First, Einstein was right. Then he was wrong. Then he was right due to a loose wire. Now he may have been wrong due to an oscillator. Many of us would just throw up our hands and say everything is relative with Einstein, but scientists at OPERA say that a second equipment problem may have led to a too conservative reading of the 730-kilometer journey of the neutrinos reported by the European Organization for Nuclear Research or CERN.
The oscillator is used to provide time stamps to synchronize the GPS systems which measure the travel time. The scientists believe that the oscillator problem may have canceled out the cable problem . . . and that the little neutrinos did move faster than the speed of light — beyond the cosmic speed barrier of 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second). That would contradict Einstein’s theory. So I guess we have to treat Einstein like a big dummy again . . . absent another loose cable or spilled coffee cup.
I am just waiting for a finding that neutrinos are sentient with a wicked sense of humor . . . and hovering around 299,791 kilometers per second just to mess with us.
Source: CBC
The “lady” doth protest too much, methinks.
Bron you may be interested in this. I saw you comment about the sun being a main driver.
“The Sun may be entering a weak phase, analogous to the Maunder minimum, which could lead to more frequent flooding in the northeastern US at this multidecadal timescale.”
So they connect the sun to causing floods. Interesting.
GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS, VOL. 39, L04707, 5 PP., 2012
doi:10.1029/2011GL050720
Hydroclimate of the northeastern United States is highly sensitive to solar forcing
Jonathan E. Nichols
Department of Geological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, New York, USA
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Earth Institute at Columbia University, Palisades, New York, USA
Yongsong Huang
Department of Geological Sciences, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA
Dramatic hydrological fluctuations strongly impact human society, but the driving mechanisms for these changes are unclear. One suggested driver is solar variability, but supporting paleoclimate evidence is lacking. Therefore, long, continuous, high-resolution records from strategic locations are crucial for resolving the scientific debate regarding sensitivity of climate to solar forcing. We present a 6800–year, decadally-resolved biomarker and multidecadally-resolved hydrogen isotope record of hydroclimate from a coastal Maine peatland, The Great Heath (TGH). Regional moisture balance responds strongly and consistently to solar forcing at centennial to millennial timescales, with solar minima concurrent with wet conditions. We propose that the Arctic/North Atlantic Oscillation (AO/NAO) can amplify small solar fluctuations, producing the reconstructed hydrological variations. The Sun may be entering a weak phase, analogous to the Maunder minimum, which could lead to more frequent flooding in the northeastern US at this multidecadal timescale.
http://www.leif.org/EOS/2011GL050720.pdf
Tuesday, February 28th, 2012
Charles Koch Foundation Confronts the New York Times for Misleading Readers
The following letter was sent by Tonya Mullins of the Charles Koch Foundation to Art Brisbane, Public Editor, at the New York Times on February 24, 2012:
Dear Mr. Brisbane:
In previous correspondence with Melissa Cohlmia of Koch Industries, you invited any further examples of flawed journalism on the news side. The Times’s recent piece on the Charles Koch Foundation [Leak Offers Glimpse of Campaign Against Climate Science; 2/15/12] is one of the more egregious examples to date. Here are our specific concerns:
As soon as we read the piece, we pointed out to editors that they had been misinformed. The article stated, “The documents say that the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation…was expected to contribute $200,000 this year [to Heartland Institute].” That is demonstrably false and we said so in writing and on the record in an email. But editor Nancy Kenney replied a day later to ask if we could be “more explicit” (correspondence attached below). A public statement from the Charles Koch Foundation had been out for days at that point and the authenticity of the document the Times relied on had been disavowed by Heartland and thoroughly discredited by other news outlets. Yet, the Times would not update or clarify the story to include these facts.
The Times never reached out to us before publication, despite quoting several other parties that were cited. Ms. Kenney claims to “regret that our reporters didn’t call you” and yet when we asked her for an explanation (twice) she ignored the question and the information we provided remains withheld from readers.
The piece tried to convey that the Charles Koch Foundation had funded Heartland’s work on climate science – based on the headline, lede, and the sentences immediately preceding and after the mention of the Foundation’s donation, all of which emphasize climate science. That is false, and we explained to Ms. Kenney that our $25,000 donation was specifically for healthcare research. Ms. Kenney insists that we are “misreading” the article and that it is somehow “clear from the overall context” that the donation was for “purposes other than climate advocacy.” Her position is puzzling in light of the actual content and context, yet when we asked for explanation she gave none.
