Little Ice Age: It Was Not the Sun 375
vikingpower writes "The Little Ice Age, lasting from the end of the Middle Age into the 17th century, may very likely have been caused by the combined effects of four major volcanic eruptions and increased sunlight reflection by increasing sea ice, the so-called Albedo effect. ... The University of Boulder has a press release with maps and photographs. Bette Otto-Bliesner, one of the scientists behind the 'volcano + sea ice' thesis, fields an earnest warning against drawing conclusions too quickly from this research: 'I think people might look at the Little Ice Age and think that all we need to save us from rising temperatures are some volcanic eruptions or the geo-engineering equivalent [...] But when you see what happened when global temperatures dropped by just one degree and you look at current predictions of six or seven degree increases for the future, you realize how precarious things are for life as we know it.'"
University of Boulder? (Score:3, Interesting)
Not the University of Colorado at Boulder?
Re:University of Boulder? (Score:4, Funny)
OK, so maybe it is just a guy sitting on a large rock...
What's your point?
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Hmm. In your (insightful? Really?) response, I see a lot of opinion and ranting, but I don't see a single cogent statement that refutes any of the claims in the paper. They explain the lags, the feedbacks, and the modeling they used in their paper. Real climate even has a more layman's description of the mechanism: http://www.realclimate.org/ [realclimate.org] .
Of course, you're probably counting on the fact that people rarely RTFA and fewer would RTFP. But basically your entire premise is incorrect and refuted in the paper
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"But the Mauder minimum just happens to coincide really really well with the little ice age."
No it didn't, according to the University of Boulder paper the little ice age (LIA) began ~1275-1300 (Mann says is covered 1400 to 1700) and the Mauder minimum only spanned 1645 to 1715.
But I think you're right that the LIA was a false start of a new ice age, indeed the current Milankovitch cycle should be causing global cooling (not warming). Indeed, under such circumstances the climate might be especially sensitiv
Of course. (Score:2, Informative)
Maunder minimum was not the culprit [Re:Of course] (Score:5, Informative)
After 5 billion years, the sun is basically in steady state. I would not expect to see fluctuations over the type of timescales that human beings exist on....
the sun is pretty steady, a middle-aged star, but there are still some small variations in solar intensity. The hypothesis was that the Little Ice Age was correlated with the solar "Maunder Minimum," a 75-year period during which the sun had no sunspots (and hence presumably was about 0.07% lower in brightness).
What this work did was put a good date to the start of the Little Ice Age; using radiocarbon dating to determine when the plants killed by the advancing glaciers died... and the dating shows the Little Ice Age began well before the Maunder minimum. The Maunder minimum didn't cause it, very definitely.
Re:Maunder minimum was not the culprit [Re:Of cour (Score:5, Funny)
... and the dating shows the Little Ice Age began well before the Maunder minimum. The Maunder minimum didn't cause it, very definitely.
The only logical conclusion is that cold temperatures on earth somehow prevent sunspots. Which means, obviously, that global warming will blot out the sun due to a proliferation of sunspots caused by warmer temperatures here.
We're doomed!
Global Warming? Let the Intelligent Debate Begin! (Score:5, Funny)
No doubt this item will produce reasoned, well mannered discourse in droves! Pop some popcorn, enjoy the highbrow debate!
Re:Global Warming? Let the Intelligent Debate Begi (Score:4, Funny)
Canwedo it with beer and make it lowbrow?
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Canwedo it with beer and make it lowbrow?
You betcha.
O, better, perhaps (Score:2)
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I prefer Bendërbrau [deviantart.com].
Re:Global Warming? Let the Intelligent Debate Begi (Score:5, Funny)
"Intelligent debate"? What kind of nonsense is that?! Everybody worth listening to knows full well that Slashdot posts aren't written, they're generated from a QRNG in CmdrTaco's basement, and comment scores reflect natural selection.
1 Degree Change, sure, but what's the StDev? (Score:2)
I fail to see how a 1 degree average change can make any significant difference (In Phoenix, if one day the temperature ranges from 80-110 degrees F, and the next day it's 81-111 degrees F, you won't notice).
That said, one thing that's consistently missing is how much the standard deviation of the temperature changes. You might not notice a 1 degree standard deviation shift, but you will notice a 5 or 10 degree standard deviation shift.
Why is this data never present in global warming arguments? Any climatol
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"I fail to see how a 1 degree average change can make any significant difference"
If every day is 1 degree warmer or colder (just +1 degree, everywhere, no variation), you might not notice on any particular day, but you might notice that spring comes earlier or later, and you might notice your feet getting wet (or dry) because more ice is melting (or accumulating) at the poles and high altitudes.
What standard deviation are you looking for? Between locations on the planet? Daily? Monthly? Yearly?
Re:1 Degree Change, sure, but what's the StDev? (Score:5, Informative)
They do talk about it. You just (evidently) don't listen.
Global temperature increase shifts the atmospheric circulation cells, so that they land in different places. It shifts the jet stream, so that weather is carried to different places. It shifts oceanic currents; there's a big concern that global warming may actually result in a major drop in temperatures in northern Europe. There are many factors that decide what the temperature will be outside your house today; global warming is not the largest factor by a long shot. But where the Hadley Cells, Ferrell Cells and Polar Cells land has a big effect on the weather you experience, and that _is_ affected by global temperature increases in the one degree range. These effects aren't necessarily temperature increases; they are just as likely to be more energetic storms, or droughts, or floods.
