Slashdot Mirror
Domain: realclimate.org
Stories and comments across the archive that link to realclimate.org.
Comments · 1,734
-
Re:NIMBY
Nuclear sounds good in theory but in practice there are problems, long-term residual ones. NIMBY is a term that can be an excuse to not take responsibility, it can also be used to dismiss real concerns. Just ask those who have actually, not theoretically, mined it. For example: the damage to humans and groundwater from nuclear mining in New Mexico
As opposed to damage to humans and groundwater from drilling for "clean" natural gas.
Or from mountaintop removal for "safer" coal mining.
Or the risks associated with more traditional coal mining.
And finally there's the somewhat controversial issue of carbon dioxide emissions from coal and oil.Ultimately, any form of energy production will have its inherent risks and we as a society have to choose if the benefits outweigh the risks. The risks are of oil are varied and diverse and coal is not much better and in some ways worse. The risks of solar, wind, and even nuclear energy pale by comparison. We won't solve our problems by picking winners and losers but by investing in a wide variety of alternatives rather than putting all of our eggs in one basket.
I personally like the promise of Thorium nuclear power but I'm skeptical of its lofty promises. I doubt if we'll know for sure how practical it is until billions of dollars have been poured into it and dozens of plants are in operation. That's just the nature of our energy hungry culture.
-
Re:Misrepresenting Anthony Watts...
A lot of misleading statements here. Unfortunately, there are some very wealthy interests that stand to lose from efforts to control CO2, and spend a lot of money spreading misinformation. Scientists end up having to play "whack-a-mole," constantly refuting well-known falsehoods
Articles on his blog (which sometimes reads more like a scientific journal) show that rural stations often show no warming at all - at least, until they have been appropriately "adjusted" (using methods that are generally not released).
Large parts of the arctic and antarctic are presumed to be warming, even though there are no weather stations within hundreds or thousands of miles.
False. Arctic warming is not merely a "presumption;" it is supported by multiple lines of evidence, including measurements of loss of arctic ice and satellite data.. And the antarctic, far from being "presumed" to be warming, is predicted from climate models to be relatively slow to respond to global warming trends, and the best way to estimate precisely how temperatures are changing in various regions of Antarctica, based upon satellite as well as weather station data, is a matter of active ongoing debate in the scientific literature.
Articles on his blog also show that (a) over decades, there is a warming/cooling cycle that very closely follows solar cycle
However the scientific evidence shows clearly that the current warming is not due to the "solar cycle."
that the overall warming trend of the past 200 years predates any significant human contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere
There are multiple factors impacting global temperatures over the past 200 years, of which CO2 is only one, so one cannot naively simply ask "which came first?" Correct accounting must take into account all factors, including changes in solar irradiance, human particulate pollution, volcanic eruptions, and human CO2 pollution.When all of these are taken into account, CO2 is found to be the cause of the modern warming trend.
the planet has in the past been warmer than today - in that sense, the recent warming is not "unprecedented", and finally (d) millions of years ago CO2 levels were much, much higher than today, so a higher CO2 level is also not unprecedented.
This is entirely a strawman, as no scientist has ever claimed that modern warming or high CO2 is unprecedented in the history of the planet--what is without precedent is the enormous numbers of people living in areas that will be massively impacted by changes in sea level, or huge numbers of people being dependent upon reliable an
-
Re:Misrepresenting Anthony Watts...
A lot of misleading statements here. Unfortunately, there are some very wealthy interests that stand to lose from efforts to control CO2, and spend a lot of money spreading misinformation. Scientists end up having to play "whack-a-mole," constantly refuting well-known falsehoods
Articles on his blog (which sometimes reads more like a scientific journal) show that rural stations often show no warming at all - at least, until they have been appropriately "adjusted" (using methods that are generally not released).
Large parts of the arctic and antarctic are presumed to be warming, even though there are no weather stations within hundreds or thousands of miles.
False. Arctic warming is not merely a "presumption;" it is supported by multiple lines of evidence, including measurements of loss of arctic ice and satellite data.. And the antarctic, far from being "presumed" to be warming, is predicted from climate models to be relatively slow to respond to global warming trends, and the best way to estimate precisely how temperatures are changing in various regions of Antarctica, based upon satellite as well as weather station data, is a matter of active ongoing debate in the scientific literature.
Articles on his blog also show that (a) over decades, there is a warming/cooling cycle that very closely follows solar cycle
However the scientific evidence shows clearly that the current warming is not due to the "solar cycle."
that the overall warming trend of the past 200 years predates any significant human contribution to CO2 in the atmosphere
There are multiple factors impacting global temperatures over the past 200 years, of which CO2 is only one, so one cannot naively simply ask "which came first?" Correct accounting must take into account all factors, including changes in solar irradiance, human particulate pollution, volcanic eruptions, and human CO2 pollution.When all of these are taken into account, CO2 is found to be the cause of the modern warming trend.
the planet has in the past been warmer than today - in that sense, the recent warming is not "unprecedented", and finally (d) millions of years ago CO2 levels were much, much higher than today, so a higher CO2 level is also not unprecedented.
