I’m off on a small adventure today, chasing and logging a USHCN weather station which had been misidentified in the early days of the surfacestations project.
One of the results of the project is that it forced NCDC to provide better metadata in their online MMS database. This includes adding a USHCN flag to identify which stations were in fact USHCN from the more numerous COOP stations. When we started, lat/lons were coarse, and there was no such identification. Now there is and ID and the lat/lons are accurate enough to locate the stations reliably.
I have a feeling this one will be interesting, given the description of the location.
In the meantime, talk quietly amongst yourselves, don’t make be come back here.
😉
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Is he gone yet?
Ok! Break out the funny hats!
Have fun Anthony!
OK, I have a question for those who like to solve problems….
Assume that all the ice in the world melted, how much of an increase in the sea level would we see?
Open thread? Good. Been saving this one for our friends in Oz: click
Bob Diaz: click
I’m presently reading Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Orestes and Erik Conway. Specifically, Chapter 6 on “The Denial of Global Warming.” Has anyone else read this? If you have, what are your thoughts on that chapter?
Roger Sowell says:
“I’m presently reading Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Orestes and Erik Conway. Specifically, Chapter 6 on “The Denial of Global Warming.” Has anyone else read this? If you have, what are your thoughts on that chapter?”
I went to the bookstore and searched high and low through the fiction section, but couldn’t find it.
Is it in humor??
Wot, even the ice in my Gin and Tonic?
Looking at the solar images for today.. it seems that “SSN of 25” is the new “Blank” (-_-)
Roger Sowell ,
I haven’t read the book , and after seeing Oreskes and Conway on Book TV a few weeks ago , I don’t intend to . However , I recall Oreskes opining that Freeman Dyson’s skepticism to his feeling old and irrelevant and , as such , in need of attention . The woman is far too ugly to be taken seriously .
Smokey says: August 13, 2011 at 11:18 am
and what side of the road is the sign on?
For whichever brilliant person who figures out sea level rise if all the ice melts I would like to add two difficulty factors. The ocean bottom may lower with the weight of the increase in water. Not all the melted ice water will make it to the ocean. Greenland might be a vast lake.
Maybe the figuring won’t be necessary. Maybe the answer is in the very old geologic record.
The whole subject of ‘denial’ often gets incredibly emotive – for obvious reasons. However, Orestes uses the term with the assumption that CAGW is not only true, but CLEARLY true for anyone of normal intellectual functioning. I find the best context in which to place this is Salem around 300 years ago. If you couldn’t see witchcraft and witches everywhere you were in denial – according to the priests of the day.
I usually see myself as merely quite sceptical – of most things, but especially CAGW. If pushed, though, I’d have to admit that (until I see some evidence) I deny it.
Witches too
I am currently reading Paul Johnson, “Modern Times:”
Steve McIntyre reflects briefly on politics/politicians in responding to Hansen’s recent editorial. Steve’s graciousness in rare in today’s debates. Johnson addresses the abuse of parliamentary and other political systems, during the 20s and 30s, especially by Leenin, Staalin, and Hiitler [aberrant spelling to avoid moderation filters]. These men preferred decrees and diktats over messy republican/democratic give-and-take.
Do readers, other than I, perceive similarities between our times and 1916-1936? Does not a political system offer greater opportunities to address problems [real AND imaginary] than does the IPCC model? I think political systems work; further, blogs enhance the republic of Ideas: I want MORE political engagement.
Steve Keohane says:
“and what side of the road is the sign on?”
That thought is making me dizzy.
Here’s a question for you guys. The maddening thing to most of us skeptics it seems to me, is that the information and scientific arguments against the AGW orthodoxy are both highly credible, and highly available. When I listen to a guy like Al Gore asserting that “pseudoscientists are being paid” to come up with bogus arguments against the “reality” of global warming, I can barely stand it. But he can get away with it, perhaps he even really believes it, because true believers simply never bother to question their own assumptions, which is a form of blindness…
Of course in poker terms, Al Gore is “all in.” He’ll go down with the ship.
But beyond that, what do you guys think we lay skeptics can do, if anything, to enlighten people? We can read the blogs, we can donate money to them, but every time I even bring the subject up among my liberal friends, it takes about 5 seconds before tempers flare. It just seems so hopeless for now…
To Bob Diaz,
If the land based Greenland ice all melted, a rise of about 20 ft would occur. If all of the Antarctic land based ice cap melted and ran into the ocean, several hundred feet would be added. However, some of the melt for both would be captured in inland seas, so it would be some less than max possible. However, the energy to melt all this ice would take several thousands of years to accumulate. Also, even if the temperature in the Antarctic went up 10 degrees C on average, it still would be well below freezing over most of the ice sheet all year long (only the lower altitude levels even get near freezing anytime). Ice requires a lot of energy to melt. Since past ice core and sea bed sediment records indicate that we should be heading for a glacial period soon (several hundreds to a few thousands of years away), it is more likely that refreezing would to occur before much melt occurred, so I would not worry. In fact, cooling is much more likely the next couple of decades.
August 13, 2011 at 12:21 pm
Steve Keohane says:
“and what side of the road is the sign on?”
The top side, if it was the underside only drivers in the northern hemisphere would be able to see it.
Roger Sowell, Oreskes’ book is devoted primarily to attack a particular group of scientist of whom only one still lives to defend himself. He (Fred Singer) has defended himself many times, here for instance:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/06/science_and_smear_merchants.html
Although another scientist she attacks, William Nierenberg is now deceased, his son still lives, and maintains a blog where you can find extensive rebuttals of the attacks on his father:
http://nierenbergobservations.blogspot.com/
Sadly Robert Jastrow and Fred Seitz have no one in particular devoted to defending them, but given how shoddy and biased her scholarship has been shown to be attacking Singer and Nierenberg, I see no reason to believe any of her attacks on the others.
John R T says:
August 13, 2011 at 12:19 pm
I like to think of it as a 100 year behavioral cycle . . . 1864, 1964
Civil War, Civil Rights
1863,1963
Abraham Lincoln assassinated, JFK assassinated
I could go on . . . but I won’t . . .
Behavioral cycles are man made, but climate change has an influence . . . .
Does anyone know if a graph of global minimum temperature anomoly exists?
As for the increase in sea levels, would that not depend on the amount of water that is added to our Scotch Whisky?
I recently upgraded an ancient version of FreeCiv and to my utter chagrin and disgust, I find that the global warming feature annoys me and it cannot be turned off.
It’s not the global warming per se, but that just like the real AGW, this ‘feature’ totally destroys the fun of the game by introducing tedious make work, a digital version of German recycling (aka washing your litter and separating it into 9+ containers)
Meh, just wanted to vent, those pesky zealots seems to plaster their junk science anywhere and everywhere, even into games. Is there nowhere safe?
As for the increase in sea levels, for me that would depend on whether you think continents can float or rise with the sea level . . .
Apropos of nothing I present three unrelated links:
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2011/06/29/rspb.2011.1193.abstract?papetoc
http://www.met.psu.edu/people/mem45
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/staff/gschmidt/