However, it's also worth noting that 1 degree is currently considered a fairly unrealistic best-case scenario, because since we started trying to take some weak action to address Global Warming, China seriously ramped up the amount of coal they're burning, so atmospheric CO2 levels are going up faster than predicted.
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How much difference did the average of 1 degree of temperature drop during the Little Ice Age make? What if the same level of difference occurs with 1 degree of temperature rise?
A much bigger problem (Score:2, Insightful)
The second more important issue is that the west is continually building their economy to rely on an infinite (and cheap) supply of oil when it's quite clearly a finite commodity.
Fix these two world collapsing issues first.. and then worry about whether the planet's getting a little bit warmer or not.
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A much bigger problem is that western economies, having their medium exchange controlled privately, rely on perpetual (and infinite) economic growth to avoid deflation.
That's not right. You can have inflation any time you want it by printing more money. It might have to be a lot, but if you are diligent enough, you can do it.
"Volcanism" sounds like... (Score:3, Funny)
...something catholic church would disapprove of.
The view from inside climate science (Score:5, Insightful)
The original article is about the Little Ice Age primarily, and the only tie-in is the comment warning against relying on volcanoes to save us from warming / geoengineering man-made "volcanoes" to fix warming.
But, ok, you want to ask the question "is it actually warming?" I'm a climate scientist-ish, I'll throw in a line. I recommend skepticalscience.com for it's superb evidentiary support for the theory of anthropogenic global warming (a.k.a. climate change).
Yes - we have ample data demonstrating that it is warming, not only in the air but in the surface waters of the ocean (water absorbs some of the heat, it turns out - if only it would absorb more of it!). We have really really obvious evidence (seriously, just look at the satellite pictures) of dramatic summer sea ice loss. The troposphere (where we live - where our weather happens) has warmed about 1.3 degrees F over the last 100 years. This might not sound like a lot, but just integrate 1.3 degrees over the whole planet, and you're talking about a significant amount of energy.
The stratosphere has cooled up to 6 degrees Celsius (yeah, that's right, mixing up the units) in some places, and higher atmospheric layers have cooled even more. Now, you might ask, why the cooling - this is supposed to be global WARMING, right? The mechanism behind stratospheric cooling is a bit complex, but think about it this way: Greenhouse gases (GHG's) trap more heat (absorbed and re-radiated long-wave energy) in the Troposphere (the lowest layer, where weather happens) than we would otherwise have. If that extra heat weren't trapped in the lower atmosphere, it would have to go somewhere else, right? So where would it go? It turns out, it would go back into space or, more importantly, into the upper layers of the atmosphere (stratosphere, mesosphere, ionosphere). Essentially, the GHG's play favorites with the atmosphere - they give the lowest layer more heat while depriving the higher layers of their ordinary allowance.
Incidentally, this phenomenon allows us to distinguish GHG-driven heating from sun-driven heating. If global warming were caused by the sun alone, the temperature would increase in all layers of the atmosphere - the sun doesn't play favorites.
But wait, how do we know it's people? Physics tells us CO2 absorbs long-wave radiation (and then re-radiates that energy in all directions). Simple energy balance calculations tell us that without CO2 and other greenhouse gases (but mostly the CO2, as it is slower to enter/leave the atmosphere than H2O) the earth would be too cold to support most life forms. Over and over again in Earth's long history, higher concentrations of CO2 are associated with higher temperatures (the very early Earth was very warm, despite a weaker sun - this is known as the Faint Young Sun paradox - but greenhouse gases were more abundant). We're pumping this gas into the atmosphere with careless abandon, and we can measure and observe that much of it stays there (removing CO2 from the atmosphere permanently by natural processes takes a loooong time). Even if we didn't measure warming and we couldn't measure CO2 (did I mention we can measure warming and CO2? We do it all the time) the laws of physics and the principles of chemistry allow no other possible conclusion than a future of warming (for most of us) and cooling (for anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck in the upper atmosphere).
Sorry for the long post. Also, don't think for a minute someone does serious climate science without asking the questions "are we sure we know what we know?" or "are the computer models any good, like, at all?" about 3 times before breakfast. Seriously, people, we're pretty smart apes, this isn't "too complicated" or "too difficult" for us humans to figure out.
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:5, Funny)
We deny that.
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Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:5, Insightful)
> Shouldn't all science be questioned?
Yes - intelligently questioned by people who are qualified to criticize it. And who "question" it by doing their own research, investigation, hypothesizing and testing... which is not the same as digging up spurious out-of-context quotes and raising biased, uninformed objections for political reasons.
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:4, Insightful)
> Shouldn't all science be questioned?
Yes - intelligently questioned by people who are qualified to criticize it. And who "question" it by doing their own research, investigation, hypothesizing and testing... which is not the same as digging up spurious out-of-context quotes and raising biased, uninformed objections for political reasons.
And yet if these unqualified non-scientists believed in said theory, you would have no quarrel with them. Even though they don't believe it as a result of being qualified, doing research, investigation, hypothesizing, and testing (redundant after "investigation"?).
The unspoken, probably unacknowledged even by you, message here? "Don't question authority."
I never believed that science was meant to be a priesthood. Back when we had priesthoods and considered that normal, don't we call those times the Dark Ages? The moment you are told that you're not qualified and therefore have no business forming your own position, that's the moment you have established a priesthood.
