Mini Ice Age: Nothing To Worry About 195
Geoffrey.landis writes: Last week a news story suggested that a new model of sunspot activity predicted a dramatic drop in solar activity coming up, possibly resulting in coming a mini-ice age. Take that prediction with a bit of skepticism, though-- later news analysis suggests that the story may be more media hype than science. Valentina Zharkova, the scientist whose research is being quoted, made no mention of a "mini Ice age"-- her work was only on modelling the solar dynamo. And, in any case, the solar minimum predicted was estimated to last only three solar cycles-- far less than the 17th century Maunder Minimum.
Phil Plait, known for his "bad astronomy" column, does a more detailed analysis of the claims, pointing out that the effect, if it even exists at all, is weak-- and the much discussed "Little Ice Age" is currently believed to most likely have been triggered by volcanic action, not sunspots. And, in any case, any predicted cooling is small compared to already-present global warming. So, probably no need to stock up on firewood, dried food, and ammunition quite yet-- the mini ice age isn't likely to be coming quite yet.
Phil Plait, known for his "bad astronomy" column, does a more detailed analysis of the claims, pointing out that the effect, if it even exists at all, is weak-- and the much discussed "Little Ice Age" is currently believed to most likely have been triggered by volcanic action, not sunspots. And, in any case, any predicted cooling is small compared to already-present global warming. So, probably no need to stock up on firewood, dried food, and ammunition quite yet-- the mini ice age isn't likely to be coming quite yet.
Ironic (Score:3, Insightful)
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I guess, if "ironic" means "contrived by desperate anthropogenic climate change deniers".
Re:Ironic (Score:4, Insightful)
At least you had the good graces not to attach a name to the fallacies, inaccuracies and outright lies you just posted.
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[sarcasm]He probably is in front of several computer screens with several separate slashdot accounts available. He saves up mod points on those separate accounts and mods up his own posts [/sarcasm] I am being somewhat sarcastic here, but really, I cannot figure out how on earth mods would mark his post as insightful. As another poster responded, it is a series of fallacies, inaccuracies and outright lies.
Seriously though. I'm not familiar with how the mod points system works here, but it seems that I ge
Re:Ironic (Off Topic) (Score:3)
Re:Ironic (Score:5, Informative)
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What an interesting way to present the information.
What does seem to have contributed to the abandonment of the Western Settlements, archaeologists said, is climate change. The onset of a ''little ice age'' made living halfway up Greenland's coast untenable in the mid-1300's, argues Dr. Charles Schweger, an archaeology professor at the University of Alberta, who has studied soils around the Farm Beneath the Sand.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05... [nytimes.com]
It's almost as if you didn't care about what happened, but wanted to score political points.
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What does seem to have contributed to the abandonment of the Western Settlements, archaeologists said, is climate change. The onset of a ''little ice age'' made living halfway up Greenland's coast untenable in the mid-1300's, argues Dr. Charles Schweger,
..which is about three hundred years before the Maunder minimum.
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WOOSH
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What an interesting way to present the information.
What does seem to have contributed to the abandonment of the Western Settlements, archaeologists said, is climate change. The onset of a ''little ice age'' made living halfway up Greenland's coast untenable in the mid-1300's, argues Dr. Charles Schweger, an archaeology professor at the University of Alberta, who has studied soils around the Farm Beneath the Sand.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/05... [nytimes.com]
It's almost as if you didn't care about what happened, but wanted to score political points.
Now you're going to tell us that Iceland was named because it used to be cold, but the geothermal effects started up later on?
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No but I expect you are going to tell us the east coast will be battered by super hurricanes.
See how easy this is ?
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And are also revealing farms and stone towns that were built there.
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Greenland isn't even green. Put that in your climate change model. Does that not indicate that the Earth isn't even as warm as it was in the past?
No, it doesn't.
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How about we set up a fund. You will all your assets to it. If global warming turns out to be wrong then your great-grandchildren get the money. If not then Al Gore's great-grandchildren get the money.