Since the piece ran, it has come to light that some of the documents the Times cited were obtained by an activist who, by his own admission, perpetrated a fraud on Heartland. One of the documents, a purported cover memo, is now widely regarded as wholly fabricated – a view supported by what both we and Heartland have separately told the paper.
However, the paper’s subsequent reporting still omits any mention of our direct and salient statements to the Times about that apparent fabrication. Readers are still left with the false impression about the size, duration, and intent of our donation. Our good faith questions about why the Times failed to call us and won’t include our viewpoint remain unanswered. Not one of the five Times reporters that have written on the topic – Leslie Kaufman, Justin Gillis, John Border, Felicity Barringer, and Andrew Revkin – even attempted to contact us for input or reaction.
One might expect the Times to have some chagrin about its reporting that was based on material obtained by fraud, motivated by an ulterior ideological agenda, and suspect in its authenticity. Yet even though that source lied, cheated, and stole – and refuses to answer any further question from the Times or anyone – reporter Andrew Revkin nonetheless found room to praise him, writing, “It’s enormously creditable that Peter Gleick has owned up to his terrible error in judgment.” Readers would be right to wonder if the Times itself is able to own up to mistakes on this story.
If you could look into this matter we would appreciate your feedback.
Sincerely,
Tonya Mullins
Director of Communications
Charles Koch Foundation
seriously OT; (but alls morphed to global warming again anyway soooooooooooo………) go to kickstarter an d give them your monies for the Lowline!!!! we may need it when all hell breaks out on the surface….. 😉
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/855802805/lowline-an-underground-park-on-nycs-lower-east-sid
Your statement does nothing to remedy the logical flaws of your original statement, but instead rather simply moves the goal posts – another logical fallacy. You also demonstrated you have no idea how to defeat the tactic of reductio ad absurdum. Nothing you’ve done reverses that I demonstrated the irrationality of your original statement by taking it to its absurd but logical conclusion.
You didn’t originally claim that we needed to gather more information to formulate the best response (differentiated from formulating a workable response – perfect information is an ideal, but in the real world decisions are made all the time based on incomplete or imperfect information). Your original claim was embodied by the corollary “Change is the only constant so that is reason enough not to do anything about anything.” You attempt to modify this by appealing to certainty with the statement “Clearly things change based on knowledge, if the knowledge substantially points to a certain conclusion then take action.” This points out another flaw in your reasoning once again even with the goal posts moved.
Absolute certainty is not a requirement for action any more than perfect evidence, only reasonable certainty based upon a preponderance of evidence. Waiting for absolute certainty based on perfect evidence is a recipe for doing nothing.
There are only three options present: continue the status quo, do nothing, do something. In this case, doing nothing is as good as continuing the status quo. The net result is still more carbon in the atmosphere. This presents an actual dichotomy: the choices are really do something or do nothing.
The fact is that the preponderance of evidence indicates that AGW is a real phenomena and that the solution to mitigate the potential damage caused by it is to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. We can be reasonably certain that the problem is not going to be solved/mitigated by continuing to add more carbon to the atmosphere. The status quo leads to higher carbon content over time. We either choose to ignore and exacerbate the problem (your solution) or we choose to address the problem as best we can based upon the evidence at hand (which the preponderance of evidence causes the majority of the climate sciences community to recognize that AGW is real and having a measurable impact) and look for ways to both quit adding carbon and ways to remove carbon from the system. Doing nothing is not a viable solution of any sort but an exacerbation of the existing condition.
Therefore the only reasonable discussion isn’t about what to do (reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere to reduce the heat load), but rather about how to go about it.
Doing nothing because you want absolute certainty and/or perfect evidence is not a rational option. It’s Ostrich thinking. Try not to get any sand in your nose.
You don’t think things through, Bron. You tend to grab what confirms your prejudices and preconceptions and run with it. Too bad tenacity isn’t enough. You don’t understand half of what you read and misapply almost all of it. Combined with your logic being critically impaired by binary thinking, this presents the fatal flaws that result in your persistent inability to win arguments against anyone.
I don’t need to project, Bron. I’m not the one who doesn’t know who or what he is. My self-image is both accurate and realistic. I know both who and what I am including my strengths, my weaknesses and my failings. On the other hand, you’re the one who constantly misapplies data by cherry picking and other logically fallacious methods and the one who resorts to making up the meaning of terms you don’t understand to suit your binary thinking which in addition to being flawed by nature of being binary is tainted by your ever present outcome determinism playing to your confirmation biases based in your irrational belief in both Objectivism and laissez-faire economics.
