No. A huge amount of the world's population use snowmelt as a source and reservoir of fresh water. If that falls as rain, instead of snow, then that population is in serious trouble. Now, I'm of the opinion that we can use technology to solve much of this trouble, but building enough dams for several billion people seems a daunting task to me. Additionally, rainfall patterns are likely to change which means that some people (like those in the US midwest, I think) may suffer from permanent drought (and how do we feed the US without the midwest agriculture?). Likely all solvable with a large outlay of capital, but it would probably be a good idea to be researching where all this money will need to be spent. Or maybe try to prevent this before it happens (but I think that's likely too late).
Of course, the AGW scientists might be wrong. It doesn't seem likely from the data, but it's certainly possible they missed something. My feeling is that 10 years from now, we'll know for sure. Certainly if the Earth keeps warming we'll have to find some explanation for it. And since we know it's not the Sun, that tends to lead to something happening on Earth. To be honest, I'm rooting for AGW. I hate the cold:).
How many more "mistakes", falsifications, and fabrications need to be exposed before this scam goes buh-bye?
So:
1. Phil Jones did not say there had been no global warming since 1995. He said that it (barely) wasn't statistically significant since the time period was too short for the statistics (ie, not enough data). Oddly enough, had they asked about 1994 or any year prior to 1995 the answer would have been yes. So the question was pretty much a set up.
2. It appears that they did fully reply to the FOI request, giving Mr. Keenan all the data he asked for. The data was also published on their website, so it's not like anybody couldn't find it.
3. The IPCC document is something like 2400 pages and so far there has only been one error found. I'd be surprised if there aren't more. I mean, look at your response: you only had about 4 sentences and two of them were incorrect.:)
And they are measuring the temperature of the oceans. As I understand it, the real measure you want is the total amount of heat in the world and oceans are the big heat sinks for that. When you look at a graph of the Earth's total heat content, the air part is a tiny blip while the increase in the ocean's heat content is enormous, especially over the last decade. But I'm not sure how they've obtained the heat content of the ocean. If I were a skeptic, that's probably where I'd concentrate my studies, since they've failed to make a dent in the atmospheric temperature data and haven't had much success in finding another culprit than CO2.
This wouldn't be true. AGW predicts an increase in snowfall in some areas that will result in growth of glaciers. In fact, I think there are glaciers on the US west coast that are growing, possibly as a result of AGW. The warming of the oceans will lead to additional snowfall on the coasts, which will help grow some glaciers (at least until the climate in the region of the glaciers warms up more).
The AGW theories are predictable. The problem is that people continually confuse climate (what AGW talks about) with the weather (what the snowstorm is about). That's how you know that if someone says that is proof that AGW exist, they are complete idiots and everything they say should be ignored.
And Phil Jones didn't say that there was no warming over the last 15 years. He said that the time period was too short to say if it was statistically significant or not (though he said it awkwardly). Oddly enough, had they asked about 1994 (or any number prior to 1995), the answer would have been yes, there has been statistically significant warming. But the reporter set it up so that an honest scientist had to answer no (with the added caveat that the time period was too short to say anything was statistically significant).
Well, so far the iPad is the only one that might be acceptable. It has color and can also hold music and videos. Except for the books, it's free of DRM (well, the apps aren't, but I'm not including them here). I understand eInk is much better for viewing books, so I'd like to check that out. But black & white would be unacceptable to me in any ereader. I'm looking forward to seeing the color eInk when it comes out as that could be a big winner.
Or: God is evil. Or: God is not omnipotent. Or: God id not omniscient. Which doesn't really address the problem of evil, which is: how can there be an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God, and still be evil?
I've often wondered about this. Let's assume that there's a God and Satan and one of these is good and one evil. How do we know which is good and which is evil? From the Bible. However, the Bible says that slavery, incest, and prostitution are not evil (in some places - it probably also says they're evil in other places, but that causes other problems). From this we can conclude that the Bible is not good or, at least, not accurate. So there's really no reason to believe that God is the good one and Satan is the evil one. It could just as well be the other way around. Of course, God could just be the rat bastard that the Bible portrays him to be and Satan is even worse - that's something to look forward to:).
Actually, there's lots of evidence for evolution and it's been seen to occur in the lab. Can't quite say that for creationism.
