This Was America's Warmest Winter On Record (slate.com) 446
hondo77 writes: On Tuesday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its official assessment of December, January, and February's temperatures across the United States, and the results are striking: Not a single state in the U.S. had a cooler than average winter. (NOAA treats Alaska and Hawaii separately, due to shorter weather data records there -- though both states were significantly warmer than normal this winter. Weather records for the contiguous United States go back to 1895.) NOAA blames the recent warm weather on a record-strength El Nino "and other climate patterns," most notably, global warming. As a whole, this winter in the lower 48 was about 4.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 20th century average: a sharp contrast to the previous back-to-back frigid polar vortex winters, especially in the Northeast.
This is why I support global warming! (Score:5, Funny)
Write your congress critter and tell him we want more mild winters.
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Write your congress critter and tell him we want more mild winters.
As soon as the Republicans take over the sente and we have a new Republican president, we'll repeal the laws of physics, and usher in a great new age. Nothing will stand in the way of our ideology..
Re:This is why I support global warming! (Score:4, Funny)
Ah, yes, where PI is equal to 3, E as well, and where Euler's identity is but an approximation!
If global warming was false, it would say so in the bible.
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We're already getting lots of ants, spiders, and other bugs pretty early this year, so watch what you wish for! Those who live in mosquito country are not going to be terribly happy with an extra long "growing season".
I'm not complaining. (Score:3, Funny)
I hope next year is the same.
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*Rolls Eyes*
Re: I'm not complaining. (Score:2)
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And it was still warmer than every other El Nino winter on record. Your point?
Re:I'm not complaining. (Score:5, Insightful)
This El Nino was actually weaker than the 1998 event, but the recent winter was still warmer, suggesting the record temperatures have their source elsewhere.
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This El Nino was actually weaker than the 1998 event, but the recent winter was still warmer, suggesting the record temperatures have their source elsewhere.
Here's a story [theguardian.com] that has a chart of temperature trends since 1965 breaking them out for El Nino, ENSO neutral and La Nina years (also showing years with major volcanic eruptions). The temperature trend is upwards in all 3 categories and similar to the general warming trend. The chart doesn't include the current El Nino but it would be above the El Nino trend line.
So El Nino/ENSO is just a cycle that happens on top of the general temperature trend without affecting it much.
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Who is Nino? Is this another example of slashdot lacking Unicode so cannot say El Niño?
There was one cold day! (Score:5, Funny)
Global warming proven to be a lie!
Re:There was one cold day! (Score:4, Informative)
Obligatory XKCD cite: https://xkcd.com/1321/ [xkcd.com]
Was it the warmest for men, or women as well? (Score:4, Funny)
n/t
Re:Was it the warmest for men, or women as well? (Score:4, Funny)
That's a good question. I'll write a grant proposal to the NSF for my study of gender and thermostat.
Stop arguing about the details... (Score:2, Insightful)
You know what? I have no idea if warming is caused by humans or not. And it really doesn't matter.
If there is a warming trend, human caused or not, we should be dealing with the evacuations and necessary work to deal with rising sea levels.
We're not going to be able to stop it. It's time to figure out who is going to be underwater in 5-10 years (if anyone) and get them out. If there is a problem with warming coming, that is the solution. The rest of it is just babble.
Now, if you want to reduce CO2 emis
Re:Stop arguing about the details... (Score:5, Funny)
nothing screams 18th century like nuclear and solar power
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If there is a warming trend, human caused or not, we should be dealing with the evacuations and necessary work to deal with rising sea levels.
And we should be researching methods for cooling the planet.
Earth's climate has never been particularly stable. Unless we want to be forever dealing with its fluctuations we need to learn how to engineer the climate we want. Now seems like a perfect time to take the next steps I say "next" because we've already taken the first steps; we've learned how to warm the planet, though perhaps not in the most controlled or efficient way.
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take the next steps I say "next"
I hate it when punctuation marks randomly disappear from my posts.
