elyons sends word out of UCLA of a completely unexpected discovery in the physics of the Sun-Earth interaction — a previously unknown basic mode of energy transfer from the solar wind to the Earth's magnetosphere. "'It's like something else is heating the atmosphere besides the sun. This discovery is like finding it got hotter when the sun went down,' said Larry Lyons, UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences. 'We all have thought for our entire careers — I learned it as a graduate student — that this energy transfer rate is primarily controlled by the direction of the interplanetary magnetic field. The closer to southward-pointing the magnetic field is, the stronger the energy transfer rate is, and the stronger the magnetic field is in that direction. [It turns out that] if it is both southward and big, the energy transfer rate is even bigger.'" The researchers have two papers on the discovery coming out in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
Saying "It's like something else is heating the atmosphere besides the sun" when they're talking about the interaction of the solar wind and the magnetosphere is more than a little disingenuous....
Would there be some way to tap the energy from these fluctuations? Instead of solar power arrays in space, could we just have giant blimps floating in the upper atmosphere with large coils in their superstructure to take advantage of magnetic fluctuations? They could then beam that energy down as microwaves to a receiving station.
Why do one thing if you could take the opportunity to do 3? Mixing capturing electricity from this source and bringing it down by wires, with an spatial elevator, and maybe more energy orbital getting "traditional" solar energy. This could even turn profitable in the middle term building a spatial elevator
While the 'global warming implications' that would be inaccurately applied to this paper are unfortunate his statement isn't scientifically inaccurate:
Okay so when I first saw the title, I read it as "Surprise! Discovery In Earth's Upper Atmosphere" and thought the landing a couple of days ago was a hoax or something.
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday September 13, @01:11AM (#29403217)
> "Heejeong separated the data into when the solar wind was fluctuating a lot and when it > was fluctuating a little," he added. "When the interplanetary magnetic field fluctuations > are low, she saw the pattern everyone knows,
That is, the likelihood of "substorms" in Earh's ionoshpere is a function of how "northward" or "southward" Earth's manetosphere is. More southward, more storms, worse satellite TV reception.
> but when she analyzed the pattern when the interplanetary magnetic field was > fluctuating strongly, that pattern completely disappeared. Instead, the strength of the > flows depended on the strength of the fluctuations.
There's this "interplanetary magnetic field" between the Sun and Earth. The solar wind is Earthward charged particles from the Sun. These particles interact with the Earth's magnetisphere. When you have large changes in the solar wind, there are more substorms, and worse satellite TV reception.
So, pseudo-diff-eq, their contribution is the second term (or maybe I'm missing the point):
substorm likelihood =
southwardness of magnetosphere +
change of solar wind intensity with respect to time
Poor graduate student. So much data... It's good to see some basic science being done though. More, please!
by Anonymous Coward
on Sunday September 13, @01:52AM (#29403325)
Why is this being tagged "climate change" with people yammering about global warming? This is a previously unexpected form of energy transfer but would have been occuring since...oh...our planet had a magnetosphere and there is not a single mention in the article concerning climate change or global warming.
Why is this being tagged "climate change" with people yammering about global warming? This is a previously unexpected form of energy transfer but would have been occuring since...oh...our planet had a magnetosphere and there is not a single mention in the article concerning climate change or global warming.
I agree that there is no link to climate change but that doesn't stop all of the conspiracy theorist trolls. Without the link to climate change, we could only talk about this new science that was discovered and that would be boring. Now we get to waste our time reading the standard climate conspiracy rants.
TFA is one of the most confused articles I've seen in a long time.
If Stuart Wolpert had just let the scientists write it, chances are it might be intelligible. As it is it was muddled, convoluted, mis-stated, and just plain wrong on many points.
Never let a journalism student, or worse yet, one who hung around after graduating into the Science buildings.
Something a scientist writes might also be so steeped in jargon that it's less intelligible to anyone not familiar with that particular research field. That's why we need more people like Niel deGrasse Tyson, who can live in the academic world but also communicate very well with non-academics.
To me, the most interesting point of this discovery is that it should improve our understanding of shortwave radio propagation.