Also most of the scientists I've meant in three separate colleges believed in a Creator of some kind. After all, the initial singularity from which the universe sprung had to come from somewhere. Science and belief in intelligent design are not incompatible.
And in the three separate colleges I've attended, I've never met a scientist that believed in a Creator. But I may travel in different circles than you. Regardless, postulating a Creator causes all sorts of problems since you then have to answer the question of where the Creator came from (who created the Creator?). And at that point, continuing to argue that there's a Creator makes others question your intelligence and/or sanity.
Good grief, the old "they used to say it was going to be an ice age" canard! I didn't think anybody tried using that anymore since it's been debunked so often. It's well known that the majority of scientists back then predicted that the increase in CO2 would result in warming - you can check that information by just looking at the published papers. The whole ice age thing was something that the media put together - I guess to sell magazines. People who get their science information from the media really need to be removed from any decision making position.
"_No_ _vendor_ _lock_ _in_. No apple store only and no AT&T only."
I'm curious about how this tablet is better than an iPad in this department. I'm not interested in 3G, so don't really care about the AT&T part. For music, the iPad should work with just about any music store (since the iPhone does). And for books, the iPhone already supports Kindle books, so I would assume that the iPad will as well. But the Android system probably won't support music, books, or movies from Apple, so there's less vendor lock-in with the iPad there. If I understand Android correctly, you still need to buy the apps through a central Android store. So that seems a wash (or do I misunderstand the Android system?). So except for the need to use AT&T (which, again, I'm not interested in), there seems to be _less_ vendor lock-in with the iPad. I'm not currently interested in having a camera and multi-tasking doesn't seem too tremendously useful right now. That could change (and Apple could add it with an OS change), but right now it's not compelling to me.
As near as I can tell, the iPad has less vendor lock-in. It's lacking in flash, which is annoying, so the choice seems to be between the system with more media options (the iPad) and the one(s) that support flash. To me, that points me to the iPad - but I don't need one right now so I can wait a while and see how things shake out.
I read the article and didn't see anything particularly panicky about it (but then, I don't panic easily - maybe others are more easily affected by the headline). Just that people need to start thinking about it now and decide how to deal with the future problem (that would likely affect some structures in much less than 90 years). If they're going to let the water do what it wants, then they'll have to decide how to deal with that: appropriate property when they can, prohibit new construction in the new flood area, etc. Much of that property is likely to be very expensive, so amortizing that over 90 years would be useful. Of course, the property is likely to become much cheaper as time goes on, so that should be taken into account. And keep in mind that sea level rise is not likely to stop in 2100, so this really becomes a long term issue and a new way that most coastal areas need to start thinking.
Seems to me there was a study recently that showed that people were pretty bad at multi-tasking, due to the time lost in context switching. This would seem to indicate that the "iGeneration" would, in general, be poorer workers than their older brethren. Or have the new kids gotten better at the context switching somehow? (Maybe added cores to their brains?:)
"It was in response to Global Cooling, which as we all know was false and THANK GOD we didn't do anything about it. Regardless of our arrogance back then, science in the 70's was no where near where it is today. If we had acted on our ignorant assumptions, it surely would have led to an enormous disaster today."
Yes, and thank goodness the scientists never predicted global cooling in the '70s because, as they said at the time, they didn't feel they understood the science sufficiently.
This is pretty old news. I think I've seen reports of this at least as far back as 2003. But it's estimated that this effect is only 25% of global warming. Green house gases are most of the rest. And, yes, it doesn't necessarily take a huge increase in global temperatures to get the glaciers melting.
See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Climate models are trying to model changes to the climate over large periods of time. El Nino is something that crops up from time to time, but it's influence only lasts a short time (relatively speaking). It shouldn't be in the climate models. When somebody looks at the spike in temperature in 1998 and then says things are cooling off, this is a big flag to me to tell me that they don't know what they're talking about. I don't know why people expect real data to be smooth and monotonic. It isn't. Maybe it's because the current generation grew up with computers and just expect nice, smooth curves in their data. But I'd be surprised if any complex system gave you that.
