 and I stopped at 8.0. Maybe something radical has changed, but last time I looked, dead simple would be an outright lie. Documentation may be amazing, once you understand it. The handbook is ok. The rest, not so much. As for the user community. Have you read the posts from that community on this thread? Read your own post. If you are an example of a helpful community, I'd hate to see what you consider rude and obnoxious.
The best part is that now Linux fanboys are using the same "arguments" that were used against their baby to attack BSD. "But why should I use BSD if Linux is almost as good", or "but my graphics card!". I'm glad my Android phone is my only point of exposure to Linux, wish it could be moved to NetBSD or something though.
From what I've read on this thread, it is more "why should I use BSD when Linux is far superior". Nice attempt at redirection though. In case you are wondering, I dumped debian in favour of FreeBSD in 2001. I dumped FreeBSD completely in 2010. I use professionally produced (i.e. for pay) software now. These amatuer things were nice as a hobby but I have kids and a life now.
Aw look at this. Somebody got their feelings hurt when bullshit was called. It made me feel bad too....wait that was just lunch.
Earlier on in this thread someone made the claim that the people in the FreeBSD community were a bunch of arrogant arseholes (he was more polite than that). I was pointing out instances here of this attitude. Thanks for providing another prime example. You should read up on "irony". And posting as an AC to boot.
So unless you code, where do you get your computer fun then? The feeling of boredom that avalanched over me as I read your post nearly kills my willing to live:(
I'm assuming your were replying to me. What computer fun? My computer is a tool I use to work. When I feel the desire to procrastinate I post here. If computers are your source of fun . . . Sorry about that young fella. Also sorry about your 'willing'.
They've had it for years, there's at least two different ways of doing it. The easiest way is just using Wine and the Windows version of Firefox. The other way is to just use the Linux version of Flash. And really, it's only necessary because of incompetent web developers anyways.
These sorts of FUD posts about a largely unimportant feature that isn't native, is really not conducive to a decent discussion.
Are you serious? Flash is an unimportant feature? What year did you fall asleep? It's 2011 now.
Of course, as an experienced FreeBSD user, it's not likely you would have made this post in the first place. How long have you actually been running FreeBSD anyway?
Yet another example of the helpful attitude of the FreeBSD community.
You must not have been very good if you had that much trouble. I started using FreeBSD over a decade ago and I never had that much trouble getting my graphics cards to work.
Wow! Thanks for providing an excellent example of the "support" one can expect on a FreeBSD mailing list.
I've used debian and freebsd. I now use Windows 7. Works with everything, I never have to R an FM, I never have to compile anything. My security updates come in without any effort on my part. And I NEVER have to ask for help from nice folk like you.
The FreeBSD community takes a "blame the user" stance that is going to alienate most desktop users, who want to use the machine to get something done and don't want to be held up by snafus that may take days to fix.
Can you be more specific ? I have a subscription on several mailing lists and I see people asking questions and being helped all the time. Same on the FreeBSD forum.
Much of BSD's documentation is wrong or vague, many things are still broken within the OS and especially in the parts a desktop user would use, and when there is a problem, there's nowhere to go for a clear, quick solution.
Can you give an example of broken things and bad documentation ? I find the documentation rather thorough and easy to understand. Maybe a bit to technical, but neither wrong, nor vague.
And you know, sometimes it's actually a RTFM problem after all.
I dumped FreeBSD for a number of reasons. Required to upgrade due to some security thing, Oh wait, some obscure library has also updated and now the entire OS needs to upgrade. And KDE too. WTF? When did Gnome get installed? Ah well, I wasn't going to use the computer this week anyway. One week later, nothing works, so I go to the mailing lists. First responses are usually "It's in UPDATING, come back when you've read that." If you haven't seen the snide, arrogant crap that happens on the mailing lists you are not paying attention. (mailing lists? are your reading what you are typing? mailing lists? This isn't 1988.) And yes, there are a large number of parts of the base OS (not the ports) that have crap documentation. And RTFM? If you need to RTFM to install software and keep a system running, the system is crap. I've switched to a Mac and Windows 7. Haven't had to R any FM since. No. FreeBSD is not a desktop system. If you want it to do useful things, don't install a gui and try to limit yourself to the base OS. Do everything from the command line. Aint that quaint. Otherwise, run away.
