New AMS statement on Climate Change

Dodgy,
Cloud has decreased (possibly). Water vapor has increased. Different thing.

They totally missed the single most important issue: sunspots.
The sun has gone quiet, and the dramatic worldwide cooling is underway.
Dr. Abdussamatov of Russia is correct in predicting imminent global cooling.
As one wag put it, “Nature bats last.”

What planet do THEY live on?

Dodgy Geezer says: @ August 27, 2012 at 10:40 am
….I had thought that observations showed a DECREASE in water vapour. Was I wrong? I wish they had provided references….
_______________________________
No you were not wrong, but then this is not the first ERrrr, MMMuuummm, …Data manipulation we have seen from the ‘Team’
Global Relative Humidity Graph (1948 – 2008)
Atmospheric Specific Humidity at different heights above the surface from NOAA: Graph (1948 – 2012)
Cloud & Atmospheric water Graph (1983 – 2010)
Cloudiness by cloud type Graph
Change in Earth Albedo Graph (Earthshine Project) WUWT Article

There must be a run on bandwagons!

Didn’t see any mention of Antarctica. This is global, right?

Roger Sowell says:
August 27, 2012 at 10:47 am
Dr. Abdussamatov of Russia is correct in predicting imminent global cooling.
We have in an earlier thread shown that Abdussamatov’s ‘prediction’ is already falsified.

“Seems almost a planned effort this week” … Oh, I dunno, I reckon they just work on the principle so well expressed by Dickens’ character Wilkins Micawber – “Something will turn up”. Sit and wait, and sooner or later … Bingo! Like buses, three turn up at once!

Reads like it was written for the them by Skeptical Science. /sarc

I noticed one rather interesting thing about the AMS statement. They go out of their way to explain that meteorolgy is incapable of making accurate predictions more than two weeks out. Then they explain that climate science is based on completely different drivers than is weather.
Which begs the question:
If the AMS, by their own admission, have expertise that has nothing to do with climate science, how can they possibly assert that their opinions on climate science have merit?

Alec Rawls says:
August 27, 2012 at 11:19 am
The AMS statement completely ignores the fact that there even IS an alternative possible explanation for recent warming: the high levels of solar activity that persisted over most of the 20th century.
Solar activity was equally high during the 18th and 19th centuries.
http://www.leif.org/research/Reconciliation%20of%20Group%20&%20International%20SSNs.pdf

As I posted on Climate Etc. Shades of Tom Lehrer’s,The Vatican Rag
“First you get down on your knees,
Fiddle with your rosaries,
Bow your head with great respect,
And genuflect, genuflect, genuflect, genuflect”

Key points in their paragraphs on models:
“Climate models simulate the important aspects of climate and climate change based on fundamental physical laws of motion, thermodynamics, and radiative transfer. These models report on how climate would change in response to several specific “scenarios” for future greenhouse gas emission possibilities.”
They follow Trenberth in using “radiation only” models. They realize that models are no more than scenarios. See third paragraph below for further explanation of this point. They are quite aware that their work is “a priori” and without a physical science to support it.
“A valuable demonstration of the validity of current climate models is that when they include all known natural and human-induced factors that influence the global atmosphere on a large scale, the models reproduce many important aspects of observed changes of the 20th-century climate, including (1) global, continental, and subcontinental mean and extreme temperatures, (2) Arctic sea ice extent, (3) the latitudinal distribution of precipitation, and (4) extreme precipitation frequency.”
They overlook the fact that models do not include all known natural and human-induced factors that influence the global atmosphere. That makes their statement a trivially true conditional. In other words, it has no content at all.
“Model limitations include inadequate representations of some important processes and details. For example, a typical climate model does not yet treat fully the complex dynamical, radiative, and microphysical processes involved in the evolution of a cloud or the spatially variable nature of soil moisture, or the atmospheric interactions with the biosphere. Nevertheless, in spite of these limitations, climate models have demonstrated skill in reproducing past climates, and they agree on the broad direction of future climate.”
They admit that their models are substantially incomplete. Any one of these factors could explain most temperature increase in the last 150 years. Yet they do not point out that this fact makes their earlier statement trivially true. And, as we all know, successful hindcast does not imply successful forecast or provide any evidence for it whatsoever. Successful hindcast shows only that models can be tuned to a known set of numbers.
In summary, after trumpeting the fact that they have embraced AGW totally, they reveal that their one tool for projecting future climate is the same old broken down Model T that they have yet to get up and running.

So how much “greenhouse effect” can we now attribute to water vapor increase?

Why was the initial point picked in the 1950s? Because there was a cold period? This looks like a bad initial-value selection. Data goes back much farther. The skew due to UHI pollution also needs to be removed from the global data since it skews an already bad ides (that there is a global average temperature that has any meaning.)