I think I agree with you. There are some things I didn't like in the climategate emails. Nothing horribly damaging, but more along the lines of maybe this person shouldn't be in a position with that much authority. There are some things I don't agree with the climate change proponents, although on the whole I think they've proven that the global climate, in general, is getting warmer and that mankind is a big part of that. But I'm not a climatologist and, so, can't speak with great authority. However, there are some things that have been pretty thoroughly debunked and when skeptics keep bringing these points up, it doesn't help their arguments any. Points like the medieval warm period, volcanoes, water vapor, and CO2 as a green house gas. Whenever I hear someone making these arguments, I start to tune them out because I know that this person is either too stupid or, and I think this is more likely, not willing to question anything that might shake his or her belief system.
To intelligently question the climate change arguments, the skeptics should look at the methodologies used by the AGW proponents and question those. Or come up with their own theory and show why their's is better. Personally, I think the models are the best area examine. The climate change proponents' models all seem to underpredict the amount of change. Why? Are they being too conservative? (In which case, we're going to be in a world of hurt.) Or have they missed a driver that may only be temporarily making things hotter? (In which case, maybe everything gets back to "normal".) This is what I think they should be doing. Instead, all I get is some idiot telling me that CO2 is a harmless gas, when that clearly is not the case.
Also - don't yell at skeptics of the skeptics. I actually had some guy tell me that since the earth had been warmer in the past, this was proof that climate change was false. When I (very politely) mentioned that this proved nothing of the sort, he didn't take it well.
This is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. If you go to the website, there's some nonsense articles and something that appears to be serious called "Calibrating Dr. Thompson's Z-Mometer". In that article, he makes the claim that "It may be seen from Fig. 4 that “Dr. Thompson’s Thermometer” is in fact completely uninformative about the existence or absence of a Medieval Warm Period (MWP), Al Gore to the contrary notwithstanding." The "thermometer" in question is an attempt to show global temperature variations from about 1000 to about 1990. The MWP was a regional phenomenon. It wasn't seen world wide. If it was represented in the thermometer, that would make me suspicious of the thermometer. I can't speak to any other conclusions that the author might have drawn, but the fact that he doesn't understand that regional variations might be different from global ones makes me suspicious of anything else in the article.
But the questioning needs to be done intelligently. Most of the questioning that came about from climategate has seemed to come from people that either don't understand science or (and I think this is more likely) don't want to understand it.
Are you nuts? I don't think anybody would say that Linux doesn't support multitasking, but it will kill processes when it needs more memory (see the OOM killer). I think you're redefining the meaning of multitasking to fit your bias.
This is probably too late for anyone to notice, but I might as well answer it. I'm guessing the citation you're looking for is the whole "Bible contradicts itself" thing. It's pretty simple to find examples just by googling "biblical contradictions". I suspect all of these websites are run by anti-religious types, but it's easy enough to confirm things with any bible. And most of the contradictions are minor, but the fact that there are any contradictions means either 1) the bible is not the word of God, 2) God is not infallible, or 3) God doesn't have a problem with errors in the bible. Regardless which of these are true, it makes the bible irrelevant as a reference since, without outside confirmation, you can't know which parts of the bible are true.
I think, in the end, people believe the parts of the bible they agree with and ignore the parts they don't like. So evolution and homosexuality is bad because the bible says so, but we'll just ignore what the bible says about slavery (and other bad things:).
But the specifics differ everywhere on earth. That kind of points to a God who is indifferent to those who might worship Him. And if He doesn't care about me, why should I care about Him.
My problem with Christians (and those worshipping the same god - Jew, Muslims, etc?) is that the Bible contradicts itself. So you know parts of it are wrong. Why, then, believe any of it? And if the Bible is useless as a reference to God, what is there left to believe in?
I'm not sure how that could be considered condescending. Why should a non-American care about the United States? Perhaps I should have said "citizen of the United States" instead of "American", but I think (for good or ill) the two are considered synonymous (or maybe I don't get out of the country enough:).
