The recent report from NASA regarding increasing levels of ice in Antarctica shows beyond any reasonable doubt that climate science is not “settled.” Any scientist who says so is playing politics, lying, or both; any politician who says so is not very bright or lying. If the science were settled, NASA, whose leadership has crossed many lines of honesty and objectivity by over-hyping climate change research, would not publish studies whose authors have explain them by saying things like this, from Jay Zwally, NASA glaciologist and lead author of the study:
…”The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away But this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for.”
…In noting that it could take only a few decades for the ice melt in Antarctica to outweigh the ice gains: “I don’t think there will be enough snowfall increase to offset these losses.”
…“We’re essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge. Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica; there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas.”
Does that sound “settled” to you?
If it does, then you have simply made your mind up in the presence of selected opinions, misrepresentations and guesses, and have ceased to think. If the models and theories of those claiming catastrophic results if the industrial world doesn’t cripple itself withing years if not month with draconian laws and regulations don’t predict current climate change-related conditions any better than this, why should anyone who got a C in Logic 101 believe that those same models will be more accurate predicting conditions a century from now?
Some progressives and Democrats, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have suggested that denying climate change should be a crime. Al Gore, who has shown that his understanding of science in general would get him a D in middle school Earth Science (not to be confused with Middle Earth school science), opined this year that climate change skeptics should be forced to pay—heh heh heh!— “a price.” All of this is designed to stifle dissent and to ram far-reaching legislation through Congress without adequate facts to justify it. It is not and has never been a scientific debate. It is a political debate driven by bias, dishonesty and ignorance by its primary proponents, like that Nobel Prize-winning researcher, the Pope.
This is one of two reasons why you will never hear that question—“You and President Obama claim that climate change is settled science to the extent that the United States should burden industry with expensive and job threatening mandates to curb it. Explain your certitude on this despite NASA’s discovery that Antarctica is actually gaining ice?” —put to a Democratic candidate for President. An honest answer would be Ralph Cramden’s ( “The Honeymooners,” for God’s sake—know your cultural history!) famous “Huminahuminahumina..” or, in the alternative, “I don’t understand this stuff at all; if I was that talented in science I wouldn’t be here. I’m just saying what the environment fanatics on our party’s base want us to say. I don’t really understand what’s the matter with the Keystone XL pipeline, either.”
Democratic climate change cheerleaders should be asked that question, just as any Republican candidate who questions the accuracy of climate change projections and who gets a snide, “How stupid are you that you can deny settled science and dispute the need to drastically reduce carbon emissions immediately lest Cincinnati end up under water?” from CNBC’s John Harwood should reply, “First tell me how you explain NASA’s discovery that Antarctica is actually gaining ice, since they can’t?”
The fact that Antarctica is gaining ice now and climatologists are trying to explain how their models didn’t predict it means that the science isn’t advanced or trustworthy enough to settle very much…certainly not enough to mandate passing speculative legislation. Definitely not enough for the President or Bernie Sanders to to denigrate those of us who are a little more demanding, and who want to see understandable and provable data, as well as models that show some reliability, instead of guesses before we start killing industries and putting people out of work. The truth is that there is no reason to trust the current conclusions because they aren’t conclusions, no reason to trust the scientists who hype what they are capable of determining now regarding future climate conditions, and absolutely no reason to trust science-challenged journalists, pundits, politicians and popes who are just mouthing what is to them as much “fact” as Obama’s statement that his own health care law wouldn’t require anyone to change insurance plans or doctors.
Seriously, how dare any of these people compare Americans who are just applying basic, responsible critical thinking skills in the face of deceitful environmentalist propaganda to Holocaust deniers? That accusation alone removes the accuser forever from the ranks of the trustworthy: denying what has happened is the same as questioning a projection of what will happen? Such an accusation is proof of stupidity or malice.
My verdict: in most cases it is stupidity, or some combination of ignorance and bias. I first read about the NASA study on the Christian Science Monitor site. There, linked to the story, was a quiz titled “Climate change: Is your opinion informed by science? Take our quiz!” What it meant was, “Are you a denier? Here’s proof that you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!” The quiz is all about gases, which have nothing at all to do with my opinion on climate change hype. My opinion is based on the fact that I don’t trust those who lie and hype, that even the most radical proponents of climate change protections can’t say for certain how great it is, how long it will be in duration, when the results will be critical, whether intervening factors will compensate for it and whether there are any realistic and affordable measures the U.S. can take to stop it with any certainty. I don’t care whether the cause is carbon or peanut butter. The issue isn’t gas, it is logic, technology and common sense.