But this declaration is consistent with the ignore factual reality and hard science in order to use modelling and systems theory that pretends the Earth and climate are closed systems where human actions necessarily have physical or biological effects. I wrote http://www.invisibleserfscollar.com/hobbling-minds-and-misrepresenting-reality-mounting-a-political-coup-from-within/ recently after I discovered that systems theory was becoming one of the dominant pushes in schools and classrooms all over the world. Literally teaching students to pretend that the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth was good science. And about to become the dominant theory in the US.
If the students mindset and perceptions of the world are being shaped by bogus and discredited political theories, you do get the result of a false sense of reality actually altering future events. Just like the schemers described in that USCGRP 2012-2021 report I wrote about that said the future primary tool for climate science would be education and the behavioral and social sciences.
This really is Lysenkoism all over again. Remember his natural science may not contradict political ideology caused massive starvation in the USSR? Haven’t we learned anything? This is just another way of getting to Paul Ehrlich’s New Mindedness. Just ignore reality until ed alters future realities is not going to end well. And it’s atrociously expensive of tax dollars to boot.
We need a non-corrupted NAS. I don’t think all the federal science agencies reporting to John Holdren is the least bit helpful to us. Probably thrilling to Ehrlich of course.

Statements that purport to represent the views of a professional society’s members should be made illegal unless approved in a proper democratic vote by a 2/3 majority of their members.
One would expect that the membership of a professional society would have sufficient intellect to understand the issues and not need an (often unelected) quorum to speak on their members behalf.
Presumably they are afraid of the outcome of such a vote, they risk getting a surprise along the lines experienced by the authors of the infamous “97% of scientists” survey.

davidmhoffer says:
August 27, 2012 at 11:11 am
“Wow. More intense storms…. except the data says otherwise. More water vapour… except the data says otherwise. Acclerating sea level rise…. except the data says otherwise.
I lost track of how many statements they made as being true that are the exact opposite of what the data shows.”
Yep, Kool Aid time for the AMS. However, as you point out, their claims undermine their position. Their claims about models do the same, as I explain above.

The same old nonsense

Here is as close as I can get to what AGW theory says should be happening. The less than 500 parts is supposed to create a lot more water vapor because the 500 parts warms the atmosphere just a bit more. That bit more allows the atmosphere to hold more evaporated water from the oceans (which would mean the oceans would be cooling yes?) and land surfaces. It is water vapor that is the major source of greenhouse warming, not CO2. Given the idea that the uptick in water vapor combined with the uptick in CO2 SHOULD be warming the planet by an X amount and the current warming does not nearly approach the X amount, Trenbreth thinks the warming may be hiding deep in the oceans where we can’t see it.

Isn’t Meteor ology the study of ^falling stars^?

KR says:
August 27, 2012 at 11:00 am
Your usual crap KR.

Alec Rawls says:
August 27, 2012 at 11:19 am
Full cover-up mode. Radical fraud.
Business as usual then.

Leif Svalgaard says:
August 27, 2012 at 11:30 am
Alec Rawls says:
August 27, 2012 at 11:19 am
The AMS statement completely ignores the fact that there even IS an alternative possible explanation for recent warming: the high levels of solar activity that persisted over most of the 20th century.
“Solar activity was equally high during the 18th and 19th centuries.”
I refer you back to your own chart to note that it does appear that the Group and Wolf sunspot numbers were higher in the 1900’s relative to the 1800’s and 1700’s in your chart. A visual comparison, only, as there are no x or y coordinate lines within the body of your chart. The three time periods are only similar when compared to the 1600’s, a poor comparison to consider, at best. If you are using totals for each, or some other measure, please give them as I could not find such in your paper. I saw no trend line nor r squared value for a trend on these values.
http://www.leif.org/research/Reconciliation%20of%20Group%20&%20International%20SSNs.pdf

Steve C says:
August 27, 2012 at 12:35 pm
Theo Goodwin says “…the outcome can only be a righteous and holy war to stop them. /sarc off”
“Careful where you’re pointing that sarc, Theo … 8-|”
LOL: Really very funny. It is darn difficult to make a joke about political correctness within the framework of PC. My hat is off to you.

Jim G says:
August 27, 2012 at 12:46 pm
Alec Rawls says:
August 27, 2012 at 11:19 am
the high levels of solar activity that persisted over most of the 20th century.
“Solar activity was equally high during the 18th and 19th centuries.”
I saw no trend line nor r squared value for a trend on these values.
Nor could you find any in Alec’s comment.
Perhaps, one way of comparing is to list the maximum sunspot number for the two highest cycles in each century:
1778 185
1788 157
1837 166
1848 150
1957 190
1989 158

Smokey says:
August 27, 2012 at 12:47 pm
KR could not answer my point above, so he changed the subject.
I posted a chart that was too short for KR, so here is one that goes back to the 1800′s.
——————–
Typical Smokey! The graph does not say what you claim. The data touches the top of the envelope at both ends. It touches the bottom in the middle. That is because the trend is increasing. A parabolic fit would be better. But you knew that, Smokey, as it has been pointed out to you many times before..

