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Andy Mayhew at 06:58 AM on 18 January 2012New research from last week 2/2012
As someone who has been assessing Corbyn's forecasts for some years, I have long suspected (though it's unproven)that he updates them based on latest numerical model guidance - his about turn with regards December 2011 for Britain (he went from the coldest on record, to an unsettled, 'zonal' month) appears to be in keeping with this belief. When all model guidance went against him, he issued a completely new forecast which, coincidently went aog with what the modls (and the MetO and others) were indicating. I don't know which forecasts he will be providing for this weather test: the ones he issues months in advance or the ones he issues at the start of each month (which invariably tend to be more accurate for the first 2 weeks than the latter 2). But I am confident those involved know what they are doing and that the final assessment will be fair and open. -
funglestrumpet at 06:41 AM on 18 January 2012Patrick Michaels: Serial Deleter of Inconvenient Data
Re. my further thoughts @16 in yesterday's (16th Jan) posts under the 'Issue of the Week' item. Michaels would seem to be exactly the sort of person I am targetting. -
funglestrumpet at 05:45 AM on 18 January 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #2
Further thoughts I am of the opinion that many of the mis-information brigade will face sanction as the full effects of climate change become obvious to the wider public and they can see just how much danger these persons/organisations have placed them and their families in. As an aid to any possible future criminal proceedings or private prosecutions this site could have a section where instances of disseminating falsehoods were itemised together with the science current at the time of the offence by way of evidence. On top of that, this site could take it upon itself to write to the miscreants pointing out the error of their ways and requesting a retraction (of identical prominence) together with recording any continued failings after the issuance of such notice. These mis-informers should be offered the opportunity to record a paragraph outlining the fundamental basis for their position, citing any relevant peer-reviewed papers in support. I imagine such a record would be of value to any seeking to prosecute either via the criminal legal system or via private prosecution in civil courts. If nothing else, it should give pause to certain individuals who seem to think that their name, reputation or title will protect them from any charge of deliberately endangering life by hindering the political processes necessary to enact legislation essential to combating climate change. Having a title, say, and/or a deep seated psychological need to be the centre of attention would need psychiatric evidence in support if advanced as a defence. Just to be clear, I see this covering not only individuals, but organisations such as media organs and scientific journals whose peer-review process can be shown to be suspect. Any known funding issues should be listed. That should allow the dragnet to catch the fossil fuel industry executives, which should wipe the smile of their collective faces. Heaven knows, as things stand, they must be laughing all the way to the bank. In short, we should go up a gear, if only for the sake of our families. -
pbjamm at 05:05 AM on 18 January 2012The Debunking Handbook: now freely available for download
The NCSE (National Center for Science Education) Picks Fight Against Climate Science Deniers Perhaps SkS can team up with these guys. -
CBDunkerson at 04:53 AM on 18 January 2012Naomi Oreskes' study on consensus was flawed
EnergyPolemist, it would be difficult for Oreskes to have 'possibly understated the level of consensus'... given that she found 0% disagreement. This is not to say that there are not any peer reviewed papers which disagree with the consensus that humans are responsible for most of the warming over the past ~50 years. Oreskes' study didn't find any, but that wasn't meant to suggest that none exist... just to demonstrate that they are so vanishingly rare that the claims of a huge scientific controversy on the issue were nonsense. You'd have to do a much more thorough search to find out that the actual value is something like 0.00023%. -
EnergyPolemist at 04:38 AM on 18 January 2012Naomi Oreskes' study on consensus was flawed