This is entirely a strawman, as no scientist has ever claimed that modern warming or high CO2 is unprecedented in the history of the planet--what is without precedent is the enormous numbers of people living in areas that will be massively impacted by changes in sea level, or huge numbers of people being dependent upon reliable an
-
Re:From the article
What part of "found no evidence" do you not understand?
“It also appears that one senior NOAA employee possibly thwarted the release of important federal scientific information for the public to assess and analyze,” he said, referring to an employee’s failure to provide material
The "he" in your quote refers to Senator James Inhofe, who requested the inquiry. That this partisan found something he thought to "appear" fishy somewhere in a pile of 1073 emails is unremarkable, and does little to contradict the science.
If Muller's article in Technology Review tells a "joke", here is a comeback:
MM05 [McIntyre and McKitrick] claim that the reconstruction using only the first 2 PCs with their convention is significantly different to MBH98. Since PC 3,4 and 5 (at least) are also significant they are leaving out good data. It is mathematically wrong to retain the same number of PCs if the convention of standardization is changed. In this case, it causes a loss of information that is very easily demonstrated.
The state of the art in Climatology may be horribly wrong, but quoting politicians and skewering scientists who bumbled an FOIA request is not going to correct the science.
-
Re:NASA Gets Busted All The Time
Finally got this comment through the filter after removing MANY of the links.
In a field where all you really have are climate data and computer models, refusing to share them with the world is akin to a physicist claiming that he’s invented Cold Fusion, but refusing to show exactly how (except perhaps to a couple of his friends). Gavin of course defended him saying that while maybe THEIR data wasn’t available, HIS data was available, and so that made it all better. (Which it didn’t – it rather just highlighted their shady behavior).
Gavin wasn't just saying that other data was available, he was saying that CRU doesn't do any primary data collection:
The raw data is in the custody of the met services who originated it. CRU is just a collation, not a temperature measuring organisation. [Gavin Schmidt]
No data has been destroyed, the original files and numbers are with the national weather services that provided them. Removing a copy of a original file because it is not useful for my purposes is not 'deleting data' [Gavin Schmidt]
The raw data is the GHCN data (v2.mean.Z) (publicly available, as has been the case for decades). [Gavin Schmidt]
Unsurprisingly, that's also what the reviews said:
The Unit does virtually no primary data acquisition but has used data from published archives and has collaborated with people who have collected data.
The CRU dataset, which forms the land surface component of the HadCRUT global temperature record, was compiled with the aim of comprehensiveness. The majority of the data in it are derived from the same freely-available raw data sets used by NOAA and NASA.
Any independent researcher may freely obtain the primary station data. It is impossible for a third party to withhold access to the data.
Somehow, you managed to twist the fact that it was impossible for CRU to prevent access to the raw data into a
-
Re:NASA Gets Busted All The Time
Finally got this comment through the filter after removing MANY of the links.
In a field where all you really have are climate data and computer models, refusing to share them with the world is akin to a physicist claiming that he’s invented Cold Fusion, but refusing to show exactly how (except perhaps to a couple of his friends). Gavin of course defended him saying that while maybe THEIR data wasn’t available, HIS data was available, and so that made it all better. (Which it didn’t – it rather just highlighted their shady behavior).
Gavin wasn't just saying that other data was available, he was saying that CRU doesn't do any primary data collection:
The raw data is in the custody of the met services who originated it. CRU is just a collation, not a temperature measuring organisation. [Gavin Schmidt]
No data has been destroyed, the original files and numbers are with the national weather services that provided them. Removing a copy of a original file because it is not useful for my purposes is not 'deleting data' [Gavin Schmidt]
The raw data is the GHCN data (v2.mean.Z) (publicly available, as has been the case for decades). [Gavin Schmidt]
Unsurprisingly, that's also what the reviews said:
The Unit does virtually no primary data acquisition but has used data from published archives and has collaborated with people who have collected data.
The CRU dataset, which forms the land surface component of the HadCRUT global temperature record, was compiled with the aim of comprehensiveness. The majority of the data in it are derived from the same freely-available raw data sets used by NOAA and NASA.
Any independent researcher may freely obtain the primary station data. It is impossible for a third party to withhold access to the data.
Somehow, you managed to twist the fact that it was impossible for CRU to prevent access to the raw data into a
-
Re:NASA Gets Busted All The Time
Finally got this comment through the filter after removing MANY of the links.
In a field where all you really have are climate data and computer models, refusing to share them with the world is akin to a physicist claiming that he’s invented Cold Fusion, but refusing to show exactly how (except perhaps to a couple of his friends). Gavin of course defended him saying that while maybe THEIR data wasn’t available, HIS data was available, and so that made it all better. (Which it didn’t – it rather just highlighted their shady behavior).
