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from the climate-change-simply-happens dept.
Papas Fritas writes "Patrick Michaels writes in Forbes that atmospheric physicist Garth Paltridge has laid out several well-known uncertainties in climate forecasting including our inability to properly simulate clouds that are anything like what we see in the real world, the embarrassing lack of average surface warming now in its 17th year, and the fumbling (and contradictory) attempts to explain it away. According to Paltridge, an emeritus professor at the University of Tasmania and a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, virtually all scientists directly involved in climate prediction are aware of the enormous uncertainties associated with their product. How then is it that those of them involved in the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) can put their hands on their hearts and maintain there is a 95 per cent probability that human emissions of carbon dioxide have caused most of the global warming that has occurred over the last several decades? In short, there is more than enough uncertainty about the forecasting of climate to allow normal human beings to be at least reasonably hopeful that global warming might not be nearly as bad as is currently touted.
Climate scientists, and indeed scientists in general, are not so lucky. They have a lot to lose if time should prove them wrong. "In the light of all this, we have at least to consider the possibility that the scientific establishment behind the global warming issue has been drawn into the trap of seriously overstating the climate problem-or, what is much the same thing, of seriously understating the uncertainties associated with the climate problem-in its effort to promote the cause," writes Paltridge. "It is a particularly nasty trap in the context of science, because it risks destroying, perhaps for centuries to come, the unique and hard-won reputation for honesty which is the basis of society's respect for scientific endeavor.""
(Score: 5, Interesting) by people on Thursday February 20 2014, @10:53AM
This is the second "climate skepticism" nonsense article posted on Soylent, in the very short time that the site. The previous story one has now been edited, after the fact, to claim that it was actually intended to be sarcasm. We also recently had the strange Fox News story about a solar power plant.
I would hate for this site to become a platform for crackpot science and conspiracy theories. I understand that a second editor needs to sign off on articles for them to be published? Perhaps quality would be improved if instead of just one editor approving, a handful of editors would vote on each story?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by girlwhowaspluggedout on Thursday February 20 2014, @11:19AM
Look at it as an opportunity to take crackpot claims apart [soylentnews.org] and help others [soylentnews.org] become better informed [soylentnews.org].
Put another way, Soylent is the best disinfectant :)
Soylent is the best disinfectant.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2014, @12:24PM
I look at it more as an opportunity for Soylent to feed the trolls and imitate the worst of Slashdot, without even the financial motive to justify it. Next thing you know we'll be seeing a front page full of articles on intelligent design and women in STEM.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pe1rxq on Thursday February 20 2014, @01:58PM
I don't mind doing that on occasion, but the amount of crackpot articles seems to be pretty high right now. You should also keep in mind that the comments might be more down to earth the summaries certainly weren't. The front page looks more like crackpot-HQ right now.
It leaves me worying about the mental state of the editors aswell......
What is next? Young earth creationism?
If this kind of crap becomes a daily occurance I might end up running back to Dice and beg them for forgiveness.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:24PM
The problems with Beta stem from formatting. I don't think anyone expected that to fix the "editing".
P.S.: IIUC, if you want better articles, you need to submit them. It would probably be possible to submit reports on every story from Science News, Science, and Scientific American. I don't think they'd all get selected, but having them available to choose from might change the stories the editors picked.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by hubie on Thursday February 20 2014, @05:22PM
Interestingly enough, my first story submission here was to an editorial [wiley.com] printed in the inaugural edition of the peer-reviewed open-access journal Earth's Future. It makes the point about the potential impacts of the things that aren't in the climate models (namely, an accurate albedo). Very nice, I think, summary of where things stand and the issues involved. Perhaps my summary was too boring or not as sensational as this one, because my submission was rejected. I'm a long time Slashdot reader, and I'm not bitching about my story being rejected because I know how things work, and I also know we're early into this site, but it disappointed me in the sense that I really hope the only kind of stores that pass muster here are not just the same NSA/Snowden/bitcoin/etc. kind, because then this place will really only be just Slashdot with a throwback UI.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 21 2014, @02:42AM
Slashdot was pretty badly biased the other way. You've gotten used to that, so it seems normal and this seems weird. Stick around so you get recalibrated.