Australia Cuts 110 Climate Scientist Jobs: "The Science is Settled." 568
An anonymous reader writes: With an ax rather than a scalpel, Australia's federal science agency last week chopped off its climate research arm in a decision that has stunned scientists and left employees dispirited. Why? Because the science is settled, there is no need for more basic research, the government says. No doubt many will experience a case of schadenfreude as they see those who have long claimed "the science is settled" face the inevitable and logical consequence of that stance.
The basic question is answered...but still... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, we know the answer is "The world is getting hotter and it's all our fault" - but there are still a heck of a lot of questions that need to be answered. "How Fast?" and "Will the extra CO2 help crops or weeds grow faster?" and "What can we do about it?" and "Will such-and-such course of action have enough effect to avoid such-and-such consequences?"
We need those guys even more than we did before the original question was answered.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Climate scientists aren't qualified to answer most of those questions; you need to hire economists and agronomists.
Re:The basic question is answered...but still... (Score:5, Insightful)
Climate scientists aren't qualified to answer most of those questions; you need to hire economists and agronomists.
Many of these questions are going to need to start with climate models, to answer things like "what will be the effect at different latitudes, what will be the effect on precipitation, what will be the effect on storms"
Re:The basic question is answered...but still... (Score:5, Funny)
"what will be the effect at different latitudes, what will be the effect on precipitation, what will be the effect on storms"
We know already. Just read the headlines we see all the time. Its all going to be catastrophically bad, everywhere, for everyone. Cold snaps will be colder. Dry places will be dryer. Wet places will be wetter. Floods will be bigger. Hot places will be hotter. Shorelines will be underwater. Extinctions will be accelerated. Heck, even earthquakes will be quakier.
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Sheep are changing colour [telegraph.co.uk] and short-nosed dogs are stressed out. [theage.com.au]
Re:The basic question is answered...but still... (Score:4, Informative)
Now we obviously still need to do some funding to reach that point, but if you're country has other needs you can let other countries subsidize all of that learning for you.
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Yes the earth is getting warmer, that much is clear enough. But we haven't had anywhere near the kind of time scales to measure to validate model for a climate system that spans billions of years.
Yes, we look at ice cores and sediment layers but we work on assumptions that these things pack on layers and grow in ways that are consistent our predictions of how they developed and our observations during a statistically insignificant p
Re:The basic question is answered...but still... (Score:4, Insightful)
It would help if any of the climate models demonstrated some degree of predictive ability. The difference between model projections and reality have grown to ridiculous proportions.
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Predictions, so far, have been accurate (Score:5, Informative)
It would help if any of the climate models demonstrated some degree of predictive ability. The difference between model projections and reality have grown to ridiculous proportions.
Let's look at that. The very first numerical greenhouse effect model was Manabe and Wetherald 1967-- That's the classic, the model from which pretty much all current climate models stem. Since the paper was submitted in 1966, that's 50 years ago-- definitely long enough to see how well the prediction worked. They predicted that the climate sensitivity to CO2 (assuming constant relative humidity) was 2.3C. Comparing that to the actual carbon dioxide, for the rise from 320 ppm to 400 ppm (here [noaa.gov]) using the Arrhenius relation, we get 0.74C for the temperature rise from 1966 to 2015. The measured temperature rise (here [columbia.edu]) is 0.7C, with the error bars in the figure 0.1C.
Looks like not merely a good prediction, but an outstandingly accurate prediction.
For comparison, the current IPCC 5th Assessment report [www.ipcc.ch] estimate of sensitivity is that it is the range 1.5C to 4.5C with "high confidence", so Manabe and Wetherald's value of 2.3 is still is the range of current estimates.
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He went a little quick, as I misunderstood his statement at first too and had to reread it a couple time. Let me extract the relevant data and using that go back and re-read what he said and it might make more sense.
