That global warming will really get after ya.

[USN_Hokie]

This is a false equivalency. First, how do you complete a study like this? What amount of data is robust enough? Should we leave it up to politicians to decide? I'm sure I'm guilty of speaking in absolutes on this board when it comes to climate change and other topics. But the people that actually matter in this conversation, the climate scientist, don't speak in absolutes. They talk of probabilities. And even in this time of supposed leveling off, their level of certainty has gone up, their data has been strengthened, and their models have been proven accurate (despite what AG says).

Is this really the attitude we should be taking? Should we give Robert Kennedy Jr. equal credence when it comes to vaccines? How about the discovery institute when it comes to evolution? The problem is that one side is doing the science, and the other side is using rhetoric and straw men to misrepresent the others' work so that it fits their narrative.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

Models have been proven accurate? I'd love to see a cite for that.

[nolanvt]

This thread is hilarious. It reads like a PFTCommenter (parody account based on the moronic commenters on the Pro Football Talk blog) tweet:

https://twitter.com/PFTCommenter/status ... 3204652032

OK

My serious take: don't use the sample size of one or two days of extremely cold weather to prove or disprove Global Warming/Climate Change/Whatever We're Calling It Now.

[awesome guy]

This thread is hilarious. It reads like a PFTCommenter (parody account based on the moronic commenters on the Pro Football Talk blog) tweet:

https://twitter.com/PFTCommenter/status ... 3204652032

OK

My serious take: don't use the sample size of one or two days of extremely cold weather to prove or disprove Global Warming/Climate Change/Whatever We're Calling It Now.

and who is doing that?

[nolanvt]

This thread is hilarious. It reads like a PFTCommenter (parody account based on the moronic commenters on the Pro Football Talk blog) tweet:

https://twitter.com/PFTCommenter/status ... 3204652032

OK

My serious take: don't use the sample size of one or two days of extremely cold weather to prove or disprove Global Warming/Climate Change/Whatever We're Calling It Now.

and who is doing that?

The very first post of the thread.

[Uprising]

This is a false equivalency. First, how do you complete a study like this? What amount of data is robust enough? Should we leave it up to politicians to decide? I'm sure I'm guilty of speaking in absolutes on this board when it comes to climate change and other topics. But the people that actually matter in this conversation, the climate scientist, don't speak in absolutes. They talk of probabilities. And even in this time of supposed leveling off, their level of certainty has gone up, their data has been strengthened, and their models have been proven accurate (despite what AG says).

Is this really the attitude we should be taking? Should we give Robert Kennedy Jr. equal credence when it comes to vaccines? How about the discovery institute when it comes to evolution? The problem is that one side is doing the science, and the other side is using rhetoric and straw men to misrepresent the others' work so that it fits their narrative.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

Models have been proven accurate? I'd love to see a cite for that.

If you are really interested, you could read this:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronom ... isn_t.html

In fact the models are doing a pretty good job of representing the physical nature of what’s going on. The real problem isn’t with the models, it’s with people interpreting them, or, more accurately, misinterpreting them.

Lots of good links in there.

And this:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... zzle-piece

Our results show that the current hiatus is part of natural climate variability, tied specifically to La-Niña-like decadal cooling … For the recent decade, the decrease in tropical Pacific sea surface temperature has lowered the global temperature by about 0.15 degrees Celsius compared to the 1990s

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

[awesome guy]

This thread is hilarious. It reads like a PFTCommenter (parody account based on the moronic commenters on the Pro Football Talk blog) tweet:

https://twitter.com/PFTCommenter/status ... 3204652032

OK

My serious take: don't use the sample size of one or two days of extremely cold weather to prove or disprove Global Warming/Climate Change/Whatever We're Calling It Now.

and who is doing that?

The very first post of the thread.

So one ribbing posts means the entire thread is saying one day proves/disproves the AGW hoax?

[Major Kong]

Who remembers this ditty from November 1, 2013 (Oh that's right it was a Friday )...

Executive Order -- Preparing the United States for the Impacts of Climate Change

EXECUTIVE ORDER

- - - - - - -

PREPARING THE UNITED STATES FOR THE IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to prepare the Nation for the impacts of climate change by undertaking actions to enhance climate preparedness and resilience, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Policy. The impacts of climate change -- including an increase in prolonged periods of excessively high temperatures, more heavy downpours, an increase in wildfires, more severe droughts, permafrost thawing, ocean acidification, and sea-level rise -- are already affecting communities, natural resources, ecosystems, economies, and public health across the Nation. These impacts are often most significant for communities that already face economic or health-related challenges, and for species and habitats that are already facing other pressures. Managing these risks requires deliberate preparation, close cooperation, and coordinated planning by the Federal Government, as well as by stakeholders, to facilitate Federal, State, local, tribal, private-sector, and nonprofit-sector efforts to improve climate preparedness and resilience; help safeguard our economy, infrastructure, environment, and natural resources; and provide for the continuity of executive department and agency (agency) operations, services, and programs.

A foundation for coordinated action on climate change preparedness and resilience across the Federal Government was established by Executive Order 13514 of October 5, 2009 (Federal Leadership in Environmental, Energy, and Economic Performance), and the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force led by the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In addition, through the U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP), established by section 103 of the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (15 U.S.C. 2933), and agency programs and activities, the Federal Government will continue to support scientific research, observational capabilities, and assessments necessary to improve our understanding of and response to climate change and its impacts on the Nation.

