Comments on: Deep Water: New TED Book on crisis of polar ice melt and rising oceans

By: Daniel Grosman

Daniel Grosman — Sat, 04 Aug 2012 17:20:25 +0000

I’m very excited that we’re having a discussion about my new book. I notice that we’ve gotten off track a little though. It is true that scientists are not always the best communicators. That’s partly why my book was necessary. The basic ideas of climate change are well proven and well explained in many places. But studying how Earth’s climate system works and how it might change in the future, in all of its dimensions, is a complicated topic involving thousands of researchers around the world. In my book, I’m trying to explain one small area, how the field of past climate (or paleoclimatology) might help us to understand how high the sea will go in the future. There are, of course many complications that must be understood, such as how ice sheets that grew and receded in the past have altered the height of land around the world, and how that confounds measurements of past sea level. If anyone here wants to discuss these issues, I’d be happy to comment.

By: barrie singleton

barrie singleton — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 17:33:33 +0000

Yo NevenA! I have also followed on from Velikovsky, in the 50s, the thread that is now the Electric Universe – tomorrow’s ruling paradigm. Oh – add “Cold Fusion” under whatever title it now (reproducibly) performs. I’ll see you for coffee (you are buyng) after the Apocalypse.

By: NevenA

NevenA — Fri, 03 Aug 2012 16:15:28 +0000

An admirer of Piers Corbyn? Oh, dear. Even WUWT, the place where climate ostriches go to roost, has distanced itself from Corbyn recently.

By: barrie singleton

barrie singleton — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 21:22:02 +0000

I am well retired from a life of applied physical chemistry. Our tiny company competed with, and supplied, big names by virtue of maverick thinking and boldly going where no industrial chemist had gone before. Such a past, makes me inclined to ‘play the odds’; e.g. I am an admirer of Piers Corbyn. We live in interesting times.

By: Mark Kimura

Mark Kimura — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 21:14:03 +0000

Thanks for trying – I actually do think scientists are not doing a good job communicating with general public and even the “Basic” section of this article is not concise enough – and that’s scientists’ job to make it accesible. I think there should be something like “bottomline” and preferably a short video instead of just text and graphs. I’m a scientist myself working for a university, and whenever I go to a conference, I don’t understant 95% of what the presenters are talking about because they don’t even try to think what the audience doesn’t know and adjust their language accordingly. Scientists and their culture do need to change.

By: barrie singleton

barrie singleton — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 21:04:16 +0000

Cheers Mark. Now what’s left of my brain hurts. I’ll take a watching brief and an each-way bet.

By: Mark Kimura

Mark Kimura — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 20:48:57 +0000

This explains what you are talking about:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm

By: barrie singleton

barrie singleton — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 16:43:53 +0000

Meanwhile, in the Antarctic? I heard the snow was accumulating. Might we be about to confirm one of the ‘flip’ theories? Maybe in time for December?