Burning it just releases CO2, which would happen in short order anyway since methane breaks down rather quickly in our atmosphere into water and CO2. So unless you're talking about really short timescales, burning the methane would make almost no difference over just having it hang out in the atmosphere.
The only way to have a net win is to re-sequester it somehow. Otherwise, even if you do use it feedstock for other fuels it's still putting more GHGs in the atmosphere than would have otherwise occurred if it remained at the bottom of the arctic ocean.
Not really. Methane has a short atmospheric half-life. Whether you burn it or leave it alone, it breaks down into CO2 which stays in the atmosphere for quite a bit longer.
Unless you're only looking at very short timescales, there is no "net win". Additional GHGs are going into the atmosphere.
So the tests allow you to use a calculator and gives you a cheat sheet of standard formulas used in the test? Even without those the test questions are pretty damn easy, even for 10th grade education.
How on earth do people like him make it to the school board?
"They were stopped before they could penetrate several other nuclear plants, but they shouldn't have been able to penetrate any of them long enough to hang a banner."
Penetrating security by being penetrated by security is nothing new.
Ah, well you see, it is more profitable to take money loaned at next to 0% and gamble in the various markets than it is to loan out to you. Why make a fixed 5% interest over the next X years when you play the derivatives market for much more?
The top 1% control 43% of the wealth depending on whose numbers you use. The next 19% control another 48%. The bottom 80% controls about 9%.
But if you want the "official" numbers, try the Congressional Budget Office. Wikipedia has a good summary of the CBO data:
According to the Congressional Budget Office, between 1979 and 2007 incomes of the top 1% of Americans grew by an average of 275%. During the same time period, the 60% of Americans in the middle of the income scale saw their income rise by 40%. Since 1979 the average pre-tax income for the bottom 90% of households has decreased by $900, while that of the top 1% increased by over $700,000, as federal taxation became less progressive. From 1992-2007 the top 400 income earners in the U.S. saw their income increase 392% and their average tax rate reduced by 37%.[7] In 2009, the average income of the top 1% was $960,000 with a minimum income of $343,927.[8][9][10]
Doesn't really seem like the rich are the victims you make them out to be.
No, the dumbest thing ever is the legal system which punishes whistleblowers. Wait, no, that's the 2nd dumbest thing ever. The absolute dumbest thing ever are the people who support a legal system that punishes whistleblowers.
The dumbest thing ever is at the beginning of this sentence.
"Whether you agree or disagree with the question of human affected climate change you really can't deny the fact that these folks are heavily biased toward a specific outcome for their research."
Bullshit. That isn't how the science is done. And you would know that if you actually read any of the research that has been done over the past century.
Global warming isn't some new science that someone concocted over the past decade or two to get more money. It's origins date back to the 19th century. Climate change as a result of human activities was mentioned in the early 20th century. Since then, observations have been gathered and models have been constructed BASED ON THOSE OBSERVATIONS. The first "zero-d" climate model was invented long before computers came about.
Now the icing on the cake here is climate models aren't using anything special. Every single aspect of a climate model relies on well established science from chemistry to fluid dynamics. The models are verified against historical observations. And yes, they have made many useful predictions which are used everyday by governments and businesses.
Researchers do not start off with a forgone conclusion and then try to find some way to shoehorn data into it. Any researcher that does that fails, if not at peer review then when the conclusions are actually applied to the real world. This is why researchers like Mann and Schmidt are well regarded while people like Spencer, Watts, and McIntyre are not.
Climate changes. It isn't static. Weather, even more so. To cast climate change as the villain in a scare story is the ultimate gimmick. When I was a kid (in the 1950's), we had some long dry spells in NE Pennsylvania. And there was the dust bowl.
No climate isn't static and no scientist claims it is. However, WE have adapted to a particular climate and expect it to stay within norms to survive. Changes in the climate can have devastating effects to regions not prepared to deal with them.
As to your examples, a dry spell isn't climate change. The dust bowl wasn't climate change either. Those were both weather events.
Further back, there were other notable and unusual climate events. And huge swings in temperature. Also huge swings in CO2 (although they lagged warm periods, they didn't lead them... obviously the plants making lots and lots.
Your claim of CO2 lagging warming is nonsense and has been thoroughly debunked. Also, plants do no make CO2, they consume it. Conditions millions of years ago have jack to do with our current climate. Different albedos, land mass configurations, etc..
But this doesn't provide evidence that CO2 increases warmth, it provide evidence that CO2 correlates with decreasing warmth.
