Climate Education Week, April 18-25, 2015

It appears that Wisconsin is getting as nuts as Florida.

Mike Elzinga said: It appears that Wisconsin is getting as nuts as Florida.

Ugh. Here's the second link for the above.

Mike Elzinga said: It appears that Wisconsin is getting as nuts as Florida.

Interesting how climate change is terrible for agriculture, forestry, tourism, and construction, but "business friendly" politicians support it.

harold said: Interesting how climate change is terrible for agriculture, forestry, tourism, and construction, but "business friendly" politicians support it.

ksplawn said:

harold said: Interesting how climate change is terrible for agriculture, forestry, tourism, and construction, but "business friendly" politicians support it.

It's simple. Agriculture, forestry, tourism, and construction businesses just need to get "friendlier" with the right politicians.

stevaroni said:

Mike Elzinga said: It appears that Wisconsin is getting as nuts as Florida.

What 'fifth straight year of extreme drought'? Texas has not had any unusual weather, other than a bit fewer hurricanes, and this year has been quite wet, so far. I'm waiting this summer for Texas and Oklahoma to officially rename 'fifth straight year of extreme drought' to 'Freedom Dryness'.

KlausH said:

stevaroni said:

Mike Elzinga said: It appears that Wisconsin is getting as nuts as Florida.

What 'fifth straight year of extreme drought'? Texas has not had any unusual weather, other than a bit fewer hurricanes, and this year has been quite wet, so far. I'm waiting this summer for Texas and Oklahoma to officially rename 'fifth straight year of extreme drought' to 'Freedom Dryness'.

KlausH said:

KlausH said:

stevaroni said:

Mike Elzinga said: It appears that Wisconsin is getting as nuts as Florida.

What 'fifth straight year of extreme drought'? Texas has not had any unusual weather, other than a bit fewer hurricanes, and this year has been quite wet, so far. I'm waiting this summer for Texas and Oklahoma to officially rename 'fifth straight year of extreme drought' to 'Freedom Dryness'.

Sorry, formatting got messed up. The "What 'fifth straight year of extreme drought'? Texas has not had any unusual weather, other than a bit fewer hurricanes, and this year has been quite wet, so far." was my reply.

Well, blame it on the USPS (United States Prayer Service) for the 169 day delay in answering those Texas prayers
after Perry proclaimed a 3 day "Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas" in 2011. Looking at the map in the link that
Just Bob posted there is a need for another proclamation.

Charley Horse said: Well, blame it on the USPS (United States Prayer Service) for the 169 day delay in answering those Texas prayers after Perry proclaimed a 3 day "Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas" in 2011. Looking at the map in the link that Just Bob posted there is a need for another proclamation.

I have heard that Pope Francis is about to issue an encyclical on climate change.

TomS said: I have heard that Pope Francis is about to issue an encyclical on climate change.

KlausH said:

KlausH said:

stevaroni said:

Mike Elzinga said: It appears that Wisconsin is getting as nuts as Florida.

What 'fifth straight year of extreme drought'? Texas has not had any unusual weather, other than a bit fewer hurricanes, and this year has been quite wet, so far. I'm waiting this summer for Texas and Oklahoma to officially rename 'fifth straight year of extreme drought' to 'Freedom Dryness'.

Sorry, formatting got messed up. The "What 'fifth straight year of extreme drought'? Texas has not had any unusual weather, other than a bit fewer hurricanes, and this year has been quite wet, so far." was my reply.

April 9,20l5 I, GREG ABBOTT, Govemor of the State of Texas, issued an Emergency Disaster Proclamation on March 9, 2015, certifying that exceptional drought conditions posed a threat of imminent disaster in specified counties in Texas. WHEREAS, significantly low rainfall across Texas beginning in late 2010 and continuing has resulted in declining reservoir and aquifer levels, threatening water supplies and delivery systems in many parts of the state; and WHEREAS, prolonged dry conditions continue to increase the threat of wildfire across many portions of the state; and WHEREAS, these drought conditions have reached historic levels and continue to pose an imminent threat to public health, property and the economy; and WHEREAS, this state of disaster includes the counties of [list of 100 counties]. THEREFORE, in accordance with the authority vested in me by Section 418.014 of the Texas Government Code, I do hereby renew the disaster proclamation and direct that all rules and regulations that may inhibit or prevent prompt response to this threat are suspended for the duration of the state of disaster as authorized under Section 418.016.

I think that famous Texan John Hagee's solution could end that Texas drought. He identified, scientifically, the cause of Hurricane Katrina as
a Gay Pride event. So, following his tried and true theory all that is needed is more Gay Pride events and maybe even adding a rainbow to that Texas one star flag. Maybe doing that would up their rating to a three star state.

ksplawn said: Keep these kinds of incidents in mind the next time someone tries to argue that mainstream climate science and global warming are the new Lysenkoism.

And keep in mind that is not some fringe element, that's a mainstream GOP site. Know what you are up against.

scienceavenger said:

ksplawn said: Keep these kinds of incidents in mind the next time someone tries to argue that mainstream climate science and global warming are the new Lysenkoism.

You mean like this guy?

The claim was "fifth straight year of extreme drought". 2012 and 2013 had normal precipitation, therefore were not "extreme drought" years. Furthermore, 2015 has well above average rainfall, so far, like I said. Perhaps you people who mindlessly parrot claims could check reality.

KlausH said: The claim was "fifth straight year of extreme drought". 2012 and 2013 had normal precipitation, therefore were not "extreme drought" years. Furthermore, 2015 has well above average rainfall, so far, like I said. Perhaps you people who mindlessly parrot claims could check reality.

Perhaps I should be more clear. One wet summer does not mean there was no drought, or that the drought is over. Weather is not the same as climate. NOAA still classifies large portions of Texas as under severe drought. And they project that the drought will get worse and expand before it gets better.

The point is that relatively rapid changes in climate will have severe impacts on our ability to produce food. This could have disasterous consequences for this and every other country. To deny the reality of climate change or it's potential impact for ideological reasons is not going to be a productive approach.

KlausH said: The claim was "fifth straight year of extreme drought". 2012 and 2013 had normal precipitation, therefore were not "extreme drought" years. Furthermore, 2015 has well above average rainfall, so far, like I said. Perhaps you people who mindlessly parrot claims could check reality.

I, GREG ABBOTT, Govemor of the State of Texas, issued an Emergency Disaster Proclamation on March 9, 2015, certifying that exceptional drought conditions posed a threat of imminent disaster in specified counties in Texas.

...the counties of Archer, Armstrong, Bandera, Baylor, Bexar, Blanco, Bosque, Briscoe, Burnet, Carson, Childress, Clay, Collin, Collingsworth, Colorado, Comal, Comanche, Cottle, Crosby, Dallam, Dallas, Delta, Denton, DeWitt, Dickens, Donle¡ Eastland, Edwards, Ellis, El Paso, Erath, Fannin, Floyd, Foard, Frio, Garza, Gillespie, Gray, Hall, Hamilton, Hansford, Hardeman, Hartley, Haskell, Hemphill, Hidalgo, Hill, Hood, Hudspeth, Hunt, Hutchinson, Irion, Jack, Johnson, Karnes, Kaufrnan, Kendall, Kerr, Kimble, Krg, Knox, Lamb, Lipscomb, Llano, Mason, Matagorda, Mclennan, Medina, Montague, Moore, Motley, Oldham, Palo Pinto, Parker, Parmer, Potter, Real, Roberts, Rockwall, Shackelford, Sherman, Somervell, Stephens, Stonewall, Sutton, Tarrant, Throckmorton, Tom Green, Travis, Uvalde, Val Verde, Walker, 'Wheeler, Wichita" Wilbarger, Willacy, Williamson, Wise, Young and Zavala.

Maybe this is a more interesting question: Why do you think the governor of Texas is lying about climatic conditions in his state?

Just Bob said: Maybe this is a more interesting question: Why do you think the governor of Texas is lying about climatic conditions in his state?

Just Bob said: Now, if you live in Harris County, as I do, then it's easy this spring to say, "Drought? What drought?"

harold said: Scientists who get grants to study the climate get the same grants whether they say it's getting colder, getting warmer, or staying the same... Do you really think that scientists invented some big, useless conspiracy that benefits nobody?

harold said:

Just Bob said: Maybe this is a more interesting question: Why do you think the governor of Texas is lying about climatic conditions in his state?

Here's another good question for Klaus. We all have the same bias - we would all love to deny harmful climate change. Literally nobody benefits from it. Scientists who get grants to study the climate get the same grants whether they say it's getting colder, getting warmer, or staying the same. I suppose the nuclear energy, windmill, and solar panel industries could be said to benefit, but those are either nascent, weak industries, and/or the same energy companies that process fossil fuels are big players in those industries. It's easy to see why corrupt scientists and right wing politicians deny climate change. One, they get money for doing that from the oil industry, and two, everyone is afraid of it so denying it is enticing. But why do you think the rest of us are not denying it? Do you really think that scientists invented some big, useless conspiracy that benefits nobody?

scienceavenger said: The claim is that they invented it to get more grant money, and the more alarmist their conclusions, the easier that money is to get. Of course, I've never seen anyone making this claim back it with any data, or explain why the scientists couldn't study something else, or why in the world someone deciding to create said scam would choose one that would make enemies of the most profitable corporations in the history of the world. But it flies because it's very intuitive to those who see government as a giant scam for grifters.

3%? Them's the ones goin' to Heaven, along with the Holy Koch Brothers.

TomS said: The enemies of capitalism would love to see the economy destroyed by imposing impossible burdens on corporations. Then there are the tree-huggers for which any environmental so-called protection regulation is good, and any excuse is welcomed. We can include neo-pagans who worship Gaia. And negative population growth advocates.

Yardbird said:

TomS said: The enemies of capitalism would love to see the economy destroyed by imposing impossible burdens on corporations. Then there are the tree-huggers for which any environmental so-called protection regulation is good, and any excuse is welcomed. We can include neo-pagans who worship Gaia. And negative population growth advocates.

Ummm. Is this a joke? Maybe my sarcasm detector's down.

Just Bob said:

Yardbird said:

TomS said: The enemies of capitalism would love to see the economy destroyed by imposing impossible burdens on corporations. Then there are the tree-huggers for which any environmental so-called protection regulation is good, and any excuse is welcomed. We can include neo-pagans who worship Gaia. And negative population growth advocates.

Ummm. Is this a joke? Maybe my sarcasm detector's down.

Seriously, you need to take it in for a recalibration. Actually, more bitter sarcasm than a joke. That's been known to throw off those older model detectors.

Yardbird said:

Just Bob said:

Yardbird said:

TomS said: The enemies of capitalism would love to see the economy destroyed by imposing impossible burdens on corporations. Then there are the tree-huggers for which any environmental so-called protection regulation is good, and any excuse is welcomed. We can include neo-pagans who worship Gaia. And negative population growth advocates.

Ummm. Is this a joke? Maybe my sarcasm detector's down.

Seriously, you need to take it in for a recalibration. Actually, more bitter sarcasm than a joke. That's been known to throw off those older model detectors.

But it's only as old as I am111! Uhhhhhhhh. Well, crap.

I guess I've just read TomS enough. And I'm a sarcastic SOB myself.

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/crp/?n=drought

Those numbers appear to be the percent of the area in the state that are in some drought condition. Just looking at the current numbers, 51.15% of the state has no drought, and 48.85 has some level of drought on the D0-D4 scale. 36.37% has drought at least as bad as D1 or worse, 25.39% has D2 conditions or worse, etc. That seems like a strange way to report the numbers, but at least the trend has been improving across the state during the time shown in this chart.

Matt Young said:

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/crp/?n=drought

The maps are clear, but the topmost map displays a table of numbers. What are the units of those numbers?

