To some extent I agree. However, the title of this was somewhat misleading. If you dig into it, they were only running the beam one direction at 1TeV before. This time, they're running it both ways, so there could actually be 2.36 TeV collisions. That's the important part.
How about not browsing at -1, and not replying to trolls? It's quite easy to do, actually. I would have never seen that post if you hadn't replied to it.
I learned this probably 7-8 years ago. If it's stamped EA, I don't buy it. Period. In fact, I don't even pirate it.
I've got no interest in supporting companies who produce crap products. While this has seriously cut down on the mainstream titles I play, I spend less money and buy more games. There are plenty of fun little games from small publishers who do a good job, polish their game, and support it. Those are the folks who get my money now.
Yeah except you can't really predict how the public will react to marketing ploys.
But you don't have to! Run your marketing ploy. There are two outcomes: It works, and you make truck loads of money. It doesn't, so you declare bankruptcy, dissolve your company, and then found a new one with the money you got from dumping your stock options part-way through the ploy.
You need to test it somewhere. What better place than where we already have tools doing the exact same thing. You have your satellite, Predator, and ground info to compare this air craft's performance against. Plus, if it's giving good intel, why would you NOT use it? More intel is always better.
Just as beneficial, we can see if OUR forces can spot it and track it. We've got the damned military out in force, AWACS, ground radar, planes in the air, eyes on the ground looking up. What a great time to test it!
I doubt that the "Put a guy on a hill and have him look up line of defense" would work. This thing is 1/3 the size of a 747. Those are painted white most of the time, with shiny aluminum parts. This thing is small, non-reflective and dark colored. Unlike the Soviet helicopters, it can operate far higher up, and won't be trying to land or engage ground targets with lead. The predator UAV, a decade and change in development less mature, operates above 20,000 feet.
we're going to look just as bad as the Russians
That, at least, I can agree with. I wonder who's going to repeat this fun history in 2030? China?
seriously dysfunctional to the point of needing to be disbanded and reorganized with brand new people
This. School boards are little fiefdoms, filled with people who desperately want to be important. The school board for the school I worked for was just like this. There was a conference that some students were going to go to. The teacher for the subject couldn't make it, but since it was on a saturday, and not a contract work day or event, it wasn't a big deal. The school board disagreed, and ordered him to write a letter of apology to the students who went. Yes, he had to apologize for not doing something he wasn't required to do.
School boards LOVE to micromanage. They mandated a specific essay format for my district at one point. All essays, for all subjects, had to be in one format. Why? To make sure kids knew what to expect for writing projects. It would lead to success!
We had issues with one board member who ran a conservation program. He continuously hounded the science teachers to bring their kids on field trips to his conservation area. Why? He needed the free labor to plant trees and do work. Of course, "it's a valuable educational resource that you're not taking advantage of" was the motto.
Never underestimate the amount of dysfunctional, petty, micromanaging idiots that can get on a school board.
When I started reading the summary that was my thought as well. "Salon....I vaguely remember them. Haven't been there in like a decade, wonder why? Ooooh, they had a paywall...that's why...And now they're advertising that they don't!"
Wow, you ARE an environmentalist. I'd not have spared the "g" and "t" if I'd have penned a response, but you are amazing...."overnmen"? Really?
Despite how stupid your post makes you look, I'll spend the time to post a reply:
We're talking about ADDITIONAL investment, not current investment. Yes, farmers are being paid to (not) produce crops and goods currently. But basing an energy future on this is stupid. We need to stop subsidizing stupid things, and start subsidizing useful things.
Making algae farms that you can harvest from efficiently requires a major investment. Buying corn from a farmer who's already harvesting corn doesn't require such an investment.
Corn is terrible for making Ethanol. But currently, the WORLD has a corn infrastructure in place. The farmer is going to sell his corn crop to someone. It doesn't matter to him who's buying it - someone making tortillas or someone making Ethanol.
Corn is popular, not because it's good or efficient, but because it requires no additional investment. Just a reallocating from the poor to the rich.
You're asking a horrifically nuanced question. I don't know that I have a good answer, because it's very situationally dependent.
As an example, one model I work with doesn't handle salinity very well. To make sure the rest of the model works properly, we force the salinity to stay around values taken from observations. As the goal of this model isn't to model salinity, we're not too worried about it. The salinity is moderately important, but our focus is elsewhere. We could go get a model that does salinity better, but it's likely that it won't do what we want to study. Of course, the ideal situation would be to improve the salinity in this model. It's happening, but slowly.
