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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
(Score: 5, Informative) by Nerdanel on Sunday May 25 2014, @10:12AM
Of course the theory could be falsified. For example, if the glaciers around the world were growing instead of shrinking, that would do it. Too bad it's not happening. Mid-latitude places like the Alps have their glaciers retreating and revealing new archeological discoveries, the Antarctic has lost enough ice that it would show on your desktop globe, and we'll soon have a workable Northwest Passage.
Weather != climate, and it's indeed possible to measure the climate. For example, in mathematics there exists a method to calculate the so-called "average" from several numbers, in addition to some more difficult and advanced tools such as standard deviations and running averages.
Posted non-anonymously even though this place is full of denialists. I think it's the libertarian bias.
(Score: 1) by karmawhore on Sunday May 25 2014, @12:21PM
My pet theory: it's because there's no (active) technocrat.net to draw them away. Please, Bruce! You gotta start posting, or soon we're going to be overrun with doomsday stockpilers and conspiracy theorists. And hams. But those guys are mostly okay.
=kw= lurkin' to please
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Daniel Dvorkin on Sunday May 25 2014, @03:45PM
So far, Soylent doesn't seem to have developed the self-reinforcing anti-science echo chamber that infested Slashdot. There are a few of the loonies here, but not enough of them to take over every discussion. Hopefully it will stay that way.
Pipedot [pipedot.org]:Soylent [soylentnews.org]::BSD:Linux
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 25 2014, @05:04PM
Stop calling it global warming, climate change if you want people to do anything about it. Call it what it is. It is pollution. People get that. The people doing the polluting were able to change the narrative by saying 'prove it'. Then another group of people figured out they can steal more money from people thru the use of taxes (see UPS and Europe, tl;dr taxes went up, rates went up, and they used even more fuel). Follow the money and you will see what is going on. It has little to do with real science and more to do with peoples bottom lines.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 26 2014, @01:18AM
Seriously? Just wait till they post some flame bait article about evolution...it requires faith to believe in just as Christianity does or Judaism or Islam for that matter...which retard religion is right is really a crap shoot at this point. And yes I called evolution a religion. Then again I just invaded soylentnews.com with CRAZYTALK!! Oh the humanity!