TEST

Why are my comments being held for moderation?

Matt Young said:

http://www.srh.noaa.gov/crp/?n=drought

The maps are clear, but the topmost map displays a table of numbers. What are the units of those numbers?

ksplawn said: Now the argument goes that not only are such people doing it for the money, but also that they have some kind of motivation to maintain a massive hoax involving their entire field of study. This is preposterous for a number of reasons. First, what kind of person tends to become a scientist in the first place? Having established that it's not usually a treasure hunter, it's generally somebody who is intensely curious about how things really work. Is that the kind of person who will dedicate their entire career to perpetrating a lie about the very subject they want to know about? Are they really going to abandon any genuine search for knowledge just to find ways to make their peers and the public believe something that is plainly false?

Important reminder that much of movement conservatism is a con and the base are the marks

ksplawn said: Now the argument goes that not only are such people doing it for the money, but also that they have some kind of motivation to maintain a massive hoax involving their entire field of study. This is preposterous for a number of reasons. First, what kind of person tends to become a scientist in the first place? Having established that it's not usually a treasure hunter, it's generally somebody who is intensely curious about how things really work. Is that the kind of person who will dedicate their entire career to perpetrating a lie about the very subject they want to know about? Are they really going to abandon any genuine search for knowledge just to find ways to make their peers and the public believe something that is plainly false?

Dave Luckett said: Well, it happens. Georgia Purdom. Andrew Snelling. John Marcus. Maybe as many as fifty or sixty others who had scientific qualifications, and even research careers in geology or biological science, and who abandoned "any genuine search for knowledge to find ways to make their peers and the public believe something that is plainly false".

ksplawn said:

Dave Luckett said: Well, it happens. Georgia Purdom. Andrew Snelling. John Marcus. Maybe as many as fifty or sixty others who had scientific qualifications, and even research careers in geology or biological science, and who abandoned "any genuine search for knowledge to find ways to make their peers and the public believe something that is plainly false".

That's my point though, it does happen... but not really to an entire field like this. There are outliers. We expect a few outliers. A tiny, single-digit-at-best minority for an issue like this where the evidence is overwhelming and has been for decades. But we're supposed to believe it applies to virtually everybody. That the 97% percent are the fraudsters, the sell-outs, the ideologues, the incompetents, the contrarians, the stubborn ones who just can't let their biases go. Basically, we're supposed to believe almost nobody in climate science actually does any climate science. Actually it usually doesn't get that far. Climate "skeptics" usually reject the idea that 97% of climate researchers are lined up on either side. There's a widespread delusion that the numbers are, if anything, evenly split or close to that. Show them the several studies arriving at a 90% or higher figure and they'll dismiss it as some sort of ploy, a shoddy poll that can't tell us anything, or even trot out Michael Crichton's sentiment that "consensus isn't science!" Anything to avoid acknowledging that only 3% of the experts are on their side, let alone that perhaps those 3% represent something other than the best, brightest, and most probably correct experts.

If one were to take a poll of scientists which included a question about the shape of the Earth, what percentage would respond other than "round", because they were careless, would not take it seriously, insist that it is not a perfect sphere or object to some other imperfection in the question, are registering their anger at being disturbed from their work, are so cynical about the intellectual life, or are extreme post-modernists. And I am assuming that there would be some with dementia - that it being a sign of dementia for a scientist to be a genuine flat-earther.

My point being that somewhere short of 100% is the most that one can expect, even without taking into account being paid off.

I see a bunch of stuff in this comment-thread that I'd like to reply to, so rather than scattergunning I'll put it all into one comment, and hope that no one minds.

ksplawn asked: "First, what kind of person tends to become a scientist in the first place? Having established that it’s not usually a treasure hunter, it’s generally somebody who is intensely curious about how things really work."

People become scientists for the same reason that people do anything else: because it seems like the best idea at the time. Some of them are indeed intensely curious about the nature of reality. That way lies paleontology, astronomy, geology, cosmology, and other fields that have little to do with the here-and-now. But some are also interested in making a difference in how we see and understand reality. I submit that people like James Hansen - climatologist, politician, and environmental activist - are not necessarily the "see reality as it is and report it honestly" sort. The activist mentality generally has no problem with telling a little white lie or two in service of a greater good. But of course, lies in science are like the great tar pits of yore: even the littlest touch is hard to escape, and it isn't long before you're telling bigger lies to avoid the shame of exposing the little ones.

ksplawn also wrote: "There are social rewards for being the guy who can tear down the Established Truths, or shoot down the current Fastest Gun in the West by showing how their ideas are wrong. Science encourages iconoclasts rather than blind tractability. This not only means you are required to submit your own work for scrutiny, but also that you get to tear apart the field’s big wigs as if they were on your own level."

Er, no. Not always, that is. The history of science holds many cases in which established scientists fought back against 'iconoclasts' who challenged them, and the challengers lost despite being right. Quick, complete scientific revolutions such as plate tectonics are rare. Let's not forget, especially here on the Panda's Thumb, that Darwin's theory of evolution was relegated to a position of "true but irrelevant" by most biologists for more than half a century, until the neo-darwinian synthesis and new discoveries in genetics provided a way to effectively combine evolution and genetics.

On the question of "can 97% of climate experts all be wrong?" -- how many are we talking about? There are hundreds of thousands of chemists in the world, tens of thousands of physicists of various sub-strains, tens of thousands of doctors, thousands of geologists. Ask me "can 97% of them can be wrong?" and I'll readily agree the answer is 'no.' But I doubt there are more than a hundred working climatologists whose fields touch directly on 'global warming' theory. Ask me if 97 human beings can all be wrong about something, and I'll say 'yes' without an instant's hesitation. Much larger groups of 'experts' have been wrong about major theories before.

Regarding the argument over the drought in the Southwest: why does anyone believe this is anything new, or that it MUST be connected to anthropogenic climate change? Let's not forget that the Southwestern US is climatically desert and has been for millennia. Or that the ancient Southwestern Amerind cultures - the Anasazi, the Sinagua, the Hoahokim - suffered severely from years-long droughts more than a thousand years ago. Or that a mere hundred and fifty years ago, settlers crossing the Great Plains called that region the Great American Desert -- because it was. With barchan dunes and everything else we currently associate with the Sahara. Finally, let's not forget that much of the 'breadbasket' of the Great Plains is made farmable only by massive irrigation that is rapidly depleting the deep-buried 'fossil water' of the Oglala aquifer.

(Yes, all that is true to the best of my knowledge. I haven't time right now to find linkable sources for it all, but I know I've read it in various sources - books, Smithsonian magazine, textbooks, etc.)

For all of the above reasons, I remain a skeptic on the "anthropogenic" part of "anthropogenic climate change." That climate is changing is not in doubt. That humans are solely or even primarily responsible -- sorry, I don't see any solid proof for that at all. Just a massive case of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: Regarding the argument over the drought in the Southwest: why does anyone believe this is anything new, or that it MUST be connected to anthropogenic climate change? Let's not forget that the Southwestern US is climatically desert and has been for millennia. Or that the ancient Southwestern Amerind cultures - the Anasazi, the Sinagua, the Hoahokim - suffered severely from years-long droughts more than a thousand years ago. Or that a mere hundred and fifty years ago, settlers crossing the Great Plains called that region the Great American Desert -- because it was. With barchan dunes and everything else we currently associate with the Sahara. Finally, let's not forget that much of the 'breadbasket' of the Great Plains is made farmable only by massive irrigation that is rapidly depleting the deep-buried 'fossil water' of the Oglala aquifer. (Yes, all that is true to the best of my knowledge. I haven't time right now to find linkable sources for it all, but I know I've read it in various sources - books, Smithsonian magazine, textbooks, etc.) For all of the above reasons, I remain a skeptic on the "anthropogenic" part of "anthropogenic climate change." That climate is changing is not in doubt. That humans are solely or even primarily responsible -- sorry, I don't see any solid proof for that at all. Just a massive case of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

DS said: You are perfectly free to ignore the consensus of all of the experts in the field. But you are not free to claim that such a consensus does not exist.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said:

ksplawn also wrote: There are social rewards for being the guy who can tear down the Established Truths, or shoot down the current Fastest Gun in the West by showing how their ideas are wrong. Science encourages iconoclasts rather than blind tractability. This not only means you are required to submit your own work for scrutiny, but also that you get to tear apart the field’s big wigs as if they were on your own level.

Er, no. Not always, that is. The history of science holds many cases in which established scientists fought back against 'iconoclasts' who challenged them, and the challengers lost despite being right.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: I submit that people like James Hansen - climatologist, politician, and environmental activist - are not necessarily the "see reality as it is and report it honestly" sort. The activist mentality generally has no problem with telling a little white lie or two in service of a greater good.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: ksplawn asked: "First, what kind of person tends to become a scientist in the first place? Having established that it’s not usually a treasure hunter, it’s generally somebody who is intensely curious about how things really work." People become scientists for the same reason that people do anything else: because it seems like the best idea at the time. Some of them are indeed intensely curious about the nature of reality. That way lies paleontology, astronomy, geology, cosmology, and other fields that have little to do with the here-and-now. But some are also interested in making a difference in how we see and understand reality. I submit that people like James Hansen - climatologist, politician, and environmental activist - are not necessarily the "see reality as it is and report it honestly" sort.

The activist mentality generally has no problem with telling a little white lie or two in service of a greater good. But of course, lies in science are like the great tar pits of yore: even the littlest touch is hard to escape, and it isn't long before you're telling bigger lies to avoid the shame of exposing the little ones.

ksplawn also wrote: "There are social rewards for being the guy who can tear down the Established Truths, or shoot down the current Fastest Gun in the West by showing how their ideas are wrong. Science encourages iconoclasts rather than blind tractability. This not only means you are required to submit your own work for scrutiny, but also that you get to tear apart the field’s big wigs as if they were on your own level." Er, no. Not always, that is. The history of science holds many cases in which established scientists fought back against 'iconoclasts' who challenged them, and the challengers lost despite being right. Quick, complete scientific revolutions such as plate tectonics are rare.

On the question of "can 97% of climate experts all be wrong?" -- how many are we talking about? There are hundreds of thousands of chemists in the world, tens of thousands of physicists of various sub-strains, tens of thousands of doctors, thousands of geologists. Ask me "can 97% of them can be wrong?" and I'll readily agree the answer is 'no.' But I doubt there are more than a hundred working climatologists whose fields touch directly on 'global warming' theory.

For all of the above reasons, I remain a skeptic on the "anthropogenic" part of "anthropogenic climate change." That climate is changing is not in doubt. That humans are solely or even primarily responsible -- sorry, I don't see any solid proof for that at all. Just a massive case of post hoc ergo propter hoc.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: Ask me if 97 human beings can all be wrong about something, and I'll say 'yes' without an instant's hesitation. Much larger groups of 'experts' have been wrong about major theories before.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: Regarding the argument over the drought in the Southwest: why does anyone believe this is anything new, or that it MUST be connected to anthropogenic climate change?

(To bring this back around to TomS's analogy)

At this point, holding out for someone to come along and disprove AGW is like holding out for someone to come along and prove that the Earth isn't round, but actually a cube.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: On the question of "can 97% of climate experts all be wrong?" -- how many are we talking about? There are hundreds of thousands of chemists in the world, tens of thousands of physicists of various sub-strains, tens of thousands of doctors, thousands of geologists. Ask me "can 97% of them can be wrong?" and I'll readily agree the answer is 'no.' But I doubt there are more than a hundred working climatologists whose fields touch directly on 'global warming' theory. Ask me if 97 human beings can all be wrong about something, and I'll say 'yes' without an instant's hesitation. Much larger groups of 'experts' have been wrong about major theories before.

ksplawn said: (To bring this back around to TomS's analogy) At this point, holding out for someone to come along and disprove AGW is like holding out for someone to come along and prove that the Earth isn't round, but actually a cube.

