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Ocean Circulation Doesn't Work As Expected
techno-vampire writes with word that a long-accepted model of deep ocean currents is inaccurate. Deep Sea News has a summary of the research, to be published in Nature. The Woods Hole press release has more details. "A 50-year-old model of global thermohaline circulation that predicts a deep Atlantic counter current below the Gulf Stream is now formally called into question by an armada of subsurface RAFOS floats drifting 700 - 1500m deep. Nearly 80% of the RAFOS floats escaped the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC), drifting into the open ocean. This confirms suspicions that have been around since the 1990s, and likely plays havoc with global models of climate change."
aren't accurate? For Gore's sake, what a surprise!
cuz it's the Day After Tomorrow
Need more useless stuff to read on teh internetz?
And I already replaced all my light bulbs with those dim, mercury-filled corkscrew kind!
I wish you had warned about that masthead.
Got into lots of trouble with my boss who just happens to be a jellyfish.
... we're all gonna die, right?
Generally, bash is superior to python in those environments where python is not installed.
Clearly this is a product of Western materialism. However, Al Gore will stop at nothing to demonstrate our danger:
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/al_gore_caught_warming_globe_to
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Despite the fact that we didn't have accurate data about the pattern of ocean currents earlier, we can now welcome panicked decrees that we are changing the pattern of ocean currents!
more study required and then to re run those disaster scenarios the day after the week tomorrow
Something that everyone should keep in mind with nearly any theory regarding earth science -- "long accepted" doesn't go back very far. Most "modern" geologic (and oceanographic) theories only go back 40 or 50 years. When compared to the other major scientific fields, that's not very long at all. Hell, we've understood nuclear fusion and fission longer than we've understood the basic mechanics of the Earth.
I do enjoy the irony.
This confirms suspicions that have been around since the 1990's, and likely plays havoc with global models of climate change.
So, in the AC's world, the entire underpinnings of ocean circulation can be incorrect, yet the conclusions are NOT to be questioned.
Hence the label, 'denier'.
That is not what I understand to be science.
TFA says there is a cold water current that exists, but it just happens to flow differently than previously thought.
FTFA:
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Grumpy comments from the "right to bear coal-fired-power stations" gang will be arriving in three, two, one ...
I don't care what the research shows, Al Gore IS the Chuck Norris of climate change. If Al Gore says its warming then mis-understood ocean currents and insufficient data points be damned, its warming.
There is no global warming. It's just the surface. The core temperature is unaffected.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
...may well be completely gone in 5 years."
- Al Gore, December 2008
who would have ever guessed that we would have trouble forming an accurate model of a vast, complex, chaotic system
The core temperature is unaffected.
Just wait until some crazy Romulan with a scary looking CGI drilling device comes along ;)
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Doesn't mean it's totally wrong, just that they are looking in the wrong place...
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
I'm not a denier, but I'd like to see more source code. The Royal Society worked because people were able to reproduce results. Even a worthless bookbinder like Faraday was able to reproduce experiments, if he was curious. Calculus worked because Leibniz published his methodology, and not just his initial assumptions and final results, rather than sitting on it like Newton.
I know there's a few models with published source, but it's a rare thing to see the method and apparatus (i.e. the program that produced the results) displayed in all it's gory detail. The usual excuses ("the code is just research quality", or "nobody would understand it") just don't seem to be in the spirit of science.
Mod parent up. Global warming isn't science, it's politics.
"some species will die".
yes, that's kind of the problem, isn't it? Since the oil predates human existence, who's to say the world that results from the release of all of that sequestered carbon leaves us a world in which WE will survive? We have never survived a world in which all that carbon was in the atmosphere before.
I'm not really a big worrier about climate change... other environmental issues bother me a lot more... but your argument is a bit weak.
There is such a thing as stable states. By your logic, uranium underground, uranium in atmosphere, no difference, right?
The perennial war cry of the crank is "If this one thing is wrong, then nothing they say can be trusted!"
Of course, in the real world, all data has flaws, and all interpretations are subject to revision. So a demand for absolute perfection gives the crank license to engage in cherry-picking, rationalizing away the data he doesn't like, while accepting that which feeds his obsession.
Real science doesn't work that way. When new data comes in, or errors are found in old data, the scientist carefully reassesses conclusions in the light of the new evidence.
The amount of CO2 in the world is fixed. There is not more C02 in the world than there was several billion years ago.
No, the amount of carbon is fixed (ignoring unnoticeably small effects like gasses lost to space, and nuclear decay, and the like). If I burn a pencil, that carbon goes from graphite and organic material to CO2, and the amount of CO2 actually increases a tiny bit. Carbon can also be found in various kinds of rock, such as limestone... I think the carbon in limestone is actually carbon that used to be in CO2 in the atmosphere, since it's sedimentary rock.
The amount of CO2 in the world is fixed. There is not more C02 in the world than there was several billion years ago. The oil came from somewhere, idiots.
Oh dear, I'm sorry but this made me lol. The amount of carbon and oxygen atoms has remained relatively constant of course, but the whole point is that when they are components of long chain hydrocarbons, they are not carbon dioxide molecules!
It was once in the atmosphere. So it goes back into the atmosphere - big deal. Some species will die. Others will benefit. END OF STORY.
And given our dependence on so many species of animal and plant, some think that its in our best interests to minimise such extinctions. And also, more specifically, we are trying to reduce the number of human deaths that occur, as we'd prefer to reduce our population in a controlled manner, rather than through famine and drought. You actually have a problem with that? Yeesh.
The ultimate goal of these models is to make solid predictions on the effects of climate change. As of yet, few if any are much more than toys. They're useful toys in so far as they help move us towards a good model, but toys just the same.
However, the fact that climate change is occuring and directly related to human activity is based on empirical data. The models being wrong do not change that conclusion.
Not a typewriter
Ocean Circulation doesn't affect the *global* temperature directly. It simply redistributes the heat around the planet. Hence the name CONVEYOR.
The down side is that if the 'conveyor' belt doesn't work as we expect, global warming may actually end up being WORSE. The (now questined) premise of the conveyor belt is that if the northern Atlantic ocean becomes less salty (due to melting Greenland ice), the water stops falling to the ocean depths, and since no conveyor means no warm gulf steam to warm the northeastern US and European continents, they will get colder.
This in turn produces more snowfall in the northern latitudes, thicker ice, etc. Which in turn reflects more sunlight lessening the effects of global warming.
So the conveyor belt may act as somewhat of a coarse 'brake' on global warming over longer time frames.
Or at least that was the theory. If the conveyor belt doesn't work as we thought, it might just mean we will feel the full effects of global warming.
Some of the deniers will jump on this as a natural cycle. Understand it that is a natural environment *response* to an unnatural influx of carbon dioxide from humans.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
It's kind of poetic how stupid you come off trying to dis on the global warming people.
1. Pretty much everyone agrees that the term global warming is bad, since what is happening is global climate change, which is very real and a very big problem.
2. The amount of CO2 is not fixed as you claim, CO2 is a by product of chemical reactions. There are also reactions going the other way, but unfortunately we are producing way more CO2 than is being consumed, this is a problem.
3. While you are correct that the world will probably survive just fine as a whole, some of us are rather concerned about the amount of climate refuges we are going to see and in time the wars that will most likely follow.
and since no conveyor means no warm gulf steam to warm the northeastern US and European continents, they will get colder.
Does the Gulf Stream actually have much of an impact on North America? Wouldn't the typical weather patterns (i.e: west to east) suggest that the heat moved by the Gulf Stream would wind up making most of it's impact on the Atlantic Ocean and Europe?
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Mod parent up. Global warming isn't science, it's politics.
No, it's actually science.
What do you think is going to happen now? Either scientists will ignore this data or they will incorporate it into their models... wanna bet they incorporate it?
Wanna bet CO2 still warms the atmosphere after they incorporate the new ocean current data? We won't know for sure until they incorporate the new data, but I'll take that bet.
Unless, of course, your contention is correct and they are not scientists - then they will simply ignore the new data, right?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The only question is in what group our species will be found.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Damnit, I love science!
This is how it's supposed to work.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
I'm with you on the substance of what you say.
But even really smart people can be amazingly stupid, at least from time to time. It doesn't mean that they are stupid all the time, just that they are, well, people.
Case in point, I had this professor of ethics who was an incredibly bright guy. When in high school, one of his experiments went on the space shuttle. Attended Harvard, got his PhD at Brown. He had a phenomenal memory and a great broad understanding of his field.
He also was fired because he was living in his office, since he spent all his money on heroin. Actually, he didn't make enough money to support his habit, so he robbed houses. Pretty stupid.
These results don't say that global warming is occurring. In fact, they neither support nor oppose the idea at all. The Woods Hole press release is fairly neutral:
"May impact the work of global warming forecasters" is true; it might also influence the thinking of UFO chasers but that won't help determine whether they're piloted by little green men. This research will complicate models designed to model the specific effects of global warming. Given how much is unknown yet, and how much has yet to be determined by human activities (to the extent that we choose to mitigate or fail to mitigate our impact on the biosphere) those models are already only potentially correct by marvelous coincidence anyway.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
IAAPO (physical oceanographer).
The quoted blog is being a little over-excited about this. There's nothing in WHOI's press release that suggests that this brings the thermohaline circulation tumbling down, and certainly nothing to play "havoc" with climate models. Quoth the press release:
And since this cold southward-flowing water is thought to influence and perhaps moderate human-caused climate change, this finding may impact the work of global warming forecasters.
"This finding means it is going to be more difficult to measure climate signals in the deep ocean," Lozier said. "We thought we could just measure them in the Deep Western Boundary Current, but we really can't."
In other words, the circulation is there, but it's more diffuse that expected, and so you can measure it by looking at a well-defined path along the continental shelf as expected. That requires some revamping of theory, and will make circulation model validation and data assimilation more difficult, but that's all.
The DWBC has an interesting scientific history -- it's one of the few ocean phenomena predicted by theory before it was observed, in part because its depth and slowness prevented observation.
But, hey, never mind, Al Gore, manbearpig, lalala I can't hear you.
I agree completely. Where, though, are these practitioners of 'Real science'?
It isn't my field, but this seems like a big deal to me. Years of work would need to be reassessed in the light of this sort of a discovery.
It seems a tad soon to break out the "denier" and "crank" handles to me.
What I see is the scientific establishment diligently working to identify flaws in the existing theory of climate change and freely publishing any flaws found. The FACT is that the scientific community is vigorously collecting data to challenge and correct where necessary climate change theory, and has been for over two decades now. Note this is the same scientific community that has endorsed the current climate change theories and it's predictions - which include pretty fat error bars you know.
I understand that to be science and is why I respect the consensus of National Academies of Science (or equivalent bodies) across the first world in this matter (and not Mr Gore or Exxon or the headline of the week).
Is it me, or does the title sound like a bug report indicating that the oceans to not behave properly?
Can not reproduce. Will not fix.
So, in the AC's world, the entire underpinnings of ocean circulation can be incorrect, yet the conclusions are NOT to be questioned.
Perhaps that's because the fact that the planet is getting warmer is, um, a *fact*. We measure that. This doesn't call that "conclusion" into question; at best it implies we have even less understanding of why the planet is getting hotter, which suggests we need *less* calm, not more. Our temperature measurements aren't wrong, and still remain valid.
Real science doesn't work that way. When new data comes in, or errors are found in old data, the scientist carefully reassesses conclusions in the light of the new evidence.
That's right. Whenever the global warming science is shown to be questionable, you just need to dive right in and blame the problems on the deniers. It's all their fault that the science doesn't ever work out, so they need to be reassessed to a pole, with a large fire build around them, for a very hot conclusion, then you'll have your new evidence of warming by roasting marshmallows on their frying butts!
Global warming has to be real, otherwise how would someone like Algore have gotten a Nobel Prize for making a movie about it?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
We (mankind) are currently lacking in the capability to accurately quantify many natural phenomena. We may not ever, given our nature and the nature of the universe, be able to see somethings as they actually are.
However, the fact that climate change is occuring and directly related to human activity is based on empirical data. The models being wrong do not change that conclusion.
Based on what work?
You can already say that misrepresenting how the ocean currents work will have no impact on the conclusion?
How?
Shock - Simplified computer models of $HIGHLY_COMPLEX_SYSTEM found to be inaccurate! News at 11!
That's all well and good, and as it should be. The ONLY problem here, is that some folks want to make trillion-dollar adjustments to industry all over the world based on these models which are still in such a preliminary state.
(The trillion-dollar adjustments involve increasing everyone's cost of living in order to internalize costs that may not actually be negative externalities, and include the imposition of a very expensive administrative layer atop everything carbon-related.)
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
That may be true now, but it used to be science, a long time ago, back in the 1990s, back when only journals and magazines such as Science or Nature would talk about it and that no one else cared or listened. I grew up in the 1990s in France reading Science & Vie, global warming was there all along, back then we called it 'climate warming', but then suddenly the American public started caring, and that's when the shit went down and it all became controversial and hysterical.
You damn kids and your newfangled climatological hysteria, get off my lawn!
You just got troll'd!
"...and likely plays havoc with global models of climate change"
So, they think it might make a difference in the model, but they don't know - which means they haven't tested it and are going on gut instinct that a single boundary condition to a problem with thousands of boundary conditions (not all equal, of course) will completely reverse the theory and find out that the earth is acting in a way opposite to our expectations.
Call me when they actually update the model and correlate it with global temperature readings. Being wrong in one area is no big deal. Being wrong and having it completely invalidate the overall results is quite different.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
There are two separate issues here. On the one hand there are certainly serious scientists working on climatology and climate change. I have no doubt they will incorporate the new information and work to improve their models. However, they are also much more careful about their certainty of the future, than...
The other side of the debate, which is political; it deals with what policies (if any) should be put in place to combat climate change. And in this realm, we are being bombarded by "it's settled science", "it's going to happen", "we have to act in ten years or it'll be too late", etc. ad inf. And the unseriousness of these positions is made clear by radical flaws in models such as the one referenced in this article.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
OMG. Best. Game. Title. Evar.
In other words, now we don't know what might happen and we're *still* mucking with our climate.
Yeah, I think the gulf stream bypasses any warming of the northeastern US. This is more of a problem for Europe.
...
You and agree on this. The paid shills with science degrees may too, but most will still produce pretty diagrams that look a lot like the political leanings of their sugar daddies.
Its been a while since I worked a problem queue for a living, but this sev 1 defect which has been raised "Ocean Circulation Doesn't Work As Expected" is just going to be closed as "Working as designed".
No, the perennial war cry of the crank is "They didn't believe NAME_OF_GENIUS_HERE either!"
The implication being that as geniuses were considered crazy in their time, so people who are crazy must really be geniuses!
Good point. Part of what killed the Roman empire was a slight climate change (the world getting colder), causing more people going southwards, where the Roman empire was "in the way".
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Pretty darn likely. (Neat picture, BTW).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
No, there are TWO problems — the one you mention, and another one, where the people who make their coin on the status quo (and the politicians that they own) will ignore all evidence that the current way of doing business might make the planet unlivable. Or, at a minimum, cost a trillion dollars to adjust to as it changes.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but 'That's funny...'"
-- Isaac Asimov
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
It equally implies that the evidence underpinning the "denial" is incorrect.
So lets face it, there is very little science and an awful lot of jealous hatred of Al Gore motivating the deniers in this thread.
That global warming is occurring is based on empirical data I'll grant; but how is the human cause based on empirical data? In order to make an empirical assertion about a cause you would need a control group, which is pretty much impossible with a sample size of one.
We think that the cause his human activity because its the simplest explanation for such a rapid rise in temperatures, that's not the same as saying we have direct experimental evidence that says the same thing.
Or, it could also make global warming somehow better than it was predicted. It could be either worse or better, and those studies that predicted the end of the world if Kyoto wasn't ratified will need to be redone.
This will take time.
Shoring up conclusions today without considering that these original assumptions were false is NOT science.
And, on a side note, I like these sorts of statements:
Understand it that is a natural environment *response* to an unnatural influx of carbon dioxide from humans.
As if humans have the capability of creating matter from thin air now...
Every molecule of carbon on Earth was here before we were aware of it, and it will all still be here long after the race has ran itself out.
You can reasonably blame human behavior if you like, but placing the blame squarely on 'carbon' is a fashionista tactic, and little else.
Personally, I wonder why we're not considering the impact of all the little heat pockets we need to survive on this planet. Think about it - we warm our cars, our homes, our beverages, we use electrical devices that ALL radiate heat, and we're actually producing a fair amount of thermal energy just by walking around and breathing...
For that matter, what about all the concrete/asphalt in the world? That stuff gets HOT in the sun light, and there's a lot of it. Could that not warm things up a bit? There used to be trees there, you know...
All that heat, and yet we blame poor little 'carbon'. :D
But seriously, I do fear that an all-electric world will produce more net heat than an oil-powered one, if for no other reason than oil has a far greater energy density than we can currently achieve with electricity.
Science: "We've observed that the Earth's climate is getting warmer by nearly a full degree Celsius over a period of observation of around 200 years. We've noticed a correlating increase in CO2 emissions in that timespan."
Politics: "GLOBAL WARMING IS GOING TO CHANGE EVERYTHING ABOUT OUR LIVES!"
Science: "But the Earth is 4.54 billion years old, so our dataset is incomplete."
Politics: "THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS GLOBAL WARMING, WE DON'T KNOW ENOUGH ABOUT THE EARTH!"
Science: "Of course, we've seen in tests that increasing the level of CO2 in an environment can significantly increase the temperature of an environment."
Politics: "CO2 CAUSES WORLD OT GET HOTTER!"
Science: "One of the leading theories we have as to the increase in global temperatures is this so-called 'blanket-effect'"
Politics: "GLOBAL WARMING IS BLANKET EFFECT! WE ALL MUST USE HYBRIDS NOW OR DIE!"
Science: "On the other hand, it's still a possibility that we're in a natural cycle of global warming. We saw a similar pattern in history, which occurred right before we experienced a miniature ice age."
Politics: "GLOBAL WARMING NATURAL CYCLE. ICE AGE IMMINENT!"
Repeat until you either change the channel or become so psychotic from the endless political bashing that you go out and kill 50 or 60 people, just to relieve the stress.
Or at least, they remain as valid or invalid as they were before.
Mod parent up. Global warming isn't science, it's politics.
How true! I invented the physics of greenhouse gasses when I was running for mayor of Peoria.
People are quite cockroachlike, though not quite cockroaches ourselves. We will survive as a species in some sort of existence if any animals of 30+ pounds survive.
...
Our temperature measurements aren't wrong, and still remain valid.
Absolutely true.
And yet I understand that the Earth warmed and cooled periodically without the intervention of humanity.
Correlation does not equal causation. Ever.
Humanity is so prideful that we insist we understand every tiny nuance of a vastly complex system to the level where we understand which actions we need to take in the short term.
We're so infallible that we absolutely know that these are the correct courses of action despite when we discover that 50-some years of climate science have been using the wrong data.
This is what separates us from the animals, and I am grateful for it, to be sure. But it does make me chuckle from time to time...
So long as we're willing to concede the opposite as well, in reverence to intellectual honesty...
Why does it matter if they control the drilling device with a CGI script?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
What I would like to see is some more data before we start passing laws that are ruinous economically.
However, since we are doomed in 30 to 50 years anyway, it's a bit of jerking off anyway.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I like how you've used this story as a place to post your rant, when in fact this particular piece of information only suggests that our models for precisely what will happen as the globe warms are wrong. As they were pretty much guaranteed to be wrong anyway (which is why we call weather a chaotic system — we don't get it yet, and "small" inputs can have large so-far-unpredictable outputs) this is entirely irrelevant to the question of global warming. Science still says the answer is "yes". If you want to know whether your particular valley is going to get warmer or cooler, then this information is directly relevant to you. If you want to know whether the Earth is warming or cooling, it's not that relevant. It says where and how, not what.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You say that like it's a bad thing.