Solar activity has risen a bit since the 1750’s, but since 1950 (when temperatures have risen) solar activity has been decreasing.

Smokey says:
August 27, 2012 at 12:47 pm
“KR could not answer my point above, so he changed the subject.
I posted a chart that was too short for KR, so here is one that goes back to the 1800′s. Notice that the long term trend has not changed between a time when CO2 was around 280 ppmv, and today’s 394 ppmv.
That indicates two things:
a) global warming is a natural event, and
b) CO2 is not the cause
CO2 may have some minor effect, but it is too small to measure. Thus, the rise in CO2 is the result of natural global warming, not the cause.”
We have had 12000 years of interglacial warming, makes sense that CO2 would be on the rise, perhaps precipitously, at this point in the interglacial warming. Ice core charts show the lag between temperature and corresponding CO2 increase which the AGW crowd attempts to explain away. Present day temps are not showing corresponding increases relative to the present day CO2 increases. At least 10 years of lack of temp increase in the face of CO2’s major increases. Data on surface temps is suspect given poor siting and UHI phenomina (data buggering?). So, why are you so skeptical/(humor)? (Bob told me last corrspondence with him to start puting in the humor/sarc labels as apparently my humor is not always apparent. God rest his soul.)

Leif Svalgaard says:
August 27, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Leif Svalgaard says:
August 27, 2012 at 1:40 pm
“Perhaps, one way of comparing is to list the maximum sunspot number for the two highest cycles in each century
I forgot the cycle with max in 1870. The correct list should be:
1778 185
1788 157
1837 166
1870 167
1957 190
1989 158”
Thank you, is there total by century? The total of the above two highest cycles would put the 20th century higher than the 18th or 19th, but not by much.

KR says:
August 27, 2012 at 2:01 pm
Solar activity has risen a bit since the 1750′s
Your graph is skewed by suing the SIDC numbers which after ~1945 are too high by some 20%
http://www.leif.org/research/Reconstruction%20of%20Sunspot%20Number.pdf
but you are correct in stating that solar activity has been decreasing for some time.

Here’s an offer for all the true-believers that maintain that GISSTEMP and the other so-called global temperature data sets are valid.
Let’s use the identical statistical and data adjustment techniques to design and build nuclear power plants, chlorine manufacturing plants, and oil refineries. You true believers will of course agree to live next to these, and downwind.
No problem, right?
Let me know…

@ Dr. Leif Svalgaard on August 27, 2012 at 11:16 am
“Roger Sowell says:
August 27, 2012 at 10:47 am
Dr. Abdussamatov of Russia is correct in predicting imminent global cooling.
We have in an earlier thread shown that Abdussamatov’s ‘prediction’ is already falsified.”
——————
Dr. Svalgaard

The AMS Information Statements do not represent the opinions of the members of the AMS.
There are 14,000 members of the AMS, but the AMS Information Statements are drafted and approved by only 27 to 31 individuals. There is no procedure of approving the statement by all the members of the AMS.
According to “Guidelines for Statements of the American Meteorological Society” (http://ametsoc.org/policy/statementpolicy.pdf) it goes like that:
“AMS has a membership of more than 14,000 professionals (in government, the private sector and academia), students and weather enthusiasts.
…The basic steps leading to completion of a statement of the AMS are as follows: initiation, appointment of a drafting committee, drafting of the statement by the drafting committee, review, revision, and AMS Council approval.
…In all cases, the membership of the drafting committee includes at least one member of the AMS Council.
Information Statements are initiated by the Executive Committee or Council, possibly as a result of suggestions from other AMS officials, AMS members or external requests. A drafting committee of six to ten individuals is appointed by the Council and includes:
– At least one chair (or chair’s designee) of an AMS Board or Committee. The Board or Committee is selected by the relevant AMS Commissioner for its disciplinary expertise;
– At least one Council member;
– Three to eight other subject-matter experts, at least three of whom are AMS members.
Before the membership of the drafting committee is finalized, MS members are notified that the statement is being undertaken so that individuals may volunteer to participate.”
The Council consists of 21 individuals, they appoint the drafting committee and approve the draft.
The 14,000 members of the AMS have nothing to do with the statement.

New AMS statement on Climate Change
Another one of lifes great mysteries … right up there with why doesn’t knitting yarn come already rolled into balls?