Re:Stop arguing about the details... (Score:4, Informative)
Earth's climate has never been particularly stable
The stability of the last 10,000 years birthed civilization : http://www.skepticalscience.co... [skepticalscience.com]
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Please tell us your thoughts on the flat earth hypothesis, the moon landing hoax, and the government's involvement in 9/11.
Re:Stop arguing about the details... (Score:4, Insightful)
The earth is an oblate spheroid, the moon was landed on by the US in a number of Apollo missions starting in 1969, and a group of asshole al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked planes on 9/11/2001 and destroyed the WTC towers and impacted the Pentagon after flying low over my fucking head as I drove to work that day. Please don't be an ass.
However, I'm not a scientist. I don't disbelieve in human causes for the warming, but I have zero first hand ability to judge whether it is true or not. And to be honest, it is entirely irrelevant to me.
The point I was making is that ultimately, the requirement to reduce the warming of the Earth to merely two degrees is a distraction. And the bickering about who caused it is an equal distraction. Assuming we did cause warming, this happened over the period of industrialization. Fixing such a process isn't going to happen in the desired time frame. If we're dropping all our eggs in that basket, we're going to lose.
I want to make very clear that we're doing what it takes to make sure the people impacted are taken care of. We can bicker about what caused it, but we should be preparing to get people out of there and mitigate the damage.
To deal with the outcomes, all we have to prove is that warming is happening. If it is, then we have all the answer we need to start the process of mitigating the damage. I don't care if it is CO2, sunspots, or cow farts that is causing it. That's a problem someone else can work out. Let's get a pricetag together for what needs to be done and get on it. This doesn't have to be a disaster, but it will be if we ignore it until it is too late.
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but I have zero first hand ability to judge whether it is true or not.
Neither do you have for those points:
The earth is an oblate spheroid, the moon was landed on by the US in a number of Apollo missions starting in 1969, and a group of asshole al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked planes on 9/11/2001 and destroyed the WTC towers and impacted the Pentagon after flying low over my fucking head as I drove to work that day. Please don't be an ass.
Just nitpicking.
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You know what? I have no idea if warming is caused by humans or not. And it really doesn't matter.
If you don't know what is causing the present warming trend, how can you know whether or not it matters?
We're not going to be able to stop it.
How do you know? Didn't you profess ignorance as to the cause of the warming?
I am all in favor of less CO2 emissions and more efficiency. I just think it is a waste of time, at this point, to make that what we throw all our money at, because it isn't going to make a bit of difference in the short term.
How do you know what difference it will make without researching and understanding the mechanism that is causing the warming? How do you know how much it will cost, if it even IS a net cost?
I find your statements a bit puzzling. Have we begun to treat ignorance as a source of greater authority than knowledge? After all, the und
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I was thinking evacuations and resettlement.
You're trying to solve the issue. I think it is already too late for that.
It's not the end of the world. We're not going to end up like Venus from this, but a lot of people are going to get displaced and things are going to change. That can be a disaster or it can be handled more or less gracefully. And it is one thing I never see get discussed in these little debates. It's always "it's totally real and we can only stop it with solar panels" or "its a conspir
The climate skeptic's reply: (Score:3, Funny)
"Nuh-uh!"
Bees are collecting honey here... (Score:5, Informative)
Well, here in the Netherlands, the number of days there was frost at day-time this winter could be counted on a single hand. I may have had central heating on for maybe two weeks in days in total ('80s concrete apartment, 60 sq.m, bottom corner, reasonably isolated, double glass on one side, no indirect heat from neighbours because that apartment is empty) the past half year. It certainly has been the mildest winter in human recollection here. Positive: I'll probably get returned a shit-load of money on my energy bill advances this year. There has been no snow to mention this year. In the northern part there has been one frosty period of a week or so and some nice snow... but not in the center and bottom 2/3ds of our country.
Spring flowers are in full bloom, bees are collecting honey, trees are budding... at the end of February/start of March... it's all quite strange...