If we have to choose between spending a trillion dollars now and spending a trillion fifty years from now, which should we do? Personally, I'd rather wait the fifty.
But more importantly, there's a philosophical point to be made. When faced with a possible problem, should you always make a radical change to the status quo? Well, what do you do in your personal life? Most people don't do this, unless the potential problem is both very serious and has a high probability. The ones who want to effect massive changes know this and want to convince us on both counts.
Ultimately, though, broken models like this one do damage to the radical policymakers. Those policy choices are dependent on not just climate models, but economic models based on those climate models. If we can't even trust the climate models, where do you think we are with the economic models? And how can we possibly justify spending such massive sums with that much uncertainty as to the outcome?
We might end up impoverishing ourselves to such a degree that we don't have the technology to handle whatever the climate does throw us. And that would be just as disastrous. So there are risks either way. I say stick to the status quo until we know we can't.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
Being skeptical of scientists giving dogmatic claims of incredibly complex weather systems with billions of variables, known and unknown, sounds like Denier talk to me. Either that or you are obviously under the employ of oil companies, Dick Cheney or you are the guy who controls Karl Rove's weather machine. The one Bush used to destroy New Orleans.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The fact that temperature has been dropping for a decade doesn't change the warming theory?
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
No, it really isn't. The very historical charts that Mr. Gore laid out in his "An Inconvenient Truth", when superimposed on one another, show that the atmospheric CO2 concentration trailed the temperature increase. When people point to current trends, they fail to account for the fact that there are natural cycles in climate that go on over tens of thousands of years.
Global Warming is a science the way String Theory is a science, which is to say that it makes no testable predictions. Well, that's a bit harsh, it says that if CO2 goes up, then temperature goes up, but it is untestable because the effect is below the signal to noise ratio when you factor in long term climactic cycles. Basically, it's JUST A MODEL. When a major factor of your model is destroyed, it puts to lie ALL of the assumptions based on that model. Since you obviously aren't going to do that, nor will the politicians, I guess that makes it a matter of who makes the choices.
That is to say, it's politics. Another flamebait moderation in 3..2..1..
A fairly reliable indicator of a crank is the conviction that the dominant view is a house of cards, and the most recent finding, whatever it is, is about to bring the whole thing down. Press releases tend if anything to overstate the significance and novelty of a result, but what does the press release say? The lead sentence is "Oceanographers have long known that the 20-year-old paradigm for describing the global ocean circulationâ" called the Great Ocean Conveyor â" was an oversimplification. " And as far as the impact on climate theory, "this finding may [my emphasis] impact the work of global warming forecasters." Doesn't exactly sound like a startling, paradigm-shifting result, does it?
So while we'll have to wait for the modelers to incorporate the new data to see what the real impact is, I think that it is safe to say that anybody who is seizing upon this finding at this early stage as casting doubt on global warming certainly qualifies as a crank.
Yeah, they all just hate Al Gore.
Nevermind the huge extra costs everyone is going to have to pay for every product that uses energy. Nevermind the worse standards of living we'll all have forced on us. Nevermind the loss of freedom.
It's just that people personally don't like Al Gore.
Please. Researchers ignore data that break their theories all the time.
It may be worst in the medical world. For example, why do you think that cholesterol is targeted as enemy number one for heart health? There is no study that has ever demonstrated causality; 50% of people with heart disease have "normal" cholesterol; nearly all studies on the subject show that all-cause mortality is higher with low cholesterol; much better working theories exist.
So why is that hypothesis still treated as correct? Because reputations and huge amounts of money would be lost. Prominent people and institutions may even be found liable. Good science goes out the window in the face of that.
Regarding the subject at hand, you might want to look at what an ad hoc hypothesis is.
^X^S ^X^C
If the gulf stream was to just stop, the NE US would lose the moderation the ocean does. As the ocean water gets cooler and cooler, the temps will go down. The Europe really gets screwed. As this ocean current affects it a lot more.
What? Every case of causation I've ever heard of also showed correlation. Correlation does not PROVE causation, but it is a big flashing sign with a buxom topless girl waving pom poms jumping around it pointing in the right direction.
Note that at this point, the link between smoking and lung cancer still doesn't have a definitively proven causation.
Is it possible that the Ocean's circulatory system itself has changed because of global warming? Suppose that the models we had before were correct, but because of global warming and ManBearPig the system is changing its' 'configuration'?
Yeah, I have no idea what I'm talking about, but just a thought.
The perennial war cry of the crank is "If this one thing is wrong, then nothing they say can be trusted!"
Y'know, everyone pretty much does this. I'll bet you've even used that argument at one time or another, might've been a different subject, maybe not.
It doesn't make someone a "crank", although it is a logical fallacy.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
That's right. Whenever the evolution science is shown to be questionable, you just need to dive right in and blame the problems on the deniers. It's all their fault that the science doesn't ever work out, so they need to be reassessed to a pole, with a large fire build around them, for a very hot conclusion, then you'll have your new evidence of evolution by roasting marshmallows on their frying butts!
Evolution has to be real, otherwise how would someone like Darwin have gotten a year named after him for making a book about it?
This prooves the small size fluorescents are a case of technology raising your standard of living. You bought the 60 watt fixture thinking you didn't want to pay for more than a 60 watt bulb anyway. But now you can put 100 watt equivalent bulbs in there because they are brighter for the same energy use, or choose to pocket the savings. It's like the photocopier. Before that, no more than three copies were ever made of anything, and then email which meant even more (electronic) copies sent to MORE people. If a tech raises someone's standard of living they will use it whether or not it's environmentally friendly.
...
Let's see if I understand this correctly:
Atlantic ocean becomes less salty (due to melting Greenland ice), the water stops falling to the ocean depths, and since no conveyor means no warm gulf steam to warm the northeastern US and European continents, they will get colder.
OK, so ice melts, the conveyor stops... got it!
This in turn produces more snowfall in the northern latitudes, thicker ice , etc.
More ice? WTF?!!? You just said there would be LESS ICE due to ice melting, then you say that will cause THICKER ICE?
Wouldn't this restart the conveyor and return everything to normal?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Let me guess, you live in Asia?
I'm a Londoner, and it's cold enough already damn you!
CO2 does not warm the atmosphere. It is a myth thats widely accepted to be true by the general population.
This'll probably come as a surprise to you, but do some research - there is not a single bit of scientific evidence that CO2 warms the atmosphere, the only link proven is that a warmer atmosphere brings more CO2 - usually 200-300 years later than an initial rise in temperature.
Much of the east coast, especially the southeastern coast would be much colder without the warm waters of the gulf stream. This is something of a limited case but an example would be eastern North Carolina in the wintertime; Eastern NC south of Cape Hatteras trends warmer than would be accounted for by latitude alone. Here is an example of the way the Gulf Stream looks for much of the winter (though this image is from April) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gulf_Stream_water_temperature.jpg.
E pluribus unum
I say stick to the status quo until we know we can't.
The problem with that is, what if the "oh we can't stick to the status quo" moment is actually a massive human extinction event?
The risk is that the "bullet has already been fired" so to speak. It won't hit for another 50 to 100 years, but it's on the way, and it'll cause damage when it finally does hit.
We don't know for sure if that's the case, but there certainly is a risk.
Reading the news release makes it sound as if the problem was that the expected deep ocean return current was just in the wrong location. They put the floats in the areas where the current was supposed to be and only 8 percent of them actually even went in the 'right' direction. So...their 'conclusion' is that the current is just in the 'wrong' location but that it still exists, although they have never actually observed it. Without being any sort of climate 'expert' it seems obvious that evaporation of water in the northern latitudes is a far more important contributor to the gulf stream flow than the hypothesized deep ocean return current. It even seems probable that most of the evaporation of water on this planet occurs in the northern and southern latitudes. In that model, warm water flows north and south around the planet from the equatorial regions towards the poles and evaporates, thereby cooling the ocean waters and transferring heat and moisture into the atmosphere where it eventually falls as precipitation as it moves back towards the equator. Of course, this evaporation model cannot be correct because it allows the atmosphere to be a major conveyor of heat (as vapor phase water) which does not fit well with the 'greenhouse gas' idea in which the earth is surrounded by atmospheric gases which are blocking the radiation of long-wave infrared radiation into space, thereby warming the earth. I don't think there are any Eisteins in the atmospheric sciences field at the moment.
Ocean models model the physics of the ocean. They certainly don't attempt to model a cartoon (shown in the linked Deep Sea News article) presented years ago as a way to illustrate a principle. The cartoon had utility but no physical oceanographer actually thinks it really reflects reality any more. Many versions of the cartoon have been made including some with many more complex flows and recirculations. All of them are attempts to simplify something spanning spatial scales from millimetres to thousands of kilometres and time scales from seconds to thousands of years. None of these gross simplifications was ever accepted as "the real, actual, true circulation".
I don't think that this study has any significant implications for ocean and climate models.
So, in the AC's world, the entire underpinnings of ocean circulation can be incorrect, yet the conclusions are NOT to be questioned.
Perhaps that's because the fact that the planet is getting warmer is, um, a *fact*. We measure that. This doesn't call that "conclusion" into question; at best it implies we have even less understanding of why the planet is getting hotter, which suggests we need *less* calm, not more. Our temperature measurements aren't wrong, and still remain valid.
Your "facts" rely on accurate measurements.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I guess if the truth sounded anything like what you're saying then, yes, it would change the warming theory.
Note that at this point, the link between smoking and lung cancer still doesn't have a definitively proven causation.
That's also absolutely correct. There's a strong correlation, but we cannot scientifically say that tobacco kills people. Something in it certainly seems to be fatal, but no one has the foggiest idea what.
Rewind your mind two or three hundred years. Understand that we will know more tomorrow than we do today. Humble yourself before the true vastness that is knowledge and try and accept the reality that all a human will ever be capable of grasping represents a thimble in the ocean.
Humans jump to conclusions. It is part of who we are. Ignoring that part of our nature just seems silly to me.
I find it prudent to accept that ANY conclusion could in fact be false. I'd advise the rest of us to do the same.
But you don't understand. The science is "settled". Didn't you hear? The conclusions are "settled". It's a consensus. Everyone who disagrees is a "denier". The calls for these deniers to be prosecuted have already begun.
Why is there new data? What is it for? Why does the new data almost always support the position of the "deniers"?
Maybe we should prosecute these researchers as denier-accomplices so we can stop anyone else from undermining the settled consensus with new data.
Dude, we survive everywhere. There is no other species on the planet that comes close to being as adaptable as human beings. We live in the tropics and the arctic and everywhere in between. We can take food out of oceans, out of swamps, out of the forests, and out of plains. We can grow food in the desert if we're forced to. For crying out loud, we can survive limited amounts of time in the vacuum of space.
The idea that the climate is going to change so fast and so drastically that it is going to risk human civilization is just ridiculous. We might have problems that are worth working to avoid, but human extinction isn't one of them. We'll dome over our cities and grow food in skyscrapers before we die off from global warming.
What empirical data?
I've seen ice core temperature graphs that go back several hundred thousand years and it appears to me that we're in roughly the right time period to experience a warming. Correlation not implying causation, and whatnot. You can look at CO2/temp graphs since 1800 and come to the "clear conclusion" that it's humans, but you'd have to ignore a lot of other historical evidence where temperatures naturally behave in this manner.
Not to say that it's impossible that 6+ billion people can't change the climate when, in theory, a butterfly can have a net effect all over the globe, I'm just wondering what this empirical data you speak of is based on. Like some other poster said, a lot of the "science" in this area is political.
The ONLY problem here, is that some folks want to make trillion-dollar adjustments to industry all over the world based on these models which are still in such a preliminary state.
Really? What makes them preliminary state? The simple fact is, that the majority of data that feeds these models ARE known. In fact, it was because of these models that this experiment was done. Will it change the models? I would think so. Would it change them DRASTICALLY? I seriously doubt it. The simple fact is, that these models have been being developed for over a couple of decades. The real problem is that they do not appear to match what is going on. They all seem to indicate that we have MUCH longer time. Every time they make a prediction of things to occur in 20-30 years, it keeps happening NOW.
As to the trillion dollar adjustments, had America followed Nixon/Ford/Carters lead back in the 70's, and pushed for being off oil/coal, we would not be in Iraq, likely not be in afghanistan, and not have the exchange deficit that we have. The vast majority of the wests security and economic issues can be tied DIRECTLY to our being dependent on the same price fuel that other countries are on.
Actually, we pay more than most because we clean it up more. While China surpassed us in CO2 emissions several years ago, they surpassed us nearly a decade ago in major pollutants. The west MUST get off of importing fossil fuel and skip this garbage about Cap/Trade. Instead, we need to put in place a cap at TODAY's amount (i.e. no more), and then put in a time progressive co2 tax on all goods, esp. imported goods.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
al gore has too many conflicts of interest to listen to. That he repeatably fails to disclose his offshore investment operation that he helps run should concern all that are for transparency.
I am a nature subscriber and I just read the letter which this crap is 'based on'. In what I find to be depressing regularity the content in Nature Magazine is misrepresented. Presumably because some of the content at Nature.com is only available to subscribers.
So the title of Slashdot submission is wrong. The summary and free article at deepseanews it is based on mischaracterize the content of the letter. And naturally most of the comments here on Slashdot don't take into account the article, the letter, or anything that smells to much like reality.
If anyone is particularly interested the study found additional new details about ocean currents which the suggest should be included in future model of global ocean currents. This isn't especially exciting but I suppose it's interesting from a point of view of making our understanding and models more complete.
So nothing there about ocean circulation not working the way scientists have described (or a "a major paradigm shift in ocean circulation theory.") Nothing there about failure of models. Nothing there about climate change being either true / not true or stronger / weaker.
This is just what most science is all about... making current understanding more complete or more correct. Below is the excerpt, which I believe to be publication available.
To understand how our global climate will change in response to natural and anthropogenic forcing, it is essential to determine how quickly and by what pathways climate change signals are transported throughout the global ocean, a vast reservoir for heat and carbon dioxide. Labrador Sea Water (LSW), formed by open ocean convection in the subpolar North Atlantic, is a particularly sensitive indicator of climate change on interannual to decadal timescales1, 2, 3. Hydrographic observations made anywhere along the western boundary of the North Atlantic reveal a core of LSW at intermediate depths advected southward within the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC)4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. These observations have led to the widely held view that the DWBC is the dominant pathway for the export of LSW from its formation site in the northern North Atlantic towards the Equator10, 11. Here we show that most of the recently ventilated LSW entering the subtropics follows interior, not DWBC, pathways. The interior pathways are revealed by trajectories of subsurface RAFOS floats released during the period 2003â"2005 that recorded once-daily temperature, pressure and acoustically determined position for two years, and by model-simulated 'e-floats' released in the subpolar DWBC. The evidence points to a few specific locations around the Grand Banks where LSW is most often injected into the interior. These results have implications for deep ocean ventilation and suggest that the interior subtropical gyre should not be ignored when considering the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
that they'll be reshooting "Finding Nemo"?
If we have to choose between spending a trillion dollars now and spending a trillion fifty years from now, which should we do? Personally, I'd rather wait the fifty.
I'd rather wait the fifty years as well. In fifty years a trillion dollars isn't going to buy much. Maybe a loaf of bread at the local convenience store. It's a much better bargain waiting than spending now.
As if humans have the capability of creating matter from thin air now...
;-)
Uh, does the guy who opens the flood gates at the dam 'create' the water that flows out of it? not hardly. But that doesn't diminish the effects of LOTS more water downstream does it?
Humans have clearly and measurably increased the carbon dioxide in the ATMOSHPHERE. That comes from burning MILLIONS of years of carbon sequestered in the oil. This is the problem and the 'unnatural' influx of which I spoke. it would not have happened this much this fast without us actively digging it up and burning it.
As for the other sources of heat you mention, the solar aspects are the most reasonable to affect global temperatures since its the basis for just about all life in the first place
However, global warming is not because we are producing more heat than the earth can handle. It is because we are retarding the rate at which it sheds heat into space. How much heat we as a species produce is probably actually pretty measurable as is the amount of heat added by the Sun (Sun heated asphalt would be in our bucket not the Suns). I'd be willing to bet we don't hold a candle to the Sun in that department.
But generally those wonderful thermodynamics laws really do prevent us from 'increasing' the heat on the planet. The rate at which it moves (into space) however is something we can and have readily affected. That's where the vast majority of 'extra' heat is coming from. Without the extra CO2 blanket, transfer rates would simply go up in response to any larger heat concentrations we've caused, still reaching a reasonable equilibrium.
But as you say, by paving over fields and forests, and then reducing the rate at which the extra heat can leave (through processes producing yet more heat) we aren't helping ourselves.
The main problem is still the 'greenhouse' effect.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Just like tossing a stick in a river to watch the flow, we *luckily* have polluted the ocean with a massive continent-sized field of plastic bits we can now follow! Brilliant! Who needs fancy computer models and theoretical conjecture?
http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
Either way, here comes Cap and Trade...
The "fact"?
I live in Texas. It's 105 degrees in the shade. If it gets one degree hotter, I'm gonna kick your ass!
(with all due respect to Mike Judge)
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
You're citing stock climate change deniers' arguments. They were refuted looooooong time ago. Do you think all climate scientists are idiots?
Specifically:
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/04/historically-co2-never-causes.php
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/03/geological-history-does-not-support.php
From the long list of:
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/07/how_to_talk_to_a_sceptic.php
Whatever happened to global cooling? Wasn't that the rage just 10 years ago? We're in an ice age, right?
You're suggesting that we have somehow set off a chain of events that will result in the entire planet being inhospitable to humans, and it will occur in as small a timescale as 50 years?
There certainly is a risk. I can't see it being much greater than the risk that a solar storm is about to wipe out all our electronics, or that a large meteor will land in my garden next week and the resulting dust cloud will block out the sun (hey it wasn't my garden but this has actually happened - we should definitely be more worried about meteors than climate change).
"However, they are also much more careful about their certainty of the future."
Nope. Almost all bona-fide climate scientists agree on anthropogenic global warming. Mostly they argue the details now.
I'm obviously being cheeky with you. But the point remains - without Earth2, only hindsight will tell us for sure who is correct.
Where to start...shesh...
No, it's actually science.
No, first and foremost it is politics. The fact the gp was modded "flamebait" does a wonderful job of underscoring that fact. LOL. Seriously, think about it.
What do you think is going to happen now? Either scientists will ignore this data or they will incorporate it into their models... wanna bet they incorporate it?
Yes, some science is being done but its goal orientated science; which is the worst kind. In other words, the goal is to prove global warming so politically they can get yet more funding. The absolute best of climate models are well known to be worthless. The only reason these models match historic data is because they fold in historic data into their models. Once they no longer have historic data, the models become worthless. Yet these same models are used to predict gloom and doom for global warming.
Wanna bet CO2 still warms the atmosphere after they incorporate the new ocean current data? We won't know for sure until they incorporate the new data, but I'll take that bet.
Oh there is zero doubt CO2 warms the atmosphere. That's never been a point of contention. The contention is, is man responsible. The simply FACT is, no one knows. The FACT is, anyone who says otherwise, is at best dishonest.
The models we current have; and I mean the best of models, is at best is a tonka toy. They provide no real science and absolutely provide no credible evidence. Say it again ten times fast. That's the facts!
he only thing these models do is stir the political pot to garner yet more funding. To date, the models are only good for estimating and approximating historic trends using historic data. Once you get more than a couple years out or so, these models are nothing but a toy to gain more funding. Period. They are constantly having to add yet more historic data to make it even match the year or two before - and they are trying to project decades and centuries into the future. That's what sane people call political bullshit.
Should we research "Global Warming"? Sure. Should we react to it? Sure, only if your a fool of the worst kind. Again, the simple fact is, we have no proof man is behind the current warming trend. None.
And the bottom line is, are you prepared to play god with the climate? Realistically, if the doom and gloom profits are right, that's the only option we have on available on the table. And if their wrong, playing the only card we have may actually screw things up far, far worse than the worst of the doom and gloom projections.
