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Consequences / Re: COVID-19

« on: March 23, 2020, 03:41:37 PM »

Dear Neven, Maybe it’s not specifically addressed to me but I would like to offer some protest to the pandemic porn label. I didn’t much like the doomer porn label that was thrown around in the past as some of us here talked about radical independence, simplicity , frugality and walking back from the eternal promises made by civilization and green BAU advocates.
 I don’t throw insults around the Tesla tread and those enamored with perpetual technological progress at any price . But I believe that progress has resulted in many of the shitty food options, the unaffordable medical system ( here in US ), inequity , endless motoring and collapse of independent farms. Some things you fight directly and other things you can best fight by disengagement . When  the doomer porn label was applied I tried to argue that all of the small is beautiful options also result in less CO2 emissions. I can’t argue the the pandemic will result in less CO2 because it sounds callus but at this point disease, hunger, war , and death are the time tested mechanisms nature has to deal with one species consumed with it’s importance.  I would prefer to bet on what nature has to offer rather than with those options that separate us from it. And yes accept the results as earth trying it’s best to survive us. 
 When my opinion detracts from this forum please disinvite me. Insulting each other does make the forum more typical of other online conversations. Pandemic porn, or doomer porn are insults .

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Policy and solutions / Re: Extinction Rebellion

« on: February 19, 2020, 08:05:04 PM »

Young, single people always think they are different and have the only perspective in the world.

Until they marry, have a family and get taken over by the realities of life.

Then they start spewing out the same old bullshit they decried when they were young and single.

The more they rant, the more they have to retract.

That is life.

and get taken over by the realities of life.

When I was young,
- When I was young, I was told that I should try 2 or 3 jobs at least until I found an occupation that might suit me for the long-term,
- When I was young, after 1 year's hard saving I had enough deposit saved to buy my first little  house,
- When I was young we were pretty sure a permanent job was a permanent job,
- When I was young we were pretty sure that our standard of living would get better as the years went by,
- When I was young Planet Earth was a safe place.

So what have the young got now? The certainty that things are going to get worse and may not get better. The only uncertainty is how rotten is it going to get.

Such unwarranted complacency beggars belief.

Now I am old I can merely be a witness.
But if I was young ! Ah- the difficulty would be to restrain myself merely to non-violent civil disobedience.

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Consequences / Re: Chinese coronavirus

« on: February 03, 2020, 11:00:24 PM »

Personally we know as much as anyone and more than most.
I found Sam's insights informative and logical .
John Hopkins keeps a count that is reliable.
Watch the numbers they will tell you how concerned you should be .
At the moment the direct health risk is negligible for almost all of us .
It is already impacting trade and tourism here in NZ I expect more finical impacts to emerge.

If you insist on Stocking Up on supply's I suggest hand sterilizer will be your best protection.
 Not something I usually have or use as I believe you do more harm to your immune system obsessively washing with such an agent than you do good. I intend to buy some tomorrow.

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Policy and solutions / Re: Greta Thunberg's Atlantic crossing

« on: January 13, 2020, 09:02:57 AM »

The politicians and the corporate elite will of course try to sideline and ignore Greta and her messages, just as they have done to countless other message bearers for decades. But when the silent majority finally rises maybe things will change.
Greta is only a schoolgirl who brought huge awareness to the climate crisis and affected the opinions of (tens? hundreds?) millions of people. She deserves all the praise she can get. If her messages are ignored you should put the blame where it belongs, on the politicians and corporate elite. Have your own messages been received and executed upon? I think not. So why diss her? Have you affected such numbers of people? I think not. At least she did.
She is not a product, she is just one person, lacking the power to make or cause a change by herself.
Maybe she will be beaten and give up later, maybe even sell herself somehow. This is understandable when facing impossible odds. That she hasn't done so yet tells a lot about her.
Praise, not unjustified criticism, is her due.

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Arctic sea ice / Re: "Smart" and "Stupid" Questions - Feel Free To Ask

« on: December 03, 2019, 05:10:25 PM »

There is no viable way to build out (and maintain and replace) a "renewable" solar and wind infrastructure to replace the fossil fuel infrastructure at scale

While i agree with you general point you are making, this one is wrong! Drop-dead wrong!