Smokey – August 27, 2012 at 4:09 pm
Another amusing group of distorted and cherry-picked graphs from Smokey: An unlabeled graph of GHCN and something else (meaning not clear), two plots of CET temperatures (a _single_ station on an island, in the context of global temperatures, one a graph which has a compressed Y axis), a 10-year data (sub)set of the US (4% of the globe, seasonal only, and far too short a time for any statistical significance).
My favorite, however, is this one: http://butnowyouknow.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/globa-mean-temp.gif?w=469&h=427 – global mean temperature change on a scale of 30-80 degrees F. A 1.5F change plotted in a graph with a range more than 30x the range of change? One could hardly ask for a more blatant visual distortion, or a more deliberate attempt to minimize the perceptual impact of the data. The only chart I’ve seen that was even more distorted was the plot of temperature changes in degrees Kelvin – with a range extending to absolute zero.
Seriously, Smokey – how much time and effort do you put into finding and creating such distorted graphs? That’s a _lot_ of work, all of which (IMO, mind you) appears aimed purely at misleading people.
—
I will, however, thank you for these in one respect. I will likely be teaching a class later this fall involving (in part) how to clearly present data, and have been keeping track of your graphs as counterexamples of distortion and cherry-picking. I’m actually going to have to pick and choose from them – you’ve given me far more material than I can spend time on.

Jim G says:
August 28, 2012 at 8:20 am
If you ran a linear regression the b factor from the equation above would tell us if the sun spots were increasing over time. The sign and absolute value of that factor would indicate if, indeed, there has been any changeover the 3 centuries.
Of course, b is +0.04+/-0.04 spots/yr, so over a century that is 4+/-4 spots

Leif Svalgaard says:
August 28, 2012 at 8:40 am
Jim G says:
August 28, 2012 at 8:20 am
If you ran a linear regression the b factor from the equation above would tell us if the sun spots were increasing over time. The sign and absolute value of that factor would indicate if, indeed, there has been any changeover the 3 centuries.
“Of course, b is +0.04+/-0.04 spots/yr, so over a century that is 4+/-4 spots”
What values did you use as x and y observations in your regression analysis?
What is your linear regression equation in the form of y = a + bx where your observations are:
y = (number of sunspots) dependent variable ( there should be 300 observations or 251 if you only start at 1749)
a = calculated slope intercept
b = calculated slope of the line
x = 1749 through 2000 for the years of the observation (Time)? independent variable
The r squared will be small as a sinusoidal type of line would fit better in this cyclical situation but a straight line with slope will tell more accurately if spots are increasing over the entire time period. Is the data you used available, if so where? I would not think that time would be a very good predictor of the variation in sunspots irrespective of what type of line is fitted and therefore the r squared will be low though I believe that using the actual years may be more enlightening than simply the series 1-251 due to the percentage difference between low and high in the time series for dates vs 1-251, one from the other. And, obviously, the sinusoidal type fit should produce a higher r squared.

Pamela Gray – If you feel that pointing out rhetorical distortions, unmentioned and unsupportable data modifications, or cherry-picking/incomplete evidence fallacies in someones argument is itself rhetoric, I would suggest checking a dictionary.
If you would like a somewhat more complete analysis of one of Smokey’s graphs, see http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/07/the-folly-of-blaming-the-eastern-u-s-heat-wave-on-global-warming/#comment-1026852 – having gone over that in depth at one point, I did not repeat all steps here. My apologies if I provided insufficient context in this thread.
From that post:

Summary: If you see a graph with unneeded compression or expansion, and in particular if you see one where (as in the case of trends here) the important data has been altered to change values, you can conclude one thing with certainty. The presenter of that graph is attempting to mislead.

Smokey says:
August 28, 2012 at 2:04 pm
there is zero scientific evidence showing that anthropogenic CO2 causes global warming.
There is plenty of evidence that it does, the question is how much [and the answer is ‘not much’, but it is wrong to say ‘zero’]. Don’t overreach and grandstand so much.

Smokey says:
August 28, 2012 at 2:44 pm
And I would never use the word ‘martinet’
If you would stick to valid science, no martinet will bother you.

Smokey says:
August 28, 2012 at 3:55 pm
The entire debate is based on taxing CO2 emissions.
And the people [and the voters who keep them in office] who want to do this don’t care about your science and arguments one whit. I say people have the government they deserve, and since CAGW is a political problem, it must be solved at the ballot box: throw the bums out.

Jim G says:
August 28, 2012 at 4:18 pm
The simplest way to look at this will be to total sunspot activity by century just to start with.
We have three independent ways of measuring solar activity, SSN, Ap index, and Heliospheric Magnetic field.
using centuries as you suggest might be a good [unbiased] way, even if the data does not perfectly overlap.
The three indicators per century come to
Cent. 18 19 20
SSN 65 51 64
Ap ??.?? 13.08 13.34
HMF ?.?? 6.45 6.43
These numbers are the basis for my contention that we have no evidence for any significant change. Cosmic rays is another [but less direct] indicator, and again there is no evidence for a secular trend of the three centuries: http://www.leif.org/research/Svalgaard_ISSI_Proposal_Base.pdf

Leif Svalgaard says:
August 28, 2012 at 5:34 pm
“The three indicators per century come to
Cent. 18 19 20
SSN 65 51 64
Ap ??.?? 13.08 13.34
HMF ?.?? 6.45 6.43”
Question, how confident are you in the accuracy of the 18th century SSN? I note there are no corresponding numbers for the other measures for this time period. I ask this as there is a 25% increase in SSN from 19th to 20th century, which woud seem substantial were in not for the previous 18th century SSN. I would also note that there are evidently arguments even today regarding sunspot counts, size of spots, what is a spot, etc. Finally, your opinion on the relative relavence of each measure to potential ‘solar warming’, if any.