I'd be tempted to throw 10% of my assets into such a fund (paying my heirs, if not actual great-grandchildren) IF Al Gore did the same. B-)
But since Al Gore is heavily betting his assets (and those of others that he manages) on businesses profiting from draconian government actions to combat "global warming"
Re:Ironic (Score:5, Interesting)
What climate scientists are saying is not that the Sun has no effect but that there is not enough variability in the Sun to account for the changes we've seen. The incoming energy from the Sun's radiation is of course critical to the Earth's climate. The variability of the Sun from a Maunder Minimum condition to the maximum output we've see is on the order of 0.2% which is less than the forcing of the added CO2 in the atmosphere.
And based on what astronomy knows about G-type main sequence [wikipedia.org] stars there's no reason to expect a drastic increase in the variability of the Sun.
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It's more like 255 TW but just because it's a big number doesn't mean much. The total energy from an average of 250 W/m^2 is 127,500 TW, 3 orders of magnitude larger.
What does the energy consumption of humans have to do with anything? It has practically nothing to do with global warming other than being responsible for supplying most of the CO2 that is causing most of the warming.
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Maunder Minimum wasn't that short. (Score:3, Interesting)
What they say is that the short-term solar cycles have no effect on the climate.
"Little Substantial Effect" of the ups and downs of the individual cycles themselves and their usual cycle-to-cycle variations (rather than the exceptional cases of multi-cycle sunspot minimums), if I'm not mistaken.
If the Maunder Minimum (about five cycles long) was responsible, or even a substantial contributer to, the Little Ice Age, the effect of that variation Was substantial. It's the largest of three sunspot minima event
Little Ice Age followed a warm period (Score:5, Informative)
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The "Little Ice Age" was up to 500 years give or take - with some warmer years. But we don't really know what the future will hold - will we get a new "little ice age", a few cold winters/summers or will we get a new full-blown ice age?
The last option is the most worrying.
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The "Little Ice Age" was up to 500 years give or take - with some warmer years. But we don't really know what the future will hold - will we get a new "little ice age", a few cold winters/summers or will we get a new full-blown ice age?
The last option is the most worrying.
Maybe Global Warming/Climate Change will even it out?
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Re:Ironic (Score:4, Interesting)
It's called the Maunder Minimum for a reason. There is definitely a correlation with sun activity... and my guess is that it's better than the correlation with volcanism. I don't know that for sure, but that's my best recollection.
It is easier to believe the documented condition of the sun going quiet for a few hundred years was the major factor behind the cooling than it is to believe one or more volcanoes were going off constantly for a few hundred years creating an ash blanket over the Earth for the whole period and caused it.
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It's almost as ironic as a troll being modded "troll".
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Also ironic: Claiming Plait debunked it. (Score:5, Informative)
In the summary Geoffrey.landis writes:
Phil Plait, known for his "bad astronomy" column, does a more detailed analysis of the claims,
I also find it ironic that, according to the Slashdot summary, Plait allegedly wrote, four years ago, a "detailed analysis" of last week's report (of a new solar model with a 97% match to the sun's actual behavior).
In the referenced article, Plait was deconstructing a previous report suggesting maybe the next solar cycle might be low, on the basis of extrapolations of the diclines seen in its two predecessors. He was not discussing the new model, which predicts, with substantial confidence, that (at least) the next TWO solar cycles would be almost nonexistent, comparable to the first two of Maunder Minimum's five nearly-missing cycles.
I also find it ironic that nobody else (that I've noticed) has commented on this yet.
If we're going to discuss this, let's at least have a reference to an authoritative article that is ACTUALLY TALKING ABOUT the model under discussion and the fallout if its predictions are accurate. B-)
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Nice catch! The article: Are we headed for a new ice age? By Phil Plait | June 17, 2011
Unless Phil Plait is a time traveler then he didn't address this new model's predictions 4 years ago.
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Sorry-- Phil Plait wrote a detailed analysis of the claims that decreases solar activity means that the Earth is likely to slip into a mini ice age.
The new model of the solar dynamo is new, but doesn't mention a "mini ice age". The part Plait analysed is not new.
