Using data from instruments aboard the Calipso satellite, which monitors clouds and particles suspended in the atmosphere, the researchers determined that mixed-phase clouds contain more water and less ice than expected. Water droplets reflect more solar radiation back into the sky than ice crystals do. As the atmosphere warms, clouds tend to have more water and less ice in them, and the more watery clouds prevent solar radiation from reaching the earth.... With less ice in the mix to start, however, there is less capacity for water to replace ice.... The result... is more warming.
April 8, 2016
"The computer models that predict climate change may be overestimating the cooling power of clouds...."
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So now the rich are finally gonna give up their Gulfstreams and sell their beachfront homes, right?
Right?
I'm fully on board with the Model being wrong.
I'm still trying to figure out why this particular version of the Model being wrong has resulted in the Model predicting higher temperatures than we've actually seen. For something like a decade now.
Oh, our climate change models don't scare you? Then look at THIS one!
So if trace amounts of CO2 plant food really had an effect, causing warming of the atmosphere, then it would have shot up faster than earlier climate models predicted it would have.
Therefore, since the last 20 years of rapidly rising trace gas plant food has caused no warming (apart from a systematic fraudulent change of past data), then CO2 is not a problem at all outside the Imaginary Hoax World proclaimed by the World Governance Gang.
More to the point,
though note that "researcher" still says that just because our models are proved wrong, it doesn't mean we should stop believing in them.
If at first you don't succeed.....
Oh shit. Looks like Obama has some more sea rise stoppin' to do.
This is a grad students paper. Should that make me more or less concerned?
Furthermore, it's all computer modeling. How hard does one look to insure that the data and formulas put into the model are correct (I.e "that number doesn't look right, let's check the model")
settled
“The hope,” she added, “is that instead of giving up, people get the sense of urgency in this, and in terms of emissions cuts, this leads to more action and less talk — instead of despair, that this triggers action.”
Trigger warning!
SJ said...
I'm fully on board with the Model being wrong.
I'm still trying to figure out why this particular version of the Model being wrong has resulted in the Model predicting higher temperatures than we've actually seen. For something like a decade now.
I'd state it differently.
The model has been predicting warming that has not occurred.
Now we find that the model is wrong and should be predicting even higher temps that haven't happened. So with her fix, the model will diverge even more from reality and this is written as an improvement?
Me thinks she's dickering with a micro-knob when the basic model or the models view of reality is very wrong...
Phil 3:14 said...
How hard does one look to insure that the data and formulas put into the model are correct (I.e "that number doesn't look right, let's check the model")
One looks extremely hard at both the formulas and the data, and one works vigorously to correct any mistakes, right up until one gets the answer one was looking for.
Science is like a streetcar. When you get to your stop, you get off.
I'm so sick of these morons pretending the climate is an egg balanced on its end, that just hasn't happened to tip over for billions of years.
Our climate system is obviously negative feedback. To think it is positive feedback is ABSURD.
Does this make any sense? Sounds like the higher water content in those clouds maximizes its cooling effect.
So clouds with more than expected water would be like air conditioners on max cool.
No where in the article does it suggest the conversion of ice to water is the process that causes cooling.
Are they just suggesting their models baseline of ice content was wrong and therefore the ability of clouds to increase their cooling capacity is lower than they predicted?
It's only a model.
Bob Ellison said...
It's only a model.
LOL.
It isn't my cup of tea, but people who hated Christianity should be alarmed at the hysterical progressivism that serves as substitute for traditional religious belief. Don't trust any climate "science" that you cannot verify directly for yourself.
EDH said...
Are they just suggesting their models baseline of ice content was wrong and therefore the ability of clouds to increase their cooling capacity is lower than they predicted?
They are saying that, plus they are saying that the amount of cooling we are currently getting from the clouds is greater than then models had been predicting, thus explaining why the models have overestimated warming in the past.
It makes sense, and it might even be true. Or it might be a just-so story to explain past model failures without scraping a fundamentally flawed model.
Time will tell.
Being a history major and not scientist, my question may be ignorant. This article appears to present a hypothesis or a theory. Can it be called research until it has been tested with data collection that confirms or refutes the hypothesis, or causes it to be reformed?
