NOAA: ‘Robust, Unambiguous’ Independent Evidence Confirms The Recent Global Warming Measured By Thermometers

Yes, The Modern Instruments Are Right. Just Ask The Coral. Or The Caves. Or The Ice Cores. Or The….

Climate deniers claim you can’t trust thermometers because they change0 locations or are too close to warmer urban environments. They have tried and failed to disprove millions of temperature observations all over the world. But the myth still persists.

Here’s some good news for science: NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, the University of South Carolina, the University of Colorado, and the University of Bern in Switzerland have found that the warming trend can be revealed using not a single thermometer:

A new compilation of temperature records etched into ice cores, old corals, and lake sediment layers reveals a pattern of global warming from 1880 to 1995 comparable to the global warming trend recorded by thermometers. This finding, reported by a team of researchers from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center, the University of South Carolina, the University of Colorado, and the University of Bern in Switzerland, resolves some of the uncertainty associated with thermometer records, which can be affected by land use changes, shifts in station locations, variations in instrumentation, and more.

“Using only temperature-sensitive paleoclimate proxy records, un-calibrated to instrument data, it is possible to conclude that the warming trend in the global surface temperature record is supported by independent evidence,” said David Anderson, head of the Paleoclimatology Branch at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center and lead author of the paper. The new research is detailed in “Global Warming in an Independent Record of the Past 130 Years,” published online this week in Geophysical Research Letters.

The thermometer-based global surface temperature record provides meaningful evidence of global warming over the past century, and it is critical to have independent analyses, like this one, to verify that record. For this analysis, the team used environmentally sensitive proxies to compile a temperature record that is independent of thermometer-based records. Proxies such as coral growth layers, shells of tiny marine plankton, lake sediments, ice cores, and caves are biologically, physically, or chemically connected to environmental conditions. For example, coral skeletons and plankton shells record temperature changes in the ratio of oxygen isotopes.

This paleoclimate dataset used 173 independent proxy datasets to draw a record from 1730 to 1995. To ensure the paleoclimate dataset was independent of the instrumental record, the scientists used raw data rather than reconstructed temperatures. Paleoclimate records and trends are affected by multiple environmental influences, not just warming, and the scientists minimized non-temperature influences by averaging together many records.

“The correlation of this paleoclimate dataset with the global surface temperature record has important implications in climate science and provides evidence of the significance of paleoclimate research,” said Thomas Karl, Director NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. “Temperature reconstructions, like this one, continue to play a significant role in understanding the global climate by quantitatively extending the record back in time in an independent, objective way.”

In addition to their shared long-term trend, many smaller-scale features also appear in both the paleoclimate and instrument temperature records. For example, the warm interval of the 1940s in the global surface temperature record also appears in the paleoclimate record. Both records also show that the global warming in the last 15 years of the record (1980–1995) is significantly faster than that of the long-term trend (1880–1995).

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Independent Analysis: Sequester Spending Cuts Would Cost 700,000 Jobs

President Obama today called, once again, for Republicans in Congress to support a plan to void the so-called “sequester,” the automatic budget cuts scheduled for March that were set in motion by the 2011 debt ceiling deal. House Republicans responded by releasing a statement that called for eliminating job training and financial literacy programs and by mocking the very idea of government funded scientific studies.

But engaging in the sort of austerity included in the sequester is a terrible idea with the economy in its current fragile state. As Macroeconomic Advisers noted today (reiterating its previous analysis), the sequester will knock 0.6 percent off of economic growth this year, killing 700,000 jobs:

– Our baseline forecast, which shows GDP growth of 2.6% in 2013 and 3.3% in 2014, does not include the sequestration.

– The sequestration would reduce our forecast of growth during 2013 by 0.6 percentage point (to 2.0%) but then, assuming investors expect the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) to delay raising the federal funds rate, boost growth by 0.1 percentage point (to 3.4%) in 2014.

– By the end of 2014, the sequestration would cost roughly 700,000 jobs (including reductions in armed forces), pushing the civilian unemployment rate up ¼ percentage point, to 7.4%. The higher unemployment would linger for several years.

Here are the competing plans to void the sequester that have been proposed in Congress. The GOP has yet to introduce an official plan this time around, instead just pointing to legislation that it passed in the last Congress. Of all the plans, only the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ acknowledges that the country’s most pressing issue right now is not the deficit, but lingering, high unemployment.