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Oh noes! [seite3.ch]
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An "ice age" in the age of "global warming".
Ironic that the "Little Ice Age" was triggered by enourmous quantities of CO2 emitted by volcanic erruptions.
No, actually, triggered by enormous quantities of volcanic ash and sulfate aerosols ejected into the atmosphere, reflecting sunlight and thus reducing the amount of energy reaching the Earth's surface. This is a well-documented effect. Volcanoes, ironically, don't emit all that much carbon dioxide. That is, they emit a lot... but not compared to the cubic miles of coal we burn.
Nothing to see here, move along... (Score:2, Insightful)
And focus on the global warming. Exclusively. Without deviation.
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And focus on the global warming. Exclusively. Without deviation.
And give us your money. Now. Without fail. Only we can save you from global warming. And no, you can't question it.
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And give us your money. Now. Without fail. Only we can save you from global warming. And no, you can't question it.
If they weren't asking for so damned MUCH of my money, I'd be handing it over. I'd be delighted to have solar panels on my roof. But despite the fact I don't think I can install them safely myself, I also don't believe that it should cost $30,000 to safely install $6,000 worth of panels.
So, take my money. Please. Just... don't rip me off.
Re:Nothing to see here, move along... (Score:4, Insightful)
I was active on Slashdot early on, and then recently came back. Can someone tell me what the hell happened to this site? Was there a specific event that made all of the smart people leave, or was it gradual? Or did some event cause thousands of idiots to start posting here?
Because this thread is amazing. It makes the comments at the bottom of a Fox News article seem rational and intelligent.
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Hard to say. I've been active here for quite a long time, more or less ontinuously since I joined, and a while before as AC. There's been a small decline in the comment quality, but much of the decline is due to seeing history through rose coloured glasses I think.
Basically there have always been timecubers/deniers/yecs on slashdot.
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There's been a huge influx of ACs the last two years, to the point where they dominate most of the threads. Since they're not smart enough to figure out how to create a user account you can guess what sort of contribution they make to the discussions.
Mostly the site started going downhill when Cowboy Neal left, and now that Dice is the corporate overlord they started making random changes to the site, auto-playing videos, injecting ads willy-nilly, etc. You missed the clusterfuck of SlashDot Beta, which D
Re: Nothing to see here, move along... (Score:2)
No, I'm like the three-day-a-week-at-the-gym old guy with cholesterol hovering around 190 fending off his doctor who is desperate to get him on the stations to reduce that, without any current research or trials to support there premise.
Go look it up. Cholesterol level doesn't correlate well wiith heart disease, previous studies having been contradicted.
And statins are not without undesirable side effects..
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This is where I have an issue. ANY piece of science than, in any way, might somehow make someone question the global warming dogma is immediately attacked and discredited. As a former scientist, this is really scary.
Every scientific point of view deserves scrutiny. To immediately try to discredit people of differing opinions to stop the global warming money train is really scary.
Same thing happened back in the 90s, when the theory of dinosaurs evolving into birds surfaced. For a few years there, any op
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This is where I have an issue. ANY piece of science than, in any way, might somehow make someone question the global warming dogma is immediately attacked and discredited.
Agreed: if this work was identical in every respect but said nothing about climate, no one would pay any attention to it. Instead, it "must be false" because it has been used by Denialists (somehow... it isn't clear to me how, but Denialists are insane so I guess it doesn't have to be).
My favorite response to this story from Warmists has been statements along the lines of, "The Little Ice Age was local to Europe and in any case caused by volcanic eruptions" (which result in global cooling.) It's a bit like
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This is where I have an issue. ANY piece of science than, in any way, might somehow make someone question the global warming dogma is immediately attacked and discredited.
Agreed: if this work was identical in every respect but said nothing about climate, no one would pay any attention to it. Instead, it "must be false" because it has been used by Denialists (somehow... it isn't clear to me how, but Denialists are insane so I guess it doesn't have to be).