I have an entirely different take. I think this science has a problem most sciences don't. We have only one planet that's practical to use for this model. We can't modify the system to test different variables in a rigorous way, and we can't compare what happens to a control group. There is too much uncertainty that there's no clear way to resolve. So, it becomes a political issue. It boils down to some authority's opinion concerning what makes the most sense. That's great fun when the authority is wrong, or there are multiple authorities who disagree with each other, or there's no positive way to rule those out.
If you don't understand that, you wind up passionately judging the stupidity of people you know nothing about, not because they demonstrated stupidity but as a feeble attempt at shutting them up. After all, they followed the "wrong" authority. Do you realize that popular ideas which people were absolutely certain about, and sometimes would have fought and died over, that anyone would have been ridiculed for doubting, have turned out to be wrong in the past?
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you are also bluring the "argument from authority" thing (which is about relying on a single source), science does in fact carry a certain authority in it's calim to have the best answer, if not the correct answer. It's authority comes from a meritocricy that Popper called "the republic of science" and what everyone else calls "consensus". It's the difference between "science says" and "a scientist says".
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I wish even more that people would wake up and realize these are issues they can understand and investigate for themselves. We don't have to rely on a priesthood to guide us.
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a strange kind of "priesthood" that has to show its work and changes its mind when new evidence comes in.
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It's a strange kind of "priesthood" that has to show its work and changes its mind when new evidence comes in.
What's the point in showing you my work if you're not qualified to understand it?
...
After all, the Catholic Church had plenty of Bibles written in Latin. They were not hidden. Of course, no one other than Catholic priests happened to speak/read Latin
The point is, if you can't explain the gist of it to a reasonably intelligent layman, there's something wrong with your own understanding.
In favor of an educated populace, not sheeple (Score:3)
The entire point behind a "liberal arts" education was that free men were supposed to be educated to enough of a degree in many different subjects so they could intelligently discharge the duties of citizenship.
Ideally, that would mean
-people have enough of a grounding in computer science/applications to know about encryption and privacy issues
-people have enough knowledge about DNA testing to know when it useful and when it's not
-people have enough knowledge about science to ask useful questions of climate
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I have an entirely different take. I think this science has a problem most sciences don't. We have only one planet that's practical to use for this model.
I think it's a problem of abstraction, the higher the level of abstraction you go to, the more the little details are thrown out, and the devil is always in the details.
Of course, abstraction is necessary, we aren't capable (nor are we likely to ever be) of doing simulations of the whole solar system at a sub atomic level in a time scale that would be useful to us. So we throw out information or not care about the lack of it in coming to whatever conclusions they do, they simply try their best.
Compare a soc
yes they can with Solomonoff's inductive inference (Score:4, Interesting)
The belief that "if you don't have replicates of some subject to use as a control group, you can't know if a theory will make good predictions about this subject" is false.
We only have one universe , with no control group, but scientists have been able to accurately predict things about our universe.
Solomonoff's inductive inference is a mathematical formalization of how to make a good prediction in a unique universe. It is a mathematical Occam's razor: shorter theories give better predictions, provided that they perfectly describe previous observations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inductive_inference&oldid=471899642 [wikipedia.org]
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Actually the surge of interest in witchcraft and the accompanying witch trials was towards the end of the Middle Ages. The peak of the European witch trials was between 1580 and 1630. The infamous Salem witch trials were in 1692-93. A long, long time after the so-called Dark Ages (which aren't generally referred to as Dark Ages any more).
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That was mostly a reaction to the Black Death.
The belief that Satan was loose in the world mostly arose out of attempts to understand how God could allow 1/3 the population of Europe (the world? possibly, but we don't have good records for the whole world, we do have them for Europe) to die of some loathsome disease....
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:4, Insightful)
He probably does not even realize that some of the persons he interacts with on a daily basis are Wiccans, Gardnerians, BTWs, hedge witches.
He probably does. And smirks inwardly every time he thinks about it.
Just because a certain kind of people are everywhere doesn't mean they aren't funny. Crystal healers are my favorite.
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:4, Insightful)
> Shouldn't all science be questioned?
Yes - intelligently questioned by people who are qualified to criticize it. And who "question" it by doing their own research, investigation, hypothesizing and testing... which is not the same as digging up spurious out-of-context quotes and raising biased, uninformed objections for political reasons.
See, that's the problem. Any scientist that questions it is immediately deemed unqualified or even unethical simply because they have bothered to question it.
Can you name a me a single AGW "denialist" that you deem to be qualified enough to have their theories and research taken seriously?
Exactly!
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:5, Informative)
Can you name a me a single AGW "denialist" that you deem to be qualified enough to have their theories and research taken seriously?
Yes. Richard Lindzen. If you ask for 2 it gets difficult ... there are a few "luke-warmers" though.
Now can you name me a single scientist who denies the existence of gravity, that you deem to be qualified enough to have their theories and research taken seriously?
Exactly!
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:4, Informative)
denies the existence of gravity
No, but there sure as hell are a lot who disagree on how and why it occurs, and the mechanisms behind it.
We know the Earth changes global temperature, often wildly (we have testable records of this). We know the current global temperature is (we have multiple measurements of this). What we don't have is another spare Earth running with accelerated time to test whether injecting the quantities of CO2 that have been released (along with aerosols, particulates, and other assorted crap) will have a long term net warming effect, cooling effect, or something else, and the magnitude of that effect. We can create models to predict the effect, but we only have training data (past records), but no control data. To only current way to test to see if what we think will happen in 100 years is correct is to wait 100 years.
