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New NASA Data Casts Doubt On Global Warming Models
bonch writes "Satellite data from NASA covering 2000 through 2011 cast doubt on current computer models predicting global warming, according to a new study. The data shows that much less heat is retained by carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere than is assumed in current models. 'There is a huge discrepancy between the data and the forecasts that is especially big over the oceans,' said Dr. Roy Spencer, a co-author of the study and research scientist at the University of Alabama." Note: the press release about the study is somewhat less over the top.
This is just a plot by Bush Cheney & Big Oil to destroy the world!! Now hurry up with the organic hempseed paint so I can finish my sign protesting Nuclear power plants and solar power plants that despoil Nature's beauty and wind turbines that spoil the views of multimillionares in Nantucket!! We won't save the world until China produces everything because there's no pollution in China!
AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
We should follow wherever the data leads. That's science. Up till now, the data has suggested that global warming is very real.
I'm glad for these kind of alarmist views spurring people to save energy, think cleaner and take responsibility ("carbon footprint" lol).
...is a proponent of intelligent design and rejects evolution.
http://www.uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/roy-spencer-on-intelligent-design/
nuff said
...because we've increased the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere over 37% in the last 100 years. That's a substantial amount, so if it has less of an impact, we're all better off. That said, this should not be used as an excused to maintain the unmaintainable status quo.
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
I really wish the people at the Heartland Institute are right. I really do. I'd hate to witness major migrations because farming conditions dramatically change across the globe. But I also really, really wish they'd drop the sensational language (alarmist models, etc), because I'd able to actually take them seriously. Not to mention that I also would like to see them actually properly quote the papers they reference. For example, the abstract in this particular paper is actually far less strong than what the venerable James Taylor says.
Abstract:
"The sensitivity of the climate system to an imposed radiative imbalance remains
the largest source of uncertainty in projections of future anthropogenic climate change.
Here we present further evidence that this uncertainty from an observational perspective is
largely due to the masking of the radiative feedback signal by internal radiative forcing,
probably due to natural cloud variations. That these internal radiative forcings exist and
likely corrupt feedback diagnosis is demonstrated with lag regression analysis of satellite
and coupled climate model data, interpreted with a simple forcing-feedback model. While
the satellite-based metrics for the period 2000–2010 depart substantially in the direction of
lower climate sensitivity from those similarly computed from coupled climate models, we
find that, with traditional methods, it is not possible to accurately quantify this discrepancy
in terms of the feedbacks which determine climate sensitivity. It is concluded that
atmospheric feedback diagnosis of the climate system remains an unsolved problem, due
primarily to the inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in
satellite radiative budget observations. "
James Taylor: "New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism"
Go fuck yourself with a chainsaw, James Taylor.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I'll wait for some peer review to decide whether this guy is on to something or whether his findings are nothing but hot air (pun intended).
A few notes about TFA:
1) The data comes from satellites put into space by NASA, but NASA is in no way involved in this study.
2) If this study actually significantly contradicts our knowledge of global heating, why has it been published in Remote Sensing, and not a more reputable journal?
3) They only interviewed the guy from the University of Alabama who lead the study
4) The author works for The Heartland Institute
5) They seem to have replaced the words "accurate" and "accepted by the scientific community" with "alarmist"
6) Source on UN's involvement? Seems like they threw that one in just to go for the "UN = bad" reaction that a lot of people have
Alarmist marklar!
Alarmist alarmist alarmist alarmist, marklar alarmist alarmist alarmist.
Marklar.
Dr Roy Spencer is a creationist. A proponent of intelligent design.
His work has been largely criticized in the peer review literature.
TFA author: "James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News."
The Heart Land Institute (http://www.heartland.org/about/) mission:
"Heartland's mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Such solutions include parental choice in education, choice and personal responsibility in health care, market-based approaches to environmental protection, privatization of public services, and deregulation in areas where property rights and markets do a better job than government bureaucracies." ...not to mention using "alarmist" thirteen times in the article
FTA:
James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News.
Re. Heartland:
About us:
Heartland's mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Such solutions include parental choice in education, choice and personal responsibility in health care, market-based approaches to environmental protection, privatization of public services, and deregulation in areas where property rights and markets do a better job than government bureaucracies.
In other words, Heartland is a mouthpiece for the Tea Party.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
The guy who wrote this article is a little biased. The original paper is available online for those who want to see what it really has to say.
http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603/pdf
I haven't looked at the study, which while in a journal about remote sending not climatology that requires the paper's authors to pay for publication does sound reasonable enough from the blurb.
But the continued labelling of what is the mainsteam of climatology as "alarmist" seriously detracts from that article.
It's the sort of argument a 5 year old makes, which doesn't make the actual claims incorrect just much more difficult to see...
Or at least to a different article. The constant use of the word "alarmist" is a bit offputting (in the same way as is the word "denialist").
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
"James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute" Oh. Yeah, I figured something like that was coming.
I've given up on Slashdot's comment scores.
I thought the evidence was pretty clear that global temperatures are already rising significantly. This only seems to affect predictive models - global warming may not continue to increase as much as we previously thought, although temperatures are already pretty elevated.
Dr. Lindzen of MIT showed through his research of thirty years that carbon dioxide does not retain heat. That report was published two years ago. The idea that carbon dioxide is evil is published and promoted only by those who stand to gain from such lies. Breath the free air, people.
It felt like the word "alarmist" was being pounded into my skull.
How does the new data compare to non-alarmist computer models?
Bah!
we made a brighter future for our children. That alone should be reason enough to fight for renewable energy sources and a world without nuclear reactors.
I mean, c'mon.
"The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth's atmosphere is approximately 391 ppm (parts per million) by volume as of 2011.." https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere So does that mean that CO2 is .03% of our atmosphere (That is clost to 4 one-hundredths of one percent.)? While I agree that we should not be dumping crap into the atmosphere I still don't see how "doubling" this particular gas over the medium o long term should have any real noticeable effect on our climate.
This isn't news; the satellite data frequently fail to show the warming trends observed at surface locations. Then someone just recalibrates the satellite data, and everything matches up just fine.
Look more noise from Dr. Roy Spencer intelligent design proponent global warming denier. I would feel guilty if I was using this person's history on the subject and ignore the science but it looks again like he's ignoring the science to push an agenda. Who gave us this wonderful article? Why our own timothy, Slashdot's barely literate "editor". We need to buy him more paste to eat so he'll stop posting this bullshit.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Big surprise, computer models that can't predict the weather accurately 2 weeks into the future fail to accurately predict global temperatures years out.
Can we just forget about this global warming nonsense and focus on better managing all of the pollution we create? If we can figure out how to produce all the material goods that make life comfortable without also producing vast tailing ponds of filth and huge clouds of toxic smoke the world will be a better place.
Why should they be conflicted?
http://www.wmich.edu/corekids/Climate-Change.htm
Any child in the audience for that webpage can take one look at the graph of temperature vs. CO2 and tell how well-correlated they are.
http://www.koshland-science-museum.org/exhibitgcc/historical03.jsp
The same child can tell from this graph that CO2 began rising sharply at the beginning of the 1900s and was followed by a very well-correlated rise in temperature.
These aren't models, they're data. If modellers have any problems, it's with their ability to create a mathematical theory to predict temperature from CO2. The Earth does a rather fantastic job of it experimentally, and a non-formulaic, table-driven, statistical method of predicting temperature from CO2 falls out of the data. Using that, plus the rather easy deduction that fossil-fuel consumption created the rise in CO2 over the past century, anyone with any idea what science actually is can tell you that if we don't start to turn that curve flat or down, the temperature will continue to rise along with the CO2.
No conflict there at all, except one manufactured by an industry that pays scientists to pretend they're telling the truth when in fact they're working for the industry.
Anyone who is inclined to give a lot of weight to this "alarmist" press release should first read this, on a previous paper from Roy Spencer. Note this
what he gets through peer-review is far less threatening to the mainstream picture of anthropogenic global warming than you’d think from the spin he puts on it in press releases, presentations and the blogosphere.