Drought? There's no stinkin' drought in America! I live in America, and it's raining here RIGHT NOW!

scienceavenger said:

harold said: Scientists who get grants to study the climate get the same grants whether they say it's getting colder, getting warmer, or staying the same... Do you really think that scientists invented some big, useless conspiracy that benefits nobody?

The claim is that they invented it to get more grant money, and the more alarmist their conclusions, the easier that money is to get. Of course, I've never seen anyone making this claim back it with any data, or explain why the scientists couldn't study something else, or why in the world someone deciding to create said scam would choose one that would make enemies of the most profitable corporations in the history of the world. But it flies because it's very intuitive to those who see government as a giant scam for grifters.

Just Bob said:

ksplawn said: (To bring this back around to TomS's analogy) At this point, holding out for someone to come along and disprove AGW is like holding out for someone to come along and prove that the Earth isn't round, but actually a cube.

Dang, I love the beautiful clarity of Asimov's writing. Having read that essay long ago, and again, just now, I am confident in declaring that YECism is right. That is, compared to Last Thursdayism: 6,000 years is WAY closer to the right answer. Of the two, YECism is the 'right' answer. But the problem for YECs is that over the last few centuries, answers that are MUCH more right have been derived and refined. Compared to Last Thursdayism, YECism is right[er]. But compared to 21st Century geology, cosmology, and physics it is very wrong indeed.

Recently I’ve read claims that some scientists are opposed to AGW but won’t speak out because they fear censure from a nearly monolithic community intent on imposing a mainstream view. Yet my last 10 years of personal experience refute this claim. This story began late in 2003 when I introduced a new idea (the ‘early anthropogenic hypothesis’) that went completely against a prevailing climatic paradigm of the time. I claimed that detectable human influences on Earth’s surface and its climate began thousands of years ago because of agriculture. Here I describe how this radically different idea was received by the mainstream scientific community. Was my initial attempt to present this new idea suppressed? No. I submitted a paper to Climatic Change, then edited by Steve Schneider, a well-known climate scientist and AGW spokesman. From what I could tell, Steve was agnostic about my idea but published it because he found it an interesting challenge to the conventional wisdom. I also gave the Emiliani lecture at the 2003 December American Geophysical Union (AGU) conference to some 800 people. I feel certain that very few of those scientists came to my talk believing what my abstract claimed. They attended because they were interested in a really new idea from someone with a decent career reputation. The talk was covered by many prominent media sources, including the New York Times and The Economist. This experience told me that provocative new ideas draw interest because they are provocative and new, provided that they pass the key ‘sniff test’ by presenting evidence in support of their claims. Did this radical new idea have difficulty receiving research funding? No. Proposals submitted to the highly competitive National Science Foundation (NSF) with John Kutzbach and Steve Vavrus have been fully funded since 2004 by 3-year grants. Even though the hypothesis of early anthropogenic effects on climate has been controversial (and still is for some), we crafted proposals that were carefully written, tightly reasoned, and focused on testing the new idea. As a result, we succeeded against negative funding odds of 4-1 or 5-1. One program manager told me he planned to put our grant on a short list of ‘transformational’ proposals/grants that NSF had requested. That didn’t mean he accepted our hypothesis. It meant that he felt that our hypothesis had the potential to transform that particular field of paleoclimatic research, if proven correct. Were we able to get papers published? Yes. As any scientist will tell you, this process is rarely easy. Even reviewers who basically support what you have to say will rarely hand out ‘easy-pass’ reviews. They add their own perspective, and they often point out useful improvements. A few reviews of the 30-some papers we have published during the last 11 years have come back with extremely negative reviews, seemingly from scientists who seem deeply opposed to anything that even hints at large early anthropogenic effects. While these uber-critical reviews are discouraging, I have learned to put them aside for a few days, give my spirits time to rebound, and then address the criticisms that are fair (that is, evidence-based), explain to the journal editor why other criticisms are unfair, and submit a revised (and inevitably improved) paper. Eventually, our views have always gotten published, although sometimes only after considerable effort. The decade-long argument over large early anthropogenic effects continues, although recent syntheses of archeological and paleoecological data have been increasingly supportive. In any case, I continue to trust the scientific process to sort this debate out. I suggest that my experience is a good index of the way the system actually operates when new and controversial ideas emerge. I see no evidence that the system is muffling good new ideas.

For a quick, admittedly anecdotal rebuttal to the idea that new ideas are either A) adopted wholesale for entirely political, non-scientific reasons or B) suppressed by the ossified scientific Establishment

harold said: Hyper-conservative physicist Edward Teller did warn about it quite a few decades ago (and he's spinning in his grave if someone is calling him an "environmentalist"),

but the idea and the evidence are new.

Atmospheric CO2 has increased from a pre-industrial concentration of about 280 ppmv to about 367 ppmv at present (ppmv= parts per million by volume).

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: On the question of "can 97% of climate experts all be wrong?" -- how many are we talking about? There are hundreds of thousands of chemists in the world, tens of thousands of physicists of various sub-strains, tens of thousands of doctors, thousands of geologists. Ask me "can 97% of them can be wrong?" and I'll readily agree the answer is 'no.' But I doubt there are more than a hundred working climatologists whose fields touch directly on 'global warming' theory. Ask me if 97 human beings can all be wrong about something, and I'll say 'yes' without an instant's hesitation. Much larger groups of 'experts' have been wrong about major theories before.

How new do you mean? I thought it was at least a staple of dystopian SF for a long time. Wasn’t that part of the premise of Soylent Green?

harold said: so I don’t any disagreement but am mildly puzzled by your question. The idea began to be raised some decades ago but really gained support over the last twenty years or so. ... To me that's a relatively new idea, describing a relatively new phenomenon, compared to say, Newton's model of gravity, or Archimedes articulation of displacement of equal volume by a body submerged in water.

The Greenhouse Effect goes back to Fourier, Tyndall, and Arrhenius.

Serious, sustained research on how our industrial activity and GH gas emissions have been changing the climate dates back to about the middle of the 20th century, and came from (among other things) military research into the IR-blocking properties of atmospheric gases. It became a more prominently public issue in the 1970s and 80s.

Spencer Weart has a fantastic outline of the history at The Discovery of Global Warming - A History. As I said before, the AGW idea had to struggle for acceptance and keep making successful predictions over many years to come out on top where it is today.

By the way, there's a popular trope floating around that scientists of the 60s and 70s were in a panic about predictions of an imminent onset of Ice Age conditions, much like today's scientists are "alarmist" about the opposite problem. The obvious insinuation is that this warming hysteria too shall fall out of favor soon and prove to be just as unfounded.

It's not true. A literature trawl of climate predictions and modeling studies from 1965-1979 found that at no time did predictions of cooling outnumber predictions of warming, and that warming predictions outnumbered cooling by more than 6 to 1 over that timeframe.

ksplawn said: The Greenhouse Effect goes back to Fourier, Tyndall, and Arrhenius. Serious, sustained research on how our industrial activity and GH gas emissions have been changing the climate dates back to about the middle of the 20th century, and came from (among other things) military research into the IR-blocking properties of atmospheric gases. It became a more prominently public issue in the 1970s and 80s. Spencer Weart has a fantastic outline of the history at The Discovery of Global Warming - A History. As I said before, the AGW idea had to struggle for acceptance and keep making successful predictions over many years to come out on top where it is today. By the way, there's a popular trope floating around that scientists of the 60s and 70s were in a panic about predictions of an imminent onset of Ice Age conditions, much like today's scientists are "alarmist" about the opposite problem. The obvious insinuation is that this warming hysteria too shall fall out of favor soon and prove to be just as unfounded. It's not true. A literature trawl of climate predictions and modeling studies from 1965-1979 found that at no time did predictions of cooling outnumber predictions of warming, and that warming predictions outnumbered cooling by more than 6 to 1 over that timeframe.

DS said: Sorry, no. There is now a scientific consensus that the climate change we are presently experiencing is largely caused by human activities.

We can identify the source of the carbon emissions and we have detailed records of the amounts of green house gas emissions from numerous sources. It cannot reasonably be denied that this is a factor. Nothing you have said brings any of this into dispute.

As for the drought, we also know some of the causes for this. We can model the way in which global warming destabilizes the jet stream and ocean currents, disrupting weather patterns. The models predict prolonged and extensive droughts in the american southwest, something we are already starting to experience.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said:

DS said: Sorry, no. There is now a scientific consensus that the climate change we are presently experiencing is largely caused by human activities.

Have you seen and analyzed the raw data for yourself? No? Then "the scientific consensus" is no more than what other people have told you is true. Courts have a term for that: they call it hearsay, and it isn't allowed.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said:

DS said: Sorry, no. There is now a scientific consensus that the climate change we are presently experiencing is largely caused by human activities.

Have you seen and analyzed the raw data for yourself? No? Then "the scientific consensus" is no more than what other people have told you is true. Courts have a term for that: they call it hearsay, and it isn't allowed. I want to see the evidence. Always. Not just on this subject, but on any scientific subject. Because that is part of the essence of science, as far as I'm concerned. No evidence, no science. Full stop. If somebody tells me Velociraptor had feathers, I expect them to produce a Velociraptor fossil with feather impressions. If someone says Diplodocus's neck was too weak to hold its head up high, I want to see their reconstruction of the muscles and the neck anatomy. If somebody claims they saw a living pterosaur, they better have evidence in the form of a body, a picture or a video, untouched and unaltered -- and they damn well better be sure it isn't any kind of bird I can recognize. Or I just won't believe it.

We can identify the source of the carbon emissions and we have detailed records of the amounts of green house gas emissions from numerous sources. It cannot reasonably be denied that this is a factor. Nothing you have said brings any of this into dispute.

Nor was it intended to. I don't doubt that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, or that there's a lot more of it now in the atmosphere than there was 200 years ago. I never have. I even agree that logically, if what we think we know about the atmosphere is anywhere near right, then all that extra CO2 should be having an effect on the climate. Which brings me to this:

As for the drought, we also know some of the causes for this. We can model the way in which global warming destabilizes the jet stream and ocean currents, disrupting weather patterns. The models predict prolonged and extensive droughts in the american southwest, something we are already starting to experience.

Is there a website where I can go and see these models for myself? Not the output but the actual models, run in realtime or something close to it? Can I try different sets of inputs and see how the changes affect the outputs? Can I see the source code, read it, and verify that it works the way climatologists say it does? Yes, you're right, I'm being rigid about this. I've found over the years that when the topic is anything controversial, I have to be rigid about the level of evidence I demand, or I just get buried under tons of cr@p. I don't want insults, I don't want abuse, I don't want snide insinuations, and I don't want logical fallacies. I want evidence - raw, undiluted, undigested, unadjusted evidence. Explanations are welcome too, of course, but it's gotta have that evidence, or we're back to hearsay. Sadly, the only people in the AGW controversy who will show me that all seem to be on the other side. (To be sure, there are an awful lot of nuts on that side too, but I try to ignore them as best I can.) One guy has a page that shows how the number of GHCN surface thermometer stations has fallen over the years, in a specific pattern that has selectively eliminated higher-altitude stations and left only lower - ie, warmer - stations reporting data. Another points out how certain temperature proxies, once thought to be reliable, could be affected by non-climate-related factors. But when I come to someone on the pro-AGW side and ask for explanations, all I get is a lot of jargon about "data adjustments", usually followed by "the science is settled," usually in a sneering tone that adds "how dare you question Science, you ignorant peasant!" Which leaves me with a dilemma: logic says AGW is right, but the little evidence that I can see and study for myself says ... something else. What's a guy to do? What I've done is the only thing I can reasonably do: withhold judgement until I have more, and more definite, information. And I don't understand how anyone who understands and values science as a process and a worldview can do anything else.