The quiz, predictably, is illogical and misleading itself, probably due to a pro-climate change bias. For example, Question 7 asks, “From 1800 to 2012, the amount of atmospheric CO2 has increased by how much?” Does this mean that the technology and methodology was as accurate in 1800 for measuring global CO2 as it is today? Who believes that? Who believes that scientists today have accurate enough data to measure conditions in 1800…that’s 215 years ago…as precisely as they can measure today’s levels? Do you? I don’t. That’s a junk science question, and before I’m going to accept the quiz’s assumptions, I need a clear explanation of why the “answer” isn’t based on rough estimates. The same objection follows for 8, “How much has the average global surface temperature increased since 1900?” There are other questions based on supposedly accurate comparisons of conditions when scientific methods of measurement were primitive and unreliable, and today’s data. None of the questions justify presuming that projections are accurate to the extent justifying massive economic disruption, and that, not temperature, gases, or any of the topics examined in the quiz explain my skepticism. The quiz itself justifies skepticism. The fact that journalists think it’s relevant to the real issue justifies skepticism.
By all means, however, give the Pope and Hillary the quiz.
_____________________
Sources: Christian Science Monitor, NASA
Ethics Alarms 
Odd, NASA ‘discovers’ this after three record-setting seasons for Sea Ice extent??
“ ‘After three record high extent years, this year marks a return toward normalcy for Antarctic sea ice,’ said Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.”
We almost set a record high yesterday in Madison “77 Square Miles Surrounded By A Sea Of Reality” Wisconsin, and will be closed today & tomorrow.
This HAS to have something to do with increasing atmospheric CO2
concentrations.
Perhaps the strong El Niño and positive-flipping Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)?
Naw, that’s not ‘settled science.’
Jack, haven’t you learned yet that everything that happens in the climate and weather is proof of man made climate change?
The sarcasm content is really getting out of control…
Scientists determine that seemingly annual leaf fall due to American industry; nearly interminable Spring-time would exist if it weren’t for capitalism.
Why keep belaboring the obvious?
There seems to be a ponderousness of evidence that supports the concept of GW. Maybe the “debate” on the issue can be within the scientific community with anyone who is in political office excluded? Is it just a coincidence with increased greenhouse gases rising as humans industrialize?
I have had solar since 1982 since I heat by hot water. Has been reasonably efficient. Originally I wished to have a wind turbine but Zoning Board put the kibosh on that. Now they would probably help built one.
Seems water temperature and ocean currents are a key factor and that leads to some rather critical disparities with the climate. One thing of note is that we have been in a rather climatic “sweet spot” for several hundred years with no excessive volcanic activity. My understanding is that though the years that has been a big player starting with snowball earth.
I think preponderance of the current evidence is a fair description; “settled” is ridiculous.
The problem is that the discussion on this topic is ALWAYS wavering between at least three different “tiers” of easily conflated discussions:
1) climate is or is not changing (it is- to which we should all say no duh Sherlock… We needed scientists to tell us this?)
2) climate is changing in the direction as has been asserted the past several decades or it is changing another direction.
3) climate change is or is not caused by man – that is to say, man’s impact on climate change is sufficient enough to be noticeable and stoppable compared to ALL the other environmental inputs…
Those last two are NOT settled by any means.
But I’ve had discussions where the environmentalist immediately assumes that an admission of #1 by me is tantamount to a concession of the latter 2. It isn’t.
Bingo.
Also that asserting 2 or 3 makes one a denier of 1.
There is no reason why climate change should be a partisan issue of involve politics at all. It is an honesty, ignorance and intelligence issue, and always has been.
It is an excuse for a certain segment of the left to justify all the anti-capitalistic rules they want to implement. Push them, and they will sometimes actually state “even if it’s wrong, reducing our level of consumption is still a good thing”.
The alignment with political goals (or opposition) is a reason it’s linked to politics, although not a good one
Well, with over a billion people with Internet access, there are bound to be a few thousand crackpots. Hell, I deal with a bunch of them on the Usenet newsgroup soc.culture.israel.
Has anyone in the congressional leadership (committee chairmen, minority leaders, etc.), state governors, or the leadership of a political party made this argument?
“What we’ve got to do in energy conservation is try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy. — Timothy Wirth, former U.S. Senator (D-Colorado)” Not quite the same statement though. Quote pulled from Right Wing News.