The Federal Government must build on recent progress and pursue new strategies to improve the Nation's preparedness and resilience. In doing so, agencies should promote: (1) engaged and strong partnerships and information sharing at all levels of government; (2) risk-informed decisionmaking and the tools to facilitate it; (3) adaptive learning, in which experiences serve as opportunities to inform and adjust future actions; and (4) preparedness planning.

Sec. 2. Modernizing Federal Programs to Support Climate Resilient Investment. (a) To support the efforts of regions, States, local communities, and tribes, all agencies, consistent with their missions and in coordination with the Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience (Council) established in section 6 of this order, shall:

(i) identify and seek to remove or reform barriers that discourage investments or other actions to increase the Nation's resilience to climate change while ensuring continued protection of public health and the environment;

(ii) reform policies and Federal funding programs that may, perhaps unintentionally, increase the vulnerability of natural or built systems, economic sectors, natural resources, or communities to climate change related risks;

(iii) identify opportunities to support and encourage smarter, more climate-resilient investments by States, local communities, and tribes, including by providing incentives through agency guidance, grants, technical assistance, performance measures, safety considerations, and other programs, including in the context of infrastructure development as reflected in Executive Order 12893 of January 26, 1994 (Principles for Federal Infrastructure Investments), my memorandum of August 31, 2011 (Speeding Infrastructure Development through More Efficient and Effective Permitting and Environmental Review), Executive Order 13604 of March 22, 2012 (Improving Performance of Federal Permitting and Review of Infrastructure Projects), and my memorandum of May 17, 2013 (Modernizing Federal Infrastructure Review and Permitting Regulations, Policies, and Procedures); and

(iv) report on their progress in achieving the requirements identified above, including accomplished and planned milestones, in the Agency Adaptation Plans developed pursuant to section 5 of this order.

(b) In carrying out this section, agencies should also consider the recommendations of the State, Local, and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience (Task Force) established in section 7 of this order and the National Infrastructure Advisory Council established by Executive Order 13231 of October 16, 2001 (Critical Infrastructure Protection in the Information Age), and continued through Executive Order 13652 of September 30, 2013 (Continuance of Certain Federal Advisory Committees).

(c) Interagency groups charged with coordinating and modernizing Federal processes related to the development and integration of both man-made and natural infrastructure, evaluating public health and social equity issues, safeguarding natural resources, and other issues impacted by climate change -- including the Steering Committee on Federal Infrastructure Permitting and Review Process Improvement established by Executive Order 13604, the Task Force on Ports established on July 19, 2012, the Interagency Working Group on Coordination of Domestic Energy Development and Permitting in Alaska established by Executive Order 13580 of July 12, 2011, and the Federal Interagency Working Group on Environmental Justice established by Executive Order 12898 of February 11, 1994 -- shall be responsible for ensuring that climate change related risks are accounted for in such processes and shall work with agencies in meeting the requirements set forth in subsections (a) and (b) of this section.

Sec. 3. Managing Lands and Waters for Climate Preparedness and Resilience. Within 9 months of the date of this order and in coordination with the efforts described in section 2 of this order, the heads of the Departments of Defense, the Interior, and Agriculture, the Environmental Protection Agency, NOAA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, and other agencies as recommended by the Council established in section 6 of this order shall work with the Chair of CEQ and the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to complete an inventory and assessment of proposed and completed changes to their land- and water-related policies, programs, and regulations necessary to make the Nation's watersheds, natural resources, and ecosystems, and the communities and economies that depend on them, more resilient in the face of a changing climate. Further, recognizing the many benefits the Nation's natural infrastructure provides, agencies shall, where possible, focus on program and policy adjustments that promote the dual goals of greater climate resilience and carbon sequestration, or other reductions to the sources of climate change. The assessment shall include a timeline and plan for making changes to policies, programs, and regulations. Agencies shall build on efforts already completed or underway as outlined in agencies' Adaptation Plans, as discussed in section 5 of this order, as well as recent interagency climate adaptation strategies such as the National Action Plan: Priorities for Managing Freshwater Resources in a Changing Climate, released October 28, 2011; the National Fish, Wildlife and Plants Climate Adaptation Strategy, released March 26, 2013; and the National Ocean Policy Implementation Plan, released April 16, 2013.

Sec. 4. Providing Information, Data, and Tools for Climate Change Preparedness and Resilience. (a) In support of Federal, regional, State, local, tribal, private-sector and nonprofit-sector efforts to prepare for the impacts of climate change, the Departments of Defense, the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Transportation, Energy, and Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and any other agencies as recommended by the Council established in section 6 of this order, shall, supported by USGCRP, work together to develop and provide authoritative, easily accessible, usable, and timely data, information, and decision-support tools on climate preparedness and resilience.

(b) As part of the broader open data policy, CEQ and OSTP, in collaboration with OMB and consistent with Executive Order 13642 of May 9, 2013 (Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information), shall oversee the establishment of a web-based portal on "Data.gov" and work with agencies on identifying, developing, and integrating data and tools relevant to climate issues and decisionmaking. Agencies shall coordinate their work on these data and tools with relevant interagency councils and committees such as the National Science and Technology Council and those that support the implementation of Presidential Policy Directive-21 of February 12, 2013 (Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience).