Global warming isn't shrinking the icebergs, its creating new ones!
Umm... I know that was a joke but of course global warming would create new icebergs (not that it's responsible for this one apparently). Ice breaking away from existing stable formations, forming icebergs, is exactly what you'd expect if the ice is melting.
Actually, glaciers advancing and pushing ice into the ocean which then breaks off is exactly how this works. If the glaciers were melting, they wouldn't be pushing into the ocean to break off and form icebergs. THAT is why smart people are careful to point out that this isn't caused by global warming. To claim that glaciers getting bigger is caused by global warming is insane. Don't go there. You will make a fool of yourself. Oops. To late.
On the blog, she states that the direct attributes from her in the Mail article were accurate. Here is one of her direct attributes:
"There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped,’ she said. ‘To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.’"
From that, I think it is pretty clear that she is indeed saying that the warming has stopped over the last 10 years. I read Dr. Curry's blog a lot and I'm pretty familiar with her point of view. This isn't the first time she has talked about the stalled warming. At this time, there is a real debate in the climate world concerning this stall. Is it significant (we need more time to know). If it is significant, is it solar? aerosols? ocean variability? Does it prove CO2 is not important? Does it prove the feedbacks are negative? Is there some hysteris effect that will result in a massive surge in warming? Finding the answer to such questions will lead to a better understanding of the poorly understood climate on this planet. That will happen faster if people stop trying to score debating points and start being real, skeptical scientists again. Because the alternative of unskeptical scientist is an oxymoron.
The term "mainstream side" is intended to be neutral. Other terms, such as alarmist or denier are inflammatory and detract from the debate. I am working at toning down such inflammatory rhetoric in my own writing. In science, one should not care if one is in the mainstream or not. Max Planck was advised by Kirchoff to stop worrying about minor discrepancies in thermodynamic quantities. Good thing he worried about the little details that the mainstream claimed to be unimportant.
There is much emotion and strong politics involved in CC.
I'm not a scientist nor trained in climate science. and find it hard to gather information that is neither too science heavy/too dispersed nor too politicised/emotional.
For the unitiated like myself, can the community recommend a book that can give good primer on where we are on CC, with compelling evidence of AGW?
All suggestions welcome.
For the physics of radiant heat transfer (which is the fundemental basis of the greenhouse effect) there is an excellent blog:
http://scienceofdoom.com/
As for compelling evidence of A (with emphasis on the A) GW., there you will have to get help from others. I haven't found any. For compelling evidence of GW on the other hand, google Ice Age. A good book on geology will provide background on climate change over the last few billion years. If you learn some geology, you will learn that CO2 levels have previously been 10 times higher than today, though rarely much lower. You will learn that climate can change dramatically in a very short period of time. You will learn that our climate today is relatively cool compared to almost all time since the earth formed billions of years ago. You will then scratch your head and ask what all the excitement is about. Don't ask someone though. They will call you a skin headed denier of a flat earth creationist.
Umm. McIntyre and McKitrick? Eschenbach? Spencer? Pielke Sr.? All have at least one (Pielke a whole slew) of papers published in peer reviewed literature. There are quite a huge number of others equally or more skeptical. And how is the failure to calibrate a "slight potential source of error". When I do science (engineering actually, which is harder as people sue you if you are wrong), if one of my instruments fails to calibrate, you don't use it as a measurement device. And "hide the decline" was entirely about the failure to calibrate tree rings as a proxy, hence making all of the hockey stick graphs meaningless as measures of temperature. Yes. The results are worthless because the instruments failed to calibrate. Also, Dr. Mullar has stated, in his paper, that there has been no warming in the last ten years. The WSJ, Huffpost, etc., put words in his mouth with about as much integrity as the Daily Mail putting words in Dr. Curry's mouth.