So with her fix, the model will diverge even more from reality and this is written as an improvement? [Emphasis added]
These are postmodern pseudo-scientists in the same league as Trafim Lysenko. This politicized "science" pursues not truth as a goal but only power.
The climate is identifying as warming.
How much warmer does the earth need to get before climate science deniers stop denying?
If it causes more warming, trapping the heat down here, why isn't the stratosphere cooling because it is denied that heat the way the theory says?
Beach Brutus - the current accepted practice with all climate warming theories is that the models are completely correct and accurate, and Reality itself is in the wrong.
And Reality will hurry to catch up when it realizes just how far behind the models it is.
David, warmer than a thousand years ago would do it for me.
NYTs said...it suggests that making progress against global warming will be even harder.
1) It suggests that if the cooling power of clouds was understated, than any warming cause by man made Carbon emissions was overstated. Notice how the 'global warming' term is used rather that 'climate change' since the finding contradicts past settled science.
2) That sentence from the article can also mean, relative to the above, this is "making progress against global warming will be even harder" because it further exposes past models as bunk.
3) In their sinister efforts they are trying to say "now we'll have to cut emissions even more" since we can't count on the clouds to save us.
Send in the clouds.
Assholes, trying to save their paychecks. Fuck them. One degree total in 150 years--that's the bottom line.
Climate change models are becoming the 21st century version of Ptolemaic astronomy: whenever something needs a little correction (or perhaps you need a correction to the correction to the correction), just add another epicycle to the epicycle for the feedback loops within the feedback loops!
The epicycles are fourier series coefficients of the orbits, as Fred Hoyle pointed out long ago. So not wrong, just in a different coordinate system than one what suggests a simpler law.
David:
If it were actually warming, NASA wouldn't need to go back and 'adjust' past records downward to generate a warming trend.
"That series has included links to some dozens of articles and blog posts where mostly independent researchers have gone out and compared raw temperature data from hundreds of places around the globe to the current data sets published by our government functionaries at the likes of NASA and NOAA. And somehow, when these comparisons are made, the results are always the same, over and over again: the government agencies have altered older data to be cooler, thereby introducing into history exaggerated warming trends not present in the raw data."
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-imminent-collapse-of-cagw-delusion.html
If you're altering the data going into the software, anything you get out is going to be modified by it. Even with the best of intentions (and after seeing a whole lot of money disappear into green scams of varying sorts I question just how good the intentions are in the first place...) trying to base any sort of future climate policy on models that don't work is sheer foolishness.
Predictive models are nearly always wrong if they involve complex systems with uncertain data. Our direct climate data is of very recent origin, and contains gaps, inaccuracies and inconsistencies in how data was collected. Data from deeper time is all derivative and inferential from observations of other phenomena like tree rings. Moreover the climate system is hugely complex with a vast number of inputs. We really don't understand many of the inputs very well. Sun temperature is a great example of this, as is the influence of the earth's own super hot core. Add to this ideological bias, greed, lust for fame and power and other distorting human characteristics, you have an unreliable mess.
The first step to a realistic approach to climate change should be acknowledgment of the uncertainty and the reality that our "solutions" may be more harmful than beneficial. With some smart and honest leadership we might get somewhere, but smart and honest leadership is in short supply.
We boomers grew up with the phrase "the balance of nature." I bought it and still do. The earth is getting too much carbon in its atmosphere? Something will kick in to balance it out: more clouds, wind, sea thermals, whatever. Nature is a giant, self-adjusting machine. It's almost spooky how effectively nature deals with survival of itself..
Global warming theory is just a blind man with a new Braille tape measure measuring an elephant's foot. He's getting a better read on the foot's dimensions but he still mistakes it for the entire elephant.
I pity the people that were born after 1985 that were inculcated into thinking that global warming is a real threat. Sad, sad clowns.
"new research suggests."
Standard propagandistic language used by science deniers. When studies don't show what you want dismiss them with prelim results and skip over the fact that the new research doesn't actually refute the old.