Sec. 5. Federal Agency Planning for Climate Change Related Risk. (a) Consistent with Executive Order 13514, agencies have developed Agency Adaptation Plans and provided them to CEQ and OMB. These plans evaluate the most significant climate change related risks to, and vulnerabilities in, agency operations and missions in both the short and long term, and outline actions that agencies will take to manage these risks and vulnerabilities. Building on these efforts, each agency shall develop or continue to develop, implement, and update comprehensive plans that integrate consideration of climate change into agency operations and overall mission objectives and submit those plans to CEQ and OMB for review. Each Agency Adaptation Plan shall include:

(i) identification and assessment of climate change related impacts on and risks to the agency's ability to accomplish its missions, operations, and programs;

(ii) a description of programs, policies, and plans the agency has already put in place, as well as additional actions the agency will take, to manage climate risks in the near term and build resilience in the short and long term;

(iii) a description of how any climate change related risk identified pursuant to paragraph (i) of this subsection that is deemed so significant that it impairs an agency's statutory mission or operation will be addressed, including through the agency's existing reporting requirements;

(iv) a description of how the agency will consider the need to improve climate adaptation and resilience, including the costs and benefits of such improvement, with respect to agency suppliers, supply chain, real property investments, and capital equipment purchases such as updating agency policies for leasing, building upgrades, relocation of existing facilities and equipment, and construction of new facilities; and

(v) a description of how the agency will contribute to coordinated interagency efforts to support climate preparedness and resilience at all levels of government, including collaborative work across agencies' regional offices and hubs, and through coordinated development of information, data, and tools, consistent with section 4 of this order.

(b) Agencies will report on progress made on their Adaptation Plans, as well as any updates made to the plans, through the annual Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan process. Agencies shall regularly update their Adaptation Plans, completing the first update within 120 days of the date of this order, with additional regular updates thereafter due not later than 1 year after the publication of each quadrennial National Climate Assessment report required by section 106 of the Global Change Research Act of 1990 (15 U.S.C. 2936).

Sec. 6. Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience.

(a) Establishment. There is established an interagency Council on Climate Preparedness and Resilience (Council).

(b) Membership. The Council shall be co-chaired by the Chair of CEQ, the Director of OSTP, and the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism. In addition, the Council shall include senior officials (Deputy Secretary or equivalent officer) from:

(i) the Department of State;

(ii) the Department of the Treasury;

(iii) the Department of Defense;

(iv) the Department of Justice;

(v) the Department of the Interior;

(vi) the Department of Agriculture;

(vii) the Department of Commerce;

(viii) the Department of Labor;

(ix) the Department of Health and Human Services;

(x) the Department of Housing and Urban Development;

(xi) the Department of Transportation;

(xii) the Department of Energy;

(xiii) the Department of Education;

(xiv) the Department of Veterans Affairs;

(xv) the Department of Homeland Security;

(xvi) the United States Agency for International Development;

(xvii) the Army Corps of Engineers;

(xviii) the Environmental Protection Agency;

(xix) the General Services Administration;

(xx) the Millennium Challenge Corporation;



(xxi) the National Aeronautics and Space Administration;

(xxii) the U.S. Small Business Administration;

(xxiii) the Corporation for National and Community Service;

(xxiv) the Office of the Director of National Intelligence;

(xxv) the Council of Economic Advisers;

(xxvi) the National Economic Council;

(xxvii) the Domestic Policy Council;

(xxviii) the Office of Management and Budget;

(xxix) the White House Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs;

(xxx) the United States Trade Representative; and

(xxxi) such agencies or offices as the President or Co-Chairs shall designate.

(c) Administration. CEQ shall provide administrative support and additional resources, as appropriate, for the Council to the extent permitted by law and within existing appropriations. Agencies shall assist and provide information to the Council, consistent with applicable law, as may be necessary to carry out its functions. Each agency shall bear its own expenses for participating in the Council.

(d) Council Structure. The Co-Chairs shall designate a subset of members of the Council to serve on a Steering Committee, which shall help determine priorities and strategic direction for the Council. The Co-Chairs and Steering Committee may establish working groups as needed, and may recharter working groups of the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force, as appropriate.

(e) Mission and Function of the Council. The Council shall work across agencies and offices, and in partnership with State, local, and tribal governments (as well as the Task Force established in section 7 of this order), academic and research institutions, and the private and nonprofit sectors to:

(i) develop, recommend, coordinate interagency efforts on, and track implementation of priority Federal Government actions related to climate preparedness and resilience;

(ii) support regional, State, local, and tribal action to assess climate change related vulnerabilities and cost-effectively increase climate preparedness and resilience of communities, critical economic sectors, natural and built infrastructure, and natural resources, including through the activities as outlined in sections 2 and 3 of this order;



(iii) facilitate the integration of climate science in policies and planning of government agencies and the private sector, including by promoting the development of innovative, actionable, and accessible Federal climate change related information, data, and tools at appropriate scales for decisionmakers and deployment of this information through a Government-wide web-based portal, as described in section 4 of this order; and

(iv) such other functions as may be decided by the Co-Chairs, including implementing, as appropriate, the recommendations of the Task Force established in section 7 of this order.

(f) Termination of the Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force. The Interagency Climate Change Adaptation Task Force (Adaptation Task Force), established in 2009, created the framework for coordinated Federal action on climate preparedness and resilience, driving agency-level planning and action. The Adaptation Task Force shall terminate no later than 30 days after the first meeting of the Council, which shall continue and build upon the Adaptation Task Force's work.

