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posted by martyb on Sunday May 25 2014, @02:30AM   Printer-friendly

Tim Palmer, a climate scientist and professor at the University of Oxford in the U.K., has published a somewhat controversial Perspective piece in the journal Science. In it, he theorizes that heavy thunderstorms in the western tropical Pacific (due to global warming) this past winter caused changes to the flow pattern of the jet stream, which resulted in the "polar vortex" that chilled the northern part of North America for the first four months of 2014. The winter of 2014 was cold in the U.S., of that there was no doubt. Subzero temperatures became the norm and heating bills skyrocketed. At the time, very few who experienced it were blaming it on global warming, but that may very well have been the cause anyway, Palmer suggests--despite the fact that global temperatures haven't been rising lately.

The abstract (and link to paywalled journal article) can be found at: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/344/6186/803

 
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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by FlatPepsi on Sunday May 25 2014, @02:38AM

    by FlatPepsi (3546) on Sunday May 25 2014, @02:38AM (#47235)

    Pizza Hut got my order wrong today. It was clearly Global Warming, because it has caused everything else in the last few years.

    Sounds like someone needs some press or additional funding...

    Starting Score:    1  point
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       Flamebait=2, Insightful=1, Funny=2, Overrated=1, Total=6
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    Total Score:   1  
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Sunday May 25 2014, @07:41PM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday May 25 2014, @07:41PM (#47348) Journal

    Why is this flamebait when those that are pushing the "AGW solution" of crap and trade [youtube.com] and carbon indulgences [nakedcapitalism.com] have set the AGW to be EXACTLY this? its its too hot? Climate change, too cold? Climate change, weather stays the same? Climate change has shifted the weather patterns!

    While I believe putting pollution in the air is bad I want to hear from the AGW supporters...can you name ONE scenario of seasonal weather that CANNOT be blamed on AGW using the new criteria? because i have a REALLY hard time considering something scientific when there is literally NO answer that doesn't forward a specific agenda.

    --
    ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
    • (Score: 2) by Open4D on Friday May 30 2014, @06:18PM

      by Open4D (371) on Friday May 30 2014, @06:18PM (#49229) Journal

      i have a REALLY hard time considering something scientific when there is literally NO answer that doesn't forward a specific agenda.

      Is Tim Palmer saying the polar vortex is evidence of climate change, or does he blame it on climate change? (For which there is ample evidence already [www.ipcc.ch].)

      See BasilBrush's comment about gravity below. (What if I were to re-word your comments and say those damn physicists are always blaming things on gravity? Whether I drop a rock and it falls down, or I release a helium balloon and it floats off; they always blame gravity!)

      • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Saturday May 31 2014, @02:00AM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Saturday May 31 2014, @02:00AM (#49399) Journal

        You can tapdance and try to move the goalposts all you want, you WILL fail because I WILL respond thusly...can you name ONE specific change in the weather, just one which CANNOT be blamed on AGW?

        Again it is NOT science if there is NO wrong answer,after all I can say "The reason the weather changes is because of the sun and thus you should give me a trillion dollars to fix this problem" and short of you finding a way to make the sun not rise you cannot "disprove" my argument because it is tying a fact of nature with my personal agenda. If you can find NO WAY to come up with ANY change in the way that does not fall under AGW, even though this planet has had weather changes for billions of years? Then I'm sorry but your "science" is anything but because all you have done is tie a fact of nature (the weather changes) with your personal agenda ( AGW is caused by people so Goldman Sachs should get a check for 100 billion to change this) and short of making the weather stop changing there is no way to disprove the sentence as a whole because you are tying half the sentence to a fact of nature. To use your gravity tapdance i could say the exact same thing with gravity and short of stopping gravity you couldn't disprove my sentence either, doesn't make it science nor true.

        --
        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 31 2014, @02:15PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 31 2014, @02:15PM (#49558)

          There is no single weather event that contributes much evidence either way to help us assess the theory of human-induced climate change. What does contribute is long-term patterns of weather. The latter is documented in the report I already linked to.

          Once we have good evidence for the accuracy of a theory, it is very reasonable for us to start applying that theory to specific situations. When someone does this, do not mistake that for them necessarily suggesting that the specific situation in question can be taken as useful evidence in favour of the accuracy of the theory. That is why I asked, "is Tim Palmer saying the polar vortex is evidence of climate change, or does he blame it on climate change?"

          Is still think the gravity analogy is quite good. Theories of gravity have been developed over centuries, with increasingly good evidence. We are now at the point where I am completely entitled to use these theories as part of my explanation for both the falling of a rock I just dropped and the floating of a helium balloon I just released.

           
          If you are saying the theory of human-induced climate change is not falsifiable, well, that's discussed in the "How can we falsify the CAGW theory?" comments below. But I would answer it by simply saying that actually yes, of course it is falsifiable. Again I come back to the report of long-term trends that I linked to previously. There is no single weather event that contributes much evidence either way to help us assess the theory of human-induced climate change, but if the long-term trends had been going in the opposite direction to what is documented in the report, that would surely disprove the theory.

          Regards,
          Open4D [soylentnews.org]
          (Posting anon because I modded your first comment "Interesting" before replying to it, and I'm currently getting [soylentnews.org] "If you continue to post this comment, all moderations done to this discussion will be undone!".)