The 1967 prediction for warming generates an ultimate warming value 2.3C, taking that value and using the PPM they predicted you can extract a PPM/degree C. Using that equation over 50 years where the now known change in PPM of CO2 was 320ppm to 400ppm you end up with a calculated change of 0.74
The devil is in the details (Score:5, Insightful)
And those climate models have been created and are available as software. It's now just a question of applying them.
The global climate models are there, and are getting pretty well validated-- although you do know that the error bars are still plus or minus fifty percent, right? But the more you want fine-grained data, though, the more you're still going to need to do a lot more work.
"Overall, things are getting slightly warmer at a pace we know to within a factor of two"-- that's something we know. "Australia is getting hotter"-- that's slightly harder to say with certainty: Australia is not the world. "These detailed results will be the result"-- that's getting very hard to predict.
The devil is in the details.
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But the more you want fine-grained data, though, the more you're still going to need to do a lot more work.
To get more data, you don't need more climate scientists with PhDs. You just need to deploy more sensors.
Re:The basic question is answered...but still... (Score:5, Insightful)
And economists and agronomists are going to be able to continue to develop climate models?
It's amazing, no matter how the wheel turns, people still have this desire to shoot the messenger.
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Or agronomists and a magic 8-ball...I'm only half joking.
Re:The basic question is answered...but still... (Score:5, Funny)
Absolutely not. Economists are not scientists. They are data-free advocates for a world-view. They're the last people you want around any discussion of solutions to a problem.
Better to have parapsychologists than economists. At least the parapsychologists have a little bit of rigor in their discipline.
Re:Economics is a social science (Score:5, Interesting)
If this is enough for you to say Economics is a science, then it is the softest science of all. Parapsychology (and I'm absolutely serious about this), is based more on data and scientific rigor than economics. Psychology is many times more rigorous than Economics. Fucking Gender Studies is more rigorous and data-based than Economics.
I am probably the only Slashdot user who has actually taken a course from Milton Friedman. My views on the pseudoscience of Economics is based on 30 years experience having economists as colleagues, friends, neighbors and lunchmates. I have played in a weekly poker game with economists. I lived next door to a Nobel-nominated economist for years back in Chicago. I watched Superbowl XLI with him and had to explain what it means to arbitrage a point spread that has moved 10 points.
Plus, if you read any Economics articles, you will find that their math is very unimpressive, and even suspect.
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Economists aren't really useful for anything except propaganda, because you can always find one who'll tell you what you want to hear, no matter how stupid. The combination of nigh impossibility to isolate variables and high economic stakes makes the whole field a bad joke.
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When you hire a consultant to tell you what's wrong with your organization, it's bad practice to hire the same people to do the cleaning up; it creates a perverse incentive.
Re:The basic question is answered...but still... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is more akin to firing the consultant about half way through their analysis, declaring "Yeah, you told us some things were wrong, so we don't need you tell us any more."
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For some reason I doubt that however.
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Yes, but none of that is "basic science". Presumably, they'd be keeping the specialists. Or these scientists will simply need to apply for a new specialist job that will be opening up.
Hard to say what this means, but if all they're doing is cutting the scientists who are trying to prove that it is real, then yeah, they're redundant.
When you've won the war, you send the soldiers home. Keeping a standing army like that has a tendency to cause people to find uses for it and make work.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
When at least some portion of General Relativity was confirmed by the 1919 eclipse, did that mean all the cosmologists could go home, their work done?
Re:The basic question is answered...but still... (Score:5, Informative)
I work in the field, and I don't know any climate scientist out there whose sole job is to prove it's real - the measurements have been out for years empirically showing that the global warming is real. But "real" is a low-level, qualitative conclusion. Right now it's all about understanding and quantifying the causes and consequences, given the empirical data we have and the models we choose to employ.
The models generally agree on certain things (like warming), but there is a huge amount of variation between them in other ways. If anyone doubts that, I invite them to take a look at the abstracts from the most recent Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), or even better, attend it. There's no "right" model, and certainly no "right" + plug-and-play model. IMHO I don't see that happening for a very long time.