According to NASA, Greenland is losing about 100 billion tons of land ice every year. Antarctica glaciers are also melting but not as fast as the Arctic ones. Gravity data obtained from space using NASA's Grace satellite showed that at the Antarctica, glaciers are melting at a rate of more than 100 km3 (or 24 cubic miles) yearly since 2002. The Himalayan glaciers are also melting at a very fast rate. For example, according to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), glacier Chhota Shigri has retreated by 12% in the last 13 years, while glacier Gangotri (where the Ganga River starts) has retreated by 12% in the last 16 years.

callahanpb said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said:

DS said: Sorry, no. There is now a scientific consensus that the climate change we are presently experiencing is largely caused by human activities.

Have you seen and analyzed the raw data for yourself? No? Then "the scientific consensus" is no more than what other people have told you is true. Courts have a term for that: they call it hearsay, and it isn't allowed.

I am not a lawyer, but I think courts make a distinction between hearsay and expert testimony. Anyway, your entire line of argument is nonsense. Nobody has time to verify every claim directly, and it is entirely reasonable to hold working assumptions based on a consensus of experts. These may or may not be true, but on average they are superior to completely ignorant or intentionally contrarian beliefs.

callahanpb said:

harold said: Hyper-conservative physicist Edward Teller did warn about it quite a few decades ago (and he's spinning in his grave if someone is calling him an "environmentalist"),

In that case, I'm sure it is something easily fixed by detonating a few strategically placed H-bombs.

but the idea and the evidence are new.

How new do you mean? I thought it was at least a staple of dystopian SF for a long time. Wasn't that part of the premise of Soylent Green? Note: don't want to sound like I'm scoffing. It would actually be pretty strange if we could dump so much excess CO2 into the atmosphere without changing the climate. While specific models can be off, climate change deniers basically have to claim that either CO2 doesn't matter or that there is some compensating effect (the existence of which follows primarily from wishful thinking). Just from a quick web search: http://www.grida.no/publications/vg/climate/page/3062.aspx

Atmospheric CO2 has increased from a pre-industrial concentration of about 280 ppmv to about 367 ppmv at present (ppmv= parts per million by volume).

If you want to check out climate models for yourself, you can start here:

http://www.riversimulator.org/Resources/ClimateDocs/FutureDrynessSouthwestAndHydrologyOf21centuryDroughtCayan2010.pdf

or here:

http://www.nateko.lu.se/Courses/NGEN05/2009%5CTH%5CWang2005.pdf

Or here:

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00282.1

Or here:

http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/1/1/e1400082

Have you seen and analyzed the raw data for yourself? No? Then "the scientific consensus" is no more than what other people have told you is true. Courts have a term for that: they call it hearsay, and it isn't allowed.

I want to see the evidence. Always.

Is there a website where I can go and see these models for myself? Not the output but the actual models, run in realtime or something close to it? Can I try different sets of inputs and see how the changes affect the outputs? Can I see the source code, read it, and verify that it works the way climatologists say it does?

I don't want insults, I don't want abuse, I don't want snide insinuations, and I don't want logical fallacies.

Explanations are welcome too, of course, but it's gotta have that evidence, or we're back to hearsay. Sadly, the only people in the AGW controversy who will show me that all seem to be on the other side.

One guy has a page that shows how the number of GHCN surface thermometer stations has fallen over the years, in a specific pattern that has selectively eliminated higher-altitude stations and left only lower - ie, warmer - stations reporting data.

Another points out how certain temperature proxies, once thought to be reliable, could be affected by non-climate-related factors.

But when I come to someone on the pro-AGW side and ask for explanations, all I get is a lot of jargon about "data adjustments", usually followed by "the science is settled," usually in a sneering tone that adds "how dare you question Science, you ignorant peasant!"

Which leaves me with a dilemma: logic says AGW is right, but the little evidence that I can see and study for myself says ... something else. What's a guy to do?

What I've done is the only thing I can reasonably do: withhold judgement until I have more, and more definite, information. And I don't understand how anyone who understands and values science as a process and a worldview can do anything else.

DS said: If you want to check out climate models for yourself, you can start here: http://www.riversimulator.org/Resources/ClimateDocs/FutureDrynessSouthwestAndHydrologyOf21centuryDroughtCayan2010.pdf

ksplawn said: Or to put it another way, have you ever seen an alpha particle for yourself? Is all this "atomic theory" just so much hearsay until you personally run the experiments and determine that they are, in fact, free nuclei? Methinks you are very inconsistent in applying these standards, despite your protestations to the contrary.

Just Bob said: Hah! Beat me to it by seconds!

callahanpb said: I am not a lawyer, but I think courts make a distinction between hearsay and expert testimony.

Is there a website where I can go and see these models for myself? Not the output but the actual models, run in realtime or something close to it? Can I try different sets of inputs and see how the changes affect the outputs? Can I see the source code, read it, and verify that it works the way climatologists say it does?

harold said: ...projectile vomit doesn't travel through the internet.

Yardbird said:

Is there a website where I can go and see these models for myself? Not the output but the actual models, run in realtime or something close to it? Can I try different sets of inputs and see how the changes affect the outputs? Can I see the source code, read it, and verify that it works the way climatologists say it does?

Interesting! What's your background in software testing and validation? How about partial differential equations and numerical analysis? What do you think your prospects are of working through even the most basic climate model before you start just accepting large hunks of code and calculations? Dude, if you were accomplished enough to really understand all of that, you wouldn't be here being a jackass!

Yardbird said:

Is there a website where I can go and see these models for myself? Not the output but the actual models, run in realtime or something close to it? Can I try different sets of inputs and see how the changes affect the outputs? Can I see the source code, read it, and verify that it works the way climatologists say it does?

Interesting! What's your background in software testing and validation? How about partial differential equations and numerical analysis? What do you think your prospects are of working through even the most basic climate model before you start just accepting large hunks of code and calculations? Dude, if you were accomplished enough to really understand all of that, you wouldn't be here being a jackass!

Steve Easterbrook, a professor of computer science at the University of Toronto, has been studying climate models for several years. “I'd done a lot of research in the past studying the development of commercial and open source software systems, including four years with NASA studying the verification and validation processes used on their spacecraft flight control software,” he told Ars. When Easterbrook started looking into the processes followed by climate modeling groups, he was surprised by what he found. “I expected to see a messy process, dominated by quick fixes and muddling through, as that's the typical practice in much small-scale scientific software. What I found instead was a community that takes very seriously the importance of rigorous testing, and which is already using most of the tools a modern software development company would use (version control, automated testing, bug tracking systems, a planned release cycle, etc.).” “I was blown away by the testing process that every proposed change to the model has to go through,” Easterbrook wrote. “Basically, each change is set up like a scientific experiment, with a hypothesis describing the expected improvement in the simulation results. The old and new versions of the code are then treated as the two experimental conditions. They are run on the same simulations, and the results are compared in detail to see if the hypothesis was correct. Only after convincing each other that the change really does offer an improvement is it accepted into the model baseline.” Easterbrook spent two months at the UK Met Office Hadley Centre, observing and describing the operations of the climate modeling group (which is about 200 scientists strong). He looked at everything from code efficiency to debugging to the development process. He couldn’t find much to critique, concluding that “it is hard to identify potential for radical improvements in the efficiency of what is a ‘grand challenge’ science and software engineering problem.” Easterbrook has argued against the idea that an independent verification and validation protocol could usefully be applied to climate models. One problem he sees is that climate models are living scientific tools that are constantly evolving rather than pieces of software built to achieve a certain goal. There is, for the most part, no final product to ship out the door. There's no absolute standard to compare it against either.

ksplawn said: It does take some pretty deep knowledge to do any non-trivial review of a climate model. From an Ars Technica article about climate models:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: Yes, you're right, I'm being rigid about this. … I want evidence - raw, undiluted, undigested, unadjusted evidence. … Sadly, the only people in the AGW controversy who will show me that all seem to be on the other side.

But when I come to someone on the pro-AGW side and ask for explanations, all I get is a lot of jargon about "data adjustments", usually followed by "the science is settled," usually in a sneering tone that adds "how dare you question Science, you ignorant peasant!"

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said:

DS said: Sorry, no. There is now a scientific consensus that the climate change we are presently experiencing is largely caused by human activities.

Have you seen and analyzed the raw data for yourself? No? Then "the scientific consensus" is no more than what other people have told you is true. Courts have a term for that: they call it hearsay, and it isn't allowed. I want to see the evidence. Always. Not just on this subject, but on any scientific subject. Because that is part of the essence of science, as far as I'm concerned. No evidence, no science. Full stop. If somebody tells me Velociraptor had feathers, I expect them to produce a Velociraptor fossil with feather impressions. If someone says Diplodocus's neck was too weak to hold its head up high, I want to see their reconstruction of the muscles and the neck anatomy. If somebody claims they saw a living pterosaur, they better have evidence in the form of a body, a picture or a video, untouched and unaltered -- and they damn well better be sure it isn't any kind of bird I can recognize. Or I just won't believe it.

We can identify the source of the carbon emissions and we have detailed records of the amounts of green house gas emissions from numerous sources. It cannot reasonably be denied that this is a factor. Nothing you have said brings any of this into dispute.

Nor was it intended to. I don't doubt that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, or that there's a lot more of it now in the atmosphere than there was 200 years ago. I never have. I even agree that logically, if what we think we know about the atmosphere is anywhere near right, then all that extra CO2 should be having an effect on the climate. Which brings me to this:

As for the drought, we also know some of the causes for this. We can model the way in which global warming destabilizes the jet stream and ocean currents, disrupting weather patterns. The models predict prolonged and extensive droughts in the american southwest, something we are already starting to experience.

Is there a website where I can go and see these models for myself? Not the output but the actual models, run in realtime or something close to it? Can I try different sets of inputs and see how the changes affect the outputs? Can I see the source code, read it, and verify that it works the way climatologists say it does? Yes, you're right, I'm being rigid about this. I've found over the years that when the topic is anything controversial, I have to be rigid about the level of evidence I demand, or I just get buried under tons of cr@p. I don't want insults, I don't want abuse, I don't want snide insinuations, and I don't want logical fallacies. I want evidence - raw, undiluted, undigested, unadjusted evidence. Explanations are welcome too, of course, but it's gotta have that evidence, or we're back to hearsay. Sadly, the only people in the AGW controversy who will show me that all seem to be on the other side. (To be sure, there are an awful lot of nuts on that side too, but I try to ignore them as best I can.) One guy has a page that shows how the number of GHCN surface thermometer stations has fallen over the years, in a specific pattern that has selectively eliminated higher-altitude stations and left only lower - ie, warmer - stations reporting data. Another points out how certain temperature proxies, once thought to be reliable, could be affected by non-climate-related factors. But when I come to someone on the pro-AGW side and ask for explanations, all I get is a lot of jargon about "data adjustments", usually followed by "the science is settled," usually in a sneering tone that adds "how dare you question Science, you ignorant peasant!" Which leaves me with a dilemma: logic says AGW is right, but the little evidence that I can see and study for myself says ... something else. What's a guy to do? What I've done is the only thing I can reasonably do: withhold judgement until I have more, and more definite, information. And I don't understand how anyone who understands and values science as a process and a worldview can do anything else.

Yardbird said:

Is there a website where I can go and see these models for myself? Not the output but the actual models, run in realtime or something close to it? Can I try different sets of inputs and see how the changes affect the outputs? Can I see the source code, read it, and verify that it works the way climatologists say it does?