Sec. 7. State, Local, and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience.

(a) Establishment. To inform Federal efforts to support climate preparedness and resilience, there is established a State, Local, and Tribal Leaders Task Force on Climate Preparedness and Resilience (Task Force).

(b) Membership. The Task Force shall be co-chaired by the Chair of CEQ and the Director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. In addition, its members shall be such elected State, local, and tribal officials as may be invited by the Co-Chairs to participate. Members of the Task Force, acting in their official capacity, may designate employees with authority to act on their behalf.

(c) Mission and Function. Within 1 year of the date of this order, the Task Force shall provide, through its Co-Chairs, recommendations to the President and the Council for how the Federal Government can:

(i) remove barriers, create incentives, and otherwise modernize Federal programs to encourage investments, practices, and partnerships that facilitate increased resilience to climate impacts, including those associated with extreme weather;

(ii) provide useful climate preparedness tools and actionable information for States, local communities, and tribes, including through interagency collaboration as described in section 6 of this order; and

(iii) otherwise support State, local, and tribal preparedness for and resilience to climate change.



(d) Sunset. The Task Force shall terminate no later than 6 months after providing its recommendations.

Sec. 8. Definitions. As used in this order:

(a) "preparedness" means actions taken to plan, organize, equip, train, and exercise to build, apply, and sustain the capabilities necessary to prevent, protect against, ameliorate the effects of, respond to, and recover from climate change related damages to life, health, property, livelihoods, ecosystems, and national security;

(b) "adaptation" means adjustment in natural or human systems in anticipation of or response to a changing environment in a way that effectively uses beneficial opportunities or reduces negative effects; and

(c) "resilience" means the ability to anticipate, prepare for, and adapt to changing conditions and withstand, respond to, and recover rapidly from disruptions.

Sec. 9. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department, agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of OMB relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with U.S. obligations under international agreements and applicable U.S. law, and be subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

BARACK OBAMA

[burgrugby]

Hahaha... I've heard about this project if I remember it correctly. I thought the one they wanted to build was at Lejeune, but perhaps it could have been Pendleton. Was this the one where the Base CO had a teenage son who wanted a skateboard park? So we ended up spending taxpayer money to look into building a skateboard park for... you know... all those Marines who sit around with nothing to do but skateboard?

I once was paid by the Marine Corps to complete an EA. The proposes action was to construct a skateboard park on an enclosed existing asphalt parking lot that happened to be 300 yards from the Pacific Ocean. Wooden structures only. No other uses for the property. No parking, no installation of utilities, nothing. What could have been solved by sending the Coastal Commission a courteous heads up letter cost them I forget how much (I suggested they try the letter first but they wanted the EA). The CC's comments on the EA were the polite version of "O.K.! Thanks for letting us know and wear your helmets!"

Way to many years in the field fighting some of the silliest issues imaginable has hardened me to truly and totally as possible look at both sides of the coin, weed through the chaff and reach a decision.

All to often I've been confronted by environmeddling nutz or anti-environmeddling nutz whose only true axiom is don't confuse me with no damn facts, my mind is made up.

[Once]

MCRD. Yes, the new CO rotated in with two teenaged boys who wanted to get their skate on. They didn't just merely look into it. We did an EA for a bargain basement price and actually saw the "project" completed (as in I had the pleasure driving by the skate park after it was completed) when I was on the Depot to develop a P2 plan for them. The entire thing was just a stinkin waste of money and resources. It's not even there anymore now. It's back to being a pkg lot. I remember at the time asking their chief of environmental, "are you sure? We can get this done with just a letter." When have you ever known a contractor who says, yeah.... You don't need to do ALL that.... The only positive thing that came out of it for me was a few good introductions to folks at the Coastal Commission which have served me well in terms of knowing who to call for what, etc. Think about it: who is going to forget the embarrassed contractor who wants to discuss the MCRD CO's kids' hobby?

Hahaha... I've heard about this project if I remember it correctly. I thought the one they wanted to build was at Lejeune, but perhaps it could have been Pendleton. Was this the one where the Base CO had a teenage son who wanted a skateboard park? So we ended up spending taxpayer money to look into building a skateboard park for... you know... all those Marines who sit around with nothing to do but skateboard?

I once was paid by the Marine Corps to complete an EA. The proposes action was to construct a skateboard park on an enclosed existing asphalt parking lot that happened to be 300 yards from the Pacific Ocean. Wooden structures only. No other uses for the property. No parking, no installation of utilities, nothing. What could have been solved by sending the Coastal Commission a courteous heads up letter cost them I forget how much (I suggested they try the letter first but they wanted the EA). The CC's comments on the EA were the polite version of "O.K.! Thanks for letting us know and wear your helmets!"

Way to many years in the field fighting some of the silliest issues imaginable has hardened me to truly and totally as possible look at both sides of the coin, weed through the chaff and reach a decision.

All to often I've been confronted by environmeddling nutz or anti-environmeddling nutz whose only true axiom is don't confuse me with no damn facts, my mind is made up.

[BG Hokie]

Chicago may have it's coldest high temperature in recorded history on Monday.

Agree. These cold temperatures (see Virginia for one day tomorrow) have single handedly led me to believe that the majority of scientists that think the earth is warming and that man likely has something to do with it are absolute lefto whackos putting together partisan science for the betterment of their political preferences. Where them good Republican scientists sit on the issue, or are they still busy with their man walked with dinosaur conclusions?