Sorry for the long comments, but I have another one. The sceptics claim that Oreske type studies miss the point about the political nature of science funding. They say that the reason why so many studies agree with the anthropogenic perspective is that you need to be part of the consensus to get funding. I.e., that scientists follow the money. Another point often made is that money or not, you have more chances of being published if you work within the dominant paradigm. After all, you won't see many Marxist or Libertarian papers in mainstream economics journals. Does this mean that Marxist or Libertarian theory is wrong? One thing for sure, you will never convince Marxists or Libertarians of this by saying that "99% of articles in peer-reviewed economics journals agree with mainstream (neo-classical/neo-keynesian) theory". However, I believe the political nature of science is exagerated in physical sciences (as opposed to social sciences). I believe that in many fields, there is no consensus. So what might be useful to silence the sceptics would be comparative studies - compare Oreskes (or the study I proposed above) to other bibliometric reviews. If you can show that there is an unusually robust consensus in climate science, that might be more convincing... -
Bob Lacatena at 04:27 AM on 18 January 2012Puget Sound, Under Threat From Ocean Acidification, Put on "Waters of Concern" List
24, Pirate, I never said they didn't require more study. In fact my exact words were "Further study of ocean acidification in estuaries is warranted because..." I said that such studies are important in addressing the immediate problem, but the uncertainties are not a valid excuse for ignoring the additional, constant influx of CO2 into the oceans due to fossil fuel use, which represents a problem which will dwarf the current issue, and which will have few if any viable solutions once it comes to pass. Yes, the CO2 already released is going to be there a long time, as will every gigaton of CO2 that we add between now and the future on our path to 560 ppm. How can you recognize the first factor, without being at all cognizant of the second? We are "whimsically" burning fossil fuels when American housewives drive 4 ton SUVs by themselves two miles to the grocery store and back, every day, instead of using a more fuel efficient vehicle and more sensible practices. We are "whimsically" burning fossil fuels when companies consider it cost effective to fly an employee from the USA to Germany for a two hour meeting, and then to turn around after the meeting and fly them straight back without even time for a meal let alone an overnight stay, several times a month (my brother did this for years). Odd that you talk about the need for changes and solutions, when your own approach amounts to "we better study more before we act" and "we better study something else and ignore the larger, well-understood and quantified problem." Everything you say points to delay, ignore and business-as-usual. The scientists under discussion flat out said that 560 ppm was going to account for 49% to 82% of a pH drop that was going to be much larger than today's, but instead you choose to focus on what we don't know about estuaries and stop your thought process dead, right there. And in the next breath your make your own lack of foresight evident when you talk about solving the problem within our children's lifetimes. As long as you don't need to solve the problem (because, after all, you think you can't, because you won't even recognize it or attempt to try), it doesn't need one ounce of your attention. So you blatantly want to pass the problem on to all of our children. That is so lame. -
EnergyPolemist at 04:20 AM on 18 January 2012Naomi Oreskes' study on consensus was flawed
I am not a "climate sceptic", far from it, having had the chance to discuss the topic in depth with various scientists. However, I do think that the points raised by Dellewho need to be considered. I have done a lot of "bibliometric" research, which is basically what Oreskes did. With bibliometrics, you need to find the right keyword combination to capture as many relevant publications as possible while excluding the irrelevant. It's not easy. No matter what the keyword combo, you will either end up missing a lot of papers (because your keywords were too strict) or the opposite (if your keywords were too wide). I believe that a lot of papers who might AGREE with the consensus view might not mention "climate change" in their abstract. Like adelady above, I doubt that many sceptics would NOT include those words though. So if anything, Oreskes might have understated the level of consensus! BUT, this needs to be verified. I think a more comprehensive study is needed, one that makes explicit the keyword strategy, and that compares and discusses various alternative strategies (bibliometrics is like statistics, you will get different results with different strategies). I doubt this will result in any significant change in Oreskes' conclusions, but it might help to silence the sceptics... By the way, I am available to do such as study if anyone has funding :) -
apiratelooksat50 at 03:42 AM on 18 January 2012Puget Sound, Under Threat From Ocean Acidification, Put on "Waters of Concern" List