Gavin wasn't just saying that other data was available, he was saying that CRU doesn't do any primary data collection:
The raw data is in the custody of the met services who originated it. CRU is just a collation, not a temperature measuring organisation. [Gavin Schmidt]
No data has been destroyed, the original files and numbers are with the national weather services that provided them. Removing a copy of a original file because it is not useful for my purposes is not 'deleting data' [Gavin Schmidt]
The raw data is the GHCN data (v2.mean.Z) (publicly available, as has been the case for decades). [Gavin Schmidt]
Unsurprisingly, that's also what the reviews said:
The Unit does virtually no primary data acquisition but has used data from published archives and has collaborated with people who have collected data.
The CRU dataset, which forms the land surface component of the HadCRUT global temperature record, was compiled with the aim of comprehensiveness. The majority of the data in it are derived from the same freely-available raw data sets used by NOAA and NASA.
Any independent researcher may freely obtain the primary station data. It is impossible for a third party to withhold access to the data.
Somehow, you managed to twist the fact that it was impossible for CRU to prevent access to the raw data into a
-
Re:NASA Gets Busted All The Time
Finally got this comment through the filter after removing MANY of the links.
In a field where all you really have are climate data and computer models, refusing to share them with the world is akin to a physicist claiming that he’s invented Cold Fusion, but refusing to show exactly how (except perhaps to a couple of his friends). Gavin of course defended him saying that while maybe THEIR data wasn’t available, HIS data was available, and so that made it all better. (Which it didn’t – it rather just highlighted their shady behavior).
Gavin wasn't just saying that other data was available, he was saying that CRU doesn't do any primary data collection:
The raw data is in the custody of the met services who originated it. CRU is just a collation, not a temperature measuring organisation. [Gavin Schmidt]
No data has been destroyed, the original files and numbers are with the national weather services that provided them. Removing a copy of a original file because it is not useful for my purposes is not 'deleting data' [Gavin Schmidt]
The raw data is the GHCN data (v2.mean.Z) (publicly available, as has been the case for decades). [Gavin Schmidt]
Unsurprisingly, that's also what the reviews said:
The Unit does virtually no primary data acquisition but has used data from published archives and has collaborated with people who have collected data.
The CRU dataset, which forms the land surface component of the HadCRUT global temperature record, was compiled with the aim of comprehensiveness. The majority of the data in it are derived from the same freely-available raw data sets used by NOAA and NASA.
Any independent researcher may freely obtain the primary station data. It is impossible for a third party to withhold access to the data.
Somehow, you managed to twist the fact that it was impossible for CRU to prevent access to the raw data into a
-
Re:NASA Gets Busted All The Time
Finally got this comment through the filter after removing MANY of the links.
In a field where all you really have are climate data and computer models, refusing to share them with the world is akin to a physicist claiming that he’s invented Cold Fusion, but refusing to show exactly how (except perhaps to a couple of his friends). Gavin of course defended him saying that while maybe THEIR data wasn’t available, HIS data was available, and so that made it all better. (Which it didn’t – it rather just highlighted their shady behavior).
Gavin wasn't just saying that other data was available, he was saying that CRU doesn't do any primary data collection:
The raw data is in the custody of the met services who originated it. CRU is just a collation, not a temperature measuring organisation. [Gavin Schmidt]
No data has been destroyed, the original files and numbers are with the national weather services that provided them. Removing a copy of a original file because it is not useful for my purposes is not 'deleting data' [Gavin Schmidt]
The raw data is the GHCN data (v2.mean.Z) (publicly available, as has been the case for decades). [Gavin Schmidt]
Unsurprisingly, that's also what the reviews said:
The Unit does virtually no primary data acquisition but has used data from published archives and has collaborated with people who have collected data.
The CRU dataset, which forms the land surface component of the HadCRUT global temperature record, was compiled with the aim of comprehensiveness. The majority of the data in it are derived from the same freely-available raw data sets used by NOAA and NASA.
Any independent researcher may freely obtain the primary station data. It is impossible for a third party to withhold access to the data.
Somehow, you managed to twist the fact that it was impossible for CRU to prevent access to the raw data into a
-
Re:NASA Gets Busted All The Time
Do you have any reputable citations showing professional climatologists engaging in groupthink or responding badly to reasoned criticism? I ask because, once again, your description of the climatology community sounds like a description of a cult... [Dumb Scientist]
You mean like how they circled the wagons around Phil Jones, even when actual bad behavior on his part was discovered? For example: [ShakaUVM]
“This has some similarity to the CRU email theft, where precious little was discovered from among thousands of emails, but a few sentences were plucked out of context, deliberately misinterpreted (like “hide the decline”) and then hyped into “Climategate”.” [RealClimate]
Presumably you meant to say that scientists in general are circling wagons and responding badly to reasoned criticism.