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No. A huge amount of the world's population use snowmelt as a source and reservoir of fresh water. If that falls as rain, instead of snow, then that population is in serious trouble. Now, I'm of the opinion that we can use technology to solve much of this trouble, but building enough dams for several billion people seems a daunting task to me. Additionally, rainfall patterns are likely to change which means that some people (like those in the US midwest, I think) may suffer from permanent drought (and how do we feed the US without the midwest agriculture?). Likely all solvable with a large outlay of capital, but it would probably be a good idea to be researching where all this money will need to be spent. Or maybe try to prevent this before it happens (but I think that's likely too late). Of course, the AGW scientists might be wrong. It doesn't seem likely from the data, but it's certainly possible they missed something. My feeling is that 10 years from now, we'll know for sure. Certainly if the Earth keeps warming we'll have to find some explanation for it. And since we know it's not the Sun, that tends to lead to something happening on Earth. To be honest, I'm rooting for AGW. I hate the cold :).
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
At least now we know why they were illegally denying FOI requests for their data.
UN climate body admits 'mistake' on Himalayan glaciers
How many more "mistakes", falsifications, and fabrications need to be exposed before this scam goes buh-bye?
So: 1. Phil Jones did not say there had been no global warming since 1995. He said that it (barely) wasn't statistically significant since the time period was too short for the statistics (ie, not enough data). Oddly enough, had they asked about 1994 or any year prior to 1995 the answer would have been yes. So the question was pretty much a set up. 2. It appears that they did fully reply to the FOI request, giving Mr. Keenan all the data he asked for. The data was also published on their website, so it's not like anybody couldn't find it. 3. The IPCC document is something like 2400 pages and so far there has only been one error found. I'd be surprised if there aren't more. I mean, look at your response: you only had about 4 sentences and two of them were incorrect. :)
And they are measuring the temperature of the oceans. As I understand it, the real measure you want is the total amount of heat in the world and oceans are the big heat sinks for that. When you look at a graph of the Earth's total heat content, the air part is a tiny blip while the increase in the ocean's heat content is enormous, especially over the last decade. But I'm not sure how they've obtained the heat content of the ocean. If I were a skeptic, that's probably where I'd concentrate my studies, since they've failed to make a dent in the atmospheric temperature data and haven't had much success in finding another culprit than CO2.
This wouldn't be true. AGW predicts an increase in snowfall in some areas that will result in growth of glaciers. In fact, I think there are glaciers on the US west coast that are growing, possibly as a result of AGW. The warming of the oceans will lead to additional snowfall on the coasts, which will help grow some glaciers (at least until the climate in the region of the glaciers warms up more).
The AGW theories are predictable. The problem is that people continually confuse climate (what AGW talks about) with the weather (what the snowstorm is about). That's how you know that if someone says that is proof that AGW exist, they are complete idiots and everything they say should be ignored.
And Phil Jones didn't say that there was no warming over the last 15 years. He said that the time period was too short to say if it was statistically significant or not (though he said it awkwardly). Oddly enough, had they asked about 1994 (or any number prior to 1995), the answer would have been yes, there has been statistically significant warming. But the reporter set it up so that an honest scientist had to answer no (with the added caveat that the time period was too short to say anything was statistically significant).
Well, so far the iPad is the only one that might be acceptable. It has color and can also hold music and videos. Except for the books, it's free of DRM (well, the apps aren't, but I'm not including them here). I understand eInk is much better for viewing books, so I'd like to check that out. But black & white would be unacceptable to me in any ereader. I'm looking forward to seeing the color eInk when it comes out as that could be a big winner.
Or: God is evil. Or: God is not omnipotent. Or: God id not omniscient. Which doesn't really address the problem of evil, which is: how can there be an omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent God, and still be evil?
I've often wondered about this. Let's assume that there's a God and Satan and one of these is good and one evil. How do we know which is good and which is evil? From the Bible. However, the Bible says that slavery, incest, and prostitution are not evil (in some places - it probably also says they're evil in other places, but that causes other problems). From this we can conclude that the Bible is not good or, at least, not accurate. So there's really no reason to believe that God is the good one and Satan is the evil one. It could just as well be the other way around. Of course, God could just be the rat bastard that the Bible portrays him to be and Satan is even worse - that's something to look forward to :).
The one that has never been proven.
That would be BOTH.
Actually, there's lots of evidence for evolution and it's been seen to occur in the lab. Can't quite say that for creationism.
Also most of the scientists I've meant in three separate colleges believed in a Creator of some kind. After all, the initial singularity from which the universe sprung had to come from somewhere. Science and belief in intelligent design are not incompatible.
