Posts by Thought About IT 413 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Feb 2008
Lewis, why are you so selective about reporting on the categories of science that NASA undertakes? For example, you didn't cover this:
"The current warming trend is of particular significance because most of it is very likely human-induced and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented in the past 1,300 years."
http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
"and you consider it a problem? I would say the title indicates what is on the tin."
No it doesn't. It indicates a willful ignorance of the effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Without these trace gases, global temperatures would permanently be well below zero, as was established more than a century ago.
Increasing the trace molecule CO2 from 394 ppm to 685 ppm is still a trace, but just like with arsenic, the difference between a small trace and a larger trace can be dramatic.
Never mind how much it costs to make this device, why waste all that money on paying scientists to research a technology that's not needed? After all, El Reg have told us often enough that AGW is a scam, and here's another example of scientists getting filthy rich out of it.
Meanwhile, those Marxists at the New Scientist would have us believe that "Humanity's greenhouse gas emissions may be acidifying the oceans at a faster rate than at any time in the last 300 million years. The sheer speed of change means we do not know how severe the consequences will be.". (http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21534-oceans-acidifying-at-unprecedented-speed.html)
Scientists, pah - what do they know!
Having installed and played around with the preview yesterday, I was left feeling that it's a real struggle to use on a desktop PC. Apart from running the tiled apps, nothing is intuitive, and I still haven't found how to shut it down. No doubt that's explained in the documentation, but any GUI that can't be used without RTFM is a failure.
Josh 16: "Why won't St AlGore debate the 'settled science' with Christopher Monckton".
Why would anyone want to debate with Monckton, who uses the Gish Gallop technique to drown his opponent in a torrent of half-truths, lies and straw man arguments?
It's time El Reg realised that pushing this agenda alienates many of their readers and sets them against each other. Stick to what you do well, and keep your politics to yourself.
"Noticed how the vocabulary changed from global warming to climate change? The latter is happening constantly, just like sun sets and sun downs so no sane person, let alone climatologist, will disagree with it."
The IPCC first assessment report was completed in 1990. Any guesses what the CC part of IPCC stands for?
Andrew, I can understand why you're shy about coming clean, so I'll give you a hand.
Here's the dichotomy:
- The survival of the neoliberal agenda depends on never ending growth.
- The survival of the environment depends on sustainability.
The 1% have seen the threat, so to protect their ill-gotten gains they've mounted a propaganda exercise the tobacco industry would be proud of. Breathtakingly amoral, but impressively effective.
Andrew Orlowski: "Demonise the individual and the problem doesn't go away."
But that's exactly what the so-called "sceptics" are doing, and you're right, the problem doesn't go away.
They mounted a sustained campaign to get the scientists to release all their data, doing it in a way that demanded ever more of their time away from their primary research, so they bitched about it in emails. That data is now out there for anyone to analyse, and nobody has come to any different conclusions than the original researchers. The problem is that this doesn't fit your agenda, so you keep on attacking the scientists.
Come on Andrew, spell it out: let your readers know what exactly is your agenda, and that of the GWPF and WUWT who echo what you write.
You quote Schmittner as saying: "Now these very large changes (predicted for the coming decades) can be ruled out, and we have some room to breathe and time to figure out solutions to the problem.", as reported in the Australian.
Here's what he also said, as reported by New Scientist:
"Even if the climate sensitivity really is as low as 2.4 °C, Schmittner says that doesn't mean we are safe from climate change. The Last Glacial Maximum was only 2.2 °C cooler than today, yet there were huge ice sheets, plant life was different, and sea levels were 120 metres lower.
"Very small changes in temperature cause huge changes in certain regions," Schmittner says. So even if we get a smaller temperature rise than we expected, the knock-on effects would still be severe."
Funny how you only report stuff on climate change which fits your agenda.
Did I miss something, or have all those screaming for the release of the data from the CRU gone very quiet since they did just that? A cynic might think that they came to the same conclusions as the CRU (and as BEST did), so decided to have another go at discrediting the scientists. Nothing to do with another upcoming climate change conference, I'm sure.
"New, unconventional gas doesn't require any subsidies at all."
Well, that's not how they do it in Canada. British Columbia is providing the gas industry with 78 million cubic meters of free water each year for fracking:
http://www.desmogblog.com/free-water-fracking-b-c-government-gives-20-year-withdrawal-permit-talisman
If that's not a subsidy, I don't know what is!
@Josh 15:
"Very Disappointed, El Reg..."
Au contraire, and I never thought I'd be saying this, El Reg (or at least the author of this article) has looked at the evidence and changed its mind. That's the scientific method at work.
"Proving that mankind's piddling activities might have anything - or nothing - to do with any such measured change is quite another thing. As yet, we have no such proof, none at all - not from one climate scientist, ever."
I take it your idea of scientific source material is from the likes of WUWT and GWPF. How come, 3 months after the CRU at UEA released all the data that the "sceptics" had been screaming "climategate" about, has not a single one of them found a flaw in their methodology? Answer: because they don't do science, they just do propaganda - and it's astonishingly effective.