Or you can just read the editor’s comments left in the response sections of RC.org. Just skimming through that above article, here’s an interplay between Pielke and Stefan. [ShakaUVM]
Coincidentally, Pielke Jr. had similar things to say about that interplay. That's the interplay where he asked a bunch of 'questions' like "Was it appropriate for the IPCC to make stuff up about my views?". Then Stefan replied:
Clearly there are different views on this, which is why we called this graph "debatable". But let's keep things in perspective: we're discussing Supplementary Material and a response to one of those 90,000 review comments now, not even the report itself. You've been working hard to scandalize your personal quibbles with IPCC here - how consistent is this with your self-proclaimed role as "honest broker"? Stefan
That link leads to an in-depth comment, and neither seem to constitute "responding badly to reasoned criticism." In fact, it's not clear that Pielke's rant counts as "reasoned criticism" in the first place. As far as I can tell, he's got
-
Re:NASA Gets Busted All The Time
Do you have any reputable citations showing professional climatologists engaging in groupthink or responding badly to reasoned criticism? I ask because, once again, your description of the climatology community sounds like a description of a cult... [Dumb Scientist]
You mean like how they circled the wagons around Phil Jones, even when actual bad behavior on his part was discovered? For example: [ShakaUVM]
“This has some similarity to the CRU email theft, where precious little was discovered from among thousands of emails, but a few sentences were plucked out of context, deliberately misinterpreted (like “hide the decline”) and then hyped into “Climategate”.” [RealClimate]
Presumably you meant to say that scientists in general are circling wagons and responding badly to reasoned criticism.
Or you can just read the editor’s comments left in the response sections of RC.org. Just skimming through that above article, here’s an interplay between Pielke and Stefan. [ShakaUVM]
Coincidentally, Pielke Jr. had similar things to say about that interplay. That's the interplay where he asked a bunch of 'questions' like "Was it appropriate for the IPCC to make stuff up about my views?". Then Stefan replied:
Clearly there are different views on this, which is why we called this graph "debatable". But let's keep things in perspective: we're discussing Supplementary Material and a response to one of those 90,000 review comments now, not even the report itself. You've been working hard to scandalize your personal quibbles with IPCC here - how consistent is this with your self-proclaimed role as "honest broker"? Stefan
That link leads to an in-depth comment, and neither seem to constitute "responding badly to reasoned criticism." In fact, it's not clear that Pielke's rant counts as "reasoned criticism" in the first place. As far as I can tell, he's got
-
Re:A more immediate likely problem
As a GHG, water really only matters as a feedback mechanism. i.e. what we put out there doesn't matter, since the equilibrium between the atmosphere + oceans, etc, is so rapid. Increase the temperature of the planet, though (i.e. through other GHGs) and you shift the equilibrium so that more water is in the atmosphere... then it's a problem as that heats up the planet even more. This is well understood, and definitely not the big uncertainty the "skeptics" make it out to be. Real climate has a solid overview if you want to read more:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/
-
Re:NASA Gets Busted All The Time
... the paradox that I mention is this: even if we have no global warming, the +0C result is within the band of error bars, so this counts as verification of the prediction. But a +5C change counts as invalidating the prediction.
If for some reason you decide to smooth the GCM output and sensor data at only 10 years, the error bars will be large. That's why professional climatologists usually smooth data and model output using ~20 year averages. [Dumb Scientist]
If you'd like to engage in a gedankenexperiment, consider if predictions after 20 years had error bars from +0C to +10C. (Error bars themselves are fuzzy things, but I digress.) The same paradox applies to the notions of falsification and verification. No change verifies AGW, but a massive +20C change falsifies AGW (technically, the current-best-guess-AGW theory). [ShakaUVM]
Huh? You quoted me and repeated "20 years" as though your statement was a response to mine. But you're talking about waiting "after 20 years" and implying that we need to perform gedankenexperiments rather than just reading the peer-reviewed literature? I haven't ever been talking about waiting 20 years. This whole time I've been talking about the applied smoothing. There's no waiting, no "after 20 years". So there's no need to make up numbers. In fact, I've already shown you the actual dependence of the error bars on the applied smoothing (or trend length- same idea.) Sadly, this isn't the first time you've ignored this point:
So multiple scientists have already tried to tell you that longer temperature trends have smaller error bars than shorter trends, but you're still blissfully fantasizing that the opposite is true. According to #6, you get another 5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment.
Clearly, we need to review the difference between an empirical climate model and a dynamical climate model.
An empirical climate model:
- Incorporates past temperature data into its sample data set, and predicts temperatures without requiring one to specify radiative forcings as the IPCC emission scenarios do.
- Is guaranteed to perform well over the sample data set; the real test would come with new data. Thus anyone claiming accuracy over the sample data would be laughed out of any scientific conference.
A dynamical climate model:
- Doesn't incorporate past temperature data into its sample data set, instead the model describes the laws of physics.
- As a result, the model requires input in the form of estimated and projected radiative forcing histories which are specified in the IPCC emission scenarios.
- Thus, a dynamical model predicts the climate's response to changes in forcings like the sun's brightness, CO2 levels, etc. One example prediction of modern GCM's is the value of the equilibrium climate sensitivity, which has units of (degrees C) / (doubling CO2 concentration).
-
Re:NASA Gets Busted All The Time
... the paradox that I mention is this: even if we have no global warming, the +0C result is within the band of error bars, so this counts as verification of the prediction. But a +5C change counts as invalidating the prediction.