Interesting! What's your background in software testing and validation? How about partial differential equations and numerical analysis? What do you think your prospects are of working through even the most basic climate model before you start just accepting large hunks of code and calculations? Dude, if you were accomplished enough to really understand all of that, you wouldn't be here being a jackass!

Here in Perth, Western Australia, we have just had the earliest and wettest break to the season in more than a decade. (I should say that our summers are hot and dry, and our winters are supposed to be mild and wet, with a pretty sudden break between them.) All very well, but nine out of the ten driest years in the last century and a quarter have been in the last decade; and the average daily max temperature of the summer months for the last ten years has been 1.2 degrees C above the century average, while the number of days with maxima above 38 degrees Celsius has gone from four a summer to seven. Perth, now a city of two million people, has had to go to desalinating seawater and recycling.

Do I think AGW is a furphy, a story spread by librul intellectshul scientists to cripple jobs creation, on account of they hate Western society 'cuz we're so free? Urr. As a matter of fact, I don't think that.

Daniel said: So yes, when someone says things like "Can I see the source code, read it, and verify that it works the way climatologists say it does?" about an extremely complex computer system, I usually just roll my eyes.

Daniel said: So yes, when someone says things like "Can I see the source code, read it, and verify that it works the way climatologists say it does?" about an extremely complex computer system, I usually just roll my eyes. And also, like Yardbird points out, software Testing and Validation is a whole discipline unto itself. You can literally make a career out of it, and there are international standards, certifications, post-grad courses, and so on, about it.

eric said: I will raise you one more abstract layer than that: some of these problems are so complex that there is even good business to be had in helping companies and the government decide what it would take to validate a system. Because just figuring that out is sometimes a hard problem in itself. :)

Hire a consultant to help you figure out what consultants to hire?

Just Bob said: Hire a consultant to help you figure out what consultants to hire?

But how can you be sure you have the BEST consultant to help you figure out what consultants to hire (a consultant consultant)? Maybe you need a consultant consultant consultant.

But you'd better seek expert opinion before choosing one.

It isn't just the software models that are telling us something about climate change. It's also huge swaths of data about the ice caps, glaciers, CO₂ increases, rising sea levels, increasingly extreme weather variations and stronger storms, coral reefs, diminishing tropical jungles, expanding deserts, water shortages, shorter growing seasons, northerly migrations of semitropical insects, birds, and other animals; the list goes on and on.

The software models confirm that the biosphere behaves under stress as we are observing it to behave; but they also extrapolate current trends into the future, and the future doesn't look pretty.

It is clear the there are some politicians, industrialists, and developers who would like to keep the public in the dark about all this. The gag orders on climate change in Florida and Wisconsin, and the denials of sea level rises in other states along the East Coast where developers would like to build and sell huge, expensive houses are all indications that there is big money trying to keep people from anticipating disasters resulting from the effects of climate change.

It's like ripping out the warning signs and blockades indicating that the bridge is out around the next blind curve.

In order to see just how not pretty the near future looks, check out a graphic that has been dubbed Marcott's Wheelchair.

It combines global proxy data of the last 20,000 years with ~150 years of instrumental records, and a middle-of-the-road emissions scenario going out to 2100.

What we're looking at is the potential to experience as much warming in the next 100 years as the warming between yesterday and the time when Chicago was buried underneath a mile of ice.

I'd just like to quickly point out that "I won't believe the conclusion of experts until I analyze all the raw data myself" is one of the stupidest and most hypocritical dodges I have ever heard from a science denier.

Attempting in a childish way to sound "sophisticated and skeptical", it actually negates the entire concept of expertise.

When I sign out a case as a pathologist, it would take most other physicians at least a year of training to be able to interpret the raw data efficiently enough to confirm my diagnosis at the raw data level. A lay person would essentially have to start with pre-med courses and work their way through medical school course material and specialized pathology material.

But what makes it even worse as a dodge is that it can be done and this guy hasn't done it for climate science. Pathology is completely transparent; you can't get a license or board certification unless you do training programs but you could hypothetically teach yourself about it to high level of understanding just with books and web sites, starting at basic undergraduate science if necessary. Same with climate science. So he could pretty much be analyzing raw data, most of which would be available to a person of good faith. He just doesn't want to. And that's fine, but if you don't want to, it makes sense to accept valid expert consensus as the current default state of affairs.

To xubist and harold, who were kind enough to ask good questions:

xubist: "First: What, exactly, have you asked for explanations of?
Second: Exactly what sort of evidence are you looking for?"

What I've looked for, occasionally asked for, and been unable to find are explanations for things like how climate models adjust for the loss of thermometer stations, or how they adjust for the lack of surface thermometer stations across large parts of the planet's land area. I have heard, for example, that there are no surface-temperature stations at all in Siberia, because the Russian government can't afford to maintain them. Yet every time those maps of 'surface temperature anomalies' come out, Siberia is consistently shown as one vast warmer-than-normal area. How are surface temperatures in Siberia measured?

I've read that temperature records from the early part of the 20th century have been adjusted in ways that exaggerate the warming trend, such as this claim about Australian surface temperature readings: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/27/the-australian-temperature-record-the-big-picture/. True, or not? If not, then what's the explanation?

There's a story told about a temperature station in the US - the Ripogenus Dam site in Maine - whose data was included in GISS until 2006 despite the fact that the station was decommissioned (which I assume means 'closed') in 1995, ten years earlier.

Anti-AGW types often point to the Medieval Warm period as evidence that Earth has been this warm before - warmer, even - and human activity was not the reason. For a while a few years ago, it seemed to be the established wisdom that the Medieval Warm Period was restricted to the North Atlantic region, which essentially 'solved' the problem by handwaving. Why was that done? What evidence was there that the Medieval Warm was only in that part of the globe?

Those temperature proxies that are used to reconstruct the temperature record back beyond the oldest direct evidence? How reliable are they?

And so on. I could give you a lot more examples, but half of them come from websites you wouldn't consider trustworthy, and I have plenty of doubts about myself. But even if their answers are all wrong, their questions seem valid. They make me wonder, and the lack of any substantive answers that I can find makes me wonder even more.

Harold asked: "Could any evidence ever convince you, and if so, what evidence that is now lacking would do so?"

Evidence that we understand atmosphere dynamics well enough that there are no major unknowns screwing up our theories. If California has been seeing droughts for a variety of reasons for thousands of years, then why are scientists so sure that this drought is because of anthropogenic warming? Is there no other plausible explanation?

Evidence that pro-AGW scientists and their supporters are genuinely objective would be nice, too. The 'Climategate' leaks are almost forgotten now, but when they first came out there seemed to be a lot of nasty stuff in there - stuff that was never explained or justified. Just buried. There was the 'Harry read me' file that looked an awful lot like somebody trying to trace and debug production code, and giving up because it was unsalvageable. There was an apparent attempt by Phil Jones to censor anti-AGW papers from IPCC 4, shown here: http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/11/ipcc-scientists-hacked-emails-leaked-damning.html

and the infamous 'hide the decline' phrase -- this is the first reasonably clear description of it I could find: http://climateaudit.org/2009/11/26/the-deleted-portion-of-the-briffa-reconstruction/

I'd like to see the explanations for all of these.

This comment is already long, and I have other things to do. To those who posted links to models: thank you, and I will be checking those out. To those who tried to take my questions seriously, I thank you as well for your consideration. To those who preferred to jump to foolish conclusions and organize a two-minute hate on the heretic ... here is some climbing gear, and there is a tree. See how high you can get.

Oh, one last thing. When I set out to learn evolutionary theory, I found and read books that described the theory for the layman. When I was ready to move up, I found plenty of books that described it at an intermediate level of detail. When I wanted more than that, I found plenty of books, websites, and journal articles that described evolutionary theory, and the evidence for it, in as much detail as anyone could want.

When I got interested in Enigma and Bletchley Park, I found a whole variety of books and websites that described how the Enigma machine worked, and how BP broke it, in any level of detail I wanted, from general descriptions to circuit diagrams of both the Enigma M and a bombe.

Geology, paleontology, sedimentology, taxonomy, astronomy, cosmology, isotope geology, relativity, quantum mechanics, probability theory, meteorology, ballistics, aerodynamics, military tactics, sailing -- all are subjects I've looked into at one time or another, and always found sources in at least those three levels of detail: beginner, intermediate, advanced. There was always a way to get from where I was to the next level. In particular, there was always the 'intermediate' level that gave me the knowledge I needed to make a start on reading and understanding advanced materials such as journal articles.

Except in AGW theory. Oh, there are plenty of intermediate-level sources on the arguments against AGW. But I've never found any good ones on the arguments for it. I can find basic primers on it, and journal articles that are densely-packed masses of jargon. Nothing in between. I want to understand AGW theory -- but right now, I can't. And that concerns me.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: Evidence that we understand atmosphere dynamics...

How are surface temperatures in Siberia measured?

I want to understand AGW theory -- but right now, I can't. And that concerns me.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: Except in AGW theory. Oh, there are plenty of intermediate-level sources on the arguments against AGW. But I've never found any good ones on the arguments for it. I can find basic primers on it, and journal articles that are densely-packed masses of jargon. Nothing in between. I want to understand AGW theory -- but right now, I can't. And that concerns me.

Yardbird said:

How are surface temperatures in Siberia measured?

Found this on Wikipedia in two minutes. I'm surprised that with all your vast knowledge you were unable to. The temperature of the atmosphere at various altitudes as well as sea and land surface temperatures can be inferred from satellite measurements. Weather satellites do not measure temperature directly but measure radiances in various wavelength bands. These measurements can be used to locate weather fronts, monitor the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, determine the strength of tropical cyclones, study urban heat islands and monitor the global climate. Wildfires, volcanos, and industrial hot spots can also be found via thermal imaging from weather satellites.

ksplawn said: Lotta smart stuff.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: What I've looked for, occasionally asked for, and been unable to find are explanations for things like how climate models adjust for the loss of thermometer stations, or how they adjust for the lack of surface thermometer stations across large parts of the planet's land area.

I have heard, for example, that there are no surface-temperature stations at all in Siberia, because the Russian government can't afford to maintain them. Yet every time those maps of 'surface temperature anomalies' come out, Siberia is consistently shown as one vast warmer-than-normal area. How are surface temperatures in Siberia measured?

I've read that temperature records from the early part of the 20th century have been adjusted in ways that exaggerate the warming trend, such as this claim about Australian surface temperature readings: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/27/the-australian-temperature-record-the-big-picture/. True, or not? If not, then what's the explanation?

There's a story told about a temperature station in the US - the Ripogenus Dam site in Maine - whose data was included in GISS until 2006 despite the fact that the station was decommissioned (which I assume means 'closed') in 1995, ten years earlier.

Anti-AGW types often point to the Medieval Warm period as evidence that Earth has been this warm before - warmer, even - and human activity was not the reason.

For a while a few years ago, it seemed to be the established wisdom that the Medieval Warm Period was restricted to the North Atlantic region, which essentially 'solved' the problem by handwaving. Why was that done? What evidence was there that the Medieval Warm was only in that part of the globe?

Those temperature proxies that are used to reconstruct the temperature record back beyond the oldest direct evidence? How reliable are they?

And so on. I could give you a lot more examples, but half of them come from websites you wouldn't consider trustworthy, and I have plenty of doubts about myself. But even if their answers are all wrong, their questions seem valid. They make me wonder, and the lack of any substantive answers that I can find makes me wonder even more.

Evidence that pro-AGW scientists and their supporters are genuinely objective would be nice, too.

The 'Climategate' leaks are almost forgotten now, but when they first came out there seemed to be a lot of nasty stuff in there - stuff that was never explained or justified. Just buried.