Sphaerica at 23 Starting at paragraph 6... You could not be more wrong in your statement about estuaries and natural factors not requiring further study on the effects of anthropogenic CO2. According to Heely's paper about 25% of the impact to a bay/fjord/estuary system is currently coming from anthropogenic CO2. The rest comes from anthropogenic and natural sources on land. Natural sources from land probably can't be managed, but if we can learn how to manage the anthropogenic input then we greatly reduce pressure on the aquatic systems that are a source for a lot of our food supply. Actions like that essentially buy time while we wean ourselves off fossil fuels. The CO2 already released into the biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere is going to be there for a very long time even if a miracle energy source were to be developed tomorrow. That doesn't appear likely and furthermore there are not any likely short-term solutions. We are not "whimsically" burning fossil fuels. I don't need to list the reasons we use them, but I know right now that my children and yours live vastly more comfortable and safe lives because we do. I don't think it will happen in mine and your lifetimes, but I do think that within our children's lifetimes we will have solved most of our energy problems. And, hopefully we can solve a lot of our other environmental problems. There are going to be an awful lot more humans by the end the century. To gnash one's teeth about the need for changes without offering solutions is poignant in and of itself. -
Albatross at 03:39 AM on 18 January 2012Patrick Michaels: Serial Deleter of Inconvenient Data
prokaryotes @20, So can we assume that Upton (a staunch anti-science Republican and denies that we need to reduce our GHG emissions) turned a blind eye and failed to follow up? It would not surprise me. Nothing these anti-science extremists do surprises me anymore. -
Albatross at 03:33 AM on 18 January 2012New research from last week 2/2012
Hi PaulD @6, That assessment bothers me. How do we know that Corbyn and Bastardi are not using the numerical weather prediction model guidance, perhaps even the exact same guidance that the Met Office is using? I do not like this idea one bit, is is going to be too easy for Corbyn and Bastardi to cheat. Unless the officiators stipulate that they see the output from Corbyn's algorithm to make sure that his forecasts are consistent with his own methodology. Do you perhaps know where we can find out more about this assessment? Thanks. -
skept.fr at 02:06 AM on 18 January 2012Lessons from the Whitehouse-Annan Wager
Typo : "another byprodct" > another "byproduct" -
2012 SkS Weekly Digest #2
No way to search comment threads (just the original posts), which is frustrating when I know someone has written something relevant, and I want to refer to it. The search capability is, while sometimes helpful, rather crude. I, too, go to the great Googley when I need to find something. -
Kevin C at 02:03 AM on 18 January 2012Lessons from the Whitehouse-Annan Wager
The completeness issues with HADCRUT3 are certainly sufficient to render any conclusion based on short-term behaviour of the index dubious. Here is a comparison of the global coverage of the major indices, using data from December 2005:
The number of stations is not a direct indicator of coverage: GISTEMP achieves much better coverage by allowing every station to cover an equal circle of 1200km radius, where in HADCRUT the coverage of a station is a 5x5degree box, which gets smaller as you move to higher latitudes. Can we find out what the impact of the lack of coverage of HADCRUT is? Tom Curtis suggested a simple approach which I've now implemented. Gridded anomaly maps are produced by all 3 sources. I downloaded all of these, and put them on a common 1x1 degree grid. As a check I made sure I could reproduce the published temperature series from my gridded maps. Then I tried blanking out any cell in the GISTEMP map which was also missing in the corresponding HADCRUT map from the same month. I calculated a temperature series for the resulting map. The results are shown in the following graphs: (a) 60 month moving averageCRU GISS NCDC BEST Number of stations 1451 ≥2796 2796 16340 Coverage: Land 65% 99% 89% 99% Coverage: Ocean 87% 98% 94% Coverage: Global 81% 98% 92% Map 2005/12 
(b) 12 month moving average from 1970
What this tells us is that if the GISTEMP temperature reconstruction is correct, then we would expect HADCRUT to underestimate temperatures since 2001 simply on the basis of its poor sampling of the temperature field. That is exactly what we do observe. That doesn't prove that GISTEMP is right, but it is strong evidence that HADCRUT shouldn't be relied upon. We'll know more once BEST release a gridded dataset.
Why does the divergence only occur after 2001? I did an additional set of comparisons masking all the maps with single years of data, either 1985 or 2007. The 2007-masked data shows about twice the divergence as the 1985-masked data. That suggests that roughly half the divergence is due to changes in coverage since 2000, while the other half is due to changes in the geographical distribution of anomalies changing the effect of the missing data.