Now, also read the paper, and note this
It is concluded that atmospheric feedback diagnosis of the climate system remains an unsolved problem, due primarily to the inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in satellite radiative budget observations.
Hmm, doesn't sound like the press release or the Forbes article much, does it ?
Use the above and your judgement to figure out just how much weight to give the above.
Let's be sure to point this out to our less factually inclined friends.
Is there anything whatever here to indicate that CO2 sensitivity is outside the (wide) range that climate scientists have been working with?
Oh, and research the Heartland Institute before deciding whether their interpretation of the paper is the most reliable one. It's also interesting to read about Roy Spencer.
This requires very careful analysis. The timing is dubious. The finding is dubious. And a lot of money and power is riding on finding something like this.
However if it pans out (which I doubt) it would be good news.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Actually climatological modellers, the only people who can really speak authoritatively on the subject have been conflicted for a while. That's actually the best argument against global warming, but most deniers are so mindnumbingly stupid they miss that. Based on what I've read on the subject I am unconvinced of warming; but the risk is sufficiently high that the relatively low costs and side benefits of moving to alternative fuels and capping emissions is worth it.
The cost of capping carbon emissions is 'low' relative to what? You understand that carbon emissions are involved in EVERY act of production and distribution in the world. Just building a system to assess the appropriate fees is a huge expensive undertaking... and the frictional costs (it will surely be like a VAT)... and the fact that when everything is more expensive to make and use, we will make and use less of everything... and the corruption and distortions of giving regulators a new stranglehold on all economic activity... and the fact that alternative fuels are all much more expensive than the traditional choices*. THIS is what you call "relatively low cost"?!
I am not making any statement here about the reality of AGW. We ordinary citizens can't know that, at least not yet... but we already do know what is necessarily involved in a planetwide carbon tax. Your state is just epically wrong, so much so that I think you are practicing deception with an agenda.
*Yes yes I know about oil wars. I also know about wars over the next set of choke points: selenium, lithium, uranium, cadmium, etc.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
I'm not looking at your data, just need to say that correlation does not mean causation.
Of course 37% is a big increase and CO2 and climate may be sensitive to small amount of CO2 but, CO2 is still less than 0.1% by vol (more like 0.04%) so who is being alarmist the big 37% increase or the small 0.04% by vol.
It is just how the numbers are presented and to who but that are political arguments and not scientific ones .... so never mind ... who cares when stuff matters.
It must be the heat from the armies of the Dark Lord Sauron building their underground weapons factories.
Pay no attention to the droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods and scorching summers the agency that couldn't plan a new heavy lift rocket program says everything is hinky dinky.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Certain denialist-friendly scientists from Alabama (Christie & Spencer) put out results which appeared to "deny" the mainstream results, claiming that the mismatch indicated that the ground measurements were contaminated by "heat islands".
The scientifically honest community found the problem, it was an error in processing the satellite calibration (orbital parameters), once corrected, the satellite data matched the ground data (which was not especially contaminated, this effect is well known and calibrated by normal scientists).
The same 3 or 4 denialist friendly scientists get more press than the thousands of anonymous and honest scientists whose results in aggregate fully support the fact of significant increase in greenhouse warming from human modification of the atmosphere.
You call 23C (74F) cold? Yeah, for summer that's peculiarly low, but I wouldn't call that "cold", much less "fucking cold".
It is strange that neo-cons are desperate to kill R&D on this, when in reality, most of the climatologist would love to DISPROVE GW. The reason is that they would be a HUGE name .
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
made me spit milo at the screen :)
Even when looking at graphs that "any child" should be able to interpret, you've got it backwards. If you look critically, you'll find that CO2 increases trail temperature increases.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Up till now, the data has suggested that global warming is very real.
Data can show anything you want, based on what you want to "prove". This is called Confirmation Bias ("a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true").
It's sorta like the parable about the blind men and the elephant:
More important than interpretation of the data we do have is finding ways to make data out of information that is currently unavailable. To my knowledge, there are currently no efforts being made to measure the cyclical nature of underwater volcanic activity.
How do changes in a subsurface volcanic activity influence temperatures on the surface of the ocean? The El Niño/La Niña temperature swing is currently unexplained ("Mechanisms that cause the oscillation remain under study")... Perhaps it's the volcanoes, but those are hard to measure.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
*looks out of the window* It's a bright sunny day in Seattle today. And 23 centigrade is not cold.
Yes, GW evidence by itself is irrefutable. However, if carbon is much less of a factor than previously thought, then this would make human contribution less significant. Also, remember that we're talking about very complex systems here, with a lot of boundary conditions. It may be possible that e.g. previous estimates resulted in models with a positive feedback loop (warming leading to more warming), where in the new model there isn't one - which would significantly revise down the predicted long-term temperature increase.
Well, that does raise the issue, if this anti-evolution "scientist" establishes that CO2 is not the cause of global warming, what is his alternate hypothesis on the cause?
Evolution is the basis for all modern medical and biological science.
For some "scientist" to claim that Intelligent Design is a science (hint: it cannot be falsified so it is not) does call into question all their other "scientific" claims.
And before anyone goes into "religious beliefs" ... that's irrelevant. Even the Pope and the Catholic Church have accepted the evidence of evolution.
Relative to the very high costs of coastal flooding, drought, and other effects of the climate changing. You may disagree with the risk assessment or the tallying of costs, but it seemed that the "relatively" in the original post was pretty clear...
Rhapsody in Numbers
1) The data comes from satellites put into space by NASA, but NASA is in no way involved in this study.
Next you'll tell me that Google isn't a porn company.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
I'm guessing it ended up on slashdot because climate change deniers, like evolution deniers, throw a royal tantrum when they're "suppressed." Better to put their dribble up for public commentary, where it will take the beating it deserves.
No. Anyone who advocates this stance is advocating ignorance and advocating self inflicted blindness. How many people flung themselves from the heights, before one flew? I bet you that not one of them was humble. Science consists of two questions, "Why?" and "Why not?" Neither can be asked with your gaze on the ground.
Global warming is bad, not because it harms the planet. That is impossible. It is bad because it will kill us and our children and kittens. Pollution doesn't hurt the planet, it hurts us and our children and kittens. I like kittens too much to let them suffer through weird mutations. Polar bears too. Don't save the planet. Save us. And the kittens.
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
Look closely Slashdot readers - the author of that FORBES article: "James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute. All you have to do is wiki 'The Heartland Institute.' and you'll see what a sham of an organization they are! By no means should this posting on /. give any credence to the debate!
In fact if this kind of posting continues, I'll have to conclude that our beloved /. has been overrun by the well-heeled unqualified purveyors of snake oil typically heard on conservative talk radio.
Now we don't want that to happen....RIGHT?
Please have respect for people with different abilities, especially children.
This story is showing up everywhere. Lots of positive comments. How long till I'm buried. I give 10 min's.
That only shows that temperature increases are correlated with CO2 rises. It doesn't rule out temperature rises originating from other causes as well; it shows that those causes can result in increased natural CO2 emissions which will accelerate the temperature rise, in a feedback effect.
We already have plenty of rock-solid experimental evidence that CO2 increases definitely cause a greenhouse effect. That's never been in doubt.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Oblig. xkcd: Until I see more data, I'm going to assume cancer causes cell phones.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Given Newton's involvement in alchemy, I'm pretty sure if he were born in the late 20th century he'd be calling up J.Z. Knight and asking her to channel the ancient Atlantean warrior Ramtha to get his advice on things.
Seriously.
Newton was a fine mathematician, a fine physicist, and a grade-A first-class believer in all the woo-woo the 17th century had to offer him.
Actually, true engineers would weigh the cost of reducing the amount of waste spewed by 20 tons against the benefits accrued from having 20 less tons of waste being spewed.