The AMS are in on it too! How many of these so called scientific organisations are going to continue telling us lies? So far it’s the IPCC, the 30+ Academies of Science who’ve issued joint statements supporting AGW, NASA, the Royal Meteorology Society , The European Science Foundation, American Geophysical Union (with the highly-suspicious acronym AGU) et al.
I’m not remotely bothered that not a single scientific institution in the world dissents from AGW. I get my science from blogs.
Whoooopeeeeee!

Leif,
“Finally, your opinion on the relative relevance of each measure to potential ‘solar warming’, if any.”
Here, I was trying to get at your opinion as to whether you feel that any of the three solar activity measures is more important when considering potential warming effects.
I do not claim to be a solar expert (I do have some great visible light photos through an 8″ Meade SCT of recent and older sunspots, the 1994 annular solar eclipse, this year’s venus transit and accompanying sunspots as well as two partial solar eclipses). I do agree that there are way too many variables to ascribe too much importance to any one, or small group of variables, when it comes to climate and feel that the present attempts at modeling and predicting future climate are ridiculous.

Jim G says:
August 29, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Using the SIDC data, possibly a different one than you quoted […]
I also looked at 1950-2011 to see if there was anything worth noting and found an average of 69.2 for those most recent 63 years
As I show here the SIDC values after 1945 are 20% too high http://www.leif.org/research/Reconstruction%20of%20Sunspot%20Number.pdf
You should reduce all values after 1945 by 20% in order to make a correct comparison.

Leif Svalgaard says:
Jim G says:
August 29, 2012 at 2:07 pm
Using the SIDC data, possibly a different one than you quoted […]
I also looked at 1950-2011 to see if there was anything worth noting and found an average of 69.2 for those most recent 63 years
“As I show here the SIDC values after 1945 are 20% too high http://www.leif.org/research/Reconstruction%20of%20Sunspot%20Number.pdf
You should reduce all values after 1945 by 20% in order to make a correct comparison.”
The point is that you must understand that perhaps others might not buy your argument, or even be aware of it, and use the actual unadjusted data and come to conclusions such as the original comment from Mr. Rawls regarding recent increases in solar activity. Based upon your links and other information available, at some point much of the finer detail here apparently becomes a matter of opinion. No offense intended, as I have found this most recent discourse with you enlightening, to say the least. That aside, we will probably not, however, come to agreement on dark matter or dark energy any time soon. And I am well aware that this most likely does not bother you in any way, but be aware neither am I disturbed by this situation.

Jim G says:
August 30, 2012 at 8:35 am
The point is that you must understand that perhaps others might not buy your argument
One of the arguments is simply comparing the data. It has been known for a long time that there is an obvious relationship between the sunspot number and the area on the sun covered by spots: more spots take up more area. So one can calculate the number of spots from their areas. If one does that using the pre-1945 relationship one can compare the observed sunspot number with that calculated from their observed areas. The result is shown in the top panel of
http://www.leif.org/research/Rz-SA-comparison.png As you can see there is very good agreement. You may also see in the lower panel that if you use that same relationship to calculate the sunspot number after 1945, the observed numbers are overall 21% higher than the expected numbers. It is this kind of data that convince the solar community that the post-1945 numbers need to be corrected. We actually choose to correct the pre-1945 numbers upwards instead as the modern values are used in operational programs, e.g. by the US Air Force to calculate satellite drag.

Jim G says:
August 30, 2012 at 3:32 pm
Until then, as I said before, you are confusing indirect evidence based upon observed gravitational EFFECTS with direct evidence such as some actual DM like those WHIMP’s or MACHO’s that are theorized to exist as the CAUSE.
If we observe a Whimp in the laboratory we have no assurance that that particle is in fact what causes the effects of DM on the large scale. In fact it will impossible with current technology to measure the gravitational effects of a single or a few Whimps, the same way as we cannot [to my knowledge] yet measure directly the gravitational effect of a normal particle, like a proton. ALL evidence is indirect. We deduce from the effect that DM must exist [and very few physicists doubt taht], and we have a pretty good idea of what it is [not baryonic, not reacting to the EM force, etc]. Then we go and look to see if we can find such a particle. If we can, we can further explore its properties and learn new physics. If we cannot up to a point in time, it simply means that we should look for a longer time, not that DM does not exist. Just like that if the police faced with a murder victim but has not caught the murderer yet does not mean that there is no murderer.