Really? And what is your scientific research backing up such a ridiculous claim? It seems all the peer-reviewed science says the exact opposite. Let me guess, you're a conspiracy nut, right?
Still, no one can predict climate in the best of times, much less now.
Of course, since you're clearly an expert on the subject. Climate is much easier to predict than weather.
Yet, sometimes the climate does very unfriendly things.
Yes it does, usually over 100's or 1000's of years which is usually enough time for adaptation. Sudden changes have had some rather nasty side effects in the past. The changes we are seeing now are happening with a lifetime or two. At best, that should raise some concern. It wouldn't take much change to render the US into a nation full of starving people for example. Shift the jet stream north and suddenly the nations breadbasket turns into a desert.
So it's the perfect bogy-man to point at if you want to scare money out of people, or distract them.
You're confusing terrorism and climate science. Terrorism is an ill-defined nebulous threat with about as much real threat as you being struck by a bolt of lightning on any given day. Climate science is a well researched topics that has made many verifiable predictions and has a huge amount of data and research backing it up.
Having said that, yes, we should reduce our CO2 emissions. And the good news is, we will -- quite naturally -- as we stop burning petroleum. And we will stop, because it's hard to get, appears to be running out, and we have to negotiate with crazy people to get enough, and alternate sources make more sense on many levels, and we'll be reducing our power consumption by increasing efficiency, a good example being by wide adoption of electric vehicles, which we'll have in great numbers very shortly -- VERY shortly if recent battery tech announcements (1,2) pan out. What we don't need to to is torque the economy (even further) out of shape to deal with an emergency that isn't here and which so far, no one has shown decisively to be incoming.
The point is that if we keep burning fossil fuels until they get too expensive to use we will just make the situation worse. It's not just oil. It's also coal, natural gas, and any other carbon based fuel source that isn't carbon neutral. None of these are going away any time soon.
But clearly, no amount of scientific research will convince you otherwise, so we'll just wait and see what happens over the next decade or so.
*Statements are based on word count example and terrasort. Performance may vary greatly. May need to spend significant amounts of time to tune cluster for your particular data and applications to see any real performance. Applications may need to be specially designed to fit within the tuning constraints of the cluster. This statement does not apply if you are using binary data of significant size (BDOSS). Multiple data sets and apps may not perform equally well within the cluster. Data pre-processing, formatting, sequencing, and other such steps are not included in this statement. If you any problems, hope to $DIETY Google returns a hit. See your browser search bar for further details.
It is evidence of AGW, at least indirectly. He confirmed the planet is rapidly warming. In order for warming to occur, the Earth either needs to be getting more energy from the sun or the Earth is radiating less energy out into space. A review of the solar record shows that the Earth has not been receiving any significant increases in solar energy.
So that leaves the option that the Earth is absorbing more/emitting less energy into space. The question is, what has changed on the Earth over the past 100 years that could cause this? A big clue comes from upper atmosphere temperature measurements. The upper atmosphere has been cooling.
So what does this mean? If the the lower atmosphere has been warming, and the upper atmosphere has been cooling, then something in between the surface of the planet and the upper atmosphere has been absorbing more energy. And what has changed significantly over the past 100 years that could do that?
No, it hasn't been cooling for the last 12 years. And considering the last 12 years is the warmest such period at least since the beginning of the Holocene you're argument really isn't all that convincing. Add to this that you chose to use an outlier year as your start point and that 12 years is too short of a time period to establish long term climatological record and your argument becomes even weaker.
Try looking at the last 20, 30, 40, 50, etc. years of data. There is no question which way temperatures have been going. You'll also notice that there will will be variability within the trend.
Temperatures have been increasing rapidly. A 1 C rise over the past 100 years is very fast compared to the historical record. The project 2-4 C rise over the next 100 years is also rapid. But if your expecting every year to be warmer than the previous year then you don't really have a good understand of how climate and weather works.
You are arguing from the point of ignorance. There are plenty of online resources and research papers that cover this and a lot more, going back to the late 19th century where the greenhouse effect was first studied.
"I'm not sure pure science is up to answering those questions. And it doesn't help that the issue has become hopelessly politicized--to the point where I've grown very skeptical of BOTH sides and their respective penchants for self-serving hyperbole and increasingly shrill fear-mongering."
Then you're not listening to the right people.
If you're getting all your information pre-chewed from the media, politicians, talking heads, etc. then you're doing it wrong. The published research has all the information, minus the media glitz. It also has the data, the models used, the scenarios run, the equations, the methodologies, and pretty much anything else an educated person would care to ask for to verify the research. If you're going to allow the attention-sucking politimediawhores grind into apathy, then you're already lost.