One of the most important components of engineering is cost/benefit analysis which is used to inform design decisions.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
I have been told repeatedly by "skeptics" that no Climatologist would ever publish a study that does not exaggerate the consequences of Global Climate Change because they would lose their lucrative government research grant money.
Warning: This sig is not thread safe. For more information see Slashdot's sig policy.
Made me laugh. Pielke is the guy who argues - essentially - that since the neighborhood is burning and that is a larger problem, you shouldn't do anything about the fact that your house is on fire. http://motherjones.com/environment/2008/10/qa-roger-pielke-sr
Very useful guy if you're making a fortune generating greenhouse gases...you can use him to argue that you should be left alone until such time as slash-and-burn agriculture is outlawed.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
The paper doesn't do anything close to what the summary suggests, nor what either story suggests. The submitter is basically trolling it up.
The paper is available for all to read here: http://www.mdpi.com/2072-4292/3/8/1603/pdf
Basically, they are talking about lack of model sensitivity for non-radiative feedback, which is something that was already known. The models on a MONTHLY basis don't go high enough on the maximums and don't go low enough on the minimums (and there is a lag). Or in other words, the models get the general predictions right (warmer temperatures) but don't capture shorter term variability as well (heat waves, cold snaps).
Of course, it's already well known that climate models don't capture short term variability very well. However, this paper helps quantify that and provides some insights on how to better improve that aspect of modeling.
Or if you don't want to read the whole paper just skip to the conclusions sections, which mention nothing about invalidating global warming or the science thereof.
How that gets translated into "New Study Trashes Global Warming" is beyond me.
~X~
And I did not say that it did.
Gregor Mendel was a monk in a monastery.
I wouldn't say "reduces".
If a scientist cannot tell that an unfalsifiable claim is not science then he is not to be trusted with any other "scientific claims" he makes.
I'm saying that both should be done.
His "science" should be dismissed because he's demonstrated that he either does not understand it or is willing to sell his "professional" claims.
And there is nothing wrong with any data being reviewed by any scientist at any time.
The problem with dealing with fake science is that it is useless. The practitioners keep "moving the goal posts" and will mis-quote anyone who critiques their work.
The Intelligent Design "debate" is a great example of that.
I thought I'd look into this journal to see its impact factor and other metrics that would let me know if it is a reputable source. It is not indexed by ISI/Web of Science, so it has no published impact factor. Google scholar only picks up a few articles from this journal, most of which have been cited 0 or 1 time only. While this doesn't automatically negate the authors' findings, it says to me that no reputable journal wanted to publish it.
The conflict on the CO2 question is shown by your own chart; CO2 trails temperature, when logically the reverse should be true. This has been a problem in the modeling for years. I am not a GW denier; I believe anthropogenic GW is probably true. I'm just saying (a) there is a legitimate conflict (though the idiotic arguments raised by many deniers should be ignored), and (b) the costs of mitigating anthropogenic GW, whether it exists are not, are worth it compared to the risk.
As any geologist will tell you, the earth has gone though heat and cold cycles for MILLIONS of years. Europe used to be a jungle. Half of the United States used to be covered in ice. There have been hundreds of mass extinctions. Does global warming exist? Yes, of course it does. Global warming is a natural phenomena. Is global warming a problem? No. Not if you can adapt. (and I'm pretty sure us big brained humans can) I for one welcome the "new" warmer climate. I hope my ancestors get to ride giant lizards through great underground cities.
cat
Stephen Jay Gould had a Ph.D. student who disbelieved evolution. Gould was once asked how he could be the doctoral advisor to a biology Ph.D. candidate who didn't believe in evolution. Gould answered that science didn't demand anyone have a particular set of beliefs, only that practitioners understand and can rationally discuss theories — both the prevailing ones and minority ones. So long as this Ph.D. candidate could intelligently discuss evolution, that was all Gould had any right to expect.
I hold Dr. Gould in the utmost respect. I don't hold much respect for people who believe that scientists must always hold the One True Set of beliefs or else they're not scientists at all. Good grief: if we thought like you we wouldn't have Newton or Linus Pauling.
For God's sake, Kary Mullis -- inventor of polymerase DNA replication, recipient of a Nobel Prize, and a world-class biochemist -- is an HIV/AIDS denialist: he openly advocates that the HIV virus does not cause AIDS. So, sure: let's throw PCR replication out the window and all the medical advances that go along with it. Who should believe a biochemist who doesn't believe HIV causes AIDS?
So, sure. Let's discount all the scientists who have wacky ideas. By the time we're done, humanity's progress will be completely stunted, we'll be forever locked into our current level of technology, and we'll never reach the stars. That's the future you're hawking, and I want nothing of it.
If Dr. Spencer is wrong, well, hell, that'd be reason to disregard his opinions. But so far your only argument against him is, "he holds thoroughly silly opinions in another field," which is absolutely true and puts him in excellent company among scientists.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Shockley /. complaint) that did not understand his statements.
If so, the problem with that comparison is that Shockley seems to have been mis-represented by the media (another common
Or maybe he really was a racist who wanted to find a biological reason for "inferiority" but never seemed to be able to.
What is this junk doing on Slashdot? Did anyone look at the source of this "information" before posting it? The Heartland Institute? Really?
Here's more: Climate Change Debunked? Not So Fast
Slashdot editors, please try to remember that a single paper normally doesn't overturn scientific understanding, and try to avoid habitual hype sources. Thanks.
mt
Maybe the models didn't took into account the influence of China's coal power plants. But if they ever fix the enviromental impact of those plants, global warming could start to be closer to the models.
Providing evidence to the contrary is sufficient to disprove a hypothesis, but it does not come with a requirement to provide an alternative hypothesis.
(not that I disagree with the AGW theory, just that if you're going to argue for science, stick to the principle rather than being dogmatic about it. This claim needs to be tested & reviewed, and if it's found to be true then a revised theory is required.)
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
You seem to think that it matters to science what beliefs a person holds when presenting experimental data or writing a scientific paper. Well it doesn't. It could be Bugs Bunny or Santa Claus doing it for all it matters to science, as long as appropriate data is being provided. Belief or disbelief in something is not required.
What's important is that the data is public and the work is reproduceable, and the same applies to any analysis presented in a paper. Other teams can then repeat the work and either find agreement or disagreement with the numbers.
The only crime in science is falsifying data, and that is not happening here, unless you have evidence to the contrary.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
We'll see your climate model and raise you one. And while both sides are busy bluffing, maybe an actual useful model can be developed. In the mean time, its all a stalling tactic.
This is a serious issue about which we really haven't got much of a clue. There are those who don't want anything done. There are those who have invested in various investment scams and are waiting for them to begin paying off. And there are those who would like to get something locked down in law and treaty that we'll be stuck with for generations after we realize it was all based on bad, or poorly informed science.
The economic consequences of whatever we do will be major. So the last thing we need is to make irreversible laws based on incomplete science. On the other hand, we can take steps to evaluate some of the possible fixes now, keeping in mind that the work done might have to be thrown out if refined models suggest that we really need to regulate something else.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'll wait for Al Gore to chime in. Afterall, he invented the internets. He must be right!
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
I'm sorry Mr. Gore didn't kiss you before he left this morning.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
How many times can you use "alarmist" in one article?
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
And may I laugh at your ignorance? Well, I will anyway. Way to go Mr. Ostrich. Keep your head in the sand. Anyone who presents any evidence contrary to your belief is "advocating ignorance". This is the exact tactic of the "other wing". You idiot. I'm sorry, I guess the agency reporting the data isn't reputable enough for you. WTF is wrong with people like you? I'll never understand why someone can't just read a report, and then simply comprehend the findings. The "fanboi" mentality is the worst curse the world has to deal with. Cults are a very similar scenario. Get help my friend, you need it.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
It's true that there is a direct correlation, but that is not necessarily a cause for concern. The graph that you've linked to has its Y axis specifically adjusted (with zero points and scales selected) such that the graphs nearly overlap, to highlight the correlation. But what we should care about in practice is, how much is the temperature going to rise for every ton of carbon emitted by us into the atmosphere? If that ratio is minuscule, such that we may burn everything that we can dig out, with only minor temperature rise, it may well be that it's more cost efficient to deal with the aftereffect than to reduce emissions.