You have yet to ever best anyone in an argument. Fully understand that sentence, Bron. Not just me, Bron.
You’ve never once bested ANYONE in a debate or argument in this forum.
Maybe it’s time you realized maybe the problem isn’t with others, but within yourself. I know this will never happen though. As an Objectivist, you are the stick by which all the universe is measured.
Bron,
As a guest Blogger…. Gene is not a projector he is a writer….
Gene H:
“It’s not enough to read Plato, Bron, or anyone else. You have to understand what you read and be able to properly apply it. You again demonstrate the fundamental flaws of binary thinking and why half-knowledge is as dangerous as no knowledge: it lends a veneer of respectability (in this case by appealing to authority) but hides serious logical deficiencies.”
011110010110111101110101001000000110000101110010011001010010000001100001001000000110110101101111011100100110111101101110
you also need to quit projecting.
Otteray Scribe:
“Under Bron’s rubric, the firemen and crowd should not have been so hysterical and taken their own sweet time putting out the fire.”
That is not my rubric, there was a clear danger and action needed to be taken to try and save that mans life. There is no clear and present danger with global warming. How long will it take to raise sea levels 10′ with the melting of ice caps and glaciers? 1 week, a month, a year, 10 years? How long? How long does it take to melt a 1 mile thick block of ice? and what does the temperature have to be? If we raised the average earth temperature 3 degrees, I doubt that would be enough to melt arctic and antarctic ice fields.
Gene H:
1) The hysteria surrounding AIDS is reason enough not to do anything.
There was overwhelming evidence AIDS was a killer.
2) The hysteria surrounding rogue nuclear states is reason enough not to do anything.
There is overwhelming evidence nuclear weapons are deadly.
3) The hysteria surrounding not having enough clean water is reason enough not to do anything.
there is overwhelming evidence pollution at certain levels is harmful to human health.
4 ) The hysteria surrounding Wall Street criminals going unpunished is reason enough not to do anything.
this is an opinion and not fact. The meltdown has more than one cause
5) The hysteria about the corporatist driven destruction of democracy and erosion of civil rights is reason enough not to do anything.
this is opinion as well, the destruction of our republic has many causes
6) Change is the only constant so that is reason enough not to do anything about anything.
Clearly things change based on knowledge, if the knowledge substantially points to a certain conclusion then take action. Otherwise wait and see. Sometimes action just for the sake of change is deleterious.
Do something. What? I dont know, just do something. Is not a good idea.
It helps to know what you are doing and why before taking action.
Again there has only been one solution ever proffered. Stop burning fossil fuels is the one all cure all for the one thing that causes earthquakes, droughts, floods, tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, and everything else under the sun. If we get it to 350ppm we will all be safe. If we get it lower than that there will be peace on earth.
@Elaine: Another excerpt, Mann speaking: During the last year we’ve seen ten times as many warm records as cold records than what we would expect in absence of climate change. People are noticing. At some point they will demand action regardless of efforts by some to poison the public debate. My worry, of course, is that we will be committed already to levels of climate change that are already very damaging to the planet. We don’t have a lot of time left to act if we are going to limit, with any degree of confidence, the planet’s warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less.
Unlike Mann, however, I am very pessimistic; people respond to real economic pain that doesn’t look like it will go away, and by the time that level of economic pain appears the system will be broken for centuries. There will be too much momentum to stop it.
Mann on Heartland’s education plan: “So amoral it’s almost hard to put into words.”
http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2012/02/mann-on-heartlands-education-plan-so-amoral-it%E2%80%99s-almost-hard-to-put-into-words/
Excerpt:
Speaking of attacks, it strikes me that many of these attacks are very personal, and once you get past Al Gore, you’re right on the front line of scientists along with the likes of James Hansen. What is it like to be a lightning rod?
I started to recognize that I might be subject to these kinds of attacks back in 2001 when our hockey stick reconstruction was featured in the summary for policymakers of the IPCC report, and it quickly became an icon in the climate change debate. Icons tend to get attack by those who are seeking to discredit the science because, often, they oppose efforts to regulate carbon dioxide. They feel only by discrediting the science can they prevail. But even back then there were others I could look to who had been attacked this way before, and they were a source of inspiration and assistance for dealing with these efforts to attack my character and discredit me. Ben Santer had been through similar attacks in the mid-1990s, Steve Schneider and James Hansen, who you mentioned, were prominent figures who had been attacked before. Fortunately many of them came out and provided assistance.