If for some reason you decide to smooth the GCM output and sensor data at only 10 years, the error bars will be large. That's why professional climatologists usually smooth data and model output using ~20 year averages. [Dumb Scientist]
If you'd like to engage in a gedankenexperiment, consider if predictions after 20 years had error bars from +0C to +10C. (Error bars themselves are fuzzy things, but I digress.) The same paradox applies to the notions of falsification and verification. No change verifies AGW, but a massive +20C change falsifies AGW (technically, the current-best-guess-AGW theory). [ShakaUVM]
Huh? You quoted me and repeated "20 years" as though your statement was a response to mine. But you're talking about waiting "after 20 years" and implying that we need to perform gedankenexperiments rather than just reading the peer-reviewed literature? I haven't ever been talking about waiting 20 years. This whole time I've been talking about the applied smoothing. There's no waiting, no "after 20 years". So there's no need to make up numbers. In fact, I've already shown you the actual dependence of the error bars on the applied smoothing (or trend length- same idea.) Sadly, this isn't the first time you've ignored this point:
So multiple scientists have already tried to tell you that longer temperature trends have smaller error bars than shorter trends, but you're still blissfully fantasizing that the opposite is true. According to #6, you get another 5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment.
Clearly, we need to review the difference between an empirical climate model and a dynamical climate model.
An empirical climate model:
- Incorporates past temperature data into its sample data set, and predicts temperatures without requiring one to specify radiative forcings as the IPCC emission scenarios do.
- Is guaranteed to perform well over the sample data set; the real test would come with new data. Thus anyone claiming accuracy over the sample data would be laughed out of any scientific conference.
A dynamical climate model:
- Doesn't incorporate past temperature data into its sample data set, instead the model describes the laws of physics.
- As a result, the model requires input in the form of estimated and projected radiative forcing histories which are specified in the IPCC emission scenarios.
- Thus, a dynamical model predicts the climate's response to changes in forcings like the sun's brightness, CO2 levels, etc. One example prediction of modern GCM's is the value of the equilibrium climate sensitivity, which has units of (degrees C) / (doubling CO2 concentration).
-
Re:Keep drinking the coolaid
"can you link to the data that shows AGW?"
Attribution does not come from statistics. The attribution section of the IPCC WG1 report is the most thourough treatment of that question I know about but it's heavy reading. For something less formal you could try this article on attribution.
A good accounting of the major climate forcings (both +ve and -ve) can be seen in this graph that summarises the IPCC's findings.
Some salient points on attribution are...
1. We know the proportion of CO2 mankind has put into the atmosphere from analysing it's isotopes, the result is a ~30% increase since the start of the industrial revolution. That equates to half a trillion tons, projections of current emmisions show that it will take another 40yrs to emit another half a trillion tons.
2. The radiative forcing effect of CO2 has been known since Fourier discovered it in 1824, the modern formula is RF=5.35*ln(C1/C0) where C1 and C0 are the end and start concentrations of CO2 respectively. Thus the temprature change due to changes in CO2 concentrations can be easily calculated (for the troposphere), what cannot be easily calculated are the feedbacks that such a temprature change will induce. To estimate the effects of feedbacks they use paleoclimatology and computer modelling.
3. Remove the +ve forcing effect of our emmission from climate models and the 20th centry shows a slight but insignificant cooling.
"The only part I don't comprehend about this debate is jumping to the conclusion that SUVs are responsible"
Well that makes two of us, by far the largest source is the coal industry (~40%), oil and gas is secondary (~25%), followed by concrete (which emits CO2 while setting), and then a whole bunch of other minor sources. Arguments about SUV's just demonstrate the ignorance of people who participate in them. -
Re:If you can predict the weather 100 years from n
If you can predict the weather 100 years from now you had better be able to predict the weather 100 days from now
Predicting climate is not the same as predicting weather. One deals with average global temperature over a long period of time, and the other deals with local variations on a short timescale. "climate" is basically an indication of the total amount of thermal energy in the earth system, whereas "weather" describes exactly how that energy is distributed at any given time.
predictions made so far by the AGW community have so far been totally wrong
Actually, the model output has been quite successful:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/updates-to-model-data-comparisons/ -
Re:A testable prediction?
"I think this sort of high profile bet is actually a good start."
It's been done, and the guy who lost by betting on cooling had a lot more credibility than Bastardi. -
Re:Keep drinking the coolaid
"Rarely does anyone point to data."
Here, knock yourself out. -
Climate Scientists at RealClimate have already...
RealClimate (some of whom were the target of the so-called "Climategate" emails) has done this, or covered betting markets several times.
In 2005, they compared the rhetoric of a sceptic to the odds they were willing to bet on. Take a guess as to whether they were consistent.
In 2008, they proposed a bet on a specific paper with specific scientific reasons. Guess what? No takers. And they would have won.
-
Climate Scientists at RealClimate have already...
RealClimate (some of whom were the target of the so-called "Climategate" emails) has done this, or covered betting markets several times.
In 2005, they compared the rhetoric of a sceptic to the odds they were willing to bet on. Take a guess as to whether they were consistent.
In 2008, they proposed a bet on a specific paper with specific scientific reasons. Guess what? No takers. And they would have won.