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Exactly. Just because a theory has been confirmed in a "larger picture" fashion hardly means there's no work left to do. It's not like cosmology is finished because General Relativity has been largely confirmed, or Proto-Indo-European studies is finished just because we know a large number of languages descended from a common ancestral tongue about 5,000 years ago.
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Re:The basic question is answered...but still... (Score:4, Informative)
From TFA:
Marshall wrote in the memo that climate change is now settled science, and basic research is no longer needed.
“The question has been answered, and the new question is what do we do about it, and how can we find solutions for the climate we will be living with,” he wrote.
CSIRO would now focus on a path where “climate and industry can be partners, now we must walk that path to prove our science.”
We need climate engineers (Score:3)
I agree, but we need more than that - climate engineers who can figure out how to modify the system to prevent the worst effects. I think it's great that among the general population the narrative is to reduce emissions and environmental destruction, but nothing about the nature of humans convinces me that we won't eventually end up having to use engineered solutions to the problem.
Just look at the US elections. Every four years I see a bunch of politicians turn up in some coal town and spout on about how c
Ignore the hype, pay attention to the science (Score:5, Insightful)
No one in climate science is interested in answering those questions. It's all "X is caused by global climate change", where X can be literally anything,
If you read what actual climate scientists say, and not the hype in the press, they in fact don't say "It's all "X is caused by global climate change", where X can be literally anything," Over and over, they say things like, no particular storm can be attributed to global warming-- it's a long term global effect. Over and over and over. But the press likes disaster stories. They'll keep looking until they can find a way to write the story that makes it a disaster story, and bury the "other scientists caution that there's not enough data to attribute X to climate change" on page 2.
with pictures of polar bears in the background.
I've read a lot of papers by climate scientists, and never seen one with "pictures of polar bears in the background." I think I can safely say that if what you're reading has pictures of polar bears in the background, you're reading the popular press, and not a scientific paper. Even the paper (one paper-- count it, one [springer.com]) that talked about dead polar bears in the arctic didn't have pictures of polar bears in the background.
Re:Ignore the hype, pay attention to the science (Score:5, Insightful)
Obligatory PHD Comics: The Science News Cycle [phdcomics.com].
At their most specific, the scientists might say that Climate Change means we'll be more likely to get stronger storms more often, but the media reports it as "Scientists say Current Storm X is directly caused by Climate Change!!!"
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I like the IPCC report summary of effects. Each and every claim had an attached confidence level. That's the sort of thing I want to see with predictions. Of course, it makes for really crappy sound bites. "New York will wash away" sells more clicks than "We're pretty sure that sea level will rise by X meters or more over Y time".
Science reporting (Score:3)
But the press likes disaster stories.
Yes they do and in general the popular press is REALLY bad at science reporting. I've had a few direct interactions with science reporters for our local paper and holy cow they were a bunch of idiots. They mostly have NO training in the scientific method, their knowledge of technology and science is severely lacking, and they ask incredibly stupid questions and misunderstand the answers. Worse they often come in with an agenda about what they are going to report about and will twist any facts you give th
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And, since we know Mars and Venus are also getting warmer, it must be the Martian's fault.
Well, given that we don't know that Mars and Venus are getting warmer we don't have to look for causes for that nonexistent warming.
How much of the change is likely to be caused by which of the several known factors, and potentially unknown factors?
If there are unknown factors causing the warming then there are also unknown factors causing cooling that happens to exactly balance the unknown factors causing warming, since the observed warming fits pretty damn well the known factors that can cause warming. Or maybe we should just use Occam's razor?
What is the long-term temperature trend, based on long-term actual data (as opposed to COUGH corrections COUGH made up on the spot and added to the data).