Lester Brown was famous for this when predicting new peak food production every five years - all vast increases over previous peak predictions. Food production per acre has been increasing for centuries, but for 50 years there has been "new research" suggesting it was all about to end. It just never happened. See also: Paul Ehrlich.
This information from the "Trofim Denisovich Lysenko climate research center"...
Don't judge us by our models and their inaccuracies. Judge us by our superior knowledge that the models are "underestimating" the scary warming we've been shouting about for 30 years. You people just don't get it! We're serious this time!
"The prediction is more warming, but that's not what the actual data shows."
"The data must be wrong, then. Damn it!! Call in the adjustment team!!"
<a href="http://thefederalistpapers.integratedmarket.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Climate-Change-Resized.jpg>Climate Change Pronouncements</a> depend on people not being able to remember what was said before.
Calipso is a really cool satellite, especially when you combine its information with the other satellites in the A-Train, as they call it.
@traditionalguy, yes, you would think that more CO2 would be beneficial for plants, and perhaps it is. But there is considerable research that shows more CO2 leads to less concentrated nutrients in a plant. (Rice, Wheat, Potatoes (Note: I'm not sure how available these are -- I use the power of the UW to read them).
From the Potato Study: "The concentrations of protein, potassium, and as a trend of calcium, were negatively related to CO2 enrichment, suggesting adverse impacts on tuber quality for human nutrition and aesthetic and sensory quality during processing." (I add this so that you can at least google on it if you want to read it). From the Wheat/Rice Study: "In C3 plants (e.g., rice, wheat), elevated concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (eCO2) reduce protein and nitrogen concentrations, and can increase the total non-structural carbohydrates"
I'm not reading people saying that the Earth isn't warming anymore, but I expect that'll happen when 2016 turns out to be cooler than 2015. (As if a warming planet warms linearly)
Andrew Breitbart said politics is downstream from culture. Science is now downstream from politics.
Those pesky German physicists notwithstanding, right MadisonMan?
> The result... is more warming.
Unexpectively. I predicted that result without having to do any research at all because my model of climate research is awesome.
@Bob Ellison/
Forget the climate models, Jake, it's Junk Science City..
"Science is now downstream from politics."
Science has long been downstream from funding which is driven by all sorts of factors, including politics.
It used to be politics was focused on imperial ambitions so science was driven by war-making, now politics tends to be focused on financial ambitions, so science is driven to drive new industries that get government funding. Both are oriented by fear-mongering.
The earth has been warming since the end of the last ice age. Sooner or later it will start cooling and we'll all be covered by a mile of glacier again.
man isn't involved in that cycle...
Increased warming can be reliably predicted using this simple yet elegant model:
More warming = more funding = more warming = more funding
A couple of decades is too short to prove anything either way.
1200 years gets to be a little more like it.
However, every 1000 year cycle looks to be a little cooler than the one before it, so we apparently are on the downward slope to another glaciation.
And in any case, regarding the horrors of global warming, then why did the dinosaurs (and the atmosphere and vegetation that could feed them to those sizes) do so great when the average global temperature was 15-20 degrees warmer than now?
Those pesky German physicists notwithstanding, right MadisonMan?
What?
I do know that there was a study (5 years ago? 10? Time really flies) put out by German Physicists that has been thoroughly rebuked. As I recall, they ignored the 2nd law of Thermodynamics, something like that. But My memory ain't what it used to be.
There is nothing more amusing for a Meteorologist than watching a theoretical physicist trying to understand or describe the atmosphere. It would be like me teaching Law.
@ Hagar
Dinosaurs thrive when it's warmer. Conservatives are dinosaurs. It's all starting to make sense to me now.
Proving once again that the models are just guesses. Good piece about the "warming" in the WSJ. The conclusion being that we are better off with a little extra heat than extra cold. The idea that we and other flora and fauna will not adapt to a 1 degree temperature difference over 150 years - should it happen - is laughable.
I ask, once again, why we aren't "doing' something about El Nino. It has blown more holes in this past year's weather than "warming" ever will. Ah, but it's just a natural phenomenon over which we have no control. Is that it?
Anyway nukes are the answer to the power generation/CO2 question.