"Of course, there is also the question of DEGREE of warming, an issue where it's getting harder and harder to distinguish between mainstream science and Chicken Little fear-mongering. IIRC, initial models were showing a 1-2 degree increase over the next 100 years, something that clearly needs to be addressed but not something that's GOING TO KILL US ALL TOMORROW!!!!!"
Please name any respectable climate scientist who is saying we're all going to die.
A 1 or 2 degree increase over the next 100 years should be a cause of GREAT concern. Historically, temperature changes of that magnitude have had some rather unsavory effects (ice ages, extinctions, etc.). Despite our technology we DEPEND on a relatively stable climate. Arable lands turning into dust bowls or flood plains due to climate shifts is something that can't be addressed when it comes up. You have a much harder time dealing with invasive species once they've already taken root. And then there's disease migration. And so on and so forth.
Dealing with climate change will require some things that we, as a species, generally suck at: long term planning and sustainable living.
"Somewhere along the way this kept getting more and more ramped-up to the point now where I hear advocates claiming that the entire east coast of the U.S. is going to be underwater by 2050. I can no longer tell where the truth begins and the humbug ends."
You must have some pretty strange sources. I've seen no such claims in the scientific literature.
"This indicates a light global average increase in temperature over this period."
I think you have a strange definition of "light". According to paleoclimate studies, a change of a degree or two Celsius is enough to drastically alter the climate of the entire globe.
"Finally their analysis still can't fully account for the so-called "fudge factor" which has to be applied when you consider the positive effect of concrete cities on temperature readings."
Bunk, and there have been several papers on this. Having the urban heat islands included in the data DECREASES the amount of temperature rise. Man made materials are terrible heat sinks, and have a tendency to radiate heat quickly away. This leads to slightly cooler temperatures on average.
"Furthermore, the fact that the Koch brothers funded an apparently legitimate scientific study is unlikely to challenge the conception of most on this forum that they are a bunch of purely evil monsters, but it should."
They're not evil. They're sociopaths. There's a difference.
Before I provide the "proof", first you must answer this question: Do you consider the laws of thermodynamics a "hoax" or scientifically valid physical laws?
Those are P2W games (pay to win), and a number of F2P (free to play) games follow that strategy where in order to have any hope of reaching high level content within a reasonable time frame (or any time frame at all) you have to fork over the cash. They also end up destroying their in game economies by allowing players to sell "store" bought items in-game (items are not bound to character or bound to account), which usually ends up inflating the in game currency to the point of worthlessness.
There are F2P games that don't follow this design (Dungeons and Dragons Online, for example), but they are in the minority.
You are trading money for entertainment. If you determine the amount of money is worth the amount of entertainment you get from a game, then it is worth it. The same goes with TV, internet, fly fishing, astronomy, or whatever other hobby you happen to have.
Most hobbies are time and money sinks. It becomes a problem when those time and money sinks start destroying your life. If you're failing in school, getting fired from jobs, etc. due to your hobby, then it isn't a hobby anymore.
We regularly hear stories about how some people get addicted to MMORPGs and such. What we don't often hear about are the thousands of others that are NOT addicted to such games.
Climate science is most certainly a cross-discipline hard science dealing with topics from atmospheric dynamics to hydrology. Unless you think advanced mathematics and computational fluid dynamics are "light", I suggest you read up a bit about what climate science entails before casually waving away over a century worth of research and a significantly longer period of data.
Here's what's been happening in the scientific community:
1. Scientists have been conducting research and gathering data on the greenhouse effect that keeps our planet from turning into a snowball since the late 1800s. 2. The research and data show that our planet has been warming at rapid rate, especially since the middle of the last century. 3. Paleoclimate and climate studies demonstrate that rapid changes in global temperature destabilize existing climate conditions. 4. Climate research, models, and experiments show that the bulk of the warming has come from human activities. 5. Scientists recommend that we take steps to mitigate and/or prepare for the changes a warming planet will have.
Here's what's been happening for the rest of us:
1. The media exaggerates, distorts, misinterprets, and or outright lies about what the science concludes, attempting to turn everything into "OMGZ!!!11! DOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!1!" 2. Corporations and industry who stand to lose profit margins frantically begin large-scale PR FUD campaigns and ramping up donations and favors to their favorite politicians. 3. The combined noise of idiotic talking heads and political vitriol drowns out any logical discussion about the science itself. 4. The populace gets fed up, ceases to care or listen, and/or becomes "deniers".
That remains the case until: 1. Shit gets so bad and/or obvious that anyone not suffering from psychotic issues finally accepts the science and demand that something be done about it.