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Bob Lacatena at 01:03 AM on 18 January 2012Puget Sound, Under Threat From Ocean Acidification, Put on "Waters of Concern" List
22, Pirate, Let's make it simple. As we have discussed elsewhere, for many tens of millions of years there has been exactly the same amount of carbon in the ocean/atmopshere/biosphere system. It is very, very hard to add more to the system, and doing so generally occurs on very large timescales (i.e. millions of years). The same CO2 cycles among those three areas, with vast stores kept well sequestered underground (fossil fuels and rock) and in the deep oceans (sediments). The largest variation in the distribution of carbon occurs between glacial periods, where levels in the atmosphere increase by 105 ppm from about 180 ppm to 285 ppm of the course of several thousand years. At this point in time, in two hundred years, we have sucked 337 Gt of carbon out of the ground and added it to the system. That's 337 Gt that have been stored underground for hundreds of millions of years. There are only three places for it to go, the atmosphere, the oceans and into biomatter. It's not going to preferentially go into biomatter, or the atmosphere. It's going to go everywhere. So if we go from the 395 ppm that we're at now to 560 ppm, an increase of another 175 ppm over the 110 ppm that we have already added, then a very large and noticeable chunk of that will go into the oceans. Ocean pH will fall. Recognizing this does not require a knowledge of estuaries and natural factors. It does not require further study. Yes, other factors at present are dangerous, require study, and may require action. But all of that will be moot if we continue to whimsically burn fossil fuels at the current rate. Further study of ocean acidification in estuaries is warranted because there are lots of ways to foul up the planet and we'd like to understand all of them. Further study is not needed to find reasons to ignore the dire implications of continuing to burn fossil fuels at a preposterous rate while we patiently other study things in order to figure out just how badly we've messed up by ignoring the obvious. As far as your assertion that you would not play even one round of Russian Roulette, your behavior and comments say otherwise, because you already are (and it's all the more poignant that you don't even know that you are playing). -
Paul D at 00:23 AM on 18 January 2012New research from last week 2/2012
Piers Corbyn is taking part in a weather forecasting accuracy assessment organised by the BBC, along with others, including Joe Bastardi and The Met Office. -
CBDunkerson at 23:52 PM on 17 January 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #1
On the general issue of 'moderation bias' raised by he of the various 'ch' names... I've seen instances which looked like overly generous and overly strict application of the comments policy to both 'sides' of the debate. With multiple moderators you are going to have multiple tolerance levels and inevitably some inconsistent results. That said, I'd agree that the best policy is to err against the 'status quo' of the website. This is a site for debunking 'skeptic' myths... thus, a suspicion of anti-skeptic bias is inevitable. The best way to counter that (to the small degree possible) is to allow skeptics somewhat wider latitude and those who agree with the consensus less. My general impression is that this was the case a couple of years ago, but that the balance has gradually shifted the other way as more and more 'skeptics' have stopped by to 'contribute' to the site. However, it would also be nice if there were some way to inform people why their posts were removed. I've had some disappear that I have no idea what the reason was. For instance, I recall responding to a 'skeptic' post suggesting that 'whether you call it recent cooling or a pause in warming since 1998 the consensus is still wrong' with a two sentence reply saying that 'most people call it continued warming'... the response was removed, but the original post with the 'no warming since 1998' myth remained unchallenged and I don't know what I did 'wrong'. -
CBDunkerson at 23:35 PM on 17 January 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #2
Ease of use is about an 8. Primary difficulty is finding things. In addition to suggestions above about improved search, reshuffling various 'special features' to be more visible/organized, and/or adding an e-mail notification system... it might be worthwhile to have a link for users to see their own posts so that they can check if there has been any follow up. While this is technically possible now, it requires pre-knowledge of the URL structure and a sufficient degree of OCD to track down one's user number through trial and error (and yes, I'm user #1534 :]). Most regulars use the 'Comments' link to try to keep track of conversations, but that means at least skimming everything which gets discussed here... being able to go directly to the few conversations you've commented on to check for updates would be much easier. -
CBDunkerson at 23:24 PM on 17 January 2012New research from last week 2/2012