A few decades ago we would have been able to ice-skate on natural ice for several weeks or even months each year... Marathons and '11 cities' full day races on frozen canals and rivers. One year even the Rhine (the largest river in the northwestern part of the European continent) froze over. In the last couple of years the number of days of skate-able ice may have been a few weeks, at the most. And this year it was only a few hours. So there were national championships ice skating on natural ice this year... the one day it was possible to skate on a thoroughly nurtured 'natural' ice track somewhere in the north-eastern part of our country...
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Positive: I'll probably get returned a shit-load of money on my energy bill advances this year.
You have to pay your energy bill a year in advance??
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You pay monthly. But the payment is based on your previous years consumption. End of the year (or your "period") you get a yearly bill and a new monthly payment is defined. If you have payed to much because of changes in energy usage, you get money back. If you payed to less you get an extra bill to pay.
Ofc if you have evidence through the course of the year that you are already paying to much, you sent in the numbers and let your monthly bill get adjusted.
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So was Less Energy (and Carbon) used? (Score:2)
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Risk (Score:2, Insightful)
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Or we could compute this another way:
- There is no global warming, and we do nothing, and we all live happily with a strong economy
- There is no warming, and we spend $trillions in shifting the economy from cheap oil to expensive wind and solar, life sucks
- There is global warming, and we do nothing, and we end up spending $trillions to adjust to the new climate, life sucks
- There is global warming, and we spend $trillions to stop it, life sucks
Of those options 3 of 4 have life sucking. So, it appears to m
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There are many benefits to renewable energy even if you leave global warming out of the equation. Such as better health, reduced pollution, and less financial support for autocratic governments like Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Moving away from fossil fuels to renewable energy is worth the effort, regardless of climate change.
Winter isn't over (Score:2)
I love the warmer winters, but (Score:3, Insightful)
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Just saying. Take the global warming bs and shove it up your ass.
Global warming has nothing to do with how much snow is in your driveway, the snow in your driveway this year is "weather", not "climate". Measure it over the next decade, then get back to us.
Re:I shoveled a fuckton of snow. (Score:5, Informative)
Just saying. Take the global warming bs and shove it up your ass.
Global warming has nothing to do with how much snow is in your driveway, the snow in your driveway this year is "weather", not "climate". Measure it over the next decade, then get back to us.
Or the previous decade.
.
.
.
Here's the rankings of warmest from the decade
2015 - 1st
2014 - 2nd
2013 - 4th
2012 - 8th
2011 - 11th
2010 -3rd
All 15 years this century are in the top 15 warmest years on record.
Re: I shoveled a fuckton of snow. (Score:2)
That's absolutely absurd.
I'm not trying to deny AGW at all. It's serious, and needs to be addressed. No doubt about it.
But to imply that the last 15 years have all been the 15 hottest on record is ridiculous. As though we never had a single warm year in the 1990s or earlier, or a single cold year in the last 15 (the phrase Polar Vortex comes to mind.)
This is exactly the kind if alarmist bullshit that deniers can clamp on to. This screams bad science.
Don't fall into that trap. Don't present obviously skewe
Re: I shoveled a fuckton of snow. (Score:5, Informative)
The Polar Vortex was a local phenomenon, and while the Lower 48 was freezing its nuts off, Alaska was 18 degrees C warmer than usual. [thinkprogress.org]
You're confusing local weather events with the global temperature record. I wouldn't go yelling about bad science if I were you...
Re: I shoveled a fuckton of snow. (Score:2)
You're confusing a pattern of global warning with a gospel of annual record breaks.
There SHOULD be some "weather" happening. At least one year this century should have some cold weather. At least one year in the previous century should have some warm weather.
But there isn't. The numbers are adhering perfectly with the alarmist rhetoric, instead of following a natural pattern of peaks and valleys slowly increasing over time.