It has always frustrated me that the same space program that is producing the data needed to understand the physics needed to make accurate, day-to-day predictions of ionospheric propagation -- a hundred-year-old mystery -- is also the same space program that replaced commercial HF communication with satellites, greatly reducing the economic value of such predictions (and, therefore, the science funding to make them). So now that we have the ability, we no longer have the desire . . . unless one is an amateur radio operator, and it's harder to think of an entity lower on the economic value chain than that.
The most difficult path for shortwave links is one that passes near the magnetic poles, like the path from Southeast Asia to the US East Coast that passes over the north magnetic pole. Energy from the solar wind couples into the Earth's magnetic field; in particular, charged particles are directed parallel to the field. This is great for propagation over most of the planet; however, near the poles the magnetic field becomes vertical and these particles are directed perpendicular to the ground, where they form a ring of radio wave attenuation and refraction [noaa.gov] in the upper atmosphere that closes this path for many days out of a given month. To open this path there has to be minimal energy coupling from the solar wind, and there is very little understanding of when this will occur. Even the best propagation prediction software (e.g., VOACAP [voacap.com] and Proplab Pro [spacew.com]) is based on statistics, giving one the probability of a given path being open.
This discovery should add to our understanding of how and when these paths will open. Until then, we have to survive on "Space Weather" web sites like [noaa.gov] these [qsl.net], and turn on a radio to see for ourselves what the day brings.
(Those interested in an accessible introduction to HF propagation can check out K9LA's propagation site [verizon.net].)
It was a MS virus that all the researchers touched and got infected with. Now, we are in a botnet phase. I mean, hey, nearly all scientist support weird ideas, like the earth not being the center of the universe, and that it is older than 5K year, or that GW is at least strongly influenced by mankind's contribution.
Of course, there is a manner in which scientists do work in concert, and that's in 'consensus'. On this issue, the consensus is pretty clear. [slashdot.org]
Yeah, I know... and I get why Anderson Cooper would think that's hilarious.
What I don't understand is why your average garden variety left-winger on the internet (where you tend to hear/see it the most)--whether it be slashdot, kos, wherever else--thinks it's so hilarious. I guess what it boils down to for me is, I think it's downright odd how the Democratic party which wholeheartedly embraced liberty, freedom, and the "common man" at its core a generation ago--and still pays lip service to such things--has
I don't understand the scorn for the lower middle class / poor / etc who seem to be at these kind of rallies.
I see. You have not been to one of these. It is NOT the lower middle class/poor. I went to one in Denver. Watching ppl drive away in Suburbans is not my idea of lower middle class. Think that there is a real reason why it is pushed by rush?
The idea that this represents the common man would be like having the king of england attend the boston tea party. Basically, the very ppl, neo-cons, that ra
Have you missed the fact that people all across the nation are angry with both republicans and democrats? More than one republican who assumed that he could just get in front of this movement has been booed off the stage.
Politicians are the problem. The republican/democrat distinction is just a distraction. Both sides want to take away your freedoms and your money - they just pay lip service to different ideals when they do it.
really? The pubs had control of congress from 94-2000, while the dems had control of the presendcy; The pubs had TOTAL control of dc from 2000-2006. pubs had WH from 2006-2008, while neither party control congress during that time (dems controlled house, but the pubs had a slight edge on the senate).
Lots of money flowed to W and the neo-cons and now they are gone...
So, when you throw money/whatever at a problem, it goes away.
This was pretty funny, and not surprisingly, was modded so... then the followup posts this comment:
If I throw money at the democrats will they go away?
For some reason - that was modded troll? I found the second one as equally amusing, and fail to see how the second was any more trollish than the first - particularly when the first even referred to tea-party protesters as "tea-baggers"
it was something unexpected (which it was), so nobody was looking in this direction. It would be interesting to find out if this was discovered because of all the hoopla about GW. I am guessing that it is the case. IOW, this would not likely have been found except that ppl are concerned about getting the facts, rather than just trolling.