A modern society can be transformed into a 100% renewables society in like 10 years. You can easily extrapolate the effect the German subsidising of renewables had. If the program was still in place we would be there already.

You subsidise renewables while ending subsidies on fossil fuel. You have a constantly rising carbon tax. And that's it. From a technical and from an economic standpoint, there are no hurdles at all.

Building, changing, and modernising stuff is good for the economy.

We are talking entirely about a political problem here.

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Science / Re: 2019 Mauna Loa CO2 levels

« on: November 30, 2019, 05:18:43 PM »

Excellent reminder Lennart.

It is all too easy to forget that in focusing solely or excessively on CO2 alone that we neglect a couple of fundamental truths, 1) that all global warming gases count, 2) that man is producing a lot of global warming gases that nature either never did produce, or that it did not emit as much as man has.

This then leads to false equivalencies in paleohistorical comparisons. The argument that 3-5 million years ago CO2 levels were as high as now is just one such fallacy, and the implied or sometimes stated argument that things aren’t so bad, that nature has done this before and hence that we shouldn’t worry about it. Just keep on keeping on.

When all warming gases are included we get a much better comparison and a more shocking answer. 

We are already at warming gas levels likely not seen since the Oligocene over 24 million years ago at just about the time the Hominoids branch developed and 7-10 million years before the great apes (including man) developed. That is about 20 million years before the first bipedal upright apes walked the Earth.

In our brief few thousand years of technological evolution, and our flash-in-the-pan brief period of fossil fuel use, we have altered Earth’s climate system in ways not seen since tens of millions of years before the first hominid stood upright.

The climate will need just a moment to respond to this massive and shockingly sudden insult before it stabilizes. Before that can fully happen we must first stop emitting warming gases.

We are at the beginning of a highly unstable ultra-rapid human caused climatic shift.

We will soon be at warming gas levels not seen at any time in all of primate history. Our whole group of species is not guaranteed to be adapted to the climate we are creating. We certainly have had no similar pressures during primate development to push whatever adaptations might be required. Now, it may well be that we don’t need any such adaptations. That would seem to be a rather dicey gamble.

The new or even transient conditions may well involve pH homeostasis conditions that we are not adapted for and not suited to. Or, it may take us to oxygen concentrations (low and/or high) that we are not easily suited for. Or ....  an “interesting” gamble indeed.

Given sufficient time, our and other species would likely easily adapt. However, the rate of change we are triggering may be far faster than most species can adapt to, especially considering the complex web of dependencies between species, and the dependence on fairly uniform seasons from year to year that most rely upon.

Sam

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Policy and solutions / Re: Tesla glory/failure

« on: November 23, 2019, 05:40:02 PM »

Sig, Gerontocrat has it mostly correct about the financial struggles of small farmers. Cyber is a tool, utilitarian in concept and something I very much need to compliment my farms zero carbon goals.
I am going to put in a reservation. I will have a couple years to get my finances ready if the Tesla wait time is typical.
 Maybe this is more personal than I should share but consider this.
My wife and I are at social security age+. We are willing to try to pull together a zero carbon farm plan because we both understand the climate and the carbon cycle. We will dig deeply into our small retirement to get a Cyber but it’s utility is measured in how much feed it will carry or how many loads of pigs it will haul to market. Our planets health is dependent on farmers producing food with tools that don’t use fossil fuels. My wife and I may very well fail financially but in the next few years we are going to grab for the brass ring. Retirement is a seven day work week.
 Farm gross ~ $80,000 , Ten acres in use +Twenty in riparian reserve.

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Arctic sea ice / Re: When will the Arctic Go Ice Free?

« on: September 15, 2019, 07:22:53 PM »

Whenever a curve or line is fitted to a graph it is to illustrate a correlation; such a correlation is the decline in sea ice volume over the last few decades. I'm no expert in sea ice modelling but, there is a fundamental need to understand how one would apply a model to be able to predict future conditions.