Time frame is critical in these discussions. The area of greatest debate is the medieval warm period(MWP). Up until Mann produced his hockey stick graph, it was accepted that temperatures in the MWP were warmer than today. As such, if this were true, then yes indeed, it hasn't warmed. After the hockey stick, this became an area of debate. McIntyre and McKitrick showed that the statistics of Mann were flawed. Mann countered and there is still debate. The "Hide The Decline" is a separate area of debate. If Mann would be as open as the BEST team, there would be considerably less debate. Much of Mann's reconstruction relies on tree rings. The "temperature record" as recorded by tree rings drops off dramatically after about 1960. The instrument record shows that temperatures were flat, then increasing. This trend was removed from plots of the hockey stick. This is the "decline" that was "hidden". Given that Mann is asserting that tree rings are good thermometers, it is valid to question this assertion when they fail calibration during the time when our ability to accurately compare temperature to tree growth has been best. Recent temperatures, from the end of the little ice age have been increasing. The BEST data clearly shows that temperatures decreased from 1945 to 1975, began rising again then and have been flat since 2000. Temperatures have been rising, they have been falling, they have been flat. So, if you cherry pick, you can support both sides. And both sides are cherry picking. One side tends to be a little nastier in their assertions though. What with the comparison to skin head holocaust deniers, creationists and flat earthers. Given the vitriol of the mainstream, I started to wonder what they had to hide. So I started to look. That is how I became a skeptic.
Denialists rely upon a narrative. After all, they are faced with an insurmountable amount of repeated observations stretching back 100 years - the entirety of human reasoning and science is against them. The only way for Denialism to seem reasonable is to formulate a narrative, a myth based on an evil conspiracy of scientists colluding to hide the actual truth. Its all a conspiracy! That explains why the science is all in agreement!
Muller has destroyed that narrative. By formulating a test outside of the conspiracy in the narrative, he has demonstrated that the narrative is myth. The CRU was right. GISS was right. The narrative that they colluded to fake the data is debunked.
Not sure where this "conspiracy" meme is coming from. Possibly the Laframboise book. Anyway, one doesn't need a conspiracy. Only a whole lot of money to be made. Also, I'm a "denialist" (nice Godwin by the way). Here is what I know to be true. 1: Global Warming is real 2: The greenhouse effect is real 3: CO2 is the second largest contributor to the greenhouse effect 4: While the effect of water is greater, the effect of CO2 will be cumulative, hence we can (mostly) ignore the effect of water. What pray tell are you suggesting I'm denying?
Actually, 390 ppm in the entire atmosphere is the same as a 50% CO2 atmosphere over 5 meters. So, yes, from a radiative heat transfer point of view it is a lot. So much that increases now have a marginal effect. Ironically, if there really were "very little" CO2, then an increase would matter. It is precisely because there is so much in the atmosphere that it doesn't matter much how much more we add, up to about 2,000 to 3,000 ppm where it might begin to impact on respiration. (Yes, I am an expert in radiant heat transfer).
The nice thing about the BEST data is you can see it all, see the methods used and if you want, plot your own. If you do this, you will see that the data has been flat for 10 years. Further, the other data sets (CRU. GISS) have also all been flat for 10 years. It has gotten to the point where Dr. Kevin Trenberth is telling people that all that energy that should have hit the earth, but didn't actually warm anything, is in the very deepest oceans. Places where (conveniently) we don't have any historic records. The heat magically made it's way there without warming any of the water in between.
Realclimate is not the only source of authoritative climate science on the web. Read Dr. Curry, the Dr's Pielke for some balance. If you have the courage of you convictions, read some of Roy Spencer or Freeman Dyson. That would be a good start. You will see that there are many people with many doctorates in physics, atmospheric physics, statistics, engineering and other sciences who a pretty certain that there really isn't much to worry about here. And if you are going to say "we should act now, what harm could there be" ask the Australians who were flooded because the climate alarmists told the government not to draw down reservoirs that should have been empty when the rains came. Ask Heathrow airport who have finally decided to upgrade their snow removal fleet, after realizing that there was actually still going to be snow in England. In the next 5 years or so, ask the people in the Mediterranean when the rains return and they have set up systems to live with drought, but forgotten about shedding water. Of course, when those rains return and make a lie of the assertion that the droughts were a sign of global warming, the rains too will be claimed to be "consistent with global warming" or climate change or regional climate disruption, or whatever it is called this week.