[USN_Hokie]

This is a false equivalency. First, how do you complete a study like this? What amount of data is robust enough? Should we leave it up to politicians to decide? I'm sure I'm guilty of speaking in absolutes on this board when it comes to climate change and other topics. But the people that actually matter in this conversation, the climate scientist, don't speak in absolutes. They talk of probabilities. And even in this time of supposed leveling off, their level of certainty has gone up, their data has been strengthened, and their models have been proven accurate (despite what AG says).

Is this really the attitude we should be taking? Should we give Robert Kennedy Jr. equal credence when it comes to vaccines? How about the discovery institute when it comes to evolution? The problem is that one side is doing the science, and the other side is using rhetoric and straw men to misrepresent the others' work so that it fits their narrative.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

Models have been proven accurate? I'd love to see a cite for that.

If you are really interested, you could read this:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronom ... isn_t.html

In fact the models are doing a pretty good job of representing the physical nature of what’s going on. The real problem isn’t with the models, it’s with people interpreting them, or, more accurately, misinterpreting them.

Lots of good links in there.

And this:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/ ... zzle-piece

Our results show that the current hiatus is part of natural climate variability, tied specifically to La-Niña-like decadal cooling … For the recent decade, the decrease in tropical Pacific sea surface temperature has lowered the global temperature by about 0.15 degrees Celsius compared to the 1990s

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

1. I don't have the time right now to slug through all the crap in that Slate article blog post (ETA: written by a UVA grad....ewww) - I'll take a look later.
2. Your second link supports my position.

[Uprising]

1. I don't have the time right now to slug through all the crap in that Slate article blog post (ETA: written by a UVA grad....ewww) - I'll take a look later.
2. Your second link supports my position.

One of two possibilities:
-a misunderstanding of climate modeling
-any link will support your position

Here is an explanation of climate models:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm
As Phil Plait points out, the previous models predicted a higher "best fit," but they were still within the projected range. The second article shows how the understanding of the deep ocean warming and La Nina effect are now being incorporated into the modeling with greater accuracy.

The deep ocean warming makes a lot of sense to me. It is in line with my very basic understanding of thermal mass. In architecture, you can use heavy materials like concrete, stone, and water to act as a heat sink for extra energy during the day. (We also see this on a larger scale with the heat island effect of cities.) This helps to level out the larger temperature swings throughout the day/night. So, the earth is acting as a much larger version over a much longer timescale. This is probably why during a la Nina effect we are only seeing a leveling rather than an full on cooling.

Phil Plait is one of the most highly recommended science writers I have come across. He is a go to source on this topic and many other "controversial" topics. Here is a rebuttal to the "settled science" argument:

So let this be clear: There is no scientific controversy over this. Climate change denial is purely, 100 percent made-up political and corporate-sponsored crap. When the loudest voices are fossil-fuel funded think tanks, when they don’t publish in journals but instead write error-laden op-eds in partisan venues, when they have to manipulate the data to support their point, then what they’re doing isn’t science.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronom ... apers.html


Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

[HokieJoe]

Woo boy, here's one of those nasty deniers...

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/ ... 3268.html#


What Catastrophe?
MIT’s Richard Lindzen, the unalarmed climate scientist
Jan 13, 2014, Vol. 19, No. 17 • By ETHAN EPSTEIN

When you first meet Richard Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at MIT, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, leading climate “skeptic,” and all-around scourge of James Hansen, Bill McKibben, Al Gore, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and sundry other climate “alarmists,” as Lindzen calls them, you may find yourself a bit surprised. If you know Lindzen only from the way his opponents characterize him—variously, a liar, a lunatic, a charlatan, a denier, a shyster, a crazy person, corrupt—you might expect a spittle-flecked, wild-eyed loon. But in person, Lindzen cuts a rather different figure. With his gray beard, thick glasses, gentle laugh, and disarmingly soft voice, he comes across as nothing short of grandfatherly.

Granted, Lindzen is no shrinking violet. A pioneering climate scientist with decades at Harvard and MIT, Lindzen sees his discipline as being deeply compromised by political pressure, data fudging, out-and-out guesswork, and wholly unwarranted alarmism. In a shot across the bow of what many insist is indisputable scientific truth, Lindzen characterizes global warming as “small and .  .  . nothing to be alarmed about.” In the climate debate—on which hinge far-reaching questions of public policy—them’s fightin’ words.

In his mid-seventies, married with two sons, and now emeritus at MIT, Lindzen spends between four and six months a year at his second home in Paris. But that doesn’t mean he’s no longer in the thick of the climate controversy; he writes, gives myriad talks, participates in debates, and occasionally testifies before Congress. In an eventful life, Lindzen has made the strange journey from being a pioneer in his field and eventual IPCC coauthor to an outlier in the discipline—if not an outcast.

Richard Lindzen was born in 1940 in Webster, Massachusetts, to Jewish immigrants from Germany. His bootmaker father moved the family to the Bronx shortly after Richard was born. Lindzen attended the Bronx High School of Science before winning a scholarship to the only place he applied that was out of town, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, in Troy, New York. After a couple of years at Rensselaer, he transferred to Harvard, where he completed his bachelor’s degree and, in 1964, a doctorate.