I'd like to see the explanations for all of these.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: Lotta crap.

ksplawn said: Look, this is really an example of how you don't know what climate models are or how they work.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: Lotta crap.

ksplawn said: Once again, the explanations have been around for years. I'm giving you immediate access to them. Will you take advantage and avail yourself?

To expand on a couple of points above.

Climate model ensembles vs. single runs, and the "pause": An important thing to remember is that individual model runs in an ensemble can have exactly the same behavior as the real-world data regarding warm or cool periods, but they are not necessarily expected to occur at the same time as the real-world changes. Again, because we cannot predict precisely when these things happen. There are absolutely individual model runs where we see an apparent "cooling" Or "pause" in warming for 10-15 years, but happening in a different time period than the real-world.

If such "internal variability" is built into our models and shows up in the resulting model runs, it doesn't particularly matter if they coincide with the timing of a real-world event. We don't expect to predict that kind of thing ahead of time. They're not forecasts, remember. We don't run climate models and conclude, "Oh well, we can expect rapid warming in the 2020s followed by drought in the mid-2030s, with a brief slow-down of warming in the 2040-2045 time period..." That's weather forecasting, not climate projections. In modeling climate change, we're interested in the long-term behavior, not short-term wiggles that depend on getting the timing right. Over those long time periods, ups and downs caused by things other than underlying trends tend to cancel out.

On adjusting the data: When I say they're corrected for known problems, I mean things like changing the kind of thermometer, relocating a station, switching between recording morning temps and evening temps vs. recording max and min temps, stuff like that. The alternative to using these adjustments is to use data that we know is wrong. That does not sound like something we should do if we have any concerns about data quality affecting our conclusions! As long as the adjustments are performed in the open (they are) and the results are tested for improvements against the faulty data (they are), there isn't an issue.

About me: As said, I'm not a scientist. In fact, I'm sadly math-challenged and most of my work history involves laboring. Why do I keep providing so much information about climate science if I have nothing remotely to do with science?

Because I listen to scientists. I may be introduced to concepts mostly through blogs or news articles, but I preferentially turn to those run by scientists or at least people with relevant expertise, such as in statistics, and which cite peer-reviewed scientific literature. In short, because I recognize the value of expertise when informing myself. I am not of the opinion that anybody's ignorance (especially my own) is just as good as an expert's knowledge. The collective insights of humanity do not begin and end with me. I am not the final arbiter of what is valid and true. I recognize a huge deficit in my own knowledge when it comes to answering these questions, and I act accordingly.

About my views on climate scientists and their critics: It's the same when I was introduced to the Creationism/evolution controversy. I started from a virtually blank slate, with a community college introduction to logic and philosophy. When I came across the "controversy," it quickly became clear to me which side had the answers and which one didn't. Creationists were constantly wrong. They could not even describe evolution or biological sciences accurately, and there were plenty of answers to their questions which they ignored.

I have found the exact same pattern at play in this climate science issue. The "skeptics" are almost universally misinformed, and they tend to stay that way. They don't understand the things they're arguing about, and they don't correct their mistakes when legitimate experts show how they're wrong. Climate skeptics kept misinterpreting climate models. They kept making bad arguments about climate data. And on top of all that, they constantly mischaracterized how climate science and climate scientists actually work. Especially if the topic was in any way connected to politics, or could be distorted to fit a political projection. Scientists who took AGW seriously were "alarmists" trying to push a Liberal Marxist agenda and "redistribute wealth" from rich nations to poor ones under the guise of a fabricated scientific hoax. Or they were hippie tree-huggers who wanted to take us all back to the Stone Age! What's more, they reject sound economic theory and want to impose expensive measures that will hurt the poor and enrich the elites.

I have found such things to be the opposite of true. By and large, AGW has support from a broad and diverse number of experts with various political backgrounds; those who reject it are almost universally of right-wing or "Libertarian" leanings, championing a "free market" and decrying Big Government or New Taxes. It is their rejection which is politically motivated, not the acceptance of AGW by others.

And far from trying to turn back the clock on our technological society, the people who advocate solutions to our GHG emissions want more advanced technology as the answer. They want research into alternative power that's non-polluting and usually renewable. They want improvements in efficiency. They want new machines and new, more robust energy grids. Newer, better. They are not abolitionists of progress, they are champions of it. It's the climate rejectionists who seem to cling to outmoded methods and technology, insisting that coal and oil are necessary for our future the way they have been in our past.

Economically, the tide of expert opinion is strongly in favor of climate mitigation and carbon pricing. It is found to be less expensive than doing nothing, it can actually generate positive revenue, and it buoys the poor against the damaging effects of climate change (where they would otherwise suffer the most). That's not even taking into account all the benefits of cleaning up our energy supply, such as reducing health problems and ecological damages which amount to more than $120 billion annually in the US alone.

To xubist and harold, who were kind enough to ask good questions: xubist: “First: What, exactly, have you asked for explanations of? Second: Exactly what sort of evidence are you looking for?”

What I’ve looked for, occasionally asked for, and been unable to find are explanations for things like how climate models adjust for the loss of thermometer stations, or how they adjust for the lack of surface thermometer stations across large parts of the planet’s land area. I have heard, for example, that there are no surface-temperature stations at all in Siberia, because the Russian government can’t afford to maintain them. Yet every time those maps of ‘surface temperature anomalies’ come out, Siberia is consistently shown as one vast warmer-than-normal area. How are surface temperatures in Siberia measured?

I’ve read that temperature records from the early part of the 20th century have been adjusted in ways that exaggerate the warming trend, such as this claim about Australian surface temperature readings: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/[…]big-picture/. True, or not? If not, then what’s the explanation?

There’s a story told about a temperature station in the US - the Ripogenus Dam site in Maine - whose data was included in GISS until 2006 despite the fact that the station was decommissioned (which I assume means ‘closed’) in 1995, ten years earlier.

Anti-AGW types often point to the Medieval Warm period as evidence that Earth has been this warm before - warmer, even - and human activity was not the reason. For a while a few years ago, it seemed to be the established wisdom that the Medieval Warm Period was restricted to the North Atlantic region, which essentially ‘solved’ the problem by handwaving. Why was that done? What evidence was there that the Medieval Warm was only in that part of the globe?

Harold asked: “Could any evidence ever convince you, and if so, what evidence that is now lacking would do so?”

Evidence that we understand atmosphere dynamics well enough that there are no major unknowns screwing up our theories.

If California has been seeing droughts for a variety of reasons for thousands of years, then why are scientists so sure that this drought is because of anthropogenic warming? Is there no other plausible explanation?

Evidence that pro-AGW scientists and their supporters are genuinely objective would be nice, too.

The ‘Climategate’ leaks are almost forgotten now, but when they first came out there seemed to be a lot of nasty stuff in there - stuff that was never explained or justified. Just buried. There was the ‘Harry read me’ file that looked an awful lot like somebody trying to trace and debug production code, and giving up because it was unsalvageable. There was an apparent attempt by Phil Jones to censor anti-AGW papers from IPCC 4, shown here: http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the[…]damning.html and the infamous ‘hide the decline’ phrase – this is the first reasonably clear description of it I could find: http://climateaudit.org/2009/11/26/[…]onstruction/ I’d like to see the explanations for all of these.

This comment is already long, and I have other things to do.

To those who posted links to models: thank you, and I will be checking those out.

To those who tried to take my questions seriously, I thank you as well for your consideration. To those who preferred to jump to foolish conclusions and organize a two-minute hate on the heretic … here is some climbing gear, and there is a tree. See how high you can get.

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: To xubist and harold, who were kind enough to ask good questions: xubist: "First: What, exactly, have you asked for explanations of? Second: Exactly what sort of evidence are you looking for?" What I've looked for, occasionally asked for, and been unable to find are explanations for things like how climate models adjust for the loss of thermometer stations, or how they adjust for the lack of surface thermometer stations across large parts of the planet's land area.

xubist said: Note that I am not, at this point, calling you a liar, nor am I attempting to impugn your honesty. Rather, I am pointing out that your vagueness makes it impossible to rule out the possibility that you’re lying.

callahanpb said:

xubist said: Note that I am not, at this point, calling you a liar, nor am I attempting to impugn your honesty. Rather, I am pointing out that your vagueness makes it impossible to rule out the possibility that you’re lying.

I'd state it more strongly. I can't rule out the possibility that he is honestly curious, but his style is so typical of a concern troll that most people who had the same questions would soon learn to adopt a different rhetorical approach. There are plenty of ways to ask for more information about climate models that would have elicited a positive response from knowledgeable regulars here. So my working assumption is that the anonymous poster has a specific agenda of casting doubt on climate science. However, he's doing it so badly, that my alternate hypothesis is that he is acting like a concern troll just for fun. Way, way, down on the list is the possibility that he is a polymath who has studied a laughably broad list of subjects and only finds himself blocked on climate science. I mean, I can keep an open mind, but to me the only unknown is whether he's been exposed as a troll, or if the joke's on us and he doesn't care either way as long as he gets attention. Even in that case, the debunking is a useful enough exercise that his motivations aren't all that important.

harold said: Here are the techniques reality deniers use to do that - 1) Pretend that they have "examined the evidence". 2) Make unfair accusations against scientists. 3) Give biased science deniers a total pass from any accusation of bias or anything else. 4) Use logical fallacies that can "seem right to them" before being pointed out by others. 5) Refuse to answer direct questions. 6) Initiate a discourse and then claim that anyone who responds is "insulting" them. 7) Focus on false claims that something is wrong with the existing evidence and refuse to state what type of evidence it would take to convince them... There are other things they do...

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: To xubist and harold, who were kind enough to ask good questions: xubist: "First: What, exactly, have you asked for explanations of? Second: Exactly what sort of evidence are you looking for?" What I've looked for, occasionally asked for, and been unable to find are explanations for things like how climate models adjust for the loss of thermometer stations, or how they adjust for the lack of surface thermometer stations across large parts of the planet's land area. I have heard, for example, that there are no surface-temperature stations at all in Siberia, because the Russian government can't afford to maintain them. Yet every time those maps of 'surface temperature anomalies' come out, Siberia is consistently shown as one vast warmer-than-normal area. How are surface temperatures in Siberia measured? I've read that temperature records from the early part of the 20th century have been adjusted in ways that exaggerate the warming trend, such as this claim about Australian surface temperature readings: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/27/the-australian-temperature-record-the-big-picture/. True, or not? If not, then what's the explanation? There's a story told about a temperature station in the US - the Ripogenus Dam site in Maine - whose data was included in GISS until 2006 despite the fact that the station was decommissioned (which I assume means 'closed') in 1995, ten years earlier. Anti-AGW types often point to the Medieval Warm period as evidence that Earth has been this warm before - warmer, even - and human activity was not the reason. For a while a few years ago, it seemed to be the established wisdom that the Medieval Warm Period was restricted to the North Atlantic region, which essentially 'solved' the problem by handwaving. Why was that done? What evidence was there that the Medieval Warm was only in that part of the globe? Those temperature proxies that are used to reconstruct the temperature record back beyond the oldest direct evidence? How reliable are they? And so on. I could give you a lot more examples, but half of them come from websites you wouldn't consider trustworthy, and I have plenty of doubts about myself. But even if their answers are all wrong, their questions seem valid. They make me wonder, and the lack of any substantive answers that I can find makes me wonder even more. Harold asked: "Could any evidence ever convince you, and if so, what evidence that is now lacking would do so?" Evidence that we understand atmosphere dynamics well enough that there are no major unknowns screwing up our theories. If California has been seeing droughts for a variety of reasons for thousands of years, then why are scientists so sure that this drought is because of anthropogenic warming? Is there no other plausible explanation? Evidence that pro-AGW scientists and their supporters are genuinely objective would be nice, too. The 'Climategate' leaks are almost forgotten now, but when they first came out there seemed to be a lot of nasty stuff in there - stuff that was never explained or justified. Just buried. There was the 'Harry read me' file that looked an awful lot like somebody trying to trace and debug production code, and giving up because it was unsalvageable. There was an apparent attempt by Phil Jones to censor anti-AGW papers from IPCC 4, shown here: http://briefingroom.typepad.com/the_briefing_room/2009/11/ipcc-scientists-hacked-emails-leaked-damning.html and the infamous 'hide the decline' phrase -- this is the first reasonably clear description of it I could find: http://climateaudit.org/2009/11/26/the-deleted-portion-of-the-briffa-reconstruction/ I'd like to see the explanations for all of these. This comment is already long, and I have other things to do. To those who posted links to models: thank you, and I will be checking those out. To those who tried to take my questions seriously, I thank you as well for your consideration. To those who preferred to jump to foolish conclusions and organize a two-minute hate on the heretic ... here is some climbing gear, and there is a tree. See how high you can get.