Slashdot Mirror
Another bloody story about global warming, or is it climate change, or is it climate disruption. If anyone lives in New York or New Jersey, they should be royally pissed at this. Because Sandy was NOT a hurricane strength storm when it hit. What would the effects of Sandy have been if she had the strength of Hazel? But because of the "global warming" debate as epitomized by this story, no one is asking Bloomberg or Christie why a storm that was NOT a design event (as engineers understand the term) resulted in so much destruction. Politicians are using global warming as cover. They don't have to answer for the catastrophe that has happened in New York and New Jersey because it is "global warming". And the useful idiots here and the media are letting them succeed. So Bloomberg and Christie will not be held to account. A catastrophe that was predictable, certain to occur, is accepted as "the new normal". NO it isn't the new normal. It is LESS than the old normal. If you live in an affected area in NY or NJ, sue your government because they have failed you. This was NOT anything larger than a design event. OK. Stopping my rant now.
Fighting disinformation is not a crime.
Now, if anybody can present real evidence, that would be different.
I believe most of the people "fighting disinformation" have been banned from editing at Wikipedia. As for real evidence, what do you need? How about this?
http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod.html
Strictly regional proxies don't count.
Wow! Have you told Dr. Mann that? Because most of his evidence that the MWP didn't exist comes from a very few regional proxies. And those proxies failed to calibrate. If you don't believe that, google "divergence problem". There is a lot about the divergence problem at RealClimate. Then "hide the decline". The temperature, as measured by the proxies, has been dropping while the temperature, as measured by modern instruments, has been increasing. This isn't some "denier conspiracy" thing either. The divergence problem is accepted by all climate scientists. They know that during the period when we have highly accurate means of calibrating the "proxies", they do not reflect actual temeprature. THAT is the "decline" that was hidden. The proxies tell us that the world has been cooling while the world has been warming. There is NO basis for assuming that this did not also happen during the MWP.
I take it you haven't read UPDATING after all. Honestly, if you don't know about /usr/ports/UPDATING you shouldn't even play with FreeBSD. I assume you haven't spent any time on reading about Ports system before using it. So basically this breaks down to a RTFM case.
There are rare occasions when some libraries are upgraded to a more recent release, time when you need to recompile/upgrade applications that depend on it too. It *does* make sense, isn't it ? Otherwise you may end up with broken applications due to changes in those libraries they depend on.
Another situation is when some app/library has a security update. Usually few people provide patches for older versions, so if you want the patch you upgrade to the most recent version. Kind of natural if you think about it. FreeBSD is not RedHat and doesn't have the same financial support to spend time on backporting patches for instance.
I take it you don't like this system. You are free to stick with Windows or Fedora then, but there are people that prefer systems such as FreeBSD and Gentoo (yes, amazing, Gentoo Linux functions in a similar fashion, so it's not even a FreeBSD vs Linux issue here, it's a matter of packaging philosophy).
I don't claim FreeBSD is better then Linux or vice-verse, but your comments show an amount of ignorance that I generally disregard.
I stopped reading UPDATING more than a year ago when I gave up entirely on this POS operating system and the people in the community. Before then, I spent WAY too much time reading UPDATING. Based on my hourly billing rate I could have purchased a full version of Win7 Professional a month. So now I run Windows. I haven't had to read UPDATING in a very long time. I spent a lot of time on the mailing lists. I was able to help a lot of people over the years. The problem isn't just the system. The problem is the community. It is elitist, obnoxious and rude. FreeBSD is a nice hobby. Fewer and fewer people who have to do real work are using it. Anonymous Cowards, such as yourself, who epitomize that community, are assuring that the trend will continue.
If you've got any real experience (like a week of use...) with FreeBSD, you know that FreeBSD is dead simple to use, has amazing documentation, and a very helpful user community. However, you literally can't install your first port without discovering that system tuning is automatic/done at compile time. Xorg is also the same between Linux and FreeBSD, again something that any real experience would teach.
No longtime BSD user would have made any mistakes as the thread starter did with wasting hours tweaking the graphics card or the system. In fact, not even a week old newbie would make those mistakes. The thread starter poster revealed himself as a clueless, FUD-spreading troll.
I've got nine years experience with FreeBSD. I started at 4.7 and I stopped at 8.0. Maybe something radical has changed, but last time I looked, dead simple would be an outright lie. Documentation may be amazing, once you understand it. The handbook is ok. The rest, not so much. As for the user community. Have you read the posts from that community on this thread? Read your own post. If you are an example of a helpful community, I'd hate to see what you consider rude and obnoxious.