Jim G says:
August 31, 2012 at 12:05 pm
We only have the dead body.
Proof that there is a murderer, just as the effect of DM is proof there is DM. The serious effort has long ago shifted from arguing over existence to actually trying to find the particle that is there. There is a similar case concerning the neutrino. When energy seemed to be missing in beta decay, Pauli in 1930 introduced the neutrino to carry away the ‘missing’ energy. He did that because physicists were [and are] loath to give up the conservation of energy [a consequence of Noether’s theorem: “any differentiable symmetry of the action of a physical system has a corresponding conservation law”: Invariance of physical systems with respect to spatial translation gives the law of conservation of linear momentum. Invariance with respect to rotation gives the law of conservation of angular momentum, and invariance with respect to time translation gives the law of conservation of energy]. Only in 1956 was the neutrino actually ‘detected’ as a particle in the laboratory, although that event did not turn the existence of the neutrino into a ‘fact’, in the process converting hordes of doubting Thomases, and to change their opinion. It was already a fact. Same with DM and General Relativity.

Jim G says:
August 31, 2012 at 2:03 pm
One of my undergrad professors was actually involved in the project for the detection of the neutrino which, if I remember the story correctly, was a facility established at the bottom of a coal mine?
You are confusing this with the detection of neutrinos from the Sun by Ray Davis. In 1956, the neutrino was detected in a regular laboratory.
In any event you are comparing apples and oranges
Absolutely not, the situation is completely equivalent.
This search is not so different from our space explorations which have inevitably resulted in finding out what we thought was true of planet formation was incorrect.
This is typical of this kind of debate. By not qualifying it, you are saying that ALL we thought was true was incorrect. In reality, the Vesta finding has to do one of the finer details, not with the fundamental ideas.
Skeptical Thomas
Are by definition always found to be wrong.

Jim G says:
August 31, 2012 at 2:56 pm
Do you continue to rule out any “new physics” discoveries that may change, using your term, the “minor details” of what is presently understood/theorized?
Finding the DM particle will be ‘new physics’ as will finding out about its properties, just like all the new physics we learned about the neutrino: that it has mass, can change flavor, etc.
It took open-mindedness to propose DM in the first place. Now that DM has been established, you call it is open-minded to continue to deny it… sigh…
On Vesta, it does not upset the theory about planet formation, just about what Vesta itself is: a protoplanet or an asteroid [which are debris from destroyed protoplanets], so Vesta survived. We didn’t know that, but that certainly does not change anything fundamental.

Smokey says:
August 28, 2012 at 4:40 pm
Leif,
I am in complete agreement with you. Throw the bums out!
_____________________________
Unfortunately we just get a different set of piglets with their nose in the trough but at least they are not yet hogs.
The downside is tax payers get to fund another set of Congressional pensions. Taxpayers are likely to foot the bill for at least $26 million in pensions for former Members of Congress this year…