So what should we do? React to models we know to be 100% worthless bullshit?
Basically, it's JUST A MODEL.
I challenge you to name a set of "natural laws" or really any aspect of current scientific research or long established dogma that isn't just a model at heart.
I'll grant you that it may not be fine-grained enough to allow for testable predictions within natural cycles, but it does show that there's a correlation between CO2 and temperature. Whether that means that CO2 changes cause temperature changes, or that temperature changes cause CO2 changes, or that some other process causes them isn't really all that relevant. The model is sufficiently robust as to state, quite clearly, that increasing CO2 emissions is potentially a bad idea, and that reducing them is potentially a good idea.
The question isn't "is the model fine grained enough that we can make large predictions based on it?".
The questions are "what are the risks associated with the possible courses of action/inaction provided it's right/wrong?
It's a factor in a risk assessment, plain and simple. Not to mention the fact that there are likely hundreds of thousands of business opportunities involved in becoming more green. It's all a matter of how it's done.
Disclaimer - I'm a meat-eating, V6-driving, ex-military hunter who is completely addicted to technology. ie. A far cry from a tree-hugger. That being said, if you can present me with green alternatives to the energy-hungry devices I RELY on, that aren't 150% the cost of the non-green versions, I will happily take them.
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
They're actually brighter for lower energy use. Also, people rarely buy an N-watt fixture thinking that they don't want to pay for more than an N-watt bulb anyway.
In short, we don't know what's really happening, but our political leaders are making very expensive decisions based on the belief (of some) that we do.
That's a great textbook definition of Stupidity!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
So in the crankosphere, an improvement in a model that was previously acknowledged to be an approximation has already mutated into "a radical flaw."
Of course, if you want to find out what the settled science says, you can always consult the report of the International Panel on Climate Change, or the reports of independent elite scientific societies such as the US National Academy of Science.
But just as, to a crank, any improvement of a model becomes "a radical flaw" that invalidates all conclusions, the science is never "settled" so long as there is some scientist, somewhere who disagrees (and of course, on any topic, there is always someone who disagrees)
If we have to choose between spending a trillion dollars now and spending a trillion fifty years from now, which should we do? Personally, I'd rather wait the fifty.
Thank you for disclosing your idiocy club membership. In 50-100 years the cost will not be the same, it will be MUCH MUCH higher even adjusted for inflation. Damn near everything costs more the longer you wait to address the problem, why would this be any different?
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
the water stops falling to the ocean depths, and since no conveyor means no warm gulf steam to warm the northeastern US and European continents, they will get colder.
Just tossing this out there - this is believed to be at least partly responsible for the last mini-ice age.
Cost isn't always just the money you spend, it's also the consequence of what you don't do. We're already seeing the economic consequences of global warming and there is no reason to believe that this won't continue to be a more serious problem.
What climate change critics often say is that the science isn't good enough yet. What they mean is migrating away from burning billions of barrels of petroleum and billions of tons of coal for cheap energy is hard, expensive work that we can kick down the road until it's someone else's problem.
If you didn't come to party don't bother knocking on my door. Prince '1999'
Yes. The Gulf Stream helps keep much colder polar weather from migrating further south. Think of it as a giant blower at the front of stores which keeps cold air inside and warm air outside.
And for this reason. I did not think the forces to confine the cold water along the east coast would be sufficient to sustain a narrow conveyor. It just doesn't seem to work that way stably in the atmosphere. This discovery alone could improve our climate modelling and help us understand why our current models seem to consistently underestimate human caused global warming. We should expect that the western boundary of the Pacific shows similar characteristics.
(Never have mod points except when tedious faggotry like the World's Biggest Lego Soup Spoon stories are up....)
You might be willing to spend money and burden your economy for global warning but there is no way India and China are going to do anything that impacts their growth.
Plus some of that heat blows on shore.
And makes it too damn hot to live in the Carolinas. At least if you're from up north.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Perhaps that's because the fact that the planet is getting warmer is, um, a *fact*. We measure that.
And its a fact that it's also normal. The Earth has long gone through these phases.
Look, the global warming crackpots would have you believe that those that doubt deny the climate is changing. That's simply not true. Those that question are simply asking if man is behind it. The simple fact is, no one knows. The simple fact is, the best of data which indicates man is behind it is known to be full holes - bullshit in layman's terms.
The only conclusion anyone can actually have at this point is that we need more research and that we absolutely don't know if man is even partly responsible. Anyone who says otherwise is at best being dishonest - or more likely is up for a research grant.
People are quite cockroachlike, though not quite cockroaches ourselves. We will survive as a species in some sort of existence if any animals of 30+ pounds survive.
[citation needed]. I'm going to have to disagree here. We may make it for 1000 more years, hell perhaps longer. Ultimately however, the bacteria still own this planet and they are going to do just fine regardless of what stupid shenanigans we are up to in the meantime.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Personally, I find it prudent to not smoke, listen to my doctor, and not test the conclusion that licking a frozen flag pole is a bad idea. Accepting that any conclusion could be false - a fundamental aspect of the scientific method - is radically different than asserting that any that you don't like could be false and can therefore be ignored.
Nothing has assured me of the accuracy and correctness of my stance than the ludicrous terminology that associates me with those who deny that the holocaust happened.
Indeed, no one who uses the term "Global Warming Denier" can call themselves either a scientist or even a friend of science. It is a bold-faced appeal to emotion to use such idiotic terminology.
It's more religion than logic.
Exactly...the entire atmospheric sciences field is being stifled by the climate change zealots who attack anyone who even suggests that are questions yet to be answered or...even worse...hints at the heresy that the entire basis of the global warming model is...wrong. There are powerful political forces at play in the global warming debate...and they are driven by the wealthy oil have-not nations of the world. The actual science is just something to be used and manipulated to achieve their ends...enforced rationing...and the political power that accrues.
Is that your own opinion or that of "we run out of oil and arable land in 1970"-Club of Rome?
We don't know much about the weather ten days from now and you think you know about the general climate a hundred years in the future? Are you serious?
Your "bullet fired" analogy has serious flaws, because it leaves us with a small batch of options, all of which point AGAINST combating "climate change" today:
- bullet is fired, ducking away is possible
we now have a hundred years of time to duck, which is an eternity given current speed of technological progress. Another 50 or even 100 years can might have the Technology Singularity or Grey Goo scenario - everything else is utterly trivial compared to that. Either way, we're terraforming Mars within several decades, if we can avoid some impending World Wars. Cooling or heating a runaway climate will then be an engineering task, not a catastrophe.
- "bullet is fired, ducking away is impossible"
Improbable, given the climate change speed which is whole orders of magnitude slower than "The Day After Tomorrow", but other than that, we could just sit down and pray. No need to impoverish everyone when they everyone dies in the end without escape.
- "bullet is not fired, ducking away or preventing firing is possible"
same as the first one: preventing the firing now is a million times more expensive than ducking away later, given technological advances and even simple compound interest over that time period.
- "bullet is not fired, but ducking away is impossible, preventing firing is not possible"
improbable, as the second one, and riddled with assumptions, hypotheses and hard factual errors. We're not betting the farm on this.
did you miss this part of my post:
So the conveyor belt may act as somewhat of a coarse 'brake' on global warming over longer time frames.
We have the problem of warming temps melting more ice. This means less salty northern waters. As such the 'conveyor' stops running (based on previous theories). This stops the transfer of heat from the tropics to the northern climates which in turn causes a cooling of the northern climates producing more ice. It is indeed a cyclical process so point A leads to point B to point C and back to A in a massive generalization.
My point was that if the conveyor theory is wrong, the 'brake' I described might not exist or only work at a reduced rate, thus allowing more effect from global warming to be experienced.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
None of this makes the slightest difference to the expected global warming, except insofar as rainfall patterns may change slightly faster or slower in some places. How the heat is distributed around the planet is pretty much irrelevant to the global energy balance (as would be obvious to anyone with half a brain cell.) Now, please FOADIACF.
"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free." -- Goethe
in 2002, not exactly NEWS for nerds, by maybe it matters.
You had me until "LOL"
You'll find no disagreement here.
On the other hand, there's not necessarily any impetus to take any specific actions either. Just because a certain conclusion might be correct doesn't necessarily mean we all need to be stocking up on sunscreen.
Actually I live just outside Washington, DC so I'm somewhat experienced with 'hot gaseous emmisions' ;-)
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
You know, this conversation highlights exactly why this will work... In all reality tremendous instantaneous changes are not really required to mitigate some of the risks and damage by global warming.
I *thank* the crazy environmentalist nutjobs for providing a solid shove in the needed direction.
I *thank* the crazy conservative nutjobs for refusing to budge.
The net result of all of this discussion? More general awareness and many more people making small changes to help cut energy use and find cleaner means of producing energy. Slower change, still effective, and much more manageable.
It was meant more like "$FACT doesn't change the warming theory" (except for a cooling theory, which is also admissible and probably equally valid)
Truth is, we're not getting any carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that has never been there before. IF carbon dioxide is heating up the planet, it's not going to be warmer than what we once had. This might be bad news for penguins and polar bears, but humans who thrive from equator to polar circle probably have not much to worry about as a whole.
Building dams in the lowlands and combating moskitoes and deserts should be the first line of defense, because that's where it will be needed, if ever.
Are people really claiming that *the* single most effective AND efficient method to prevent a flood is burning less oil? It's only a few steps above Voodoo, but I personally can think of several hundred things that can prevent future floods much better than stopping today's cars.
In terms of actual flood protection per dollar spent, carbon dioxide reduction is totally ridiculous.
...when confronted with a choice, you choose money over the only known planet that sustains human life in the entire universe.
I'm not sure I can get on board with that. And something tells me that using less energy to do everyday tasks will lead to more technology, not less. Sticking with the status quo is the choice that provides no technology, and possibly spends finite resources on luxuries that could be used later for needs.
But fuck it. Hop in your hummer, crank the AC, and rush to sit in traffic. Buy the house tens of miles away from work so you can have a library and basement bar that get used about twice a decade. Terraform your yard with nice looking weeds, so the neighbors can enjoy it the whole 30 seconds they spend outside their front door.
Enjoy these pinnacles of human achievement, while they last.
You're citing stock climate change deniers' arguments. They were refuted looooooong time ago. Do you think all climate scientists are idiots?
Specifically: http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/04/historically-co2-never-causes.php
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/03/geological-history-does-not-support.php
From the long list of: http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2008/07/how_to_talk_to_a_sceptic.php
Ummm, your links agree with me. Temperature rises preceded CO2 increases. It then goes on to claim that somehow the CO2 STILL causes it. Apparently CO2 moved faster than the speed of light and violated causality back in those days. The second link admits that CO2 levels are not well correlated with historical temperature (he blames this on a lack of comprehensive data--meaning that he recognizes that they don't have data, but he's somehow still right).
There is a lot more to the story of climate change than CO2, but governments around the world would shut down civilization rather than hear that.
You and I must have wildly different understanding of the word "refute".
You understand that there is no energy source that behaves differently than what you decry about oil and coal?
If we moved en masse to fission, for example, then uranium mines and spent-fuel reprocessors would become the new OPEC. If we made a serious move to wind/solar, then solar-panel fabs and battery chemicals and wind corridors would become the new OPEC. (E.g. Bolivia's recent moves regarding its lithium deposits.)
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
Many water shortages today aren't cause by a lack of water, but a lack of clean, fresh water.
In other words, "repent, the end is near".
Sound familiar?
I think you've got the wrong idea.
The Stern Review came to the conclusion that the benefits of strong, early action on climate change considerably outweigh the costs.
Waiting fifty years might be the worst thing we could do.
doesn't mean that the outcome has changed. For all we know this could mean more proof tha humans are causing global warming because we have changed the pattern of the water flows or that the water flows are even more significant than first thought. The fact of the matter is that the planet is warming, ice caps are melting and we are in a massive species extinction. We are obviously having some effect on the planet, the question is how much.
If you have to remove that cancerous tumor now or wait a year, what will you do?
Right now, it has already been proven to an extremely high degree of certainty, that global warming is both very serious and has a high probability.
Broken model? What broken model? The model for global warming is fully intact. The fact that one small part of an accessory needs some adjustment in no way breaks the model for global warming.
The only thing this study shows is that water that circulates in depths of 700 to 1500 meters under the surface travels in wider and slower paths than had been previously thought. The total flux of water is, naturally, the same, water isn't accumulating in the Arctic.
You speak as if we weren't already spending hundreds of billions to keep companies that cause global warming alive.
"majority of data that feeds these models ARE known"
It would be nice if the models using that data could predict, umm, even the past?
Climate modeling can't account for the effects of clouds, but the data's good.
The lie that temperature has been dropping for a decade doesn't change the warming theory?
There, fixed that for you.
Hey, 50 years from now it'll be cheap, because we'll have nuclear fusion!
Luckily for us, 50 years from now never gets here.
Shown to be questionable != said to be questionable.
I don't have a problem with anyone getting behind either side of this issue, as long as they're willing to back up their contentions with evidence.
First, we have plenty of nuke fuel in America to handle our needs for hundreds of years (and that would be if we move to 100% nukes, which would be a mistake). Secondly, Australia and Canada are major holders of Uranium as well. As to lithium, Bolivia does currently have the largest found deposits, but we have only recently started looking. I have little doubts that more and bigger will be found. OPECs can be created out of anything. BUT, energy generation is what is important to ALL COUNTRIES. Once the west no longer imports large amounts of fuel, then our economy comes back, the invasions/occupations stop, and political blackmail stops as well. You have noticed that the west DOES pay attention to what Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and even Russia wants and does. Russia is a major player in many areas, but if not for oil, both Saudi Arabia and Venezuela would have ZERO abilities to blackmail.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
An explanation of this. No it would first trigger a massive warming that would kill off many cold tolerant creatures then swing radically the other way to an ice age environment killing many of the heat tolerant creatures and causing war due to lessening space for human habitation and crop failures. It's kind of like a pendulum. It take radical steps each way back and forth over time to equalize. Let's be clear about the real issue of climate change, the issue is not whether or not the planet is warming, that is happening. The question is the cause and how fast. The rate of melt in the ice caps has significantly and progressively increased, pictures show this well. The fact that currents exist is also not at debate, sailors have known this for years and anyone who goes ot the beach can tell you that the water generally follows about a month behind the air in temperature. This report does not significantly change anything about what we know about global warming and climate change and it isn't about saving the planet, the planet will get on just fine. It's about keeping the planet habitable for all humans for as long as possible.
The simple fact is, that the majority of data that feeds these models ARE known
The majority of THIS equation is known, but the missing bit (n) makes a hell of a difference in the final result (r).
r = 12345678^n^n
The result of any model is only as good as the accuracy of ALL the data fed into it. Garbage in, garbage out.
Yes, warmer. Not everywhere, but certainly not where we've been led to believe.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/05/13/arctic-non-warming-since-1958/
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/02/13/the-skeptic-that-wasnt/
damaged by dogma
Wanna bet CO2 still warms the atmosphere after they incorporate the new ocean current data? We won't know for sure until they incorporate the new data, but I'll take that bet.
They haven't bothered to scientifically test to see if CO2 warms the atmosphere -- they've only shown that correlation exists between increased atmospheric temperature and carbon dioxide content. They've also seen that when temperatures increase, carbon dioxide and methane is released in greater quantities from natural sources. They've shown that carbon dioxide blocks heat rays as well. If taking these 3 observations and using them to say "It's a scientific fact that CO2 warms the atmosphere" then you are operating under a different definition of "science" than I do.
What makes you think they'll "scientifically" incorporate this model? Despite popular belief, making a documentary and pretending it's a NOVA special doesn't make something science. Neither does appearing on public broadcasting.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
At least Bruce Willis is still around. We'll be fine.
That would be the logical fallacy Falsus in unus, falsus omnibus
This is a straw-man argument.
hardburn's conclusion was that climate change is occurring and is directly related to human activity.
The conclusion to be determined by the models of ocean currents (and which are probably highly impacted by the implications of TFA) are what the effects of that climate change are.
"If it wasn't for my horse, I'd never have spent that year in college." -Lewis Black
yeah, that how i felt after reading this tripe.
Actually, one good way to determine causation would be to repeatedly modulate the human output of greenhouse gases and look for a corresponding climate change.
Waiting to know every single variable to be known nothing gets done.
Start now and adjust as new observation and facts come in.
I would rather start now and have it be for nothing them wait and it have catastrophic results and be running around in a panic.
Simple risk analysis tells us to prepare.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
it's also a theory as to why there was a 2nd prolonged cooling period during the last major ice age. A massive ice damn broke releasing millions of tons of fresh water that flooded the north Atlantic.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Either way, we're terraforming Mars within several decades, if we can avoid some impending World Wars.
Really, we haven't even sent people to Mars. We haven't even got a clue on how to control our own environment, what makes you think we can create an entire environment on a far away planet?
"Educate the mind but never at the expense of the soul."~Blessed Basil Moreau
I thought it was more like 30 years ago.
In my experience the trouble begins when the AGW-Believers over-state their case, but are then left without actual evidence which they can cite for it. They will try to point those questioning them at evidence which does not support their case, but instead support only a much more general idea such as that "its waming."
When their horseshit citations don't work for them, in my experience, they call in the logical fallacies such as labeling the questioners as "deniers", "fanatics", or "shills."
"His name was James Damore."
Well that and models which when applied to the data we have from 30 years ago, predict what we're seeing now.
The problem is the models we have, actually *understate* the problem. They predicted LESS effects than we're seeing now. As we get better data and models, hopefully we'll be more accurate but when you predict your mark and reality overshoots it by significant amounts, its time to adjust your models to be *more* aggressive.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
His experiments obviously proved that Faraday wasn't "worthless".
6 meters of ocean water contain more heat than the above atmosphere.
Isn't that what we've been doing? If we don't understand what we're messing with, wouldn't it make sense to cut back on the degree to which we're messing with it?
The basic theory behind global warming and the models is sound. While we might not be able to predict exactly which parts of the planet will be affected and how severely, there's already plenty of confirmation from melting eons-old glaciers that global warming and climate change are happening, and that it's primarily human caused. Sure the last 2 years have been a little cooler compared to 2007 and earlier, but we're also at a minimum in the "11-year" solar cycle and when you take that into account the overall trend is still climbing. So your comments are like someone arguing that there's no cause for alarm on the Titanic and we should just sit and listen to the band - the engineers can't tell exactly how many minutes before the ship sinks so there's no need to worry about the big hole in the bow. Teach the debate.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
"The 25 watt CFL you are discussing actually uses 50 watts total power. 25 watts at the bulb, and another 25 at the power company as they try to balance the reactive load."
Please read up on your electronics. It doesn't "use" another 25 watts at the power company. At the most, it uses a very little bit of power due to the extra current flowing in the transmission lines. Maybe a watt or two. This has been discussed here before.
Do you think all climate scientists are idiots?
Glad you asked. I can't prove that all climate change catastrophists are idiots, but may I suggest that they are not very bright scientists, at least?
Truth is, we're not getting any carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that has never been there before. IF carbon dioxide is heating up the planet, it's not going to be warmer than what we once had.
Might be true, except as our star ages it gets more luminous by about 10% every billion years. Having the same CO2 concentration as at a time in the distant past would certainly make it warmer now due to this.
The fact that CO2 causes warming does not mean that it is the only cause of warming. Sometimes large models with many variables require more effort than a quick glance at a couple graphs to understand, let alone "prove" or "refute".
First off, we as a species didn't exisit when the carbon in fossil fuels was sequestered from the atmosphere. Therefore the extra carbon may not cause global temperatures that haven't happened before, but these conditions certainly weren't experienced by humans.
News flash, people in different parts of the planet face different challenges from climate change! Just because its more cost-effective in North America and Europe to build levies around settled areas doesn't mean the same is true in Southern Asia or Polyonesia. Unless of course you take the view that only the wealthy societies matter...
Ah, you have to appreciate conservative sarcasm. Debunking the "myth" of science while praising Bush and simultaneously playing the victim. It's like a recap of the past eight years. I hope you guys stay out of power for a very long time.