The best part is that now Linux fanboys are using the same "arguments" that were used against their baby to attack BSD. "But why should I use BSD if Linux is almost as good", or "but my graphics card!". I'm glad my Android phone is my only point of exposure to Linux, wish it could be moved to NetBSD or something though.
From what I've read on this thread, it is more "why should I use BSD when Linux is far superior". Nice attempt at redirection though. In case you are wondering, I dumped debian in favour of FreeBSD in 2001. I dumped FreeBSD completely in 2010. I use professionally produced (i.e. for pay) software now. These amatuer things were nice as a hobby but I have kids and a life now.
Aw look at this. Somebody got their feelings hurt when bullshit was called. It made me feel bad too....wait that was just lunch.
Earlier on in this thread someone made the claim that the people in the FreeBSD community were a bunch of arrogant arseholes (he was more polite than that). I was pointing out instances here of this attitude. Thanks for providing another prime example. You should read up on "irony". And posting as an AC to boot.
So unless you code, where do you get your computer fun then? The feeling of boredom that avalanched over me as I read your post nearly kills my willing to live :(
I'm assuming your were replying to me. What computer fun? My computer is a tool I use to work. When I feel the desire to procrastinate I post here. If computers are your source of fun . . . Sorry about that young fella. Also sorry about your 'willing'.
They've had it for years, there's at least two different ways of doing it. The easiest way is just using Wine and the Windows version of Firefox. The other way is to just use the Linux version of Flash. And really, it's only necessary because of incompetent web developers anyways.
These sorts of FUD posts about a largely unimportant feature that isn't native, is really not conducive to a decent discussion.
Are you serious? Flash is an unimportant feature? What year did you fall asleep? It's 2011 now.
Of course, as an experienced FreeBSD user, it's not likely you would have made this post in the first place. How long have you actually been running FreeBSD anyway?
Yet another example of the helpful attitude of the FreeBSD community.
You must not have been very good if you had that much trouble. I started using FreeBSD over a decade ago and I never had that much trouble getting my graphics cards to work.
Wow! Thanks for providing an excellent example of the "support" one can expect on a FreeBSD mailing list.
I've used debian and freebsd. I now use Windows 7. Works with everything, I never have to R an FM, I never have to compile anything. My security updates come in without any effort on my part. And I NEVER have to ask for help from nice folk like you.
The FreeBSD community takes a "blame the user" stance that is going to alienate most desktop users, who want to use the machine to get something done and don't want to be held up by snafus that may take days to fix.
Can you be more specific ? I have a subscription on several mailing lists and I see people asking questions and being helped all the time. Same on the FreeBSD forum.
Much of BSD's documentation is wrong or vague, many things are still broken within the OS and especially in the parts a desktop user would use, and when there is a problem, there's nowhere to go for a clear, quick solution.
Can you give an example of broken things and bad documentation ? I find the documentation rather thorough and easy to understand. Maybe a bit to technical, but neither wrong, nor vague.
And you know, sometimes it's actually a RTFM problem after all.
I dumped FreeBSD for a number of reasons. Required to upgrade due to some security thing, Oh wait, some obscure library has also updated and now the entire OS needs to upgrade. And KDE too. WTF? When did Gnome get installed? Ah well, I wasn't going to use the computer this week anyway. One week later, nothing works, so I go to the mailing lists. First responses are usually "It's in UPDATING, come back when you've read that." If you haven't seen the snide, arrogant crap that happens on the mailing lists you are not paying attention. (mailing lists? are your reading what you are typing? mailing lists? This isn't 1988.) And yes, there are a large number of parts of the base OS (not the ports) that have crap documentation. And RTFM? If you need to RTFM to install software and keep a system running, the system is crap. I've switched to a Mac and Windows 7. Haven't had to R any FM since. No. FreeBSD is not a desktop system. If you want it to do useful things, don't install a gui and try to limit yourself to the base OS. Do everything from the command line. Aint that quaint. Otherwise, run away.
Global warming isn't shrinking the icebergs, its creating new ones!
Umm... I know that was a joke but of course global warming would create new icebergs (not that it's responsible for this one apparently). Ice breaking away from existing stable formations, forming icebergs, is exactly what you'd expect if the ice is melting.