Lindzen wasn’t a climatologist from the start—“climate science” as such didn’t exist when he was beginning his career in academia. Rather, Lindzen studied math. “I liked applied math,” he says, “[and] I was a bit turned off by modern physics, but I really enjoyed classical physics, fluid mechanics, things like that.” A few years after arriving at Harvard, he began his transition to meteorology. “Harvard actually got a grant from the Ford Foundation to offer generous fellowships to people in the atmospheric sciences,” he explains. “Harvard had no department in atmospheric sciences, so these fellowships allowed you to take a degree in applied math or applied physics, and that worked out very well because in applied math the atmosphere and oceans were considered a good area for problems. .  .  . I discovered I really liked atmospheric sciences—meteorology. So I stuck with it and picked out a thesis.”

And with that, Lindzen began his meteoric rise through the nascent field. In the 1970s, while a professor at Harvard, Lindzen disproved the then-accepted theory of how heat moves around the Earth’s atmosphere, winning numerous awards in the process. Before his 40th birthday, he was a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In the mid-1980s, he made the short move from Harvard to MIT, and he’s remained there ever since. Over the decades, he’s authored or coauthored some 200 peer-reviewed papers on climate.

Where Lindzen hasn’t remained is in the mainstream of his discipline. By the 1980s, global warming was becoming a major political issue. Already, Lindzen was having doubts about the more catastrophic predictions being made. The public rollout of the “alarmist” case, he notes, “was immediately accompanied by an issue of Newsweek declaring all scientists agreed. And that was the beginning of a ‘consensus’ argument. Already by ’88 the New York Times had literally a global warming beat.” Lindzen wasn’t buying it. Nonetheless, he remained in the good graces of mainstream climate science, and in the early 1990s, he was invited to join the IPCC, a U.N.-backed multinational consortium of scientists charged with synthesizing and analyzing the current state of the world’s climate science. Lindzen accepted, and he ended up as a contributor to the 1995 report and the lead author of Chapter 7 (“Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks”) of the 2001 report. Since then, however, he’s grown increasingly distant from prevalent (he would say “hysterical”) climate science, and he is voluminously on record disputing the predictions of catastrophe.

The Earth’s climate is immensely complex, but the basic principle behind the “greenhouse effect” is easy to understand. The burning of oil, gas, and especially coal pumps carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere, where they allow the sun’s heat to penetrate to the Earth’s surface but impede its escape, thus causing the lower atmosphere and the Earth’s surface to warm. Essentially everybody, Lindzen included, agrees. The question at issue is how sensitive the planet is to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases (this is called climate sensitivity), and how much the planet will heat up as a result of our pumping into the sky ever more CO2, which remains in the atmosphere for upwards of 1,000 years. (Carbon dioxide, it may be needless to point out, is not a poison. On the contrary, it is necessary for plant life.)

Lindzen doesn’t deny that the climate has changed or that the planet has warmed. “We all agree that temperature has increased since 1800,” he tells me. There’s a caveat, though: It’s increased by “a very small amount. We’re talking about tenths of a degree [Celsius]. We all agree that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. All other things kept equal, [there has been] some warming. As a result, there’s hardly anyone serious who says that man has no role. And in many ways, those have never been the questions. The questions have always been, as they ought to be in science, how much?”

Lindzen says not much at all—and he contends that the “alarmists” vastly overstate the Earth’s climate sensitivity. Judging by where we are now, he appears to have a point; so far, 150 years of burning fossil fuels in large quantities has had a relatively minimal effect on the climate. By some measurements, there is now more CO2 in the atmosphere than there has been at any time in the past 15 million years. Yet since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, the average global temperature has risen by, at most, 1 degree Celsius, or 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit. And while it’s true that sea levels have risen over the same period, it’s believed they’ve been doing so for roughly 20,000 years. What’s more, despite common misconceptions stoked by the media in the wake of Katrina, Sandy, and the recent typhoon in the Philippines, even the IPCC concedes that it has “low confidence” that there has been any measurable uptick in storm intensity thanks to human activity. Moreover, over the past 15 years, as man has emitted record levels of carbon dioxide year after year, the warming trend of previous decades has stopped. Lindzen says this is all consistent with what he holds responsible for climate change: a small bit of man-made impact and a whole lot of natural variability.

The real fight, though, is over what’s coming in the future if humans continue to burn fossil fuels unabated. According to the IPCC, the answer is nothing good. Its most recent Summary for Policymakers, which was released early this fall—and which some scientists reject as too sanguine—predicts that if emissions continue to rise, by the year 2100, global temperatures could increase as much as 5.5 degrees Celsius from current averages, while sea levels could rise by nearly a meter. If we hit those projections, it’s generally thought that the Earth would be rife with crop failures, drought, extreme weather, and epochal flooding. Adios, Miami.

It is to avoid those disasters that the “alarmists” call on governments to adopt policies reducing the amounts of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere. As a result of such policies—and a fortuitous increase in natural gas production—U.S. greenhouse emissions are at a 20-year low and falling. But global emissions are rising, thanks to massive increases in energy use in the developing world, particularly in China and India. If the “alarmists” are right, then, a way must be found to compel the major developing countries to reduce carbon emissions.