My favorite response to this story from Warmists has been statements along the lines of, "The Little Ice Age was local to Europe and in any case caused by volcanic eruptions" (which result in global cooling.) It's a bit like the old Russian joke about "It was a long time ago and in any case it never happened."
It is possible but quite tricky to reconcile the claims that the Little Ice Age was both local and caused by volcanoes, but the people putting forward these arguments don't even try. They just spout whatever contradiction sustains their faith.
This is not to say AGW isn't real and doesn't deserve a significant policy response, including rapid building of modern nuclear plants to replace base-load coal, shifting of taxes from income to carbon emissions, and public money spent to support solar, storage and smarter grids. But many people who "believe in global warming" have decoupled themselves from the science, such that almost anything that happens will be spun in support of their beliefs.
Again, who says it "must be false"? Again, it's like the Fox news anchor who asked Bill Nye if the discovery of volcanoes on the moon did not disprove AGW; except that at least that guy did not respond to Nye's explanation with "So you're saying there are no volcanoes on the moon?"
Re:Nothing to see here, move along... (Score:4, Informative)
This is where I have an issue. ANY piece of science than, in any way, might somehow make someone question the global warming dogma is immediately attacked and discredited. As a former scientist, this is really scary.
Every scientific point of view deserves scrutiny. To immediately try to discredit people of differing opinions to stop the global warming money train is really scary.
Same thing happened back in the 90s, when the theory of dinosaurs evolving into birds surfaced. For a few years there, any opposing theory was mocked and laughed at.
If you were a real scientist then you wouldn't type that "money train" denialist bullshit.
Also, if you were real scientist then you would actually have a clue about what the research actually was. People aren't attacking the the double dynamo hypothesis proposed by the paper. They're attacking the outrageous stupidity by the media and science deniers saying that a predicted solar minimum event will result in a mini ice age.
If you passed third grade math class then you should be able to tell pretty quickly that the "mini-ice age" claim is 100% garbage. Even during the Maunder Minimum (which, if you read the paper, isn't what's predicted to happen) insolation changed by a whopping .2%. The forcing from additional greenhouse gases significantly exceeds that to the point where it will barely make a dent in the best case scenario (2C temperature increase).
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This is where I have an issue. ANY piece of science than, in any way, might somehow make someone question the global warming dogma is immediately attacked and discredited. As a former scientist, this is really scary.
Every scientific point of view deserves scrutiny. To immediately try to discredit people of differing opinions to stop the global warming money train is really scary.
Same thing happened back in the 90s, when the theory of dinosaurs evolving into birds surfaced. For a few years there, any opposing theory was mocked and laughed at.
this is where you indeed have an issue, but I don't think you and I are thinking of the same issue. who's attacking the "piece of science"? I don't see anybody doing so. the "piece of science" being the original paper, I assume you mean.
what happens is that any piece of science that, in any way, might be used as an excuse to shed some sort of doubt on AGW, no matter how unfounded, is immediately publicized ad nauseum and accepted uncritically in the mass media; and that groundless denialism is "attacked"
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Funny how the reporting of an ice free northwest passage, no glaciers by some date long since past, no more snow in Britain, etc, are never mocked by the alarmists.
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Bummer (Score:2)
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Re:Bummer (Score:5, Funny)
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Ouput != activity (Score:1)
And I see timothy still hasn't bothered to correct his idiotic headline.
http://science.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
Timothy's headline:
"Double-Dynamo Model Predicts 60% Fall In Solar Output In The 2030s"
Actual headline:
"Solar activity predicted to fall 60% in 2030s, to 'mini ice age' levels: Sun driven by double dynamo"
Interesting study (Score:4, Insightful)
After thinking about it for a few days I find Dr. Zharkova's double dynamo hypothesis interesting. Time and more study will tell if it holds up or not.
What I find amusing is all the breathless hype over a mini ice age. If if Dr. Zharkova's study is right and we do enter a Maunder Minimum-like period on the Sun we're talking about a reduction in insolation of at most about 0.2%, much less than the added forcing from the increase in CO2. At best it holds off some warming for a few years and that all goes away once the Sun returns to a more normal pattern.