-
Climate Scientists at RealClimate have already...
RealClimate (some of whom were the target of the so-called "Climategate" emails) has done this, or covered betting markets several times.
In 2005, they compared the rhetoric of a sceptic to the odds they were willing to bet on. Take a guess as to whether they were consistent.
In 2008, they proposed a bet on a specific paper with specific scientific reasons. Guess what? No takers. And they would have won.
-
Climate Scientists at RealClimate have already...
RealClimate (some of whom were the target of the so-called "Climategate" emails) has done this, or covered betting markets several times.
In 2005, they compared the rhetoric of a sceptic to the odds they were willing to bet on. Take a guess as to whether they were consistent.
In 2008, they proposed a bet on a specific paper with specific scientific reasons. Guess what? No takers. And they would have won.
-
Re:real science
"he has a track record of accurately describing temperature in the future."
Not really, his winter forecasts for every year since 2005 have been wrong. His method is that of a fortune teller, ie: make lots of predictions and highlight the ones that are by chance correct or close to correct.
On a side note, climate scientists are not adverse to betting against global cooling. -
Re:Missed the Issue
studies have shown that CO2 rises AFTER the temperature rises, not the other way around.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/
Also, water vapour has a much greater greenhouse effect than CO2.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/
What about the warm period in the middle ages? When it was hotter than now, and Greenland was actually green? Then it got cooler and the Vikings had to leave or starve.
HTH
-
Re:Missed the Issue
studies have shown that CO2 rises AFTER the temperature rises, not the other way around.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/
Also, water vapour has a much greater greenhouse effect than CO2.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/
What about the warm period in the middle ages? When it was hotter than now, and Greenland was actually green? Then it got cooler and the Vikings had to leave or starve.
HTH
-
Re:Missed the Issue
studies have shown that CO2 rises AFTER the temperature rises, not the other way around.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/
Also, water vapour has a much greater greenhouse effect than CO2.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/04/water-vapour-feedback-or-forcing/
What about the warm period in the middle ages? When it was hotter than now, and Greenland was actually green? Then it got cooler and the Vikings had to leave or starve.
HTH
-
Re:No problem!
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/
Lets pull out two real important facts that are used to bash this global cooling myth from that link.
That the global data from the 1940s-70's was new, and not accurate enough to be trusted.
That extrapolating a 50 year trend was not a good idea.
Same two issues are still alive and well today for global warming.
Man made or not, the climate has lived though a lot worse then we currently are in, do we want to push our luck before we know one way or another? my vote, hell no, we could be the 1c that dose push it over the edge, but all the global warming ppl need to get on the historical graphs that look past the current mini ice age and educate ppl that the current warming trend may be lasting longer and peeking longer then it should.
We have the 2nd coldest peek for temp. in the last 500k years, but one of the longest running.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ice_Age_Temperature.pngIts been pretty cold for the last 3 million years.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Five_Myr_Climate_Change.pngOr 50 million
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:65_Myr_Climate_Change.png -
Re:No problem!
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/
I disagree, Dishevel, you're not very entertaining at all.
-
Re:ah faux news
Climate is not chaotic in the mathematical sense until you get into geologic time scales that are long enough to negate the regulating influence of the Milankovich cycles (ie: millions of years). Weather is chaotic on timescales of days.
You can see the same mathematical concept in a pan of water on the stove, you can make a usefully accurate model to predict how long it will take to boil but there is no way to predict when or where the first bubble will start to form.
Climate model forecasts of climate trend (particularly golbal average temps) have matched observations within their defined error margin for over 30yrs now.
Since this stuff is so easy to google I can only assume you haven't tried answering your own question. -
Re:Relax
Well, you're right. We're both tied to our positions. Time will tell who is right. But I kind of enjoy conversations like this. It forces me to dig deeper and expands my knowledge of the subject.
Of course observations trump models. In a subject like climate science where we don't have the option of performing direct experiments (there isn't a 2nd Earth to run tests on) models are the way we bring together the different factors we discover into a coherent whole that can be tested against the real world. Considering the complexity of the subject I don't think GCM's are doing that bad and they'll get better as our understanding improves.
Yes, I'm fully aware of the plate tectonics example. Another good one is the Missoula Floods first brought to light by J. Harlen Bretz in the 1920's. It took 40 years of debate for Bretz's findings to be accepted.
You might want to check out the most recent post over on RealClimate. The subject is "Science is self-correcting: Lessons from the arsenic controversy". They outline three lessons from the recent kerfuffle.
Lesson one: Major funding agencies willingly back studies challenging scientific consensus.
Lesson two: Most everyone would be thrilled to overturn the consensus. Doing so successfully can be a career-making result. Journals such as Science and Nature are more than willing to publish results that overturn scientific consensus, even if data are preliminary – and funding agencies are willing to promote these results.
Lesson three: Scientists offer opinions based on their scientific knowledge and a critical interpretation of data. Scientists willingly critique what they think might be flawed or unsubstantiated science, because their credibility – not their funding – is on the line.