But Lindzen rejects the dire projections. For one thing, he says that the Summary for Policymakers is an inherently problematic document. The IPCC report itself, weighing in at thousands of pages, is “not terrible. It’s not unbiased, but the bias [is] more or less to limit your criticism of models,” he says. The Summary for Policymakers, on the other hand—the only part of the report that the media and the politicians pay any attention to—“rips out doubts to a large extent. .  .  . [Furthermore], government representatives have the final say on the summary.” Thus, while the full IPPC report demonstrates a significant amount of doubt among scientists, the essentially political Summary for Policymakers filters it out.

Lindzen also disputes the accuracy of the computer models that climate scientists rely on to project future temperatures. He contends that they oversimplify the vast complexity of the Earth’s climate and, moreover, that it’s impossible to untangle man’s effect on the climate from natural variability. The models also rely on what Lindzen calls “fudge factors.” Take aerosols. These are tiny specks of matter, both liquid and solid (think dust), that are present throughout the atmosphere. Their effect on the climate—even whether they have an overall cooling or warming effect—is still a matter of debate. Lindzen charges that when actual temperatures fail to conform to the models’ predictions, climate scientists purposely overstate the cooling effect of aerosols to give the models the appearance of having been accurate. But no amount of fudging can obscure the most glaring failure of the models: their inability to predict the 15-year-long (and counting) pause in warming—a pause that would seem to place the burden of proof squarely on the defenders of the models.

Lindzen also questions the “alarmist” line on water vapor. Water vapor (and its close cousin, clouds) is one of the most prevalent greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. According to most climate scientists, the hotter the planet gets, the more water vapor there will be, magnifying the effects of other greenhouse gases, like CO2, in a sort of hellish positive feedback loop. Lindzen disputes this, contending that water vapor could very well end up having a cooling effect on the planet. As the science writer Justin Gillis explained in a 2012 New York Times piece, Lindzen “says the earth is not especially sensitive to greenhouse gases because clouds will react to counter them, and he believes he has identified a specific mechanism. On a warming planet, he says, less coverage by high clouds in the tropics will allow more heat to escape to space, countering the temperature increase.”

If Lindzen is right about this and global warming is nothing to worry about, why do so many climate scientists, many with résumés just as impressive as his, preach imminent doom? He says it mostly comes down to the money—to the incentive structure of academic research funded by government grants. Almost all funding for climate research comes from the government, which, he says, makes scientists essentially vassals of the state. And generating fear, Lindzen contends, is now the best way to ensure that policymakers keep the spigot open.

Lindzen contrasts this with the immediate aftermath of World War II, when American science was at something of a peak. “Science had established its relevance with the A-bomb, with radar, for that matter the proximity fuse,” he notes. Americans and their political leadership were profoundly grateful to the science community; scientists, unlike today, didn’t have to abase themselves by approaching the government hat in hand. Science funding was all but assured.

But with the cuts to basic science funding that occurred around the time of the Vietnam war, taxpayer support for research was no longer a political no-brainer. “It was recognized that gratitude only went so far,” Lindzen says, “and fear was going to be a much greater motivator. And so that’s when people began thinking about .  .  . how to perpetuate fear that would motivate the support of science.”

A need to generate fear, in Lindzen’s telling, is what’s driving the apocalyptic rhetoric heard from many climate scientists and their media allies. “The idea was, to engage the public you needed an event .  .  . not just a Sputnik—a drought, a storm, a sand demon. You know, something you could latch onto. [Climate scientists] carefully arranged a congressional hearing. And they arranged for [James] Hansen [author of Storms of My Grandchildren, and one of the leading global warming “alarmists”] to come and say something vague that would somehow relate a heat wave or a drought to global warming.” (This theme, by the way, is developed to characteristic extremes in the late Michael Crichton’s entertaining 2004 novel State of Fear, in which environmental activists engineer a series of fake “natural” disasters to sow fear over global warming.)

Lindzen also says that the “consensus”—the oft-heard contention that “virtually all” climate scientists believe in catastrophic, anthropogenic global warming—is overblown, primarily for structural reasons. “When you have an issue that is somewhat bogus, the opposition is always scattered and without resources,” he explains. “But the environmental movement is highly organized. There are hundreds of NGOs. To coordinate these hundreds, they quickly organized the Climate Action Network, the central body on climate. There would be, I think, actual meetings to tell them what the party line is for the year, and so on.” Skeptics, on the other hand, are more scattered across disciplines and continents. As such, they have a much harder time getting their message across.

Because CO2 is invisible and the climate is so complex (your local weatherman doesn’t know for sure whether it will rain tomorrow, let alone conditions in 2100), expertise is particularly important. Lindzen sees a danger here. “I think the example, the paradigm of this, was medical practice.” He says that in the past, “one went to a physician because something hurt or bothered you, and you tended to judge him or her according to whether you felt better. That may not always have been accurate, but at least it had some operational content. .  .  . [Now, you] go to an annual checkup, get a blood test. And the physician tells you if you’re better or not and it’s out of your hands.” Because climate change is invisible, only the experts can tell us whether the planet is sick or not. And because of the way funds are granted, they have an incentive to say that the Earth belongs in intensive care.

Richard Lindzen presents a problem for those who say that the science behind climate change is “settled.” So many “alarmists” prefer to ignore him and instead highlight straw men: less credible skeptics, such as climatologist Roy Spencer of the University of Alabama (signatory to a declaration that “Earth and its ecosystems—created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence—are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting”), the Heartland Institute (which likened climate “alarmists” to the Unabomber), and Senator Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma (a major energy-producing state). The idea is to make it seem as though the choice is between accepting the view of, say, journalist James Delingpole (B.A., English literature), who says global warming is a hoax, and that of, say, James Hansen (Ph.D., physics, former head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies), who says that we are moving toward “an ice-free Antarctica and a desolate planet without human inhabitants.”