The reason why GW is worrying is because our models predict a runaway global warming, where every ton of carbon emitted does not only give the immediate temperature rise, but that this also causes more greenhouse gases being emitted, which in turn also increase temperature etc - so that ton of carbon has a disproportionally high impact. If that models are correct - and, so far, credible research seems to support that - then we need to reduce the emissions now, because every second wasted is having an effect. But if this new data is verified to be correct, and changes the models so that this is no longer true, we definitely need to re-evaluate our priorities.
Because it's totally OK to shut up people who have a different religion than you do.
That's close to the opposite of what I was saying. Does the fact that you misinterpreted a 2 sentence post make you think that maybe you're wrong about OTHER things?
too damned funny!
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Higher temperatures cause increased atmospheric CO2.
Higher CO2 concentrations lead to higher temperatures.
These two statements do not contradict each other. It's a self-reinforcing feedback system.
Why do you believe the risk is sufficiently high?
Or more importantly, what observations would convince you that the risk *wasn't* high? Historical incidences of higher temperatures and a more vibrant biosphere hospitable to mankind? Contemporary incidences of more harm from cold weather than harm from hot weather? Some future decrease in harm per capita during a period of increasing warming?
The problem we have is that the precautionary principle can fuck things up royally if you get it wrong. Take DDT - safe, non-toxic to humans and animals, and responsible for eliminating the scourge of malaria from countries world wide. Someone posited that there *might* be some risk associated with it, and *just to be safe*, it's been banned. As a consequence, malaria has raged throughout Africa for decades, killing tens of millions of babies.
Based on what I've read on the subject, I am unconvinced that there is any appreciable risk, and the relatively high costs and limited benefits of moving to alternative fuels and capping emissions is going to have tremendously negative unintended consequences.
I'm not going to throw aside 100% of Nobel Science Prize winners in agreement that global warming is a major threat because industry might have arranged to have some prof. in University of Alabama Huntsville went along with a rushed, less than throughout peer review process in an industry satellite hardware journal.
The alternative hypothesis is the null hypothesis - global warming and global cooling and even global temperature stability are natural phenomena. More specifically, global climate changes occur for the same reasons they did for the millions of years before humanity even existed - we might not be able to deconstruct every last variable, of course, but we don't need to have any specific cause in mind just because we've refuted the "CO2 drives temperature" hypothesis.
Or do you deny that climate ever changed before humans came along? :)
1) climate has always changed - you've got to show that this *particular* change is going to cause your *particular* harms
2) you've got to deal with the particular benefits that come with this *particular* change in order to do a proper analysis (more flooding might be bad here and there, but increased food production and crop yields could easily provide more benefit than the cost of occasional floods)
3) you've got to deal with the evidence that shows that while global temperature has increased, natural disasters have either had no change in incidence, or a positive change in incidence.
So what do you do when the risk assessment that is being made is in fact 100% backwards?
Tangential question - if you became thoroughly convinced that the data showed a safer, more benign planet when things were warmer, would you then begin encouraging CO2 emissions as a mandatory responsibility of world governments?
The oil companies will do anything to change their bad perception on peoples minds. $$$
Yes, but that changes nothing.
Previously, temperature shifted due to ice ages, and CO2 amplified that shift (CO2 being responsible for the significant proportion of the actual temperature increase). This time, we've kicked things off instead.
It's not hard to understand. Recommended reading: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/04/the-lag-between-temp-and-co2/
A few notes about TFA: .....
2) If this study actually significantly contradicts our knowledge of global heating, why has it been published in Remote Sensing, and not a more reputable journal?
Tell me what do you think the phrase "Remote Sensing" refers to?
I'm guessing that you are confusing it with "Remote Viewing."
Oh, but I heard that correlation implies causation.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
No, I realize there is natural climate change. But the sudden change in CO2 concentration and temperature over the last few decades do not fit the pattern of change in the last several hundred thousand years. We're living in a climate outlier unprecedented to homo sapiens.
Given Roy Spencer's history in this debate, there will be scathing rebuttal to this paper that points out elementary mistakes that Spencer never bothers to correct.
This is *exactly* how to spread doubt on the issue.
I too hope that the climate scientists are wrong, but Spencer has little credibility. Be that as it may, his arguments will be analysed, because real scientists examine and assess all arguments -- unlike denialists, who just talk.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
The costs of reducing carbon emissions would be comparable to reducing discharge of toxins into the environment. You may note the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act did not plunge the United States into a permanent depression.
If you look critically [wordpress.com], you'll find that CO2 increases trail temperature increases.
The temp-leads-co2 canard has been answered decades ago. It is not surprising that denialists keep bringing it up, because they never bother to learn what they are talking about.
You can learn why the graphs are the way they are here.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Actually it kind of does. Theories tend to remain accepted until a better one is posed, often just with a sort of buyer-beware status of everyone understanding it might not work, at least not in all cases. The only way to truly get rid of a theory is to come up with a better one. So let's see this guy's excuse.
Great Intellect...
You are correct, there is only a tiny amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. What is important is how much that CO2 warms the atmosphere. This is the sensitivity question, which is much discussed in literature.
Not every gas or molecule is the same. For example, you can inject teaspoon of water into your blood just fine, but a tiny fraction of that of most neuro-toxins will kill you.
You can learn more about it here.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
(Almost) every time someone complains about articles posted on Slashdot having some form of suspected unimportance to the community here or 'uninformedness' in general, I find that it's useful to read the article and subsequent comments and ideological warfare in order to prepare for when those real-life ideological zealots present their arguments in this kind of upon-a-pedestal fashion: be informed against the deluge!
Leela: "Is all the work done by children?" Alien: "No, not the whipping."
Dr. Roy Spencer is a professional Denialist, who has been putting out junk "science" like this for years now: /. ? An expose of last year's headlines from snopes.com?
http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/roy_spencer/
What's next for
One, there's no way you can assert that either CO2 concentration changes or temperature changes over the last few decades are unprecedented - there are certainly similar rates observed, in the historical record, just within the past 150 years, well before the industrial revolution.
Second, simply because you haven't been able to observe with sufficient accuracy, the past several hundred thousand years, doesn't mean you can take your detailed measurements of the past few decades and assert something extraordinary. Now, maybe if we had several hundred thousand years of weather station data, you could plausibly make that argument, but any comparison of modern instrumental temperatures against historical proxies is weak at best.
That all being said, what observations of CO2 and temperature over the next few decades would you consider a falsification of your hypothesis?
This is simply not true.
It is obvious
Did Roy Spencer get no funding? Christie? Soon and Baloonis?
It is easier to get funding if you are against the consensus on climate change, because institutions like the heartland institute will throw money at the most remotely implausible weak arguments of the aforementioned published authors.
If there was a grain of truth in what these guys said, then they would be rock stars in the scientific community. But science relies on cogent arguments, and not political sides.
What you said is self-evidently not true.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I don't trust either side on the science
There is only one side to the science. The other side talk and don't listen. They are not scientists, except for a handful such as Roy Spencer. You can count them on one hand, and they publish peer reviewed work, and what they publish really has nothing to do with the spin that is put on it.
You can read about it in this book if you are really interested.
As for the paranoid/cynical content of your post -- go take some political studies courses at university. It is fascinating stuff, and the world is far more interesting then we could ever fantasize about. Nothing is what it seems in politics, but at a certain level, everything is as it seems. Politics is really complex and very interesting.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
All the article says is that the future most likely will not be as bad as the predictions based on current models. It does not say anything about invalidity of global warming, which is a fact based not on predictions but observations of a global average temperature, which is rising
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/
Wait -- our leaders are taking the problem of global warming seriously and are tackling solving the problem?