The problem many people (or at least I!) have with PARTS of the GW / global climate change conversation is that it's clear that we have at best a minimalistic understanding of climate. I don't even think most climate scientists would deny this... Like you point out--this is a great example of a really interesting (and fundamental!) discover. New discoveries in terms of carbon sequestration (or lack thereof in many cases), cloud vapour / temperature interactions, etc are being found all the time. The technology we have available to monitor global temperatures and carbon levels, arctic ice, etc, and the tools (better satellites, etc) are likewise exponentially improving.
I don't think you can find a person out there who would deny that strong scientific progress is being made.
The problem is with the non-science aspects of the movement. Heck, the problem is that it IS a movement. Things like Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and some scientists who do seem to be more interested in a political agenda more than a scientific one do not help. That is to say, of all the parts of what you call the "hoopla about GW" (nice desc!) we can really do without the hysteria and the partisan politicking (why is global warming even a partisan issue to begin with?! -- and I'm fully expecting a partisan respose;-) )
Concern troll. Al Gore and AEI with their daffodil ads are not the same thing. Al Gore may be a politician, he may not be your kind of politician, but the science is on his side.
The pseudoscience is on the side of the "skeptics"
The pseudoscience is on the side of the "skeptics"
Do a survey at any green movement rally, and see what percentage of these people are anti-nuclear and anti-GM, or support "alternative" medicine over the conventional (scientific) kind. How many anti-vaxxers would you expect to find in the crowd?
None of this reduces the validity of AGW of course, but it does put paid to the notion that people follow this cause because they are more scientifically rational... indeed, there seems to be a general fear of technology in the green movement (and to be clear, I'm not talking about the scientists here, as much as the supporters).
In short, my global warming skepticism, though a minority view amongst scientists (and I accept that it IS a minority view) is still scientifically based... most of the green movements support of the "consensus" view is not scientifically based at all - it just happens to conform to their world-view.
There are constant changes to the model, but nothing HUGE. My understanding from talking to some NOAA scientists that I know, that it would take something totally unknown coming from out of the solar system or from the middle of the earth.
As they pointed out, the simplest item to look at are the glaciers. Overall, they are melting very fast. Some new ones are started, but that is due to increased moisture in the air. That is like the center of Antarctica is growing again, but that is due to increased mo
There are few changes to the very basic set of facts: that there is warming, and a significant proportion of it is anthropogenic. But there is huge disagreement on the details and especially in predictions. That's to be expected, because many of the systems we're attempting to model have sensitive dependence on parameters and initial conditions. Whether, for example, a shutdown of thermohaline circulation [wikipedia.org] is likely, and under what circumstances, isn't at all well understood--- and that's just picking one large-impact uncertainty.
(why is global warming even a partisan issue to begin with?! -- and I'm fully expecting a partisan respose;-) )
It became partisan when republicans through the 90's up til about 2005, were saying that GW was not occurring. Now, the top neo-cons claim that it is not man made, but there is overwhelming scientific evidence that says otherwise. I am not a climatologist, but I know a few of them who are. Other than Dr. Grey, all of them say that it is occurring and man is partially responsible (though none ap
Most of Dr Gray's "debate" is personal attacks on the young whipper snappers talking about climate change. If he gets something that actually stands up he has the clout to get people to listen.
Cool. Then what's next weeks excuse? Thirty years ago you would ask a scientist about global warming and climate change. Now you just have to ask an old farmer or a ski lift operator. It was all cut and dried in general terms long before the film came out and it became a political/armageddon cult/economic issue. Nitpicking about specifics that might swing things a fraction of a percent either way doesn't wind the clock back. Most of this "climate change doubt" crap comes out of the "Heartland Institute"
The climate change "debate" is pretty well reality vs PR and is occurring because people want to make money out of it. If the wackos in the nuclear lobby had kept out of it with stupid ideas like carbon credits and carbon taxes to nobble their opposition it would all be a lot simpler - things have been overhyped in both directions.
