Boffins
Is this the Sun newspaper? Should an article really loose all credibility in the first sentence with the author essentially admiring he is not versed in science and a regurgitating a press release.
British and international boffins, having probed an Antarctic glacier which is thought to be a major cause of rising sea levels worldwide, report that increased polar ice melting may not be driven by climate change. The 'Autosub' battery-powered undersea research robot - Pic: BNOC Southampton The latest in scientific bottom- …
Should a commentard really lose all credibility in the second sentence with the author essentially demonstrating he is not well versed in English?
Why, yes he should. Even a Yank knows the difference between "loose" (not rigidly fastened or securely latched) and "lose" (fail to keep or maintain). Away with thee!
Most of them aren't & often use the wrong word as do Australians. The words greivous & mischievous are 2 words commonly misread as greivious & mischievious but the second two are wrong. One more for the road is obstreporous as opposed to obstropoulous which doesn't exist.
Mankind has a tendency towards Drama. One can witness this in newspaper headlines the world over, and also in Scientists' reports. Scientists tend to grasp at the most dramatic potential outcome of their research, and they can cling to it in the face of other potentially less dramatic conclusions.
"World about to die due to CO2-based Warming!" sounds so much more satifsying than "Ice melting quicker due to natural ice/earth movements!"
We all do it.
In fact, "Mankind doomed to die due to universal tendency to be dramatic"
There you go.
Because the doom-sayers, scaremongers and profiteering thieves from this artificially induced mass hysteria don't have enough press coverage already?
Why should ElReg feel obliged to give voice to other opinions, when the opinions voiced from ElReg don't get one split second of consideration from the lobby of pseudo-scientists and their lackeys? Go back in your cave with your tinfoil hat, and wait for doom.
Sea levels rising... Yes, they do - just about every day, meters at a time.
It's called TIDE. And we dealt with it for millennia.
If we need to build more breakwater defences, we will.
What about using the money thrown away to fight the effects of "climate change" to - in fact - PREPARE for it, if it ever happens?
We didn't stop flying on the 1st January 2000 for fears to fall off the sky, we spent money to check the system were all Y2K compliant. Some were, some weren't and have been fixed. And we travelled safely on 1/1/2000.
Ancient far eastern philosophies teach to sum the strength of your enemy with yours to defeat him. It takes more than double the effort to counter his force *and* win with an overwhelming counterforce.
But hey, that would mean money diverted from the pseudo-scientist baccalaureates' lobby to burly builders and civil engineers, it would be a disgrace.
Or fuck off.
The climate has been changing—as others have pointed out ad nauseam—SINCE THE EARTH FORMED.
Has humanity influenced the climate in recent years? Possibly. Maybe. Nobody's 100% certain, however, because NOBODY is 100% certain how the Earth's climate *works*. However, as pollution is also a result of *inefficient processes*, there are plenty of businesses and scientists working on how to make said processes more efficient. Because that sort of thing *saves businesses—and us—*money*. There are people on it already.
The real problem is that most of these scaremongers are primarily interested in "Climate STASIS"—maintaining our climate as-is, in perpetuity.
Got news for you: can't be done. At all. Not even close. We simply don't have anything like that level of understanding of all the climate processes involved, let alone how to change them. Fact. No, seriously: this is a FACT. Even the ecotastrophists admit it. (This article alone is proof that we're *still* discovering new stuff about the Earth's climate *right now*.)
Our species has survived full-on ice ages. We're famously adaptable. (Okay, some cities may need to be relocated, but these sea-level rises aren't going to happen overnight. We have *time*, people!)
If projected global warming was to result in a full 3 degree rise in temperatures in Antarctica, what would be the average temps there, and why would anyone be surprised that water still freezes at those temps, or that gosh, glaciers might actually still freeze at a summer sweltering -12C?
Global warming is, as the name implies, related to GLOBAL temperature rises. That's a GLOBAL average. Some areas, and the Poles certainly fall withing this category, experience greater than average warming (and conversely some areas experience less and may even cool realtively speaking).
So, just to belabour the point, a 3degree GLOBAL temperature rise does NOT imply that the temperature only rises by 3 degrees at the Pole.
This is why a clod winter in Europe does not disprove GLOBAL warming any more than a blistering summer proves it.
Easy, eh!
The point is that there is much guff generated by the idea that the Antarctic glaciers may actually be growing despite claims of rising temperatures, something taken by many as a proof that such claims are false, without taking into account that the temps in Antartica have a long way to go while still remaining below freezing point. Easy sums indeed.