To understand a correlation a model is built. The model can perhaps take the starting data and then show how sea ice has changed on a year to year basis (hind casting). It can then be used to predict the future, and it's skill tested by it's ability to do so. Models are only as good as the test conditions applied. Hindcasting can be tricky as there is the temptation to model fit the data.

Obviously models based on a line fit are incorrect, they can be trivial disproved by projecting backwards in time and showing that there wasn't that much ice 10000 years ago. I hear the 'but there wasn't GHG emissions" so immediately the model has to include global warming from GHG gases. Assumptions are disproved, the model improves. If a model can effectively hind cast current sea ice from pre industrial times, then we perhaps have a chance of predicting more accurately what the future holds.

At least correlate global temperatures with sea ice volume, that seems like a better starting point than time.

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Antarctica / Re: Majestic Antarctic Images

« on: August 30, 2019, 02:25:30 AM »

One image, maybe not so majestic considering colors.

Link: https://apps.sentinel-hub.com/eo-browser/?lat=-68.609&lng=-62.567&zoom=9&time=2019-08-27&preset=EW-DH-HV-DECIBEL-GAMMA0-ORTHORECTIFIED&datasource=Sentinel-1%20AWS%20(S1-AWS-EW-HHHV)

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The forum / Re: WHY THE CRAZY QUESTIONS TO POST AND ENTER SITE

« on: August 26, 2019, 03:34:40 AM »

Maybe there should be a quiz before you can post to rule out stupid comments???   It might shut me up sometimes 😝

PS. I hope this does not turn out to be my most liked comment. 🤔

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Arctic sea ice / Re: The 2019 melting season

« on: July 18, 2019, 05:14:14 PM »

the value of pms .. Neven can read at his leisure and respond in kind rather than search for posts that may be 10 or 20 pages back when he returns or maty never read .. b.c.

 

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Permafrost / Re: Arctic Methane Release

« on: July 13, 2019, 05:38:05 PM »

Ken, as long as the water that methane bubbles pass through contains significant dissolved oxygen, the process of bacterial oxidation of methane will continue. However, because methane oxidation consumes dissolved oxygen there is a rate limit on how much methane can be consumed. That limit is controlled by the rate of oxygen supply, minus other natural processes that consume oxygen, such as the oxidation of organic matter in river water inflows into the Siberian shelf.

Some of the catastrophists are clearly wrong, but you cannot correctly assume that all methane bubbles will continue to be oxidize as the rate of methane release increases. Global methane data published in the scientific literature shows that global methane levels are increasing again, but the Arctic is not a primary source of the increased emissions. So far, so good. However, we need to remember that there are physical-chemical limits on oxidation rates.

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Consequences / Re: Hurricane Season 2019

« on: June 11, 2019, 01:12:34 PM »

I agree with Tom and Kiwi. This all can be explained by (misguided) optimism. Kat has to be given the benefit of the doubt.

That said, i wonder when this thread will calm down and goes on topic again. Endless debates of who might be a troll are tiring and aren't helpful.

If someone thinks someone isn't suited for this forum, isn't the way to go to bring it to Nevens attention? He has shown to act accordingly when the concerns are grounded in reality.

Can we please stop accusing and insulting other members now?

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Arctic sea ice / Re: The 2019 melting season

« on: June 02, 2019, 06:58:28 AM »

the area above Ellesmere and Greenland (is that what gets called the CAB)?

yes.  In the upper right corner of this page is a link to the ASI Graphs.  Click it, then click the "Regional graphs" tab.  There you'll see the Cryosphere Today based map of the Arctic showing the several (main) areas in the Arctic.  (They ignore the Baltic Sea, for example.)  Click on the map for an enlargement.  Once on the ASIG, you can spend hours (months, years even) studying the maps and graphs and links.