Almost forgot. I gave you references to four different studies published in four different journals. Have you read the papers? Have you found anything wrong with the models? Have you published rebuttals in the scientific literature? You do realize that one study used fourteen different models and that they all gave the same answer, right? You do realize that the experts have been refining these models for years, right? You do realize that the people you have been listening to and that you claim are so transparent are not the ones publishing in the peer reviewed literature, right? You aren't just another one of those wacky conspiracy guys who automatically distrusts anything that is actually scientific and automatically trusts anything that is unscientific, right? That would be a pretty funny position for someone who claimed that a scientific consensus was nothing but "hearsay".

One more thing. I am curious as to what conclusion you reached about evolution. You say you have investigated the issue. DId you conclude that the scientific consensus was just "hearsay" on that issue as well?

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: Anti-AGW types often point to the Medieval Warm period as evidence that Earth has been this warm before - warmer, even - and human activity was not the reason. For a while a few years ago, it seemed to be the established wisdom that the Medieval Warm Period was restricted to the North Atlantic region, which essentially 'solved' the problem by handwaving. Why was that done? What evidence was there that the Medieval Warm was only in that part of the globe?

scienceavenger said: Who cares? This entire line of argument is stupid in the extreme. It's like arguing that a forest fire couldn't be caused by arson because there were forest fires in the past that had natural causes.

scienceavenger said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: Anti-AGW types often point to the Medieval Warm period as evidence that Earth has been this warm before - warmer, even - and human activity was not the reason. For a while a few years ago, it seemed to be the established wisdom that the Medieval Warm Period was restricted to the North Atlantic region, which essentially 'solved' the problem by handwaving. Why was that done? What evidence was there that the Medieval Warm was only in that part of the globe?

Who cares? This entire line of argument is stupid in the extreme. It's like arguing that a forest fire couldn't be caused by arson because there were forest fires in the past that had natural causes.

eric said:

scienceavenger said: Who cares? This entire line of argument is stupid in the extreme. It's like arguing that a forest fire couldn't be caused by arson because there were forest fires in the past that had natural causes.

Oh, this one is worse. He said he didn't understand the theory behind AGW while acknowledging past (non-anthropomorphic) warming. So in this case, what we're seeing is someone saying 'I understand that forest fires have happened in the past when some natural source of fire starts one. But I don't understand the theory behind match-started forest fires.'

scienceavenger said:

https://me.yahoo.com/a/4i3Cj_gJ1N7rJXe.7jpNbFmo1Enkj7QA#3d0d9 said: Anti-AGW types often point to the Medieval Warm period as evidence that Earth has been this warm before - warmer, even - and human activity was not the reason. For a while a few years ago, it seemed to be the established wisdom that the Medieval Warm Period was restricted to the North Atlantic region, which essentially 'solved' the problem by handwaving. Why was that done? What evidence was there that the Medieval Warm was only in that part of the globe?

Who cares? This entire line of argument is stupid in the extreme. It's like arguing that a forest fire couldn't be caused by arson because there were forest fires in the past that had natural causes.

Still waitin dude. Read those papers yet? By the way, you do know that all of the standard denialist talking points you have been parroting have already been debunked, right? The medieval nonsense is just a classic example of cherry picking data. The e-mail nonsense is all just one big attempt at distraction. You could easily find the answers to all of your questions, but you choose not to. I guess you are too busy trying to decipher code, right.

Funny how just having questions is enough to make you abandon the scientific consensus, even if you supposedly don't have any answers to those questions. Have you seen the denialist source code? Have you read their e-mails? Can you say "double standard"?

It seems to have taken a powder. Perhaps too many questions that it really doesn't want to answer.

Or too many answers. The ones it didn't want.

For a good discussion of exactly why the medieval argument is flawed, check out this web site:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/medieval-warm-period-intermediate.htm

The site also has refutations of many other denialist claims. Isn't it funny how the climate deniers and the evolution deniers use the same play book? Isn't it funny how neither one can ever seem to come up with an original argument that hasn't been already debunked? Isn't it funny how they are both willing to deny a scientific consensus for no reason other than that they choose to? Isn't it funny how they both accept any criticism of the consensus uncritically while making unrealistic demands of real scientists?

By the way, the concern troll still hasn't said whether he accepts the scientific consensus for evolution or not. I'll try not to draw any conclusions from that, right up until the evidence indicates that such generosity is unwarranted.

It's a little less funny once you realize that the climate deniers and the evolution deniers have a tremendous amount of overlap. There seem to be a handful of climate deniers that accept evolution, but the reverse seems exceedingly rare.

scienceavenger said: It's a little less funny once you realize that the climate deniers and the evolution deniers have a tremendous amount of overlap. There seem to be a handful of climate deniers that accept evolution, but the reverse seems exceedingly rare.

callahanpb said:

scienceavenger said: It's a little less funny once you realize that the climate deniers and the evolution deniers have a tremendous amount of overlap. There seem to be a handful of climate deniers that accept evolution, but the reverse seems exceedingly rare.

It is hard to imagine a believer in Noah's Ark coming up with a correct conclusion about climate except by chance.

harold said: The global warming denial is just because the corporate masters who control their ideology command it.

As for the supposed climategate email "scandal", that's obvious hogwash. There is even a wikipedia article describing why it is total bull puckey.

1) The emails were private correspondence that were illegally hacked. The hackers should have been prosecuted and sent to jail. Is that really the side you want to defend?

2) There were eight separate committees that investigated an no evidence of and wrong doing was ever discovered. It was all a bunch of quotes taken out of context and quote mining. Now where have we seen that kind of behavior before?

3) The actual data was never in question. No papers were ever retracted and no conclusions were ever reversed. The whole thing was completely irrelevant and contrived from beginning to end. This is exactly the kind of crap you pull when you don't have the facts on your side. Does anyone remember the embryo drawing "scandal"? This is more of the same kind of crap from the same denialist play bock.

Conservative Republicans Alone on Global Warming

callahanpb said:

harold said: The global warming denial is just because the corporate masters who control their ideology command it.

I agree for the most part, but I think you are ascribing pragmatic motives to something that is almost entirely blind ideology. The idea that it could be wrong, or even possible, to destroy the environment is just off the moral radar of Christian fundamentalists. I.e., it is not related to sex or drug use, it does not undermine faith in the Bible, and it does not go against traditional criminal laws. If you were to deforest an entire county to build a church, that would show great zeal in the service of God rather than an unconscionable ecological destruction. The idea that this could lead to anything bad is also unthinkable, because the Bible says that God put nature here to be exploited by humans, so... you know the trees will grow back, or they'll grow somewhere else, or we're better off without them. It's up to God to figure out that part. Replace "trees" with "cannon fodder" and you can explain a lot of wars with the same reasoning. It is certainly true that corporate interests exploit the very limited moral compass of religious believers, but I don't think that they established it in the first place. It's just the inevitable result of narrow-minded dogmatism.

callahanpb said:

harold said: The global warming denial is just because the corporate masters who control their ideology command it.

I agree for the most part, but I think you are ascribing pragmatic motives to something that is almost entirely blind ideology.

phhht said:

Conservative Republicans Alone on Global Warming

harold said: The idea that you can never pollute or waste resources is a latter day invention.

There's such a huge desire to blame "religion" for bad human behavior, it causes resistance to the better explanation.

My understanding is that the first reaction of Christian churches to the interpretation of fossils as the remains of extinct species was that it would be contrary to the doctrine of divine creation that what what God has created could go out of existence: If the dinosaurs were real creatures of God, then they must still be living somewhere on Earth. And in particular, human action could not cause extinction: Contrary to the reports of human extinction of the dodo.

One of the impressions I get frequently from the current crop of Republicans is that they would fit nicely into the category of Social Darwinists bought and paid for by Robber Barons.

There is a lot of the self-righteous Calvinism in their social agenda; and their constant pandering to pugnacious religiosity suggests that they think the world belongs to them to do with as they please.

I never had anything against religious practice as a way of life, but I am not comfortable pretending to believe something I don’t. I often wonder about religious people I know, whether they are Christian, Jewish, Muslim, or Hindu (covering most cases I can think of) and I do not know what they really believe or if they have some way to continue to practice a religion without belief and not feel awkward about it. It is kind of a mystery to me.

Matt Young said: I do not know what you mean by religious, and this is getting way off task

I will make 1 more comment and then drop it. First, everyone at my synagogue knows I do not believe in God, and many of them do not either. Second, and this may be a major difference between Judaism and Christianity, Christians sort of have to believe in God. If they do not, they are not Christians and just become part of the dominant culture. Jews who do not believe in God often remain members of their subculture and express that fact by observing certain Jewish rituals. That those rituals have a religious origin bothers some, I will grant, but if you transvalue some rituals and drop others, you can manage without feeling weird or hypocritical. Kashrut -- keeping kosher -- is meaningless to me, for example, so I do not keep kosher. On the other hand, I fast on Yom Kippur because that is what you do on Yom Kippur. Ditto eating matzot on Passover (for any mavens who read this comment, I eat grains other than wheat flour, because the point is avoiding leavened bread, not meshugenner rules). (I would tell you that I eat corned beef on rye bread, but I no longer eat beef and tell my Orthodox cousin that that is Reform kashrut.)

I think that Mr. Callahan could do the same if he wanted to, but it is harder in a culture where faith is paramount. In liberal Judaism, at least, deeds matter more than belief, so I go to synagogue occasionally (serve on the board even less frequently), observe certain sancta, belong to a Jewish book group, contribute to liberal Jewish organizations. None of these has anything to do with belief in a god.

Incidentally, I once worked at an Italian-Catholic college that you never heard of. It struck me then that it was the ethnic Catholics who understood the best.

TomS said: And in particular, human action could not cause extinction: Contrary to the reports of human extinction of the dodo.

Just Bob said:

TomS said: And in particular, human action could not cause extinction: Contrary to the reports of human extinction of the dodo.

Many long moons ago, I heard one fat fascist (whom I won't name, but whose initials are Rush Limbaugh) proclaim that humans have NEVER caused the extinction of any species.

Surely you don't mean that zebra mussels are extinct. Or are you pointing out that the invasive mussels, inadvertently spread by humans, have driven native species extinct?

IANAB, so maybe that's why I'm missing it.

Then there was that pigeon that wasn't in the driver's seat...

Just Bob said: Surely you don't mean that zebra mussels are extinct. Or are you pointing out that the invasive mussels, inadvertently spread by humans, have driven native species extinct? IANAB, so maybe that's why I'm missing it.