And you fell for it. Don't feel bad though. You aren't the first and you certainly won't be the last. If you think this is the first time something like this has happened, you're wrong. In fact, some of the same PR FUD companies from back in the '50's are the same ones that are being used now, and for very similar purposes. Smoking, asbestos, ozone depletion, leaded gasoline and paints, and acid rain are all examples of what happens when science collides with those with money and power threatened by said science. They will fight tooth and nail to prevent any actions being taken. They'll tie it up in courts. They'll attack the science. They'll attack the scientists. They will delay for as long as they can, and bend every rule they can.
Science eventually wins in the end, but usually at a price. It will be interesting to see what straw will finally break the camels back in the case of climate change.
I'm not so sure that everyone who isn't "on the AGW/ACC bandwagon" are _denying_ the science of climate study.
Yes. Yes they are. Most assuredly they are. The two largest sites for deniers are run by McIntyre and Watts, who between them spew so much psuedo scientific nonsense that calling them quacks would insulting to quacks. They deny the science whole-heartedly (along with their followers), even going so far as to claim that all ground and satellite temperature data is full of crap. And nary a peer-reviewed research article backs up a single claim made on either site.
Now skeptics, on the other hand, actually do produce peer-reviewed research and are not denying the science. They are trying to make the science better. Unfortunately, true skeptics appear to be few and far between. The deniers have done a good job of giving skeptics a bad name.
Rather, I think they are questioning the knee-jerk solutions to a "problem" not yet fully defined, the sometimes overreaching conclusions made from a dataset still in development
Two points. First, the "knee-jerk" reactions have little to do with the science and more to do with politicians. Second you make it sound like climate science is a fledgling field that has no track record, which is very much incorrect. Climate science has been around since the 1800's and there is a HUGE amount of data, resources, and research on the subject. There isn't one dataset, there are hundreds. There isn't one model, There are dozens. Climate science is not a new field.
...and also motives of those politicians and scientists who stand to profit from said 'solutions'...
Climate scientists don't profit from climate science. There is a fixed pool of money that CONGRESS allocates to agencies like NASA and NOAA. They, in turn, allocate where the money goes for their respective programs. The amount being allocated to climate science specifically is pennies compared to other programs, and most of that is allocated for satellite based missions. You don't get rich being a climate scientist. You'd do far better going to work for Exxon and taking the opposing viewpoint.
"The climate" is not, nor has it ever been, a static system.
There is not a single reputable climate scientist that has ever made such a claim.
We have only begun to study it in earnest.
False.
Let's let the science and data develop, before we go salting the oceans with rust to cause plankton blooms, and other such possibly world-changing 'solutions'.
The science is well established and getting better all the time. Any "solutions" being proposed are being done by talking heads and politicos, not climate scientists. If it isn't in a peer-reviewed research article, then any solution is just speculation.
Let's employ rationality and healthy skepticism to further our understanding, before we go trying to "fix" what may well prove to be natural forces in action.
Then take your own advice and dive into the research that's already been done. If you had, you'd already know that the warming we are seeing is not being induced by any natural variations in our environment.
That is truly one of the most ignorant and idiotic statement I have read on slashdot. That ranks right up there with the "electric" universe and flat earthers.
Climate science isn't pushing a political agenda anymore than anthropology is. The only people making it political are politicians backed by big money interests who stand to lose money by policy changes. You act like this is the first time this has happened. It isn't. Every time a big company or multiple big companies stand to lose money due to a policy change the exact same shit occurs. It happened with asbestos. It happened with tobacco. It happened with lead. It happened with acid rain. It happened with the ozone hole. And now, it's happening with climate research.
Politics has nothing to do with it. It is about money and what companies will do to protect their cash cows. Whenever a new issue crops up, the money starts flowing to politicians and the same PR firms that have been used since the 40's and 50's to spread FUD and attack the messengers.
Eventually, the shit hits the fan though. Things get so bad or or the evidence becomes so obvious that they give up. We should be reaching that point within the next couple of decades. Until then, enjoy your ignorance. I hear it is quite blissful.
Slashdot Mirror
Burning it just releases CO2, which would happen in short order anyway since methane breaks down rather quickly in our atmosphere into water and CO2. So unless you're talking about really short timescales, burning the methane would make almost no difference over just having it hang out in the atmosphere.
The only way to have a net win is to re-sequester it somehow. Otherwise, even if you do use it feedstock for other fuels it's still putting more GHGs in the atmosphere than would have otherwise occurred if it remained at the bottom of the arctic ocean.
