144448354
submission
Layzej writes:
In January of 2011, Slashdot reported on AccuWeather meteorologist Joe Bastardi's wager for climate scientists. He bet the earth would "cool .1 to .2 Celsius in the next ten years, according to objective satellite data." He later backed down when the wager was accepted, saying "With the way the article is couched, which I did not know would turn into a bet, I think that if I am wrong, then I will not have the 10k to bet anyway..since it seems that 35 years of forecasting is now on the line with this. I have never bet on the weather before, and I think since it now appears I am betting my entire livelihood on this, then that is enough."
It's a good thing too. The wager would have come due in January of 2011. As it turns out, the linear trend of global mean temperatures shows the earth actually warmed by just over 0.5C over the period according to satellite data.
123338294
submission
Layzej writes:
In 2016 Slashdot reported on a series of three climate wagers between environmental lawyer Brian Schmidt and climate contrarian David Evans. Evans was betting that warming would fall well below the 0.2 C per decade projected by the IPCC. Under the conditions of the wager, the average temperature over 2005–2009 would be compared with averages of each of these three periods: 2015-2019, 2020-2024, and 2025-2029. Schmidt would win in cases where warming was greater than 0.17 C per decade and Evans would win when it warmed at less than 0.13 C per decade.
The results for the first of three bets are in. With warming of almost 0.3 C over the decade, Schmidt is the clear winner. Schmidt now reports on his blog, "Fresh and early in January, I received a very sportsmanlike and courteous email from climate skeptic David Evans, congratulating me for winning the ten-year climate bet we have and asking for arrangements to pay the $1500." He is is also asking for recommendations on where he can donate his winnings: "David is Australian, and Australia is burning... If anyone knows a good Australian charity that does climate advocacy, please LMK."Link to Original Source
112451388
submission
Layzej writes:
"
Boosted by a historic heat wave in Europe and unusually warm conditions across the Arctic and Eurasia, the average temperature of the planet soared to its highest level ever recorded in June.
According to data released Monday by NASA, the global average temperature was 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit (0.93 Celsius) above the June norm (based on a 1951-to-1980 baseline), easily breaking the previous June record of 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.82 Celsius), set in 2016, above the average."
106060500
submission
Layzej writes:
In a recent study, 91 per cent of 1,000 American adults surveyed reported some level of opposition to GM foods. The more extreme the opposition, Fernbach and his co-authors found, the less people knew about the science and genetics, but the more their “self-assessed” knowledge — how much they thought they knew — increased.
Extreme views often come along with not appreciating the complexity of the subject — “not realizing how much there is to know,” said Philip Fernbach, lead author of the new study and a professor of marketing at the University of Colorado Boulder. “People who don’t know very much think they know a lot, and that is the basis for their extreme views.”
“So, the obvious thing we should try to do is educate people,” Fernbach said. “But that generally hasn’t been very effective.”
Sometimes it backfires, and people double down on their “counter-scientific consensus attitudes,” Fernbach said. “Especially when people feel threatened or if they are being treated as if they are stupid.”
103500258
submission
Layzej writes:
Back in 2005, solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev made a $10,000 bet that global temperatures, driven primarily by changes in the Sun's activity, would fall over the next decade. The bet would compare the then record hot years between 1998 to 2003 with that between between 2012 and 2017. With temperatures falling from their peak during the 1998 super El-Nino, and solar output continuing to fall, this seemed like a sure bet. The results are now in and all datasets show that climate modeler James Annan is the clear winner.
At the time of the wager, Annan had supposed that the reputation of the scientists involved would be enough to ensure payment once the bet was settled. Unfortunately, as was the case with Alfred Russel Wallace's famous 1870 bet against flat-Earthers, the losing parties have refused to pay up.
102884294
submission
Layzej writes:
Young Earth creationist Joseph Kezele has been tapped to serve on a committee tasked with revising the state's science curriculum standards on evolution.
Evolution, he said, is a false explanation for life and should be taught so that students "can defend against it, if they want to."
"I'm not saying to put the Bible into the classroom, although the real science will confirm the Bible," Kezele told Phoenix New Times in an interview on Wednesday. "Students can draw their own conclusions when they see what the real science actually shows."
102066574
submission
Layzej writes:
Last week, FiveThirtyEight published nearly 3 million tweets sent by handles affiliated with the Internet Research Agency, a Russian “troll factory.” That group was a defendant in one of special counsel Robert Mueller’s indictments, which accused the IRA of interfering with American electoral and political processes.
Since the release, 538 has compiled a sampling of reader projects that utilize the data set. The projects reinforce and expand upon the Clemson researchers’ initial finding: The trolls were engaged in a sophisticated and intricate Russian assault on the political debate in America and several other countries. It was an assault waged both before and after the 2016 presidential election — and an assault that appears to continue, at least in some form, to this day.
The data set is available on github.
101169300
submission
Layzej writes:
NASA’s top climate scientist, James Hansen, warned the world in 1988 that global warming was here and worsening.. In a scientific study that came out a couple months later, he even forecast how warm it would get, depending on emissions of heat-trapping gases.