I agree. I think that the west is in for a LOT of trouble by trying to take full responsibility and to be the ones doing things. Kyoto has been a disaster since NONE of the part
Yeah, the cap/trade is going to be a true disaster in the making. I think that it will be destroying the west. EU pushes their companies to be loyal and stay there, but we have not done that since reagan. Add in more expensive energy, combined with much of Asia having their money fixed against the dollar as well as major trade barriers, I think that we will not only see the wholesale destruction of much of the west, but that our energy bill will have the exact opposite impact. Basically, GE coal plants will
There are legitimate reasons to be unconvinced, no matter what the affiliations of the people offering them may be.
We have an hypothesis about the reaction of the earth's climate to CO2 emissions. The hypothesis is first, that the additional CO2 warms by absorbing IR radiation. That this will occur is not subject to dispute, its basic physics, and has been known for around 100 years. It was only partially known to Aarhenius, who seems to have got the effect right but to have overestimated its magnitude, but the effect itself has been known. This is a relatively minor component of the hypothesis. If this effect were all there was, doubling of CO2 levels from around 300ppm to around 600ppm would raise the average temperature of the planet in the lower troposphere by roughly 1 degree centigrade. This would not be terribly serious - in fact, it might even improve life, and its of the same order as natural variations anyway.
The second hypothesized effect is that when the climate warms by any amount, from any cause, there is positive feedback. This feedback amplifies the effect. So the warming of 1 degree caused by CO2 rises is hypothesized to lead to further warming of a further few degrees. The amounts are uncertain. The total warming effect could be anything from 2-5 degrees C. Even at the lower levels, this would lead to significant problems, and at the higher levels, particularly over 5 degrees, we would be looking at climate disaster.
However, its a question whether the climate reacts to warming by positive feedback, and if so how strongly, or by negative feedback. To have concerns about feedback is not denialism or flat-earth -ism. Its quite reasonable.
This is where we come into the evidence issue. The decisive evidence for feedback would be if the climate were now genuinely warming faster than or differently from ever before. And this is where the question of the refusal of the climate science community to reveal their data becomes important. We have Jacoby, d'Arrigo, Mann, Thompson, Jones and others refusing to reveal the data which would allow replication and verification of their results. Their defenders meanwhile abuse everyone who does not simply believe, without proof, that the results are as represented.
As long as the data and algorithms are not placed in the public domain for inspection and validation, it is going to be reasonable to be skeptical. All that the authors have to do to eliminate this skepticism is to publish. Until they do, it is going to remain an open question whether there is anything very special going on with climate in terms of the last 2,000 years, and so it will remain an open question whether feedback works the way that the IPCC hypothesizes.
And so, it will remain an open question whether the reaction of the climate machine to an initial warming of 1 degree will be an ultimate stable state of no change, +1, +2 or +5.
In the same way as when I drink a cup of coffee, you cannot predict my future temperature solely by reference to the heat content of the coffee, nor can you make any assumptions without examining the way my body reacts about whether the feedback will be positive or negative, so you need evidence in the form of the behavior of the climate to tell what sort of feedback mechanisms occur. It is very, very odd, inexplicable in fact, that the climate science community seems to see it as positively wrong to ask for the data on what is allegedly going on with the climate to be released. Free the data, free the code, and lets see if the studies prove what they purport to.
However, its a question whether the climate reacts to warming by positive feedback, and if so how strongly, or by negative feedback.
There's a debate about how much positive feedback exists, but the case for negative feedback is very weak. For example, events such as Heinrich and Dansgaard-Oeschger events [noaa.gov] are the best examples of abrupt climate change in the paleoclimate record. These ancient events are worrying because they show the climate has a propensity to shift quickly from one state to another, given
Based on purely anecdotal evidence, it seems to be getting worse: my impression is that climate scientists who entered the field after it became a partisan political issue are much more likely to have axes to grind one way or another. The 40+ y.o. PhDs entered the field because they were interested in science, but a lot of the under-40 crowd entered the field to join a battle on one side or another.
why is global warming even a partisan issue to begin with?!
It's naturally partisan. Everywhere, not just in the developed countries, we have a natural division between wealthy and those with much lower resources. This manifests everywhere as common conflicts of interest, between employer and employee, polluter and those affected, rich people and the envious, etc. Environmentalism naturally falls in with the beliefs of the people with lower resources (and those who purport to represent them). And global warming is merely a huge potential environmental problem that w
I was wondering how long it would take the anti-global-warming fringe to latch onto this one and say "Look! This shows scientists don't actually know everything, and therefore it proves that they don't know anything!"