The long term temperature trend is slightly cooled the corrections that are
Own opinions, not ignore facts. Mars ice caps melt (Score:3)
The fact is, the ice caps are Mars are indeed melting. Look at the data yourself. You're entitled to your own opinion about what we should do about that, if anything, but the fact is each time we send a probe to Mars, the ice caps there are smaller. The principal investigator for the Mars Orbiter Camera, Michael Malin, says the martian polar ice cap is shrinking at "a prodigious rate." You can look for yourself and compare the pictures even from 1999-2005; it's visibly noticeable even in that short time
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If I'm getting warmer because of a fever, and the chicken breast in my oven is also getting warmer, they must be related or neither is really getting warmer. CHECKMATE AL GORE!
Delete your account you stupid fuck.
What scientists do (Score:5, Informative)
So tell me, what do yuo consider science?
Taking data, analyzing data, making models, verifying models, refining models, taking more data, taking more data.
All the stuff that climate scientists actually do, and climate deniers don't.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Except that "verifying models" step. None of the climate models are making better predictions than the null hypothesis, or for that matter than the "lgw blindly asserting it's getting colder" model. Global temperatures have been remarkably steady for the past 19 years or so, and while that's within the error bars for most of these models, it's better predicted by the null hypothesis, and within the error bars if you take any of these models and put a "-" in front on their predicted temperature change. So
Data [Re:What scientists do] (Score:3, Informative)
Except that "verifying models" step. None of the climate models are making better predictions than the null hypothesis,
About all I can say to that is "sorry, but you are wrong.".
or for that matter than the "lgw blindly asserting it's getting colder" model. Global temperatures have been remarkably steady for the past 19 years or so,
Sorry, but you are wrong. Here is the data from four groups on three different continents: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/resea... [nasa.gov] temperatures have not been "remarkably steady for the past 19 years or so" - they have been rising. and while that's within the error bars for most of these models, it's better predicted by the null hypothesis, and within the error bars if you take any of these models and put a "-" in front on their predicted temperature c
Re:What scientists do (Score:4, Insightful)
Horseshit. CO2 is rising. By simple laws of radiative physics this must result in warming. What alternate possibility do you imagine exists?
No one is debating how CO2 works. What's the cost-benefit analysis on human action going forward? What are the feedback loops, in both directions, and how much does this matter? What's the dominant factor in determining future temperatures on Earth? (Hint: it's yellow)
Re:The basic question is answered...but still... (Score:4, Funny)
Yes, that's what climate scientists are trying to do. They want to take your money and give it to their friends.
It must be a burden for you to have such brilliant insights in the face of all the stupid, stupid scientists.
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...in the face of all the stupid, stupid scientists.
They're not stupid. They're a huge success. Their plan has been working great for many years. It's very lucrative.
Re:The basic question is answered...but still... (Score:5, Funny)
Wait. Let me try to wrap my head around this argument. You're saying that global warming is an excuse for politicians to steal our money so they can give it to climate scientists? Because climate scientists are their buddies?
I'm speechless. Gobsmacked. Utterly bereft of words to express the stupidity of this argument.
Let me read what you wrote again, in case I missed something and have got it wrong:
Nope. That's what you said. I think I need to sit down. This level of stupidity is giving me vertigo.
Funny... (Score:2)
I'm surprised that /. would like to the definition of schadenfreude. It seems like every slashdotter is WELL acquainted with that principle.
The science is not settled (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone that tells you the science is settled is not a scientist.... they are a politician wanting to shutdown inquiry on an issue and install dogma in its place.
Science is not dogma, and if someone who is a scientist tells you that "The science is settled"; that is really just their personal opinion on the topic, And it should be taken to assume that the research results they produce might be accidentally (or maliciously) biased to reflect results consistent to the bit of science they would claim to be "settled".
Re:The science is not settled (Score:4, Insightful)
The earth being round.
The earth orbiting the sun.
Space time can be curved.
Science IS settled on a lot of issues. AGW is a new one, but something we can do something about (well, 10 years ago).
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Here are some things science is settled on: The earth being round. The earth orbiting the sun. Space time can be curved. Science IS settled on a lot of issues. AGW is a new one, but something we can do something about (well, 10 years ago).
It's the year 2016, and the Flat Earth Society still exists...as in humans who still believe the Earth is flat, in the face of the ISS orbiting above us, and pictures from our Moon.