I don't see how anyone can really believe that so many climate scientists are pushing an agenda that doesn't conform to reality. Their credibility is on the line.
-
Re:Relax
I still don't see that the NASA study has anything to do with record highs outnumbering record lows. I guess you're saying that increased urbanization has caused the change in the ratio over the years but I don't buy it.
Why limit yourself to one model? The IPCC AR4 results were presented as an meta-ensemble of a number of models. Each model has its strengths and weaknesses. Combining them suppresses weather noise in the models making the underlying forced change more visible. It turns out that the meta-ensemble outperforms any single model when compared to the real world. More on that subject here. I'm curious, what exactly is it you think climate models are projecting?
I would say as leading scientists in the field the people at Realclimate are perfectly capable of judging what is good science. Please point out evidence of their advocacy for anything other than good science. As I said, they censor unscientific BS. I guess what you are saying when you claim to be a strict Popperian is that you don't think global warming theory is falsifiable. I think it is completely falsifiable just maybe not on a time scale people like you can live with. Don't you think another 20 or 30 years of intense study of the subject will clarify the outcome?
My perception when you say "Changing the weighting of a model to fit the facts, after the fact, is not "new understanding"." is that you think they are just using numerical methods to fit the output to the real world observations. That is simply not the case. Changing the weighting because of a new understanding of the underlying physical process is a perfectly valid technique.
I wish you guys would get over your vilification of Mann. It's been 12 years since the "hockeystick" graph and there have been at least 10 other papers I'm aware of since then by different researchers using different sets of proxies that show substantially the same thing as Mann's original graph. I guess if you can't discredit the science you try to discredit the scientist. Why don't you move on to the more recent stuff?
I meant to ask you in my last post what are some of the reasons for stratospheric cooling other than increases in GHG's? I'll even volunteer one. Ozone depletion is a factor. With less ozone in the stratosphere less incoming ultraviolet radiation is captured allowing more radiative energy to get through to the surface rather than remaining in the stratosphere. I don't think it's reasonable to dismiss something out of hand without offering an alternative or at least a reason why it is wrong.
-
Re:Relax
The urban heat island effect is well compensated for. A recent study that used Anthony Watts surfacestations.org list of well and poorly sited weather stations found that poorly sited stations actually show slightly less warming compared to the well sited stations. (Menne 2010)
Other studies showing the urban heat island effect is not a significant factor affecting temperature trends:
Peterson 2003
Parker 2006
Jones et al 2008The NASA page you cited discussed the causes and effects of the UHI effect but says nothing about its effect on global temperature trends.
I'm trying to figure out what you mean by a "warm oceanic cycle". While changes in currents and atmospheric effects can change the distribution of heat in the oceans which will effect adjacent land temperatures it doesn't change the total heat energy stored in the oceans. Over 99% of the heat energy in the Earth system, including the oceans comes from greenhouse warming. Without the buffering effect of the oceans absorbing over 90% of the enhanced greenhouse warming we would already have surface temperatures much higher than they are now.
I probably shouldn't be making any 20 year bets since I'm old enough that it's at best 50-50 whether I'll still be among the living in 2030.
Regarding climate models, they don't make any predictions. In order to make a realistic prediction they would have to know the inputs of things subject to natural variability ahead of time. Inputs such as insolation, CO2 levels and the timing of events like ENSO among other things. Instead they make projections based on various input scenarios. They are tested and validated by hindcasting using the actual observations of those inputs.
In 1988 James Hansen made projections based on three scenarios (A, B & C). Scenario B came out closest to reality and the projections based on it are reasonably close to the reality we observe today. Here is a discussion of that.
As far as falsification of greenhouse gas (mostly CO2) driven climate change one of the most straightforward predictions made by the theory is that the stratosphere will cool some because of it. This has been observed. If it hadn't it would call into question the theory. If the warming were being driven by increased insolation the stratosphere would be expected to warm.
-
Re:Relax
You want science on cold winters in a warming world, here it is.
-
Re:ocean acidification
Ocean acidification is even less studied than GHG. It didn't even exist until a year or two ago.
-
Re:The models are crap.
The paper you mention cites numerous studies supporting the models of the IPCC. Additionally, it isn't without it's own critics.
In other words: No, not end of story. I'm not dismissing the paper, as I'm not qualified to do so, but this certainly does not prove the claim: "Models are garbage".
-
Re:How consistently has he "sounded alarms"?
What happens if you remove El Nino 1998 from that graph?
This.
According to Phil Jones, there's been no statistically significant warming since 1995. That's 15 years. Around 1/2 of your usual "significant" timescale. It's not looking good for the hypothesis, is it?
You, like many, are confused about what "statistically significant" means.
Over a 10-15 year time scale, it's common for no climatological trend to achieve statistical significance. That doesn't mean there is no trend. It's because it usually takes about 20-30 years of data to detect a trend with 95% confidence in a noisy, autocorrelated data set.
That's why it took about 30 years for scientists to become sure there was a modern warming trend in the first place, and why 30 years is the commonly accepted standard for calculating "climatological trends".