Not really. Methane has a short atmospheric half-life. Whether you burn it or leave it alone, it breaks down into CO2 which stays in the atmosphere for quite a bit longer.
Unless you're only looking at very short timescales, there is no "net win". Additional GHGs are going into the atmosphere.
So the tests allow you to use a calculator and gives you a cheat sheet of standard formulas used in the test? Even without those the test questions are pretty damn easy, even for 10th grade education.
How on earth do people like him make it to the school board?
"They were stopped before they could penetrate several other nuclear plants, but they shouldn't have been able to penetrate any of them long enough to hang a banner."
Penetrating security by being penetrated by security is nothing new.
Ah, well you see, it is more profitable to take money loaned at next to 0% and gamble in the various markets than it is to loan out to you. Why make a fixed 5% interest over the next X years when you play the derivatives market for much more?
"During the Carter years, when the top tax rate was 90%, the top 1% of taxpayers paid about 20% of all income taxes."
You need to check you numbers (or cite some sources). According to this http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html :
The top 1% control 43% of the wealth depending on whose numbers you use. The next 19% control another 48%. The bottom 80% controls about 9%.
But if you want the "official" numbers, try the Congressional Budget Office. Wikipedia has a good summary of the CBO data:
According to the Congressional Budget Office, between 1979 and 2007 incomes of the top 1% of Americans grew by an average of 275%. During the same time period, the 60% of Americans in the middle of the income scale saw their income rise by 40%. Since 1979 the average pre-tax income for the bottom 90% of households has decreased by $900, while that of the top 1% increased by over $700,000, as federal taxation became less progressive. From 1992-2007 the top 400 income earners in the U.S. saw their income increase 392% and their average tax rate reduced by 37%.[7] In 2009, the average income of the top 1% was $960,000 with a minimum income of $343,927.[8][9][10]
Doesn't really seem like the rich are the victims you make them out to be.
No, the dumbest thing ever is the legal system which punishes whistleblowers. Wait, no, that's the 2nd dumbest thing ever. The absolute dumbest thing ever are the people who support a legal system that punishes whistleblowers.
The dumbest thing ever is at the beginning of this sentence.
"Why is the world ruled by morons?"
Because a stupid answer that appeals to emotion will get you a hell of a lot farther than a smart answer that appeals to reason.
"Tax increases are only a temporary solution at best..."
Oh...so how's those Bush tax cut's working out for reducing the red ink? Funny, they seem to be making the problem a whole lot worse.
How did this get modded insightful? Funny yes, but insightful?
"Whether you agree or disagree with the question of human affected climate change you really can't deny the fact that these folks are heavily biased toward a specific outcome for their research."
Bullshit. That isn't how the science is done. And you would know that if you actually read any of the research that has been done over the past century.
Global warming isn't some new science that someone concocted over the past decade or two to get more money. It's origins date back to the 19th century. Climate change as a result of human activities was mentioned in the early 20th century. Since then, observations have been gathered and models have been constructed BASED ON THOSE OBSERVATIONS. The first "zero-d" climate model was invented long before computers came about.
Now the icing on the cake here is climate models aren't using anything special. Every single aspect of a climate model relies on well established science from chemistry to fluid dynamics. The models are verified against historical observations. And yes, they have made many useful predictions which are used everyday by governments and businesses.
Researchers do not start off with a forgone conclusion and then try to find some way to shoehorn data into it. Any researcher that does that fails, if not at peer review then when the conclusions are actually applied to the real world. This is why researchers like Mann and Schmidt are well regarded while people like Spencer, Watts, and McIntyre are not.
Climate changes. It isn't static. Weather, even more so. To cast climate change as the villain in a scare story is the ultimate gimmick. When I was a kid (in the 1950's), we had some long dry spells in NE Pennsylvania. And there was the dust bowl.
No climate isn't static and no scientist claims it is. However, WE have adapted to a particular climate and expect it to stay within norms to survive. Changes in the climate can have devastating effects to regions not prepared to deal with them.
As to your examples, a dry spell isn't climate change. The dust bowl wasn't climate change either. Those were both weather events.
Further back, there were other notable and unusual climate events. And huge swings in temperature. Also huge swings in CO2 (although they lagged warm periods, they didn't lead them... obviously the plants making lots and lots.
Your claim of CO2 lagging warming is nonsense and has been thoroughly debunked. Also, plants do no make CO2, they consume it. Conditions millions of years ago have jack to do with our current climate. Different albedos, land mass configurations, etc. .
But this doesn't provide evidence that CO2 increases warmth, it provide evidence that CO2 correlates with decreasing warmth.
