Weather channel co-founder rebuts Barack Obama's United Nations address

AirPo said:

Am I reading this correctly. The Y axis is measuring the change in sea level, not the actual sea level? So that the data suggests that not only is sea level rising, but it's rising faster every year?

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A reasonable interpretation, but I think the delta is total from a fixed point not the annual change. If they are measuring at several points that makes sense. an average total deviation.

Looking some more it looks like only one measuring station at a time and that it has changed twice. Not ideal by any means.

NightHawkeye said:

Everyone knows that meteorologists observe the weather.

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If I want to know what the weather will be tomorrow, I'd consult a meteorologist. If I want to know about potential climate changes over time, I'd consult a climatologist.



Through 2014, the linear rate of decline for September Arctic ice extent over the satellite record is 13.3% per decade, relative to the 1981 to 2010 average. The ten lowest September ice extents over the satellite record have all occurred in the last ten years.

MikeCarra said:

LOL! That's funny.

This reminds me of an experience I had back in my younger days. I applied for a geochemistry job at a university in Missouri. In fact the kind of geochemistry I specialized in was pretty big in the mid-continent and I'd even done some of my early research in Missouri.

The person they hired was an OCEANOGRAPHER.

Because you CAN do science from anywhere.

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True, if you have teh interwebz and stuff.

Aryeh Jay said:

Yah! Cause you can’t access NOAA buoy information in Colorado. It’s not allowed!!!!!

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I agree! It's a contradiction in terms. What's next, jumbo shrimp?

AirPo said:

Not the way you did it.

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All right well it's not a super important point or anything.

KarateCowboy said:

True, if you have teh interwebz and stuff.

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Actually in earth sciences it is more common to do something called "FIELD WORK". It's where one gets a grant and goes elsewhere to get the data.

On top of that the NSF does provide access to a huge amount of data coming from the ocean to scientists all over the world. My wife used to work on just such a project. It's part of the whole "cyberinfrastructure" concept.

This is, by the way, one of the ways people can tell how out of touch the "climate change skeptics" are. AGW Skeptics often complain about the availability of the raw data. Unfortunately for them much of this data has been freely available for decades. They just don't know that and wouldn't know what to do with the data if they had it!

KarateCowboy said:

Pffft. Colorado is about as far from the Ocean as you can get. If you think THEY can track sea level, then I have a bridge I'd like to sell you !!

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NightHawkeye said:

One wonders if Obama gets credit for stopping the rise of the oceans.

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Can he part them too?

BigDaddy4 said:

Can he part them too?

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No, that was just during his first term.

AirPo said:

Every knows that meteorologists are not climatologists.

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That was quick, the old he's not a climatist defense.

conamer said:

That was quick, the old he's not a climatist defense.

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I'm a stickler for getting my science from real scientists. I got burned from getting discount science in the past and having it turn out to be ideology and political talking points repackaged as science.

Belk said:

I'm a stickler for getting my science from real scientists. I got burned from getting discount science in the past and having it turn out to be ideology and political talking points repackaged as science.

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Yes, climatists, political taking points repackaged as some sort of science.

conamer said:

That was quick, the old he's not a climatist defense.

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What's a climatist?

USincognito said:

What's a climatist?

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In short, those running the show who hate capitalism have a Trojan Horse ( AGW, err, climate change) for power, money and control.

conamer said:

Yes, climatists, political taking points repackaged as some sort of science.

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That's why I try to post as much SCIENCE as possible. Usually that means it's ignored by the "skeptics".

Science is hard to understand.

conamer said:

In short, those running the show who hate capitalism have a Trojan Horse ( AGW, err, climate change) for power, money and control.

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So you've just opted to ignore all the science (which admittedly is hard) so you can go with ideological talking points (which admittedly is easy).

Got it!

So how far to the "Right" do you have to go to start suspending fundamental laws of thermodynamics as most of our skeptic friends on this forum do?

MikeCarra said:

So you've just opted to ignore all the science (which admittedly is hard) so you can go with ideological talking points (which admittedly is easy).

Got it!

So how far to the "Right" do you have to go to start suspending fundamental laws of thermodynamics as most of our skeptic friends on this forum do?

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There are the sciences but no "the science". It's more like the faith. No... I tend to ignore political hacks.

conamer said:

There are the sciences but no "the science". It's more like the faith. No... I tend to ignore political hacks.

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The science of which I speak is chemistry and physics. But along with that there's paleoclimatology.

But the more troubling aspect to many of our "skeptics" on this board is the concept of the First Law of Thermodynamics. That's the one that says energy and mass is neither created nor destroyed.

So if a gas like CO2 (which has been known to absorb in the IR region since about 1850 and can be trivially shown any time to be true) is pumped into the atmosphere at extremely high rates far in excess of the natural cycles' ability to remove it, what do the "skeptics" imagine is happening to that IR energy?

Do they believe it is magically being "raptured" somewhere? Because for the rest of us it has to go somewhere.

This is not to say there aren't negative forcings (most skeptics don't actually understand that NEGATIVE, or "cooling" forcings have been an integral part of the science for decades and decades). But that won't really change the fact that excess energy held in a system can't just disappear.

If you think the First Law of Thermo is "political" in nature then you don't know the science.

AirPo said:

Every knows that meteorologists are not climatologists.

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John Coleman wasn't even that, his degree is in journalism.

I've always wondered if the science deniers would ignore their doctor in favor of advice they read on the interwebs or heard on talk radio. I mean, why should we listen to the experts, when we can just reject reality and insert our own that fits our biases way better.

conamer said:

In short, those running the show who hate capitalism have a Trojan Horse ( AGW, err, climate change) for power, money and control.

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Ah, so figments of denialist imaginations then. Gotcha.

conamer said:

There are the sciences but no "the science".

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"The science" refers to evidence and data supporting a particular field.