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Not even all the lower 48. The west coast had an absurdly warm winter. I joke that the east stole our winter (I'm from Washington, the one on the west coast in case that's unclear). We had a day in February hit 70F (about 21C), about 10F (5C) above what would normally be considered a warm day for February in the Seattle area last year. The ski season basically didn't exist, especially on this side of the Cascades; base snow depths that should have been in the upper double digits were in the single digits. T
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Global warming has nothing to do with how much snow is in your driveway, the snow in your driveway this year is "weather", not "climate". Measure it over the next decade, then get back to us.
In the Eastern USA, ther eis a region known as "The Snow Belt". Interestingly enough, it is to the south of my location, and does indeed tend to have warmer weather than we do here. But they usually get a lot more snow. How is this possible? Warm water laden air tries to work it's way up north, form the Gulf of Mexico. It usually gets met by a cold front, and although the Snow Belt is warmer than my location, it is still cold enough to turn into snow. Some times a lot of snow.
Now with a general warming t
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Global warming has nothing to do with how much snow is in your driveway, the snow in your driveway this year is "weather", not "climate". Measure it over the next decade, then get back to us.
Question: "How much snow did you shovel over the last decade?"
Answer: "Too much!"
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Question: "How much snow did you shovel over the last decade?"
Answer: "Too much!"
For some people, any at all is too much.
Re:I shoveled a fuckton of snow. (Score:4, Informative)
In all fairness, the story isn't really about global warming, either. It's about the weather in the United States. In recent summers, the US has been abnormally cool while the rest of the world has been hot. Overall, the Earth has been very warm, but the weather in the United States doesn't necessarily indicate as such. By the way, mid-latitude weather may not be the best indicator of global warming, especially during the winter.
The Arctic Oscillation has two phases, the positive phase being a strong polar vortex that traps the cold air in the Arctic, while the negative phase weakens the polar vortex and allows more cold air outbreaks in the mid-latitudes. The Arctic Oscillation is very much related to sudden stratospheric warming, which is often a precursor to the onset of mid-latitude cold air outbreaks. It makes sense that the stratosphere would have a role in weakening the polar vortex, which is actually a semi-permanent large-scale feature near the tropopause. In the positive phase of the Arctic Oscillation, the polar regions can be quite cold while the mid-latitude regions are warm.
Global warming means global warming, not regional warming. And there are reasons why the weather in the United States might be decoupled from other parts of the Earth. Even with global warming, a few regions of the Earth might actually cool. For example, if global warming slows the North Atlantic Drift current, the British Isles may cool because of global warming. My point is that scientists have to be precise in what they say, otherwise climate deniers (and trolls, in the case of the OP) will distort their message and attack them.
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This is kind of always what bugs me - because global warming isn't actually "global". You even stated it - even if the global average goes up, large regions could indeed have lower average temperatures over an extended period of time.
My question has always been - is the global average an actual meaningful metric, or do we really need to look at something a little more fine-grained? The globe is a big place, so simply averaging over the entire thing is losing a lot of information.
I'm also curious as to the
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Just saying. Take the global warming bs and shove it up your ass.
Global warming has nothing to do with how much snow is in your driveway, the snow in your driveway this year is "weather", not "climate". Measure it over the next decade, then get back to us.
Only a decade? So the 18 year warming hiatus (which may or may not extend even further into the future as the current El Nino comes to a close and a La Nina probably takes over) while CO2 climbed to historic (modern history, not prehistoric) heights IS enough to demonstrate the non-validity of AGW for you? Good to know.
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It's obvious isn't it? The air is getting warnee because we are measuring it. We didn't have all this global warming before we started measuring it in mass and make the results available.
On the other hand, you did bring up a point. If roads, houses (cities), and air conditioning are bringing the temp up, why all the fuss over a gas that was relatively harmless in the quantity we are concerned with before the measuring conspiracy? Is it somehow intended to limit the roads, houses, and air conditioning?
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What kind of water?
Sea water? Filtered water?