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But really, it doesn't matter anyways as some people have just convinced themselves that they have the answer and would rather dismiss all claims and evidence otherwise and argue with reality that it's wrong for not distorting itself to fit their point of view.
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Anyone invested in denying global warming would leap at the chance to raise uncertainty and doubt in people's minds.
'Journalists' don't need any other motive than to get people to click on their 'interesting' bullshit article and sell some ad views.
Remember this one?: http://science.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
Re:Interesting study (Score:4)
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The solar constant is 1360 W/m**2, so 0.2% reduction would be 2.7 W/m**2. Current anthropogenic climate contributions come out to about 1 W/m**2 (some decrease from aerosols, some increase from GHGs).
Only about 1/3 of that 2.7 W/m**2 is relevant at the surface, but it's still very much in the range of anthropogenic contributions to the terrestrial heat balance.
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I kind of misspoke when I wrote that. The 0.2% is the difference between maximum solar forcing and minimum solar forcing in a Maunder Minimum scenario given the Sun's variability so the potential change is more like half of that.
I found several sources that seem to disagree with you:
http://www.pnas.org/content/10... [pnas.org]
http://www.grida.no/climate/ip... [grida.no]
https://www.ipcc.ch/publicatio... [www.ipcc.ch]
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There's a lot of money to be made with making sure people aren't afraid of fossil fuels.
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No, the latter changes how the energy is retained in the atmosphere and then passed to the hydrosphere. CO2 content has little to do with how turbulent the atmosphere is or how energy is distributed, it's a relatively minor component of the air. It's only important for it's heat retention properties, at least in this context.
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It may only be a 0.02% change in the overall atmosphere (I didn't check your math) but it's also an over 40% increase in one of the principal greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
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So 0.2% change in insolation is insignificant, while 0.02% change in atmospheric composition is catastrophic. The former causes change in raw primary energy input, the latter in how that energy is distributed in a turbulent atmosphere.
There's thinking right and "thinking" left.
If 99.96% of the atmosphere does not absorb energy, then yeah, a change in the remaining fraction from .03% to .04% represents a 33% increase in energy absorbed. Is that difficult for you to follow?
Need to cool the earth? (Score:2)
That's easy. A few well placed h-bombs, perhaps in conjunction with some volcanoes, and we can put a nice sun-shield up into our atmosphere.
If man can affect global climate change, it can work both ways. What have we got to lose?
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For a few hundred bucks, I can help you with that.
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No change of plan: we cut CO2 emissions to zero, and if the next day a volcano triggers a mini ice age, we're gonna resurrect the oil industry and burn gasoline in the open to counter it. You can watch the flames from your electrical vehicle.
No worries. If we cut CO2 emissions to zero now, it will be centuries, maybe millennia before the CO2 level drops back to 280 again. So we are effectively ice age proof for the foreseeable future.
See, the glass is half full after all.
400 years away? (Score:2, Interesting)
If it's been 400 years since the Maunder Minimum, and assuming we peak on temperature right now, wouldn't that mean the new minimum is still a problem for our [great-]+grandchildren?
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Bad assumption.
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The "for the sake of argument" was strongly implied.
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If it's been 400 years since the Maunder Minimum, and assuming we peak on temperature right now, wouldn't that mean the new minimum is still a problem for our [great-]+grandchildren?
No, because solar variation even during the minimum wouldn't even be close to enough to offset the additional warming we've introduced. Even if our temperature peaked right now, we're at about .8C above the 20th century average. A Maunder Minimum type event would drop that by about .2C. So even if this was as warm as it gets (which it isn't) then global average temperature would still be about .6C above the 20th century average.
Relevant scientific links at NCAR (Score:2)
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Media hype! (Score:2)
Throw Out the Bums (Score:2)
If you don't like the conclusion, throw out the data.
If anyone cares, why not go to the source? (Score:2)
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Because humans can happily puke as much as CO2 as they can into the atmosphere, because apparently the chemistry and physics surrounding CO2 IR absorption and emission is all evil Commie lies! You agree with me that all climatologists should be forced to admit they are evil liars, right, and leading ones should be shot for economic crimes!
