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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 mcgrew on Thursday February 20 2014, @03:50PM
When I first saw the AC comment above, I thought "uh, oh, a bad slashdotdotter's here". It's obvious when you see it, a stupid and/or trollish post by an AC that gets modded up. I always suspect someone with mod points wants to troll so he makes an AC comment and mods it up himself. Not sure about this one, there's one insightful, one flamebait, one underrated. All are undeserved; it isn't flamebait (who's being flamed?) but it certainly isn't insightful. It would be overrated at 0.
The wrong people are getting mod points. Where are mine? I have yet to get a single one. I'll tear the AC apart point by point:
We keep being told that global warming IS happening
True, we have been told that. Actually, what we've been told is that almost all climate scientists say the Earth is warming.
the science is settled
False. Nobody in the scientific community has ever said that.
anyone who tries to argue that they may still be missing a variable or two in the equation is labelled a climate change denier
False. Of course there are missing variables, there always are in any endeavor. Climate change deniers are the ones who say "well look at all the snow outside? Global warming? Bullshit! That's proof global warming is a hoax perpetrated by evil lying scientists who are hawking this nonexestant threat for the money!"
and yet, we are still waiting
Completely ignoring that the north pole is ice-free for the first time in history, ignoring ocean acidity, etc.
Global warming should have been here years ago.
False. No scientist ever said that.
The oceans should have rised several feet years ago.
False, no scientist ever said that, either. And his grammar shows his education level -- someone who had at least finished high school, let alone attended college, would know that the word is "risen" or "raised", not "rised". There is no such word as "rised" [google.com] unless you refer to the urban dictionary or wictionary, which are, guess what? Edited by high school dropouts. They are not references or citations. The OED also says the word does not exist. Typical Fox News watcher.
And all we hear are lame excuses as for why the predictions didn't hold
Such as?
I really hope soylent gets the same kind of metamoderation slashdot had years ago, the one that actually worked, because two of the three people who moderated that are ignorant and don't give much thought to the comment they're moderating. It only took me seconds to see what's wrong with it (as did one of the three mods, who was also lazy and didn't bother choosing which downmod he wanted to use).
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Thursday February 20 2014, @04:01PM
I'd mod you up as insightful if I hadn't already commented in this thread.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 20 2014, @10:14PM
Let me add a few things:
We already know that you can create an earthquake by damming up a river. Shift the amount of mass on a portion of the crust, and you get earthquakes. A lake such as that in S.C., on the Savannah river, generates quakes every so often.
So far, so good. Now, we see that (fortunately) the ocean levels aren't rising as predicted, despite (unfortunately) the fact that the northern ice sheet has mostly gone away, because (fortunately) the increased storms in the south seem to be covering the Antarctic with a thicker ice sheet.
Unfortunately, that means that there is a LOT of mass that has been lifted off one side of the globe, and stuck on the other. Which might imply the possiblity of increased earthquakes, and increased plate movement, and therefore increased volcanism.
Interesting thought, eh? Global warming doesn't mean quite what we thought. But it means somethign significant, nonetheless.
Now... as to the issue of us not understanding clouds, okay, we don't understand everything about them. I thought the Jeopardy was about knowing the pat question to every answer; science is all about searching for answers. That said, I have a suggestion: the clouds are visible, therefore would appear to be gaseous crystalline. That being the case, as the air currents move a unit of cloud from one location to the other, and the pressures change on the unit of cloud, then we should expect changes in the charge structure on the surface, which will then deposit onto the dry air surrounding the cloud, much as a van-de-graaf generator, causing... lightning.
Which may be correct, may not be... but it's one phase of many in science: people propose ideas, eventually someone checks the ideas out, maybe...
Now... on to this AC posting. Ummm. When I click "Create an Account" I get 500 internal server error. Which makes me very anonymous.