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Arctic sea ice / Re: The 2019 melting season

« on: May 22, 2019, 03:59:51 AM »

be cause: can only guestimate area that heads out of the basin but it is a lot

Right. Wind-driven ice motion has been extraordinary this freeze/melt season. By translocating thicker, older ice into zones that will melt out later in the summer, or exporting ice altogether out of the basin via the Fram, Nares and Svalbard-FJL chain plus blocking Kara Sea ice on the import side, wind-driven ice motion may challenge conventional bottom and top melt this year as the leading ice volume loss mechanism.

The first image below shows  on mid-basin Atlantic-side feature drift (boundary between old and new ice) over the the last 195 days using twenty-day contours.

A similar area of ice ahead of the front has been (or will be if wind patterns keeps up) irreversibly displaced out of the basin. This area can be measured, not adjusting for compression or extension, by lifting geo-referenced Ascat images onto Google Earth Pro for its ellipsoidal (WGS84) area and length calculations (2nd image shows the 7.109 million sq km polygon of relevant Arctic Ocean.

Wx predictions are the proverbial drunk looking for her car keys under the street lamp because the light is better there -- winds thousands of meters above the ice are easier to predict than the 0m winds, yet only the latter actually move the ice pack (by coupling to pressure ridges and floe edges rather than flat pan).

You can see this on any given day by comparing ice motion vectors observed by OSISAF/NSIDC to winds GFS or ECMWF are showing, before or after reanalysis (3rd image). Surface currents are negligible (or as oceanographer R Woodward notes, induced by ice keels) outside the intake funnels of the Nares and Fram and inconsistent Bering Strait flows to/from the Chukchi. Note the ice pack has a certain amount of mechanical rigidity, leading to cohesive motion despite a heterogeneous stress field.

The Arctic Ocean is seriously 'under-instrumented', meaning models have never had sufficient calibration or feedback guidance. On the rare instances an instrumented ship has been out there in May (eg N-ICE spring 2015), measurements departed markedly even from nearby land stations like Ny-Ålesund. However nobody ever fixed a weather model or reanalysis based on a basin instrument account.

Help is in sight (with a 2-3 year delay?): this Sept, AWI's Polarstern will drift for a full year on a thick Siberian-side floe (lol !) to collect "direct in-situ observations of the climate processes that couple the atmosphere, ocean, sea ice, bio-geochemistry and ecosystem ... to enhance understanding of the regional and global consequences of Arctic climate change and sea-ice loss and improve weather and climate predictions. https://www.mosaic-expedition.org

This won't be meagre point weather and ice properties because they are going out to a 50 km swath radius on both sides of the drift track. The 4th image shows a hypothetic drift trajectory. They'd have been home early this year whereas in 2017/18 the ship would hardly have moved in the hoped-for direction:

233 days of anti-transpolar drift 2017-2018.mp4
https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,2278.msg155398.html#msg155398

The Oden made a remarkable observation of open water at the north pole on 25 Aug 18, photographing a walrus there, messing with a research sled. Ask yourself how much open water there had to be regionally for a walrus to swim to the NP on that date and when it last ate: the water is 4,087 m deep whereas the deepest walrus dive ever recorded is 500m.

This and a few little things like ice thickness went seriously under-reported (except by Jim Hunt and twitter). This has really got to change -- scientists chewing on their cud for years (buffing their journal articles) while leaving everyone else in the dark.

I had an identical experience trying to get even the most mundane CTD casts from the Polarstern when by great good fortune they were able to reach the Weddell Sea during that unprecedented reversal of the Fram in Feb 18 attributed to a sudden stratospheric warming. A cr*ppy article by another research group ensued who also couldn't get the data. Where is the public benefit in  hoarding?

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Policy and solutions / Re: If not Capitalism... then What? And, How?

« on: May 17, 2019, 05:22:47 PM »

There is no country in the world without socialism. That's a fact.

Even in the US, there are plenty of examples. Socialism is a financing scheme for services needed in a society more than a political ideology.

The very creation of the nation state results in socialism as the state pursues the common good. Ayn Rand proponents would have you believe that absolute personal freedom without constraints in the pursuit of self interest is the perfect state for man. Hobbes more accurately characterized life in this state of nature as "nasty, brutish and short."