... who've hardly paused to take breath before WUWT and the GWPF presented them with a new tack to take, now that the heat island effect has been kicked out from under them. Of course, the reason they've come out fighting so hard, now that their safe pair of hands - Richard Muller - has proven to have some scientific integrity after all, is that the logical next step is to confirm that CO2 is the cause. The "sceptics" will continue to deny any such conclusion, but they know that when that happens, it will make their propaganda war much more difficult.
I've just installed it on a 64-bit Windows 7 PC and checked it against the Chrome V8 Benchmark Suite:
http://v8.googlecode.com/svn/data/benchmarks/current/run.html
The score for the 32-bit edition is 2255, while that for the 64-bit edition is only 484. For comparison, the score for the current release of Chrome is 8100, while Firefox 3.6.15 languishes in 64-bit IE9 territory at 508.
"As everyone except the most vehement climate-change deniers know, the earth is currently in a warming phase. The preponderance of evidence points to the rising rate of temperature increase as being anthropogenic"
Let me be the first to congratulate El Reg for allowing those words to appear under its banner..
Before any sceptic or denier uses this as evidence of a global warming scam, note that these scientists are still unequivocally confirming the connection between CO2 concentrations and global warming. This is also the position of the American Geophysical Union, which publishes the journal Geophysical Research Letters. They have stated:
"The Earth's climate is now clearly out of balance and is warming. Many components of the climate system--including the temperatures of the atmosphere, land and ocean, the extent of sea ice and mountain glaciers, the sea level, the distribution of precipitation, and the length of seasons--are now changing at rates and in patterns that are not natural and are best explained by the increased atmospheric abundances of greenhouse gases and aerosols generated by human activity during the 20th century."
Note also that their paper has not been peer reviewed, so can only be considered as preliminary findings which further research may confirm or disprove.
You only ever seem to report on climate news that reinforces your predefined narrative. For example, I've yet to see any coverage on El Reg of this story:
Dr. Andrew Weaver, one of the most respected climate scientists in Canada and one of the best climate modellers in the world, has launched a libel suit against the National Post newspaper and its publisher, editors and three writers. The suit is for "a series of unjustified libels based on grossly irresponsible falsehoods that have gone viral on the Internet."
http://www.desmogblog.com/climate-scientist-sues-national-post
By being so one-sided in what they publish on AGW, the Reg are revealing an anti-science agenda that undermines their credentials to report objectively on technological matters. Advances in technology are built on scientific research, which is conducted in the same peer reviewed fashion, whatever the discipline, so stop trying to undermine it!
Anybody interested in why the scientists at the CRU behaved the way they did should read the following series of articles by the Australian Clive Hamilton, who is a Professor of Public Ethics:
* Bullying, lies and the rise of climate denial (www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2826189.htm)
* Who is orchestrating the cyber-bullying? (www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2827047.htm)
* Think tanks, oil money and black ops (www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2828195.htm)
* Manufacturing a scientific scandal (www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2829295.htm)
* Who's defending science? (www.abc.net.au/unleashed/stories/s2830890.htm)
They shed a fascinating light on the matter.
There's no point in trying to use rational debate to point out the fallacies in the sceptic's arguments, as they are just bulletin points given to them by the climate denial industry. There are huge vested interests at stake, and those interests are being very effectively promoted by professional lobbyists. All they have to do is maintain the fiction that there is some doubt about the science, and they can make it impossible for effective political action to be taken to curb greenhouse emissions. This is a lesson learned from the tobacco companies, who were able to deny the irrefutable evidence of the connection between smoking and cancer for about 40 years. The difference is that smoking only affected individuals and their families, whereas global warming will affect everyone.
@twat ("The trouble is the tories continue to pander to him in return for propaganda, sorry favourable publicity. I just hope they have the sense to tell him to piss off should they win the next election.")
Unfortunately, Cameron has already intimated that he will allow Murdoch to change Sky News into a UK version of Fox News. Fox foments disaffection to the extent that it's destroying the concept of a loyal opposition and giving succour to all kinds of extremists. I wonder if they are intentionally trying to undermine democracy, because fascism is much more conducive to the corporatism that Murdoch represents.
Well, I suppose it's progress that El Reg have published an article that actually admits we have a problem with global warming. Now, how about one that debunks geoengineering solutions such as this:
"The estimated costs of maintaining a sulphate aerosol shield, most likely through a small number of dedicated high-flying aircraft, are remarkably cheap compared with the costs of conventional mitigation by factors of hundreds or even thousands."
Reason? Its destructive effect on the ozone layer. (See http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/node/1953)
I suppose reducing greenhouse gas emissions at source is too boring.
"Over the past few years, botnets have revolutionised the spam industry and pushed spam volumes to epidemic proportions despite the best efforts of law enforcement and the computer security industry,"
Well, clearly, the only solution is to take control of the botnets and disinfect them. I know it's illegal, but the problem can't be solved if the computer security industry has both hands tied behind its back. We should hold our noses and allow them to get on with it.
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