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Have a look at Early Warning [blogspot.com]. You'll have to root around a bit for the climate entries (some are oil, some are economic), but a recent few point out the medium-term possibility of killer droughts, and the long term possibility of not-necessarily so bad. The main issue that is very hard to appreciate (hard for me, too) is that it takes a long time (many decades, maybe centuries) to reach equilibrium. The heat capacity of the oceans is ginormous. [wordpress.com], meaning that they can absorb an extraordinary amount of ene
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"Gravity" is not a theory.
Neither is the mass of raw data which is routinely challenged by climate deniers, you know "warming has stopped it's been getting colder for the last x years ..."
Comparing gravity to AGW is preposterous.
I think you've missed AC's point which, if I may, was that an argument along the lines of "if you can't name any scientists you regard as reputable who disagree with a well-established sciency then you criterion for selecting reputability is obviously politically biased ... exa
What is a theory (Score:3)
Of course gravity is a theory. All scientific generalizations are theory. The facts or the observation. "I dropped this ball and it fell to the floor" may be a factual observation. "Balls fall when dropped" or "there is a force that attracts masses together" are theories--they can never be proved, because they are generalizations: you can never test every ball, or every pair of masses.
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:5, Informative)
See, that's the problem. Any scientist that questions it is immediately deemed unqualified or even unethical simply because they have bothered to question it.
Oh come on Archer. The criterion for "suitably qualified" is not whether they personally agree or disagree with any position. It is simply whether they are literally suitably qualified, which is to say, are they working and publishing (in an ISI listed peer reviewed journal, i.e. not a phish journal like E&E) in the field, the holder of a chair in the relevant discipline etc.. And ultimately it's not what scientists say, but what the bulk of the published science says that we must defer to.
Nor is there universal agreement among most expert climatologists. But the baby questions, such as is anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere rising; are mean global temperatures rising; and are the two causally linked, are now settled in the affirmative. The scientific debate has largely moved on. And recent attempts to revive these questions by the very few suitably qualified scientists who do disagree with the mainstream has invariably resulted in disaster: Witness Lindzen & Choi (2009) (In Lindzen's favour, once the flaws in this paper were pointed out he withdrew it without hesitation), or the debacle [mdpi.com] surrounding Spencer and Braswell (2011).
Now once he was presented with the body of the science, the editor of Remote Sensing (where Spencer and Braswell appeared) realised he'd been duped and took the appropriate course of action (for which see the link above). When are you going to wake up Archer, and face up to the fact that you've been duped too?
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Can you name a me a single AGW "denialist" that you deem to be qualified enough to have their theories and research taken seriously?
More than likely no. Why? Too much money tied up in it now. And if you're proposing a competing theory, you're likely to be blackballed right out of the sciences for speaking heresy against doctrine.
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. There needs to be a way to publish studies, raw data, and the like, without jeopardizing one's career.
Of course there is. JUST PUBLISH IT. If it's valid, you're famous, the oil companies can quite legitimately shower you with money to continue your research. This continued assertion that there is a conspiracy to prevent dissenting views on global warming is just idiotic. Is Al Gore going to leave a horse's head in your bed?
Is there a word that combines "retarded" with "denialist"? There should be.
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is a post a few spots up that completely negates your statement:
Richard Lindzen. Wasn't he the guy who was recently debunked and had his papers withdrawn from publication because he was being paid for his position?
The second a scientist takes on penny from an oil company, even after his work is published, he's instantly discredited, regardless of the quality or accuracy of his work. Yet, it is perfectly acceptable for a scientist to take money in the form of a grant from a government that stands to gain power over citizens.
Rubbish. Lindzen didn't have his livelihood threatened, that's what the poster I was responding to insinuated. Being criticised is another thing entirely. Lindzen has had a long comfortable career. He didn't suffer for his opinions.
He was pilloried though for LYING about his funding. See http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_S._Lindzen [sourcewatch.org] : "in 2007, Lindzen wrote that "his research has always been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from any energy companies." Which was untrue.
And, FYI, governments already have " power over citizens". I don't understand where you conspiracy nutjobs get the idea that global warming is a political issue that somehow helps commies. It doesn't help ANYONE. It's going to fuck us all.
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Shouldn't all science be questioned? If we unanimously accept a scientific theory to be fact, is it still science?
All science should be questioned but once consensus is reached for instance "There is a meteor heading for earth and will strike it in 3 months wiping out all surface life." you should probably act upon that if you know what's best for you. "Sure maybe all of our deep space instrumentation might be on the whack at the same time and sure it might be independently verified by every astronomical scientific society through repeated observation... but how do we reallllly know about space?"
Should we continue qu
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:4, Insightful)
The only thing is, a meteor is an easily provable phenomenon. The factors are well known, and predictions can easily be made and verified. I can go and reproduce Newton's equations, or re-measure the speed of light, or retest hundreds of other theories that have been proven. These are not contested.
I have yet to see anybody make a verifiable prediction with regard to climate change on anything less than what will happen decades from now. If the science is so settled as claimed, shouldn't the scientists be able to isolate a few variables, and say that if this happens (with regard to sun activity, and any other variables they want to quantify) and lay down some solid numbers so we know what is predicted. Nothing like last year's after the fact statements that year's winter storms or tornado activity was caused by human activity.