That statement is an outrage. I wrote a critique and sent it to AMS directly. Earlier I posted a copy under loose ends but it really belongs here so here it is again:
**********************************
On the Information Statement of the American Meteorological Society,
Adopted by AMS Council 20 August 2012
By Arno Arrak
As a member of the AMS I find this so-called “Information Statement” highly objectionable. It does not meet the standard of providing “… a trustworthy, objective, and scientifically up-to-date explanation of scientific issues of concern to the public at large” as claimed in its first line. It is full of scientifically unsubstantiated claims which amount to purposeful misleading of the public. I checked BAMS and find that at no time has the membership been consulted about any of the “factual” statements it promotes. It is clear that a small group now controls the Society and has taken it upon themselves to define what science says about climate. Any information that contradicts their opinion is either suppressed or left out. There are so many distortions, errors and omissions in it that I can’t cover them all so I will concentrate upon the more important ones. I will use the same paragraph headings as the report uses.
Background
This statement provides a brief overview of how and why global climate has changed over the past century and will continue to change in the future, or so they say. There are two problems with this. First, their account of how climate has changed over the past century is wrong. Second, the idea that they know the future is laughable. They use climate models that have been proven wrong time and time again. One example: IPCC AR4 predicted that global warming in the twenty-first century will proceed at the rate of 0.2 degrees per decade. We are now in the second decade of this century and there is no sign of the predicted warming. If a scientific theory makes a prediction and that prediction is demonstrably wrong that theory is also considered to be wrong. The greenhouse theory of warming that made this prediction must therefore be considered wrong. I will have more to say about greenhouse theory below.
How is climate changing?
“Warming of the climate system now is unequivocal…” Let’s stop right there. They mean “anthropogenic warming” but deceptively do not want to spell it out. Then they continue: “Observations show increases in globally averaged air and ocean temperatures, as well as widespread melting of snow and ice and rising globally averaged sea level.” As observations of nature these are true but most of them cannot be used to support anthropogenic warming. Global air temperature, for instance, is controlled by various natural forces, not even one of them human-caused. I will cover that below. As to the “rising globally averaged sea level” it simply does not belong in this package. We know it for a fact that sea level has been rising linearly for eighty years, at the rate of 2.46 millimeters per year [Chou, Yu & Li, Science 320:212-214 (2008)]. That is 24.6 centimeters per century, not twenty feet as Al Gore says in his Nobel Prize-winning propaganda film. Satellites clock sea level rise today at 3 millimeters per year which corresponds within the statistical error with the eighty year trend. This long term trend is most likely due to the world-wide melting of glaciers that is part of coming out of the Little Ice Age. It has absolutely nothing to do with human influence. Next they claim anthropogenic warming of polar regions: “Arctic sea ice extent and volume have been decreasing for the past several decades. Both the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have lost significant amounts of ice. Most of the world’s glaciers are in retreat.” I already explained the glaciers above. They are deceptive also with their Antarctic story because the warming is confined to the West Antarctic, the only part of Antarctica that is not fully inside the Antarctic Circle. The West Antarctic ice sheet in places drops directly into the ocean without any protective ice shelves and can be influenced by oceanic conditions. For example, the shelf facing the Amundsen Sea is melting because warm water from below wells up. What is happening is that prevailing winds blow away the cold water from the coast which is then replaced by that upwelling water from below. Such vagaries of winds and currents have so destabilized the West Antarctic ice sheet that it has a periodic record of collapse. Thus, sediments in the Ross Sea indicate that melt water has cascaded into the sea 18,000 years ago, again 10,500 years ago, again 5,000 years ago and then again 1,500 years ago. It could easily happen any time now but not because of anything we have done. And then in the north then they want to claim Arctic warming as their own. What they say about the Arctic sea ice extent is certainly true but this again is not due to any anthropogenic influence. The Arctic is not warming because of any imaginary greenhouse effect but because Atlantic Ocean currents are carrying warm Gulf Stream water into the Arctic Ocean [E&E 22(8):1069-1083 (2012)]. In 2010 the temperature of water reaching the Arctic exceeded any individual values available for the last two thousand years. It all started suddenly at the beginning of the twentieth century after two thousand years of slow, orbitally-driven cooling. We know for sure that there was no parallel increase of carbon dioxide when the warming started and this makes the greenhouse effect impossible. Warming paused in mid-century for thirty years, then resumed, and is still going strong. However, if you still believe in the greenhouse effect you will have to explain how to turn it on and off as is required to produce this mid-century pause in warming.
Why is climate changing?
Here is how they present their case for human-induced warming: “It is clear from extensive scientific evidence that the dominant cause of the rapid change in climate of the past half century is human-induced increases in the amount of atmospheric greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide (CO2), chlorofluorocarbons, methane, and nitrous oxide. The most important of these over the long term is CO2, whose concentration in the atmosphere is rising principally as a result of fossil-fuel combustion and deforestation.” For now, let’s forget about the other gases, they are introduced just to confuse the issue, and concentrate on carbon dioxide. Originally Hansen blamed carbon dioxide for global warming when he spoke to the Senate in 1988. It was a warm day, peak of the 1988 El Nino period, and both Hansen and the cameramen were wiping the sweat off their brows in a non-airconditioned hearing room. Senator Wirth, the committee chairman, had made sure that the air conditioning did not work and went out the previous night to open all the windows in the hearing room. For the hearing itself he had lined up more than ten TV cameras to report Hansen’s talk to the nation. It is this media blitz that started the present global warming mania. Hansen showed three versions of his climate models, predicting the amount of global warming through 2020, and advocated emissions reductions. The one marked “business as usual” was scariest and predicted a temperature rise of more than a degree Celsius in thirty years. This prediction has turned out to be way off the mark. The other two of his curves showed what could be done by emission controls. The climate models used today are all descended from