In another model I've worked with, the ocean is treated as a motionless slab, with modified seasonal values attached to it. That model is just trying to model the atmosphere, so it's not wasting computational time on oceanic fluid dynamics. Both make vastly different assumptions, and use very different data.
The major issue is the science we *think* we know. We're pretty sure about gravity. It's directed down in every model. But what else are we sure about? I know cloud formation isn't one of those things. That's one huge issue currently. Ocean heat transport isn't all that hot, although it's getting much better. Lets suppose we know 90% of the big currents in the ocean. Are those 90% enough to successfully run a model?
In the end, what everyone wants is The Penultimate Climate Model, and they want it now. We're decades from that. At the moment, we're cobbling together many different models. How much of their physics, initialization data, and forcing data is the same? It all depends on what ones you're using. And that's not even answering the real question - are those things correct? If they are, great. If not, that's a problem.
Like any science, if we could get more money thrown this way, we'd be doing a lot more. The oceans and great lakes have vast areas that aren't well studied. For the first time in almost a decade a research plane is finally flying through winter storms in the midwest to collect data. We don't have the programmers we could use. More graduate students to slave away would help too.
It's weird, but from the center of all this, I really don't see the world of climate research reflected in the media. I've got friendly collaborators who share code and data. Maybe CNN would want to hear that story....
If that's your understanding, I'd highly advise that you look a little deeper into what their models did. It was nothing in anyway like what climate modeling is doing. The models they created were known to be bad, but nobody cared as long as were making money. It was greed, fraud, and a willingness to take risks with other people's money that caused the problems. The models were a very, very tiny part of the issue. They were built solely to convince people to give junk bonds a good rating. Climate models aren't built to convince people of climate change. They're built to try to understand the physical processes that control our climate. There's a big difference there.
If you really have such a limited understanding of what caused the financial meltdown, this article gives a pretty blunt look at the mess. It's not a bad place to start. It will put your comment about relying on models into proper context.
The first PDF you linked to is pretty much "Issues with computer models, 101". The second is a fairly limited snapshot of where we are with model verification/validation. Most of the people I know aren't doing wide-scale model comparisons. They're comparing very, very specific parts. Thinks like ocean overturning, cloud-ice formation, etc. How do several different models do in modeling this stuff? How does it compare with reality? If we take detailed observations of an area, then dump those into the model, does it recreate the result?
None of that tells us if a model will be good for predicting the future. However, if we have models that predict things very well, we can start to narrow our confidence bands for future prediction. One model doesn't need to do everything - if we have one fantastic ocean transport model, we can plug that output into one which does cloud formation better.
Despite the press, most scientific articles on climate models are all validation and verification. While there are results, for sure, nobody cares unless you can provide some sort of metric for how good your model is. I skipped all the technical language as it'd be a waste of time for me to even begin. Rest assured, there is plenty of verification/validation.
I fully believe that we'll figure it all out when it's too late to do anything about it.
Our current social outlook is far too short-term to plan for something 20,40,100 years into the future. We don't even invest for retirement on the whole. Our politicians won't spend political capital on something which won't ever benefit them. Our governments are so polarized, that, even if one party did make the necessary sacrifices, the other would just undo them when they got back into power.
If by assumptions you mean, "observed properties of earth systems and well understood physics", then yes. Most people programming models don't put in gravity going up, the earth spinning backwards, etc. Every one has a different set of assumptions and simplifications. Some are fantastic at modeling clouds, others just approximate them. Some are great at modeling ocean heat transport, others just use rough averages. The key is that they are all based on observed properties. The assumptions are based on observed properties. And the results are checked against observed properties.
Climate science is well enough established that most models are trying to understand one part better. If you're looking at cloud formation, for example, why would you waste weeks of computational power modeling ocean transport down to 5000m? That particular model might just use a slab ocean, with observed surface temperatures on an annual cycle. It's an approximation, for sure. But when you get the same general results out of several vastly different models, it's a pretty good indication that the physics behind it all is fairly robust.
Read this comment of mine. If you're not just trolling, it will explain why we can trust the "black magic" in the models. In short, I don't have a PhD in fluid dynamics. When I look at that code, my eyes glaze over, and I have no idea wtf is going on there. Does that mean it's worthless? No. Just because I don't understand, or you don't understand doesn't make it worthless.