I want real prediction that say if sun output is low, temperatures will be stable or slightly down. If sun output is average, temperature will be up .1 and if it's high temperatures will be up .25. If they want to add in modifiers for cloud cover, and other weather conditions and any other factors they can think of, great. Then if their predictions are accurate, we have some sort of confidence that they model actually takes into account all of the necessary variables. If the numbers come in significantly different than what they predict, then we know that the models are far from complete and the science isn't settled yet. Until I see the science actually giving us predictions that conform to reality, I choose to believe that the scientists don't haven't it all figured out. Extraordinary claims (like complete confidence in predictive powers concerning climate) require irrefutable evidence. Since these predictions haven't been made yet (since I'm sure they would be big news and nothing of the sort has ever been printed), and the time scale of all predictions concerns what will happen at mid or end of century, it's entirely possible that scientists are making claims that can't be falsified in their lifetimes.
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The fact that the models don't predict everything completely accurately does not necessarily mean that they are far off, it just means that they haven't been extended and refined as well as we could yet. Furthermore, science gives us predictions that conform to reality literally every day.
But you illustrate your cognitive dissonance when you say that you "choose to believe that the scientists don't haven't [sic] it all figured out." Scientists will NEVER have it all figured out, because this universe that
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Consensus has no place in scientific discourse. Galileo was not a consensus kind of guy.
How many people in some category (such as how many scientists) share the same opinion on a subject has no bearing on the search for truth about that subject. It definitely has an effect on the politics involved, but that is not science. That is politics. Setting up a carbon credit system is politics, maybe good, maybe not, but definitely something involving politics (and a little engineering), but not science. Choosing
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:5, Insightful)
Consensus is not when scientists get together and decide "We're going to have a consensus!" Consensus is what you have when (nearly all) scientists in a field no longer argue seriously about a particular subject except at the minute detail level because it isn't interesting any more.
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You are right that consensus has nothing to do with determining what is true. I never said it did. The definition of consensus is a general agreement among such a large majority of participants on a particular point. In science it can be a useful indicator of what the practitioners in a particular field understand about it and what they don't. That doesn't necessarily mean they are right but they probably will be more often than not.
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I have never seen a case where they ask questions, their minds are made up already and no ammount of evidence/answers will change it. After all they might have to drive their SUV overcompensationveichles a bit less or something, and we cant have that!
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Amazing how you manage to make yourself seem a victim of the moneygrubbing AGW scammers.
There was actually some non-politically motivated criticism, and a group of scientists lead by a renowned physicist set out to double-check the work of AGW science (who had doubts regarding AGW) and sponsored by AGW doubters. What happened? Do you even remember or did you filter that out...
There was some questions on the issue of bias due to the sponsorship, yet most in the AGW community seemed to welcome the effort to i
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a difference between questioning a theory based on evidence to the contrary and questioning it simply because it is controversial. One of the few other scientific theories that seems to enjoy this distinction is the theory of evolution. However, you'd be hard pressed to find as many slashdotters making the same argument against that theory.
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And honestly, you SHOULD doubt evolution, and let that doubt propel you to find the mountains of evidence that support it.
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the few other scientific theories that seems to enjoy this distinction is the theory of evolution. However, you'd be hard pressed to find as many slashdotters making the same argument against that theory.
Actually, you will. Check any Slashdot story dealing with evolution, and you'll see a ton of comments pushing creationism (usually in its "intelligent design" guise) very often using the same "we should always question theories" argument. Sadly, almost none of these people seem willing to question the theory of gravity in the most obvious manner.
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:5, Informative)
All theories, from gravity to evolution generalizations that can never be exhaustively tested, but that are to some degree accepted because they make testable predictions that have turned out to be correct. For example, we theorize that all masses, past, present, and future exert a gravitational force on all other masses, but almost all of the masses in the universe are not directly accessible for testing--we have tested only an insignificant fraction of them.
Here's a list of some of the predictions of climate science that have been tested and have turned out to be correct [bartonpaullevenson.com]
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:5, Informative)
> As far as I know no one has created a model of the earth to test global warming or bred a large number of animals to create a new species.
No-one that is, apart from those that have. There have been a fairly large number of the latter, both observing and inducing speciation in plants and animals [talkorigins.org].
There are plenty of earth models for climatic and other purposes. It's clearly not practical to make physical models, so we have to make do with software ones which don't have such practical constraints. Their accuracy can be tested by seeing if older data can be used to predict more recent data (hindcasting), for example can data gathered from 1900 to 1960 in a given model be used to predict what the conditions were like in the 1960s? If they do, then you might consider some of that model's future predictions trustworthy too. This technique is used to test models of individual parts of an overall climate model, such as temperature changes, cloud actions, El Niño events, gas mixtures etc. Generally these models will only ever get better as research improves and computing power increases. Still, they are an approximation (as all models necessarily are), but as the IPCC said: "Despite such uncertainties, however, models are unanimous in their prediction of substantial climate warming under greenhouse gas increases". More info [skepticalscience.com].
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Reasoned questioning and debate based on scientific fact should alway she welcomed. I think the point the parent was trying to make is that we see, all too often on slashdot, debate that has little basis in fact.
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Shouldn't all science be questioned?
Yes, but the problems with the deniers is that they don't listen to the answers.
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:4, Insightful)
Shouldn't all science be questioned?
Yes, but the problems with the deniers is that they don't listen to the answers.
Terms like "denier" or "believer" have no place in this debate. Both imply an unwillingness to consider what is known and what isn't.
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why the label "denier" is appropriate.
The use of "denier" in this context sounds no different than a religious zealot blindly assuming that whatever is "denied" is in fact true. When it comes to arguing global warming, there appear to be more parallels with religion than with actual science.