Fully frozen or starting to freeze?
Fast boil? Slow boil?
How to you make a vacuum 200 years ago? What do you write with? Where do you measure it?
You see, even science can be falsified.
Allow me my dear coward. We'll assume that since you are talking about the Celsius system, there is a very specific water to use, at a standard pressure for both freezing and boiling points.
Note that the standard pressures are slightly dfferent for different establishing entities, but all are easy to compare. Let's use NIST Standard Pressure, which is 101.325 kPa which corresponds to 1 bar, or 14.504 psi, or .98692 atm.
In the Celsius temperature standard, Water freezes at 0 degrees, and boils at 100 de
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That's the old way of looking at it. Now it's:
1. If there is less snow this year, it proves warming.
2. If there is more snow this year, it proves warming.
Well, it depends on where you are at. Have you taken into account shifting weather patterns where warm moisture laden air ttravelling northward runs into arctic air at a higher latitude than normal?
Think Gulf of Mexico air travelling northward through the Appalachian Mountains and east coast.
It is very possible for my area - which is north of the US snow belt, to get more snow as the belt shifts northward. It will be warmer, but any temperature in the low 30's or near 0 degrees depending on your measu
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Global warming has nothing to do with how much snow is in your driveway, the snow in your driveway this year is "weather", not "climate".
And, more to the point, the amount of snow in a given location is not the same as the temperature in that location.
Amount of snow is related to how much water vapor is in the air.
Re:I shoveled a fuckton of snow. (Score:5, Informative)
We had 30" of snow in 24 hours this winter. That's all the snow we received.
Why? Because we had temperatures in the 40s and 50s through all of December, including hitting 71 on the 24th. We've had 40s through large portions of January and February and February had 50s at the end of the month. Today our temperature was almost 70, tomorrow it will be above 70 and winter isn't yet over.
See how the game works?
Re:I shoveled a fuckton of snow. (Score:4, Informative)
Here in Phoenix we hit 90 degrees on Feb. 17th this year, which is the earliest 90-degree day on record (since 1895, at least). The average for that day is 71, so we're a bit above average. Last weekend things cooled off a little bit (i.e. approached the average) but the forecast shows that we're back into the high 80s approaching 90 again this week. Last year the first 90-degree day didn't happen until March 16, so we're about a month early. All of our reptiles and bugs are waking up early this year.
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Let's face it - Phoenix will be uninhabitable in 10 years, 25 tops... Unless you like year-round 100+ temps spiking to 130 in the summer.
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I am look forward to the Suns coming grand minimum causing cool summers and cloudy days where I live.
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Up here in Utah we had the same warming at the same time period it was 60degrees on the week of the 17th. The flowers have already started to come up and the birds are returning. More than 2 months ahead of schedule (normally wouldn't occur till mid April to may). I'm a little over 40 and I cannot remember, nor can my 80 year old parents any time in their lifetimes or mine when this has happened. And it's not a freak occurrence, though this is the earliest it's been, just two years ago this was in the 2nd w
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Similar results here in upstate NY. By now we should have gotten 49.2 inches of snow. Instead, we've gotten 10.3 inches. It's 54F out right now (at nearly 9PM) and it should get to 70 tomorrow. Christmas day here was warmer than it was on July 4th. I didn't need to use ice melt, my roof rake, or more than one shovel all winter. I'm not really complaining about the lack of snow, but my youngest son (age 9) definitely has been.
Re:I shoveled a fuckton of snow. (Score:5, Informative)
You should be aware that even in global warming scenarios where the planet on average is several degrees warmer it'll still get cold enough for snow to fall out of the sky in most places where snow has historically been common. What you'll have a slight tendency to have less snow in many places due to temperature that's offset by a lot more water going into the atmosphere. Many places may see lots more snow.
In many high temperate regions you'll also see more frequent cold snaps. Global warming doesn't mean the climate gets warmer every day of every year; it means there are more total joules of thermal energy in the atmosphere. Since we're talking about a giant rotating ball of fluid which is exchanging heat with the surface and space what you get is much more complicated stuff happening.