On the 30th anniversary of this first climate projections using GCMs, Gavin Schmidt, the current director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, evaluates the skill of those early projections, and finds they have stood up remarkably well. The original study gave three different emissions pathways, showing how climate would react to various levels of increased greenhouse gasses. The emission pathway we've chosen to follow doesn't match any of the three scenarios exactly, partly due to the implementation of the Montreal Protocol to limit CFCs. This somewhat complicates a simple comparison between the model and reality. Nonetheless, Schmidt is able to show that scenario B, which presumes emissions 20-30% greater than actual, would give a trend of 0.20-0.22C/decade if brought in line with actual emissions– remarkably close to the observations.
95021845
submission
Layzej writes:
Astrophysicist Ethan Siegel looks at a climate model (MW67) published in 1967 and finds "50 years after their groundbreaking 1967 paper, the science can be robustly evaluated, and they got almost everything exactly right."
An analysis on the "Climate Graphs" blog shows exactly how close the prediction has proven to be: "The slope of the CO2-vs-temperature regression line in the 50 years of actual observations is 2.57, only slightly higher than MW67’s prediction of 2.36" They also note that "This is even more impressive when one considers that at the time MW67 was published, there had been no detectable warming in over two decades. Their predicted warming appeared to mark a radical change with the recent past:"
93530599
submission
Layzej writes:
Ars Technica has an interesting discussion of the strengths of various weather models and why their predictions for Irma vary:
Take a look at this plot of a bunch of different models from Wednesday morning. Note the dark blue line on the left-hand side of the forecast tracks—that's the official track forecast from the National Hurricane Center that was issued at 5am ET.
Now, you may be wondering, "Why is the official forecast so far to the left, when all of the other models had moved east?" The answer is the European model. This forecast system has superior hardware to run its calculations. But more importantly, it has a method by which it better assimilates real-world data—observations from weather networks around the world, atmospheric soundings, reconnaissance aircraft, and much more—into its calculations
The US analog to the European model is the Global Forecast System. It has a lower resolution, and it typically doesn't perform quite as well (proposed NOAA budget cuts will make matters worse, too). However, this GFS model has some benefits: it runs four times a day, and NOAA freely makes the data available to anyone who wants it. This is why GFS data appears on plots like the one above, but the proprietary European model does not.
92453639
submission
Layzej writes:
The majority-Republican House of Representatives declared Friday that climate change is a national security threat while passing a defense spending bill, according to reports. It's a stunning turn for a party that has for a long time distanced itself from climate science in favor of business interests.
The surprising section calls global warming “a direct threat to the national security” and instructs the Pentagon to create a report on how climate change could affect the military. It asks for a list of 10 bases that could be susceptible to phenomena such as increased flooding and rising oceans.
92356847
submission
Layzej writes:
Reported to be “hanging by a thread” last month, the trillion-tonne iceberg was found to have split off from the Larsen C segment of the Larsen ice shelf on Wednesday morning after scientists examined the latest satellite data from the area.
Luckman said that while the Larsen C ice shelf might continue to shed icebergs, it might regrow. Nevertheless previous research by the team has suggested that the remaining ice shelf is likely less stable now that the iceberg has calved, although it is unlikely the event would have any short-term effects. “We will have to wait years or decades to know what will happen to the remainder of Larsen C,” he said, pointing out that it took seven years after the release of a large iceberg from Larsen B before the ice shelf became unstable and disintegrated.
And while climate change is accepted to have played a role in the wholesale disintegration of the Larsen A and Larsen B ice shelves, Luckman emphasised that there is no evidence that the calving of the giant iceberg is linked to such processes.
92260317
submission
Layzej writes:
Hackers working for a foreign government recently breached at least a dozen U.S. power plants, including the Wolf Creek nuclear facility in Kansas, according to current and former U.S. officials, sparking concerns the attackers were searching for vulnerabilities in the electrical grid.
The possibility of a Russia connection is particularly worrisome, former and current officials say, because Russian hackers have previously taken down parts of the electrical grid in Ukraine and appear to be testing increasingly advanced tools to disrupt power supplies.
The hacks come as international tensions have flared over U.S. intelligence agencies’ conclusion that Russia tried to influence the 2016 presidential election. The U.S., which has several continuing investigations into Russia’s activities, is known to possess digital weapons capable of disrupting the electricity grids of rival nations.
89028223
submission
Layzej writes:
As long as you're considering publishing that other "shocking" Daily Mail story, you may also want this "sciencetech" scoop as well! The article breathlessly concludes "The shocking thing about this was that it's me being abducted by a grey alien and the satellite image clearly shows me trying to fight off the grey alien by punching it in the face," he said
88769897
submission
Layzej writes:
Popular Science reports that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is now barred from communicating with the public and The US Department of Agriculture has banned scientists and other employees from sharing the results of its taxpayer-funded research with the broader public.
The memo outlining these new rules has not been made public, but the ban reportedly includes everything from summaries of scientific papers to USDA-branded tweets. Scientists are still able to publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals, but they are unable to talk about that research without prior consent from their agency.
This is not the first time that public science has been hamstrung by a gag order. To this day, the quantity of oil spewed into the ocean during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil spill remains something of a mystery. Many of the scientists who worked on the spill were hired by BP and barred from speaking on it. But gag orders—while always troublesome—have usually been limited to one specific issue. Right now, the EPA and USDA have been forbidden to speak about all of their scientific research. It means that many of the kinds of stories we now cover will never see the light of day.