Maybe you could try to actually _read_ these links?
And that's ultimate irony of the most hysterical proponents of human caused global warming. They believe that we're already irreversibly doomed and that no matter what economic devastation we wreak on the developing world (read: starvation exacerbation), all we will do is the equivalent of attaching a few life vests to the Titanic. So if we were to believe and heed them, what's the point?
Read my blog: HansMast.com
There is scientific evidence for Global Warming Climate Change. Very few of the skeptics (myself included) doubt that the evidence exists and is legitimate. However, there is also evidence that it's not OUR fault, that it was going to happen anyway, and that nothing we are planning on doing about it will actually work becuase we are placing the cart in front of the horse in blaming CO2.
The problem IMHO is that those who believe the current theories to be correct, believe with the certainty of a religious zealot. You cannot question them or else they accuse you of working for big oil, the republicans, or some other group with a vested interest. They've taken the science out of the equation and made it a SIN to question them. Sounds more like the Catholic church than the scientific community I like to consider myself a member of.
Here is more evidence that their models are incorrect. Maybe the flaw is not fatal, and the model can be saved, I'm not a climatologist so I don't know. However, there will be those on this message board that insist that having the wrong assumptions in these models, somehow isn't a problem. That's not science, that's faith. What those who've never done scientific modeling need to remember is that all models are wrong, but some models are useful
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Wrong!
http://scienceblogs.com/illconsidered/2006/04/warming-stopped-in-1998.php
Temperature _trend_ is still "up", even though we have fairly large year-to-year fluctuations.
Your notion that what I put forth was a straw-man argument is in fact itself a straw-man argument.
For what I said to be disingenuous, one would have to discount that the ocean has any effect on the climate.
Always so hasty with the labels...
Ok, you go have surgery to to remove that tumor that you may or may not have, even though the surgery may or may not kill you. Also, we don't know if the tumor is actually cancerous or not. Actually, we're not even sure if its a tumor, or something that comes naturally from aging.
This is the problem with taking massive action based on a model. If the model turns out to be wrong (yes, the whole thing could still be wrong--I haven't seen any evidence that it takes into account any natural climate cycles that have a period of more than 5,000 years, the current warming trend is nothing more than noise compared to such cycles), then you have done all this damage to industry worldwide (and lowered everyones standard of living, not to mention the fact that you caused a large number of people to starve to death). What if these climate cycles are natural, and we were actually helping to stop an ice age from wiping out a good sized portion of human civilization? Global cooling is a much scarier thought than global warming. A warmer planet encourages more wildlife diversity, opens up more cropland, though it will pose a problem for many low laying nations.
The significance of this finding is that we no longer have to worry about the gulf stream shutting down due to warmer climate, which would have hit the Western democracies hard. Who cares if it's a little warmer? So long as the weather isn't significantly affected (ie New England an England become as cold and dry as Siberia), then it really isn't a problem.
> This confirms suspicions that have been around
> since the 1990's, and likely plays havoc with
> global models of climate change.
Not that this will change our country's fixed delusion about global warming...
Well, the EU is supposed to follow the Precautionary principle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle
In my opinion, it is not a question of spending a trillion dollars now or later, but spending a trillion dollars now, or maybe wipe out the entire human race. The probability may be low, we don't know that yet, but the consequences are big enough that it is still a significant risk.
To what end?
some folks want to make trillion-dollar adjustments to industry
Say hello to the US Banking Industry - how is the US economy anyway - and the trillions lost there. And don't forget the odd trillion or two spent on the GWOT.
It's kind of poetic how stupid you come off trying to dis on the global warming people.
1. Pretty much everyone agrees that the term global warming is bad, since what is happening is global climate change, which is very real and a very big problem.
I appreciate how you raised the level of dialogue with a carefully reasoned, logical argument backed up with facts. /sarcasm
Read my blog: HansMast.com
Umm, I did. He agrees with me on the data, then goes on to draw conclusions that don't match his data.
For example: "During the glacial/interglacial cycles, CO2 concentrations and temperatures show a remarkable correlation. Closer examination reveals that CO2 does not lead the temperature changes, but actually lags by many centuries. Even so, the full extent of the warming can not be explained without the effects of CO2. Though this period does not demonstrate greenhouse gas initiated warming, it does lend support to the importance of CO2 and CH4 in setting the planetary thermostat."
The data disproves what he is saying, but he says it supports it. This person must be a mental gymnast.
Next link: "While there are indeed poorly understood ancient climates and rather controversial climate changes in Earth's long geological history, there are no clear contradictions to greenhouse theory to be found. What we do have is an unfortunate lack of comprehensive and well resolved data. There is always the chance that new data will turn up shortcomings in the models and unforeseen new aspects to climate theory, and I guarantee you scientists in the field are working hard to uncover such things - every scientist relishes the thought of uncovering new data that overturns current understanding. But it does not make any sense at all to reject CO2 as a primary driver of climate change today because it looks, through the foggy glasses of time, like CO2 has not always completely controlled climate changes in the past."
Basically he says that there is no historical correlation, but that because the current CO2 is produced by humans, there suddenly is some sort of correlation. Also he questions the strength of the data, which when you question it from the other way you are called a "denier". Why would the Earth get warm when people produce CO2, but not when it rises naturally?
Again, it's all politics.
one thing
Little things like the entire basis for popularized alarmist scenarios about sudden and dramatic changes in circulation (Day After Tomorrow...)
The naive 'deniers' leap as though the king stepped outside naked, forgetting that politically favored climatologists specialize in subsuming each new discovery into the giant tapestry of bullshit that is anthropic global warming. They spin each new 'fact' however they must to produce intended outcomes. Doubtless the new circulation model will be even more prone to sudden and catastrophic changes. All the feedback loops will clearly lead to Venus by 2029 unless we Do Something Now (tm).
Contemporary climatology is the new astrology; politically conformal 'science.'
perhaps the same end that lets us now reasonably predict the weather a few days ahead and generally even a week ahead of time? We didn't used to be able to do that much more than a day.
maybe the science that is starting to predict when volcanoes will erupt?
If we can predict something with accuracy, we can take actions appropriate the the situation *before* the situation becomes reality. This is critical when the issue is prevention of catastrophe.
you don't get better at predicting without trying out ideas and seeing how they work. In this case the models have predicted less change than we've already seen. It's clearly time to make the models act more aggressively.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Even if you could get all of humanity to agree, it would be difficult to correct the data against other events, like volcanic eruptions and sun activity.
Not a typewriter
Isn't that what we've been doing?
No. Aside from hurricane research, I'm not aware of anyone doing that. And that's really playing with weather rather than climate.
Can you cite some specific examples?
Seems a totally unrelated issue to me.
Moron.
We still can't accurately predict the weather, nor volcanoes...
And fundamentally, you're talking about shifting a global paradigm away from more than a hundred years of energy practices. This is more than whether or not to pack along an umbrella.
The need to be correct goes up exponentially. So, then, should the need for open debate.
You should work on your straw man arguments. It works better when the bit you quote (e.g., "certainty of the future") actually has something to do with the straw man you argue against (e.g., "anthropogenic warming").
To be clear: there probably is some anthropogenic warming. Its extent is subject to some debate. The future of the climate is subject to a lot of debate. The future of the global economy given climate change (and at this stage we are out of the realm of climatology and into the social sciences) is so cloudy that we might as well not even make projections.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
I agree with your statement about it being a matter of risk-assessment. Unfortunately what most people miss in the debate is that all the things man does to impact the environment are generally life-enhancing, allowing people to live longer, healthier, safer, happier lives.
So the biggest risk of environmental regulation is that it will make people live shorter, less healthy, less safe, and less happy lives.
Mine is Good
According to wikipedia this paper seems to disagree with you.
Blood cholesterol and vascular mortality by age, sex, and blood pressure: a meta-analysis of individual data from 61 prospective studies with 55â000 vascular deaths
We're actually overdue for a new ice age cycle. In fact, our CO2 output may have broken the cycle. Which is probably a good thing, but that doesn't mean that even more CO2 is still a good thing. We've overcompensated.
While it's possible for the climate to change quickly, it's usually due to some specific event, like an asteroid impact. The Earth by itself would change over the course of thousands of years. Since we can rule out asteroid impacts and pretty much any other drastic climate event, our own activity over that time period is the only thing left.
Further, in the 1970s (before this issue became politicized), the only debate between climate scientists was if the albedo effect of particulates would drive temperatures down faster than CO2 would drive it up. By the '80s, many countries had put limits on particulates (such as mandating emissions on cars), thus guaranteeing that CO2 would win the tug-of-war on tempature. I'm happy that particulates are at least limited (since they have a direct effect on the human respiratory system), but CO2 needs to be delt with, too.
Not a typewriter
Where does he say that data disproves him?
Author just points out that the _current_ warming period is unprecedented, because it's caused primarily by greenhouse gases emission.
Also: "Even so, the full extent of the warming can not be explained without the effects of CO2. "
And yet, cardiovascular death rates have dropped with increased effort to reduce cholesterol, just as predicted.
Am I the only one that this stuff reminds of the ID sites where they teach people how to defend their faith based ideas?
Granted, this site is using actual science to form an argument, but the mere appearance of needing this sort of site just gives me the willies.
"Basically he says that there is no historical correlation, but that because the current CO2 is produced by humans, there suddenly is some sort of correlation."
Let me clarify: geologic history shows that CO2 rarely was the _trigger_ for global warming. However, geologic history shows quite well the effects of CO2 _once_ _it's_ _in_ _the_ _atmosphere_.
The whole situation is pretty complex, but climate scientists are well aware of that.
"Also he questions the strength of the data, which when you question it from the other way you are called a "denier"."
Because you are. You cherry-pick favorable data to support your position.
"Why would the Earth get warm when people produce CO2, but not when it rises naturally?"
It can, of course. But we can't explain current warming using other sources. On the other hand, model of AGW fits data quite nicely.
did you miss this part of my post:
So the conveyor belt may act as somewhat of a coarse 'brake' on global warming over longer time frames.
We have the problem of warming temps melting more ice. This means less salty northern waters. As such the 'conveyor' stops running (based on previous theories). This stops the transfer of heat from the tropics to the northern climates which in turn causes a cooling of the northern climates producing more ice. It is indeed a cyclical process so point A leads to point B to point C and back to A in a massive generalization.
My point was that if the conveyor theory is wrong, the 'brake' I described might not exist or only work at a reduced rate, thus allowing more effect from global warming to be experienced.
Thank you. I didn't link "So the conveyor belt may act as somewhat of a coarse 'brake' on global warming over longer time frames" to mean that it is a cycle.
Still, that's one of the better explanations I've heard. Most are like that moronic "Day After Tomorrow" movie where they say make the argument similar to yours, but skip the last step.
1) Global warming causes ice melt at the poles
2) Currents stop due to no icing at the poles
3) Currents no longer bring warmer water to poles
4) Poles freeze
5) There is no step 5 except to show the catastrophe caused by the poles freezing (??)
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Nope.
It's more like http://www.talkorigins.org/ where whole lists of stock creationists' claims are gathered with stock refutations.
PS: I'd be curious to see such list for ID supporters.
I'm not sure I should respond reasonably to someone who immediately calls me an idiot, but let's try. First of all, the post to which I was responding itself posited that the cost would be a trillion dollars, and the GP used the same cost. I was merely adhering to the standard applied by those posts.
Second, you assert that the cost will be "much, much higher" without any data. Let's look at environment protection in history; the Clean Air Act might be a good example. Suppose we had required 2009 emission standards back when Ford was producing the Model T. Do you think that car would've been economically viable using turn-of-the-century technology? No way - would've been much too expensive, or lacked power, or had some other major flaw. Later, as technology improved, we developed catalytic converters, fuel injection systems, etc., and brought air pollution from cars way down for much less cost. Furthermore, air quality improved drastically once emissions standards rose. The cost of improving air quality via auto emissions controls was thus dramatically lowered by waiting than by insisting on it from the get-go.
Suppose in thirty years we develop a cheap carbon-sequestration technique that allows us to completely control global ppCO2? Or we develop an cheap method of cooling the atmosphere, maybe some variant on this notion of spraying seawater into the air? That would pretty dramatically change your cost assumptions, wouldn't it?
One last point: while I'm well aware that the "no-tech-improvements" cost of doing nothing now would probably be many trillions (not just $1T), you also have to admit that the proposals now under consideration don't cost just $1T right now and then nothing else later. Rather, they would cost trillions per year, forevermore. That's pretty expensive. It might be perfectly rational to wait 50 years and spend $100T at that time instead (especially since we might develop technology that requires us to spend much less).
These are all debates worth having. What pisses me off more than anything else is when people want to curtail debate by calling other people idiots or saying that these issues are all settled. They aren't.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
"To be clear: there probably is some anthropogenic warming. Its extent is subject to some debate."
OK. Let me clarify: almost all climate scientists think that we need major economic measures _yesterday_. With some minority thinking that we need some form of global engineering. And another small minority thinks it's already too late and we should just sit back and enjoy the ride.
What economic consequences of global warming are we seeing?
Please. Researchers ignore data that break their theories all the time.
It may be worst in the medical world. For example, why do you think that cholesterol is targeted as enemy number one for heart health? There is no study that has ever demonstrated causality; 50% of people with heart disease have "normal" cholesterol; nearly all studies on the subject show that all-cause mortality is higher with low cholesterol; much better working theories exist.
So why is that hypothesis still treated as correct? Because reputations and huge amounts of money would be lost. Prominent people and institutions may even be found liable. Good science goes out the window in the face of that.
Regarding the subject at hand, you might want to look at what an ad hoc hypothesis is.
Nutritionism is only pseudo-science. Go read In Defense of Food for a really nice metanarrative of nutrional memes, and the most respected nutrionists pointing out that the entire field has still basically determined nothing practically useful so far.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
No citation needed. It was a statement of my own opinion.
...
Truth is, we're not getting any carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that has never been there before. IF carbon dioxide is heating up the planet, it's not going to be warmer than what we once had.
It wasn't in the atmosphere all at once. Most all of the carbon in the earth's limestone deposits has also been in the atmosphere at one time or another. However, if it were somehow all released into the air at the same time, this planet would look a lot like Venus.
Not to mention that we are making judgements about 100000 year temperature (and composition) cycles based on 200 years of data, completely ignoring the other ~4.55 billion years. These judgments fly in the face of paleological evidence showing the earth has been much hotter than now in the past, in a repeating cycle, long before man existed.
All we really know is that the global temperatures are rising. We have no idea why. Anyone that claims they do has a political agenda or hasn't bothered with the paleological record or the Milankovitch cycle.
I'm all for green energy etc, but predicating it on global warming is fallacious and misleading. "Because we will run out of oil in less than 100 years, need sustainable energy, we fight wars over oil, fossil fuels are filthy, and hydrocarbons cause cancer" are much better reasons, factually correct, and are scarier because we have valid evidence to support them as opposed to "Wolf!", which is based on a data set tailored and limited to fit the "man caused global warming" argument and political agenda.
Nobody is denying climate change. What is at issue is the cause of the climate change. The only acceptable answer is "We don't really know, but the *evidence* says it's been much hotter and much colder in the past, and climate change is part of the earth's natural processes".
That's all we can prove.
It's very irresponsible (in many ways) to misrepresent a theory as fact before it's been proven.
I don't think any climate scientists are idiots. However a lot of them are supported by government grants, so they have a conflict of interest. There are many cases where scientists that disagreed with the bandwagon have had their funding cut.
http://www.scientificblogging.com/news_releases/climate_scientist_consensus_global_warming_real_other_scientists_not_so_much
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
Well, there's more expense than just the electricity for the bulb, when upping wattage. There could be: the cost of the fixture, the wiring possibly needed to support the wattage, ( you wouldn't want to blow a circuit breaker every time you turn on the light ). Etc.
...
Have you ever seen a domed city?
Even one?
Biosphere is the closest we have ever come. But sure, if you are willing to gamble that as yet completely unproven technology will just save us all... which is just a variant of the "Aw shucks, sumbuddy'll figger it out" argument... I can see why you aren't at all concerned. Because you have a wildly optimistic faith in human foresight and technology.
Regardless: it's not really about human extinction. That's a pretty drastic event. Of course, killing 5/6 of our population (arbitrary number to illustrate a point) would be PRETTY FUCKING BAD, even if it weren't really "extinction". So perhaps we dial back the casual attitude that if it's not extinction, it's not bad?
I have no idea if climate change will even be a net negative or positive, really. But I don't pretend that it's definitely "all gonna be ok" either. it's a pretty damn big experiment really, and a lot of people would rather not play. Unfortunately, it's kind of an all or nothing thing. So the question is who do you listen to? the ones who would rather not guess, or those who are sure we'll "figure it out"?
That was pushed aside by the Beanie baby bubble which was replaced by the Dot Gone bubble and the Y2K bubble. Those were forgotten when Wall St invented monetizing liabilities. That bubble extinguished itself by consuming all the wealth on the planet. Now they are working on monetizing CO2. It will probably be known as the Green Bubble.
Somebody should open up a bug. Why didn't QA catch this?
Thank you for disclosing your idiocy club membership. In 50-100 years the cost will not be the same, it will be MUCH MUCH higher even adjusted for inflation.
You must be president.
And you know this because of the climate computer models that were just invalidated?
The cost could be insignificant 50 years hence due to technological advancements or due to naturally occurring events. Since I'm guessing neither of us are psychic that's as likely of a prediction as your's is. One thing's for sure, you can only be as green as you can afford to be. Destroy the economy because of completely wrong models based on a misunderstanding of the most complex system man has yet encountered and the consequences will be much sooner and much more predictable. It won't be pretty and green won't be anywhere in sight. Hmmm...unless you'd count the death of billions as green. Actions have consequences and not understanding the environment those actions are taken in means the consequences are unpredictable. What you think may help may actually cause much worse damage than if you had taken no action.
I'm always amazed that people in a computer based technology forum put so much faith in computer models. A computer model only models what the programmer coded it to model (not even accounting for bugs). On top of that the people doing the coding either aren't the experts in the system being modeled or aren't experts in coding. Why the hell do people put that much faith in computer models that are attempting to model something as complex as an entire planet?
Cow farts have a significant effect on the climate. How do you measure the methane produced by a cow fart? You take samples. What a cow eats can have a major effect. So now you have to both get data on what cows eat everywhere in the world and how each diet effects there farts. Then you have to add this information to the model. This is one relatively small factor that significantly effects the planets climate. There are trillions of trillions of these many of which (like ocean currents) we don't even have an understanding how they function much less how they effect the climate. But we can make a model that not only predicts the climate for centuries but also accuratly determines all the factors that effect the climate.
Short of huge reductions in the world population, a strong world economy and rapidly advancing technology are the best bet for both understanding and effecting our environment positively. This has been historically and scientifically proven over the last couple centuries.
Who is John Galt?
I don't think that's true, but even if it is, they're not in a position to make that call, are they? They're not economists, for one thing, and while they may be expert in climatology, they are not expert in macroeconomics. A climatologist can tell us, "If you want to avert X degrees of warming, you'll need to reduce CO2 emissions by Y." But - as experts - they cannot make the call of how much X degrees of warming is likely to cost, how much a reduction of CO2 emissions by Y is likely to cost, or what trade-off should be made between those extremes.
Finally, while climatologists have just the same vote that I do for making these trade-offs in a democratic society, they don't have more votes than I do. Ultimately, it's up to voters to decide where the trade-offs should lie. The alternative is basically global tyranny*, which I (for one) consider a cure worse than the disease.
* I'm not even being hyperbolic here. The scale of measures being proposed is massive and there would be a huge incentive to cheat. Therefore, the only way to enforce these measures would be to subjugate every nation to a global power capable of enforcement.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
"Not to mention that we are making judgements about 100000 year temperature (and composition) cycles based on 200 years of data, completely ignoring the other ~4.55 billion years. These judgments fly in the face of paleological evidence showing the earth has been much hotter than now in the past, in a repeating cycle, long before man existed."