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You can also have more snow in places because the warmer weather means lakes don't freeze over. Since they don't freeze over, there's more evaporation which turns into more lake effect snow.
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Global warming doesn't mean the climate gets warmer every day of every year; it means there are more total joules of thermal energy in the atmosphere.
Someone who understands the basic bottom of the barrel truth.
Expressed another way, Human activity has added about 1.6 watts per square meter since 1750. Hey, that doen't sound like much does it? Until we figure out that is 800 TeraWatts.
I don't know about the deniers, but I can envision 800 TeraWatts. And my reaction is Holy Crap!
Re:I shoveled a fuckton of snow. (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny how people will believe economists making a guesses with the help of MS Excel instead of people using applied physics and multiple server farms.
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Run by people dependent on funding from the current politicos.
Re:I shoveled a fuckton of snow. (Score:5, Insightful)
Translation: "I don't understand science. I don't want to understand science. I assume all scientists are corrupt, because they are saying things I don't like to hear, even though their methods have increased my life expectancy massively, and provided me this computer which I use to loudly proclaim how wrong they are."
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It's not that. I understand Science, you cannot trust the entertainment industry to be honest about the science.
And if you're getting your science from the entertainment industry I have bad news for you.
Movies, TV shows, News programs, Talk radio, All the entertainment industry.
Neil Degrasse, Bill Nye, Also are paid entertainers.
Get it?
Such a small fact that it isn't there (Score:2)
Your "small fact" is so small that it does not seem to be there at all.
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He's probably referring to Al Gore's nobel peace prize acceptance speech, which itself was an allusion to a study by the US Navy that said the ice caps could be fully gone in as early as 7 years, or as late as 22 years from 2007.
http://cnsnews.com/news/articl... [cnsnews.com]
Though to be honest I don't think even the later date would be anywherre close to accurate. If the Pangaea theory is correct, we still had ice caps several million years ago while the earth was necessarily much warmer (and had much higher CO2 content
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The problem at this point is that it's become to politicized to trust regardless of the source.
I will leave this here though. Even though this reference cannot be trusted any more than any other source. Everyone has to pay their bills and 'keep the lights on'.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci... [dailymail.co.uk]
( I expect to be modded to death for the pun )
Why not cite MAD magazine instead? (Score:3)
How about we at least try to get the discussion out of the sandpit and up to grade school level. Would that be too hard?
Re:The scientific method.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for the small fact that so far their models have proven to be very very wrong.
A broad, vague statement that demands a citation before it can even be discussed.
Until they can show any form of prediction, iterative models are garbage.
The process of scientific investigation includes making predictions (right or wrong) and then learning from them. Wrong answers are not "garbage" -- they're a baseline that allows scientists to plot the course towards more correct ones. And iteration is the process that improves them. If you oppose iteration, then it's clear you have an anti-science agenda.
And no, iterative models cannot be wrong in the 5 year timeframe, but right in the longer term (except by sheer chance), because errors are cumulative.
*FACEPALM*
There are many models of many things that cannot make accurate short-term predictions, but become more accurate in the longer-term. Oh, look! [wikipedia.org]
All pretty much scientific method 101 here kids.
I'm doubting you ever took any science courses beyond high school.
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You mean to tell me I should believe the people that are claiming to predict what our environment will look like in 10 years when they can't even predict the weather for the next 10 days?
Yeah, I know right? Like I told this math idiot the other day, probability theory is BS! You expect me to believe you can tell me the average of a million rolls of a die when you can't even predict what number will come up on the next 3 rolls? Riiiiiiiiiiiight!
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Yeah, I know right? Like I told this math idiot the other day, probability theory is BS! You expect me to believe you can tell me the average of a million rolls of a die when you can't even predict what number will come up on the next 3 rolls? Riiiiiiiiiiiight!