Looking at these posts makes one appreciate just how staggering the amount of information the IPCC processes must be. Likely there is a degree of pre-filtering provided by the amount of subsequent attention various papers attract, but I've seen some fairly obscure references in the IPCC reports as well. It is also interesting to note that 'anti-consensus' papers seem to get published fairly frequently... which runs against 'skeptic' claims of a 'grand conspiracy to hide the Truth' (though the total number of papers being published also shows how absurd that is), but also indicates more skeptical scientists than I'd thought were still about. Ironically we seem to hear alot more about the ones who publish seldom or never but spread disinformation to the media. -
JMurphy at 22:50 PM on 17 January 2012New research from last week 2/2012
Piers Corbyn would probably be a worthwhile subject for a rebuttal, seeing as how he always seems to predict great freeze-ups and is favoured by quite a few naive so-called skeptics : who prefer his secretive astrology to proper science. No surprise there, then... -
hank at 22:26 PM on 17 January 2012Arctic methane outgassing on the E Siberian Shelf part 1 - the background
You quoted from the abstract of http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/rcm.5290/full: "values near gas hydrates .... can thus be interpreted to result from either the gas source or associated microbial processes" The paper isn't saying samples found near a gas hydrate definitely came from the gas hydrate. It's discussing whether it's possible to tell that or not. Answer: maybe. A clearer description is in the Conclusion: "CONCLUSIONS ... These results suggest than any measured changes in the isotopic values of environmental samples are a direct result of some other fractionation process, such as a different gas source or microbial processes."j The word 'different' was omitted from the Abstract. The ratio may be useful to identify gas found in the water as originating either from gas hydrate or from "a different gas source or microbial process" -- but they found an unexpected change in ratio during formation of the hydrate which is going to take more lab work to characterize before this test can be relied on, if it can. -
Esop at 22:05 PM on 17 January 2012New research from last week 2/2012
What I find curious are Cohens claim of overall NH cooling since 1988. In at least most of Scandinavia and large parts of the US, the exact opposite is the case, except for winters 09/10 and 10/11. Seems that Cohens forecast for the 2011/12 Northern European winter was a warm one, just like the MET office forecast. Spot on so far. Funny to note that Piers Corbyn, the favorite forecaster of the Mayor of London, who lucked out last year, failed miserably this year. The MSM didn't print anything on that failure, though, as they only hassle the MET office, not the professional disinformers. -
Tristan at 22:04 PM on 17 January 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #2
Onsite search engine is only good for certain queries. Some pithy comments about the opposite team sneak through but I think it's been improving of late. 9/10 for user-friendliness. Given that SkS has quite a strong community, are there any plans to implement community functions ie. off-topic forums, meet and greets etc? -
TheTracker at 21:11 PM on 17 January 2012New research from last week 2/2012
This is hands down my favorite feature one the web and each weekly installment is like a Christmas present -- nice to see the broadcast on more channels. Thanks! -
Kevin C at 19:47 PM on 17 January 2012New research from last week 2/2012
Cohen et al is interesting. GISS agrees that parts of the NH have shown winter cooling on 1988-2010: [Map] Apart from Siberia, the effect disappears on the annual plots: [Map] Does this contradict polar amplification? Probably not, the zonal mean trend graph has a slight dip at 50N, but doesn't go negative, and is strongly positive at the pole. (While their maps are consistent with GISTEMP, Figure 1(b) is probably rather misleading, being based on the a short times span of the hopelessly incomplete CRUTEM3 data). -
prokaryotes at 17:37 PM on 17 January 2012Patrick Michaels: Serial Deleter of Inconvenient Data
Almost 1 year ago, today... Rep. Waxman Presses for Inquiry on Global Warming Denier Pat Michaels -
dana1981 at 16:08 PM on 17 January 2012Gillett et al. Estimate Human and Natural Global Warming
My feelings exactly, Albatross. -
Doug Hutcheson at 16:06 PM on 17 January 2012Patrick Michaels: Serial Deleter of Inconvenient Data
cygnus@2 Thanks for the link to that video. Surely it must be an offence to knowingly mislead Congress? Aren't witnesses presumed to have sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Michaels is supposedly an expert who knows better, not just some guy they met in a bar. Who was it who said "half a truth is a whole lie"? Jeez, I must have led a sheltered life: I would have expected a patriotic American to guide his government to the best of his ability, not misguide them. -
John Brookes at 14:32 PM on 17 January 2012Katharine Hayhoe's labour of love inspires a torrent of hate