I don't understand open heart surgery. It's black magic to me. But I can test to see if it works. I take 100 people having heart attacks, and let half of them undergo the "black magic" of open heart surgery. If they end up better, I can confirm it works. despite not knowing how it works.
The same for climate models. If they show that some part of the ocean should be warming, and we measure it and it's warming, then great. I don't need to know the fluid dynamical principles behind it to believe it. As long as the person who wrote it knows, all is well.
You seem to be under the impression that the climate scientists, climate modelers, politicians, accountants, lion tamers, and bus drivers are all the same person, doing one job. In reality, they are all different people, all doing different jobs, and all experts in what they do. I trust the guys programing the fluid dynamics into my model because they're experts. I trust the marine biologists programming in the plankton because they're experts. I can run the model, and interpret the results because I'm (4 years from being) an expert. I a can give those results to a politician to make a policy decision, because they're the expert at that. Every person sees a lot of the rest as black magic. As long as that part is being worked on by an expert, we're all set.
Look, as a scientist, I'm all for ripping the shit out of bad science. That's how scientists make a name for themselves. That's also why I trust scientists to get it right. Stop posting shit from some random yahoo like it's gospel. There are plenty of serious, peer reviewed publications to choose from. Pick something with some sort of legitimacy to argue.
Scientists have a motivation to NOT be alarmists. Scientists make their mark by crushing the research of other scientists. If there's one thing you don't want, it's to read a journal article where your previous research was demolished, and the authors made you look like a fool. I've read several of those. They can be brutal.
I trust climate research because of this. I'm in that sort of science, and I know that I can make a name for myself if I can prove other researchers wrong. So far, most of what I've seen looks pretty legitimate. I believe that climate change is pretty much certain. I also understand that we're talking a degree per decade, averaged over the entire globe, with 0.75 degree per decade of that happening near the poles.
First world countries will be ok. Third world countries will be fucked. And by the time it really hits the fan, I'll be dead.
The data is freely available for your perusal. Not that you're educated well enough to understand it. here you go. That should start you off - once you've analyzed that and published a couple dozen papers on it, I'll shoot you the super-secret links to more data.
God, who the hell got mod points today? There are a shitton of retarded posts marked up as insightful in this article. While there are a small percentage of shithead scientists, by and large this isn't some grand conspiracy. The data is largely accessible, and the methodology is pretty clear.
If I can do anything for the cause of science, it's to repeat this: Scientists get famous by ripping the shit out of other scientists' work. The famous scientists you've heard of got famous by demolishing the work of others. As scientists, we know that. And we're always looking for some schmuck to use as a stepping stone. I know if I do bad science, I'll be a stepping stone. I know if I find bad science, I can use IT as a stepping stone. That keeps most scientists pretty damn honest.
As pretty much a climate scientist, I have to concur with you. My major talking points:
1) Yes, climate change is happening. Nobody worth a shit disagrees. 2) No, the world isn't ending. No, we're not all going to die. 3) Can we do anything about it? No, probably not.
The biggest issues with climate change are that it's slow and a long way away. Our current carbon emissions have a 20-40 year range of effect. That's longer than most politicians are in office, for sure. How do you get politicians to spend political capital on something with no visible benefit to them?
In the long run, climate change will be bad. It will disrupt 10k years of stable climate, in which we built civilization. But, at least in first world countries, the primary effect will be.....insurance rates. We're at a point now where insurance will be the driving mover for the first world. When the coasts see more flooding from storm surges, insurance rates will go up. As that happens, less and less people will be able to afford the insurance, and so they will move from the coast inland. When the sea level rises a foot, and two more Katrinas come through New Orleans, who will be able to afford the insurance to build in the flood plains?
The people who are really fucked are the third-world countries. Unless they benefit from climate change, (Mongolia, perhaps?) they will be really screwed. Floods, famine, ecosystem changes....those things suck when you don't have the science, technology, or insurance to deal with them.