“Quote by Naomi Klein, anti-capitalism, pro-hysteria advocate of global warming: “So the need for another economic model is urgent, and if the climate justice movement can show that responding to climate change is the best chance for a more just economic system…” Not a political leader though.
I never heard about the part of the scientific method where it says to pretend that an unproven hypothesis is true if acting like it is true would be beneficial.
Of course, many people would not remember, buy the Left uised to claim that global warming is a hoax .
Bob Hubert used to post on Usenet during President George w. Bush’s first term. He often accused Bush of treason. In fact, if you read this quote (and his other Usenet posts), it looks exactly like Occupy Wall Street.
Back then, global warming was a hoax, according to the proggies. But once they found out they could use it to promote their policies, they changed their tune,.
I wonder if Hubert was one of its founding fathers.
Who is Bob Hubert, and how does citing him prove what “the Left” as a whole used to claim? Do you have any examples of actual leftist politicians claiming that global warming was a hoax, or just this one insane “New World Order” conspiracy theorist?
I think he meant retired Times op-ed columnist Bob Hebert. As soon as I have confirmation, I’ll make the correction.
Too true. “Everybody complains about the weather but nobody ever does anything about it”,,,possibly because we don’t know how?
um … possible . . . .
You talk about getting legislation through Congress with bad information. The current administration doesn’t need no stinking Congress. The EPA has unilaterally and imperiously determined the Clean Air Act gives it the authority to regulate CO2 as pollution. So just bend over, electric utilities. And all you people out there in flyover country, get used to rolling black outs and just read by candle light. Morons.
Just for informational purposes, there are three power grids in this country; the Eastern Grid, the Western Grid and the Texas Grid. A few years back California (who has not built a new power plant powered by ANYTHING in 30 years) was suffering through those ‘rolling brownouts’, and Texas, a fly-over state, provided them with electricity from our grid. As a side-light, California’s then-governor, Governor Gray, was shocked that we expected him to pay us for that juice. All of that is by way of saying that states run, apparently permanently, by liberal idealists seem to be ignoring reality on a massive scale. I believe that is why the ACTUAL FACT of increasing ice in Antarctica is being spun or ignored in favor of a political agenda. For that reason alone, I expect the law of unintended consequences to kick in, as it already has in California.
Why don’t they set up a string of wind turbine’s outside of the governor’s office or in front of some Berkeley professor’s offices and power the state indefinitely?
Hah. That way they can power up their Teslas from their wind turbines rather than from coal powered electricity.
It’d never work. Same reason they wanted our juice for free…they’re ENTITLED.
I remember a little of the great global cooling hysteria of the mid 70s, and when this was starting to get big after the millennium failed to destroy the world, I had a geology friend shoot many holes in the bigger panic areas. So I just get exasperated at the Chicken Littles who tell me stuff without giving up their SUVs, airplanes, and buying far shipped imports. Reason doesn’t work when they are panicking over things they cannot control. Making people panic is such a handy method to get your way and it’s used by so many agendas.
But really, climate has been changing since the start of the world. Take a look at the guesstimated temps in the dinosaur era. We’re STILL leaving the cold period of the last ice age, so if we completely halted all of man’s influence, the climate will continue to change. We just have cut the ego trips and accept we cannot change it the way we want.
“But really, climate has been changing since the start of the world.”
From the 3 point line. Nothing but net.
Anyone ever heard of glaciers?
https://www.officesupply.com/cleaning-breakroom/breakroom-supplies/foods-beverages/water/glacier-clear-purified-bottled-water/p380221.html?ref=pla&cid=ad-pla-non-brand&adpos=1o1&creative=49052359593&device=c&matchtype=&network=g&gclid=CNau9uGP9cgCFQczaQodX6oDoQ
??
There was no “global cooling hysteria of the mid 70s”–you are remembering a myth, like the people who “remember” bra-burning and hippies spitting on Nam vets.
There were a few news articles and very few scientific papers which predicted global cooling–more at the time predicted warming. There was no “hysteria,” and the argument that there was is simply historical revisionism.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/What-1970s-science-said-about-global-cooling.html
http://www.factcheck.org/2015/03/cruz-on-the-global-cooling-myth-and-galileo/
Regardless of whether climate change ( I’m 100% with Marie) is significantly impacted by human activity or not (I’m sure it must be) and whether we can have any practical effect on altering climate change (I’m pretty unsure on that) I’m in favour of always minimising our impact on the environment (but not to the extent of issuing Koolaid to everyone on earth).