Really? And what is your scientific research backing up such a ridiculous claim? It seems all the peer-reviewed science says the exact opposite. Let me guess, you're a conspiracy nut, right?
Still, no one can predict climate in the best of times, much less now.
Of course, since you're clearly an expert on the subject. Climate is much easier to predict than weather.
Yet, sometimes the climate does very unfriendly things.
Yes it does, usually over 100's or 1000's of years which is usually enough time for adaptation. Sudden changes have had some rather nasty side effects in the past. The changes we are seeing now are happening with a lifetime or two. At best, that should raise some concern. It wouldn't take much change to render the US into a nation full of starving people for example. Shift the jet stream north and suddenly the nations breadbasket turns into a desert.
So it's the perfect bogy-man to point at if you want to scare money out of people, or distract them.
You're confusing terrorism and climate science. Terrorism is an ill-defined nebulous threat with about as much real threat as you being struck by a bolt of lightning on any given day. Climate science is a well researched topics that has made many verifiable predictions and has a huge amount of data and research backing it up.
Having said that, yes, we should reduce our CO2 emissions. And the good news is, we will -- quite naturally -- as we stop burning petroleum. And we will stop, because it's hard to get, appears to be running out, and we have to negotiate with crazy people to get enough, and alternate sources make more sense on many levels, and we'll be reducing our power consumption by increasing efficiency, a good example being by wide adoption of electric vehicles, which we'll have in great numbers very shortly -- VERY shortly if recent battery tech announcements (1,2) pan out. What we don't need to to is torque the economy (even further) out of shape to deal with an emergency that isn't here and which so far, no one has shown decisively to be incoming.
The point is that if we keep burning fossil fuels until they get too expensive to use we will just make the situation worse. It's not just oil. It's also coal, natural gas, and any other carbon based fuel source that isn't carbon neutral. None of these are going away any time soon.
But clearly, no amount of scientific research will convince you otherwise, so we'll just wait and see what happens over the next decade or so.
Hadoop is geat, fast, and easy to use!*
*Statements are based on word count example and terrasort. Performance may vary greatly. May need to spend significant amounts of time to tune cluster for your particular data and applications to see any real performance. Applications may need to be specially designed to fit within the tuning constraints of the cluster. This statement does not apply if you are using binary data of significant size (BDOSS). Multiple data sets and apps may not perform equally well within the cluster. Data pre-processing, formatting, sequencing, and other such steps are not included in this statement. If you any problems, hope to $DIETY Google returns a hit. See your browser search bar for further details.
It is evidence of AGW, at least indirectly. He confirmed the planet is rapidly warming. In order for warming to occur, the Earth either needs to be getting more energy from the sun or the Earth is radiating less energy out into space. A review of the solar record shows that the Earth has not been receiving any significant increases in solar energy.
So that leaves the option that the Earth is absorbing more/emitting less energy into space. The question is, what has changed on the Earth over the past 100 years that could cause this? A big clue comes from upper atmosphere temperature measurements. The upper atmosphere has been cooling.
So what does this mean? If the the lower atmosphere has been warming, and the upper atmosphere has been cooling, then something in between the surface of the planet and the upper atmosphere has been absorbing more energy. And what has changed significantly over the past 100 years that could do that?
I leave that question to the reader.
No, it hasn't been cooling for the last 12 years. And considering the last 12 years is the warmest such period at least since the beginning of the Holocene you're argument really isn't all that convincing. Add to this that you chose to use an outlier year as your start point and that 12 years is too short of a time period to establish long term climatological record and your argument becomes even weaker.
Try looking at the last 20, 30, 40, 50, etc. years of data. There is no question which way temperatures have been going. You'll also notice that there will will be variability within the trend.
Temperatures have been increasing rapidly. A 1 C rise over the past 100 years is very fast compared to the historical record. The project 2-4 C rise over the next 100 years is also rapid. But if your expecting every year to be warmer than the previous year then you don't really have a good understand of how climate and weather works.
You are arguing from the point of ignorance. There are plenty of online resources and research papers that cover this and a lot more, going back to the late 19th century where the greenhouse effect was first studied.
If a hostile nuke ever gets detonated on/over American soil, whatever is left of "freedom" in this country will be annihilated with it.
"...(and yes, I think an individual rights are more important than the society, because individual is the smallest minority)"
This is short, simple, and incredibly naive. Statements like this is why I hold a pessimistic view of the future of humanity.
"I'm not sure pure science is up to answering those questions. And it doesn't help that the issue has become hopelessly politicized--to the point where I've grown very skeptical of BOTH sides and their respective penchants for self-serving hyperbole and increasingly shrill fear-mongering."