This comment, by one Martin A, on the Bishop Hill blog is worth citing, I think:
“ The climate system is evidently complex beyond the capacity of current science and resources to analyse.
Climate science is dressed up in the clothes of real science (computers, equations, papers, conferences) but missing one or two essential features - being uncritical of itself, not seeing the need to validate its models and not bothering with the scientific method. And believing that untested, unvalidated models of the most complicated object ever attempted to be modelled can actually predict its future behaviour.
It is what Richard Feynman called "cargo cult science". ”
However, every 1000 year cycle looks to be a little cooler than the one before it, so we apparently are on the downward slope to another glaciation.
We are in the middle of an ice age.
All of human existence has occurred during an ice age. All of human history has occurred during a warm period in that ice age.
There was a pile of ice one mile high over Chicago once, and there will be again.
The earth has been warming since the end of the last ice age.
The ice age hasn't ended...we are in the middle of it.
Sooner or later it will start cooling and we'll all be covered by a mile of glacier again.
Yep.
Others above have pointed out why scientists spend much more time and effort trying to show that AGW/AGCC is true than false - that is where the money is. But why are the politicians (and esp. those on the left) so enthusiastic in supporting it? There, it is more than money, though money is involved. Rather, it is to increase their power. Note that for the most part (excluding the WSJ article above), it is just assumed that if we have AGW/AGCC, a lot more people are going to die (which, of course, is probably false). No real analysis of whether more will die, or, if, just maybe, we might be better off. And, no investigation into doing anything other than transferring trillions of dollars from First World to Third World countries, while those in charge siphon off their fair share. We are supposed to panic, and give governments and bureaucrats significantly more power over our lives, based on these rather poorly performing models.
Bob Boyd,
I think you mean
Predictions of more warming = more funding = predictions of more warming = more funding
Six to 10 million years ago: Ice-free summers at the North Pole
"Fernandinande said...
Six to 10 million years ago: Ice-free summers at the North Pole"
No Al Gore. Coincidence?
All of human existence has occurred during an ice age. All of human history has occurred during a warm period in that ice age.
Strictly correct, but really incorrect. Comme to think of it, just incorrect.
The current ice age began about 2 3/4 million years ago, and species homo existed before then.
However, the sentence says "ice age" when "glaciation" appears to be meant, and "modern man" - Homo sapiens sapiens - originated in the previous interglacial and survived, and indeed spread across the globe, during the last glaciation.
It is not that the money is in showing global warming is true; it is that expressing doubt as to whether it is true or not will not only cause your funding to be cut off, but you will get a bad performance review, be socially ostracized, and may loose your job entirely.
However, the sentence says "ice age" when "glaciation" appears to be meant, and "modern man" - Homo sapiens sapiens - originated in the previous interglacial and survived, and indeed spread across the globe, during the last glaciation.
But, wasn't our human species (contrasted to some other human species, such as Neanderthals) kicked back to Africa during the last Ice Age (or glaciation). And, most of our ancestors died out at that point in time (or, some other - that isn't clear). That is one of the reasons that our chromosomes are much less diverse than those of our nearest (known) living genetic relatives (chimps and pygmy chimps).
Hagar, 11:29: That's for sure.
A climate modeler of my acquaintance once showed me the manuscript of a paper in progress. It basically called into question some important recent findings relating to human influence on the climate: Not the whole enchilada, but important points of detail.
I gnashed my teeth at the intro, which boiled down to: "Of course the big picture view is correct, but…." And I challenged it: What possible relevance does this politically correct obeisance have?
The answer was, and again I'm paraphrasing: If I don't begin with that, people will think I'm denying the link between CO2 and warming. They'll write me off as a crank, and they'll pay no attention to these findings.
Ah, I said. Sounds sort of like those poor Soviet biologists trying to nudge their field back toward reality: "Of course Comrade Lysenko was correct, but…."
I've looked at clouds from both sides now..
No. The bottleneck occurred before that and in Africa.
Homo sapiens sapiens arrived in Australia 60,000+/- years ago and the last peak glaciation was just 20,000+/- years ago.
No, MadisonMan.