It's hard to call things "settled" around humans. We tend to be a rather ignorant lot.
More proof you say? Well, there is this "new one" we call religion...
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You'll never get 100 percent on any subject. If that's your standard nothing will ever be settled.
Re:The science is not settled (Score:4, Interesting)
That last one is pretty key. For some reason that is the primary focus of all anti-CO2 actions despite that being the least tested hypothesis. The geologic evidence is the exact opposite being that the warmer periods of the planet have had the most prolific life and the coldest periods have had most of the mass extinctions.
What makes people think the climate of pre-industrial humanity is the "ideal" climate? Transitioning may be hard, but shouldn't we determine what the optimal climate is before spending resources trying to control it? Wouldn't those resources be better spent on transitioning if a warmer planet is indeed better for life?
Re: The science is not settled (Score:4, Insightful)
The scientific method means any theory can be overturned in principle. But in practice we know some won't be. Anyone telling you the science isn't settled on Evolution because nothing is ever settled in science is being just as disingenuous as you are.
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And you equating evolution and the Earths orbit with climate science, as it pertains to how "settled" those sciences are, is disingenuous.
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Considering the Earth orbiting (roughly) the sun is something we can measure and use to refine and improve orbital models is a prime difference between it and climate science. Give the Earth a few more climate cycles that we can judge against the models we have developed and then maybe I'll put more stock into climate change predictions.
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Your point would be so much better expressed if you understood the difference between having a common ancestor and evolving from.
Here's a handy infographic to help
http://www.iupui.edu/~mstd/a10... [iupui.edu]
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Your point would be so much better expressed if you understood the difference between having a common ancestor and evolving from
Well, you're both a little wrong. Humans ARE apes. Specifically, we belong to the taxonomic classification that includes all Great Apes. Strictly speaking non-human apes and human apes both descended from apes. And even if you use the common meaning the the word "ape" to mean only non-human apes, humans still descended from apes, just not the extant species of modern non-human apes. (If GP had said humans descended from monkeys, on the other hand, you'd have a valid point.)
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We did NOT evolve from the great apes. We evolved from a common ancestor. Though we share much of our DNA with Chimpanzees and other great apes our lineage diverged from theirs a LONG time ago. They have evolved independently from us for that same amount of time. The common ancestor we share looks nothing like either humans or great apes (speculated to look much like a Lemur).
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I agree.
Or they are someone who, as somebody who is *not* a scientist, as you have noted above, does not believe that further scientific study in the area would add any further understanding of value, and so the money is, in their view, more wisely spent elsewhere. They could be entirely wrong in this view, but they have it nonetheless.
Do not
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Or they are someone who, as somebody who is *not* a scientist, as you have noted above, does not believe that further scientific study in the area would add any further understanding of value, and so the money is, in their view, more wisely spent elsewhere. They could be entirely wrong in this view, but they have it nonetheless.
Or as a scientist examining different questions, they see bigger returns on money spent elsewhere.
Or as an established scientist examining the question, they see further study by others as potentially conflicting with their own findings.
Or as a scientist examining the question, they see no testable predictions (string theory anyone?) and therefore reject the field from characterization as a science. But in this simple case, a politician funded by big coal finds an organized group armed with inconvenient
What we don't know; everything (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a turn of phrase in this case, but we know that man's emissions cause some aspect of the climate change we're seeing.
"Some aspect" where the exact amount is undefined.
Oh, and the total amount of warming we'll see is undefined.
Oh, and the amount of warming that is harmful is undefined.
Oh, and the benefits to the world from a warmer climate are undefined.
Oh, and the mechanism that triggers an ice age is undefined.
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Pretty much, yes, although "undefined" here doesn't mean "we don't know anything". That's why we need more research.