Mother Nature uses a loaded die for climate. I do not think we have really figured out how it's rigged yet. But the people who think they do have it figured out are making Chicken Little asses of themselves, throwing their weight around and slapping their hands all over Science making chaos, ripples and rudeness where there had once been a calm pool of open peer review, emerging theories and mutual respect. A process which valued 'attempts to falsify' and replication as much as citation and grant-seeding.
I
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So you're saying their success so far predicting what the climate would do is evidence that they're wrong?
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You mean to tell me I should believe the people that are claiming to predict what our environment will look like in 10 years when they can't even predict the weather for the next 10 days?
Another one. (*sigh*)
A few things:
(1) Weather != Climate.
(2) The "people" who "predict" weather are not the same "people" who "predict" climate change.
(3) Both kinds of "people" are actually pretty good at what they do. Can you do better? No, all you can do is snark.
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You mean to tell me I should believe the people
You mean to tell us that what you do or don't *believe* should be a matter of concern for us for some reason?
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Based on that logic, any anonymous coward comment is just as credible as anything else posted on the internet. Of course, there's a massive amount of nonsense spewed from anonymous cowards here. You need to have a way to evaluate the credibility of a claim.
I'll cite Bayes' Theorem as a way of evaluating the credibility of a statement. Person A has made many statements about a particular topic in the past and has been shown to be correct. Person B has made many statements about the same topic in the past and
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I have never heard of this guy before. His article seems to use data from proper sources though. In the who is Steve Goddard section, if what is claimed is true, he seems credible.
Oh, I'm not going to double check his work. I'm not sure I can more reliable either. I'm betting quite a few if not most the people here are in the same boat.
Re: Bullshit. (Score:2)
Based on that logic, any anonymous coward comment is just as credible as anything else posted on the internet.
Says the AC, replying to the AC.
That's not to say you're wrong, source matters. But the palpable irony couldn't go unmentioned.
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Without evaluating this particular statement about radiosondes, I don't place a whole lot of credibility in what he says. This is based on his reputation. It doesn't guarantee that Goddard is wrong, but it means his claims should be viewed with more skepticism than someone with a better record on climate change issues.
Let us keep in mind that Goddard's "Debunking" of AGW isn't even based on surface temperatures.
And what is interesting is that instead of him asking "Why", he just decided My dat is right, everyone elses is wrong."
Ain't necessarily so. http://journals.ametsoc.org/do... [ametsoc.org]
Goddard has been thorougly debunked and quite often:
http://rankexploits.com/musing... [rankexploits.com]
https://www.skepticalscience.c... [skepticalscience.com]
http://reallysciency.blogspot.... [blogspot.com]
https://rhinohide.wordpress.co... [wordpress.com]
We can read an actual paper about hi
Re:Bullshit. (Score:4, Informative)
Steven Goddard doesn't have the best record on climate change issues.
He was very critical the National Snow and Ice Data Center's data on Arctic sea ice extent before being proved wrong and having to retract his claims.
He's also accused the National Climatic Data Center of fabricating global warming, saying their "adjustments" to the data are the only global warming signal. The adjustments actually exist because many of the monitoring stations have been relocated from urban areas into rural areas. That introduces a cool bias to the data that needs to be corrected for. The NCDC has been very transparent about this, but Goddard continues to persist in his claims of data manipulation. It's also worth noting that some other adjustments have lowered modern temperature records. For example, sea temperature measurements used to be taken by lowering a bucket from a ship into the water. Now, temperatures are measured as water cycles through the engine of a ship. Of course, the engines heat the water, so the bias must be removed. Conveniently, Goddard hasn't objected to this adjustment.
Radiosonde measurements certainly do show lower tropospheric warming, consistent with other instruments. Global warming typically refers to warming at the surface or through the lower troposphere.
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"For example, reporting what an NFL quarterback said about how to throw or kick a football, or a master chef on wine and cheese pairings. Neither would be an illicit appeal to authority because they are each authorities on their respective fields of expertise."