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The politics / Re: The problem of Corporate Democrats and how to kick them out

« on: February 24, 2019, 01:01:08 PM »

There have been 1878 posts in this thread.

Lots of accusations against "corporate" Democrats, named and unnamed.
No accusations against Republicans, but if you bring that up you're chased off the thread as being off topic.

So I was wondering.

Do we have a list of Democrats that are NOT considered "corporate" by the posters in this forum ?

They would be the one's no one has heard off because they don't have any money.

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Policy and solutions / Re: Tesla glory/failure

« on: February 05, 2019, 02:28:24 AM »

The circular arguments in this thread are so tiresome. At their heart is the conviction that Tesla and Musk are to blame for the world's woes, regardless of any evidence or logic.
There are 80+ million new cars being sold each and every year, globally, burning fossil fuels. A total of more than 1 billion are prowling the globe. This is the problem. Is Tesla/Musk to blame for that? No. Does it matter if Musk is a liar or not? No. Does it matter how many Tesla execs have come and gone? No. Does it matter if Tesla goes chapter 11 or 7? No. And yet the concerned citizens on this thread keep coming back to those issues.

But when confronted with opposing arguments on these issues, they swoop with the killer argument - we, the posters on this thread are the problem, because we support a non-ideal solutions to these 80 million annual new cars. Instead of banishing them with a flick of the fingers and a carbon tax and some regulations, we support electrifying them.

To put things straight - I would bet >90% of thread posters support reducing the number of cars worldwide, a steep carbon tax, and any and all other regulations aimed at reducing fossil fuel use and GHG emissions, even if it means reducing living standards and shrinking economies. If anyone wants to argue these arguments, I strongly suggest that the place is not in this thread. Banishing cars, public transportation, curbing over-consumption, all have nothing to do with Tesla. Should these measures be adopted, Tesla will be bankrupt anyway, and good riddance.

I do beg the question - in the interim, while these measures are sadly not adopted yet, should we continue to build fossil fuel cars, or is it better that these cars are electrified? I personally believe that the answer is an obvious yes to electrified vehicles. I strongly suggest that if you believe otherwise the place to argue that argument is in the cars cars cars thread, or some other thread, but certainly not here.

The subject of this thread is - will Tesla succeed or fail in its mission to convert global transportation to electric (as well as converting energy generation to renewable, but that is currently the secondary focus)? If you hate Tesla for what it represents, a Green BAU partial solution to a BAU problem, why do you care if is succeeds or fails? It's all the same anyway, BAU. If Tesla goes bankrupt, somebody else will make these 80 million cars. I strongly suggest that if Green BAU hatred is your motivation, this thread is not for you. The underlying assumption in this thread is that cars are being electrified, Tesla is the supposed leader in this field, but some claim it is a fraud or a failure. Is it or is it not? These are the arguments appropriate for this thread.
When you lose or get tired of such arguments and immediately jump the high horse of cars are evil and we are the problem, it strongly smacks of concern trolling to me.

Zizek's " The world does not have the capacity for more cars. We need to move away from the suburban lifestyle. And Elon Musk is not offering an alternative to excessive consumption, but rather a very expensive replacement to a single problem that exists within a much bigger picture." - True, but totally does not belong here. Sorry.
GSY's "It is so sad and kinda weird that people get transfixed by the way things function now, and don't think anything else is realistic. " - Does not belong here. Sorry.

The way to resolve arguments and move this thread forward, is to focus on each relevant issue, rather than issue hopping. Fraud or not. Executive rollover. Financial Results. Cash balance. Bankruptcy scenarios. Upcoming new models. Base version will happen or not. Competition. Energy business.

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The politics / Re: The Media: Examples of Good AND Bad Journalism

« on: January 14, 2019, 08:54:13 AM »

<snip, I've decided not to go through the same motions>

Martin, maybe you haven't noticed, but ever since I've taken some measures to limit the amount of space mainstream conditioned thinking gets to take up on this forum, the belligerent bitching has been reduced by 90%. I really like it that way, much more quiet and interesting. Things have improved massively.