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:4, Informative)
The term came into common usage because the target group referred (incorrectly) to themselves in their state of cognitive dissonance as 'sceptics'. Scepticism also has a precise meaning. It doesn't refer to people who reject scientific theory without presenting contrary evidence.
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The use of "denier" in this context sounds no different than a religious zealot blindly assuming that whatever is "denied" is in fact true.
No, it indicates the assessment that the "denier" is blocking his ears and shouting la-la-la at anything that contradicts his preconceptions. Same as evolution deniers. I won't Godwin the topic and equate them with Holocaust deniers though.
Re:Call a spade a spade (Score:5, Insightful)
Using a "convenient one word label" turns the debate from scientific to political.
But this is a political debate, not a scientific one. The scientific debate is conducted in journals and conferences not on this kind of forum and not by you and I. The scientific debate is largely over, or rather it has moved on from the issues which are still hotly contested in the political debate.
It's focusing more on "us vs. them" than discussing the real issues at hand.
The "real issue at hand" is what policy position, if any, ought to be adopted in light of the now established science, or if you prefer, the current best available science. Denialists have no interest in discussing the real issues. Quite the opposite, they are concerned with stopping the real issues from being discussed at all.
We call people who disrupt democratic process with bombs with a convenient one-word label: 'terrorist.' You may object, but it makes conversation more convenient. So what would you call people who disrupt the democratic process with disinformation about science, regardless of whether it's about climate, AIDS, vaccines or whatever? We usually find it easier to identify these people as 'deniers' or 'denialists.' They would like to be called skeptics, but that is actually only more disinformation.
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Shouldn't all science be questioned? If we unanimously accept a scientific theory to be fact, is it still science?
If AGW is not a testable theory and it does not produce a falsifiable hypothesis, is it scientific at all?
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Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:5, Insightful)
Therefore the fact that people do not like the implications of AGW does not, in anyway, make it less true. We are not choosing clothes from a rack. We are not debating whether the purple shoes will go with my slacks. And it's the implications that denialists do not like. Notably, no-one ever questioned Tyndalls experiment, nor whether the greenhouse effect was real until it became clear from the numbers that we needed to change our habits. Then suddenly, the whole theory was controversial.
Question science with facts, not dogma (Score:4, Informative)
Shouldn't all science be questioned?
Yes, all science is questioned. The process is named "peer review". Do you know what the word "peer" [thefreedictionary.com] means? It means someone who has a similar standing.
The work of scientists should be questioned by people who have gone to the trouble of studying and understanding what the subject is about. Not by trolls who repeat the bullshit spewed by corporations whose interests are hurt by the facts that scientists present.
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It always astonishes me that on a geeky site like Slashdot with an audience that in theory puts such a high value on science, you get so many global warming denialists.
Someone interested in discussing science would not use words like "denialist" with the obvious intention of provoking an angry response. Pot, meet kettle.
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Sure there is. If you want to defuse the politics of the debate and stick to facts because you are thoroughly convinced that the facts back up your side, you stick to them. You do not denigrate your critics through political-style mudslinging as that only gives credence to their claims that your position is not fact-based but politically-based (thus a grab for power, money, interns, etc.). You play nice with your critics because that way you fail to give them ammunition to use against you.
Of course, if y
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:5, Interesting)
There are at least 5 reasons I can think of for that phenomenon:
1. Some are shills for by the majorly carbon-emitting industries. There's no reasoning with this group, because they aren't here to reason or discuss, they're here to do their job of sowing doubt about whether global warming is real. Similarly, there may be commenters who aren't paid PR people, but work for these companies (e.g. a friend of mine who does geology on oil rigs for a living), for whom the "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it" truly applies.
2. Some believe that placing a high value on science involves being skeptical of anything not definitively proven. With anthropogenic global warming, because there's only 1 planet Earth (that I'm aware of) there's no way to definitely prove things one way or the other. This is true even if the vast majority of the research supports the theory that AGW is causing significant changes to the climate of the Earth.
3. Some are politically libertarian and tend to strongly oppose government action not concerned with enforcing contracts, protecting property rights, or preventing violent attack and/or sexual assault on a citizen. If AGW is true, and private enterprise can't or won't act to stop it, then stopping it requires significant government intervention in the markets, which dismantles the idea that libertarianism can solve all human problems. It's not dramatically different from a reaction you might get to a devout born-again Christian discovering definitive proof that Jesus never existed.
4. Some are unwilling to make the dramatic changes to everyday life that would be needed to reduce CO2 emissions in the short term. It would mean changes like having to move your home so you can commute to work without driving 30 miles, or having to put your washing machine on timers so the load runs at 3 AM rather than right now, or keeping your home at 55 F in the winter rather than the 70 F you find comfortable. Nobody wants to do that if they can think of a short-term alternative. This also manifests itself in an absolute faith that scientists and engineers will somehow come up with a solution that will solve the problem completely without requiring any kind of conservation effort.
5. Environmentalists have been guilty of overstating their case in the past, so some are reluctant to believe anything they say.
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More for #0: The people shouting the loudest haven't given up air travel. They don't keep their (often multiple) houses at 55 degrees F in the winter instead of the 70 F they find comfortable. They don't run their washing machines on timers so the load runs at 3AM. They're typically a wealthy and self-styled elite class who, even if they aren't setup to directly benefit from AGW measures, are largely insulated from the hardships they would impose on the rest of us.
If the choice is between risking warmer
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I'll take my chances with warmer weather.