That's, in fact, the very definition of the original appeal to authority fallacy (Locke's): "because I say so" is never a rational argument (under deductive reasoning) -it is obvious when the "I" is a nobody, but people tend to accept it when coming f
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To be fair, I'd probably ask the quarterback about how to kick a football before asking a master chef. At the very least, the quarterback is more likely to have interacted with people who kick footballs and might have picked up some knowledge about how to kick footballs.
Of course, I'd ask the chef about how to kick a football before asking Charlie Brown.
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You'll think that when New York streets look more like Venice. It's nice for sure, but the biggest effect is not going to be "nice weather"... people always think weather is nice when it's average. The real issue will be bigger more violent storms, and rising ocean flooding of coastal areas where humans like to build. The rich will rise with the tide and the poor will drown.
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Re:Cycle? Trend? (Score:5, Informative)
Speaking as someone who's live in New England for almost 60 years now, for most of my life there was one regular pattern you could count on each winter: bitter, very dry cold would settle in in late December, followed by a slight rise in temperature in early February that would bring the first real snow of the season. The snow would get heavier and wetter as winter drew to a close.
You need two things for snow: sub-freezing temperatures AND water in the air. The 5F - 20F temperatures we had in January were plenty cold enough for snow, but the air was bone dry. The January skies were a deep, startling blue, often without a single wisp of cloud to be seen. The lack of water was also a contributor to the cold. Days with snow are almost always warmer because the clouds trap heat that would radiate into space. It's desert nights out west where the temperatures plunge fifty degrees after sundown.
Re:Only if you ignore the data that contradicts th (Score:5, Informative)
That paper deals only with temperatures between 1958 and 1977, specifically a brief dip in 1960-1965 (and caused primarily [goes-r.gov] by the Mount Agung volcanic eruption [wikipedia.org]). Holding that up as "contradicting" the 150 year trend of global warming is ludicrous, and a prime example of cherry-picking.
Also describing it as a "global cooling scare" is far overstating the case. The paper merely notes the cooling of the time as a datapoint of interest. Perhaps you're confusing it with sensationalist media reports?
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Also describing it as a "global cooling scare" is far overstating the case. The paper merely notes the cooling of the time as a datapoint of interest. Perhaps you're confusing it with sensationalist media reports?
The paper was not the "global cooling" scare.
Media, popularized "science" articles, etc. made it into a "scare." Went on for a year or so... long enough for film strips in grade schools to cover the subject.
That event is one of the reasons people have such a hard time believing the same type of distortion by "science" articles and media now. Regardless of the actual science being done now days.
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Can politicians affect the climate? no, thank goodness
I agree with most of your points, but I'm not sure about this one. Given the amount of both hot air and methane produced, I believe politicians ARE having a significant effect on the climate.
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Using that to argue against climate change is an act of treating the reader as being ignorant and treating them with utter contempt.
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In parts of the northern hemisphere perhaps, but elsewhere (and globally averaged), it was significantly cooler. Citation [psu.edu] (see Fig 2 particularly).
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Yes, Mann is one of the authors of that paper. Do you have better evidence, from better proxies, that contradicts it? The MWP event was indeed global in impact, but none of your links show that it was warmer than today, averaged globally.
Of your cited links, the first two are for the same paper [fgcu.edu], which notes glacial fluctations globally at that time, advancing and retreating, but does not address global average temperatures in any way.
The third link (second paper [rutgers.edu]) actually says ocean temperatures have been c
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As to your non-answer of "scientists"... actually if you look at historical averages there was a trend line going UP before the modern era. So... not so much if you look at a full trend. Subtract the rise in temperature from the previous trend in temp increases and you're talking about an extremely tiny change if anything.
As to polar bears, their numbers are up. And the whole polar bear citation was ultimately based on non-polar bear experts taking photos of "a" dead polar bear and spinning up AGW theories