Hawaii boffins: Aerosols add to Amazon rainfall Boffins based in Hawaii say that over the last 60 years emissions of aerosols - soot and other particulates often emitted by diesel engines, coal powerplants etc - have led to increased rainfall in the rainforests of the Amazon and central Africa, and have also resulted in "fewer extreme [weather] events". Hiroki Tokinaga and …
There is all the pseudo-science you could want and then some, which is why there is no global climate change due to the world cracking like a Malteaser next year (going by my chicken sandwich I'd say the entrails point towards and October Apocalypse... so we still have to stage the Olympics).
Great article and an always welcome addition to the "the atmosphere is complex as hell" file. The atmosphere (let alone the entire biosphere) is not something humanity should fuck with on more than an occasional and fleeting basis.
Pseudo-science is an oxymoron. It is either science or not science and has nothing to do with whether you believe it or not.
It is science if it employs the scientific methodology:
Observing a Phenomenon, formulating a theory about the phenomenon, then appealing to objective facts to try to prove or disprove the theory.
So yes you may not like or care about their investigation, but guess what .. it was a scientific investigation. So are the theories surrounding global warming and climate change or whatever you we want to call it.
The bottom line is .. . if we keep our discussions on the merits and demerits of the different theories we all have more to gain and the benefits of science and the scientific methodology allows us to advance and understand our world better.
The alternative is to continue to sling mud and advance our ignorance and act and think as if we should still be debating whether the world is round or flat
So these guys may well be a set of quacks ... but they are doing more to advance humanity than a set of ass holes who simply try to dismiss their investigation as psudo-science
I'm vigorously nodding along with your comment right up until that last paragraph when I had a Wile E. Coyote over a chasm moment:
"So these guys may well be a set of quacks ... but they are doing more to advance humanity than a set of ass holes who simply try to dismiss their investigation as pseudo-science"
Who are the quacks? Where we not starting a lovely mocking of magical water sellers? Am I confusing this with the Derren article? Okay now I'm definitely getting my coat; somedays it pays to put more time in to proof reading comments prior to posting.
At least they don't cite God, as their inspiration, so they're up the evolutionary ladder a bit from George W Bush; although picking on an extraordinarily selective sub-sample of science, to disprove the rest of science, is a bit like picking individual rocks on the mountainside, to disprove the existence of the mountain. The amount of good stuff, they must read through, in order to find these occasional 'turds of truth' is extraordinary, but it is a testament the staying power of irrational bastards in the face of the bleeding obvious.
So Lewis posts an anti global warming story full of errors and is made to look a fool by the Guardian et al... Now all we get are boring posts on research paper x with some implied bearing on the GW debate?
I prefer the totally inaccurate bollocks as it was at least fun seeing the loons fight it out on the comments page. I dunno if anyone will be particularly inspired to duke it out over this snore-fest of a story.
No one has any idea about the climate... there are too many bodies proposing too many differing reasons for everything that is happening... what we need is an independant body that takes into accout all variables ... someone that looks at the overall picture... Our views are too narrow and polarizing..
My two pennies worth anyhow....
It would be useful if this sort of article contained a link or reference to the source.
The latest published paper I can find by these authors on this topic is available as a pdf here:
http://iprc.soest.hawaii.edu/users/tokinaga/pdf/in_press/waswind2010.pdf
but that may not be the paper being referred to in this article.
> No one has any idea about the climate...
Quick practical experiment.
Get yesterdays new paper and compare the weather forecast from yesterday with what is happening outside the window?
Repeat using the day before's paper etc... as far back as you can find a forecast
What percentage of the time are they right?
Weather forecasting is an imprecise science and we are no where near finding all the variables. Even when we have found them all it will still be imprecise because it is chaotic. Add in the fact that mother nature can throw her hand in at any time with throws of the dice which make all of man kind look puny (think Yellow Stone or Deccan Traps)
And sadly there do not appear to be any "independent bodies"
There is even less chance of finding a body that both sides of the argument would accept as being independent.
" Scientists are biased !! " (until they say something I agree with)
Honestly, between Page, Orlowski and Monbiot - the truth might be out there. But they are all soo busy validating their beliefs they wouldn't even acknowledge it if it landed on their head.
Anyway. Dazed and Confused, Do we really need to mention for the eleventyzillionth time the difference between weather and climate ?
Your name was a warning I guess
This is purly another article that has an itresting point of view. i like that the authors don't have an axe to grind in either direction, mealy that the Partical polution has a corelation on the fainfall and winds. anyone who reads that is pro or against need a step later to get off their horse.
"This is purly another article that has an itresting point of view."
It has interesting findings in it, yes indeed...
"i like that the authors don't have an axe to grind in either direction"
...ah, you're new around here, yes ? (or you're Andrew Orlowski and ICMFP)
"anyone who reads that is pro or against need a step later to get off their horse."
I would normally be tempting to believe so, although given the interesting selection of articles from El Reg about the climate i'd suggest that the benefit of the doubt has been well and truly spent...
For a less tabloid treatment of such matters from an IT site, i'd perhaps suggest Ars Technica, if not for the sole view then as a potentially useful foil - the article related to this paper is below
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/02/cleaning-up-dirty-coal-could-lead-to-temperature-spike-in-a-few-decades.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss
ah yes, the apocalypse is coming, the apocalypse is coming brigade.
Just like the articles in Scientific American in the 1960s when it was the next ice age, then we were all gonna die from war, hunger and mass migration murder in the 1980s or nuclear winter, then WMD lurking in somewhere in the sand, then the terrorists, then drown and burn. Dont you all get sick of it ?
BTW, even New Scientist has published articles suggesting soot is a significant cause of polar ice melting early, not only CO2.
Time for doubt, uncertainty and sceptism all round on all experts, advisory bodies and busybodies wanting to tell citizens how to live their lives.
If it aint repeatable under controlled conditions, it aint science. That excludes 95% of modern studies in the last 120 years.
Need an icon for yeah, right or skepticism
I'm sorry if you though that by Authors, I meant Orlowski, i find these articles interesting and you seldom get to see a report that is not Pro AGW i have enough intelligence ( ignores spelling) to asses each reported article, and come to the conclusion that we may eventually find out what is going on.
on a personal note, I try use renewable energy as much as possible and generate locally, mostly cause I’m a cheapskate but additionally I don't like waste.
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