I am not a climate scientist (IANACS?) but ONE (and only one) of the things I find quite convincing in the 'pro' Global Warming camp is the fact that James Lovelock, who has never followed any crowd, is convinced and is concerned. That man knows his onions and although that would not in itself convince me (even bright people can be wrong, e.g. Einstein and Quantum Mechanics) it does dissuade me that this is just a conspiracy subscribed to by lazt people looking for easy funding.
Your mileage may vary.
That El Reg could show some balance? For each study saying "something not the fault of MMGW" a representative number of studies saying "something is the fault of MMGW". Scanning the pages of New Scientist or Nature shows the ratio is around 1:35, so where are the 35ish articles blaming MMGW?
I'm afraid that sort of lack of balance makes the coverage valueless - you can't argue that you're being skeptical by ignoring anything that disagrees with you. If you want to overcome the MMGW greeny brigade, you need to engage properly, show your evidence, share the theories, explain, talk and stop just cherry picking the odd article that goes against them (you'll note they all go "yep, scientific evidence, we're wrong on that", and then carry on working with the new information)
Balance is every time the BBC talk to a doctor, having a homeopathy-fiend in the studio to say "that's all rubbish, what you need is some poison diluted 300,000,000 times". Balance is having a flat-earther on to argue with people from NASA. Balance is giving the same air-time to Nick Griffin that you give to an actual political party.
Bugger balance.
The OP was talking about New Scienctist and Nature, not the BBC. And although one could argue these are not the most hardcore scientific journals they are a damn site more scientific than "El Reg", whose predertimined bias is clear for anyone to see. Strangely you don't even realise that in your analogy the El Reg editorial policy is equivalent to only letting the homeopathy guy, flat earth guy and Nick Griffin speak.
And I don't know whether to laugh or cry when I read so much "pseudo-science" baloney from posters who have absolutely no background in the area (or any scientific area it appears); yet are still determined to prove climate change is all untrue with some stupid analagy (tidal wave guy I'm looking at you). Kudus to the people who do try to argue clearly and succinctly, but you are fighting a battle that has already been lost.
Once again, the Reg denial desk is in action. (I echo those who note that El Reg's climate stories are always on the denialist side — this isn't objective journalism, it's bias.) As I've said before, this is an incredibly complex system, of which our understanding is merely scratching the surface. In the current case, it might be useful to compare a similar outflow in Greenland, where it's been shown to be fed by a feedback loop — the more it melts, the more it melts and the faster the flow. Isn't it just possible that, even though geologic forces would have resulted in increased outflow sometime in the future, that event has been sped up human interaction with the environment?
"t might be useful to compare a similar outflow in Greenland, where it's been shown to be fed by a feedback loop — the more it melts, the more it melts and the faster the flow."
Indeed, although it might not be useful because Greenland and the Antarctic are rather different in many ways. And, of course, while that is an interesting and worrying feedback loop, it says nothing as to root causes.
" Isn't it just possible that, even though geologic forces would have resulted in increased outflow sometime in the future, that event has been sped up human interaction with the environment?"
Of course it is. It is also possible that it has not been sped up by any appreciable or detectable amount by human interaction with the environment, or that is IS human interaction, but is not CO2 (the standout example is Kilimanjero, where the glacial retreat has been attributed to reduced precipitation due to the destruction of the rainforest at it's foot and on it's slopes).
It is more important to know what the hell is going on than to shout down anything that contradicts a theory (I think we can all agree that climate change is beyond a hypothesis now!)
I don't think climate change has ever been rgarded as a hypothesis on these pages - most of us accept that climates change. They always have, and they always will. It changed in a big way about 12,000 years ago when the ice sheets retreated. There is no hypothesis about that. The issue is what - if anything - H.Sapiens has to do with it, and all the answers are definitely hypotheses. Personally, I look at the fact that climate change is something that has happened many times in the history of the Earth as a sign that it would happen anyway, H.sapiens may have made some difference, but it is likely to insignificant, and we should accept the fact that change is coming, and start adapting (which is what our species does very well). What climate change worriers want is a way to prevent any change whatsoever - and I cannot accept that sort of conservatism, and, it seems, neither can may of the people who comment here.
Your theory is obviously that Global Warming is man-made.
This article highlights a study that has revealed one single case where IT MIGHT NOT be.