I am 20+ yrs annoyed how long various solar questions and basic research have remained unplowed ground, with rather dismissive treatment in the AGW stampede. I note numerous irregularities in the AGW shove similar to deliberate actions that in my personal experience got PhDs (e.g. Cornell, Hopkins, one a nationally known professor) fired for said irregularities.
I also think that the real GA Landis might have some conflict of interest with my statement, such as the InP solar cell patents that might benefi
So, basically, since the claim that the "IPPC is the primary sponsor of all AGW research" is a *lie*, can we just ignore everything else you say about this subject?
Simply calling a group "fringe" does not make it so. Fringe relative to whom? Mainstream society is overwhelmingly skeptical, so if anything the pro global warming hug fests that one sees on echo chambers like this are the true fringe.
Misleading interpretation (Score:5, Insightful)
Can Its Power Be Tapped? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
While the 'global warming implications' that would be inaccurately applied to this paper are unfortunate his statement isn't scientifically inaccurate:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exosphere [wikipedia.org]
Surprise! Discovery In Earth's Upper Atmosphere (Score:5, Funny)
I know! I know! (Score:3, Funny)
"It's like something else is heating the atmosphere besides the sun."
The orbiting teapot [wikipedia.org] must have boiled! ;)
Gosh! (Score:2)
diff eq problem? (Score:5, Interesting)
> "Heejeong separated the data into when the solar wind was fluctuating a lot and when it
> was fluctuating a little," he added. "When the interplanetary magnetic field fluctuations
> are low, she saw the pattern everyone knows,
That is, the likelihood of "substorms" in Earh's ionoshpere is a function of how "northward"
or "southward" Earth's manetosphere is. More southward, more storms, worse
satellite TV reception.
> but when she analyzed the pattern when the interplanetary magnetic field was
> fluctuating strongly, that pattern completely disappeared. Instead, the strength of the
> flows depended on the strength of the fluctuations.
There's this "interplanetary magnetic field" between the Sun and Earth. The solar wind
is Earthward charged particles from the Sun. These particles interact with the Earth's
magnetisphere. When you have large changes in the solar wind, there are more
substorms, and worse satellite TV reception.
So, pseudo-diff-eq, their contribution is the second term (or maybe I'm missing the point):
substorm likelihood =
southwardness of magnetosphere +
change of solar wind intensity with respect to time
Poor graduate student. So much data...
It's good to see some basic science being done though. More, please!
it's still the sun... (Score:2)
The Hell? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this being tagged "climate change" with people yammering about global warming? This is a previously unexpected form of energy transfer but would have been occuring since...oh...our planet had a magnetosphere and there is not a single mention in the article concerning climate change or global warming.
Re:The Hell? (Score:4, Insightful)
I agree that there is no link to climate change but that doesn't stop all of the conspiracy theorist trolls. Without the link to climate change, we could only talk about this new science that was discovered and that would be boring. Now we get to waste our time reading the standard climate conspiracy rants.
Parent
It gets hotter? (Score:5, Funny)
Larry: This discovery is like finding it got hotter when the sun went down.
Interviewer: So, the temperature actually goes up when the sun sets?
Larry: Er, no.
Interviewer: No? What does happen then?
Larry: Um, well... the temperature goes... down, I guess.
Interviewer: Okay. Thanks for that Larry.
Who writes this stuff ? (Score:4, Insightful)
TFA is one of the most confused articles I've seen in a long time.
If Stuart Wolpert had just let the scientists write it, chances are it might be intelligible. As it is it was muddled, convoluted, mis-stated, and just plain wrong on many points.
Never let a journalism student, or worse yet, one who hung around after graduating into the Science buildings.
Re:Who writes this stuff ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Something a scientist writes might also be so steeped in jargon that it's less intelligible to anyone not familiar with that particular research field. That's why we need more people like Niel deGrasse Tyson, who can live in the academic world but also communicate very well with non-academics.
