Another bloody story about global warming, or is it climate change, or is it climate disruption. If anyone lives in New York or New Jersey, they should be royally pissed at this. Because Sandy was NOT a hurricane strength storm when it hit. What would the effects of Sandy have been if she had the strength of Hazel? But because of the "global warming" debate as epitomized by this story, no one is asking Bloomberg or Christie why a storm that was NOT a design event (as engineers understand the term) resulted in so much destruction. Politicians are using global warming as cover. They don't have to answer for the catastrophe that has happened in New York and New Jersey because it is "global warming". And the useful idiots here and the media are letting them succeed. So Bloomberg and Christie will not be held to account. A catastrophe that was predictable, certain to occur, is accepted as "the new normal". NO it isn't the new normal. It is LESS than the old normal. If you live in an affected area in NY or NJ, sue your government because they have failed you. This was NOT anything larger than a design event. OK. Stopping my rant now.

I believe most of the people "fighting disinformation" have been banned from editing at Wikipedia. As for real evidence, what do you need? How about this?

http://pages.science-skeptical.de/MWP/MedievalWarmPeriod.html

Wow! Have you told Dr. Mann that? Because most of his evidence that the MWP didn't exist comes from a very few regional proxies. And those proxies failed to calibrate. If you don't believe that, google "divergence problem". There is a lot about the divergence problem at RealClimate. Then "hide the decline". The temperature, as measured by the proxies, has been dropping while the temperature, as measured by modern instruments, has been increasing. This isn't some "denier conspiracy" thing either. The divergence problem is accepted by all climate scientists. They know that during the period when we have highly accurate means of calibrating the "proxies", they do not reflect actual temeprature. THAT is the "decline" that was hidden. The proxies tell us that the world has been cooling while the world has been warming. There is NO basis for assuming that this did not also happen during the MWP.

I stopped reading UPDATING more than a year ago when I gave up entirely on this POS operating system and the people in the community. Before then, I spent WAY too much time reading UPDATING. Based on my hourly billing rate I could have purchased a full version of Win7 Professional a month. So now I run Windows. I haven't had to read UPDATING in a very long time. I spent a lot of time on the mailing lists. I was able to help a lot of people over the years. The problem isn't just the system. The problem is the community. It is elitist, obnoxious and rude. FreeBSD is a nice hobby. Fewer and fewer people who have to do real work are using it. Anonymous Cowards, such as yourself, who epitomize that community, are assuring that the trend will continue.

I've got nine years experience with FreeBSD. I started at 4.7 and I stopped at 8.0. Maybe something radical has changed, but last time I looked, dead simple would be an outright lie. Documentation may be amazing, once you understand it. The handbook is ok. The rest, not so much. As for the user community. Have you read the posts from that community on this thread? Read your own post. If you are an example of a helpful community, I'd hate to see what you consider rude and obnoxious.

From what I've read on this thread, it is more "why should I use BSD when Linux is far superior". Nice attempt at redirection though. In case you are wondering, I dumped debian in favour of FreeBSD in 2001. I dumped FreeBSD completely in 2010. I use professionally produced (i.e. for pay) software now. These amatuer things were nice as a hobby but I have kids and a life now.

Earlier on in this thread someone made the claim that the people in the FreeBSD community were a bunch of arrogant arseholes (he was more polite than that). I was pointing out instances here of this attitude. Thanks for providing another prime example. You should read up on "irony". And posting as an AC to boot.

I'm assuming your were replying to me. What computer fun? My computer is a tool I use to work. When I feel the desire to procrastinate I post here. If computers are your source of fun . . . Sorry about that young fella. Also sorry about your 'willing'.

Are you serious? Flash is an unimportant feature? What year did you fall asleep? It's 2011 now.

Yet another example of the helpful attitude of the FreeBSD community.

Wow! Thanks for providing an excellent example of the "support" one can expect on a FreeBSD mailing list.

I've used debian and freebsd. I now use Windows 7. Works with everything, I never have to R an FM, I never have to compile anything. My security updates come in without any effort on my part. And I NEVER have to ask for help from nice folk like you.

I dumped FreeBSD for a number of reasons. Required to upgrade due to some security thing, Oh wait, some obscure library has also updated and now the entire OS needs to upgrade. And KDE too. WTF? When did Gnome get installed? Ah well, I wasn't going to use the computer this week anyway. One week later, nothing works, so I go to the mailing lists. First responses are usually "It's in UPDATING, come back when you've read that." If you haven't seen the snide, arrogant crap that happens on the mailing lists you are not paying attention. (mailing lists? are your reading what you are typing? mailing lists? This isn't 1988.) And yes, there are a large number of parts of the base OS (not the ports) that have crap documentation. And RTFM? If you need to RTFM to install software and keep a system running, the system is crap. I've switched to a Mac and Windows 7. Haven't had to R any FM since. No. FreeBSD is not a desktop system. If you want it to do useful things, don't install a gui and try to limit yourself to the base OS. Do everything from the command line. Aint that quaint. Otherwise, run away.

Actually, glaciers advancing and pushing ice into the ocean which then breaks off is exactly how this works. If the glaciers were melting, they wouldn't be pushing into the ocean to break off and form icebergs. THAT is why smart people are careful to point out that this isn't caused by global warming. To claim that glaciers getting bigger is caused by global warming is insane. Don't go there. You will make a fool of yourself. Oops. To late.

On the blog, she states that the direct attributes from her in the Mail article were accurate. Here is one of her direct attributes:

"There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped,’ she said. ‘To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.’"

From that, I think it is pretty clear that she is indeed saying that the warming has stopped over the last 10 years. I read Dr. Curry's blog a lot and I'm pretty familiar with her point of view. This isn't the first time she has talked about the stalled warming. At this time, there is a real debate in the climate world concerning this stall. Is it significant (we need more time to know). If it is significant, is it solar? aerosols? ocean variability? Does it prove CO2 is not important? Does it prove the feedbacks are negative? Is there some hysteris effect that will result in a massive surge in warming? Finding the answer to such questions will lead to a better understanding of the poorly understood climate on this planet. That will happen faster if people stop trying to score debating points and start being real, skeptical scientists again. Because the alternative of unskeptical scientist is an oxymoron.

The term "mainstream side" is intended to be neutral. Other terms, such as alarmist or denier are inflammatory and detract from the debate. I am working at toning down such inflammatory rhetoric in my own writing. In science, one should not care if one is in the mainstream or not. Max Planck was advised by Kirchoff to stop worrying about minor discrepancies in thermodynamic quantities. Good thing he worried about the little details that the mainstream claimed to be unimportant.