Emphasis on MIGHT.
And straight away, parrots like you are banging on about how it just might still be because of human interaction.
Who is showing bias ?
It would be hilarious to watch people like you accusing others of their own failings if the situation were not so potentially serious.
When I was at school, "scientific proof" involved rerunning the experiment from the same start point and getting the same results - ie heat water, get steam; put sodium in a water dish, get a mini fireworks display; burn magnesium, have bright spots dancing in front of your eyes for hours; sniff amonia, have a clear nose all day.
So how come "scientific proof" to the Climate Change lobby appears to mean "shout loudly, and rubbish anyone who dares disagree". When was the last time some CC "scientist" reran the last 25 years of RealLife(TM) instead of some computer model that has been written to give the results they want?
Maybe they should just ban reality which, ACCORDING TO THEIR OWN DATA, consistently failed to be as bad they predicted.
Hell, the Weather Centre used their **climate change model** to predict the effects of the volcaninc ash on UK airspace and oops, guess what... reality failed to agree with them yet again.
Yes, we can make a difference, and if the ecosystem is close enough to the balance point then maybe we could drive it over the edge. But geological records "prove" the Eart has undergone changes since the mucky mass first showed some resemblance to the planet we live on today - and that was a L-O-N-G time before we came along to muck stuff up.
Science isn't democracy, it is cold hard facts. That in turn means it doesn't give a rat's ass about balance. The FACT being reported is that there is a very plausible, simpler explanation than "an incredibly complex system, of which our understanding is merely scratching the surface." That simplicity was how Einstein did away with the whole Ether theory that was then much beloved by scientists everywhere with a more than 35:1 ratio at the time.
Global warming isn't science, it's the religion of fascists intent on controlling what the rest of us do. Like the original fascism, it has a large number of allegedly unbiased idiots proclaiming adherence to it is the way forward to an improved human race.
Not. Going. To. happen.
And nor should it. We come here to argue about how apple is better/worse than microsoft, which linux distro is bestest and about how illegal downloading is actually my god given right. That and the amusing stories with funny tag lines. We certainly don't come here for fair and balanced news.
If only we had access to the internet, we could go to the BBC for real news.
Science isn't cold hard facts.
Science is having a hypothesis and testing for it. However, the vast majority of testing is to find said hypothesis true, and it may well be disproved somewhere down the line. Science is essentially our best understanding at any particular moment in time.
While it has been generally acknowledged that we are coming out of an ice age, the change in climate may well have been altered by human influence to speed up the rate of change. The biggest concern is that an accelerated pace of change may outstrip humanity's ability to evolve to meet the changing conditions. Adaptation and genetic selection works too damn slowly to enable us to natively handle these conditions, and that is the real danger to our species.
"Adaptation and genetic selection works too damn slowly to enable us to natively handle these conditions," ... and we will do as we have before - use the brains we have to deal with it using methods other than the blind chance of natural selection. That is how our species has been successful in living in almost every land habitat type on the planet.
"and we will do as we have before - use the brains we have to deal with it using methods other than the blind chance of natural selection. That is how our species has been successful in living in almost every land habitat type on the planet."
The difference being that we have never had to support 9 billion people (estimated for 2050) with land disappearing under water (even under the mildest predictions, whether you believe this is man-made or not) in envrionments that are already marginal in some cases and with consequent imoplications for availability of freshwater, etc.
There is an overwhelming impression that the 'mitigators' are only looking at their own local patch and not worrying too much about developing countries, pacific atolls and low-lying countries such as Bangladesh when preaching mitigation and adaptation.
Selfish, much?
The thing that really irritates me about the fascistic/religious aspects of the MMGW is the way they miss the point... We all know the climate has changed in the past. We all know the climate will change in the future. We know that there will be future changes that have immense consequences for humans on the planet, and we know, if they possibly can, humans will want to do something to minimise the effects... There ought to be little dispute about those fundamentals.
However this logically leads to the conclusion that actually it makes sod all difference whether any warming that's occurring is man made or not, we still have to deal with it and that gets rather more contentious. Are folk whose houses are washed away (should that happen) going to say, "oh that's perfectly OK its because of natural causes". You know, I doubt it...