What really burns me up is:
Us vs them. It’s big, evil, corporations that are causing the problem; not me driving a huge SUV to go shopping and drop the kids to school; not me running an air conditioner in every room of the house – all year round; not me with my massively consumer lifestyle. I’m sure we could all go on for hours on Us vs Them. Here in Oz we briefly had a carbon tax, but householders got a tax rebate – after all WE’RE not responsible! I saw a south sea islander interviewed some time back bagging out Australia over pollution=sea rise. Meanwhile in the background as far as the eye could see the beach was covered with aluminium boats – no doubt made in Australia.
Alternative = Environmentally friendly (unless it’s nuclear). We mustn’t release a drop of CO2 – except from the billions of litres of soft drink of course – but the idea that you could draw Terra-watts of energy out of our weather system with wind turbines without any environmental impact is not even given a seconds concerned thought. People here don’t want nuclear power but would like to generate it using steam generated by fracking the remote Cooper Basin Hot Rock area which is the worlds largest naturally occurring nuclear waste dump – THAT’S WHY IT’S HOT DAMN-IT!
Interestingly, Cooper Basin has been found to be the center of a huge impact crater…some 80 km. across. There are all sorts of inferences possible from this, if tied to the fact that granite rocks 3.5 km. down seem to run at about 240 degrees F. I’d kind of like to keep up with this place, but my guess is that fracking has little or nothing to do with the temperature and I can find nothing relating it to a nuclear waste dump. However, being an impact crater…who knows what’s down there?
Discovery Energy holds 100% interest in the PEL 512, a petroleum exploration license which covers 2,369 square kilometers (584,651 acres) in the Cooper/Eromanga Basin. “Access to infrastructure is excellent, meaning the path to commercialisation for successful discoveries in both short and inexpensive.
“…[T]he economic case for investing capital in exploration and development activities in the Cooper-Eromanga Basin is compelling. Based on internal estimates, the payback period on investment is calculated at under 12 months.”
Got any spare change?
Almost wish I did. Sounds good.
The questions about temperatures and carbon dioxide levels in 1800 and 1900 are legitimate. We don’t know what the levels are based on what people measured back then. We know them because air from that time period (and from long before then) has been trapped in bubbles in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. These bubbles preserve the carbon dioxide levels from past periods, as well as isotopes of carbon and oxygen that vary based on atmospheric temperature.
Based on analysis of the bubbles in the ice sheets, scientists can even tell us that pollution levels were higher during the peak of the Roman Empire and during Song Dynasty China than they were at any other pre-Industrial Revolution period.
As for Antarctica gaining ice, the linked article states that Antarctica is gaining ice more slowly than it used to be. If Antarctica’s absorption of water subtracts from the addition of meltwater from other areas (such as Greenland), the fact that Antarctica’s growth is slowing could still be a cause for concern.
I don’t pretend to understand how air trapped for centuries in bubbles can give accurate data about temperature world wide. In fact, I don’t believe it. Why should anyone believe it until there is a clear explanation why it would be as accurate as you say. I’m open minded…I just can’t imagine it. The data I find reasonable is claims that the temp. measurements are valid since 1856. I still doubt that it’s truly accurate, but for the sake of argument, fine. But before that? These are estimates.
The casualness with which you assume estimates are as accurate as current readings is a tell, frankly. Why would you believe that, when even most climate scientists ultimately refer to estimates from a thousand years ago as estimates? Estimates are estimates.
For example, what’s wrong with this passage?
How do we know what the temperature of the Earth was like thousands and millions of years ago?
Reliable measurements of global temperatures began in 1856, when the British Meteorological Society began collecting records from around the world. Climate conditions before this date can be estimated from less reliable historical records. Conditions can also be estimated from a variety of natural environmental records going back to well before humans existed. Information of this kind is called “proxy data” because it substitutes for, or acts as a proxy for, the actual data we are seeking.
I have followed paleontology since I was a child. How many times have I read, “How do we know that the dinosaurs were cold blooded? Well, we can estimate..” “How do we know the Allosaurus walked upright with its tails dragging?Well, we can…” Then new data came along.
If it’s based on estimates, comparisons, projections, models, we don’t KNOW. We may have a good idea, we may know what probably happened, but to say we know is hyping, and I don’t like being misled.
Can I still believe in tree rings?
Sure. But I have yet to hear of tree rings that will accurately measure up to a degree or two accuracy, and that’s what the ranges are here.
Perhaps both you and Mr. Marshal are unfamiliar with the laughably discredited and debunked “Hockey Stick’ theory and the talented Dr. Keith Briffa’s fine contribution.