Another 'armchair climatologist'...
First, we know quite a lot about earlier climate. For example half a billion years ago, Earth was much warmer than now even with noticeably cooler Sun. Guess why?
If we survive the coming world wars of find ways to avoid them altogether, we probably will send people to Neptune and farther. And we will one day regard it as trivial and snicker about times when old farts like us rambled and dreamt about it.
I'm curious how some of the /. crowd still cannot grasp the speed of technology after the last, well, ten years, maybe 12. To get a sense of it: Roll back to the year 1909: do you think anyone could've ever imagined even a fraction of the technology we now regard as trivial?
Heck, people living in 1959 couldn't have imagined what living was in 2009, people in 1979 could not.
Can you remember or imagine what life in an office environment without email, photocopier or telephones actually looks like? No one does. I asked a dozen friends and family members who actually worked in an office with no email and one telephone for the entire floor - yet no one could clearly describe what they filled the day with back then. Everyone has their feelings about the past, rose colored glasses and all that - but the specifics are gone quicker than you can flip the calendar.
What I'm trying to tell is that we've only got a faint idea what the past was like, even if we have movies, books, pictures and living memories. How on earth should we have a clue on what the future brings?
The only thing we do know is that it probably brings things we couldn't ever imagine lest smoke crack.
you idiots still can't determine if rising C02 is causing a rising global temerature; or IF a rising global temperature is causing a degasification of the ocean forcing an increased release of C02.
Deaths have decreased because emergency treatment at the hospital has improved and people are less likely to ignore the warning signs of a heart attack. Heart disease rates have actually increased.
^X^S ^X^C
Of course HE doesn't say it. He says the same thing that I said (that warming started before the CO2 started rising), then he went on to say that CO2 caused the rise, when HE JUST SAID that the temperature started rising before the CO2.
Just because he can't explain it any other way doesn't mean that that CO2 is what caused it. You can't see the other possible causes because there is no record. It could have been caused by any number of events, such as solar cycles, Earth passing through some galactic radiation belt, bombardment by ice/methane microcomets, etc etc.
When did I cherry pick? I took HIS DATA and interpreted it in the way that my scientific training dictated (I'm a chemist). I might be wrong, but his evidence certainly doesn't support his conclusion. If the Earth started warming, and the CO2 rose centuries later in response, and both kept rising thereafter, that is absolutely not proof that CO2 causes warming! Unless he can identify what caused the initial warming, and show that it didn't continue throughout the period, then his "evidence" is worthless.
When scientists discuss science, the is ALWAYS argument like this. Critics, me in this case, poke holes in the theories that are presented until the theory is strong enough to withstand attack. When people start talking about global warming, rather than a give and take, they simply label critics "deniers" and write them off. THAT IS NOT HOW SCIENCE WORKS. Therefore, this is POLITICS, not science.
Sure, climatologists are not experts in the economy.
However, stating that we need major CO2 emissions reduction is well within their competence. So they're stating that.
How we're gonna tackle it is a task for economists, engineers and other scientists.
Number of votes is irrelevant. Do you want to abolish CDC and FEMA because virologists have only one vote too?
It never fails to amaze me just how much hubris the human race can muster up on its own behalf.
The thing is, if you want to take an actual look at the history of the earth's geological age, and say, use a year as an analogy for how long its been around compared to us, we don't show up till around 5 seconds to midnight December 31. --thank you David Attenborough for that image--
Life on earth will continue blithely on without us. The earth will sweep us off its back as surely as a water-buffalo swats a gnat, with about as much notice, and future palaeontologists will look back at the 'human' era as one of the many branches that was doomed to fail and become extinct .... something just a wee bit more successful than the Neanderthal.
And we thought the dinosaurs were a failure. Take a look at how long they lasted in geological time compared to us so far. I think they win.
Claws down.
-Magdalene --"there are 10 types of people in the world, those who read binary, and those who don't"
We don't know much about the weather ten days from now and you think you know about the general climate a hundred years in the future? Are you serious?
Yes, because I understand the implications of Chaos Theory. Namely, the Butterfly Effect prevents you from making specific predictions a month from now, but still allows you to make more general predictions years or even centuries in the future. This is why Climatology and Meteorology are separate disciplines.
The Club of Rome misunderstood how an increase in the price of oil due to shortages means that some reserves suddenly become profitable to exploit. That doesn't mean we won't eventually run out or that we won't cause other problems along the way.
Not a typewriter
If that's the case, why did many of those same people decry the stimulus bill as generational theft?
Not a typewriter
Any sufficiently powerful entity will be invested in both maintaining the status quo and making sure that any adjustments to industry will be ones that favor their solutions.
"If the Earth started warming, and the CO2 rose centuries later in response, and both kept rising thereafter"
Temperature growth usually exhibits a 'hockey stick' shape. A slow initial warming (due to various reasons, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles ) and then rapid warming. The best explanation for rapid warming is rise of CO2 concentration.
Do you _really_ think that climate scientists are stupid?
on these models which are still in such a preliminary state.
Really? What makes them preliminary state?
The fact that they haven't been validated. These models, which have existed for 30 years, make predictions of a massively nonlinear system going out hundreds of years. They could be off by three orders of magnitude, and we wouldn't know the difference until 2100. Go dig up some of the 1980's climate model predictions of 2010 and let me know how close they are.
If you want to put in political controls to manage future climate change, you really need to know, with a fair degree of precision, what the long-term system gain is. If the deep current changes the rate of heat transport from the poles to the equator, or from the surface layer to the bottom, we need to know how sensitive the future century extrapolation is to this flux. Does it push catastrophic warming off by 1000 years or draw it in 2080? But none of the existing models has been validated. They check fine against the past data from which they were created, but that really doesn't tell us whether they will accurately represent the future.
No, that is not what he said. He said: "But it does not make any sense at all to reject CO2 as a primary driver of climate change today because it looks, through the foggy glasses of time, like CO2 has not always completely controlled climate changes in the past."
He's saying that it doesn't make any sense to look at past data to help us draw conclusions about current trends, which is utter madness! If you want to shut down the engine of the world, you damn well better be SURE, BEYOND DOUBT that you are right, and be aware that millions if not hundreds of millions of people will DIE because of it. The fact is that there IS doubt. To say that all scientists agree is WRONG, because I'm a scientist, and I do disagree, thank you very much. I also don't take kindly to politicians lying about what I think about ANYTHING.
It's too early to even guess what the smashing of this old model will mean, in terms of disproving or
proving Global Warming. Don't jump the gun. I think it's significant, but it may not actually end up as
a significant factor is widely accepted theories about global warming. Let's let the experts digest this data before making any grand pronouncements.
The data in the Framingham study does agree with me. And so does the data in every other study out there - there is not a single one that demonstrates causality.
The meta-analysis you link to does no better - it shows only a correlation (their word: "association") that is useless to any practitioner. Meta-analyses are always suspect because the input studies and parameters are cherry-picked to have the desired outcome.
^X^S ^X^C
Broken model? What broken model? The model for global warming is fully intact. The fact that one small part of an accessory needs some adjustment in no way breaks the model for global warming.
The only thing this study shows is that water that circulates in depths of 700 to 1500 meters under the surface travels in wider and slower paths than had been previously thought. The total flux of water is, naturally, the same, water isn't accumulating in the Arctic.
Wait...you mean the ocean currents have no effect on global climate? Oh, they do but this major misunderstanding of how the global currents function doesn't matter because the water isn't accumulating in the arctic? Let's face it. You are one of the faithful. Even in the face of SCIENTIFIC evidence that our understanding of the ocean currents, which by SCIENTIFIC evidence affects the global climate, was significantly wrong you STILL BELIEVE.
Who is John Galt?
You speak as if we weren't already spending hundreds of billions to keep companies [chrysler.com] that cause global warming [gm.com] alive.
Yeah, that'll take care of it. We'll just get rid of all the car companies.
Who is John Galt?
Soem discussions of global warming sound like creationism in this regard.
Really? What makes them preliminary state? The simple fact is, that the majority of data that feeds these models ARE known.
Ahhh...the faithful. Even in the face of SCIENTIFIC evidence that the models are flawed and based on untested assumptions they cling to the conclusions. But we know that every OTHER factor used in the models are absolutely correct. It was just this one little thing we hadn't tested. Just like yesterday this was absolutely known.
GP was correct that we shouldn't cause major disruption of the global economy based on a problem so little understood that our attempts to correct it may actually make it worse. Should we try and shift away from a fossil fuel base economy? Sure. But slowly and surely as technologies that allow it come online. Not forced such that we have no idea of the consequences either economically or environmentally.
Who is John Galt?
I KNOW politicians are stupid. If they start the fear-mongering machine, it means they are lying. Think about the bailouts, and the "stress tests".
Show me the actual charts (the link you posted had broken pictures), and if the temperature takes off as CO2 concentration ramps up, I'll concede that you may be right.
How about freons? Do you remember that scare?
Well, it turned out to be as bad as it was predicted. Only we managed to stop it just in time.
"Show me the actual charts (the link you posted had broken pictures), and if the temperature takes off as CO2 concentration ramps up, I'll concede that you may be right."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mauna_Loa_Carbon_Dioxide-en.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Instrumental_Temperature_Record.png
Satisfied?
Ahhh...the faithful. Even in the face of SCIENTIFIC evidence that the models are flawed and based on untested assumptions they cling to the conclusions. But we know that every OTHER factor used in the models are absolutely correct. It was just this one little thing we hadn't tested. Just like yesterday this was absolutely known.
Actually, the evidence is overwhelming that we are in global warming; Glaciers melting at a rate unknown. GLobal temp for 100+ years obviously climbing. Heck, I have been watching watching weather.com and comparing the actual to predicted daily temps and for the last 5 years, more than 98% of the time the actuals are ABOVE predicted. What I find interesting is that there are ppl that still claim that we are not undergoing global warming. Heck, just 10 years ago, nearly ALL THE REPUBLICAN PARTY said that it was not occurring. Now, the majority accept that it is occurring, but just not man made.
Now, as to the models, there are many factors in it. Things that are unknown have experiments being designed for it. This was one of them. There was underlying assumptions here that lead to others to design experiments to confirm it. And it did not. BUT, other aspects of the models have held up. I am sure that within a month, we will see what the models show.
In the end, does it really matter about the climate issues to you? Would you rather not be more concerned about the west depending on other ppl that want kill us (or at least control us)? WOuld it not make more sense to FINALLY get the F*&^ off of imported fossil fuel from countries that are actively working to control all other countries? And are you not concerned about the future for your kids if we continue to have massive economic deficits (trade deficits, not even counting fed. deficit)? This is in NOBODIES best interest. So skip all the garbage about climate and just look at this from a pure economic POV. It is in all of our best interest to quit burning fossil fuel, and use it for better items; Fertilizer; plastics; base chemicals; etc.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
No, it isn't. It's within their competence to say that to reduce temperature by X degrees requires Y. That's doesn't mean we need Y, although they might think so. (And I'm eliding here a point about the degree to which they can draw even the direct relationship between X and Y - I don't think it's as exact as you seem to think.)
Same deal with virologists. Sure, we need them to tell us that we need X doses of flu vaccine to protect against the possibility of Y. But whether we think Y is a serious enough threat to be worth buying those X doses is not their call.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
Absolutely not. I want the charts showing temperatures going back at least a hundred thousand years, and I would prefer ten million. That data is less than a thousandth of a blip on the geological time scale.
"likely plays havoc with global models of climate change"
No it won't. It can't challenge the models. The models are correct. Evidence doesn't matter. The Global Warming economic and political machine will not allow itself to be threatened.
>The Club of Rome misunderstood...
Of course, the Global Warming Acolytes understand everything.
Not all of them. Just get rid of those that bet their future on big gas guzzlers -- and lost. Let Darwin and Adam Smith take care of that.
It's amazing how people who think we should do nothing to fight global warming because it would cost too much are the same who propose spending as much or more to save companies that are among the causes of global warming.
Does the Gulf Stream actually have much of an impact on North America?
It has a profound effect on the fisheries of the Grand Banks. That is a significant portion of the world's fish catch. So yes, it does have an impact, though not perhaps in quite the way you meant.
I get a kick out of people who think the ocean will quit circulating because of salinity changes.
Warm water will still rise, cold water will still sink, As long as warm water flows from the tropics north, water will still flow south to replace it. It actually makes more sense that the southern flow is more diffuse than people thought. Picture a river flowing into the ocean, as it reaches the ocean it diffuses and spreads out, eventually you can't see it anymore. As the Gulf stream loses energy on its trip north, it will become more diffuse and spread out and eventually disappear. Its the thermal energy in the Gulf Stream that makes it flow so fast and in such a contained manner.
Salinity may change some of the flow patterns but I never thought it would be enough to stop this process.
It brings another question I have always had though, Won't increased global temperatures have a tendency to increase overall precipitation levels worldwide? Warmer Oceans would evaporate more, producing more clouds and rain. I don't get a chance to talk to climate scientists a lot, but most of the lay people I talk to seem to think that increasing global temperatures will automatically result in bigger deserts and more drought. I can see weather changes happening, but to me, it makes more sense that there will be more moisture in the atmosphere not less.
"No, it isn't. It's within their competence to say that to reduce temperature by X degrees requires Y."
Yes. And the methods for these are mostly within the bounds of climatology. I.e. questions like 'by how much we must decrease CO2 to stop the warming' or 'would stratospheric aerosols help to reduce greenhous effect'.
Moving goalposts already?
In any case, you're welcome: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/data.html
Also: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3090279.stm and http://environment.about.com/od/globalwarming/a/icecore.htm
Maybe I'm confused by your statement, but in the U.S. it's the auto unions and their friends the Democrats who want to "save" the car companies and the environmentalists and their friends the Democrats who also want to destroy industry to "save" us from CO2 and Global Warming. Granted I mostly hang around a bunch of libertarian Republicans (hang around being defined as get exposed primarily to their random political comments as opposed to other groups), but it sure seems that those who oppose the "stimulus" and who oppose the bailouts also oppose Cap and Trade, CO2 treaties, etc...
So for the record, I don't believe that we should spend anything on limiting CO2 emissions and I also don't believe the government should spend anything to save companies, including the auto industry.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Right now, it has already been proven to an extremely high degree of certainty, that global warming is both very serious and has a high probability.
[Citation needed]
>Do you think all climate scientists are idiots?
No, they just love grant money.
You can't "refute" his arguments btw, just trying reveals a hidden agenda on the part of the refuter. He's completely right about the SNR, the long term trend and the correlation problem.
But I don't expect any of your "scientists" to properly argue their point without name calling.
You are ignoring the possibility of positive feedback:
Rise in temperature (among other things) causes a rise in CO2.
Rise in CO2 causes a rise in temperature.
Lather
Rinse
Repeat
Actually, the evidence is overwhelming that we are in global warming; Glaciers melting at a rate unknown.
"at an unknown rate" is great scientific evidence.
GLobal temp for 100+ years obviously climbing.
What temperature readings are you using from 100+ years ago? They were using satellites to take accurate complete temperature measurements 100+ years ago?
Heck, I have been watching watching weather.com and comparing the actual to predicted daily temps and for the last 5 years, more than 98% of the time the actuals are ABOVE predicted.
Huh...that's strange. Did you know that most global warming models predict that global warming will actually cause temperature to drop in a number of areas. So you weren't watching the temperature in those areas? So not being able to predict the weather is actually evidence in support of accurate global warming models?
Heck, just 10 years ago, nearly ALL THE REPUBLICAN PARTY said that it was not occurring.
Ahhh...so the republicans caused global warming. According to my faith it's the pirates but pirates, republicans, it's all the same to the democrats.
Now, as to the models, there are many factors in it. Things that are unknown have experiments being designed for it. This was one of them. There was underlying assumptions here that lead to others to design experiments to confirm it. And it did not. BUT, other aspects of the models have held up. I am sure that within a month, we will see what the models show.
So every other aspect of every model showing global warming has been tested and there was just this one little thing they hadn't gotten around to yet. Don't you see the idiocy in that? Can you even begin to grasp the complexity of whet they are trying to model? Who created the model? Were they an expert in every scientific area that effects global climate? Were they also an expert in programing that they could recreate all those interactions accuratly in a computer model? even the experts in one given area will tell you that we really don't understand to the point of exactly mathematically modeling their area of expertise much less every interaction of the area with every other area. But you have 100% faith in those models.
In the end... ...Fertilizer; plastics; base chemicals; etc.
Now this is all reasonable. (except that I don't have kids. I'd be in jail for child abuse these days. I believe in spanking.) But even more I want an advancing economy and technology. And both are an absolute requirement for getting off fossil fuels. One thing that has been historically and scientifically proven over the last few centuries is that short of greatly reducing the world population economic and technological advancement are the most effective tools for improving the environment. That's the point the GGP was making. Don't try to force radical changes and disruptions on a system (the economy and environment) that is far more complex than we can possible currently understand. The results, while they may include some of those you predicted, are certain to include many that were never even imagined and it's pretty much guaranteed that some of those will be bad likely to the point that you're worse off than when you started.
Who is John Galt?
Pearls before swine by friend, pearls before swine.
I wonder sometimes what these discussions would be like if the teenagers, hippies, those who don't bath, and Democrat activists were blocked.
http://www.uwpcc.washington.edu/documents/PCC/loziernaturesubmission2008.pdf
Honestly, pretty much anyone who knows about the subject and does not have an interest in the political implications is uncommitted on the Science. The more distant people are from the funding cycle, the more sceptical they are.
On point 2, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been shrinking over geological time to what was an all-time low. It used to be thousands of parts per million. CO2 is an essential plant fertiliser and there is evidence the biosphere is becomming MORE green because of the recent upswing. Does that "concern" you in any way? I should hope not.
On your third point, wars because it's 1 degree warmer? Are you SERIOUS?
Not all of them. Just get rid of those that bet their future on big [wikimedia.org] gas guzzlers [wikimedia.org] -- and lost. Let Darwin and Adam Smith take care of that.
From an economic viewpoint I agree with you. But that has nothing to do with the environment and getting rid of them won't help the environment. So you think hybrids are the answer? Do you know the environmental problems involved in having every car in existence have batteries? Batteries are full of toxic nasty things some of which rare to the point that there is just not enough of them. Imagine battery disposal issues in places like China or Mexico where rules aren't very well enforced. The solutions aren't as simple as the environmentalist make them out to be. What will fix the environment is a healthy world economy that allows for rapid advancing technology not forced radical changes that would hamper those.
Who is John Galt?
It brings another question I have always had though, Won't increased global temperatures have a tendency to increase overall precipitation levels worldwide? Warmer Oceans would evaporate more, producing more clouds and rain. I don't get a chance to talk to climate scientists a lot, but most of the lay people I talk to seem to think that increasing global temperatures will automatically result in bigger deserts and more drought.
The answer to your question is yes, there will be more moisture in the atmosphere, generally speaking. However, the moisture will be distributed unevenly, with most of it being generated and precipitated in the northern hemisphere. This compounds a problem in that many regions in the world that are most populous will experience more problems with the desertification of their lands.
This helps with the population problem in that we will no longer have to rely on third world dictators and governmental irresponsibility to manage third world populations... the weather will help us out.
If the world economy collapsed, we would have no choice but to have less of a carbon footprint. Industrial society began when we started using oil as fuel, and once that supply is disrupted, it's unlikely to come back for some time. America will be lucky, since we leave near a lot of arable land.
Cuba is the only society that's survived a disruption, and they did it while under US embargo. Their oil imports dropped by 70% after the Soviet Union collapsed. Electricity no longer lasted through the day. Food supplies vanished, transport halted. If you research it, you'll discover that our entire society depends on oil. Plastics, fertilizers, roads, tires, electronics, pesticides... and for every calorie of food you consume, three thousand oil calories were spent to get it to your mouth. Going to Iraq was a lie, but not a mistake in the minds of the people who did it. Whoever controls what's left of the oil controls the world. There's not a single military force on earth that could operate without a huge supply of oil.