The warming is mostly caused by human activity, but there's lots of other small effects. The total amount of warming we'll see is likely to be within certain limits, but there's a lot of stuff we don't know. There will be some benefits, including some we don't suspect yet, and some problems, and we have strong reason to think that it's going to net out as seriously harmful. That, in mor
Interesting bit from article (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, I know you're not supposed to read the article. You find out all sorts of interesting things like the fact that noone was actually fired, they were re-assigned to other stuff. You also find out why some of the stuff they were doing was interesting.
But the thing that caught my attention with shades of "we have to pass the bill before we know what it does" was that one of the reasons given not to transfer the people was that they were needed to figure out what the recent climate agreement actually meant.
So apparently the climate agreement was so badly expressed that the several people who were not transferred away from basic climate research are not sufficient to figure out what it actually meant?
Didn't Kerry block the language change that would have made it require anything?
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Without looking at it, I doubt the agreement was so complicated as to require a major research effort to figure out what it means. It covers a complicated subject, and it may well require a major research effort to figure out what it implies, or the best way to meet treaty requirements, or something like that.
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I also don't understand this:
“The situation is very bad here,” the scientist said. “Eighty percent of our climate capability will be gone; it is clear that climate modeling will be cut completely.”
So.. by laying people off, you are going to break your climate?
Perhaps that has been the problem all along... we need to make more jobs to increase our climate capability!
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Quoting from the article
"Marshall has said that no one would be fired and the staff would be redistributed."
Short sighted (Score:2)
...Turnbull’s government has also emphasized science that can be easily commercialized...
It seems to me that climate scientists would be a key part of any strategies, techniques, and technologies that are developed to either counteract or accommodate global warming. Future work in this area will be heavily commercialized, just as wind and solar power and electric vehicles are commercialized today. Sounds like Turnbull is thumbing his nose at a big economic opportunity. Not to mention that, in some sense, he seems to be selling out his fellow human beings for a bit of short-term political capita
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Harper did the same thing in Canada by making our research focus on things that were more commercially viable rather than longer term science. Doing basic R&D is the proper way to grow the economy in the long term. But business wants help to put out new products in the near term and so that's what governments are doing. I haven't heard any announcements from the new Trudeau government reversing this business oriented stance though I haven't been looking at everything they've announced so I may have miss
Nothing more to learn (Score:2)
110 climatologists' next job prospect... (Score:2)
"Do you want fries with that?"
Suddenly global warming is the least of their problems....
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Okay, assume the climate science is settled (Score:2)
If it's settled that human-emitted carbon is warming up our climate that might mean fewer jobs for climatologists, but it will mean a lot more jobs for reactor builders and people who can assemble and pilot supertanker loads of iron dust.
Wait just a minute! (Score:4, Insightful)
With no "climate scientists", when every single prediction from the models come out wrong again, who will go back, adjust the models, and then retro-predict real life?
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Hollywood
Re:Wait just a minute! (Score:5, Insightful)
Myth: The predictions/models are always wrong.
Reality: Global surface temperature measurements fall within the range of IPCC projections. Models successfully reproduce temperatures since 1900 globally, by land, in the air and the ocean.
You seem to lack understanding of the relativeness or kinds of wrong.
IE, you seem to equate "wrong" with anything less than 100% accuracy and precision.
That's not how science works, particularly data driven science. A key concept here is the meanings of Precision and Accuracy, which are not the same thing:
http://withfriendship.com/imag... [withfriendship.com]
You can be completely wrong (or 'not even wrong'): "gravity is from unicorn farts!"
You can be partly wrong but still on the right track: "we predicted of rise of 0.5, but found only 0.4"
You can be right, but for the wrong reason: "we predicted a rise of 0.5 because unicorn farts, but it turned out to be from CO2"
You can be totally right and have the perfect outcome.
You appear to only recognize last possibility, and demand that anything else be discarded out of hand.
But that isn't reality or proper scientific understanding.
Posts such as yours are not insightful, nor does it show any actual understanding of what takes place, let alone is it all reflective of reality and what the scientists have actually been doing.