See here for an expository article intended to address this misconception. It takes the perspective of showing how short term "trends" commonly contradict the actual long term trend, which is another way of saying that short term trends often don't achieve statistical significance.
-
Re:Back to the actual Science...
It's really hard to do validation without the source data...
Which interestingly climate "scientists" are reluctant to make available.
Only if you're blind, or some sort of google-phobe. This simple Google search immediately turns up the RealClimate.org index of climate data sources, which has a shit-ton of climate data, ranging from raw modern data to processed modern data to paleoclimate reconstructions to models to visualization packages.
So did you just assume that the scientists are reluctant to make the data available, or are you knowingly making false statements?
-
How do you know what is real?
McIntyre & McIntrick objections to Mann have been fully documented and responded to in the academic discourse. However, McIntyre & McIntrick have been unable to respond to the objections. Their argument as been reduced to vapor.
So... how do you know what is real? -
How do you know what is real?
McIntyre & McIntrick objections to Mann have been fully documented and responded to in the academic discourse. However, McIntyre & McIntrick have been unable to respond to the objections. Their argument as been reduced to vapor.
So... how do you know what is real? -
Re:Forget something?
Although M. Mann's RC bio does not specifically state it, Mann was one of the nine founding members of realclimate.org
-
Re:Forget something?
How is that Mann's Blog? There's no specific mentioning of him on the site's "About" page
-
Forget something?
-
Re:You mean whine when a POS paper is printed
I agree with all that you said, but for heaven's sake, use full-forms at least once
For those as confused as I, the paper the parent refers to is "Gerhard Gerlich, Ralf D. Tscheuschner. Falsification of the atmospheric CO2 greenhouse effects within the frame of physics.".
Contains such howlers as "There's no such thing as average temperature"... RC Wiki page
-
Re:The 'sensors in parking lots' data supports AGW
Menne tried to get Watts involved but he didn't respond in a timely manner then Watts accused Menne of excluding him.
What is this false premise you speak of?
The vast majority of the data and methodology is available to the public. This page points to a bunch of them. But I guess maybe you're lazy and want it handed to you on a silver platter.
Why don't you take up a collection to pay professional statisticians? The grants climate scientists get don't include funds to pay for that. Most climate scientists are fair statisticians anyway since statistics underlies the majority of their work.
-
Re:Why I no longer believe in global warming
Point 4: Pretty much because no such there was never any such theory seriously debated among scientists.
And point 5 is really about overproduction and thinking that we're oh-so-smarter than nature; whether capitalist or otherwise. To frame it as a Socialist Plot is just being specious and moving the debate from science to politics (again).
-
Re:Great news!
The interesting thing about this estimate is that it has flow on effects to other estimates, such that the amount of ocean rise due to thermal expansion could be higher than previously thought which could mean that the oceans thermal inertia is not as slow as we thought.
The 2007 IPCC report did not include numbers for all ice sheet effects. It could be that acceleration of ice sheet flow is contributing a greater amount to the increase in sea level than previously thought.
-
Re:So Singh Believes in Global WarmingI remember the 1970's plenty well enough to recall that the great fear then was, are you ready for this, Global Cooling! The Earth was going to freeze in 30 years and we were all going to die through mass starvation because crops wouldn't grow. And yes, the Climate Scientists of that time were all behind that farce as well. How quickly things change.
You are either a liar, wilfully ignorant or suffering from some kind of dellusion, there was no global consensus on Global Cooling. It was a theory (based on the proven effects of particulates caused by pollution blotting out the sun) held by a small group of scientists but it was not fully tested. When the full spectrum of evidence was examined it was shown that the warming effects of pollution would outweigh the cooling effects.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/
-
Re:So Singh Believes in Global Warming
Thanks for bringing up Global Cooling so quickly, so I know that you are either ignorant or choose not to pay attention to facts.
-
Re:Politics And Science Don't Mix
The funny thing is that the paper ends up with a hockey stick that doesn't look that different from Mann's.
Here's some discussion about what that paper does and does not show
"The real proxies are less predictive than our ”fake” data. "
which to me sounds about as close to call Mann a baldfaced liar as your going to hear in a professional journal.Actually, Mann was trying to do something that had never been done before, pulling together indirect data from a wide variety of sources to get an idea global climate history. Very rarely is the groundbreaking work on a scientific problem absolutely perfect--usually there are errors and omissions that are corrected in subsequent work. But that doesn't make the pioneer a liar. Both Mann and others have improved upon Mann's original methods, but his general conclusions have held up pretty well over the years. For example, a 2006 peer-review by the National Research Council of the US National Academies concluded,
It can be said with a high level of confidence that global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries. This statement is justified by the consistency of the evidence from a wide variety of geographically diverse proxies.
-
Re:GISS
"If you have some useful information about that data then please share."
The average temp in Greenland has risen ~3degC in the last century.
You have the raw data and it's not hard to work out how to perform a least squares fit using a spreadsheet. Therefore you have everything you need to confirm/debunk my claim.
If you would rather read about science than perform it then you could start by looking here and here, or if pretty graphs are your thing then try a this random article that took me two minutes to find via a google search
