Balta1701 Posted October 21, 2011 Share Posted October 21, 2011 For those who haven't followed the story at Berkeley, a group of so-called "Climate Change skeptics" decided to put together a program a year ago to test the supposed flaws in the consensus interpretation of the statistics. They received a ton of money, as all supuposed climate change skeptics do, including industry money. Their preliminary results were released earlier in the year, suggesting that...wow, the current interpretation is actually right, and they can no longer be skeptical of anything climate science is saying. They submitted a bunch of stuff a couple days ago...and once again...they're confirming the standard interpretation. Their "Average temperature increase over the last 100 years" is actually coming in on the high side. Marshalled by an astrophysicist, Richard Muller, this group, which calls itself the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature, is notable in several ways. When embarking on the project 18 months ago, its members (including Saul Perlmutter, who won the Nobel prize for physics this month for his work on dark energy) were mostly new to climate science. And Dr Muller, for one, was mildly sceptical of its findings. This was partly, he says, because of “climategate”: the 2009 revelation of e-mails from scientists at CRU which suggested they had sometimes taken steps to disguise their adjustments of inconvenient palaeo-data. With this reputation, the Berkeley Earth team found it unusually easy to attract sponsors, including a donation of $150,000 from the Koch Foundation. Yet Berkeley Earth’s results, as described in four papers currently undergoing peer review, but which were nonetheless released on October 20th, offer strong support to the existing temperature compilations. The group estimates that over the past 50 years the land surface warmed by 0.911°C: a mere 2% less than NOAA’s estimate. That is despite its use of a novel methodology—designed, at least in part, to address the concerns of what Dr Muller terms “legitimate sceptics”. In the press release announcing the results, Muller said, "Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US and the UK." In other words, climate scientists know what they're doing after all. These results I'm sure will get enormous press coverage. After all, they even had industry backing, which shows again that scientists aren't just some massive conspiracy after government funding. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigSqwert Posted October 21, 2011 Author Share Posted October 21, 2011 QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 21, 2011 -> 09:00 AM) For those who haven't followed the story at Berkeley, a group of so-called "Climate Change skeptics" decided to put together a program a year ago to test the supposed flaws in the consensus interpretation of the statistics. They received a ton of money, as all supuposed climate change skeptics do, including industry money. Their preliminary results were released earlier in the year, suggesting that...wow, the current interpretation is actually right, and they can no longer be skeptical of anything climate science is saying. They submitted a bunch of stuff a couple days ago...and once again...they're confirming the standard interpretation. Their "Average temperature increase over the last 100 years" is actually coming in on the high side. In the press release announcing the results, Muller said, "Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US and the UK." In other words, climate scientists know what they're doing after all. These results I'm sure will get enormous press coverage. After all, they even had industry backing, which shows again that scientists aren't just some massive conspiracy after government funding. I'm sure this will get tons of coverage in the mainstream media. /sarcasm Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrangeSox Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 21, 2011 -> 09:00 AM) For those who haven't followed the story at Berkeley, a group of so-called "Climate Change skeptics" decided to put together a program a year ago to test the supposed flaws in the consensus interpretation of the statistics. They received a ton of money, as all supuposed climate change skeptics do, including industry money. Their preliminary results were released earlier in the year, suggesting that...wow, the current interpretation is actually right, and they can no longer be skeptical of anything climate science is saying. They submitted a bunch of stuff a couple days ago...and once again...they're confirming the standard interpretation. Their "Average temperature increase over the last 100 years" is actually coming in on the high side. In the press release announcing the results, Muller said, "Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the US and the UK." In other words, climate scientists know what they're doing after all. These results I'm sure will get enormous press coverage. After all, they even had industry backing, which shows again that scientists aren't just some massive conspiracy after government funding. I'm shocked, just absolutely shocked that Anthony Watts is melting down over this instead of "accept[ing] whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong." Of course, yet another paper that confirms that bears do, in fact, s*** in the woods will be summarily dismissed by the 'skeptics'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrangeSox Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 Nature had a pretty good episode last night about wildlife recovery in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, focused primarily on wolves. There was a similar documentary a few years back that was also excellent but I can't remember the name http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/ra...roduction/7108/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southsider2k5 Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 24, 2011 -> 12:39 PM) Nature had a pretty good episode last night about wildlife recovery in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, focused primarily on wolves. There was a similar documentary a few years back that was also excellent but I can't remember the name http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/ra...roduction/7108/ That was an excellent show. The one a few years back followed around some specific animals, right? I remember a cat with a couple of kittens for sure. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrangeSox Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Oct 24, 2011 -> 12:41 PM) That was an excellent show. The one a few years back followed around some specific animals, right? I remember a cat with a couple of kittens for sure. Yep, that's the one I was thinking of. I don't know what it actually was, though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