Parent
I was hoping for (Score:5, Funny)
Whales and flowerpots.
Disappointment is me.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Don't forget that there is still only 1 out of 8,767,128 chance that it will even happen.
Shortwave propagation (Score:5, Interesting)
To me, the most interesting point of this discovery is that it should improve our understanding of shortwave radio propagation.
It has always frustrated me that the same space program that is producing the data needed to understand the physics needed to make accurate, day-to-day predictions of ionospheric propagation -- a hundred-year-old mystery -- is also the same space program that replaced commercial HF communication with satellites, greatly reducing the economic value of such predictions (and, therefore, the science funding to make them). So now that we have the ability, we no longer have the desire . . . unless one is an amateur radio operator, and it's harder to think of an entity lower on the economic value chain than that.
The most difficult path for shortwave links is one that passes near the magnetic poles, like the path from Southeast Asia to the US East Coast that passes over the north magnetic pole. Energy from the solar wind couples into the Earth's magnetic field; in particular, charged particles are directed parallel to the field. This is great for propagation over most of the planet; however, near the poles the magnetic field becomes vertical and these particles are directed perpendicular to the ground, where they form a ring of radio wave attenuation and refraction [noaa.gov] in the upper atmosphere that closes this path for many days out of a given month. To open this path there has to be minimal energy coupling from the solar wind, and there is very little understanding of when this will occur. Even the best propagation prediction software (e.g., VOACAP [voacap.com] and Proplab Pro [spacew.com]) is based on statistics, giving one the probability of a given path being open.
This discovery should add to our understanding of how and when these paths will open. Until then, we have to survive on "Space Weather" web sites like [noaa.gov] these [qsl.net], and turn on a radio to see for ourselves what the day brings.
(Those interested in an accessible introduction to HF propagation can check out K9LA's propagation site [verizon.net].)
Re: (Score:2)
Can you support your premise that all scientists act in concert?
-jcr
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Reread the post. He was being ironic.
Of course, there is a manner in which scientists do work in concert, and that's in 'consensus'. On this issue, the consensus is pretty clear. [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:2)
well, not the teabaggers
I really don't understand why that's supposed to be funny...
I mean, I get why one regularly sees "M$" and "window$" and other equally stupid things on slashdot, but that one I don't get.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, I know... and I get why Anderson Cooper would think that's hilarious.
What I don't understand is why your average garden variety left-winger on the internet (where you tend to hear/see it the most)--whether it be slashdot, kos, wherever else--thinks it's so hilarious. I guess what it boils down to for me is, I think it's downright odd how the Democratic party which wholeheartedly embraced liberty, freedom, and the "common man" at its core a generation ago--and still pays lip service to such things--has
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I see. You have not been to one of these. It is NOT the lower middle class/poor. I went to one in Denver. Watching ppl drive away in Suburbans is not my idea of lower middle class. Think that there is a real reason why it is pushed by rush?
The idea that this represents the common man would be like having the king of england attend the boston tea party. Basically, the very ppl, neo-cons, that ra
Re:inb4 "that explains global warming" posters (Score:5, Informative)
Have you missed the fact that people all across the nation are angry with both republicans and democrats? More than one republican who assumed that he could just get in front of this movement has been booed off the stage.
Politicians are the problem. The republican/democrat distinction is just a distraction. Both sides want to take away your freedoms and your money - they just pay lip service to different ideals when they do it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
So, where did it get us?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_debt_by_U.S._presidential_terms [wikipedia.org] It MASSIVELY shot up when pubs had total control. It does not appear to matter which congress has it, but which
Re: (Score:3)
Interesting, first poster says:
Lots of money flowed to W and the neo-cons and now they are gone ...
So, when you throw money/whatever at a problem, it goes away.
This was pretty funny, and not surprisingly, was modded so... then the followup posts this comment:
If I throw money at the democrats will they go away?
For some reason - that was modded troll? I found the second one as equally amusing, and fail to see how the second was any more trollish than the first - particularly when the first even referred to tea-party protesters as "tea-baggers"
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
I suppose its relevant to point out the polarized views we see spewing out of the US are not interacting with the earths magnetosphere.