Then you're not listening to the right people.
If you're getting all your information pre-chewed from the media, politicians, talking heads, etc. then you're doing it wrong. The published research has all the information, minus the media glitz. It also has the data, the models used, the scenarios run, the equations, the methodologies, and pretty much anything else an educated person would care to ask for to verify the research. If you're going to allow the attention-sucking politimediawhores grind into apathy, then you're already lost.
"Of course, there is also the question of DEGREE of warming, an issue where it's getting harder and harder to distinguish between mainstream science and Chicken Little fear-mongering. IIRC, initial models were showing a 1-2 degree increase over the next 100 years, something that clearly needs to be addressed but not something that's GOING TO KILL US ALL TOMORROW!!!!!"
Please name any respectable climate scientist who is saying we're all going to die.
A 1 or 2 degree increase over the next 100 years should be a cause of GREAT concern. Historically, temperature changes of that magnitude have had some rather unsavory effects (ice ages, extinctions, etc.). Despite our technology we DEPEND on a relatively stable climate. Arable lands turning into dust bowls or flood plains due to climate shifts is something that can't be addressed when it comes up. You have a much harder time dealing with invasive species once they've already taken root. And then there's disease migration. And so on and so forth.
Dealing with climate change will require some things that we, as a species, generally suck at: long term planning and sustainable living.
"Somewhere along the way this kept getting more and more ramped-up to the point now where I hear advocates claiming that the entire east coast of the U.S. is going to be underwater by 2050. I can no longer tell where the truth begins and the humbug ends."
You must have some pretty strange sources. I've seen no such claims in the scientific literature.
"This indicates a light global average increase in temperature over this period."
I think you have a strange definition of "light". According to paleoclimate studies, a change of a degree or two Celsius is enough to drastically alter the climate of the entire globe.
"Finally their analysis still can't fully account for the so-called "fudge factor" which has to be applied when you consider the positive effect of concrete cities on temperature readings."
Bunk, and there have been several papers on this. Having the urban heat islands included in the data DECREASES the amount of temperature rise. Man made materials are terrible heat sinks, and have a tendency to radiate heat quickly away. This leads to slightly cooler temperatures on average.
"Furthermore, the fact that the Koch brothers funded an apparently legitimate scientific study is unlikely to challenge the conception of most on this forum that they are a bunch of purely evil monsters, but it should."
They're not evil. They're sociopaths. There's a difference.
Before I provide the "proof", first you must answer this question: Do you consider the laws of thermodynamics a "hoax" or scientifically valid physical laws?
Those are P2W games (pay to win), and a number of F2P (free to play) games follow that strategy where in order to have any hope of reaching high level content within a reasonable time frame (or any time frame at all) you have to fork over the cash. They also end up destroying their in game economies by allowing players to sell "store" bought items in-game (items are not bound to character or bound to account), which usually ends up inflating the in game currency to the point of worthlessness.
There are F2P games that don't follow this design (Dungeons and Dragons Online, for example), but they are in the minority.
Exactly.
You are trading money for entertainment. If you determine the amount of money is worth the amount of entertainment you get from a game, then it is worth it. The same goes with TV, internet, fly fishing, astronomy, or whatever other hobby you happen to have.
Most hobbies are time and money sinks. It becomes a problem when those time and money sinks start destroying your life. If you're failing in school, getting fired from jobs, etc. due to your hobby, then it isn't a hobby anymore.
We regularly hear stories about how some people get addicted to MMORPGs and such. What we don't often hear about are the thousands of others that are NOT addicted to such games.
Climate science is most certainly a cross-discipline hard science dealing with topics from atmospheric dynamics to hydrology. Unless you think advanced mathematics and computational fluid dynamics are "light", I suggest you read up a bit about what climate science entails before casually waving away over a century worth of research and a significantly longer period of data.
Here's what's been happening in the scientific community:
1. Scientists have been conducting research and gathering data on the greenhouse effect that keeps our planet from turning into a snowball since the late 1800s.
2. The research and data show that our planet has been warming at rapid rate, especially since the middle of the last century.
3. Paleoclimate and climate studies demonstrate that rapid changes in global temperature destabilize existing climate conditions.
4. Climate research, models, and experiments show that the bulk of the warming has come from human activities.
5. Scientists recommend that we take steps to mitigate and/or prepare for the changes a warming planet will have.
Here's what's been happening for the rest of us:
1. The media exaggerates, distorts, misinterprets, and or outright lies about what the science concludes, attempting to turn everything into "OMGZ!!!11! DOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!1!"