I'm directly tied to climate science, but like most scientists, I'm not about to proclaim doom and gloom to sell copies. We're about to see climate change unlike anything humans have ever been able to record. But personally, I'm not worried. I've got insurance. Does it help the rest of the world? Nope. But that isn't my forte. That's not what I'm going to school for. I can't affect politics. I can't make everyone stop dumping carbon and methane into the atmosphere. That isn't my job. I just model climate change. Hell, whether or not the models predict it doesn't even really affect my paycheck. I'm working under a grant to study it, period. I guess this ramble ends with this: I'm a climate scientist. Climate change is happening. No, I'm not panicking. Yes, lots of people are going to have a hard time. Yes, the poor will be the hardest hit, since they don't have insurance.
Why should climate skeptics be asked to make a good faith effort when the climate scientists have been so clearly and obviously shown to be acting in bad faith?
Can you cite a source for that?
I'm dead serious. Show me a solid, scientific study that shows a concerted effort by climate scientists to be acting in bad faith.
The fact that you got moderated interesting is ridiculous. There's this big uproar about climate science in ONE place. Where? In the media. Why? Because nothing sells like scandal or death.
I'm working on a PhD directly related to climate modeling. I've got access to four climate models, from four competing organizations, ranging from middle-school simple to research grade. And they all give about the same results. In my office, I have a poster from a paper presentation where my research group compared seven different climate models, and looked at how well they agreed. There were differences, for sure. But they all were similar. Why are they all similar?
IT'S ALL A BIG CONSPIRACY BY THE CLIMATE SCIENTISTS!!!!!
Well, except for the fact that we would love to rip the shit out of another organizations research. In that seven-model comparison, we were looking to rip apart some of the models. Where they were different, we did. Had we found one that was totally different from the rest, we would have figured out why, and published that. The fact of the matter is that the science is well settled.
While I think you're an asshat, I do agree with your last statement. It is a big pseudo-scientific world out there, provided you define "out there" as "in the media". Those of us actually involved in science know that it's not. You get ahead in science by taking heads. We know Darwin's name because he wiped out hundreds of scientists' work on biological diversity. We know Einstein's name because he wiped out hundreds of theories on atomic interaction and the nature of space-time. We know Maxwell's name because he invented coffee.
As a scientist, surrounded with scientists, and friends with a lot of scientists, I can tell you, there's nothing any of us would like to do than destroy the establishment. If I could disprove evolution, I'd do it in a heartbeat. If I could prove General Relativity wrong, I wouldn't hesitate. It would put me in the text books. It would make me famous. If I could prove climate change wrong, I'd do the same.
But I'm in the middle of that science. And I can't. It's solid, despite what the media makes it out to be. If it wasn't, I'd be famous. You have to realize that most scientists want to know the truth. And as humans, we like nothing better than to be able to yell, DUMBASS in a very loud voice, while pointing at the dumbass so everyone notices. I believe in science because if I screw up, that will happen to me. So I try really hard not to screw up. As do all scientists. The ridicule of your peers is a very good tool to keep you honest. While there are some bad scientists, we all know who they are. They're the ones that we watched get called a dumbass at the last conference. They're the ones who published an article last year, which was utterly demolished by one this year. I've been to those conferences. I've read those articles. Scientists are blood-thirsty, brutal individuals. If you do poor science, you'll be ripped to shreds. That's how scientists advance in levels.:)
Suppose your science uncovers imminent doom, just around the corner. You find a solution, publish the doom and solution, and then.....nothing. All the powers that be don't do shit. Do you go back to your research, or do you try to play politics as well? It's a shitty position to be in, for sure.
From a climate standpoint, this is somewhat the case. In the modeling I've done, there's clearly a long feedback cycle. Far longer than an average politician's time in office. As a scientist, do you just ignore that nobody is following your research, and that a lot of people are going to be fucked in 20-40 years, due to decisions being made now?
Now, this is merely an explanation for how some scientists end up trying to play politics. It's not an excuse for shitty science. It's not an apology for scientists who put more weight on politics than the actual science they are doing.
Provided that the scientist in question is still following standard scientific procedures, ego and self-interest can't blind them to what they're observing. Either it's undergone a solid statistical examination or it hasn't. The good scientists, no matter their politics, do this. You can do both. And being political does NOT mean you're doing shitty science. However, if you're doing shitty science to begin with, it may look far more promising push the politics rather than the science.
Slashdot Mirror
The coupon with an expiration date far before I'm interested in buying a new monitor.
To some extent I agree. However, the title of this was somewhat misleading. If you dig into it, they were only running the beam one direction at 1TeV before. This time, they're running it both ways, so there could actually be 2.36 TeV collisions. That's the important part.