Or (Score:2)
Re:Or (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem many people (or at least I!) have with PARTS of the GW / global climate change conversation is that it's clear that we have at best a minimalistic understanding of climate. I don't even think most climate scientists would deny this... Like you point out--this is a great example of a really interesting (and fundamental!) discover. New discoveries in terms of carbon sequestration (or lack thereof in many cases), cloud vapour / temperature interactions, etc are being found all the time. The technology we have available to monitor global temperatures and carbon levels, arctic ice, etc, and the tools (better satellites, etc) are likewise exponentially improving.
I don't think you can find a person out there who would deny that strong scientific progress is being made.
The problem is with the non-science aspects of the movement. Heck, the problem is that it IS a movement. Things like Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, and some scientists who do seem to be more interested in a political agenda more than a scientific one do not help. That is to say, of all the parts of what you call the "hoopla about GW" (nice desc!) we can really do without the hysteria and the partisan politicking (why is global warming even a partisan issue to begin with?! -- and I'm fully expecting a partisan respose ;-) )
Parent
Re:Or (Score:5, Funny)
(why is global warming even a partisan issue to begin with?! -- and I'm fully expecting a partisan respose ;-) )
Is 'both sides are filled with morons' partisan?
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
On the contrary, I think you've hit upon the only logical answer...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Concern troll. Al Gore and AEI with their daffodil ads are not the same thing. Al Gore may be a politician, he may not be your kind of politician, but the science is on his side.
The pseudoscience is on the side of the "skeptics"
Re:Or (Score:4, Insightful)
The pseudoscience is on the side of the "skeptics"
Do a survey at any green movement rally, and see what percentage of these people are anti-nuclear and anti-GM, or support "alternative" medicine over the conventional (scientific) kind. How many anti-vaxxers would you expect to find in the crowd?
None of this reduces the validity of AGW of course, but it does put paid to the notion that people follow this cause because they are more scientifically rational... indeed, there seems to be a general fear of technology in the green movement (and to be clear, I'm not talking about the scientists here, as much as the supporters).
In short, my global warming skepticism, though a minority view amongst scientists (and I accept that it IS a minority view) is still scientifically based... most of the green movements support of the "consensus" view is not scientifically based at all - it just happens to conform to their world-view.
Minority scientific opinion <> pseudoscience
Parent
And this is where you would be wrong (Score:2)
As they pointed out, the simplest item to look at are the glaciers. Overall, they are melting very fast. Some new ones are started, but that is due to increased moisture in the air. That is like the center of Antarctica is growing again, but that is due to increased mo
Re:And this is where you would be wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
There are few changes to the very basic set of facts: that there is warming, and a significant proportion of it is anthropogenic. But there is huge disagreement on the details and especially in predictions. That's to be expected, because many of the systems we're attempting to model have sensitive dependence on parameters and initial conditions. Whether, for example, a shutdown of thermohaline circulation [wikipedia.org] is likely, and under what circumstances, isn't at all well understood--- and that's just picking one large-impact uncertainty.
Parent
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It became partisan when republicans through the 90's up til about 2005, were saying that GW was not occurring. Now, the top neo-cons claim that it is not man made, but there is overwhelming scientific evidence that says otherwise. I am not a climatologist, but I know a few of them who are. Other than Dr. Grey, all of them say that it is occurring and man is partially responsible (though none ap
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It was all cut and dried in general terms long before the film came out and it became a political/armageddon cult/economic issue. Nitpicking about specifics that might swing things a fraction of a percent either way doesn't wind the clock back. Most of this "climate change doubt" crap comes out of the "Heartland Institute"
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I agree. I think that the west is in for a LOT of trouble by trying to take full responsibility and to be the ones doing things. Kyoto has been a disaster since NONE of the part
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There are legitimate reasons to be unconvinced, no matter what the affiliations of the people offering them may be.