If it was only about warmer weather, then that would be fine. Unfortunately, warmer leads to more violent weather, with all the consequences that will flow from that.
So, I'd rather put up with a hypocritical elite, which really is little more than an annoyance compared to the big disasters that we can expect.
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:5, Informative)
0) The people shouting loudest about how important this is stand to gain a significant amount of money, power, and public notice if people believe and act on their claims.
Everywhere I go, I see teachers driving Ferraris, research scientists drinking champaign...
As a research scientist, the best that they can expect to get, and in fact the goal that so many of them have in mind after 10-20 years of hard research is... a job which isn't guaranteed to terminate in 3 years.
And, the best way do do that is to make a big name for yourself by turning over the old scientific establishment and coming up with something striking and new (supporting AGW definitely does not qualify as anti-establishment).
If you think there's a cabal of scientists banding together on global warming for the money and power, then you are either astonishingly ignorant or a total moonbat.
OOOhhhh yeh! (Score:4, Interesting)
Same with anti vaccination loonies, and creationists, they all use the same tactics of internet circle jerk where one denialist site quotes another as a reference. The facts whilst interesting are considered irrelevant.
I have got to the point where i dont even bother to challenge them anymore, as their objections are based in their self interest allowing them to ignore relevant facts and use nit picking irrelevancies to support their case.
For some reason what seem to be otherwise intelligent people here on Slashdot show a remarkable degree of stupidity on this issue. Then again a lot of them propound libertarian claptrap too, so I guess I shouldnt be too shoucked.
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Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:5, Informative)
On balance it's probably natural for geeks (many of whom are naturally inquisitive) to question ideas which insist on substantial changes to our lifestyles with tenuous evidence behind them
To quote Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:
No scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion; the last was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, which in 2007 updated its 1999 statement rejecting the likelihood of human influence on recent climate with its current non-committal position.
And so all these organisations came to the conclusion that human activity is playing a key role in global warming without any "credible evidence" (to use your phrase)?
Re:Mistake (Score:3)
You are trying to use logic and reason, supported with a reasonable link to a source, when discussing an issue with an audience that is universally unwilling to accept that they are wrong.
Its like trying to deal with Creationists. Its not going to work, period. The other side has their opinion and is going to stick to it.
Now, to be fair they have that right. Everyone has a right to their own faith. I just wish people wouldn't try to use that as a basis for logical discussion. If I believe Wombats secretly c
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe because we do value science so highly and we utterly detest the politicisation of science that is such a huge feature of the climate debate.
If you actually listen to both sides, then the scientists are debating one very small thing: how sensitive the climate is to the small forcing from human gaseous emissions.
Both sides agree there is some warming. The extent of the current warming and whether it has paused/stopped for the last ten years is disputed (for a variety of reasons, but there are credible peer-reviewed climate scientists discussing the pause). The political AGW movement denies there has been any pause ("9 of the hottest 10 years on record have been since 2000", for example, which is shrill cry to keep believing the warming, but is also completely consistent with a pause in warming). The anti-AGW movement says that we have had some warming, but it's not a pause and we're due for another cooling period.
Both sides agree that at least some of the warming is due to human emissions. Again, the dispute is over how much. The political AGW movement says all the warming is human-induced. The climatologists say some of it is. The anti-AGW movement say very little of it is, and there are a variety of other more important causes.
Both sides agree that the majority influence on the climate are the various feedbacks involved in this chaotic system. The climate papers and models are very firmly saying that the current warming will increase water vapour in the atmosphere which will cause further warming. The political AGW movement says there is a 'tipping point' imminent beyond which all feedbacks become runaway positive feedbacks and the planet burns (I exaggerate only very slightly). The anti-AGW movement says that the feedbacks are unknown, there's no evidence that the models are right on this, and the water vapour feedbacks could be as strongly negative as positive.
Both sides agree that the outcome of continued warming is unknown. The climatologists get quiet on this point, but there are a number of other disciplines, notably the biosciences, that have published papers showing that any climate change is bad (which makes sense from a worldview where any changes to an ecosystem are seen as 'damage' and the current state of the ecosystem is the ideal state of that ecosystem, which is the prevailing view). The political AGW movement insist that the outcome will be catastrophic. The anti-AGW movement tend towards the view that a little warming would actually be quite nice, but accept that some places would have a negative outcome.
There are ancillary debates about, for instance, ocean level rises, ocean acidification, the causes and consequences of sea-ice and glacier retreats and other stuff, but basically it for the most part seems to be pretty good, open, honest debate. The anti-AGW movement has a core of competent scientists, mathematicians and amateur/retired climatologists who do know their stuff and can talk reasonably about it. For example, the original scepticism was sparked by McIntyre who is a statistician and had some legitimate questions about the statistics used in the climate science papers, those questions were subsequently borne out by the UK enquiries (no-one did anything 'wrong' but the enquiry did conclude that there were valid questions about the statistics methodologies used).
However, this is all surrounded by a haze of politics, so that professional climatologists have to be careful about what they publish in case it can be seen as supporting the 'other side', there are calls to censor publications on the subject to maintain a united front on the subject, the image of a 97% 'consensus' must be maintained at all times. The only place there can be a sensible debate about it is on the blogs, because they're not censored (though there are some people who would love to). And all the time there's a constant drumbeat of 'DENIALIST' whenever someone questions the political "truths".
This is bad. The use of the word Denialist is bad. Attempting to censo
That's because noone is asking the right question (Score:3)
It always astonishes me that on a geeky site like Slashdot with an audience that in theory puts such a high value on science, you get so many global warming denialists.