How about not browsing at -1, and not replying to trolls? It's quite easy to do, actually. I would have never seen that post if you hadn't replied to it.
Ignore it, and it will be modded out of sight.
I learned this probably 7-8 years ago. If it's stamped EA, I don't buy it. Period. In fact, I don't even pirate it.
I've got no interest in supporting companies who produce crap products. While this has seriously cut down on the mainstream titles I play, I spend less money and buy more games. There are plenty of fun little games from small publishers who do a good job, polish their game, and support it. Those are the folks who get my money now.
Yeah except you can't really predict how the public will react to marketing ploys.
But you don't have to! Run your marketing ploy. There are two outcomes: It works, and you make truck loads of money. It doesn't, so you declare bankruptcy, dissolve your company, and then found a new one with the money you got from dumping your stock options part-way through the ploy.
Other than that, I agree completely.
With statistics. Is there anything they can't do?
You need to test it somewhere. What better place than where we already have tools doing the exact same thing. You have your satellite, Predator, and ground info to compare this air craft's performance against. Plus, if it's giving good intel, why would you NOT use it? More intel is always better.
Just as beneficial, we can see if OUR forces can spot it and track it. We've got the damned military out in force, AWACS, ground radar, planes in the air, eyes on the ground looking up. What a great time to test it!
I doubt that the "Put a guy on a hill and have him look up line of defense" would work. This thing is 1/3 the size of a 747. Those are painted white most of the time, with shiny aluminum parts. This thing is small, non-reflective and dark colored. Unlike the Soviet helicopters, it can operate far higher up, and won't be trying to land or engage ground targets with lead. The predator UAV, a decade and change in development less mature, operates above 20,000 feet.
we're going to look just as bad as the Russians
That, at least, I can agree with. I wonder who's going to repeat this fun history in 2030? China?
seriously dysfunctional to the point of needing to be disbanded and reorganized with brand new people
This. School boards are little fiefdoms, filled with people who desperately want to be important. The school board for the school I worked for was just like this. There was a conference that some students were going to go to. The teacher for the subject couldn't make it, but since it was on a saturday, and not a contract work day or event, it wasn't a big deal. The school board disagreed, and ordered him to write a letter of apology to the students who went. Yes, he had to apologize for not doing something he wasn't required to do.
School boards LOVE to micromanage. They mandated a specific essay format for my district at one point. All essays, for all subjects, had to be in one format. Why? To make sure kids knew what to expect for writing projects. It would lead to success!
We had issues with one board member who ran a conservation program. He continuously hounded the science teachers to bring their kids on field trips to his conservation area. Why? He needed the free labor to plant trees and do work. Of course, "it's a valuable educational resource that you're not taking advantage of" was the motto.
Never underestimate the amount of dysfunctional, petty, micromanaging idiots that can get on a school board.
When I started reading the summary that was my thought as well. "Salon....I vaguely remember them. Haven't been there in like a decade, wonder why? Ooooh, they had a paywall...that's why...And now they're advertising that they don't!"
Wow, you ARE an environmentalist. I'd not have spared the "g" and "t" if I'd have penned a response, but you are amazing...."overnmen"? Really?
Despite how stupid your post makes you look, I'll spend the time to post a reply:
We're talking about ADDITIONAL investment, not current investment. Yes, farmers are being paid to (not) produce crops and goods currently. But basing an energy future on this is stupid. We need to stop subsidizing stupid things, and start subsidizing useful things.
The issue is one of investment.
Making algae farms that you can harvest from efficiently requires a major investment. Buying corn from a farmer who's already harvesting corn doesn't require such an investment.
Corn is terrible for making Ethanol. But currently, the WORLD has a corn infrastructure in place. The farmer is going to sell his corn crop to someone. It doesn't matter to him who's buying it - someone making tortillas or someone making Ethanol.
Corn is popular, not because it's good or efficient, but because it requires no additional investment. Just a reallocating from the poor to the rich.
You're asking a horrifically nuanced question. I don't know that I have a good answer, because it's very situationally dependent.
As an example, one model I work with doesn't handle salinity very well. To make sure the rest of the model works properly, we force the salinity to stay around values taken from observations. As the goal of this model isn't to model salinity, we're not too worried about it. The salinity is moderately important, but our focus is elsewhere. We could go get a model that does salinity better, but it's likely that it won't do what we want to study. Of course, the ideal situation would be to improve the salinity in this model. It's happening, but slowly.