Tom Curtis@23, thanks for quoting that. I'm not a Christian, but if I was, then those two commandments would be my guiding light. If Jesus were to return today, I expect he would have to spend a bit of time with various "Christians", explaining to them how they missed the whole point of what he said. I expect he'd also disapprove rather strongly of the attacks on climate scientists. -
Albatross at 14:25 PM on 17 January 2012Gillett et al. Estimate Human and Natural Global Warming
Dana, This is what Dr. Annan had to say about Gillett et al: "This new [linking to Gilett et al.] paper also suggests that the transient response of a modern model (albeit a particularly sensitive one) has to be significantly downscaled to match observations. Mind you, that paper also has a worrying discrepancy between the results obtained with 1900-2000, versus 1850-2010 data. Normally one would expect the latter to be broadly a subset of the former - more data means closer convergence to the true value - but the two sets of results are virtually disjoint, which suggests something a bit strange may be going on in the analysis (cf Schmitter et al with the land-only versus land+ocean results). But just a glance at the first figure shows a striking divergence between model and data over the first decade of the 21st century (compared to the close agreement prior to then). Something isn't quite right there." [Source] -
Albatross at 14:16 PM on 17 January 2012Patrick Michaels: Serial Deleter of Inconvenient Data
prokaryotes @17, The fundamental error and its implications is discussed at Deltoid. But to be fair, that time they did not delete inconvenient data, they were just being grossly incompetent. -
prokaryotes at 13:51 PM on 17 January 2012Patrick Michaels: Serial Deleter of Inconvenient Data
From the first link in my post #16 In 2004: Michaels-McKitrick Climate paper basic error Michaels "co-operated with Ross McKitrick on another paper that managed to "prove" that global warming wasn't happening by mixing up degrees with radians." -
prokaryotes at 13:26 PM on 17 January 2012Patrick Michaels: Serial Deleter of Inconvenient Data
Publication of deliberately false climate change data literally ought — i.e., MUST — be treated, not as a peccadillo, but as a Crime Against Humanity. False climate change data a Crime Against Humanity -
prokaryotes at 13:23 PM on 17 January 2012Patrick Michaels: Serial Deleter of Inconvenient Data
Extensive profile of Patrick J. Michaels, and an entire page only about Patrick_J._Michaels's funding -
apiratelooksat50 at 13:20 PM on 17 January 2012Puget Sound, Under Threat From Ocean Acidification, Put on "Waters of Concern" List
Sphaerica at 21, Yep, I acknowledged the current problem, but in no way underestimated the the potential future problem. As a matter of fact, I pretty much said the same thing as Feely did in the conclusion of his paper (emphasis mine): "While field data on the impacts of CO2 on the local marine ecosystems of Puget Sound do not exist, laboratory and field experiments with related species of calcifying organisms suggest that there is a real cause for concern for the health of this economically important marine ecosystem. Similar processes may be causing decreases of pH and aragonite saturation states in other coastal estuaries and embayments of the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. Further study of ocean acidification in estuaries is thus warranted because natural factors including acidic river inputs and restricted circulation can predispose these ecologically and economically important habitats toward corrosive, hypoxic conditions, and anthropogenic stressors such as nutrient enrichment may compound them." Your creative writing, as usual, is quite good. However, your Russian Roulette analogy is highly innacurate and inneffective. I either stated or inferred in 11, 14, 16, and 19 that further study of OA is justified. Therefor, I would no more pick up that gun thinking it had one bullet in it than you would thinking it had 6. Analogies should never be used as arguments to reach a conclusion, and should never substitute for reason and logic. -
actually thoughtful at 13:11 PM on 17 January 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #2
*The onsite search engine is atrocious - I will start searching from outside, like renewable guy. (you have to get the term exactly right or you get the dread zero results) *Moderation is a little bit shaded towards confirmation bias (friendly posts/posters are given more latitude) *It would be refreshing to find SOME issue where the doubter/denyers/skeptics got it right and to highlight that in a post (if this exists - again watch for confirmation bias) *Or, variation on the above - pull out the reservations in each paper that COULD support the denier point of view - let the readers decide - sure and little green men COULD be on the moon - not very likely! All of the above does not prevent SkS being the most approachable science information source in the history of the world! -
littlerobbergirl at 12:42 PM on 17 January 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #2