Could have fooled me. I thought they were ignoring global warming and arguing about an arbitrary self-imposed debt limit in an attempt to gain political points while not actually addressing the root issue in any meaningful way.
Uhm... you realize that this doesn't help your case at all, right? If CO2 increases trail temperature increases, that means a higher mean surface temperature leads to more CO2 in the atmosphere, or there is some hidden variable that increases CO2 first and then temperature. Occam's razor would indicate that we should not impute hidden variables where unnecessary, and in fact there are several plausible mechanisms by which increased temperatures could increase the CO2 in the atmosphere; so we're left with the conclusion that higher mean surface temperatures => more CO2.
Back in the late 19th century, Svante Arrhenius proved that more CO2 in the atmosphere means a higher mean surface temperature. The physics behind this is pretty much rock solid.
So what you're saying is "hey, CO2 trails global warming! Therefore, more CO2 => higher temperatures!"
And then basic, well-established physics says "Hey, as we increase the CO2 in the atmosphere, the surface temperature increases! Therefore, higher temperatures => more CO2!"
Do you see why this is kinda scary? If you're right, and CO2 increases trail temperature increases, then we've just kicked off a vicious cycle that will eventually leave the Earth a much warmer place than it is now.
when the press release would have done quite nicely.
That is the problem with climate "journalism", the truth is not enough, it has to be tweaked by an agenda, just a little. Then the next "Journalist" picks up the story, and tweaks it a little more. In the end it's picked up by a Murdoch paper in an illegal phone tab, and once it hits Fox news, it's a whole new story.
No one bothers to go back and check the sources any more.
It is sad that truth have to take a back seat to sensationalism. If the truth is even allowed in at all.
The press release boils down to an analysis that the atmosphere is more efficient at shucking off heat than current models account for. Conclusion: ramp up the output. We can bust this sucker yet!
Oh good grief, did you read the references on the site you linked to? You're still talking about "Mike's Nature trick" as if it meant something. Here's a hint: "Nature" is a respected scientific journal. If "Mike's Nature Trick" was any sort of foul play, the journal would have retracted his paper. It didn't. I wonder why?
Here's what "Mike's Nature Trick" really is: since the 1960s, some tree ring data does not match instrumental temperature records. For reasons we don't understand, the tree ring data shows a significant decline in surface temperatures. This does not mean that there was a real decline in surface temperatures, because we have actual instrumental measurements for those years.
What you are saying is, literally, "Throw out the actual measurements of temperature and replace them with a known-to-be incorrect proxy for measurements of temperature". You're saying "throw out all that data gathered by people with actual thermometers, and instead use data based on the width of tree rings. The only criteria for this is because I like the trees better, even though they currently disagree with almost every other direct measurement or proxy measurement."
Well actually no, you're not saying that - you're just endorsing a website that says that. I can only hope that you, yourself, would not say something so stupid.
Well clearly there is a history of positive feedback warming. That's why there is so much evidence of the "fireball earth" scenario.
This is awful. The Forbes article, and the University of Alabama press release, say exactly the opposite of what the scientific article in Remote Sensing is claiming. From the Remote Sensing article's abstract:
To summarize: the satellite observations of climate sensitivity disagree with the models because the observations include extra factors which throw off the analysis. This implies that the satellite observations should be doubted.
But the summaries linked here say that the mismatch implies that the *models* should be doubted -- just the opposite!
The denialist culture is strong especially in America, and it's support here on Slashdot is impressive because I imagine that the geek culture would actually actively discourage this denialist behavior, but I've read studies that suggest that denialism is not a choice.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
NASA or the Syfy channel?
Genetic logical fallacy.
http://www.logicalfallacies.info/relevance/genetic/
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
The CO2-is-blocking-heat mantra has been repeated so often that almost no one even questions the underlying physics...which don't support CO2 gas as 'greenhouse glass' but more like 'greenhouse fine-weave window screen.' Now finally comes some actual data which, not surprisingly, supports the basic physics and shows that CO2 has nowhere near the ability to block heat that the AGW proponents would give it.
Huh?
If CO2 concentration continues to increase (as I'm sure it will) but the warming trend reversed itself, that would falsify the idea of CO2 as an overriding contributor to global warming.
So where's the beating? I haven't yet seen a refutation of the data in the study. Just a bunch of lame terminology like "climate change deniers."
There are tons of flaws in today's global warming models, which is obvious if you actually read the reports. Several scientists even admit they are inaccurate. Unfortunately, tons of urban hippies have hijacked the movement and turned it into the same old religious belief that seems to be ingrained in human beings--a pristine Eden (nature) that was corrupted by sin (technology) which must be purged 'lest we face a Judgement Day (global warming and all the kooky things it's claimed to cause by outspoken liberals, from poverty to racism to wars). If it's not Christianity, it's environmentalism.
Roy Spencer is not a legitimate climate scientist. He is not following scientific methodology.
Your statement to the contrary undermines your credibility far more than it enhances his.
The global warming movement has been based on models making predictions far into the future. It is about time some people look at the assumptions and try to falsify them.
I predict more whining than a stuck pig.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
What do you think the logic of those models is based on?
Laws, theories, hypothesis, assumptions and/or guesswork. Equations developed to fit historical data are generally at the assumptions/guesswork end of the list and not the laws/theories end of the list. Also Statistics 101 teaches that when an equation is developed to fit data, say a linear regression, one can not make predictions beyond the range of inputs used for the regression. And of course the equations are only as good as the correctness and completeness of the data, and when interpreted correctly. Others posters have been referring to GIGO (garbage in garbage out), there is a reason this has been a well known acronym in the scientific community for decades.
The article in Forbes is written by a fellow for the Heartland Institute, one of the numerous front organizations for the coal and oil industries alongside other such groups as "CO2 is Green". The study is not peer reviewed, it has been published *for* peer review, there is a dramatic difference between the two. Beyond that, you have the issue that the study argues 180 degrees opposite to the articles claims. In short, the article is complete bunk, written by a fraud with an attempt to reinforce the positions of those who wish to kill scientific progress and research.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
All human heat production from cars to heating buildings to industrial activities to bonfires produces about 0.028 Watts per square meter. The Sun averages around 250 W/m2 across the planet (it's around 1000 W/m2 at noon with the Sun directly overhead). So if you round the human contribution down to 0.025 that's 4 orders of magnitude difference. Human waste heat is insignificant globally. It can be significant locally though. Hence urban heat islands.
That's only in the cases where the theory provides a "good enough" explanation and the question is about explaining the edge cases. In this case, if the work here is shown to be true, it would mean that current models are invalid, and need more than a pinch of salt to say "this might not be accruate".
Just thinking about it - surely someone's gone and regressed these models, right? e.g., take the known data at 1990 and project to 2010 and work out if the model matches the observed data?
Right?
Man who leaps off cliff jumps to conclusion.
Creationist are not qualified to be scientists. Dr Roy Spencer is a creationist.
So was Isaac Newton. Is he qualified to be a scientist? :-)
the disappearance of the glaciers.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
please look at your own link first. the data shows temperature rising before co2 concentration.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Fair enough. Just to be clear, though, what kind of timeframe do you put around that? 10 years of no warming trend with rising CO2? 15 years of no warming trend with rising CO2? http://blogs.forbes.com/patrickmichaels/2011/07/15/why-hasnt-the-earth-warmed-in-nearly-15-years/
My observation has been that typically, believers in CAGW will take any lack of warming trend as simply a minor setback to be ignored - they come up with some ad hoc explanation that makes the cooling somehow anomalous. With this kind of approach, CAGW can be infinitely justified (30 years of cooling? must've been a volcano. 45 years of cooling? some orbital cycle. 75 years of cooling? A spurious trend caused by solar activity.).