“In 2009 McIntyre did it again with Briffa’s Hockey Stick. After asking and
waiting three years for the data, it took just three days to expose it too as baseless.
“For nine years Briffa had concealed that he only had 12 trees in the sample from 1990 onwards, and that one freakish tree ( YADO61, seemed to show a “hockey stick” pattern) virtually transformed the graph.
“When McIntyre graphed another 34 trees from the same region of Russia, there was no Hockey Stick.”
You can still believe in tree rings, so long as it’s the right tree.
Orwell’s pigs might opine, “some trees are more equal than others.”
The sharp upward swing of the graph was due to one single tree in Yamal.
1. Very familiar with the hockey stick. I wouldn’t write about this topic without sufficient research to know about it.
2. It’s two l’s in Marshall. There are almost no Marshalls who use one L…I’ve looked, and haven’t found one.
Mr. Marshall;
1-I knew you were, in retrospect it was a clumsy set-up to the rest the post.
2-Regret the inadvertent misspelling, I’ve had a lifetime of the butchering of my last name.
I imagine a ‘fat finger’ excuse won’t work for too few letters…
You must know, given my infamous and embarrassing penchant for typos in every post, that I will never impugn a typo.
All knowledge about the world is based on estimates, comparisons, projections and/or models. All scientific knowledge can be overturned by new measurements.
Of course. But when the media states what is is in flux and subject to re-evaluation as “settled” and known, and ideological ignoramuses compare an expression of skepticism as the equivilent of denying the Holocaust, it is intentional misrepresentation. That’s especially true the larger the system one is estimating, and the more components and potential influences it has. World temperature is influenced by too many chaotic systems to count. That’s the reason why we keep getting surprise by things like Antarctic ice, and why long range projections aren’t reliable.
The website you linked to explains it. The amount of deuterium in water varies depending on the atmospheric pressure, and we can measure the amount of deuterium in ice of different ages.
In science, every measurement is an estimate. Every measurement has error bars. The fact that a scientist refers to something as an estimate is a sign that he or she is being honest.
The important thing is that estimates based on isotopes match up with contemporary measurements (which are also, of course, estimates) made in the more recent past. They do (see http://unisci.com/stories/20011/0227012.htm). Given that the method works to predict known values, we assume that it works to predict unknown values as well.
Sorry, I should have said “The amount of deuterium and oxygen-18 varies depending on the atmospheric temperature“.
No, that’s not a junk science question; you have incorrectly assumed that our data for CO2 levels in 1800 come from records made then with the techniques available then. In fact, it can be and is measured directly now, from samples trapped then.
That does not hold anything like as closely for temperature readings, as we can only make tentative and inferential estimates of that now from material available now, and that is not enough to improve on the less improved accuracy of records made then. So this criticism of yours about that, that immediately followed, is on point:-
What is your objection to estimating temperature based on deuterium content? I would agree that estimates are not as accurate as temperatures taken today.
Also, can we not rely on data collected in 1900? I could understand taking issue with data collected in 1800, but, as Jack said before, the British Meteorological Survey began to keep records in 1856.
I wasn’t objecting to the principle there (though I have heard that it is the isotope variation in trapped gaseous oxygen that gives a better estimate of global temperature, as the water variations can reflect local variation). The issue is that direct temperature measurements used to be accurate to only a few degrees, but we don’t have ways to estimate temperature from trapped isotopes even that closely as there isn’t an independent way to calibrate the estimation that well; that is, it has to be set up by reference to other temperature records anyway. That issue doesn’t arise with trapped CO2, as there what you measure is the concentration itself (some assumptions have to be made about how well samples preserve their original concentrations, but luckily comparisons of recent samples with recent direct measurements do show that that relationship does hold well enough).
Jerry Pournelle has often described the imponderables that cause him to reserve judgment about the temperature pattern, in his site at http://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor.
Interesting. I am not an expert on this topic. Based on some quick web searching, I think you would need to use the isotope variation in water. The mechanism requires the precipitation of water vapour (heavier water with oxygen-18 precipitates at higher temperatures, so a higher ratio of heavier water to lighter water indicates higher temperatures).
Even if we do not know the temperature from, say, 1800, though, we could still agree that the temperature has been getting warmer over the period for which we do have accurate measurements.
Two points:-
– Trapped water in ice cores ipso facto formed near zero celsius. That doesn’t correlate well with global temperatures, though it is affected by the amount evaporating earlier to get precipitated. However, isotopes in air trapped there does have some more correlation with global temperature, as that affects the amount pulled out to dissolve in sea water around the world and so the proportions left in the air to get trapped. Either way, you can see that there are a lot of stages involved that can affect the results, making it a very imperfect estimation. (I am quoting from memory here, not going back to the sources.)