But Lindzen, plainly, is different. He can’t be dismissed. Nor, of course, is he the only skeptic with serious scientific credentials. Judith Curry, the chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech, William Happer, professor of physics at Princeton, John Christy, a climate scientist honored by NASA, now at the University of Alabama, and the famed physicist Freeman Dyson are among dozens of scientists who have gone on record questioning various aspects of the IPCC’s line on climate change. Lindzen, for his part, has said that scientists have called him privately to thank him for the work he’s doing.

But Lindzen, perhaps because of his safely tenured status at MIT, or just because of the contours of his personality, is a particularly outspoken and public critic of the consensus. It’s clear that he relishes taking on the “alarmists.” It’s little wonder, then, that he’s come under exceptionally vituperative attack from many of those who are concerned about the impact of climate change. It also stands to reason that they might take umbrage at his essentially accusing them of mass corruption with his charge that they are “stoking fear.”

Take Joe Romm, himself an MIT Ph.D., who runs the climate desk at the left-wing Center for American Progress. On the center’s blog, Romm regularly lights into Lindzen. “Lindzen could not be more discredited,” he says in one post. In another post, he calls Lindzen an “uber-hypocritical anti-scientific scientist.” (Romm, it should be noted, is a bit more measured, if no less condescending, when the klieg lights are off. “I tend to think Lindzen is just one of those scientists whom time and science has passed by, like the ones who held out against plate tectonics for so long,” he tells me.) Seldom, however, does Romm stoop to explain what grounds justify dismissing Lindzen’s views with such disdain.

Andrew Dessler, a climatologist at Texas A&M University, is another harsh critic of Lindzen. As he told me in an emailed statement, “Over the past 25 years, Dr. Lindzen has published several theories about climate, all of which suggest that the climate will not warm much in response to increases in atmospheric CO2. These theories have been tested by the scientific community and found to be completely without merit. Lindzen knows this, of course, and no longer makes any effort to engage with the scientific community about his theories (e.g., he does not present his work at scientific conferences). It seems his main audience today is Fox News and the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal.”

The Internet, meanwhile, is filled with hostile missives directed at Lindzen. They’re of varying quality. Some, written by climate scientists, are point-by-point rebuttals of Lindzen’s scholarly work; others, angry ad hominem screeds full of heat, signifying nothing. (When Lindzen transitioned to emeritus status last year, one blog headlined the news “Denier Down: Lindzen Retires.”)

For decades, Lindzen has also been dogged by unsubstantiated accusations of corruption—specifically, that he’s being paid off by the energy industry. He denies this with a laugh. “I wish it were so!” What appears to be the primary source for this calumny—a Harper’s magazine article from 1995—provides no documentation for its assertions. But that hasn’t stopped the charge from being widely disseminated on the Internet.

One frustrating feature of the climate debate is that people’s outlook on global warming usually correlates with their political views. So if a person wants low taxes and restrictions on abortion, he probably isn’t worried about climate change. And if a person supports gay marriage and raising the minimum wage, he most likely thinks the threat from global warming warrants costly public-policy remedies. And of course, even though Lindzen is an accomplished climate scientist, he has his own political outlook—a conservative one.

He wasn’t reared that way. “Growing up in the Bronx, politics, I would say, was an automatic issue. I grew up with a picture of Franklin Roosevelt over my bed.” But his views started to shift in the late ’60s and ’70s. “I think [my politics] began changing in the Vietnam war. I was deeply disturbed by the way vets were being treated,” he says. He also says that his experience in the climate debate—and the rise in political correctness in the universities throughout the ’70s and ’80s—further pushed him to the right. So, yes, Lindzen, a climate skeptic, is also a political conservative whom one would expect to oppose many environmental regulations for ideological, as opposed to scientific, reasons. By the same token, it is well known that the vast majority of “alarmist” climate scientists, dependent as they are on federal largesse, are liberal Democrats.

But whatever buried ideological component there may be to any given scientist’s work, it doesn’t tell us who has the science right. In a 2012 public letter, Lindzen noted, “Critics accuse me of doing a disservice to the scientific method. I would suggest that in questioning the views of the critics and subjecting them to specific tests, I am holding to the scientific method.” Whoever is right about computer models, climate sensitivity, aerosols, and water vapor, Lindzen is certainly right about that. Skepticism is essential to science.

In a 2007 debate with Lindzen in New York City, climate scientist Richard C. J. Somerville, who is firmly in the “alarmist” camp, likened climate skeptics to “some eminent earth scientists [who] couldn’t be persuaded that plate tectonics were real .  .  . when the revolution of continental drift was sweeping through geology and geophysics.”

“Most people who think they’re a Galileo are just wrong,” he said, much to the delight of a friendly audience of Manhattanites.

But Somerville botched the analogy. The story of plate tectonics is the story of how one man, Alfred Wegener, came up with the theory of continental drift, only to be widely opposed and mocked. Wegener challenged the earth science “consensus” of his day. And in the end, his view prevailed.

Ethan Epstein is an assistant editor at The Weekly Standard.