They argues successfully that GlowBall Warmeningists had ignored the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
And their science was never refuted, only ignored.
And you remain a fraud, in my eyes, for never educating yourself when serially challenged.
I think the oldest "modern man" remains found outside Africa were found in a cave in Israel and is dated to 80,000+/-years ago.
David, 8:20:
"How much warmer does the earth need to get before climate science deniers stop denying?"
By far the best short response I've seen is this comment I saved from one AtlantaDude, on Scott Adams' blog:
"In reality, the scientific question is more about where you put the line in the cascading list below:
1. CO2 in the atmosphere traps heat and contributes to warming
2. Projected CO2 increases can cause roughly 1 degree Celsius of warming
3. The warming we have seen to date is primarily due to CO2
4. Positive feedback factors aside from CO2 will multiply the warming by 3x to 6x
5. The warming caused by the feedback cycles will lead to a catastrophe
"...the 97% of scientists consensus that we keep hearing about pertains to #1 and #2. Once you get to #3 the consensus gets a little shakier, and the percentage of scientists signing up for #4 and #5 is way, way smaller….[T]he warming crowd and their political allies want to keep the argument as the simple yes / no, which implies that you either buy all 5 or you are a "moron" who doesn't even believe #1 or #2."
In your fine comment at 8:54 - I was surprised you're both the same David - you mention some of the key uncertainties.
...argued...
Hagar 11:24
Genus Homo.
Sorry about that!
MadMan...You want to point out a 33% increase in crop volume from co2 fertilization by co2 causes some measurement of less mineral uptake by those faster growing plants. They are are a small amount less nutritional in minerals.
Ok. So eat more or take a mineral supplement. Eat until you are full. There is now no famine to kill you off and weaken you and make you susceptible to diseases.
Good point that co2 is beneficial, and is not a pollutant. Meanwhile Windmill Farms are still total disasters.
I think the most important cause of global warming is the sun.
And study of what goes on inside the sun (and the earth, for that matter) is just in its infancy.
Why bother to do "new research" if the science is settled?
Is it supposed to be a coincidence that the new research always makes the problem appear to be more serious than when we last considered your grant application?
Science:
For 3p-orbitals, the radial distribution function is related to the product obtained by multiplying the square of the radial wave function R3p by r2. By definition, it is independent of direction.
Not-science:
The computer models that predict climate change may be overestimating the cooling power of clouds, new research suggests. If the findings are borne out by further research, it suggests that making progress against global warming will be even harder.
"But why are the politicians (and esp. those on the left) so enthusiastic in supporting it? There, it is more than money, though money is involved. "
Long ago I read a lot of Ayn Rand. Not just her novels but her collected essays. She was wrong about a great deal, but she was always precisely correct about her enemies.
I recall one essay (late, maybe 1969-70?) where she predicted that the left would move away from justifying itself through claiming it would deliver material benefits to the working class, as that claim was not only falsifiable, through simple metrics, over a normal human lifespan, but generally by that time seen to be false.
It would instead justify its demand for power by claiming to serve the "environment" in general, which claims would not be falsifiable within a human lifetime, nor are there useful metrics. It amounted to justification through faith. Any measurable human cost could be justified for the sake of a general, unfalsifiable purpose.
She was entirely correct. This is the ideological war of our time, against the corrupt environmentalist faith.
I think, maybe, I can unpack that a bit:
The quoted section seems to be saying that the clouds in the near past to the present have had more water droplets in them than expected and, thus, the models have over-predicted temperatures for the last few years; i.e. the clouds were more reflective than expected. However, the claim is then added that with less ice in them today, the models are going to be more correct since an individual cloud is going to have less additional ability to reflect going forward. Mostly, it all seems hand-waving about the future since I don't quite see how you can assert anything about how much actual water droplets are going to be in a clouds, let's say, 25 years from now- all you can really, rationally guess is that there will be less ice crystals if the atmosphere at the level of clouds is actually warmer in the future, which almost seems they assume the outcome they are tyring to predict based on the cloud research.
And I will add- there seems to be an assumption that the water droplets themselves only arise from the melting of ice crystals rather than from nucleation from vapor itself.