As for myself, it's very likely that the climate is fairly insensitive to most factors, and that natural cycles dominate on nearly every timescale we can imagine. It will be interesting, though, if the solar minimum predictions of cooling till 2050 hold up.
Give it more than a few hours. Sometimes it takes a little bit of time. And yes, the author of this study is a well-known denialist who has, in the past, put out quite a bit of just plain wrong stuff. For example:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/04/review-of-spencers-great-global-warming-blunder/
So I would recommend a little bit of patience. Given past experience, my bet is that this study will be thoroughly taken apart by scientists who actually know what they are doing.
Yes, and the first thing I do when I see a study about something as controversial as global warming is to check on the author:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Roy_Spencer
Strangely enough, all those scientists who doubts the global warming seem to have some connections with oil companies...
But even if you don't think rising temperatures are a concern, the acidification of the oceans should amply serve that destroying forests and burning massive amounts of previously sequestered fossil fuel is a bad thing. If you feel up to living to see a sixth mass extinction including many shellfish, we're all set.
http://www.ocean-acidification.net/FAQacidity.html
That's me!
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
Roy Spencer seems to be the source of hype, both both as a denier of climate change as well as a proponent of so called 'creation science'.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Roy-Spencers-Great-Blunder-Part-1.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/roy-spencers-great-blunder-part-2.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/roy-spencers-great-blunder-part-3.html
As another poster said a single paper doesn't overturn scientific understanding.
A true sceptic should treat Spencer's paper with at least as much scepticism as they hold for established science.
What they think is sadly irrelevent - what they publicise depends not on what they think but what they are paid to do.
They are a PR group mostly infamous for lying about tobacco in the 1990s. IMHO they are nothing but confidence tricksters.
Well I've been asked by a few oil companies to perform quite a few services and I still think this guy is nothing but a liar for hire.
The real issue at hand here is that the earth's environment is changing into a less hospitable space for humans and we don't know for certain how to change that. There are many, many, many systems at work which are affecting the global climate and venting heat into space is only a small portion of one system.
The REASON we have too much heat is at the core issue. If the production and retention of CO2, Methane, Nitrous Oxide and other greenhouse gasses (GHG) is not curbed, it will not matter how much heat is lost or retained because the systems producing the GHGs are still in place.
TFA is focusing on the flame when the candle is the problem. Besides that, even without seeing any numbers, I would bet our GHG production has already exceeded the rate at which the heat it produces is lost to space. (were making more heat than what can be vented to space anyway)
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
"you realize that this doesn't help your case at all, right?"
And exactly what do you assume my "case" to be? I've simply pointed out a fact, and not put forth any claim about what it may or may not prove.
"Svante Arrhenius proved that more CO2 in the atmosphere means a higher mean surface temperature. "
Bullshit. He proved no such thing. Scientific proof involves more than having a hypothesis, and he certainly didn't single handedly increase the global CO2 level to test his. Really, if you want to argue science, at least try and understand what the scientific method requires.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
there is a University of Alabama
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
that many are pushing a solution that is NOT going to happen in the USA. It does not solve the issue which is that ALL major nations are major polluters. Until a different solution is put forward, then nothing will change.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'm just glad that sometimes conflicting data is presented. There's no excuse for the way dissenting opinion is pilloried on slashdot sometimes. "Climate change deniers," Creationists and ID'ers are labeled and dismissed as anti-science no-minds, with a bigoted fervor that would make the Spanish Inquisition proud. But we're all people and we all have reasons for our ideas and opinions. Sometimes the data takes a turn we might not have guessed. For the record, I would put myself in all three of the aforementioned pariah camps. Denier, because I've lived long enough to disbelieve anything governments, scientists and news media unite to get their knickers in a knot about. It just has the odor of social manipulation towards an end goal. Someones attempt at psycho-history or sim-earth. Seen it before, figure there must be someone at the back of it raking in the dough from the hysteria. Creationist because someone who has experienced God as I have can't really be anything else -- even though the data I'm privy to is not acceptable to someone on the other side of the debate, I must accept it. ID'er because there's just so much ordered complexity obvious to those who have an open mind to see it. Also for the record, I applaud the effort and technology that conserves energy and protects the environment, for the reason that this world is given to us to steward well, not to rape.
Jedis are stupid. If they were so powerful, why couldn't they handle counseling for a kid who missed his mom?
Why is this claptrap from a creationist, which is not published in a climatology journal but one about remote sensing technology, being treated like it was actual climate science?
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
I'm trained in specific technical fields. I am *not* trained as a climatologist, statistician, biologist, geologist, chemist, or oceanographer. Therefore I don't have the training to look objectively at the evidence.
In the absence of the ability to personally investigate all the data, the smart money is on the consensus. And this applies to every field, not just climate change.
"Requires" a global government? You sound like a LaRouchie.
What it actually requires is the major industrialized nations (most significantly the US, China and India, with others of secondary importance in this context) agreeing to put a lid on carbon emissions. It doesn't require a NEW WORLD ORDER or the Borg.
=== "Some people see the glass as half-empty. Others see it as half-full. I see the glass as too big." -G. Carlin.
I suspect this post will be lost amidst the Saffirâ"Simpson in a teapot.
Another way to look at this debate is to imagine we had figured out that the fate of humanity hinged on raising average terrestrial surface temperature by two degrees over a century, starting at 1950. We fund a Manhattan project and determine that we need to burn 2 trillion barrels of oil to accomplish global salvation. Oil is extracted and funnelled into the clouds on a scale that even the wildest optimist could not have predicted. The fate of humanity now rests on the correctness of our atmospheric hypothesis: would our audacious and daring attempt to tip the earth's climate pan out and save the day?
Pessimists and worry warts gather anxious to example the recent global temperature record. This is small cause for optimism in the collapse of a few arctic ice shelves. But this doesn't really prove anything unless the glaciers themselves accelerate their melt cycle. Some believe this is happening, others are less sure.
Apart from the ice melt, there's hardly any cause for optimism. A tiny hopeful upward tick has been detected since the year 2000, more than halfway to the deadline. It's very sensitive to the analysis model. Hardly what you'd want to pin the survival of humanity upon.
Many doubters have called the whole program into question. A cadre of optimists have reassured the public with confidence bordering on stridency, "don't worry, that tiny tick is the certain beginning of a sustained upward trend".
Reverse the scenario, we'd about ready to lynch the people who suggested that burning 2 trillion barrels of oil was certain salvation.
The article was written by James M. Taylor. At the bottom of the article it says, "James M. Taylor is senior fellow for environment policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of Environment & Climate News."
From wikipedia:
The Heartland Institute is a libertarian[2][3][4] American public policy think tank based in Chicago, Illinois which advocates free market policies. The Institute is designated as a 501(c)(3) non-profit by the Internal Revenue Service and advised by a 15 member board of directors, which meets quarterly. As of 2008, it has a full-time staff of 30, including editors and senior fellows.[2] The Institute was founded in 1984 and conducts research and advocacy work on issues including government spending, taxation, healthcare, tobacco policy, global warming, information technology and free-market environmentalism.
The author of the article also writes for Environment and Climate News (which is part of the aforementioned Heartland Institute.) The E&CN also contains articles such as "Low Level Radiation Is Good For Human Health" and "God Wants You to Fight Global Warming "
Now the actual study in question is much less stark about it's conclusions.
Abstract: The sensitivity of the climate system to an imposed radiative imbalance remains the largest source of uncertainty in projections of future anthropogenic climate change. Here we present further evidence that this uncertainty from an observational perspective is largely due to the masking of the radiative feedback signal by internal radiative forcing, probably due to natural cloud variations. That these internal radiative forcings exist and likely corrupt feedback diagnosis is demonstrated with lag regression analysis of satellite and coupled climate model data, interpreted with a simple forcing-feedback model. While the satellite-based metrics for the period 2000–2010 depart substantially in the direction of lower climate sensitivity from those similarly computed from coupled climate models, we find that, with traditional methods, it is not possible to accurately quantify this discrepancy in terms of the feedbacks which determine climate sensitivity. It is concluded that atmospheric feedback diagnosis of the climate system remains an unsolved problem, due primarily to the inability to distinguish between radiative forcing and radiative feedback in satellite radiative budget observations.