For some reason, everyone, both liberal and conservative, seems to take it as an obvious given that if a human influenced on the climate is happening, something should be done to stop this. This means that people who like our current way of life have no choice but to deny a human influence on the climate.
In my opinion, this is the wrong way of looking at it. Whether human activity influences the climate is a scientific question, best answered by scientists who have actually done the work to study the matter
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Cool word score +5... Anthropogenic.
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The US is one of the few places where you'll find a lot of people who actually believe the earth is ~6000 years old, and Adam and Eve were literally the first two humans. Since many Americans believe this, even more believe that evolution is false. I've read that Turkey also has a lot of people who believe in Creationism. But there aren't many Turks on Slashdot, whereas there are tons of Americans here. Probably not that many that believe Creationism (but who knows how many do, but don't say so publicly
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Evolution is not really contentious because it doesn't have much relation to politics outside of "batshit crazy religious" angle - which is not exactly popular among geeks.
AGW, on the other hand, has very profound implications - if it's true, then we need to do something about it. And that, generally speaking, means more environmental government regulations. Now, it so happens that there is a not very large but still vocal political group called libertarians who are, as a matter of principle, opposed to gov
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How do you make billions of dollars off of Global Warming (other than by selling more oil)?
Re:We didn't really know how things worked before (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, computer models suck. That's why airplanes keep falling out of the sky, why missiles never hit their targets, and why you can never get the temperature of the brew head on your espresso machine just right. Er, wait, you can do all of these things. Because of computer models.
Remember when the weather forecast was always wrong? It's been really remarkably precise recently when I've followed it, which I do a lot, because I enjoy outdoor sports. It's been scarily precise. Predictions a week out come true with astonishing regularity. This is weather, which is rapidly changing and chaotic, not climate, which is slow and relatively predictable.
The problem with your completely ignorant assertion here is that in fact the models do appear to be getting more accurate, not less. The debates are not over whether there is warming, but over how much, and what the effect will be, and how soon the effect will come. Nobody is debating whether it's coming except people who are making a short-term killing on carbon externalities.
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I'll probably get modded down for this comment and someone will tell me I'm wrong, even though everything I've posted is OPINION. But that's kinda how this site works. If someone disagrees with you and has mod points, they will mod you down, usually "overrated", in an attempt to silence views that differ from their own.
Proof?
(Score:0, Flamebait)
Global Warming Alarmists try to silence the opposition to prevent you from hearing any views that may disprove their own.
If you disagree, post a reply.
From the moderator guidelines [slashdot.org]:
Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it down.
(Although, my post was absolutely full of typos. It's hard for me to read and I wrote the damn thing!)
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The hypocrisy doesn't help either. The ones screaming the loudest are the ones in the biggest houses with the largest fleets of SUV and private planes.
Here [wikipedia.org] is Tom Brady's wife, a goodwill ambassador for the UN Environment Programme, lecturing [sealthedeal2009.org] us all about our responsibility to the 'environment.'
Here [ibtimes.com] is her new house.
Bring it to this malcontent backwater though and you're 'flamebait.' We suspend our outrage for our 1% when they say the right things and bury all those fools with the temerity to point out our group-think.
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The sun's output did matter in the Little Ice Age.
And your evidence for this is...?
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The sun's output did matter in the Little Ice Age. Sol doesn't put out constant energy, perhaps it was coincidentally at a low during that period and that contributed to cooling.
Some sort of ... er proof for your alternate theory might be useful.
This climate system of ours is more complex and dynamic than the AGW devotees are willing to admit.
If it is as complex as you say, I have to wonder why you are so comfortable making such bold predictions. Particularly given that you don't offer any evidence for you contradictory theory.
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The sun's the largest energy input into our climate system. Again, this is not a theory that I need to prove due to clear evidence. Your 'No.' is quite certain, you're quite set in your ways. Some sort of ... er proof for your alternate theories might be useful.
You've made such an effort to change the subject that I almost feel sorry for you. Almost.
Shouldn't I be skeptical when I hear "No, the sun's energy output not being predictable isn't a problem" when I know the sun is the largest input? Shouldn't you be skeptical too??
You made it quite clear that you know nothing about climate science. You said so yourself. So you aren't in a position to judge the veracity of that statement. In any case, am I supposed to care whether or not you are 'sceptical'? Because at the moment, I don't.
So why does your 'scepticism' matter?
Show working.
By your reaction, you would have thought I just stabbed grandma and called her names. How can either of us prove or disprove that supposition? We don't have any data from the 1600's on solar output. I KNOW THAT! Can't a guy ask a question or think aloud 'round here without getting their head cut painfully from their torso?
Well, I've got a better chance than you -since
a) You didn't read the article, or even adequately perus
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Can you dig up some links to the scientific journals that claimed to demonstrate that bird flu will kill everyone; it would be really interesting to see what kind of arguments they presented. The things I remember reading about bird flu discussed it as a dangerous pathogen but focused on methods to defeat it: vaccines, anti-virals, social behavior, etc., so I'm curious why some researchers thought those methods would be insufficent to prevent an extinction event.
Relativity certain showed that that Newtonian
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No, the periods just didn't stand out the way you want them to. Here [wikipedia.org] is a graph of a number of temperature reconstructions for the past 1000 years including Mann's hockey stick graph (the dark blue line). They pretty much all agree that it was warmer 1000 years ago than it was 400 years ago.