If you can make an accurate computer model of the Earth's climate decades out, why can't you accurately model the stock market and make tons of money? Stock prices can't be more complicated than the Earth's climate.
Liberal's love to quote Eisenhower and his warning about the "military-industrial complex" in his farewell address.
However, they never seem to want to quote his second warning:
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central, it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
Ok. So eat more or take a mineral supplement. Eat until you are full.
Easy for me to do. Easy for you to do. Other parts of the world -- maybe not so easy.
I thought they were interesting studies, I'm glad you (apparently) were able to read them.
The result... is more warming
This neatly summarizes all papers on the subject. The rest is just filler.
Yancey 12:47
And I will add- there seems to be an assumption that the water droplets themselves only arise from the melting of ice crystals rather than from nucleation from vapor itself.
The assumption seems to be that there will be no increase in cloud cover, therefore total cooling capacity increase will lessen. Maybe lack of cooling from a given level of cloud cover would be a factor in generating more clouds.
How can you question the models? They've successfully predicted 10 of the last 2 degrees of warming.
From the Wheat/Rice Study: "In C3 plants (e.g., rice, wheat), elevated concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (eCO2) reduce protein and nitrogen concentrations, and can increase the total non-structural carbohydrates"
If you had never learned how to read carefully, you might think there was less protein in the harvest. Behold the elite in defense of their precious Narrative, managing the defective perceptions of the knuckle-dragging masses.
Starchier grains, oh no! People eat grains primarily for the starch you dissimulating swine! These people are mulch candidates.
They should use the cooling power of mint.
(As if a warming planet warms linearly)
As if a cooling planet cools linearly
So, basically, the models are wrong. Again. We knew that.
Trying to model the Earth's climate is extremely difficult. It is no surprise that the models have consistently been wrong. What is surprising is anyone acting in good faith would use said models to drive worldwide policy.
Static Ping: "What is surprising is anyone acting in good faith would use said models to drive worldwide policy."
Who said anything about good faith?
Hey, at least the current models include clouds. The earliest did not. Yet, even then THE SCIENCE WAS SETTLED!!!!
"Predictive models are nearly always wrong if they involve complex systems with uncertain data,"
Spot on, David.
Now throw in varying surrogate inputs for historic temperatures, make undocumented (and therefore untestable) adjustments, throw in some here to fore unknown feedback mechanisms, change the models or manipulate data whenever predictions fall TOO far from reality, then use that model to project cliate a century ahead.
Sure, the skeptics are JUST like the Nazis.
Global warming on earth is so bad, it's causing the polar ice caps to melt. On Mars.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html
I blame the Republicans who drive SUV's and don't recycle.
It's a headline that is evergreen: "Warming will be worse than expected."
But then it isn't.
new research suggests
I was just reading this article about how scientists, and the government, were so very, very wrong about our obesity epidemic. It's sugar, not fat or cholesterol, that makes people fat.
How many people died because of this blunder?
A bemused McGovern asked Yudkin if he was really suggesting that a high fat intake was not a problem, and that cholesterol presented no danger.
“I believe both those things,” replied Yudkin.
“That is exactly the opposite of what my doctor told me,” said McGovern.
By all means, make our people fat, McGovern, you idiot. Give us all heart attacks! (And note how these "authorities" joined forces with corporate interests, and how money ultimately kept the truth hidden far longer than it should have been).
As bad as our authorities are, the real bad guys in my opinion are the journalists. Speak truth to power? Ha! More like parrot what the authorities say and silence all dissent.
How many journalists do you know who have any curiosity at all in regard to whether abortion kills a baby? I mean, it's like the question has not even occurred to them. It amazes me, this willful and arrogant ignorance. They think they know things, and so they have no interest in finding out things.
We might blame our law schools, or our medical schools, for the baby-killing. After all, it's doctors who learned to violate their HIppocratic Oath (for money) and lawyers who have no idea what a "person" is. Both the law schools and the medical schools, and the doctors and lawyers, were ultimately corrupted by money, in my opinion.