-- QED
A) James Taylor wrote the article. He is a hard core anti global warming person who has made up and misrepresents information many times in his career. He pretty much write articles so Rush Limbaugh can quote a 'journalist' so as to not look like he is just making things up.
B) The scare and panic words used in the article, or any article' casts serious doubts on the validity of the article. (Blow a gaping hole', alarmist, and so on.
C) It's one data point, in one part of a complex model. It's doesn't blow a gap in the theory.
D) His interpretation is in no way supported by the paper.
So it's basically a worthless article. And that would apply regardless of the view of the article.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Why would the facts get in the way ? We're talking computer models here - they will say exactly what was programmed into them. Anyone who's worked at a university knows perfectly well. You program a model for some way-too-complex dataset. You can do it automatically these days. It's got hundreds or thousands of variables, you modify them until the outcome "seems reasonable".
Yes you test against past data, but anyone who knows the basics of statistics knows how past data and chaotic systems work : you can explain the past to any desired level of accuracy and still make the prediction say whatever you want it to say. The (statistical) proof of this is so obvious it's almost absurd to write it down, and boils down to this simple sentence : just take the past as a given, add any random future, there's your prediction function. Because the law of large numbers doesn't apply, this function can be trivially shown to be the best possible estimator of the system's behavior (but is obviously not unique, it is only the best estimator because every estimator has the same chance of success). Done/done.
But the most convincing argument is to simply check past predictions ... ... idem ... and turns out to be wrong (google "solar cycle 24").
IPCC AR1 : prediction failed. We're currently outside of their 95% interval (below it if you must know)
IPCC AR2 : prediction failed. We're currently outside of their 95% interval (idem)
IPCC AR3 : prediction failed
IPCC AR4 : prediction succeeded, as of August 2010. However we're at the very bottom of their 95% confidence interval and dropping.
IPCC AR5 : doesn't actually make a temperature prediction anymore about temperature. It does however make a prediction about solar output that seemed very safe at the time
Let's contrast that with this story. I know it's apples and oranges but still. The measurement data from LHC for the Higgs Boson was rejected for being inconclusive because the confidence was only 3 sigma, where 5 are required. For non statisticians 3 sigma means their confidence interval was "only" 99.73% (one mistake in 400).
So physicists reject a measurement because one out of every 400 experiments fails to produce the expected result ... and climate warning hinge on theories that failed to predict the outcome of 4 out of 5 experiments are flat out wrong and the 5th is so very close to failing that it's not even funny anymore, and moving in the wrong direction. I mean astrology has a better track record.
Let's please accept the obvious here : these are VERY different sciences indeed.
Gee really? I mean the fact that we can go outside in the summer, we are not under water and the only reason oil prices are high is because of greed kind of tells me that a lot of people got a lot of thinks wrong. Hell, in the early 90's some wanted us all to believe we would all be dead. Nothing is ever accomplished using the Henny Penny method of FUD to try and change people. Truth is worth more in changing peoples minds.
Bring me evidence! This study, while from a questionable source and published in a dodgy manner, will count as evidence if other climatologist find that the findings are accurate. You didn't present any evidence and parroted one of the most offensive arguments against scientific inquiry. "Oh my, the world is just too complex for poor little mortal minds. Understanding is impossible. Dear me, we should just sit here and accept our fates."
Space Shuttle was a program that strapped humans to an explosion and tried to stab through the sky with fire and math
Yes, CO2 is usually a feedback in the system. Warming starts due to orbital changes which releases CO2 which causes further warming which releases more CO2 and the cycle continues until CO2 levels reach an equilibrium point where they can no longer increase. It's the fact that CO2 usually trails temperature increases that has many people worried. After all, if a small change in the orbit triggers a massive change in the climate, maybe we'll accidentally trigger a dramatic rise by burning fossil fuels. Those would be the "tipping points" that they talk about, and they figure the first ones will be triggered between 2 and 4 degrees of warming. Once they're triggered we would probably have to resort to geoforming solutions to stop or reverse the warming.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
The problem we have here is that the "no warming for 15 years" involve drawing a line from an anomalously high year to a later year which is less anomalous and about as warm. Do you understand the problem with that? 1998 was much warmer than 97 and 99. 2010 was only a little warmer than 2009 and probably will be a little warmer than 2011. It's probably not coincidence that 9 of the ten warmest years on record occurred since 1998. That's clear evidence that warming is continuing, at a slightly slower pace than expected.
I'm always amused by people who try to assert that the decade with 9 of the 10 warmest years isn't warmer than the one that preceded it.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
There are tons of flaws in today's global warming models, which is obvious if you actually read the reports. Several scientists even admit they are inaccurate. Unfortunately, tons of urban hippies have hijacked the movement and turned it into the same old religious belief that seems to be ingrained in human being
I've not found the reports that I've read to be obviously flawed. "Several scientists" questioning something is also what scientists are supposed to do, and is not a sign that something is flawed. Several scientists, including some nobel prize winners, question the link between HIV and AIDS.
Hippies and environmental nutters are off topic at best. The number of idiots endorsing an idea says nothing about how good or bad that idea is. Whether global warming is or is not happening has nothing to do with how dogmatic their beliefs are, nor should distain for such people enter the question of whether we should do anything about it. It's kind of like how there are greedy bastards who are for smaller government and lower taxes. The fact that they're greedy and calling for cuts in government spending doesn't mean that cutting government spending is an inherently bad idea.
You're making a bogus argument. You know perfectly well renewable energy is not being used by the private sector for power generation, and your question only makes sense if that were the case. So the answers are very simple :
If "it takes more energy to produce and ship wind turbines than they will produce in the first 10 years"
That's the really bad part : the 10 year figure is based on theoretically optimal performance (wind blowing at exactly the optimal speed for 10 years). It also completely ignores maintenance : these things contain lots and lots of mechanically rotating parts that need to be oiled, checked and cleaned regularly. Because otherwise (in this case, the brakes failed)
, why would anyone install them?
Here's the first reason. In reality most (> 60%) wind power is not bought by choice. Solar power is even worse. See how effective politics can be ? Right now one of the arguments being raised in Germany for renewable power subsidies is that not providing these subsidies would crash the market.
And as for private turbines, the few that exist. First most power companies are government monopolies, and thus buy what the government tells them to, without regard for cost and/or efficiency, so there's really only very, very few of them. Why do people buy yachts ? Why do women buy 10 different facial creams with identical ingredients, each one more expensive than the next ? Why do men (try to) buy ferrari's ? To become popular.
Have you been watching the news and read a few magazines in the last 10 years ? "Green power" gets more commercials than Verizon. Mostly paid for by the government.
Additionally, by moving production to China, the real cost of producing these things is externalized, and moved to cheap China. China burns coal, dumping the waste in rivers, to end up in the Pacific ocean. Just to give you an idea : that waste is more radioactive than nuclear waste, and more toxic than sewage. And the miners are basically slaves.
Wind power is not actually cheap, even with the government subsidies applied, but having resources dug up by slave labor, burned in substandard equipment, the waste simply dumped into nature makes a Chinese 10-year energy supply for 5-10 homes just a little bit more expensive than regulated nuclear power in the states, isolated and secured, with the waste properly disposed of (again that's only a 10-year energy supply assuming theoretically optimal performance, disregarding maintenance, and once it becomes clear you get 20% performance at best, you understand why you will find most private wind generators abandoned).
It's a fake feel-good idea, with horrible consequences for invisible people, like most popular intellectual ideas. Like how Obama claims to "better the lives of people everywhere" while holding a blackberry, and surrounded by aides mostly carrying iphones, shouting about bettering the lives of the little guy, to deafening applause. Like how Al Gore, fresh out of his private jet, taking not one, but three limousines to a stage where he declares how "everybody needs to do their part to lower CO2 output" under lights powered by trucked in petroleum generators.