We have an hypothesis about the reaction of the earth's climate to CO2 emissions. The hypothesis is first, that the additional CO2 warms by absorbing IR radiation. That this will occur is not subject to dispute, its basic physics, and has been known for around 100 years. It was only partially known to Aarhenius, who seems to have got the effect right but to have overestimated its magnitude, but the effect itself has been known. This is a relatively minor component of the hypothesis. If this effect were all there was, doubling of CO2 levels from around 300ppm to around 600ppm would raise the average temperature of the planet in the lower troposphere by roughly 1 degree centigrade. This would not be terribly serious - in fact, it might even improve life, and its of the same order as natural variations anyway.
The second hypothesized effect is that when the climate warms by any amount, from any cause, there is positive feedback. This feedback amplifies the effect. So the warming of 1 degree caused by CO2 rises is hypothesized to lead to further warming of a further few degrees. The amounts are uncertain. The total warming effect could be anything from 2-5 degrees C. Even at the lower levels, this would lead to significant problems, and at the higher levels, particularly over 5 degrees, we would be looking at climate disaster.
However, its a question whether the climate reacts to warming by positive feedback, and if so how strongly, or by negative feedback. To have concerns about feedback is not denialism or flat-earth -ism. Its quite reasonable.
This is where we come into the evidence issue. The decisive evidence for feedback would be if the climate were now genuinely warming faster than or differently from ever before. And this is where the question of the refusal of the climate science community to reveal their data becomes important. We have Jacoby, d'Arrigo, Mann, Thompson, Jones and others refusing to reveal the data which would allow replication and verification of their results. Their defenders meanwhile abuse everyone who does not simply believe, without proof, that the results are as represented.
As long as the data and algorithms are not placed in the public domain for inspection and validation, it is going to be reasonable to be skeptical. All that the authors have to do to eliminate this skepticism is to publish. Until they do, it is going to remain an open question whether there is anything very special going on with climate in terms of the last 2,000 years, and so it will remain an open question whether feedback works the way that the IPCC hypothesizes.
And so, it will remain an open question whether the reaction of the climate machine to an initial warming of 1 degree will be an ultimate stable state of no change, +1, +2 or +5.
In the same way as when I drink a cup of coffee, you cannot predict my future temperature solely by reference to the heat content of the coffee, nor can you make any assumptions without examining the way my body reacts about whether the feedback will be positive or negative, so you need evidence in the form of the behavior of the climate to tell what sort of feedback mechanisms occur. It is very, very odd, inexplicable in fact, that the climate science community seems to see it as positively wrong to ask for the data on what is allegedly going on with the climate to be released. Free the data, free the code, and lets see if the studies prove what they purport to.
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There's a debate about how much positive feedback exists, but the case for negative feedback is very weak. For example, events such as Heinrich and Dansgaard-Oeschger events [noaa.gov] are the best examples of abrupt climate change in the paleoclimate record. These ancient events are worrying because they show the climate has a propensity to shift quickly from one state to another, given
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Based on purely anecdotal evidence, it seems to be getting worse: my impression is that climate scientists who entered the field after it became a partisan political issue are much more likely to have axes to grind one way or another. The 40+ y.o. PhDs entered the field because they were interested in science, but a lot of the under-40 crowd entered the field to join a battle on one side or another.
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why is global warming even a partisan issue to begin with?!
It's naturally partisan. Everywhere, not just in the developed countries, we have a natural division between wealthy and those with much lower resources. This manifests everywhere as common conflicts of interest, between employer and employee, polluter and those affected, rich people and the envious, etc. Environmentalism naturally falls in with the beliefs of the people with lower resources (and those who purport to represent them). And global warming is merely a huge potential environmental problem that w
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'And global warming is merely a huge potential environmental problem that will primarily affect people with few resources.'
The disruption of the food chain and death of the human race primarily affects people with few resources? *scratches head*
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I also think that the real GA Landis might have some conflict of interest with my statement, such as the InP solar cell patents that might benefi
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So, basically, since the claim that the "IPPC is the primary sponsor of all AGW research" is a *lie*, can we just ignore everything else you say about this subject?
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Simply calling a group "fringe" does not make it so. Fringe relative to whom? Mainstream society is overwhelmingly skeptical, so if anything the pro global warming hug fests that one sees on echo chambers like this are the true fringe.
Whether you like it or not.
Just calling it how I see it btw.