Just wanted to pipe in, but I can't comment at The Thumb because Google dropped support for OpenID 2.0 and it's not accepting my Wordpress credentials for some reason. What you describe with atheistic Jews vs. Christians who may want to participate in their religious traditions without believing in God sounds primarily like a difference of Orthopraxy vs. Orthodoxy. In most sects, Christianity is an Orthodoxy-oriented religion. To be considered a participant, you must subscribe to the correct set of beliefs. This is paramount to other considerations. (Assuming one has the proper ethnicity or heritage in the first place) Judaism sounds more like a de facto Orthopraxic religion, since it seems that one's adherence to traditions play a bigger role in whether one is considered Jewish or not. That's painting both the divisions and the religions in over-simplified lights, but seems to capture the gist of the difference you brought up when it comes to how they accept non-theistic members.

Matt Young said: That those rituals have a religious origin bothers some, I will grant, but if you transvalue some rituals and drop others, you can manage without feeling weird or hypocritical. Kashrut -- keeping kosher -- is meaningless to me, for example, so I do not keep kosher. On the other hand, I fast on Yom Kippur because that is what you do on Yom Kippur. Ditto eating matzot on Passover (for any mavens who read this comment, I eat grains other than wheat flour, because the point is avoiding leavened bread, not meshugenner rules). (I would tell you that I eat corned beef on rye bread, but I no longer eat beef and tell my Orthodox cousin that that is Reform kashrut.)

I wonder how far up did Icarus have to fly for his wings to melt? The practice had to be just right for it to work. The escapade eventually led us to flying and ultimately venturing to the planets. But apart from that religious believes are usually foundations, that if you follow they lead to something, like a means to an end or you learn something about the outcome of the process of that religion. I don't think it was a myth it was an illustrative story that was told as a warning and had to be practiced to know.

Matt Young said: A frequent commenter, ksplawn, has written me,

Just wanted to pipe in, but I can't comment at The Thumb because Google dropped support for OpenID 2.0 and it's not accepting my Wordpress credentials for some reason. What you describe with atheistic Jews vs. Christians who may want to participate in their religious traditions without believing in God sounds primarily like a difference of Orthopraxy vs. Orthodoxy. In most sects, Christianity is an Orthodoxy-oriented religion. To be considered a participant, you must subscribe to the correct set of beliefs. This is paramount to other considerations. (Assuming one has the proper ethnicity or heritage in the first place) Judaism sounds more like a de facto Orthopraxic religion, since it seems that one's adherence to traditions play a bigger role in whether one is considered Jewish or not. That's painting both the divisions and the religions in over-simplified lights, but seems to capture the gist of the difference you brought up when it comes to how they accept non-theistic members.

Marilyn said: I wonder how far up did Icarus have to fly for his wings to melt?

That's in the troposphere and maybe stratosphere. But at some point it gets higher temperatures.

Although, at that height, the "air" is too thin for wings to work worth a flap anyway.

Daedalus that Icarus's dad, made the wings in an attempt to escape from Crete, he had tried the wings first. He told Icarus not to fly too to the sea or the wings would get wet, and not to fly too close to the sun or the wax would melt. It's possible it was one of those day's it was so hot you could fry an egg on a rock. But anyway I'm so green of this YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKqTe8F18sQ

stevaroni said:

Marilyn said: I wonder how far up did Icarus have to fly for his wings to melt?

Just where did Icarus fly? In my experience, all other things being equal-ish, it gets colder as your altitude increases.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Marilyn isn't a Greek mythology literalist.

I suppose that would be kind of an amusing thing to pretend to be, if local school boards were pandering to right wing creationism. Tell them you're a Greek mythology literalist and you demand equal time for Greek mythology science.

harold said: Greek mythology science.

I wonder about the references to Greek mythology in the Olympic games. Does anybody take those references seriously? Pro or con?

harold said: I suppose that would be kind of an amusing thing to pretend to be (a Greek mythology literalist), if local school boards were pandering to right wing creationism. Tell them you're a Greek mythology literalist and you demand equal time for Greek mythology science.

everyone knows that lightning bolts are actually hurled by the gods.

Henry J said:

everyone knows that lightning bolts are actually hurled by the gods.

Shocking!

stevaroni said:

harold said: I suppose that would be kind of an amusing thing to pretend to be (a Greek mythology literalist), if local school boards were pandering to right wing creationism. Tell them you're a Greek mythology literalist and you demand equal time for Greek mythology science.

Ooooh! I like that one! I can argue about their blasphemous teaching about electricity in physics class because everyone knows that lightning bolts are actually hurled by the gods. I demand equal time! Teach the controversy!

How about Complex Specified Imaginary numbers; such as e^iπ/2? It's complex, highly specified, and also purely imaginary.

And transcendental, too!

(I think.)

Henry J said: And transcendental, too! (I think.)

harold said:

Matt Young said: A frequent commenter, ksplawn, has written me,

Just wanted to pipe in, but I can't comment at The Thumb because Google dropped support for OpenID 2.0 and it's not accepting my Wordpress credentials for some reason. What you describe with atheistic Jews vs. Christians who may want to participate in their religious traditions without believing in God sounds primarily like a difference of Orthopraxy vs. Orthodoxy. In most sects, Christianity is an Orthodoxy-oriented religion. To be considered a participant, you must subscribe to the correct set of beliefs. This is paramount to other considerations. (Assuming one has the proper ethnicity or heritage in the first place) Judaism sounds more like a de facto Orthopraxic religion, since it seems that one's adherence to traditions play a bigger role in whether one is considered Jewish or not. That's painting both the divisions and the religions in over-simplified lights, but seems to capture the gist of the difference you brought up when it comes to how they accept non-theistic members.

Jewish friends have told me this before. At least one very, very observant Jewish colleague once implied the same thing to me. I have never discussed religion with an Orthodox Jew, but one secular Jewish friend once told me that he got a similar answer from an Orthodox practitioner (basically, something along the lines that you can control what you do better than you can control what you believe). For what it's worth pre-religious right Christianity was much more orthopraxy oriented. The evangelicals I grew up with cared whether or not you behaved as a good respectable Christian (today's religious right types fail). If you had "doubts" you would pray about that in private or ask a minister for help. Catholicism is very intolerant of overt expression of heterodox beliefs, traditionally, but also mainly monitors behavior and provides outlets for private doubts. The problem with the "I can do anything I want and then 'repent' later using the magic words" version of Christianity, for for full disclosure I do consider this to be a mainly post-modern idea, is that they can be and probably are lying about the repenting part. One social function of religion is to control behavior. Even when a middle aged man like me was young, a professed "Christian" usually had certain behavioral restraints, like Flanders on the Simpsons; that day seems to be over. The post-modern creationist types, while obsessively trying to control the harmless behaviors of others, have stripped their religion of even that. They lie, steal, cheat, then "repent" later. Literally the only religious behavior to speak of is the glib "repentance". That and voting to screw over everyone else in the name of "religion". Lest anyone think I exaggerate, here's a Jack Chick tract from 1997 that illustrates the "do anything you want and say that magic words at the last minute" version of Christianity. Note one outdated feature - "wearing your guns to church" is depicted as unusual; I'm sure Chick would edit that line out if he had the chance. http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0037/0037_01.asp

Mike Elzinga said: How about Complex Specified Imaginary numbers; such as e^iπ/2? It's complex, highly specified, and also purely imaginary.

TomS said:

Mike Elzinga said: How about Complex Specified Imaginary numbers; such as e^iπ/2? It's complex, highly specified, and also purely imaginary.

e^iπ = -1 Thus e^iπ/2 = i or -i It is not highly specified.

Mike Elzinga said:

TomS said:

Mike Elzinga said: How about Complex Specified Imaginary numbers; such as e^iπ/2? It's complex, highly specified, and also purely imaginary.

e^iπ = -1 Thus e^iπ/2 = i or -i It is not highly specified.

i = e^iπ/2 and -i = e^{- iπ/2}; one is male and the other is female. Things "get real" when two males or two females reproduce to make -1. But a male and a female make a +1. It also depends on which one is "on top." They and their offspring have very complex relationships; especially when they go through phases. Therefore they must be designed.

Kevin B said:

Mike Elzinga said:

TomS said:

Mike Elzinga said: How about Complex Specified Imaginary numbers; such as e^iπ/2? It's complex, highly specified, and also purely imaginary.

e^iπ = -1 Thus e^iπ/2 = i or -i It is not highly specified.

i = e^iπ/2 and -i = e^{- iπ/2}; one is male and the other is female. Things "get real" when two males or two females reproduce to make -1. But a male and a female make a +1. It also depends on which one is "on top." They and their offspring have very complex relationships; especially when they go through phases. Therefore they must be designed.

I think you're taking "Go forth and multiply" a bit too literally..... PS 'which one is "on top"' is perhaps rather less mathematicy than "which one is the numerator".

Just Bob said: And I thought conjugation was only a grammar word to snicker about in the back of the class. You mean math can be naughty too? The Concerned Parents Committee will soon put a stop to THAT!

Mike Elzinga said:

Just Bob said: And I thought conjugation was only a grammar word to snicker about in the back of the class. You mean math can be naughty too? The Concerned Parents Committee will soon put a stop to THAT!

Yeah; complex numbers are closed under multiplication and addition. It produces some pretty weird offspring that look quite different from their parent(s) (e.g., when they are multiplied by themselves a complex number of times; in other words, they are also serial hermaphrodites). Not to be mistaken for the sudden appearance of another species however.

Kevin B said:

Mike Elzinga said:

Just Bob said: And I thought conjugation was only a grammar word to snicker about in the back of the class. You mean math can be naughty too? The Concerned Parents Committee will soon put a stop to THAT!

Yeah; complex numbers are closed under multiplication and addition. It produces some pretty weird offspring that look quite different from their parent(s) (e.g., when they are multiplied by themselves a complex number of times; in other words, they are also serial hermaphrodites). Not to be mistaken for the sudden appearance of another species however.

And quaternions are alien beings from another dimension.

Just Bob said:

Kevin B said:

Mike Elzinga said:

Just Bob said: And I thought conjugation was only a grammar word to snicker about in the back of the class. You mean math can be naughty too? The Concerned Parents Committee will soon put a stop to THAT!

Yeah; complex numbers are closed under multiplication and addition. It produces some pretty weird offspring that look quite different from their parent(s) (e.g., when they are multiplied by themselves a complex number of times; in other words, they are also serial hermaphrodites). Not to be mistaken for the sudden appearance of another species however.

And quaternions are alien beings from another dimension.

It's PORNOGRAPHY! And they teach it to our children! No wonder kids want to get gay married.

Mike Elzinga said:

Just Bob said:

Kevin B said:

Mike Elzinga said:

Just Bob said: And I thought conjugation was only a grammar word to snicker about in the back of the class. You mean math can be naughty too? The Concerned Parents Committee will soon put a stop to THAT!

Yeah; complex numbers are closed under multiplication and addition. It produces some pretty weird offspring that look quite different from their parent(s) (e.g., when they are multiplied by themselves a complex number of times; in other words, they are also serial hermaphrodites). Not to be mistaken for the sudden appearance of another species however.

And quaternions are alien beings from another dimension.

It's PORNOGRAPHY! And they teach it to our children! No wonder kids want to get gay married.

It gets worse. Affine geometry in multiple dimensions has no absolute reference point; i.e., no objective anchor. You can also multiply with beings from other dimensions and produce offspring in dimensions in which neither of the parents exists; the offspring go off on their own without supervision. There are also those products called "inner," "outer," and "wedge." See what happens when you take away absolute standards and don't stick with missionary multiplication from elementary school and logarithms to base 2 from high school?

Just Bob said: Isn't there something in Leviticus commanding the stoning of degenerates who do this? There must be. Somewhere.