It's not that you have "taken some measures".
It's that a fair amount of commenters (including me) left, after we were told in no uncertain terms that our input on the ASIF was no longer appreciated.
And yes, that cleared up things tremendously, since now only the pro-Russia crowd is left over.
They are still promoting Jimmy Dore and RT, as you can see above.

It's just that there is no more push-back against that Russian propaganda.

This place can do without missionaries who impose their worn-out, 20th century narratives that come straight out of the divide-and-conquer strategies pushed by concentrated wealth (irrespective of nationality) to keep the wars and AGW going strong, because this Forum is about Arctic sea ice loss, not about politics.

You know, Neven : this hurts.

I came here in 2011, while fighting the deniers at WUWT, hoping to find here a crowd that was using evidence-based reasoning and science to come to conclusions about AGW and Arctic Sea Ice decline.

I feel extremely strong about AGW. Probably even more so than you do. But I approach the problem and the solution from a scientific, and engineering and economics point of view. For example : Solar farms make sense, and solar roads don't. Shutting down coal plants make sense, and so does installing grid batteries, but geo-engineering doesn't make sense, and neither does the Keystone XL (tar-sands) pipeline.

And yes, I feel very strong about Russia too. Russia has no business invading in Ukraine, and their role in the downing of MH17 cannot be denied, and neither can their meddling in foreign elections, including the US 2016 elections, and neither can we deny the poisoning of the Skripals in the UK nor the Russian bombing of hospitals in Syria.

I'm really sorry you disagree with me and some other posters here (like Martin, Susan, ASLR, Bob Wallace etc) on some issues.

But I think you are making a big mistake in booting these fine people out.

Instead, you could have booted out the Russian propagandists that we argued with.
That would have quieted down the discussion too.

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Policy and solutions / Re: Space colonization

« on: December 21, 2018, 02:23:33 AM »

If self sustaining underground cities can survive in mars, they can certainly survive climate change on Earth.

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Consequences / Re: Wildfires

« on: November 15, 2018, 05:33:28 PM »

Thanks (as always), vox. I had a feeling that I had seen those doctored and intentionally mis-representing graphs from other denialists and pseudo-sceptics on other sites. Thanks for doing the extra work of actually tracking them down.

I had the impression that this was one place we wouldn't have to put up with non-stop trolling from WUWT enthusiasts. Sadly, some still seem to squeak through. Apparently they've learned that all they have to do is mouth approval of some of the head moderators pet favorite sites (Dore, etc) and positions, and then they can get away with all sorts of crap not usually allowed here.

On another note, I was a bit surprised that this now-fairly-common denialist trope has not yet made it into the "Most Used Climate Myths" over at Skeptical Science (unless I missed it).

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The forum / Re: Forum Decorum

« on: October 04, 2018, 06:04:38 AM »

I would like to thank Mr. Neven and Mr. Petit (and perhaps other moderators i have missed) for their patience in wading thru the muck while moderating this forum. It is easy for members like me to disregard entire threads or individual posters but they do not have that luxury.  They have to deal with every temper tantrum on every thread, i am quite impressed by their forbearance. I have run moderated lists and groups before and i would have ejected many more than they have.

I offer a lesson from Usenet: i have found the best (moderated) newsgroups are the ones most tightly focussed with draconian moderation. Some of the better newsgroups have a policy that any complaint about moderation is instantly rejected.

The next best are those where the posters and audience  know how to use killfiles (in this case, ignore lists)  and do.

Lastly, i would remind that this forum is Mr. Neven's forum. When I visit someone, i defer to his wishes as to what may or may not be discussed. If those limits displease me, i am free to go elsewhere. That is merely common courtesy. I suggest those unhappy with Mr. Neven's judgements start their own forum.

sidd

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Arctic sea ice / Re: The 2018 melting season

« on: May 30, 2018, 12:46:27 PM »

Melt season looking pretty ho-hum thus far. I see you mention dipole, Neven. Should post in stupid questions bin but what is a dipole? And how do you "like" comments? I see many likes but can't figure it out.

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