And in the three separate colleges I've attended, I've never met a scientist that believed in a Creator. But I may travel in different circles than you. Regardless, postulating a Creator causes all sorts of problems since you then have to answer the question of where the Creator came from (who created the Creator?). And at that point, continuing to argue that there's a Creator makes others question your intelligence and/or sanity.
Also the difference is that global warming has been studied for 40 years
I don't think global warming was being studied 40 years ago. I think they were seeing a different trend. This link is from the examiner but contains links to Time and Newsweek, both of which comment on what science was predicting. Yes, Al Gore says that it was clear 40 years ago. Al Gore says a lot of things.
Good grief, the old "they used to say it was going to be an ice age" canard! I didn't think anybody tried using that anymore since it's been debunked so often. It's well known that the majority of scientists back then predicted that the increase in CO2 would result in warming - you can check that information by just looking at the published papers. The whole ice age thing was something that the media put together - I guess to sell magazines. People who get their science information from the media really need to be removed from any decision making position.
"_No_ _vendor_ _lock_ _in_. No apple store only and no AT&T only." I'm curious about how this tablet is better than an iPad in this department. I'm not interested in 3G, so don't really care about the AT&T part. For music, the iPad should work with just about any music store (since the iPhone does). And for books, the iPhone already supports Kindle books, so I would assume that the iPad will as well. But the Android system probably won't support music, books, or movies from Apple, so there's less vendor lock-in with the iPad there. If I understand Android correctly, you still need to buy the apps through a central Android store. So that seems a wash (or do I misunderstand the Android system?). So except for the need to use AT&T (which, again, I'm not interested in), there seems to be _less_ vendor lock-in with the iPad. I'm not currently interested in having a camera and multi-tasking doesn't seem too tremendously useful right now. That could change (and Apple could add it with an OS change), but right now it's not compelling to me. As near as I can tell, the iPad has less vendor lock-in. It's lacking in flash, which is annoying, so the choice seems to be between the system with more media options (the iPad) and the one(s) that support flash. To me, that points me to the iPad - but I don't need one right now so I can wait a while and see how things shake out.
I read the article and didn't see anything particularly panicky about it (but then, I don't panic easily - maybe others are more easily affected by the headline). Just that people need to start thinking about it now and decide how to deal with the future problem (that would likely affect some structures in much less than 90 years). If they're going to let the water do what it wants, then they'll have to decide how to deal with that: appropriate property when they can, prohibit new construction in the new flood area, etc. Much of that property is likely to be very expensive, so amortizing that over 90 years would be useful. Of course, the property is likely to become much cheaper as time goes on, so that should be taken into account. And keep in mind that sea level rise is not likely to stop in 2100, so this really becomes a long term issue and a new way that most coastal areas need to start thinking.
Seems to me there was a study recently that showed that people were pretty bad at multi-tasking, due to the time lost in context switching. This would seem to indicate that the "iGeneration" would, in general, be poorer workers than their older brethren. Or have the new kids gotten better at the context switching somehow? (Maybe added cores to their brains? :)
And the proponents of AGW have known about this for at least 6 years. And it was (as I recall) in the "mainstream" back then, if I recall correctly.
"It was in response to Global Cooling, which as we all know was false and THANK GOD we didn't do anything about it. Regardless of our arrogance back then, science in the 70's was no where near where it is today. If we had acted on our ignorant assumptions, it surely would have led to an enormous disaster today." Yes, and thank goodness the scientists never predicted global cooling in the '70s because, as they said at the time, they didn't feel they understood the science sufficiently.
This is pretty old news. I think I've seen reports of this at least as far back as 2003. But it's estimated that this effect is only 25% of global warming. Green house gases are most of the rest. And, yes, it doesn't necessarily take a huge increase in global temperatures to get the glaciers melting.
See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Climate models are trying to model changes to the climate over large periods of time. El Nino is something that crops up from time to time, but it's influence only lasts a short time (relatively speaking). It shouldn't be in the climate models. When somebody looks at the spike in temperature in 1998 and then says things are cooling off, this is a big flag to me to tell me that they don't know what they're talking about. I don't know why people expect real data to be smooth and monotonic. It isn't. Maybe it's because the current generation grew up with computers and just expect nice, smooth curves in their data. But I'd be surprised if any complex system gave you that.