DB - yes its a good idea in theory, and already happens on a casual basis via comments and links flagged up in the comments, but i was thinking of endless timewasting requests by some readers trying to skew the 'public opinion'. i was also a little unsettled by that recent thing in the u.s. from the republican geezer asking for suggestions from the public of which scientific grants to axe - the wisdom of the masses is easy to manipulate, especially online. -
littlerobbergirl at 12:29 PM on 17 January 2012Patrick Michaels: Serial Deleter of Inconvenient Data
hi dana, glad you getting noticed! writing style for general consumption cracked i reckon; very clear, no jargon (barmaid understands all), no sarcasm (despite this guy being such a prime target), no reps except last para, excellent clear graphics as usual. sorry, i sound like a school teacher! cheers, lrg -
Stevo at 11:41 AM on 17 January 2012Katharine Hayhoe's labour of love inspires a torrent of hate
Hmmmm, the old schoolyard problem. When the brats cannot win the argument they revert to threats and bullying. Hang tough, Katherine. So smart, so erudite, so brave, and so cute! -
Bob Lacatena at 11:40 AM on 17 January 2012Puget Sound, Under Threat From Ocean Acidification, Put on "Waters of Concern" List
14, Pirate, I think you are grossly misinterpreting the situation by putting too much emphasis on what is causing the problem today, while ignoring the much more tragic and seemingly inevitable problem that will come to pass if we don't get our carbon emissions under control. In a nutshell, I'm saying that the study points to how bad the current problem is, with numerous causes, while recognizing that the future problem will be much worse and the cause then will not be in doubt. You counter that fossil fuel emissions possibly only contribute in part to today's problem. By focusing on the immediate instead of the future you openly avoid the larger problem. You're like someone who has been playing Russian Roulette and now is somehow overjoyed at your great fortune at having survived five pulls of the trigger, while darn well knowing that you still have a sixth and final pull to go – one that you can't possibly win. -
John Hartz at 11:07 AM on 17 January 2012Puget Sound, Under Threat From Ocean Acidification, Put on "Waters of Concern" List
Related reading: "Reef fish at risk as carbon dioxide levels build” The Age, Jan 17, 2012 This article summarizes the results of a just published, peer-reviewed paper about how ocean acidification may affect the nervous systems of certain fish species. -
littlerobbergirl at 10:14 AM on 17 January 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #2
9/10, absolutely my best source of links to give to non scientists. re. funglestrumpet's suggestions: i agree on some reorganisation of the the little boxes - cute but a bit mystifying, i thought they were all stuff on various 'skeptics'. oh wow i just tried the 'oa not ok' a whole resource on ocean acidification! catchy but unintelligible acronym, and on such an important subject. maybe make it more obvious? tamino has a rolling strip of latest comments, which is quite useful for those of us who want to chatter but not so much for the casual reader. practical but not very useful. the 'suggestions for articles from readers' idea relies on the volunteer writers being willing to have their subject matter determined for them - not practical. on the idea of recording all previous posts by a commentator linked to by clicking their name, that's what you get on a message board like those at the wonderful bbc. it makes it very easy to organise one's conversations, and to identify trolls, but i'm sure it must take up loads of server space. the independant farms all its comments out to a separate company, and i dare say pays handsomely to do so. probably not practical. links - so many links in the texts, not really adding anything by having a general list. one problem i do have is the site loads funny - it takes pages a minute to settle into their proper shape. probably my ancient computer's fault and being at the end of the line in a village slows everything down. i do really appreciate the lack of ads, third party cookies, facebook and all that guff, which slow my loading time on other sites even more. keep up the good work!Response:[DB] "the 'suggestions for articles from readers' idea relies on the volunteer writers being willing to have their subject matter determined for them - not practical."
The suggesting person could also then nominate a subject area expert [i.e., someone other than me ;-) ] who could then be contacted for article submission. Or one could volunteer a suggestion and then write the article themself [how I got my start].
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les at 10:12 AM on 17 January 2012Katharine Hayhoe's labour of love inspires a torrent of hate
45 - with all this religion going on; someone just had to start quoting from the Jedi cannon... ... ballance is always good. -
Daniel Bailey at 10:09 AM on 17 January 2012Katharine Hayhoe's labour of love inspires a torrent of hate
I must echo the thoughts of Albatross @ 39 above:The topic of this thread is the vitriolic, hateful and even violent threats that are being made against not only Dr Hayhoe, but other Climate scientists and their families.