And the point is to have an effect, a massive effect, in reducing use of finite resources such as oil, especially those that destroy the only life-sustaining rock we can get to right now.
The only problem is that technology has brought great efficiency, but efficiency means less profit. Efficiency is the arch enemy of our current economic system, which depends on growth of consumption. Our survival depends on the opposite - reduction of consumption. Until there is an economic incentive to consume far less, we are not in control of when we make the switch. And if we're not slowly choosing to make the switch, the chance the world can survive an oil disruption without a world wide war is, in my opinion, almost impossible.
Batteries are made of nasty toxic and in many cases rare materials. The disposal problem would be far worse than that for nuclear energy.
Many modern batteries can be almost completely recycled. America has enough electricity being wasted right now in off-peak hours to power tens of millions of vehicles for their daily commute. But electric vehicles are too reliable and efficient to be politically possible, because you're asking corporations to accept 15 cents per mile in fuel and maintenance costs instead of 50. No spark plugs, oil changes, belts, transmissions... electric motors will probably last decades with very little maintenance. Batteries have lasted 180,000 miles, and that's on current technology.
Why else do you think GM killed their EV and sold the patents to Exxon Mobil? It's the classic story of the cobbler who makes his shoes too well, and manufactures himself out of a job.
Deaths are the most accurate indicator. Disease rates are unreliable, because they are so strongly influenced by changes in diagnosis.
So you are arguing that emergency treatment in hospitals just coincidentally improved around the time that doctors begin to push patients to reduce their cholesterol levels? Do you have any evidence? For example, can you show that deaths have been reduced as much or more in patients who do not reduce their cholesterol as in those who do?
As if you are not just another 'armchair climatologist'.
The very fact that you use the term "Deniers" shows you are just another partisan hack pushing your agenda.
The post you 'quoted':
...Or, at a minimum, cost a trillion dollars to adjust to as it changes.
Your post I called you an idiot for: If we have to choose between spending a trillion dollars now and spending a trillion fifty years from now, which should we do? Personally, I'd rather wait the fifty.
The OP implied paying the trillion 'now' by definition of as adjusting to changes. You implied that if we just waited, the cost would be the same; a wholly different position. Sorry that's not a reasonable assumption based on *known* factors.
As I said in my post, mitigating a problem/catastrophe is cheaper than waiting for it to fully develop and then try to remedy the situation. Your example of the automobile doesn't work since when the Model T as invented carbon dioxide emissions weren't known to be a problem, nor were the emissions from the vehicles even a remotely measurable portion of human emissions. So no problem known, no action required, no costs increased. Your examples of catalytic converters and such I claim as perfect evidence of my strategy. A problem was noticed and they attempted to solve it before it became overwhelming, and as you say it worked. Certainly cheaper than if we had done nothing until it became worse.
You're next point:
Suppose in thirty years we develop a cheap carbon-sequestration technique that allows us to completely control global ppCO2? Or we develop an cheap method of cooling the atmosphere, maybe some variant on this notion of spraying seawater into the air? That would pretty dramatically change your cost assumptions, wouldn't it?
All nice and good but what about if we don't happen to manage those things? But seriously, where do you think your 30 year down the line solutions come from? They come from investment *today*. That's the trillion now versus later.
I will agree the 'trillion' figure is just a reference to the OP and your postings. Any number will do frankly. My point is that the costs of after the fact correction just about always dwarf the mitigation/prevention costs and that includes any 'ongoing' costs. The costs also include a forecast 200 million climate refugees as sea level rises. A trillion dollars annual ends up looking fairly cheap rather than trying to handle that many refugees relocating to new areas. The modern infrastructure to support them alone would be in the trillions.
I will apologize for my tone but as I think I've explained, I think it was a pretty dumb statement to say it would cost the same 50 years from now as it would today. It seemed to me that your comment was intended to curtail the debate precisely by making an unfounded rationalization that its better to just do nothing. I agree with your statement that such inflamatory rhetoric doesn't help the rational discourse and I was, erroneously, responding in kind to what I understood at the time.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Tundra? About as fertile as it gets. It is just frozen now. The big worry is rapid release of gigatonnage of methane from that frozen tundra. If we can live through that, and that is a whopper "if", and I have serious doubts about it meselfs, the resultant areas will be quite suitable for farming (after the surface dries out a little of course, which it should if the permafrost completely melts).
Are you saying it is a bit more swirly than expected?
Or did God "pee in the pool" again?
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
Volcano eruption prediction linky
"A relation between long-period events and imminent volcanic eruptions was first observed in the seismic records of the 1985 eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in Columbia. The occurrence of long-period events were then used to predict the 1989 eruption of Mount Redoubt in Alaska and the 1993 eruption of Galeras in Columbia. In December 2000, scientists at the National Center for Prevention of Disasters in Mexico City predicted an eruption within two days at Popocatépetl, on the outskirts of Mexico City. Their prediction used research that had been done by Bernard Chouet, a Swiss volcanologist who was working at the United States Geological Survey and who first observed a relation between long-period events and an imminent eruption.[1][2][3] The government evacuated tens of thousands of people; 48 hours later, the volcano erupted as predicted. It was Popocatépetl's largest eruption for a thousand years, yet no one was hurt."
Much the same with weather, the farther out we go the less certain the prediction is. But when you see the results of past predictions and realize they are all 'under' the actual results, it's perfectly reasonable to assume future results will similarly be worse than the predictions.
Weather predictions are different in that they are frequently over and under predicted results hence why the appearance of randomness. The climate models have been consistently under what we've actually seen.
As far as paradigm shits, we've seen orders of magnitude change in exponentially shorter time frames in relation to CO2 levels, i.e. 'the hockey stick' graph. Something is going to have to give, and it likely isn't going to be the earth's environment.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
No, I'm not. I wanted long term data from the start (we were talking about historical data from hundreds of thousands of years ago, remember?). If you think 100 years of data is enough, then you are hardly qualified to be either an advocate or a sceptic. Anyways, ahving data from Mauna Loa, an ACTIVE VOLCANO isn't exactly what I would call "average".
In any event, I looked at the data from the first CO2 ice core I saw on that site, and it showed that CO2 concentration in the atmosphere started increasing a little under 30,000 years ago, going up 50% by ~1300AD (assuming I'm reading it right, it isn't very clear), though it was still within the range of other cycles over the past 200K years. Also, the data stops several hundred years ago (about 1300 AD). If you have any sources for the last few hundred years, we can finish painting the picture here.
Just looking at the data may not be sufficient, as it is hard to line up. I'm also not sure how he is calculating his deltaT. If it is a year over year change, the the Earth was quite cold indeed a few tens of thousands of years ago. It seems more likely that it is change from "today's" temperature. With that in mind, when we take a look at the data, we see that at about 121000 years ago, thee was a peak of CO2, where the temperature peaked 10,000 years before that. It seems to me that that says that CO2 is a TRAILING indicator, and does not necessarily contribute to the warming. If it did, the Earth would have still been warming as the CO2 concentration rose a further 8% after the temperature peaked.
So yeah, thanks for debunking that whole "global warming" thing for me!
The problem with this is that the Precautionary Principle as normally stated admits no cost/benefit analysis. If effect X causes a cost of Y, the PP would normally state that it should be mitigated if Y exceeds some threshold. But X might also have a benefit of Z which already mitigates Y, or even exceeds it.
I'm not suggesting that public policy be made on strict utilitarian principles, btw. Rather, each case is separate. Costs and benefits can't always be netted together. (Suppose a cost of $1 million brings the benefit of the avoidance of 1 death? Suppose the cost is $1 billion? Is the net cost/benefit positive or negative? We have no - and should have no - dollar/life conversion ratio than answers this question neatly.)
Here's an example of the PP gone awry: DDT. In developed nations, DDT is considered an environmental threat. It's known to build up in organisms higher up in the food chain, it's a human toxin, etc. And - importantly - the benefits from using it aren't all that great: we have other anti-mosquito toxins, and we don't have endemic malaria or other mosquito-borne illnesses anyway.
But there are African countries where this is not the case. The costs are still there, and they are grave. But the cost of not using DDT is arguably worse: they can't afford more expensive toxins, and they have serious disease problems. Hundreds of thousands of malaria deaths a year might be avoided through the use of DDT. I don't necessarily argue that it should be used - I'll leave that for another topic - but debate on the subject should not be curtailed by the PP. There should be debate on whether the environmental, and human, damage caused by DDT spraying is offset by the benefits of reduced disease.
One last little thing: I've read a couple of times that the alternative to expensive mitigation today might be "wiping out the entire human race". But come on, this isn't serious. Even in "The Day After Tomorrow" (which is obviously an implausibly disastrous, fictitious scenario) the equatorial regions were still livable. Is there any plausible scenario involving climate change where the entire human race is wiped out? This is the sort of hyperbole that hurts your side of this debate. If you want to use a bad scenario, use something plausible, like: Billions of people, mostly in developing countries, die from disease, starvation and rising sea levels. That's plenty bad enough, and at least it's possible.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
Only one caveat...the article wasn't about the surface currents like the Gulf Stream, which as you say, any sailor will readily testify to their existence. The article was about the undersea currents that supposedly are the reverse effect of the surface currents.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Thank you for your informative response.
I am, by no means, suggesting that we shouldn't be trying to affect our environment less. I don't doubt that abnormal levels of any substance in the atmosphere will have some type of cumulative effect on the globe.
What I'm against is portraying the "human activity is the cause" as fact when there's really no way to link data together without some type of control. You say it yourself, it "may" have broken the cycle. Is there some effective way of testing this hypothesis?
What if...just suppose that the climate change that you fear for its cost is natural and not man-caused?
Should we then muck with the environment in an effort to stop it, because of the cost if we don't?
As far as economic disruption goes, that's going to be no big deal in a free country. People will move out, move uphill/inland and their assets(other than real estate) and work will follow. More will be employed building new harbors, new levees, etc. The economy can readily adapt and does so way faster than any ecosystem can change.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
they fail to account for the fact that there are natural cycles in climate
Milankovitch Cycles have been accounted for since their discovery, as well as solar output cycles. I really don't know what cycles you could be mentioning that a generation of scientists has somehow ignored.
lets start with the fun stuff.
;-)
Cow farts: cows are simply reprocessing carbon *recently* taken out of atmosphere, i.e. grass. This is a 'shitload' (sorry, couldn't resist!) less than the amount of *ancient* carbon we're stuffing into the atmosphere every day. That's the real problem. We're changing the equation significantly with those additions. As for the numbers of cows, how many bison used to exist in the Americas? how many other animals no longer exist because exterminated them. The cows don't reflect that much of a change to the situation.
Now, computer models. So your rationale is that because they can't possibly measure everything we shouldn't try to improve them?
Models are extremely complex yes, but as you say, they aren't anything more than the people who programmed them. So your next point is that obviously people can't do this so we shouldn't even try?
I'm loving your positive attitude
Next, if you try and estimate how far away something is, and you are continually coming up short, wouldn't you expect that future estimations would be short as well? And alter your estimation process to be more aggressive? This is what has happened with climate models. We've taken data from 30 years ago and asked to see what 'today' would look like. The results indicate less effects than we actually see. The models are too conservative. So when they predict very severe results in the future, its more than reasonable to say wow maybe the actual results will be even worse than that.
Lastly, your argument for a technical solution is actually my very same one. You expect/hope that a solution in 30 years will make things much cheaper to deal with then. A little too hopeful maybe but not overly so; humans are nothing if not ingenious. Where do you think that this 'solution' will come from? It comes from research and testing and monitoring and 'models' to predict things. Money spent *right now* rather than waiting until you *have no choice* but to make changes. At which point it may be too late and/or cost much more to remedy.
Technology is going to be the answer, simply because our culture isn't going to let it go. But that requires time to figure things out; and it's best to start that process earlier rather than later.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Did you know that for something like 700 years the speed of light was 34 mph? That's the speed at which a junebug, tied with a string to one's hand, would start to blur. "Must be the speed of light!"
The point is, man is putting all the clues together from ideas and testing. Sometimes BOTH are wrong, but the attitude needs to be one of skeptical application of the known information, not blocking out entire works because of genre.
Case in point: one ancient book specifies the Earth as "suspended from nothing". Same book talks about being one land mass, then splitting (plate tectonics). Same book talks about the singularity that started this reality. Oh, and there's much, much more that it got right, but NO SCIENTIST would consider reading the Bible, would they?
It's not just bull; science and religion agree. And when they don't, it's bad theology or bad science. And there's a lot of both.
Key Point: why "must" dinosaurs be mentioned in the Bible? No one alive would see one, learn from one, get sat upon by one....why must there be a mention in the Bible?
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
see how 'calm' they are then
Nutritionism is only pseudo-science.
Except for preventing vitamin deficiencies. A class of terrible "diseases" was quickly and cheaply wiped out in the first half of the 20th century because of the novel idea that food gives us something besides fat or carbs or protein, something that we need in order to survive.
While I agree that there is plenty of nutrition-based pseudo-science out there, there are some true blue chemists working on this stuff and I think the worst you could say as a generalization is that:
(a) There's still a lot of work to be done. Our bodies are complicated and isolation studies are in many ways a blunt tool.
(b) There's a lot of crap and well-established canards out there because it's an area of study that affects so many. there's also good science, if you know where to look. in most cases the FDA does know where to look. In the periods where they're not gutted by administrations unfriendly toward regulatory agencies, anyway.
I know it's popular to blame the US for everything, including (somehow!) lowering scientific standards for the entire world, but I grew up here in the 80s and 90s and I heard plenty about global warming. For instance, Nickelodeon, which was the most popular childrens' programming (on cable tv, at least), would regularly run little cartoons about the greenhouse effect and the need to lower CO2 output.
Also they would run stuff about recycling, conserving water, solar power, you name it.
Going back further you have this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4dAkoV87a0
Sorry to break up the hate-fest, guys.
Not only that, the core is cooling! Take that, LIEberal media!
I don't claim to know the full scope, but there are couple of important points regarding Gulf Stream, all stemming from it moving heat from tropics into artic.
First: since it essentially prevents significant areas of ocean and land from freezing over, it also increases absorption of sunlight -- snow and ice reflect most sunlight off, ground/ocean water absorb most. Hence, more solar energy gets "captured" within atmosphere, increasing temperature.
Second: independent of total sum of energy being retained, there is the question of human inhabitability of the land areas in question. Much of northern Europe (Scandinavia) would be (even) less hospitable to human and non-human life, if and when local average temperature went down, like it would if not for the conveyor belt.
So it does mean a lot, esp. so locally, but also globally.
Not that they are ignored, but are simply unknown. If you think scientists know everything, I hate to disappoint, but I'm a scientist (a damn good one, you can thank me for the next generation of antimicrobial materials coming to the consumer, medical, and industrial world over the next five years), and I'm not smart enough to understand 1/1000000th of the phenomena that go on in this universe.
For example, I recall reading about an oral tradition among the aboriginal people of Australia that talks about a number of climate cycles, which apparently included El Nino, La Nina, as well as several cycles ranging from 125-625 years in period, and even a 40,000 year cycle. Who knows if there is any truth to it or now, but it does point out that there is a lot we don't know. If we start actively trying to manipulate the climate, we are almost certain to shoot ourselves in the foot.
Blasphemer is more apt for what you're preaching. Denier just doesn't have the same ring.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
Personally, I wonder why we're not considering the impact of all the little heat pockets we need to survive on this planet. Think about it - we warm our cars, our homes, our beverages, we use electrical devices that ALL radiate heat, and we're actually producing a fair amount of thermal energy just by walking around and breathing...
And THIS gets moderated up as insightful? WTF?
Sweet Jebus christ: the problem is not one-off release of thermal energy, but that the freaking gashouse gases increase absorption and reduce emission of incoming solar energy.
That is: CO2 (et al) will effectively increase retainment of heat from Sun over time. Your releasing of energy is nothing compared to cranking the rate of the solar generator notch higher. If this was otherwise, it wouldn't be very hard to convert/consume "extra" thermal energy to cool off the planet.
Yes, it is fashionable faux pas to antromorphise carbon, with silly catchphrases like carbon footprint. But that doesn't mean that the underlying concern wouldn't exist.
Then you don't understand science.
In any active science you are going to get continual alteration and refinement. And occasional large changes. You also get everyone overblowing the importance of the thing they've just been working on. And occasional refutations of earlier claims that are sometimes verified and othertimes not.
Science is a messy, chaotic process. Sorry if you thought it was clean and simple. For clean and simple you need a historical retrospective of last century (or earlier). It was never clean and simple while it was happening, I don't care WHAT they claim on TV, Or General Science I. Or any other hagiographical literature.
So... to an extent you're right: If the authors are correct, then the models will need to be rewritten. But as the way they are tested is by validating them by predicting the present from historical records, I don't expect major changes in the predictions. Possibly major changes in the theoretical underpinnings...which might give different values for which variables are more important...and might not. But you should expect that the authors have overstated the importance of their results. They've got to argue that what they did is important, after all.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
There certainly is a risk. I can't see it being much greater than the risk that a solar storm is about to wipe out all our electronics,
Whoa. Now I feel MUCH better, now that YOU have estimated the risk to be low. For a while I felt queazy about all those mumbo-jumbo scientist and their complicated words making predictions, instead of your more sane average folks like you.
Question: what, if anything, you base your estimation on? Your contempt of "global warming freaks"? You know, there were a few people who "knew" that warnings about Mt. St. Helens eruption being imminent were just bogus, and stayed. Those exemplary individuals held to their beliefs for the rest of their lives, whole day and a half.
If it wasn't for the fact that we share the same planet (even though seemingly not the same reality), I'd let you fry along with the planet.
Alas, I'm here too: and I will not let you and your ilk ruin it for us; you will cry, bitch and moan, but you too will be forced to reduce your energy usage, you ignorant stupid little brat.
Unfortunately, those models are going to BE in a preliminary state until long after it's too late to fix things. Based on current event evidence (rather than models) the models have been understating the seriousness of the situation. So fixing the models correctly, when it ever happens, if it ever does... (We still can't make weather predictions good for a month ahead of time) ... will probably just show that the situation is much worse than our current models show. And it will probably take a decade or so to rewrite the models and test them if any basic theories need changing...so by then New York may be under water (probably only a foot or so at that time, but with more on the way). Or you can bet that if we just ignore the problem it will go away... but *I* wouldn't give you good odds.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Understand it that is a natural environment *response* to an unnatural influx of carbon dioxide from humans.
I don't think the influx of carbon dioxide from humans is "unnatural". We do think of factories, automobiles, and other sources of pollution as unnatural, but this comes from a wrong understanding of what is natural. For humans, our natural habitat is man-made. While nothing else in nature builds skyscrapers like we do, it is what we do naturally. It may not be in nature, but it is in our nature. Our habitat is our modern lifestyle. Tribes living in huts in South America are not living anymore "naturally" than we are in the developed world.
While I agree that we are putting a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, it isn't unnatural. Most people just don't get that natural doesn't mean "life as it was before humans started mucking up the planet".
Funtime Candy Wow! - my plan for eventually conquering Japan.
That may be true, but you must understand that in a more formal setting the burden of proof would be on the scientist proposing the existence of such a cycle.
If we start actively trying to manipulate the climate, we are almost certain to shoot ourselves in the foot.
Completely agree.
Uncertainty about the cause is no excuse for inaction. If the human race becomes extinct or human civilization is destroyed, it's not going to matter whether it was caused by human activity or not.
The only way this could be a species extinction event is if it set off a major war...which, of course, it could. OTOH, it could quite easily be a civilization killer without any hysteria being necessary. Current evidence seems to show that modern plants are pretty well adapted to a narrow range of temperatures (which varies with the species). When the temperatures go outside that range they become much less nutritious. Ditto, but differently, for ease of growth.