But the J schools? Maybe there is some financial corruption there. The six figure and seven figure journalist jokes, with their blow dry hair and their cult of celebrity. But there are many, many journalists who are working class, and are not financially corrupt. And yet they failed, utterly failed, to see the atrocities or to report on them. And they did this with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of citizens jumping up and down and screaming about the bad stuff that is going on. It's an amazing refusal to listen, to think rationally, or to think independently.
Instead our journalists are vigilant, hyper-vigilant, vigilant-to-the-point-of-being-idiots, on the subject of race and gender and global warming. Non issues! Our society is the least racist, the least sexist, in the history of the earth! The fucking planet has had five ice ages before humanity was even here! Our authorities and our authoritarians are idiots with the wrong obsessions. Meanwhile, our media is so determined to define and name what is right and true and good, and so determined to hide what is wrong and false and bad, it is censoring and hiding the actual truth.
This partisan control of our media must end. This should be the #1 goal of the Republican party. Not just for Republican ideas, but for the good of our society.
While I"m in a cranky mood, let me remind America that a really big disaster is looming. And it's not what you think.
So if there is MORE WARMING by the clouds then why isn't it, uh, warming?
I've read that New Yorker article three times, I think. The first time I was like this. "Holy shit!" The second time I was like this. "Oh fuck, man." But the third time I read it? This paragraph leaped out at me.
“The science part is fun,” Goldfinger says. “And I love doing it. But the gap between what we know and what we should do about it is getting bigger and bigger, and the action really needs to turn to responding. Otherwise, we’re going to be hammered. I’ve been through one of these massive earthquakes in the most seismically prepared nation on earth. If that was Portland”—Goldfinger finished the sentence with a shake of his head before he finished it with words. “Let’s just say I would rather not be here.”
Althouse often skewers Christians for not acting in accordance with our belief. Thus, she concludes, Christians don't really believe. And yet we might say the say thing about Chris Goldfinger, the paleoseismologist at Oregon State. He is predicting a massive, colossal earthquake and tsunami.
When the next full-margin rupture happens, that region will suffer the worst natural disaster in the history of North America.
And yet where is he living? In a city where a 700 mile high tsunami will one day strike!
I read that article, and I am amazed that anybody would voluntarily live in a place where you are reasonably certain disaster will one day strike. You don't know when. But you know it will.
Maybe it's a part of the human condition, this wishful thinking. "I hope this bad thing will not happen. If I ignore it, maybe I will be okay." Sometimes we ignore the truth, when the truth is good. Isn't that sad? It's kind of insane. You not only believed something false, you missed the good news!
But I suspect it's far more common to ignore the truth, when the truth is bad. We don't want to believe bad stuff. I know when I was young, I was agnostic on the subject of hell, and Satan. I didn't like the idea of hell, or going to hell, and so I put it far from my mind. "God wouldn't do that to me," I said to myself. Wishful thinking!
Bad things happen to people all the time. We should not be so scared of the bad that we refuse to see the bad. Because the truth will catch up to us, sooner or later.
"Saint Croix said...
While I"m in a cranky mood, let me remind America that a really big disaster is looming. And it's not what you think."
Or maybe another Carrington event: http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2008/06may_carringtonflare/
It will happen. The fact that a Carrington event occurred so recently (1859) means that they can't be that rare. Every few centuries, perhaps.
Airplanes would fall out of the sky. All of the satellites, gone. Most powerplants, gone. Ships at sea: lost. Most electronic devices, gone. Yet, for some reason, the AGW true believers ignore the science. A few billion dollars would go a long way towards mitigating the effects of a really big solar storm, but it would not require reordering the world economy. This makes it perfectly clear that carbon rationing, etc., is not about AGW at all. It is about control.
Let me explain what I mean by 'mitigate' the effects of a Carrington event.
We used to have a lot more excess generation capacity. Computers and inter-connected grids allowed us to increase efficiency by whittling down excess generation capacity. Satellite electronics could be better shielded, but it would cost money, plus it would increase the mass of launched satellites. You can protect against this. Did you know that we have unmanned spacecraft out at the Venusian Lagrange points to monitor the sun? We do. We need more.
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