– Accurate temperature records do not go back very far at all. Jerry Pournelle pointed out that, even around the time of the Second World War (again, from memory) sea temperatures were taken by putting thermometers in buckets of water dipped over ships’ sides. Not only were those only accurate to a degree or two themselves, there was no protocol to ensure that the buckets’ temperatures didn’t change between collection and measurement; evaporation and solar gain could have varied the readings either way, even if the ships’ own waste heat didn’t end up collected too.
Thanks for the reminder of Pournelle with or without Larry Niven. And Anderson, Clarke, Dick, Dickson, Brunner, Benford, Bova, Silverberg, Asimov, Turtledove, … The joys of science, dark wonder, wry humor, adventure-with-consequences, and all-too-plausibly limitless exploration of mind and universe: the “hard” SF of the 70s.
There’s still some hard SF around today, e.g. Peter Hamilton’s stuff, the Culture novels of the recently deceased Iain Banks and the works of Stephen Baxter, whose short story collection The Hunters of Pangaea I have out from the library at the moment.
I’ll give ’em a try, thanks.
By junk science, I meant that comparing current temperatures, which also can only be estimated, with past estimates, which can’t be estimated as closely (and estimating isn’t measuring) “Scientists today have accurate enough data to measure conditions in 1800…that’s 215 years ago…as precisely as they can measure today’s levels? Do you? I don’t. That’s a junk science question…). As for my reference to past methods,the question implies that there are records and that they are being used now, and virtually everyone taking the test is unaware of what methods are being used now. The science that the question suggests would be junk (part 1) and IS junk (part 2).
Imagine a huge tank of water.
Imagine two spigots, one that releases a 25% sulfuric acid solution,. and the other releasing a 25% caustic soda solution, with a flow rate of six fluid ounces per second whenever the valves are opened.
It would then be very simple to calculate the pH of the solution in the main tank, if one knows the initial pH and volume of the main tank and how long each valve was open.
Imagine another tank of water. But, in addition to the sulfuric acid and caustic soda spigots, there are six other spigots which release solutions of unknown chemical composition at random intervals and quantities.
The latter describes our climate.
Chaos also suffices.
The spirits that randomly pours random amounts of mystery fluids is analogous to chaos.
For a longer discussion about the phenomenon of seasonal changes in Antarctic sea ice, check out the website earthobservatory.nasa.gov.
By the way, the subthreads involving Eric Monkman and PM Lawrence are exactly what I’m talking about with the “first tier” conversation…
Observation very easily supports the notion that the globe *could be* warming. Though it very well may not be.
It still doesn’t answer any questions about primary or mitigable causes – and I don’t think it ever will…the system has too many ever changing inputs.
http://www.gormogons.com/index.php/2015/11/convenient-settled-science/
Good article for anyone wanting to read it. Literally a 60 second read.
He calls that a rant?
Of course its a rational analysis, and of course the President, who killed the pipeline today, and a punch of jobs, out of concern for “climate change,” which this will effect not one iota, would have no idea what he’s talking about.
Link never opened for me – could be my computer though.
By the way, tried the Farmer’s Almanac last winter; good predictions about two-thirds of the time. Sold it back to the second-hand shop, lost another third. Out by 45 minutes and $1.50.
Local temps were right-on however; there are mini-stations in every neighborhood. And a nine degree difference between high and low in the same city. Now THAT’S settled science for ya!
I think I”m with Bill Nye on climate change.
http://www.salon.com/2015/11/06/bill_nye_demolishes_climate_deniers_im_not_a_scientist_therefore_im_not_going_to_use_my_brain/
What are his scientific qualifications?
Is he a climatologist? No. Is he what you may call, scientifically minded? Yes. Check him out.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Nye
The first answer was answer enough for me.
It should be noted that these results happen in cadence with the recording of the coldest temperature ever recorded on Earth… less than 135 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. It should be FURTHER noted that this occurred during the Antarctic summer! Now… why the hell does NASA even have glaciologists in the first place? I thought that their mission was manned space exploration. Oh, yeah. We don’t have that anymore, do we?
Speaking of glaciologists, seems one has had an attack of conscience.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1245636/Glacier-scientists-says-
knew-data-verified.html
Honesty after the fact?
It seems that cracks are developing in the Settled Science facade.