E.g., if you grow corn (maize) under conditions of high temperature and high carbon dioxide, then you get plenty of growth, but few ears, and ears that are low in nutritional value. (I don't know what assumptions they made about humidity.) Now high temperature here is about current tropics temperature, which is forecast for the temperate zone (though of course it won't be as constant there) which is where most of the farming is currently done. I suspect that they didn't need to alter the temperature, as they needed to enclose the plants in a greenhouse to control the CO2 levels, so temperature my well be just reporting what happened automatically. I think they were really investigating the reaction of plants to increased levels of CO2.
Also, with increased temperatures, weather patterns change. Moist areas become dry, etc. This means that areas that are currently farming areas can expect to experience periodic crop failures, becoming expected crop failures as the change proceeds. But all currently suitable areas are already under development. And most unsuitable land is already owned by someone who's doing as they choose with it. So relocation may not be possible. (And it's not clear where there would be to relocate to.)
So one thing that's needed is new plant strains that are more drought resistant and which will retain their nutritional characteristics under increased levels of CO2. Not easy. Drought tolerance has already been pushed rather hard, and nobody has much experience with how plant metabolic pathways change when atmospheric CO2 increases.
There are other problems, but that's one. And do note that IF civilization hiccups, one can expect a large die-off. 90% wouldn't be too high to predict...which means that a hiccup would turn into something quite a bit more serious. We've turned into a species where just about nobody knows how to raise food, and where there isn't going to be much place to raise food anyway, and in any case most of the plants we eat don't grow locally anyway. So most of the population will become desperate, which means that even those who *do* know how to raise food, won't be able to, because you can't do that around desperate people. And just where does your current water supply come from? It probably won't be there if the power's off. Do YOU know how to build a privy? And where? Building one in the wrong place is an excellent way to spread many diseases, e.g. typhoid. The list goes on. If you live in a city, don't expect to survive. If you live in a suburb, don't expect to survive.
So if we can, it's rather important to take steps to ensure that civilization doesn't fall. Unfortunately, greedy, short-sighted, and/or power-hungry individuals have sabotaged most attempts that I'm aware of to establish buffers against such a fall. So if there is one, it's going to be very hard. (I didn't say politicians, because many of them weren't politicians. Just most.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I'll agree there is some semantics involved in calling the human burning of fossil fuels 'unnatural'.
I think most people when talking about this subject would define the 'natural' course to be how the environment would react/evolve without human intervention. We aren't behaving like a 'natural' animal anymore. No other animal builds homes strictly for pleasure, goes on vacations, or spends time and effort building sophisticated means of transportation.
That said, the net effect of our existence here is now making large changes to the atmosphere. These changes may cause profound changes in how we live and survive. We need to start addressing those changes before it's over a tipping point that we can't recover from.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
However, there is also evidence that it's not OUR fault, that it was going to happen anyway, and that nothing we are planning on doing about it will actually work becuase we are placing the cart in front of the horse in blaming CO2.
Then why aren't there any models built that show this? Surely this "evidence" could be plugged into a model which meshes up well with the historical data? Otherwise it is mere speculation - however scientific sounding.
The problem IMHO is that those who believe the current theories to be correct, believe with the certainty of a religious zealot.
Some do, and they aren't scientists. You are building up a straw man... the model's fit has nothing to do with the passion with which people defend it.
Here is more evidence that their models are incorrect.
Well, the current model certainly has more detail now... they knew that the cold water came back somehow, but the path it took was not guessed properly. No doubt this will affect the models - ultimately making them more accurate, since the input is now more accurate. I highly doubt it will change the predictions regarding CO2 much, but we won't know "for sure" until they incorporate the new data.
What those who've never done scientific modeling need to remember is that all models are wrong, but some models are useful
Agreed 100%... relativity is a model that is useful, but ultimately wrong. Newton's laws are also a useful model, but ultimately wrong. These climate models are still young, but they've come a long way since the 70s (global cooling) and 80s, with the ridiculous error bars that allowed one to interpret just about anything from the output.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Less ice in Greenland, thicker ice elsewhere.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
They haven't bothered to scientifically test to see if CO2 warms the atmosphere -- they've only shown that correlation exists between increased atmospheric temperature and carbon dioxide content.
That's not true. They construct models with every input they can get their hands on, and they try to get the models to match known historical data. This is much more sophisticated than "showing a correlation". Further, the accuracy of the models has steadily improved over time. Of course, they can't model everything, and they can't foresee disruptive or non-recurring events... even something as simple a volcano going off can throw the models for a few years.
That said, they seem to have the models to a point where they match the historical data pretty convincingly.
What makes you think they'll "scientifically" incorporate this model?
What makes you think they won't? It's more data - it can only improve the model if it is reliable data.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Can you cite some specific examples?
I believe he was referring to the burning of billions of tons of fossil fuels.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
So what should we do? React to models we know to be 100% worthless bullshit?
I'm not on board with the "100% worthless bullshit" part. I would have agreed in the 80s or early 90s when the error bars were so wide that they showed a chance of cooling as well as warming.
But here we are 15-20 years later, and the error bars are much smaller, and even the most conservative models show man's portion of released CO2 having a warming effect.
I'm sorry, but your argument - while once perfectly valid - is simply out of date. The models are no longer the BS you make them out to be.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Either way, here comes Cap and Trade...
Yeah, I think it's a naive idea. I don't think there's anything to be done about our "carbon footprint"... the money is just being pissed away trying to stop it. It's pretty clear to me that mankind is going to burn everything until it is all gone, progressively moving to more and more expensive forms of energy.
But if it'll make the Europeans like us again, why not? :)
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If we have to choose between spending a trillion dollars now and spending a trillion fifty years from now, which should we do? Personally, I'd rather wait the fifty.
This is a very good point, an a much better tack to take than fighting based on the science.
There are all sorts of (unanswered) moral questions... are xxx number of lives in the future worth less than yyy number of lives now? What is the cost of attacking the problem now vs. the cost of dealing with the mess in the future? Is there a moral problem with rich countries blowing through the fossil fuel and then saddling poor countries, and their greater populations, with the effects? What about the fact that rich countries will be able to deal with rising sea levels and climate effects far more readily than poor countries?
These are really important discussions that we need to be having... not arguing over the science.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
When did I cherry pick?
You are picking out apparent flaws in the analysis of data rather than building your own model which matches historical data better.
That makes you a denier and critic rather than a scientist.
You say you are a chemist... if someone ripped apart one of your experiments, but couldn't produce an experiment which contradicted your findings, what would you think of them?
That's where climate science is. Everyone who builds a model which matches historical data agrees on the effects of CO2. So far, no denier seems to have emerged with a model to back them up.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
we have to act in ten years or it'll be too late
Even if there's a 90% probability that they're wrong --- i.e., the planet has the ability to absorb astonishing amounts of GHG-emissions without massive population displacement and loss of life (a highly unlikely proposition) --- the prudent course of action is still to curtail our carbon emissions. The radical position is to go on emitting at our current rate for a few more decades and hope that it's all ok.
But you know that.
Please. Researchers ignore data that break their theories all the time.
Of course they do... it's human nature. That's why we need the scientific method.
If you have an example of a climate model that ignores data because it produced a result that the researcher was not looking for, I'd love to see it.
My wife is a doctor - she'll be the first to tell you that medicine is NOT science. It is mostly detective work with a heavy influence from science. I wish more people understood this - it would significantly reduce the risk that I'll lose my life savings to a lawsuit someday.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
This'll probably come as a surprise to you, but do some research - there is not a single bit of scientific evidence that CO2 warms the atmosphere, the only link proven is that a warmer atmosphere brings more CO2 - usually 200-300 years later than an initial rise in temperature.
That's pretty hilarious, that you think I'd be surprised by this old gem of denier doctrine.
This has been thoroughly debunked.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If the bullet is already fired, why not live it up until it hits? Unless you're Ozymandias or something.
If someone pointed out problems with my interpretation and methods, then I would FIX THEM, and I would THANK them for it. In fact, we found recently that we had basically wasted TWO YEARS of research into a new form of anti-microbial plastic because we were binding non-specifically to the surface (which was only discovered when we sent material out to a client who then proceeded to test it in a manner that we thought didn't apply to us--they didn't have our preconceived notions). If we had been questioned earlier, we could have gotten a product to market a year ago, where instead we sat wringing our hands, steadily "improving" the product, when we were really only developing a timed release technology (which is cool by itself, but it isn't what we wanted, and is worthless for medical devices). Legitimate objections to the "science" of climate change have been papered over, and many words have been redefined for this particular argument. If you had to come up with your own model in order to criticize the current model, we'd still be looking for the philosophers stone! What we have in this case is a group of scientists driven by funding opportunities to come up with data in support of a theory, NOT against it. If this happened in my lab, I would fire the scientist perpetrating the fraud (actually it did, unfortunately the fraudster at the time was my boss, who set our work back by at least two years).
More likely, no-one has been able to get funding, because there aren't any groups that feel particularly threatened by such action. I would build a model, but I'm not a climate scientist. As a chemist I can, and regularly do, take criticism from a wide variety of sources, including other chemists, scientists from other branches, medical doctors, dentists, businessmen, and marketing people.
The sad fact is that scientists go where the money is. Currently, there isn't much money in a cure for AIDS (all the granting agencies are now funding vaccine work), which is why the cure we developed in our lab several years ago is sitting in a freezer for lack of funding for chimp and human trials. Now if something HUGE like that can get shoved aside, imagine how easy it is for contrarian research to take place in a field where dissent is immediately quashed by political forces at the granting agencies.
Yep, that big hole at the front of the ship indicates the Titanic is sinkable. No, we can't tell you yet how long it will take to sink. However, I wouldn't risk going back to your cabin for your warm jacket and would head straight to the lifeboats if I were you.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Because fundamentally, the real factor is in net heat gain of the Earth: radiation in - radiation out. Through a greenhouse effect, the atmospheric CO2 already keeps Earth warmer than it would be without it. More atmospheric CO2 (and CH4) means more IR reflected back in instead of let out to cool the Earth. The ocean currents affect heat redistribution around the Earth, how that heat is redistributed, where the resulting climate change will be focused (i.e. how fast will the artic ice cap melt) and how fast the whole process will happen. Ocean currents for instance travel latitudinally more than air (which primarily moves in Hadley cells) and transfers more heat due to water's high specific heat. So it has a pretty big effect on where that heat is going to go and how fast it will diffuse across the Earth. But that doesn't change that higher CO2 means more blackbody heat trapped under the atmosphere than before.
The damage is already done; the question is a) what's the real slow-mo rate of the catastrophe, and b) how aggressive do we have to be to prevent the worst of it? By starting now, we don't make the damage worse and we decrease how drastic we'll need to make reductions later when the models get more accurate and we find out just how much we really need to cut back.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Well accurate direct temperature measurements or not, if you have some other explanation for retreating glaciers all over the globe that is still consistent with our thermodynamic understanding of the phase change of water, I would love to hear it. If you've got provable new ideas on the thermodynamic underpinnings of the phase change of water molecules, then I think the Nobel committee would like to hear it.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
I never knew that ocean circulation models were how we discovered the greenhouse gas effect of CO2!!!
Not the order.
Does the effect of extra CO2 cause more warming?
Yes?
If so, then CO2 causes warming.
If not, why are you so happy with the "800 year lag" since there should be NO LAG AT ALL, since CO2 can and will be released without correlation with the temperature.
While those statements of yours seem logically constructed at face value. It should be noted that CO2 isn't considered life-enhancing. That's like saying that logging companies should have never started replanting programs b/c cutting down trees is life-enhancing. Sure, cutting down trees is life-enhancing, but replanting programs make sure there's no shortage of supply. Your argument is akin to saying "cars are life-enhancing, so I should be able to drive mine through crowds at high speed."; The premise has absolutely nothing to do with the conclusion, other than the fact that they both involve cars.
So to with your argument, your premise and conclusion have no relation, unless your sole objection to "going green" is that decreasing CO2 emissions may affect your quality of life by lowering availability of creature comforts or significantly raising costs on them.
I share that concern. However, building/refitting skyscrapers to use solar panels, heat pumps, and self-contained greenhouses to deal with most of their heat/electricity generation and deal with most of their waste production would serve to enhance life: less pollution and less strain on the power grid (ie. less brownouts/rolling blackouts during heat-waves for places like california).
Given the cost of gas, if I could present you with two vehicles to choose from. The vehicles are identical in every way, except that one costs $1000 more, but gets twice the gas mileage. Which would you choose? $1000 more on a vehicle, over 5 years would cost an extra $16 a month on your car payments. But would cut your gas spending in half. Would that extra cash be life-enhancing? I pay $150-200 a month in gas, so it'd be pretty damned life-enhancing for me.
Basically, when people hear "this move will cause costs to go up. This is a trillion dollar program" it sounds like something we should immediately be against. But there are tangible benefits to many green technologies. In the case of hybrid vehicles, those costs are outweighed by the benefits. How many other changes would follow similar trends?
Oh god, that woman is John Romero!
I hope that wasn't his point because such a statement would only prove he is incapable of logic and has no valid point. After all, if there is zero proof man is behind global warming and his argument is that burning fossil fuels is behind global warming, he's attempting to use an unsubstantiated position to prove his second argument. Which of course means he's wrong.
In other words, that's the argument of either a fool or an idiot.
After all, if there is zero proof man is behind global warming
And that is where your argument died.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
If someone pointed out problems with my interpretation and methods, then I would FIX THEM, and I would THANK them for it.
Right. Do you have evidence that climate scientist do not do this with their models?
If you had to come up with your own model in order to criticize the current model, we'd still be looking for the philosophers stone!
Huh? Sciences like astrophysics operate under different constraints than chemistry. You can experiment a little bit locally, but mostly you have to build models that fit observations. Climate science is the same. You aren't going very far without a model that incorporates your criticism.
There is plenty of money out there for competing models, it's just that you can't construct one without also coming to the conclusion that CO2 released into the atmosphere will warm the planet.
Currently, there isn't much money in a cure for AIDS (all the granting agencies are now funding vaccine work), which is why the cure we developed in our lab several years ago is sitting in a freezer for lack of funding for chimp and human trials.
I'm gonna need to ask for a citation, not that this has anything to do with climate science.
imagine how easy it is for contrarian research to take place in a field where dissent is immediately quashed by political forces at the granting agencies.
There's plenty of money available from the oil companies, mining companies, car companies, etc. Despite this, no alternate model has come forth, though lots of FUD, books, and criticism have.
This isn't a field where "contrarian" research does any good. The only thing you can do is build better models... it doesn't matter what your personal goal is starting out - the models all converge on the same results.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Katrina was simultaneously the fastest hitting and most severe localized ecological disaster this country has ever experienced. There were real live refugees. Are there any more today?
If there are, it's because they want to be or were already effectively socioeconomic refugees when Katrina hit in which case nothing has changed except their location.
Climate change and rising water will not hit anywhere near as fast. The wiser ones will sell their real estate and move out and buy something else while fools and/or speculators buy it cheap and move in. Later I'm sure there will be some sort of federal buy-out program(if there still is a federal gov by then) that will make the speculators smile. Even the fools will have resources to buy a new house inland. Renters can continue to do just that, just somewhere else.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
You need to check your facts again. There is only proof the climate is warming. There is no proof man is behind it. That's the problem. The proof people have been largely using to validate their position are these models which are 100% invalid and total bullshit.
That's also the problem of discussing the issue with the zealots here - as soon you offer the only real known fact, people want to cover the ears and eyes while humming. That's zealotry to the extreme.
Case in point - your post.
It also might explain their findings - perhaps being 10% dimmer made a significant difference in the subjective light quality. They probably should have compared with a 90 watt incandescent to make the comparison more apple-to-apples.
I play Nerd-Folk!
To draw on a very important truth with flying bullets.... and maybe nature as well
You don't hear the report until AFTER you have a gaping hole in your chest.
It seems that fate is not without a sense of irony.... it seems unlikely that we will perceive the bullet until it hits... I think this applies equally well to GCC and to PKAs....
One look at the ancient beaches 10 miles inland and 500 feet above the current beaches in Santa Cruz, kinda makes one wonder. Yes, Virginia, some of that was fairly recent tectonic up lift action, but not all of it.
I think the carbon in limestone is actually carbon that used to be in CO2 in the atmosphere, since it's sedimentary rock.
That is a point I was exposed to almost 20 years ago. Between 3.5Bn and 2Bn years ago most of the oldest marble and limestone deposits were laid. These deposits are in a phrase, unfathomably huge.
It is believed that one of the first organisms that really took off as a runaway best-seller was a carboniferous blue-green algae that consumed CO2 and metal salts dissolved in the ocean for building blocks and converted IR radiation for energy. It is likely that the Sun wasn't visible much back then, so broadband solar radiation wasn't a direct source of light for the organism. Additionally the organism didn't have much use for oxygen so it's primary waste product was O2.
This little algae would shed it's calcium carbonate armor prior to cell-division thus binding up a small grain of Calcium Carbonate which fell to the ocean floor. There weren't any significant predators back then, and this process continued unabated for close to a billion years. During that time the ocean was gradually depleted of calcium (and other metal ions) and CO2. The CO2 was absorbed from the air. Metal ions were replenished by erosive processes on primordial land.
Eventually the massive populations of this algae died off, and there is evidence that a combination of two factors colluded to cause this first mass extinction:
1. Low CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
2. The first Ice Age caused by a lack of CO2 trapped in the atmosphere.
After a billion years or more of single handedly precipitating CO2 out of the ecosystem these single-celled organisms started dying off due to a lack of CO2. This set the stage for the first round of organisms that aspirated O2, ate blue-green algae. Interestingly a lot of that original calcium carbonate is still around, and will likely never be available to the carbon cycle again.
As for later carbon deposits.... oil, shale, coal.... It's likely that these deposits were created rather suddenly in some cases since they appear without intervening layers of sediment.... in other cases it's clear that there were long standing geological processes that were concentrating detritus (dead organic material) for many millions of years.... before they were capped with inorganic sediments. The geological record is riddled with evidence of sudden and often catastrophic GCC... Our 2 Million year slice of the record has been relatively calm.... and the last 100K years has been a relative cakewalk. ...
While I see concern for Global Climate Change in our economic future I have to say that I have no fear that it will extinguish life on this planet, or in any reasonable time frame extinguish humans.... the real question is what levels of loss will we suffer if we destabilize the environment to the degree that GCC advocates predict? And further: At what point in time will this Scythe of Doom have swing so far away from center that we will be unable to mitigate the return swing, or it's presumably devastating consequences?
None of the deniers, cranks, or scientists have any answers, or any solutions to these problems... and the political processes in the counties that contribute most to atmospheric CO2 are clearly not on a course to address the issue any time soon.
Either we will alter our consumption of organic fuels to reduce the supposed impact of increasing CO2 concentrations in the ecosystem, and forestal a renaissance of large, marginally warm-blooded reptiles two million years from now.... or we won't...
I replaced all my IBs with these gawd damned CFLs and turned off my winter heat.... don't use AC, and I am heading towards even more conservation.... *shrug....
Ultimately I believe we are no better off than the ill-fated blue-green algae that destroyed it's ecosystem ~2.5Bn years ago...
The current political climate might change.... it might not.... either way there will be dire consequences for many and a few well-positioned monkeys will get fantastically wealthy exploiting the rest....
The wheel turns,
Civilizations Rise.
The wheel turns,
Civilizations fall.
The wheel turns.
You guys haven't really put your finger on the problem.
The bottom line is, if they can't get the most basic parts of the science correct, why should we trust them on the advanced stuff ???
!!! WE SHOULD NOT !!!
There is no proof man is behind it.
I'd say that your threshold for proof is too high. When every modern climate model shows human-produced CO2 to be responsible for warming the atmosphere, that satisfies me.
The proof people have been largely using to validate their position are these models which are 100% invalid and total bullshit.
So where is the climate model you are using to make this claim?
Scientists try to model a system and then test the model against known data. Deniers such as yourself try to pick out odd facts here and there, rather than do their own rigorous research. Of course, if they were interested in rigorous research and built a model, they'd be converts as their model started to produce results more and more like the existing models.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It is not real.