One thing I’ll never forget is Steve Schneider, early on, taking me aside and telling me, “You need to understand is that what these attacks are about is the importance of your work. Your work is perceived as a threat to some very powerful interests. Wear this as a badge of honor. It means your work has had an impact.” That’s something that stuck with me, and, during some of the darkest times, it made a difference.
What is the state of the science? It seems to me that there’s still a lot of work needed to understand climate feedbacks and other factors important to understanding how the planet’s climate is going to change.
This gets at a vexing problem we face as climate scientists that there are real uncertainties and real controversies in climate science, and I talk about some of them in the book. What’s so unfortunate is that we’re stuck in this bad-faith debate in the public discourse, over whether the problem is actually real. This has prevented us from having the good-faith debate that is to be had, about what are the uncertainties, and what implications they have. There is just this amazing gulf between what the public thinks we’re debating, and what we’re actually debating at meetings and in the scientific literature. As you allude to there are some real uncertainties.
One of the examples I often use comes from the paleoclimate record, and it concerns El Niño. One of the big uncertainties when it comes to Atlantic hurricanes is what will happen to El Niño or the larger scale dynamics related to it. We don’t really know the answer. One of my interests in studying the paleo record is seeing how the El Niño phenomenon responded to natural factors like volcanic eruptions as a way to reducing the currently very large uncertainty about how anthropogenic impacts will change El Niño. It has huge implications not only for hurricanes, but all kinds of patterns. Water managers in the southwestern United States need to know what will happen to this phenomenon because it has such a huge influence on the hydrology in that part of the world.
@Bron: By the way lets assume I agree that man is the main contributor to climate change. How do we solve the problem ?
It is my belief that we will not solve the problem in time.
Human nature will not let us; survival, food, comfort and profit will trump any attempt to limit energy consumption. It is hypocrisy for us to tell 2nd and third world countries to restrain their energy consumption while we consume fifty times what they do, they know it, and ignore us and engage in the same burning of forests for cropland that we once did, engage in the same diversion of rivers and draining of lakes and exploitation of their natural resources that made the first world rich.
So if there IS a solution it will be a scientific one; a way to generate and use energy without generating greenhouse gasses. There are very powerful, insanely wealthy people and organizations that make enormous easy profit from fossil fuels, and they do not want such solutions.
The most viable I have heard of are thermal solar and geothermal. Thermal solar is absolutely safe; geothermal could be ubiquitous, but I am on the fence about safety, leaning toward pretty safe but not absolutely safe. In the USA, there are enough viable geothermal sites to cover something like 100 times our current energy needs; but read the comprehensive MIT report for details (I did many years ago).
I do not think wind scales up to anywhere close to world needs. That might provide a local solution in Oklahoma, but wind isn’t going to work everywhere.
Those do not fix the global energy problem, though, and coal and oil are still cheaper.
So I think, due to human nature, the real question is: What is the situation when worldwide coal and oil run out, at least to the point that alternatives are slightly cheaper to use?
My personal belief is that, at that point, we are doomed. But that is not an absolute belief. There are many ways to generate energy, and we (engineering scientists) may find a way to generate energy that is cheaper and easier than the fossil fuels.
This is not my field, but from outside it is clearly a very hard problem. Many have been trying diligently and there are huge rewards for success, but no success is in sight as far as I know. But I see no reason to consider it impossible. I would focus on the sun (pun intended), co-opting photosynthesis somehow (exploiting real plants or algae, or artificial analogs of photosynthesis). For energy storage, there are several ways that do not lose too much by converting electricity to longer forms of storage; from simple gravitational storage (pumping water uphill to a reservoir that can be drained through a turbine; in fact turbines are made that can do both jobs, the uphill pumping and the subsequent electrical generation) to just compressing air to a liquid, or using the electricity to separate water into two liquefied fuels (hydrogen and oxygen).
I do not think the problem can be solved in time, but as a betting man, if I were in charge of the budget, I would be devoting about 100 times as much money as we currently devote to universities and (truly) non-profit research organizations to solve this problem, and that money would come from oil. We can begin with the oil we collectively own off our national coasts, if we stopped giving that oil away to private corporations selling it for private profit (and then paying us royalties which we refund in tax breaks), we could extract it ourselves, sell it ourselves, and use it to fund the research that would get us off of oil altogether. That is how things should be, but I doubt it can happen.