southsider2k5 Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 24, 2011 -> 12:41 PM) Yep, that's the one I was thinking of. I don't know what it actually was, though. Yeah, I can't remember the name either anymore. It was interesting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balta1701 Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 Discovery's " "? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrangeSox Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 yeah that's the one, thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balta1701 Posted October 24, 2011 Share Posted October 24, 2011 That's why you keep me around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrangeSox Posted October 25, 2011 Share Posted October 25, 2011 EPA to regulate fracking http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0...525792F00542001 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balta1701 Posted October 25, 2011 Share Posted October 25, 2011 QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Oct 25, 2011 -> 07:52 AM) EPA to regulate fracking http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/0...525792F00542001 twas bound to happen eventually. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balta1701 Posted October 25, 2011 Share Posted October 25, 2011 QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Oct 17, 2011 -> 06:11 PM) Can't believe I have to drive around a f***ing Durango this week. It's f***ing remarkable how much gas this thing blows through just doing normal city driving. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balta1701 Posted October 26, 2011 Share Posted October 26, 2011 Amazing how the Senate can get incredibly worked up about possible corruption in a loan to a solar energy company, but the response to possible corruption in the approval of a tar-sands pipeline produces a response of "I just don't think it's that newsworthy." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balta1701 Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 Blinky! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrangeSox Posted October 28, 2011 Share Posted October 28, 2011 Just watched that episode last night. Awesome that the plant owner is running for office, too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balta1701 Posted October 29, 2011 Share Posted October 29, 2011 Thailand is supposedly responsible for about 30% of the world's rice trade. Their floods are going to cost their country ~1/4 of their rice export production. This will almost certianly produce a spike in the global rice price. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kapkomet Posted October 30, 2011 Share Posted October 30, 2011 Well s***, that means Pei Wei and PF Changs will be more expensive. What a load of s*** for Americans. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrangeSox Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 Free Trade Deal in Action: Milwaukee Firm Seeks $100 Million From El Salvador Govt. For working people, talk of free trade agreements tends to trigger fear of being pitted against workers in low-wage nations—and being laid off. But another critical dimension of free trade agreements and the race to the bottom has just cropped up in Milwaukee. A multinational company named Commerce Group based in the city is seeking to use the Central American Free Trade Agreement to overturn El Salvador’s efforts to block pollution from its gold mine. Commerce Group wants to win $100 million from the government of that poverty-stricken nation, which has blocked the company from re-opening the mine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balta1701 Posted November 4, 2011 Share Posted November 4, 2011 The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the U.S. Department of Energy calculated, a sign of how feeble the world's efforts are at slowing man-made global warming. The new figures for 2010 mean that levels of greenhouse gases are higher than the worst case scenario outlined by climate experts just four years ago. "The more we talk about the need to control emissions, the more they are growing," said John Reilly, co-director of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. Sigh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balta1701 Posted November 22, 2011 Share Posted November 22, 2011 There has never been a storm in the Pacific basin this late in the season stronger than a category 1 storm. Until this category 4 storm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balta1701 Posted November 26, 2011 Share Posted November 26, 2011 Well crap. Federal safety regulators announced Friday that they have opened "a formal safety defect investigation" into the Chevrolet Volt over concerns the electric car's battery may pose a significant fire risk. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has been looking at the car for months, explaining in a press release that this includes crash-testing the Volt in May and conducting three tests last week focused specifically on the vehicle's lithium-ion batteries. "The agency is concerned that damage to the Volt's batteries as part of three tests that are explicitly designed to replicate real-world crash scenarios have resulted in fire," the administration said. "NHTSA is therefore opening a safety defect investigation of Chevy Volts, which could experience a battery-related fire following a crash." The agency noted that there are no known "real-world" instances of battery problems causing fires to erupt after a driver crashes a Volt, and added that "Volt owners who have not been in a serious crash do not have reason for concern." Nor has the federal regulator ordered any recall, though it did say that might occur "if NHTSA identifies an unreasonable risk of safety." The agency is working with General Motors, plus the federal defense and energy departments, "to assess the causes and implications" of the fires, it said. The agency reiterated guidelines for what drivers and first responders should do if an electric vehicle is involved in a crash, including taking precautions to avoid shocks and using "copious amounts of water if fire is present." No problems have been detected in other such cars. "NHTSA testing on electric vehicles to date has not raised safety concerns about vehicles other than the Chevy Volt," the agency noted. Earlier, GM spokesman Greg Martin said the automaker has been unable to duplicate the fires, even after subjecting the Volt battery pack to more than 300,000 safety tests. The Volt passed other safety administration tests for protecting vehicle occupants, earning a five-star rating for overall safety, side impact and rollover risk and four stars for frontal crash protection. "First and foremost, I want to make this very clear: The Volt is a safe car," Jim Federico, GM chief engineer for electric vehicles, said two weeks ago in a prepared statement. "We are working cooperatively with NHTSA as it completes its investigation." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balta1701 Posted November 28, 2011 Share Posted November 28, 2011 The latest U.N. conference trying to get an international agreement on Greenhouse gases has begun...and was greeted by intense storms and flooding which killed 10 people and left 700 homeless. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrangeSox Posted December 5, 2011 Share Posted December 5, 2011 Contaminated water found leaking at Japanese nuclear plant Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StrangeSox Posted December 6, 2011 Share Posted December 6, 2011 BP accuses Halliburton of destroying evidence in Gulf oil spill case Over/under on total jail sentence length for all parties combined? 2 years? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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