In another model I've worked with, the ocean is treated as a motionless slab, with modified seasonal values attached to it. That model is just trying to model the atmosphere, so it's not wasting computational time on oceanic fluid dynamics. Both make vastly different assumptions, and use very different data.
The major issue is the science we *think* we know. We're pretty sure about gravity. It's directed down in every model. But what else are we sure about? I know cloud formation isn't one of those things. That's one huge issue currently. Ocean heat transport isn't all that hot, although it's getting much better. Lets suppose we know 90% of the big currents in the ocean. Are those 90% enough to successfully run a model?
In the end, what everyone wants is The Penultimate Climate Model, and they want it now. We're decades from that. At the moment, we're cobbling together many different models. How much of their physics, initialization data, and forcing data is the same? It all depends on what ones you're using. And that's not even answering the real question - are those things correct? If they are, great. If not, that's a problem.
Like any science, if we could get more money thrown this way, we'd be doing a lot more. The oceans and great lakes have vast areas that aren't well studied. For the first time in almost a decade a research plane is finally flying through winter storms in the midwest to collect data. We don't have the programmers we could use. More graduate students to slave away would help too.
It's weird, but from the center of all this, I really don't see the world of climate research reflected in the media. I've got friendly collaborators who share code and data. Maybe CNN would want to hear that story....
If that's your understanding, I'd highly advise that you look a little deeper into what their models did. It was nothing in anyway like what climate modeling is doing. The models they created were known to be bad, but nobody cared as long as were making money. It was greed, fraud, and a willingness to take risks with other people's money that caused the problems. The models were a very, very tiny part of the issue. They were built solely to convince people to give junk bonds a good rating. Climate models aren't built to convince people of climate change. They're built to try to understand the physical processes that control our climate. There's a big difference there.
If you really have such a limited understanding of what caused the financial meltdown, this article gives a pretty blunt look at the mess. It's not a bad place to start. It will put your comment about relying on models into proper context.
The first PDF you linked to is pretty much "Issues with computer models, 101". The second is a fairly limited snapshot of where we are with model verification/validation. Most of the people I know aren't doing wide-scale model comparisons. They're comparing very, very specific parts. Thinks like ocean overturning, cloud-ice formation, etc. How do several different models do in modeling this stuff? How does it compare with reality? If we take detailed observations of an area, then dump those into the model, does it recreate the result?
None of that tells us if a model will be good for predicting the future. However, if we have models that predict things very well, we can start to narrow our confidence bands for future prediction. One model doesn't need to do everything - if we have one fantastic ocean transport model, we can plug that output into one which does cloud formation better.
Despite the press, most scientific articles on climate models are all validation and verification. While there are results, for sure, nobody cares unless you can provide some sort of metric for how good your model is. I skipped all the technical language as it'd be a waste of time for me to even begin. Rest assured, there is plenty of verification/validation.
I fully believe that we'll figure it all out when it's too late to do anything about it.
Our current social outlook is far too short-term to plan for something 20,40,100 years into the future. We don't even invest for retirement on the whole. Our politicians won't spend political capital on something which won't ever benefit them. Our governments are so polarized, that, even if one party did make the necessary sacrifices, the other would just undo them when they got back into power.
If by assumptions you mean, "observed properties of earth systems and well understood physics", then yes. Most people programming models don't put in gravity going up, the earth spinning backwards, etc. Every one has a different set of assumptions and simplifications. Some are fantastic at modeling clouds, others just approximate them. Some are great at modeling ocean heat transport, others just use rough averages. The key is that they are all based on observed properties. The assumptions are based on observed properties. And the results are checked against observed properties.
Climate science is well enough established that most models are trying to understand one part better. If you're looking at cloud formation, for example, why would you waste weeks of computational power modeling ocean transport down to 5000m? That particular model might just use a slab ocean, with observed surface temperatures on an annual cycle. It's an approximation, for sure. But when you get the same general results out of several vastly different models, it's a pretty good indication that the physics behind it all is fairly robust.
Read this comment of mine. If you're not just trolling, it will explain why we can trust the "black magic" in the models. In short, I don't have a PhD in fluid dynamics. When I look at that code, my eyes glaze over, and I have no idea wtf is going on there. Does that mean it's worthless? No. Just because I don't understand, or you don't understand doesn't make it worthless.