Actually, glaciers advancing and pushing ice into the ocean which then breaks off is exactly how this works. If the glaciers were melting, they wouldn't be pushing into the ocean to break off and form icebergs. THAT is why smart people are careful to point out that this isn't caused by global warming. To claim that glaciers getting bigger is caused by global warming is insane. Don't go there. You will make a fool of yourself. Oops. To late.
On the blog, she states that the direct attributes from her in the Mail article were accurate. Here is one of her direct attributes:
"There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped,’ she said. ‘To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.’"
From that, I think it is pretty clear that she is indeed saying that the warming has stopped over the last 10 years. I read Dr. Curry's blog a lot and I'm pretty familiar with her point of view. This isn't the first time she has talked about the stalled warming. At this time, there is a real debate in the climate world concerning this stall. Is it significant (we need more time to know). If it is significant, is it solar? aerosols? ocean variability? Does it prove CO2 is not important? Does it prove the feedbacks are negative? Is there some hysteris effect that will result in a massive surge in warming? Finding the answer to such questions will lead to a better understanding of the poorly understood climate on this planet. That will happen faster if people stop trying to score debating points and start being real, skeptical scientists again. Because the alternative of unskeptical scientist is an oxymoron.
The term "mainstream side" is intended to be neutral. Other terms, such as alarmist or denier are inflammatory and detract from the debate. I am working at toning down such inflammatory rhetoric in my own writing. In science, one should not care if one is in the mainstream or not. Max Planck was advised by Kirchoff to stop worrying about minor discrepancies in thermodynamic quantities. Good thing he worried about the little details that the mainstream claimed to be unimportant.
Thanks for the correction. No excuse for that.
There is much emotion and strong politics involved in CC.
I'm not a scientist nor trained in climate science. and find it hard to gather information that is neither too science heavy/too dispersed nor too politicised/emotional.
For the unitiated like myself, can the community recommend a book that can give good primer on where we are on CC, with compelling evidence of AGW?
All suggestions welcome.
For the physics of radiant heat transfer (which is the fundemental basis of the greenhouse effect) there is an excellent blog:
http://scienceofdoom.com/
As for compelling evidence of A (with emphasis on the A) GW., there you will have to get help from others. I haven't found any. For compelling evidence of GW on the other hand, google Ice Age. A good book on geology will provide background on climate change over the last few billion years. If you learn some geology, you will learn that CO2 levels have previously been 10 times higher than today, though rarely much lower. You will learn that climate can change dramatically in a very short period of time. You will learn that our climate today is relatively cool compared to almost all time since the earth formed billions of years ago. You will then scratch your head and ask what all the excitement is about. Don't ask someone though. They will call you a skin headed denier of a flat earth creationist.
Umm. McIntyre and McKitrick? Eschenbach? Spencer? Pielke Sr.? All have at least one (Pielke a whole slew) of papers published in peer reviewed literature. There are quite a huge number of others equally or more skeptical. And how is the failure to calibrate a "slight potential source of error". When I do science (engineering actually, which is harder as people sue you if you are wrong), if one of my instruments fails to calibrate, you don't use it as a measurement device. And "hide the decline" was entirely about the failure to calibrate tree rings as a proxy, hence making all of the hockey stick graphs meaningless as measures of temperature. Yes. The results are worthless because the instruments failed to calibrate. Also, Dr. Mullar has stated, in his paper, that there has been no warming in the last ten years. The WSJ, Huffpost, etc., put words in his mouth with about as much integrity as the Daily Mail putting words in Dr. Curry's mouth.