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With ‘Legit,’ FX Tackles Disability, Independent Living, And Sex—And Makes It All Very Funny

Over at The New Republic earlier this week, I wrote about how FX’s new comedy Legit, which premieres tonight at 10:30, encapsulates an underlying theme that animates all of the network’s programming: what does it mean to be a legitimate and successful American man? While not ever FX watcher is loyal to the network’s entire lineup, if you drop in on its comedies and dramas, you’ll find men dealing with everything from how to be better fathers to their children than their own were, coping with the consequences of sexual double-standards, and grappling with downward mobility or weaker economic positions than their partners. Legit, an enormously agreeable show that’s simultaneously sweeter and tarter than many of FX’s offerings, fits in that formula and expands it in some exciting new directions.

Legit has a relatively simple premise: a stand-up comic, Jim (stand-up comedian Jim Jeffries), who lives with his divorced friend Steve (Second City alumn Dan Bakkedahl), who he met when Jim came to live with Steve’s family as an exchange student (Steve tells his mother, who hates Jim, at one point that “I wanted a Swedish female!”), decides to become more “legitimate,” with a vague sense of what that might mean. But he finds some purpose when Steve encourages Jim to reconnect with Steve’s younger brother Billy (DJ Qualls), who has muscular dystrophy, and who is confined to an assisted-living facility. Deciding that Billy, who is 31, has been overly coddled and needs to experience more of life, Jim first takes it upon himself to break Billy out of the facility for occasional adventure, and then decides to move Billy in with him and Steve and begin caring for him. The show, run by Peter O’Fallon, starts off a bit rough around the edges. But it grows quickly in its first couple of episodes, and Legit‘s portrayal of both life with disability and the friendships among maturing men has the potential to be something special.

To start with, it’s very funny. Many of the stories are drawn directly from Jeffries’ experiences with his friend with muscular dystrophy or O’Fallon’s helping to care for his father, who died of ALS. Much of the punch of Jim’s stories comes from his character’s utter lack of social awareness. Sometimes, he’s hilariously entitled, spinning out a fantasy about having a child with a terminally ill woman who will die once their child is old enough to get him beers from the fridge, saving him from having to be a good husband, and guaranteeing that his child will always be grateful. And in other moments, that lack of respect for social norms mean Jim’s capable of caring for Billy without inhibition, whether he’s helping the other man urinate because he’s decided the bottle Billy uses is a genius invention, or helping him through the awkwardnesses of Skpye dates and cybersex. Jim may believe that Billy’s going to be the perfect wing man, and that taking him out and helping him develop a social life may mean that he’s “going to get so much pussy.” But despite his frattish inclinations, Jim spends a lot more time hanging out with Billy at home than taking him out and making use of him. If selfishness set Jim on his quest to become legitimate, it seems that once he’s started visiting Billy again, Jim finds himself in it for the pure enjoyment of Billy’s company—and the joy of tweaking Billy’s mother, Janice.

Steve is an appealing straight man to Jim’s wildness, and an ongoing illustration of the limitations of Jim’s approach to life, and the practical realities of caring for someone with muscular dystrophy. When the two men take Billy on an exuberant road trip to a Nevada brothel so he can lose his virginity, they deposit him in a room with a cheerful prostitute (and Jeffries real-life girlfriend), only for Steve to realize that he’s forgotten to undress his brother. After Jim hands out dating tips to Steve and Billy, Steve initially finds success with an attractive woman from his office by complimenting her eyes, only to end up stuck with variations on that theme after he finds he doesn’t have anything else to talk to her about. Good intentions and low inhibitions aren’t enough, as it turns out, to navigate every situation or to negotiate a truly fulfilling life.

While it might have been preferable to have an actor with muscular dystrophy playing Billy, Qualls turns in a very funny, physically astute performance that’s enriched rather than inhibited by Billy’s limited mobility. And Legit‘s done better in other areas. Nick Daley, who has Prader-Willi Syndrome, as Billy’s roommate Rodney, who does an impressive Donald Trump impersonation and is a genius at Wii bowling, skills that help him fit in just fine during a rager at Jim and Steve’s house, and the morning after, when he, Steve, Jim, and Ramona, a nurse from the long-term care facility marathon Dance Moms. And Daley isn’t the only one, though I’ll avoid discussing those other performances until the episodes have aired. As the world of the show expands, Legit has the potential to become a showcase for actors with disabilities, an important service for viewers at home, and a key niche in the Hollywood economy, where work for actors with disabilities is often highly episodic. That its only real competition is Glee says a great deal about the state of Hollywood’s representations and employment of actors with either physical or intellectual disabilities.

I hope to see Legit do better on its female characters, who initially are sorted into buzzkill and saint categories, though subsequent episodes show signs of improvement and warmth. But it’s exciting to see Legit get better with each of the three episodes sent to critics in advance of the premiere. And it’s even better to see a show do the right thing in giving work to actors with disabilities and putting issues like sexuality, independent living, and nursing care on television, and to do it with charm, love, and wicked humor, rather than the taste of spinach or the condescension of a Very Special Episode.

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