Let's join together to make every scientist that claims we can fuck ourselves over pay for the pinko evil ways! Let's get those fucking scientists now!!!!
Re:"more media hype than science" - LOL (Score:4, Informative)
I would just like climatologists to admit that most of their prior models have had their faults and this one may as well. It's currently the best theory, but that doesn't give us the right to jump down everyone's throat that has a differing opinion.
Thinking like that is what got us into the obesity crisis in this country. Problem is, unlike the obesity crisis, we don't have 40 years to learn we were wrong.
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I would just like climatologists to admit that most of their prior models have had their faults and this one may as well...
I'm going to take a wild guess here and say you don't really ever read research papers. Because if you did, you'd know that just about every piece of research includes a section for ERROR ANALYSIS. In other words, scientists know there are errors and they analyze them to describe what they are, how they're bounded, etc.
misrepresentation (Score:2)
all climatologist admit that, and this in addition to existing error bars. This is why climatology is a science , because if it finds a better way to model, it drops the old model and take a new one. That is why we can speak of prior model: because better one came up.
No sorry indeed it does. O
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Quantum mechanics and GR have their flaws, and yet no one goes around declaring that electron tunneling and time dilation are part of an evil plot by Communist physicists.
No one is advocating radically altering the entire global economy because of electron tunneling, either.
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Scientists can only report their findings. They can't force anyone to do anything. But it isn't helpful to have a legion of fossil fuel astroturfers and paid shills attacking their integrity at every point, nor is it helpful to have these same legions overstating the uncertainty, and making it sound as if industrial emissions are somehow magically inert.
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Quantum mechanics and GR have their flaws, and yet no one goes around declaring that electron tunneling and time dilation are part of an evil plot by Communist physicists.
It appears you just made a statement in which you attempted to place a limit the raving insanity of true wingnuts. Of course, being a modern take on such matters, it's a liberal plot, nmot a communist one but I believe the principle is the same. Have fun with this:
http://www.conservapedia.com/C... [conservapedia.com]
Here's the opening line:
The theory of relat
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average and pleasant.
Oh Noes! We are experiencing increasing AGM (Anthropic Global Moderation). Do something! Anything!
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That's a lot of heating for single-digit C change (Score:4, Insightful)
Once climate change really kicks in ... an Alaskan winter is going to feel more like Death Valley does today.
Really? I though even the worst models were only predicting single-digit C changes to temperature averages.
You're talking well over an order of magnitude more warming that the doom-and-gloom crowd. They're talking the ideal ranges of various crops moving a couple hundred miles toward the poles or a couple hundred feet upslope (even when trying to spin it into extinction events). You're talking frying eggs on the ground in the dead of the Alaskan winter. They're not comparable.
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Wow, so much stupid in only two sentences. I'm impressed. Hundreds of billions??? And seventeen of the hottest years on record occurred during your two decades.
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True and Zharkova's double dynamo hypothesis doesn't have anything to say on climate change or a mini ice age, just that there may be lowered solar activity for a while. How such low solar activity affects climate has been examined before and what they found was it would only slow global warming down a bit but not stop it. RealClimate had a post on it in 2011. [realclimate.org]
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Time to trot out the old "correlation isn't causation" meme. It could be a coincidence the the Dalton Minimum was at the same time or the DM could be a partial explanation. Remember that Mt. Tambora and the "Year without a summer" occurred during the DM.
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Your post is yet another sad example of a classic Slashdot genre: "Scientists unsure if Sun exists".
It's pretty well accepted that solar output affects climate.
Get a grip. The "A" doesn't matter. (Score:2)
Get a grip.
It doesn't matter whether the Global Warming is Anthropogenic or not (other than to tell us that, if anything needs to be done about it, anthropogenesis says we CAN affect it because we already DID).
What matters is where it's going, whether the destination is disastrous, annoying, ho-hum, or maybe even good, whether it will sort itself without help, and if not, how much and how we
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