Time frame is critical in these discussions. The area of greatest debate is the medieval warm period(MWP). Up until Mann produced his hockey stick graph, it was accepted that temperatures in the MWP were warmer than today. As such, if this were true, then yes indeed, it hasn't warmed. After the hockey stick, this became an area of debate. McIntyre and McKitrick showed that the statistics of Mann were flawed. Mann countered and there is still debate. The "Hide The Decline" is a separate area of debate. If Mann would be as open as the BEST team, there would be considerably less debate. Much of Mann's reconstruction relies on tree rings. The "temperature record" as recorded by tree rings drops off dramatically after about 1960. The instrument record shows that temperatures were flat, then increasing. This trend was removed from plots of the hockey stick. This is the "decline" that was "hidden". Given that Mann is asserting that tree rings are good thermometers, it is valid to question this assertion when they fail calibration during the time when our ability to accurately compare temperature to tree growth has been best. Recent temperatures, from the end of the little ice age have been increasing. The BEST data clearly shows that temperatures decreased from 1945 to 1975, began rising again then and have been flat since 2000. Temperatures have been rising, they have been falling, they have been flat. So, if you cherry pick, you can support both sides. And both sides are cherry picking. One side tends to be a little nastier in their assertions though. What with the comparison to skin head holocaust deniers, creationists and flat earthers. Given the vitriol of the mainstream, I started to wonder what they had to hide. So I started to look. That is how I became a skeptic.
You lose all credibility the instant you link to the Daily Mail.
How about from Dr. Curry herself then.
Here:
http://judithcurry.com/2011/10/30/discussion-with-rich-muller/#more-5540
Denialists rely upon a narrative. After all, they are faced with an insurmountable amount of repeated observations stretching back 100 years - the entirety of human reasoning and science is against them. The only way for Denialism to seem reasonable is to formulate a narrative, a myth based on an evil conspiracy of scientists colluding to hide the actual truth. Its all a conspiracy! That explains why the science is all in agreement!
Muller has destroyed that narrative. By formulating a test outside of the conspiracy in the narrative, he has demonstrated that the narrative is myth. The CRU was right. GISS was right. The narrative that they colluded to fake the data is debunked.
Not sure where this "conspiracy" meme is coming from. Possibly the Laframboise book. Anyway, one doesn't need a conspiracy. Only a whole lot of money to be made. Also, I'm a "denialist" (nice Godwin by the way). Here is what I know to be true.
1: Global Warming is real
2: The greenhouse effect is real
3: CO2 is the second largest contributor to the greenhouse effect
4: While the effect of water is greater, the effect of CO2 will be cumulative, hence we can (mostly) ignore the effect of water.
What pray tell are you suggesting I'm denying?
If you want to read a conspiracy theory, I suggest you go here:
http://www.amazon.com/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistaken-Climate-ebook/dp/B005UEVB8Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318623567&sr=8-1#reader_B005UEVB8Q
One person issuing a press release is hardly a conspiracy. Effective PR move, but a conspiracy? No.
Actually, 390 ppm in the entire atmosphere is the same as a 50% CO2 atmosphere over 5 meters. So, yes, from a radiative heat transfer point of view it is a lot. So much that increases now have a marginal effect. Ironically, if there really were "very little" CO2, then an increase would matter. It is precisely because there is so much in the atmosphere that it doesn't matter much how much more we add, up to about 2,000 to 3,000 ppm where it might begin to impact on respiration. (Yes, I am an expert in radiant heat transfer).
The nice thing about the BEST data is you can see it all, see the methods used and if you want, plot your own. If you do this, you will see that the data has been flat for 10 years. Further, the other data sets (CRU. GISS) have also all been flat for 10 years. It has gotten to the point where Dr. Kevin Trenberth is telling people that all that energy that should have hit the earth, but didn't actually warm anything, is in the very deepest oceans. Places where (conveniently) we don't have any historic records. The heat magically made it's way there without warming any of the water in between.
Realclimate is not the only source of authoritative climate science on the web. Read Dr. Curry, the Dr's Pielke for some balance. If you have the courage of you convictions, read some of Roy Spencer or Freeman Dyson. That would be a good start. You will see that there are many people with many doctorates in physics, atmospheric physics, statistics, engineering and other sciences who a pretty certain that there really isn't much to worry about here. And if you are going to say "we should act now, what harm could there be" ask the Australians who were flooded because the climate alarmists told the government not to draw down reservoirs that should have been empty when the rains came. Ask Heathrow airport who have finally decided to upgrade their snow removal fleet, after realizing that there was actually still going to be snow in England. In the next 5 years or so, ask the people in the Mediterranean when the rains return and they have set up systems to live with drought, but forgotten about shedding water. Of course, when those rains return and make a lie of the assertion that the droughts were a sign of global warming, the rains too will be claimed to be "consistent with global warming" or climate change or regional climate disruption, or whatever it is called this week.