I don't understand open heart surgery. It's black magic to me. But I can test to see if it works. I take 100 people having heart attacks, and let half of them undergo the "black magic" of open heart surgery. If they end up better, I can confirm it works. despite not knowing how it works.
The same for climate models. If they show that some part of the ocean should be warming, and we measure it and it's warming, then great. I don't need to know the fluid dynamical principles behind it to believe it. As long as the person who wrote it knows, all is well.
You seem to be under the impression that the climate scientists, climate modelers, politicians, accountants, lion tamers, and bus drivers are all the same person, doing one job. In reality, they are all different people, all doing different jobs, and all experts in what they do. I trust the guys programing the fluid dynamics into my model because they're experts. I trust the marine biologists programming in the plankton because they're experts. I can run the model, and interpret the results because I'm (4 years from being) an expert. I a can give those results to a politician to make a policy decision, because they're the expert at that. Every person sees a lot of the rest as black magic. As long as that part is being worked on by an expert, we're all set.
Since you can't be bothered to look, here is some reading material:
Scientific study on NOAA instrumentation in response to the linked article.
The "credentials" of the author of that book and the website you linked to.
Look, as a scientist, I'm all for ripping the shit out of bad science. That's how scientists make a name for themselves. That's also why I trust scientists to get it right. Stop posting shit from some random yahoo like it's gospel. There are plenty of serious, peer reviewed publications to choose from. Pick something with some sort of legitimacy to argue.
Thanks. I was worried that I was the only voice of reason here. No wonder you're on my friend list. :)
You hit the nail on the head.
Scientists have a motivation to NOT be alarmists. Scientists make their mark by crushing the research of other scientists. If there's one thing you don't want, it's to read a journal article where your previous research was demolished, and the authors made you look like a fool. I've read several of those. They can be brutal.
I trust climate research because of this. I'm in that sort of science, and I know that I can make a name for myself if I can prove other researchers wrong. So far, most of what I've seen looks pretty legitimate. I believe that climate change is pretty much certain. I also understand that we're talking a degree per decade, averaged over the entire globe, with 0.75 degree per decade of that happening near the poles.
First world countries will be ok. Third world countries will be fucked. And by the time it really hits the fan, I'll be dead.
Wow, you're an asshat.
The data is freely available for your perusal. Not that you're educated well enough to understand it. here you go. That should start you off - once you've analyzed that and published a couple dozen papers on it, I'll shoot you the super-secret links to more data.
God, who the hell got mod points today? There are a shitton of retarded posts marked up as insightful in this article. While there are a small percentage of shithead scientists, by and large this isn't some grand conspiracy. The data is largely accessible, and the methodology is pretty clear.
If I can do anything for the cause of science, it's to repeat this: Scientists get famous by ripping the shit out of other scientists' work. The famous scientists you've heard of got famous by demolishing the work of others. As scientists, we know that. And we're always looking for some schmuck to use as a stepping stone. I know if I do bad science, I'll be a stepping stone. I know if I find bad science, I can use IT as a stepping stone. That keeps most scientists pretty damn honest.
As pretty much a climate scientist, I have to concur with you. My major talking points:
1) Yes, climate change is happening. Nobody worth a shit disagrees.
2) No, the world isn't ending. No, we're not all going to die.
3) Can we do anything about it? No, probably not.
The biggest issues with climate change are that it's slow and a long way away. Our current carbon emissions have a 20-40 year range of effect. That's longer than most politicians are in office, for sure. How do you get politicians to spend political capital on something with no visible benefit to them?
In the long run, climate change will be bad. It will disrupt 10k years of stable climate, in which we built civilization. But, at least in first world countries, the primary effect will be.....insurance rates. We're at a point now where insurance will be the driving mover for the first world. When the coasts see more flooding from storm surges, insurance rates will go up. As that happens, less and less people will be able to afford the insurance, and so they will move from the coast inland. When the sea level rises a foot, and two more Katrinas come through New Orleans, who will be able to afford the insurance to build in the flood plains?
The people who are really fucked are the third-world countries. Unless they benefit from climate change, (Mongolia, perhaps?) they will be really screwed. Floods, famine, ecosystem changes....those things suck when you don't have the science, technology, or insurance to deal with them.