I guess in summary what I mean is: you're an idiot.
https://www.skepticalscience.c... [skepticalscience.com]
https://www.skepticalscience.c... [skepticalscience.com]
http://www.latimes.com/science... [latimes.com]
http://climatenexus.org/debunk... [climatenexus.org]
Ah yes, the meeting of Politics and Science (Score:4, Insightful)
Seems the lessons of history must be learned over and over. Mixing up politics and science, religion and science or even politics and religion is generally always a bad idea. How soon we forget and each subsequent generation repeats the same mistakes..
Well, at least we know what to expect..
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The lesson to be learned is that it works well for the politicians and religious leaders. It also works well for the scientists who support those leaders.
It is only bad for everyone else -- i.e., those don't matter. And very bad for the scientists who don't go along with the status quo.
The germ theory of disease is settled, too. (Score:2)
So I guess there's no reason to spend any more money on microbiology or antibiotics research.
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Actually, that's what we need to be spending our money on and we don't seem to be doing that at all in the "climate science" area. The propaganda machine has been whining that the sky is falling. Once you embrace that, it's simply time to move on. You move on how to fix the problem or survive it.
Chicken Little becomes irrelevant the moment that people start listening to him.
There's some well regarded English figurehead of some sort that's basically been saying this for a long time now. "OK, we're fucked. No
ExxonMobil is hiring (Score:2)
All the propaganda outlets assure me that Gore-Bull Warming is all a conspiracy to keep those evul scientists rolling in dough. Well, all they have to do is start working for the other side.
Australians (Score:2)
Australians can spell "axe" properly.
ZOMG Crisis! (Score:2)
Silencing science (Score:2)
So, when did Canada's former Prime Minister Stephen Harper move to Australia?
The "Schadenfreude" will get stuck in your throat. (Score:2)
"Die Schadenfreude wird Dir im Hals stecken bleiben."
Schadenfreude will get back at you.
Is a term deeming the people that experience "Schadenfreude" to be susceptible for the upcomming or imminent threat to experience also a same of a kind situation from the opposite side.
Because people that experience "Schadenfreude" tend not to concentrate on their own problems.
(Example: A car driver laughs about the owner of a broken luxury car, and does not concentrate on the car driving in front of him, where the drive
Comedy (Score:3)
TL;DR - the Why of it (Score:5, Informative)
It isn't until you get to the last paragraph that TFA finally gives you the underlying cause of this astonishingly shortsighted and imminently disastrous decision:
“Climate science becomes secondary to business; business comes first
So there you have it. The ability to make money trumps EVERYTHING. Kind of answers the question of why we never see aliens. If all intelligent species tend towards a capitalist society, they all end up committing environmental suicide.
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Errr...you mean the U.S. government that recently signed on to the latest climate protocol by the U.N. The government headed by Obama who has been warning about global climate warming? Is that the government you are thinking about? Stop watching TV, it is bad for you.
Re:TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership)? (Score:4, Informative)
The "Government" didn't sign it. Obama did.
Without enabling legislation or ratification as a treaty, it's fancy toilet paper from a legal point of view.
Re:If it's "settled", it ISN'T "science" (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why I test gravity every day by jumping off of the Empire State Building.
At a certain point you have to get off the shitter and act on the information you have. Sitting around while you go from 99.99% certainty to 99.999% certainty is inefficient.
Re:If it's "settled", it ISN'T "science" (Score:5, Insightful)
Science is based in SKEPTICISM and PROOF.
That's true... but what I've noticed is that far too often, the people who call themselves climate skeptics aren't skeptical at all; they are absolutely credulous-- to anything they hear that denies the reality of global warming. Garbage articles that could be debunked in two minutes of thinking get picked up and passed along with notes of "see? it's all a HOAX!"
One-sided skepticism isn't skepticism at all. Skepticism doesn't consist of "I don't care what you say, I won't believe it, but I'll believe anything the other guys say, no matter how goofy." If you want to say you're a skeptic: be equally skeptical of both sides.
Real science doesn't consist of repeated skepticism, in fact; that goes nowhere. Real science consists of getting better data and improving understanding.