Hansen’s but run on expensive supercomputers that Uncle Sam gave them. AMS prescription for stopping dangerous global warming is the same as Hansen’s in 1988: emission controls on carbon dioxide, i.e. we must stop burning fossil fuels. This is a trillion dollar demand on us, the peoples of the world. Unfortunately environmentalists have already indoctrinated enough people in power into believing their dubious theories and governments are now spending billions of dollars in public money on these worthless projects. As far as I can tell their faith in carbon dioxide comes from pure theory and is in conflict with actual observations of climate. Let’s go over the observed facts on global temperature, starting with the twentieth century, and see how they fit their story of global warming. The first ten years of the century saw cooling, not warming. This suddenly changed to warming in 1910 which stopped equally suddenly in 1940. There was no parallel increase of carbon dioxide in 1910, and this immediately rules out the greenhouse effect as a cause of warming. Bjørn Lomborg attributes this warming to solar influence and I agree with him. With it, forty percent of the century is over, without any sign of that greenhouse warming. The end of that warming was marked by rapid and severe cooling which lasted through World War II. The Finnish winter war of 1939/40 was fought at minus forty Celsius. There is nothing in any climate model that can either explain or forecast that. The Gulf of Finland froze over and Estonian volunteers walked across the ice to help defend the Finns against the Russians. Next year when Hitler attacked Russia it was General Frost, not the Red Army, who stopped the Germans at the gates of Moscow. And after the war was over the blizzard of 1947 was still able to immobilize New York City for weeks. There is no global warming theory that can explain how this cooling could happen in the presence of increasing carbon dioxide in the air. By 1950 the worst was over and climate stabilized for the next thirty years. But there was no warming until 1976 when the Great Pacific Climate Change is said to have brought a short step warming of about 0.2 degrees. By that time the Mauna Kea laboratorty was running and reported a steady increase of carbon dioxide in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. There has never been any satisfactory explanation of why a steady thirty year increase of carbon dioxide did not cause any warming. By now, seventy percent of the twentieth century was history, with still no sign of anthropogenic warming in sight. There was no warming in the eighties and nineties either, just a collection of ENSO peaks and valleys [1]. One of the peaks was the El Nino of 1988 that Hansen thought was a sign of global warming and so testified to the Senate. It was actually one of five El Nino peaks in that time interval, each one followed by a cool La Nina period. According to satellites the mean temperature remained constant during that entire period but this is not what you find on most land-based temperature curves. These feature a “late twentieth century warming” in that time slot that they count as greenhouse warming. It does not exist according to UAH and RSS satellites, NASA GISTEMP, and NCDC, all of which show that global mean temperature did not change from 1979 to 1987 . But this fake version is now so widespread that even Michael Mann and Richard Müller both use it, not knowing that it is a fake. This temperature rise was manufactured simply by reducing the depth of cool La Nina valleys between El Nino peaks of that period. The nineties ended with the super El Nino of 1998 that finally brought us real warming [1]. In four years, global temperature rose by a third of a degree Celsius and then stopped. There has not been any warming since that time. This step warming cannot be explained by any carbon dioxide greenhouse effect. Its cause very likely was the large amount of warm water the super El Nino carried across the ocean. The super El Nino peak temperature was twice as high as that of any other El Nino peak before it. This is very clear in satellite records but ground-based records do not show its true height. It is probably unique for at least a century and a half and should be intensively studied instead of being buried by a fictitious late twentieth century warming. With it we have reached the end of our temperature overview and can state that there has not been any anthropogenic greenhouse warming for the last 100 years. To talk of such warming as a fact is irresponsible pseudo-science thrust upon an unsuspecting public.
Final remarks
I will skip over the two climate change paragraphs since the required explanations are already implied by the foregoing.The final section goes on to claim again that “The dominant cause of the warming since the 1950s is human activities…” without giving any evidence whatsoever that such is a case. We have already seen that global temperature change is not among the arguments that can be used for it. But on top of that, we are also asked to believe that “The observed warming will be irreversible for many years into the future, and even larger temperature increases will occur as greenhouse gases continue to accumulate in the atmosphere.” There is no science whatsoever behind this claim. Ferenc Miskolczi, a Hungarian scientist, has studied the absorption of infrared radiation by the atmosphere and come to the conclusion that accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is incapable of raising atmospheric temperature. According to his theory, the existence of a stable climate requires that the infrared optical thickness of the atmosphere should have a constant value of 1.87. He worked out his theory in 2005 and in 2010 he was able to put it to an experimental test [E&E 21(4):243-262 (2010)]. Using NOAA weather balloon database that goes back to 1948 he showed that the infrared optical thickness of the atmosphere had been constant for 61 years. At the same time the amount of carbon dioxide in the air increased by 21.6 percent. This means that the addition of this substantial amount of carbon dioxide to air had no effect whatsoever on the absorption of IR by the atmosphere. And no absorption means no enhanced greenhouse effect, case closed. This is a purely empirical result, not dependent upon any theory, and it overrules any calculations from theory that do not agree with that. Specifically, it overrules any calculations based on the enhanced greenhouse effect, such as those predicting dangerous global warming to come. Miskolczi theory takes account of not only the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide but also of the greenhouse effect of water vapor which is the larger of the two. According to Miskolczi the required constant value of the IR optical thickness is maintained by feedback mechanisms among all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The amount of carbon dioxide cannot be changed but water vapor has an effectively infinite source/sink in the oceans and can change. By suppressing the absorption from the added carbon dioxide it demonstrates the existence of a negative feedback effect of water vapor on the greenhouse effect. This is the exact opposite of what IPCC climate models have been doing by using positive water vapor feedback as an ad hoc device to get more warming out of carbon dioxide in the air.
[1] Arno Arrak, What Warming? Satellite view of global temperature change (Second Edition, 2010)