I think I agree with you. There are some things I didn't like in the climategate emails. Nothing horribly damaging, but more along the lines of maybe this person shouldn't be in a position with that much authority. There are some things I don't agree with the climate change proponents, although on the whole I think they've proven that the global climate, in general, is getting warmer and that mankind is a big part of that. But I'm not a climatologist and, so, can't speak with great authority. However, there are some things that have been pretty thoroughly debunked and when skeptics keep bringing these points up, it doesn't help their arguments any. Points like the medieval warm period, volcanoes, water vapor, and CO2 as a green house gas. Whenever I hear someone making these arguments, I start to tune them out because I know that this person is either too stupid or, and I think this is more likely, not willing to question anything that might shake his or her belief system. To intelligently question the climate change arguments, the skeptics should look at the methodologies used by the AGW proponents and question those. Or come up with their own theory and show why their's is better. Personally, I think the models are the best area examine. The climate change proponents' models all seem to underpredict the amount of change. Why? Are they being too conservative? (In which case, we're going to be in a world of hurt.) Or have they missed a driver that may only be temporarily making things hotter? (In which case, maybe everything gets back to "normal".) This is what I think they should be doing. Instead, all I get is some idiot telling me that CO2 is a harmless gas, when that clearly is not the case. Also - don't yell at skeptics of the skeptics. I actually had some guy tell me that since the earth had been warmer in the past, this was proof that climate change was false. When I (very politely) mentioned that this proved nothing of the sort, he didn't take it well.
This is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. If you go to the website, there's some nonsense articles and something that appears to be serious called "Calibrating Dr. Thompson's Z-Mometer". In that article, he makes the claim that "It may be seen from Fig. 4 that “Dr. Thompson’s Thermometer” is in fact completely uninformative about the existence or absence of a Medieval Warm Period (MWP), Al Gore to the contrary notwithstanding." The "thermometer" in question is an attempt to show global temperature variations from about 1000 to about 1990. The MWP was a regional phenomenon. It wasn't seen world wide. If it was represented in the thermometer, that would make me suspicious of the thermometer. I can't speak to any other conclusions that the author might have drawn, but the fact that he doesn't understand that regional variations might be different from global ones makes me suspicious of anything else in the article.
But the questioning needs to be done intelligently. Most of the questioning that came about from climategate has seemed to come from people that either don't understand science or (and I think this is more likely) don't want to understand it.
Are you nuts? I don't think anybody would say that Linux doesn't support multitasking, but it will kill processes when it needs more memory (see the OOM killer). I think you're redefining the meaning of multitasking to fit your bias.
This is probably too late for anyone to notice, but I might as well answer it. I'm guessing the citation you're looking for is the whole "Bible contradicts itself" thing. It's pretty simple to find examples just by googling "biblical contradictions". I suspect all of these websites are run by anti-religious types, but it's easy enough to confirm things with any bible. And most of the contradictions are minor, but the fact that there are any contradictions means either 1) the bible is not the word of God, 2) God is not infallible, or 3) God doesn't have a problem with errors in the bible. Regardless which of these are true, it makes the bible irrelevant as a reference since, without outside confirmation, you can't know which parts of the bible are true. I think, in the end, people believe the parts of the bible they agree with and ignore the parts they don't like. So evolution and homosexuality is bad because the bible says so, but we'll just ignore what the bible says about slavery (and other bad things :).
But the specifics differ everywhere on earth. That kind of points to a God who is indifferent to those who might worship Him. And if He doesn't care about me, why should I care about Him. My problem with Christians (and those worshipping the same god - Jew, Muslims, etc?) is that the Bible contradicts itself. So you know parts of it are wrong. Why, then, believe any of it? And if the Bible is useless as a reference to God, what is there left to believe in?
I'm not sure how that could be considered condescending. Why should a non-American care about the United States? Perhaps I should have said "citizen of the United States" instead of "American", but I think (for good or ill) the two are considered synonymous (or maybe I don't get out of the country enough :).
You could have gone to eff.org and found the source on the front page, if you weren't too lazy to care about the United States. (Apologies if you aren't American.) But because you are so lazy, here's a link (hopefully, this works): http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2008/04/eff-issues-report-abuse-national-security-letter