AssKisser-Gate: Heartland Institute Founder David Padden Grovels For Master Charles Koch
By Mark Ames
http://exiledonline.com/asskisser-gate-heartland-institute-founder-david-padden-grovels-for-master-charles-koch/
Excerpt:
Speaking of the Koch-founded Heartland Institute—busted recently for plotting to brain-pollute America’s K-12 students with fake industry climate change-denial “science”—I came across this hilarious groveling quote from Heartland founder David Padden about his all-knowing Master and Dear Leader, Charles Koch:
“I would never attempt to second-guess whatever he’s doing in the interest of making this a free country. He has a strategy that probably we are unaware of. He’s so smart and so successful that I’m just going to await the outcome.”*
That’s right: Don’t even question the god-like wisdom of Our Dear Libertarian Leader Charles Koch: Just submit, and wait for His plan to work its magic.
Now, Harris is teaching at Carleton, passing on a mix of climate denial mythology and flat out fiction, telling students that the planet isn’t really warming,
It’s not Phil Jones has stated that there has not been any statistical warming for at least 15 years.
From the BBC
B – Do you agree that from 1995 to the present there has been no statistically-significant global warming
Yes, but only just. I also calculated the trend for the period 1995 to 2009. This trend (0.12C per decade) is positive, but not significant at the 95% significance level. The positive trend is quite close to the significance level. Achieving statistical significance in scientific terms is much more likely for longer periods, and much less likely for shorter periods.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8511670.stm
Ms. Elaine is Al Gore a climate scientist ? No, but he still teaches us about global warming. In fact he told high schoolers not to listen to their parents in re to Global Warming.
How bout Dr Rajenda Pachauri, head of IPCC, is he a climate scientist ? No, he is a railroad engineer trying to railroad you into believing the scam.
There are many at the IPCC that are not climate scientist. All one has to do is a little research to see the truth.
“The climate problem is so difficult that we might never solve it.”
————————————————————
That’s a good enuff reason not to try….
28 February 12
Fake Heartland “Scientist” Infiltrates Canadian University
Bogus climate course “a source of embarrassment to the institution”
http://www.desmogblog.com/fake-heartland-scientist-infiltrates-canadian-university
Excerpt:
An energy industry public relations man and lobbyist with no background in climate science has infiltrated Carleton University in the Canadian capital of Ottawa, teaching a course on climate change denial that other Carleton professors describe as “a source of embarrassment to the institution.”
Tom Harris, who originally trained as a mechanical engineer, has been a strategist for the climate change denial industry for at least a decade. A favourite presenter misrepresented as a PhD at the Heartland Institute’s regular climate change denial conferences, Harris has worked directly for companies like the international PR giant APCO Worldwide or for energy industry lobby firms such as Toronto’s High Park Group. More recently, he has launched or led at least three phony “grassroots organizations” – energy industry front groups that promote confusion or denial in climate science.
Now, Harris is teaching at Carleton, passing on a mix of climate denial mythology and flat out fiction, telling students that the planet isn’t really warming, that (if it is), humans aren’t to blame, that (if they are) if might be a good thing and that, regardless, it’s just too complicated for mere scientists to figure out. (“The climate problem is so difficult that we might never solve it.”)
Gene H.1, February 28, 2012 at 11:58 pm
—————————–
you go, that was xcellent…
The problem with this statement
“We conclude that the recent decline of Arctic sea ice has played a critical role in recent cold and snowy winters”
Arctic sea ice extent in January 2012 averaged 13.73 million square kilometers (5.30 million square miles). This is the fourth-lowest January ice extent in the 1979 to 2012 satellite data record, 1.10 million square kilometers (425,000 square miles) below the 1979 to 2000 average extent.
As in December, ice extent was lower than normal on the Atlantic side of the Arctic, especially in the Barents Sea. However, on the other side of the Arctic, ice extent in the Bering Sea was much greater than average, reaching the second-highest levels for January in the satellite record. The greater-than-normal ice extent in the Bering Sea partly compensated for low ice extent on the Atlantic side of the Arctic Ocean, but ice extent as a whole remained far below average.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2012/02/arctic-ice-extent-low-overall-high-in-the-bering-sea/
.