So what should be going on is to work out exactly what intervention is necessary to minimise the effects with the least possible effort and side effects, be it painting every available surface in the world white to increase the planet's albedo [joke] genetically engineering a plant to lock up amazing amounts of CO2 into carbon, reducing fossil fuel use or what (probably lots of different things, all together)
But instead we have the more extreme part of the Gaia lobby insisting that it must be man made and that the only way to deal with it is to reverse whatever particular human activity is causing the problem (which, as its fundamentally reproduction/population increase ought to be a damn sight more contentious that in seems to be). The flaws in that argument ought to be bloody obvious...
that the population of the earth has quadrupled during the 20th Century, be an important factor in whatever has happened in that time?
Uncontrolled breeding is something that cannot continue for long without unfortunate consequences .
We think we have conquered nature ,but when the shit hits the fan it will be an unpleasant experience.
NB. I am not (usually) a screaming greeny
...with a big red button, that when pressed would eliminate 75% of the population, and I'll press it. Regardless of whether I'm in that 75% or not.
If anybody is even remotely serious about reduce our impact on this planet, then I see no other way than to reduce the size of the population. And I don't just mean reduce the rate of increase. There's too damn many of us on this rock...
and have not *noticed* you don't have all the facts
You can generate doom laden explanations (glacier sliding faster -> glacierheating up) for behavior which can be have much less harmful explanations (basically the lower level of friction of the surface the glacier is now sliding over).
I really begin to think that a course in basic magic tricks should be a part of *any* Science curriculum.
If you can't see *all* sides of the problem (and once again it seems not even *looking* for them) how are you going to know if you've missed any *big* factors.
Now lets run some of those climate models with the data that's been collected over the last 30+ years and see what they say. No twiddling, no fudge factors. We're *living* through the real answer. Let's see what they say.
"Now lets run some of those climate models with the data that's been collected over the last 30+ years and see what they say. No twiddling, no fudge factors. We're *living* through the real answer. Let's see what they say."
The data that has been collected has already been skewed. Data from a handful of trees in one location gives us the answer we want so we destroyed not only the evidence from the other trees in the area, but all the other trees around the world as well. We don't want anybody reintepreting our data.
Mwu ha ha ha ha!
Signed: A. Climate-Scientist
In all seriousness the idea that climate scientists are the only ones to skew their data is nonsense. All sorts of scientists have been doing this for a long time in order to demontrate beyond doubt a pet theory or to continue their funding. The former being a way to keep the egg off their faces the latter being downright corrupt.
“Since when was this an AGW story?”
Fair point, but warmists are sensitive souls and they don’t like any suggestions that evidence they had previously considered rightfully theirs might have an unrelated cause. Ice melts because of AGW, not volcanoes, hotspots, cyclical warm periods or, er, summer...
So many of the greenie commentards posting on here seem to be missing a significant point here.
The problem found most unbiased scientists working in this area is that the PIG bucks the antarctic trend. Most of the antarctic area has experienced an increase in ice over recent decades. Of course those greenies, politicians and scientists who want to believe in human influnced global warming never mention this last fact. That would undermine their argument. Instead they go on and on about the increased flow of the PIG without mention of the rest of the antarctic. That is such incredibly bad science it's untrue.
Now the thing is that the increase in ice around antarctica could actually be caused by the increased flow of the PIG. If the pig is causing the oceans in the area to become fresher then this will effectively lower the melting point of the ice in those oceans. IOW this would mean ice in the oceans around antarctica would be less likely to melt. Which should mean more ice. So right up until somebody cast doubt on the theory that global warming had caused the increased flow of the PIG the greenies actually had a credible argument to explain the increase in antarctic ice. Of course it's now too late for them to start using that argument.
I'm not going to express a view either way on the subject of global warming itself, that argument will run and run. However I will say that the pro camp have got so used to fiddling figures and or at least selective reporting on the issue that they have got to the stage where they do it even if they don't need to. As such the population in general and the media* in particular are doubting the theory in ever greater numbers.
As for the comments about dramatic reporting; you should realise that reporting "we're all going to die" all the time quickly loses it's impact to the extent that it becomes a non-story. So what actually happens is that reporting the issue becomes less dramatic and more balanced. Sooner or later people see a "Global Warming Will Kill Us All" headline and unless they are dyed in the wool greenies they don't even bother reading the story. So if the journalist wants to get his point accross to the unbelievers s/he has to be more subtle. On the other hand the anti- camp have never had the dramatic headlines, "we're not doomed" has a lot less impact, so their stories have always been less dramatic and hence more generally credible to the rational mind.
* OK so that would be the media not including the Grauniad and the BBC.