I'm directly tied to climate science, but like most scientists, I'm not about to proclaim doom and gloom to sell copies. We're about to see climate change unlike anything humans have ever been able to record. But personally, I'm not worried. I've got insurance. Does it help the rest of the world? Nope. But that isn't my forte. That's not what I'm going to school for. I can't affect politics. I can't make everyone stop dumping carbon and methane into the atmosphere. That isn't my job. I just model climate change. Hell, whether or not the models predict it doesn't even really affect my paycheck. I'm working under a grant to study it, period. I guess this ramble ends with this: I'm a climate scientist. Climate change is happening. No, I'm not panicking. Yes, lots of people are going to have a hard time. Yes, the poor will be the hardest hit, since they don't have insurance.
Why should climate skeptics be asked to make a good faith effort when the climate scientists have been so clearly and obviously shown to be acting in bad faith?
Can you cite a source for that?
:)
I'm dead serious. Show me a solid, scientific study that shows a concerted effort by climate scientists to be acting in bad faith.
The fact that you got moderated interesting is ridiculous. There's this big uproar about climate science in ONE place. Where? In the media. Why? Because nothing sells like scandal or death.
I'm working on a PhD directly related to climate modeling. I've got access to four climate models, from four competing organizations, ranging from middle-school simple to research grade. And they all give about the same results. In my office, I have a poster from a paper presentation where my research group compared seven different climate models, and looked at how well they agreed. There were differences, for sure. But they all were similar. Why are they all similar?
IT'S ALL A BIG CONSPIRACY BY THE CLIMATE SCIENTISTS!!!!!
Well, except for the fact that we would love to rip the shit out of another organizations research. In that seven-model comparison, we were looking to rip apart some of the models. Where they were different, we did. Had we found one that was totally different from the rest, we would have figured out why, and published that. The fact of the matter is that the science is well settled.
While I think you're an asshat, I do agree with your last statement. It is a big pseudo-scientific world out there, provided you define "out there" as "in the media". Those of us actually involved in science know that it's not. You get ahead in science by taking heads. We know Darwin's name because he wiped out hundreds of scientists' work on biological diversity. We know Einstein's name because he wiped out hundreds of theories on atomic interaction and the nature of space-time. We know Maxwell's name because he invented coffee.
As a scientist, surrounded with scientists, and friends with a lot of scientists, I can tell you, there's nothing any of us would like to do than destroy the establishment. If I could disprove evolution, I'd do it in a heartbeat. If I could prove General Relativity wrong, I wouldn't hesitate. It would put me in the text books. It would make me famous. If I could prove climate change wrong, I'd do the same.
But I'm in the middle of that science. And I can't. It's solid, despite what the media makes it out to be. If it wasn't, I'd be famous. You have to realize that most scientists want to know the truth. And as humans, we like nothing better than to be able to yell, DUMBASS in a very loud voice, while pointing at the dumbass so everyone notices. I believe in science because if I screw up, that will happen to me. So I try really hard not to screw up. As do all scientists. The ridicule of your peers is a very good tool to keep you honest. While there are some bad scientists, we all know who they are. They're the ones that we watched get called a dumbass at the last conference. They're the ones who published an article last year, which was utterly demolished by one this year. I've been to those conferences. I've read those articles. Scientists are blood-thirsty, brutal individuals. If you do poor science, you'll be ripped to shreds. That's how scientists advance in levels.
Suppose your science uncovers imminent doom, just around the corner. You find a solution, publish the doom and solution, and then.....nothing. All the powers that be don't do shit. Do you go back to your research, or do you try to play politics as well? It's a shitty position to be in, for sure.
From a climate standpoint, this is somewhat the case. In the modeling I've done, there's clearly a long feedback cycle. Far longer than an average politician's time in office. As a scientist, do you just ignore that nobody is following your research, and that a lot of people are going to be fucked in 20-40 years, due to decisions being made now?
Now, this is merely an explanation for how some scientists end up trying to play politics. It's not an excuse for shitty science. It's not an apology for scientists who put more weight on politics than the actual science they are doing.
Provided that the scientist in question is still following standard scientific procedures, ego and self-interest can't blind them to what they're observing. Either it's undergone a solid statistical examination or it hasn't. The good scientists, no matter their politics, do this. You can do both. And being political does NOT mean you're doing shitty science. However, if you're doing shitty science to begin with, it may look far more promising push the politics rather than the science.