So as much as I have enjoyed the fruits of the overall dialogue here, I must ask all participants to limit their comments to that premise. Thank you all in advance for your cooperation on this. -
Tom Curtis at 09:52 AM on 17 January 2012Katharine Hayhoe's labour of love inspires a torrent of hate
TOP @40, unless you are implying that Matthew 22: 34-40 does not imply that "Christians are called on to love their neighbours" you are straining at gnats. (It is also not a quotation in the ECI Manifesto, as can be noted from the lack of quotation marks.) Exodus 20 is better, in that it at least mentions loving God. However, it still does not assert that is it necessary to love God in order to love humans. Your exegesis is clearly not based on accepting the message from the Bible, but on imposing your message upon it, as previously noted. I also note your belief implies that Fred Hollows did not love his fellow man. The obvious absurdity of that claim becomes sufficient refutation. Finally, I find it interesting, but bizarre that the New England Aquarium (NEA) should be quoting from the Bible. Thank you for informing me of that fact. -
Sky at 09:50 AM on 17 January 20122012 SkS Weekly Digest #2
Definately a 10. -
apiratelooksat50 at 09:48 AM on 17 January 2012Puget Sound, Under Threat From Ocean Acidification, Put on "Waters of Concern" List
RP at 17 I am not "concern trolling" and furthermore find that accusation offensive and disappointing on your part. I read your statements that you reposted here and that is what led me to look at other sources of information. I did not insinuate that atmospheric CO2 is not a factor in OA. I actually agree that it occurs. I even plainly stated that the premise has validity and justifies further research. It was plainly written and there is no room for misinterpretation - unless one wants to misinterpret. -
Rob Painting at 09:39 AM on 17 January 2012Puget Sound, Under Threat From Ocean Acidification, Put on "Waters of Concern" List
william @ 15 - "Acidification doesn't strip sea water of shell building Calcium but it does make it unavailable. I know, I'm splitting hairs" You're not splitting hairs, you're just plain wrong. Please read the SkS series "OA not OK" on the left-hand side of the page. It's the reduction in carbonate ions that causes problems for marine life that build their shells & skeletons from calcium carbonate (chalk). And on the Arctic, that region is likely to experience near-surface waters that are corrosive to marine life in about another 5 years. Ocean acidification is unravelling fast in the polar regions. -
cynicus at 09:36 AM on 17 January 2012Patrick Michaels: Serial Deleter of Inconvenient Data
tmac57, I may have another one: professional disinformation. Anyhow, now that these problems have been shown, will the WCR staff correct them? The IPCC did fixed the Hymalaya error (took a while though), so as the WCR strives to be better then the IPCC I assume they will fix pronto? Chip, tell me you will please... -
Rob Painting at 09:23 AM on 17 January 2012Puget Sound, Under Threat From Ocean Acidification, Put on "Waters of Concern" List
Pirate - in your attempt to concern troll you have not bothered to comprehend comments made earlier this thread. Particularly comments 4. This what I wrote. "Tatoosh Island (at the entrance to the estuary containing Puget Sound) has seen a drop in pH much lower than fossil fuel emissions would suggest, so clearly there is some other aspect which is not yet understood." Also in comment @ 6 - I wrote: "Quite ironically part of the problem is intensified seasonal upwelling along the coast due to global warming. The strengthening winds lead to greater upwelling of corrosive deep water. This will be moderated depending on what phase the PDO (Pacific Decadal Osciallation) is in, but the source of the upwelling is water that was last at the surface around 40 years ago. In other words it will, most likely, progressively worsen." Yes, many other factors are in play, that's simply a reflection of how significantly humans are altering natural systems. All these human perturbations are causing problems for natural ecosystems, not only atmospheric CO2. And to insinuate that atmospheric CO2 isn't a problem when the oceans are now more acidified than they have been in many millions of years is simply preposterous. I expect better from someone who claims to teach earth sciences. The fact that ocean acidification is a likely kill mechanism for numerous ancient extinction events, and coral reef extinctions and crises is a reason for scientific concern. The preferential extinction of marine life which depended heavily on calcification (calcium carbonate shell/skeleton-building), or less buffered marine life, clearly implicates ocean acidification as the culprit. This should be a worry to every person on the planet because the current rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 is unprecedented in Earth's history (as far as the paleodata allow). It is around 5-27 times faster than the PETM extinction & 15-30 faster than the Permian Extinction (the Great Dying). Fortunately we don't have enough fossil fuels to replicate the total CO2 output of those extinction events, but it's the rate that is the concern. There will be tears before bedtime, of that we can be sure.
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