It would be a HUGE wonderful thing if it was real.
It is NOT be a problem at all.
The results of a massive volcano blast or a meteor strike would be to cool the planet greatly, as well as a renewed ice age glaciation.
ALL THREE OF THESE WE KNOW WILL HAPPEN SOON on a geological time span, and the first two are both very likely to happen in the next 50 to 100 years.
WHERE AS, THE GLOBAL WARMING SCARE PREDICTIONS CAUSE ONLY MODERATE WARMING COMPARED TO THE AMOUNT OF COOLING THESE COULD CAUSE EVEN IF THE EXAGGERATED WORST CASE SCENARIOS ARE PRESENTED.
Thus, even the WORST Gobal Worming and Primate Strange will not counter act these climate KILLERS !!!
Then why aren't there any models built that show this? Surely this "evidence" could be plugged into a model which meshes up well with the historical data? Otherwise it is mere speculation - however scientific sounding.
It's not that there are competing models that have different predictions, but that the models are leaving out major effectors of the global climate. I've been told by people that actually do work in the field of climate research that most models ignore the energy output from the sun. That strikes me as incredibly myopic.
Some do, and they aren't scientists. You are building up a straw man... the model's fit has nothing to do with the passion with which people defend it.
I'm not building up a straw man. If you express doubt in the "Humans are to blame for global warming" you will be labeled as a "Denier" and ignored. I've done it so I know what I'm talking about. Try it out some time, then get back to me.
Selectively pruning a data set is a subtle thing that can end up with the model saying what you want it to say with a high measure of goodness-of-fit without it being accurate. The "Hockey stick" graph that Gore used in his presentations has been shown to be generated in such a manner. The data set that was used to generate the chart was generated by a US government agency and as such cannot be hidden. Another researcher went back and was only able to get the hockey stick shape by using inappropriate transformations of the data.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~rmckitri/research/trc.html
Agreed 100%... relativity is a model that is useful, but ultimately wrong. Newton's laws are also a useful model, but ultimately wrong. These climate models are still young, but they've come a long way since the 70s (global cooling) and 80s, with the ridiculous error bars that allowed one to interpret just about anything from the output.
That right there is the thrust of my skepticism. We cannot reliably model the goings on inside of many systems we've been studying longer than the environment. I know that we have indirect measure of past global climate, but they are all based on assumptions and with that many fundamental assumptions are included in a model the chances of it being more than marginally helpful are very slim. There are plenty of other models that are accepted as "good enough" in other fields, but most of those models are not being used as the basis for national and international policy. The fall out of all this being radical changes in the financial, energy, and other systems as thought these models are "Right," not just "Useful."
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
There was a time when they said that birds of prey nesting areas were being wiped out by city expansion. The birds adapted. The lesson was repeated over and over. Coyotes adapted. All manner of other creatures adapted.
Life is about change. Change will happen whether we want it or not. Always.
There will always be those for whom it will happen too quickly. And there will always be those who will adapt quickly enough. Enjoy the ride, don't fret about it.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
The fact that one small part of an accessory needs some adjustment in no way breaks the model for global warming.
The oceans cover what, two-thirds of the planet? The study shows that they are not understood completely ... in a significant way.
Here's the problem: climate is a chaotic system. Remember how a butterfly flapping it's wings in China, can create a storm in North America ie. small changes have potentially large effects. Therefore, this change to an "accessory" could have a potentially large effect on the models ... and that can be said of all aspects of the models that are not completely understood.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
If this were simply an academic debate, you would be right in your comments about cranks. But this isn't an academic debate. This debate affects people directly. Governments are enacting policies, people's reputations are being made and destroyed, money is moving in quantity to the detriment of other proven issues, and fear is being sown in the population. Therefore, yes, absolute faith and trust must be paramount.
In fear of highly speculative future possible problems, we are turning away from the real existing problems at hand. Enough worry about the sky maybe falling sometime to come, there are millions suffering and dying now.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
You know ... yours is the first mention of "fat error bars" in any of the posts I've read so far. Is there a link?
I've wondered what the margins of error are on the models as they must be quite large. Weather models use linear techniques to reduce the number of variables to something more manageable. If the same techniques are used in climate models (as is likely) then there must be a quick growing and large error as you extrapolate.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I agree that CO2 isn't the issue.
Ultimately the issue is: are people free to think, trade, and act in their best interest? Or should people kneel, steal, and sacrifice each other
To protect you: your health, property, family, etc. - one does not need the government (i.e. those with power), to manage our lives. All one needs is to enforce a simple idea: that you, the individual have a right to your life and property. Then nobody can damage your life and property, and if they do, they are liable.
Environmental regulation is not about protecting your life, property or happiness. If it were, all that would be required is to demonstrate in court that the actions of party X are damaging party Y, and then party X is liable, must stop harming you and your property, make restitution, etc.
Instead, the environmentalist movement is not pro-human. No matter what you do, you will exhale carbon. You will emit pollution. You will alter the environment to make your life better. Environmentalism regards all of these as evil. Why? There is no reason. It is a mystical belief system.
I think a lot of people implicitly accept environmentalism as a form of Original Sin. They regard themselves as inherently guilty. Why? Because they exist. Just like in Original Sin, every human is stained at birth. If people didn't exist, the Earth could exist in it's pristine, unstained form. But the existence of man stains the Earth, makes it fall from grace. Technology is the forbidden fruit that damns man and Earth.
If we shed our guilt and shed our mysticism, we could proceed down a different path, where we lived proud, happy, guilt-free lives, where comfort and joy is the picture, the Earth is our paint, and our mind is the paint brush.
Mine is Good
Well, considering the criticism I just posted is so well known that it is posted as a standard "denier" argument, yet has not been addressed in any serious manner, I would say that yes, there is evidence of such.
You don't have to build your own model to point out the epicycles don't explain planetary movement. It helps to have a model that does explain observations, but it isn't necessary. If there is so much money out there for competing models, show me. I haven't seen any.
The results were never published, due to politics. If you want evidence that there isn't much money for AIDS cure research, take a look at the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and notice that they are now only funding vaccine work. The NIH is giving similar favor. That fact has EVERYTHING to do with climate science. It shows that unpopular things, no matter how amazing they are, can be squashed by bureaucracy and politics.
Those types of companies would like to disprove global warming, but the development of a new model for climate science is well outside of their field of interest. Not to mention that most of those types of companies aren't exactly in any position to be funding massive research projects at the moment. Only the government has any money right now, and they have blacklisted all climate change "deniers".
Wanna bet CO2 still warms the atmosphere after they incorporate the new ocean current data?
Your premise: CO2 warms the atmosphere
Wanna bet that 1000's of individuals will gather in Washington DC this June for the 3rd time to hear 100's of scientists debunk your premise? 3rd International Conference on Climate Change
Wanna bet that a pro-human movement will rise to oppose the pro-environment movement?
Mine is Good
The problem with that is, what if the "oh we can't stick to the status quo" moment is actually a massive human extinction event?
Your family might cause a massive human extinction event.
Should we kill your family?
Just because something could happen doesn't mean it will happen. That is where science comes in, and there is plenty of debate on whether global warming is even happening at all - let alone whether people have any impact on it - and let alone what, if anything, should be done about it.
Mine is Good
Wanna bet that a pro-human movement will rise to oppose the pro-environment movement?
Wow, that DOES sound scientific rather than political! Oh, wait...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Here's a discussion of a study that supports my point nicely.
As I stated, fully half of people with heart disease have normal serum cholesterol levels. No one denies this. So it's a poor indicator - anyone with a good cholesterol test result still needs to be told that there's an equal chance they have heart disease anyway. There are better indicators such as C-reactive protein that are largely ignored. Even the recent, terminally biased JUPITER study gives that method of detection a backhanded compliment.
^X^S ^X^C
Well, considering the criticism I just posted is so well known that it is posted as a standard "denier" argument,
Yes, and never with any specific examples... just a broad accusation. Surely since you believe these accusations, you could point me towards a source? So that I'm not hypocritical, I'll direct you toward what I consider a very thorough defense of climate science. It's two years old now, but still relevant.
You don't have to build your own model to point out the epicycles don't explain planetary movement.
Yes, you do. Epicycles, before they were abandoned, did the best job to date of explaining the motion of the planets. Until a better model arose, it would have been silly to abandon it.
If there is so much money out there for competing models, show me. I haven't seen any.
Exactly my point... the people presenting a contrary view are not building models. There is plenty of money. Here's an article about the well-funded deniers. How you can claim that the problem is money is beyond me. The big money would overwhelmingly prefer that global warming were a non-issue.
The results were never published, due to politics.
So no sources, then? I thought so. Put yourself in my position... you are asking me to change my mind on an issue based on an unsubstantiated claim from a random poster on slashdot.
Those types of companies would like to disprove global warming, but the development of a new model for climate science is well outside of their field of interest.
Then why are they funding the deniers?
Only the government has any money right now, and they have blacklisted all climate change "deniers".
Do you have any proof of this? I'd assert that they aren't getting government money because they aren't interested in building a model. In fact, if I want to go all crazy conspiracy, I'd say that they know building yet another model will force them to come to the same conclusion as everyone else who has built a model, and the money will stop flowing their way from the denier gravy train. Here is a pretty hilarious list of the "scientists" who deny global warming. Sorry about the clearly biased source, but the list is too hilarious to pass up.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
most models ignore the energy output from the sun.
Sort of... they tend to ignore short-term variation like sunspots. This is because they only have records going back about 100 years, so it would not be a sufficient input for a model fitting hundreds of thousands of years worth of data. Here's a good article addressing this common argument. In any event, if you are looking for long-term trends, why are you interested in short-term solar events and cycles?
If you express doubt in the "Humans are to blame for global warming" you will be labeled as a "Denier" and ignored.
First of all, I'm not ignoring you. Second of all, whining about how you are labeled has nothing at all to do with the accuracy of the climate models... that's the straw man.
Selectively pruning a data set is a subtle thing that can end up with the model saying what you want it to say with a high measure of goodness-of-fit without it being accurate.
That's true, but do you have evidence of this occurring in climate models? In all of them?
The "Hockey stick" graph that Gore used in his presentations has been shown to be generated in such a manner.
There were certainly flaws in the original model, but it wasn't exactly "wrong", it just wasn't as accurate as it could be - and the criticism was used in part to improve the model... this is exactly how science is supposed to work, so I'm not sure why you would hold this up as a criticism of climate science. Here is a good discussion of the hockey stick graph episode.
There are plenty of other models that are accepted as "good enough" in other fields, but most of those models are not being used as the basis for national and international policy.
During the 80s and 90s I would have agreed with you (and did, actually) - the models were too immature to base policy upon. Now, however, the error bars are much tighter and even the most conservative models show man-released CO2 to cause significant warming.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
And since absolute certainty never occurs in science (indeed, the scientific consensus about the cause, extent, and danger of global warming is about as close as it ever gets), nothing is ever to be done about anything...
Yes, and never with any specific examples... just a broad accusation. Surely since you believe these accusations, you could point me towards a source? So that I'm not hypocritical, I'll direct you toward what I consider a very thorough defense of climate science. It's two years old now, but still relevant.
HA! That article talks about computer models being used for investment. Tell me, how well do you think THAT worked out for them? Also, check out the comments section there. Those guys do a better job of refuting it than I can, as there are some computer scientists in the computer modeling section. There is also a lot of interesting discussion in the "CO2 Levels Lag Behind Temperature Changes" portion. There are some posters who claim that water vapor accounts for 99% of heat retention. Having moved from 100% humidity southeast Texas, where the High temp is often 95, while the low is only 80, to low humitidy Lubbock, where The high is 105 and the low 50, not to mention the fact that a generally warmer planet will put more water vapor into the air kind of intuitively busts the "CO2 as main actor in Global Warming" thing. Thanks for posting that article. There is a lot of great stuff there, although most of it points in the other direction from your argument.
Yes, you do. Epicycles, before they were abandoned, did the best job to date of explaining the motion of the planets. Until a better model arose, it would have been silly to abandon it.
Unless people think it's right. You have to show that a scientific theory is lacking. Epicycles NEVER adequately explained planetary movements. Not even close, really. They would be sort of close for a few days out, then it would all go to hell, and that was simple, non-chaotic movement. In this world, a tiny error (like overestimating the "blanket effect" of CO2, or underestimating the amount of time the water spends in the atmosphere) would ensure that you got wildly erroneous results.
Exactly my point... the people presenting a contrary view are not building models. There is plenty of money. Here's an article about the well-funded deniers. How you can claim that the problem is money is beyond me. The big money would overwhelmingly prefer that global warming were a non-issue.
Businesses are focused on debunking global warming, not improving climate science. As such, they haven't funded climate research that could go against them.
So no sources, then? I thought so. Put yourself in my position... you are asking me to change my mind on an issue based on an unsubstantiated claim from a random poster on slashdot.
My company's website has some information on our cancer work, which comes from the same principle. www.selenbio.com
Then why are they funding the deniers?
They don't, not really. They try to get the most bang for their buck, so they pay people to publish newsletters and do PR. They aren't particularly interested in research that they can't control.
Do you have any proof of this? I'd assert that they aren't getting government money because they aren't interested in building a model. In fact, if I want to go all crazy conspiracy, I'd say that they know building yet another model will force them to come to the same conclusion as everyone else who has built a model, and the money will stop flowing their way from the denier gravy train. Here is a pretty hilarious list of the "scientists" who deny global warming. Sorry about the clearly biased source, but the list is too hilarious to pass up.
I have a few links:
HA! That article talks about computer models being used for investment. Tell me, how well do you think THAT worked out for them?
Hate to break it to you... they still use them for investment. They are right more often then they are wrong, which means money gets made. The mortgage risk models failed when the range of inputs exceeded the limits of the model... the same exact thing would happen in climate models, and no one pretends otherwise.
By the way, none of the quants that I know would classify their work as scientific - despite most of them being former scientists.
There is a lot of great stuff there, although most of it points in the other direction from your argument.
Yes, in the comments section, which is telling. You seem to be implying that climate scientists aren't aware of water vapor, which is pretty amusing.
Epicycles NEVER adequately explained planetary movements. Not even close, really.
What? Epicycles described the motions of the known planets quite well. It would not have worked for less-stable orbits, but it was a pretty darned accurate model.
www.selenbio.com
I remember the selenium stuff going around the internet a couple of years ago, but I don't know anything about it. The AIDS-selenium connection sure smells like quackery, though. Is there an actual drug?
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1299305
While there may or may not be pressure on people to fall in line on global warming, that does not amount to a critique of the models themselves. In fact, this article itself concedes that "additional evidence in favour of the anthropomorphic global warming proposition has arisen since he wrote the article". So while I won't really argue about the central premise of the article, it does not argue against the science.
http://www.citizenlink.org/content/A000007279.cfm
This is a he-said, they-said. There is no way to tell whether he is being attention seeking or whether they are truly punishing him.
http://www.faceglobalwarming.com/global-warming-silencing-the-critics/626/
You can't be serious? Did you read this article? It's hilarious! One of the quotes is a guy, who, paraphrasing, basically says, "There's no anthropomorphic global warming, and anyway, global warming will save lives because cold kills people." And to think I was embarrassed to link to that greenie site!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1789389/posts
This article brings up a good point, in that there is a fine line between an ad hominum attack and using one's funding source as part of a sniff test for BS. Still, the fact remains that nearly every climate scientist who positions himself as a "critic" has been tied back to the big industries.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090511.wscience11/BNStory/politics/home
Outcry? What about the fact that they are in the positions to begin with? Doesn't that sort of undermine your claim that they are discriminated against?
http://mises.org/misesreview_detail.aspx?control=348
Oh, lordy, please not Horner. Again, while I can see the appeal in going after the political side of things, I'm going to again remind you that I am defending the models themselves and not human nature.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Well, I'm tired of arguing with a brick wall, so I'm going to cut it off here, though I will ask you which you would find more desirable, a mile of ice covering Washington, or extending the grain belt north into Canada? I'll tell you about the selenium based drugs, though. You did not see anything about it on the internet a few years ago. None of the drug work was published due to interdepartmental politics--a certain drunkard professor torpedoed (who somehow became a world famous AIDS researcher) the project, and wouldn't allow any more work on the project using university resources, which set us back about three years--we're getting ready to start some testing again). Yes, there are actual drugs (like I said, I have them in the freezer), though they are now focusing on Pseudomonas and Staph (including MRSA). The technology utilizes phage display libraries to generate peptide sequences with strong binding constants to the targeted organism or virus, which then delivers a payload of covalently bound selenium, which proceeds to kill the target by catalyzing the production of reactive oxygen species without affecting nearby cells.
We've had to focus on the shorter timeline projects (things like materials like paints and plastics, and as you can see from the website, certain class two medical devices), which are finally starting to pay off. If all goes well, we will be able to fund the drug work ourselves.
Well, I'm tired of arguing with a brick wall, so I'm going to cut it off here
A more mature attitude is to "agree to disagree".
I will ask you which you would find more desirable, a mile of ice covering Washington, or extending the grain belt north into Canada?
I'm not worried about the US. Rich countries will be able to deal with climate change, whether it is hotter or colder. Poor countries will suffer, with no ability to move their dense populations, and no excess food production to deal with desertification.
I don't think an ice age is imminent, either... I think we've prevented that. But an ice age comes on slowly and gives you a couple hundred or thousand years to move around. This warming trend is somewhat faster and could be more difficult to deal with.
Since you are done talking to me, I feel like I should mention that though I believe that man is responsible for warming the planet, I have come to the conclusion that it is pointless to try and stop it. Even if all the rich countries agree to stop emitting more and more CO2, the developing world will quickly burn all the (now cheap) oil, coal, and gas. Mankind will use all of the easy energy... there's just no way around it.
If all goes well, we will be able to fund the drug work ourselves.
I wish you luck...
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
. It then goes on to claim that somehow the CO2 STILL causes it.
The first link actually says, "Though this period does not demonstrate greenhouse gas initiated warming, it does lend support to the importance of CO2 and CH4 in setting the planetary thermostat."
The key point is that it has long been suspected that the variation in Earth's climate in the past is usually driven by Milankovitch cycles. What the CO2 and temperature records indicate is that seems to be true. AND that increase in temperature increases CO2 which in turn leads to a higher increase in temperature.
How do I support that CO2 makes it worse, basic physics.
So in reality we do not have CO2 either causes past climate or is driven by the climate. We have both!
The most dangerous drug
I'd say that your threshold for proof is too high. When every modern climate model shows human-produced CO2 to be responsible for warming the atmosphere, that satisfies me.
Then you have set the threshold far too low AND the entire point of my post went completely over your head.
When every model, which we know is be completely wrong/invalid/incorrect/inaccurate has been specifically created to show man is responsible for the excess CO2, that's called bad science. If you are convinced by the very definition of bad science, then we have nothing else to discuss. After all, good science, logic, and reason certainly is not going to shift your opinion. If it were, you would not have already been swayed by silly, bad science which in turn is entirely rooted on bad science. You'll believe anything which is spoon fed to you - so long as they have a lab coat on when they tell you.
When every model, which we know is be completely wrong/invalid/incorrect/inaccurate
This is what I dispute. The models are inaccurate, thus the error bars. That does not make them useless, any more than Newton's Laws are useless simply because they are inaccurate. You don't need perfect accuracy - a flawed model can still be useful.
You'll believe anything which is spoon fed to you - so long as they have a lab coat on when they tell you.
Certainly you'd agree that you have to defer to someone else who specializes and thus has more knowledge? Obviously you have to use some judgment, but climate scientists have a lot more credibility than any denier that I've seen. I've not seen one denier create a model or follow any sort of scientific process - all I've seen is potshots cast at existing work.
Not that this is useless. For instance, when the deniers attacked the original "hockey stick", a lot of their criticisms were incorporated back into the improved model. It didn't fundamentally change the graph, but it did improve the science. But the deniers still didn't do any science on their own - they are more like car reviewers or film critics than they are scientists.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.