Re:If it's "settled", it ISN'T "science" (Score:5, Insightful)
Most skeptics couldn't tell good science from bad science if their life depended on it, they're just borderline conspiracy theorists who has decided that the establishment or mainstream media are pushing an agenda with cherry-picked data, flawed models and spurious reasoning to give a false, but plausible impression. And because they've found some whack jobs contradicting it they think they're part of a small elite who haven't bought into the lies. They're just as much sheep as the sheep they despise, just going in the opposite direction of the herd.
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Well said.
Oblig. Winston Churchill quote, "A bigot is someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject"
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Gravity, from our understanding of Newton's laws, we now know Newton was wrong (technically) but close enough (approximately correct). We know this because Einstein's models are more accurate (and yet .. still not correct). The problem with science is that it evolves as we gain understanding. AGW has so many different variables in it, that it is bound to be wrong, and we can't even tell how wrong it is.
This is why people use terms like "consensus" instead of "proven", because quite frankly it is still hypot
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Very well said.
Re:If it's "settled", it ISN'T "science" (Score:4, Informative)
All models are wrong. Some are useful. All climate models are wrong, particularly since this is really complicated stuff we don't understand as much as we'd like, but we can make some predictions fairly reliably and have confidence that they'll happen more or less as we predict.
There is no such thing as proven science. The best we can get is science sufficiently solid that the overwhelming consensus of involved scientists would be astonishment if it were to break, and we've had that happen before. If we speak of settled science (which is relative, not absolute), we speak of science that has a pretty much universal consensus.
AGW is a theory, not a hypothesis. It's not only a collection of observations, but has explanatory power and ties into other well-established science. Like any other scientific theory, it's got holes and almost certainly has some wrong assumptions. We know that the planetary surface is warming up, and we know that we're causing a lot of that, and therefore AGW is happening. We're fuzzy on a lot of details.
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A much easier test is to look up every-time you drop something.
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Old R. Feynman joke.
'Quantum mechanics says there is a chance it will fall up, When it does, I don't want to miss it.'
Re:If it's "settled", it ISN'T "science" (Score:4, Interesting)
" I'd also suggest that if you really want to find out what's going on, follow the money. There's lots and lots of grant money out there for people in that field, but only if their results match what the politicians need to push their agendas."
I really find astounding this argument appears once and again. It's like... hippies hold all the money, not the big oil corps.
I imagine in the seventies was more or less the same: health problems with tobacco? It's an hoax. Just follow the money. There's lots and lots of grant money out there for people in that field, but only if their results match what the politicians need to push their agendas.
The money and therefore, if any, the politicians being bought is in the side of the oil corps.
Re:If it's "settled", it ISN'T "science" (Score:4, Interesting)
The people saying "global warming" are all paid to say "global warming" to get/keep Government funding, so that government can dictate to everyone (except rich n powerful) that we need to give up every technology that makes the world run.
The fact is, ever number has been fudged to get the results they are wanting, to prove what they need to prove, to keep getting funding to support something that has no basis except "consensus"
When every major prediction has failed, the the consensus cannot be right. I remember all those predictions of "worse hurricanes" followed by "almost no hurricanes", and "Polar Ice caps disappearing" only to have "polar Ice caps expanding (which is now the new "proof" of global warming), on down the line.
not to mention the Greening of Africa, when it was supposed to be getting drier and more desert like: http://news.nationalgeographic... [nationalgeographic.com]
The problem isn't Global warming, it is that EVERYTHING is blamed on it. Ice growing or shrinking .. GLOBAL WARMING, more snow GLOBAL WARMING, more rain and greening in Africa GLOBAL WARMING!
In fact, global warming may in fact be good for the planet, even if it isn't good for Humans. ;)
Re:If it's "settled", it ISN'T "science" (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If it's "settled", it ISN'T "science" (Score:5, Informative)
Proof is for mathematics and liquor. The fact that you don't know that shows you know fuck all about science.
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