Why ? We all know why. Saying you're "green" is popular, and fantastic, extremely widely considered a good idea. Just like smoking filtered tobacco is considered a bad idea, and breathing in hand-rolled burning hemp leaves without filter, bringing actually burning fibers straight into your lungs is considered to do no harm, despite hundreds of studies claiming the opposite. Why ? You tell me why. It's popular. That excuses everything in our society.
Really, do you ever bother thinking before you post?
Yes. Do you ? Why do you think Google makes 2.5 billion per quarter for text-only commercials ? Bec
So where's the beating? I haven't yet seen a refutation of the data in the study. Just a bunch of lame terminology like "climate change deniers."
This guy did a pretty good job. (Follow his links, they are important).
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
I've seen proposals in the $40/ton-CO2 range, which corresponds to about $.40 per gallon of gasoline. We get fluctuations like that just from supply/demand/speculation, so it's not that enormous. Other costs (e.g., auto insurance) are comparable or larger. The cost of the Iraq war came to something like $.70 per gallon.
It's not nothing, and it has to be high enough to change behavior, but it doesn't have to be high enough to destroy the economy. That much "new" tax money flowing into the government could be offset by reduction in some other tax, preferably a regressive one (for example, exempting the first N dollars earned from Medicare or Social Security).
As far as "world-wide" goes, many of the other big players are already doing stuff. Gas taxes in Europe are very high already. China had one-child-per-family (ponder that, next time someone says "but what is China doing?"), and they also have regulations banning fossil-fueled motorcycles from city centers, in favor of e-bikes of various sorts (2010 sales, 28 million, scroll down through the comments here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/4973351342/ ). Even run on coal-powered electricity, a small 2-wheeled e-bike is so efficient that it's a huge win over any car commercially available.
No, it doesn't. But when you have hundreds of millions of years of statistics, you can make a strong case (p0.05) that the one is causing the other. And then you can go about deducing which way it should go.
1. Carbon causes warming. Lots of proof of that, and no way to suggest Carbon causes cooling. It's certainly not uncorrelated.
2. Warming causes carbon. Actually, the proof is the opposite; warming causes vegetation, which sequesters carbon and causes O2. This is a negative feedback in the system. If Warming caused carbon, and carbon caused warming, the Earth would be on fire by now.
So we deduct #2 from the possible and whatever is left (#1), however improbable, is the truth.
Carbon causes warming. QED. Now go play.
You can take any set of data and make a graph to support your side
No, you can't. Not always.
When you show hundreds of millions of years of data, and a plain drawing of the graph shows a correlation, then it says what it says, and I don't have to pick a side to know what it means.
And the fact that Correlation != causation does not mean Correlation == (!causation).
With this much data, something as simple as the principle of parsimony should direct you to Correlation == Causation.
But you don't need that, because this data isn't everything we know about the situation. It is, however, data that proves the industry shills are completely wrong in their claim that there's no correlation and no causation.
Look at the second link I posted. It proves you are wrong.
We do not rest on correlation alone. But when someone claims there is no correlation, we have this data to shove up their ass.
Any child can tell you're being a hypocrite. See posts above for why your claim about correlation and causation is moot.
The cause for concern is that we are manufacturing the cause for warming and the poles are melting because of it.
Ever notice how ice works?
Put some in your glass of gatorade, and if the glass is cold enough, it doesn't melt. Warm up the glass, and the ice starts to melt, and the temperature in the gatorade remains at the melting temperature of the ice.
Once the ice runs out, the temperature of the gatorade starts to rise until the entire glass is radiating as much heat as it's absorbing.
The sun, it should be noted here, puts an ungodly fuckload of energy into the Earth, and the more CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the more of that energy stays here.
Ergo, once the polar ice is gone, it's going to get hot.
No, it doesn't. In the second graph, carbon is varying in a range until ~1850 (industrial revolution, anyone?). Temperature is varying in a declining range until 1900. Then both climb like a monkey with a jalapeno in its ass.
I'm sorry, my friend, but the scope of my response limited the number of items I could mention. I could just as easily refer you to ten thousand like items (literally and from many different fields.) So no, I wasn't cherry picking, I was picking at random. By the way cherry picking implies there are a limited number of cherries, and that one needs to pick to support ones position, I'm picking from a pretty large pool of facts here.
In addition you advertise your ignorance of the topic. We have incredibly accurate data regarding global environment going back tens of millions of years. We have pristine samples of atmosphere trapped in ice, ocean water trapped in minerals, ocean floor cores, rock cores, and fossils in amber. We have a ridiculous abundance of data regarding precise weather models going back nearly to the dinosaurs. These models include atmospheric chemistry including carbon, global and local temperature, land and ocean flora and fauna, salinity, currents, pretty much the whole enchilada.
Here the problem with "Real Cherry Picking", you only look for the evidence that justifies your position, instead of basing your position on the body of evidence.
Personally, I say to hell with another grant for research, that's how the government has avoided taking any real responsibility for the situation we now find ourselves in. I say we modify our behavior, to begin easing out problematic industries. Monsanto was all about plastics in the 60s. They saw the way the wind was blowing and now they're all about biotech and food crops. There is no reason we couldn't provide fossil fuel manufacturers incentives to move into thorium reactors, wind and ocean power, geothermal, even co-generation and energy reclamation. These are huge opportunities and given the right tax breaks could prove a boon to everyone. Or you can just hunker down on your ideology, and make everyone you disagree with wrong while you keep doing nothing.
That special pleading can go either way - coming out of the LIA, temperature increases are to be expected (since they were anomalously low before).
Furthermore, if it's at a slightly slower pace than expected, doesn't that falsify the original hypothesis? Or shall we add additional special pleadings whenever we see data that contradicts our expectations?
As for "9 of the 10 warmest years", we're talking about the most insignificantly small margins. You can have technically 10 of the 10 warmest years, and *still* have a lack of expected warming - they simply have to be .0001 warmer than all other years, but compared to *each other*, flat or falling.
if it's at a slightly slower pace than expected, doesn't that falsify the original hypothesis?
The hypothesis on how fast the planet will warm? Yes.
The hypothesis that the world is getting warmer? No.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Wait, you missed a bit there -
1) you can have a hypothesis about how fast the planet will warm over the next 10 years, regardless of what causes that warming;
2) you can have a hypothesis about whether or not the world will get *any* warmer over the next 10 years, regardless of what causes the warming.
Now, for us to assert that AGW is actually CAGW (and something we should do something about), the warming has to have a certain rate. If the world warms at .01C per century because of human CO2, who cares. If the world warms at 10C per century because of human CO2, everybody needs to care.
So let's split them up - for sure CAGW is falsified by the observation of a lower rate of warming.
AGW might not be falsified by the observation of a lower rate of warming, but we definitely need to revisit the assumptions that lead people to believe that AGW means CAGW.
We have been on this path for over a decade, worrying about the Earth being destroyed by human activity just because some scientists were trying to get laid by models!?!
God Dammit!
You're just pissed that the scientists figured out how to get models before we dumb programmers did...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The /. summarry has this comment appended:
It is hard to see how the the summary is more "over the top" when it is a quote from the "less over the top" press release. In fact the quoted section seems to be quite middle of the road. People should read the Press Release itself.
http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2011/07/26/new-paper-on-the-misdiagnosis-of-surface-temperature-feedbacks-from-variations-in-earth%E2%80%99s-radiant-energy-balance-by-spencer-and-braswell-2011/
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Watch out for the ox blood!
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
Because we only have a few hundred years of weather data.
I'm not a dendochronologist, paleoecolgoist, nor even a glaciologist, but I am certain we have more than a "few hundred years" worth of weather data. In fact, I would go so far as to say we have roughly 4.5B years worth of data...