2. Corporations and industry who stand to lose profit margins frantically begin large-scale PR FUD campaigns and ramping up donations and favors to their favorite politicians.
3. The combined noise of idiotic talking heads and political vitriol drowns out any logical discussion about the science itself.
4. The populace gets fed up, ceases to care or listen, and/or becomes "deniers".
That remains the case until:
1. Shit gets so bad and/or obvious that anyone not suffering from psychotic issues finally accepts the science and demand that something be done about it.
And you fell for it. Don't feel bad though. You aren't the first and you certainly won't be the last. If you think this is the first time something like this has happened, you're wrong. In fact, some of the same PR FUD companies from back in the '50's are the same ones that are being used now, and for very similar purposes. Smoking, asbestos, ozone depletion, leaded gasoline and paints, and acid rain are all examples of what happens when science collides with those with money and power threatened by said science. They will fight tooth and nail to prevent any actions being taken. They'll tie it up in courts. They'll attack the science. They'll attack the scientists. They will delay for as long as they can, and bend every rule they can.
Science eventually wins in the end, but usually at a price. It will be interesting to see what straw will finally break the camels back in the case of climate change.
I'm not so sure that everyone who isn't "on the AGW/ACC bandwagon" are _denying_ the science of climate study.
Yes. Yes they are. Most assuredly they are. The two largest sites for deniers are run by McIntyre and Watts, who between them spew so much psuedo scientific nonsense that calling them quacks would insulting to quacks. They deny the science whole-heartedly (along with their followers), even going so far as to claim that all ground and satellite temperature data is full of crap. And nary a peer-reviewed research article backs up a single claim made on either site.
Now skeptics, on the other hand, actually do produce peer-reviewed research and are not denying the science. They are trying to make the science better. Unfortunately, true skeptics appear to be few and far between. The deniers have done a good job of giving skeptics a bad name.
Rather, I think they are questioning the knee-jerk solutions to a "problem" not yet fully defined, the sometimes overreaching conclusions made from a dataset still in development
Two points. First, the "knee-jerk" reactions have little to do with the science and more to do with politicians. Second you make it sound like climate science is a fledgling field that has no track record, which is very much incorrect. Climate science has been around since the 1800's and there is a HUGE amount of data, resources, and research on the subject. There isn't one dataset, there are hundreds. There isn't one model, There are dozens. Climate science is not a new field.
...and also motives of those politicians and scientists who stand to profit from said 'solutions'...
Climate scientists don't profit from climate science. There is a fixed pool of money that CONGRESS allocates to agencies like NASA and NOAA. They, in turn, allocate where the money goes for their respective programs. The amount being allocated to climate science specifically is pennies compared to other programs, and most of that is allocated for satellite based missions. You don't get rich being a climate scientist. You'd do far better going to work for Exxon and taking the opposing viewpoint.
"The climate" is not, nor has it ever been, a static system.
There is not a single reputable climate scientist that has ever made such a claim.
We have only begun to study it in earnest.
False.
Let's let the science and data develop, before we go salting the oceans with rust to cause plankton blooms, and other such possibly world-changing 'solutions'.
The science is well established and getting better all the time. Any "solutions" being proposed are being done by talking heads and politicos, not climate scientists. If it isn't in a peer-reviewed research article, then any solution is just speculation.
Let's employ rationality and healthy skepticism to further our understanding, before we go trying to "fix" what may well prove to be natural forces in action.
Then take your own advice and dive into the research that's already been done. If you had, you'd already know that the warming we are seeing is not being induced by any natural variations in our environment.
That is truly one of the most ignorant and idiotic statement I have read on slashdot. That ranks right up there with the "electric" universe and flat earthers.
Climate science isn't pushing a political agenda anymore than anthropology is. The only people making it political are politicians backed by big money interests who stand to lose money by policy changes. You act like this is the first time this has happened. It isn't. Every time a big company or multiple big companies stand to lose money due to a policy change the exact same shit occurs. It happened with asbestos. It happened with tobacco. It happened with lead. It happened with acid rain. It happened with the ozone hole. And now, it's happening with climate research.
Politics has nothing to do with it. It is about money and what companies will do to protect their cash cows. Whenever a new issue crops up, the money starts flowing to politicians and the same PR firms that have been used since the 40's and 50's to spread FUD and attack the messengers.
Eventually, the shit hits the fan though. Things get so bad or or the evidence becomes so obvious that they give up. We should be reaching that point within the next couple of decades. Until then, enjoy your ignorance. I hear it is quite blissful.