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Global Warming 'Confirmed' By Independent Study
chrb writes "The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project — an independent study of Earth's historical temperature record partly funded by climate skeptics, including the Koch brothers — has released preliminary results that show the same warming trend as previous research. Project leader and physics professor Richard Muller, of the University of California, has stated that he was 'surprised' at the close agreement, and it 'confirms that these studies were done carefully.' The study also found that warming in the temperature record was not caused by poor quality weather monitoring stations — thus rejecting a frequent claim of skeptics. Climate skeptic Stephen McIntyre has previously said 'anything that [Muller] does will be well done.'"
Because that's the real issue that most skeptics have been questioning of late. Anyone who isn't an idiot knows that the earth's climate is ALWAYS changing (and always has been). The real issue that people are talking about when they say "global warming" is the question of how much influence human activities have had on the normal warming/cooling cycles, if this is a negative influence, and, if so, what can humans do within reason to mitigate any negative influences. And *those* questions are a helluva lot harder to answer than "Has there been a general warming trend over the last 100 years?".
I'm not sure pure science is up to answering those questions. And it doesn't help that the issue has become hopelessly politicized--to the point where I've grown very skeptical of BOTH sides and their respective penchants for self-serving hyperbole and increasingly shrill fear-mongering.
Of course, there is also the question of DEGREE of warming, an issue where it's getting harder and harder to distinguish between mainstream science and Chicken Little fear-mongering. IIRC, initial models were showing a 1-2 degree increase over the next 100 years, something that clearly needs to be addressed but not something that's GOING TO KILL US ALL TOMORROW!!!!!. Somewhere along the way this kept getting more and more ramped-up to the point now where I hear advocates claiming that the entire east coast of the U.S. is going to be underwater by 2050. I can no longer tell where the truth begins and the humbug ends.
Of course, I'm going to be criticized here for even daring to question the accepted narrative.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
There is no amount or type of evidence, even in principle, which would answer climate change sceptics. They will disavow the fundimental principles of science if that is what is necessary to protect their beliefs.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Does Muller stand by this statement on Principle Component Analysis from 2004?
In PCA and similar techniques, each of the (in this case, typically 70) different data sets have their averages subtracted (so they have a mean of zero), and then are multiplied by a number to make their average variation around that mean to be equal to one; in technical jargon, we say that each data set is normalized to zero mean and unit variance. In standard PCA, each data set is normalized over its complete data period; for key climate data sets that Mann used to create his hockey stick graph, this was the interval 1400-1980. But the computer program Mann used did not do that. Instead, it forced each data set to have zero mean for the time period 1902-1980, and to match the historical records for this interval. This is the time when the historical temperature is well known, so this procedure does guarantee the most accurate temperature scale. But it completely screws up PCA. PCA is mostly concerned with the data sets that have high variance, and the Mann normalization procedure tends to give very high variance to any data set with a hockey stick shape. (Such data sets have zero mean only over the 1902-1980 period, not over the longer 1400-1980 period.)
My work here is dung.
No one disagrees that the earth's climate has warmed and cooled repeatedly over the last 100,000 years and beyond. Many disagree, however, about the extent of man's involvement in climate change. This sort of study is as if police were to report 'Yes a crime has occurred' when what people really want to know is 'who dunnit?'
... about sums it up.
Things look different when not done by agenda-driven "climatologist". warmest year was 13 years ago, let's all have some retroactive panic
But see also:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/20/the-berkeley-earth-surface-temperature-project-puts-pr-before-peer-review/
A real important thing to note was that this was paid for privately- with a large chunk of that capital coming from Climate-change-deniers who wanted to prove that climate change wasn't happening.
Climate-change-deniers often say that government paid studies are fake because governments are encouraging the scientists to come back with fake positives to promote various policies... ... they can't say that anymore.
The debate of man's involvement will still go on- but STOP DENYING THE PROBLEM! Let's put that to bed now.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Please God NO... it's bad enough seeing so-called news sites like the BBC peppered with scare quotes in headlines. Please don't start doing it here.
Because of this there is also incredible amount of research funding that is allocated to prove Global Warming and if disproved the research funding will stop.
This study would not have been funded if it was considered a settled issue. If there is doubt, there is research, which means more research money.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
"But for Richard Muller, this free circulation also marks a return to how science should be done."
I've long been sceptical of 'man made global warming' because of the science involved. It didn't help that people would say, "Only university-trained scientists can understand the data", either. (Obviously an idiotic claim. Anyone with a brain can learn, and Universities are not a requirement for learning.)
But this is the moment I've been waiting for. Someone finally did the science openly and put all their cards on the table. They aren't hiding anything, including their funding sources. They even used new data that wasn't tainted and made sure to watch for the things sceptics have been critical of.
So, as a long-time AGW sceptic, I'm saying: Thank you for finally proving it.
Now if we can only find ways to counter or offset it that don't hurt the environment even more than we already are, we'll be in good shape.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Notice that it abruptly cooled and the leveled out for about 30 years starting in the 40s and resumed the previous trend again the the 70s. Also note that if not for that little dip, there is pretty much a straight line from about the average in the 1800s to now.
So the temps have been going up a overall steady rate since 1800.
Why is it so hard to accept that human actions can have consequences ?
.......... why, really ?
A planetary biosphere which has evolved without homo sapiens sapiens' mega-scale industry and the innumerable effects it produces worldwide, is supposed to just take whatever you can dish out at it with your pollution, smokes, emissions, radiation, precisely because
it comes to me as if the people who are into this denial are moving with a centuries old understanding that thinks world is a biiig, biiig place. so that nothing can happen if 2-3 factories smoke here, a few people dump stuff in the sea somewhere. hey - guess what - people are doing it EVERYWHERE. and this planet actually is a small planet on the 3 orbit around a small sun in the outer rim of a galaxy called milky way. if you endlessly shit on it, it will get affected.
Read radical news here
Reporting on an event consisting of the release of preliminary results for a much-anticipated study that are clearly identified as preliminary results hardly needs to be agenda-driven. It's a news-worthy event. Just like the peer-review results of the study will be a news-worthy event.
Put your big, ugly bias back under your big, ugly hat. k?
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Politics sure is the problem, when we see you parroting that ridiculous and insulting idea. This anti-science, pro-ignorance mindset that you fall victim to is very political in nature.
Oh, please. Sore loser much?
You chose a side based on faulty premises and encountered resistance. Poor baby. Grow up, man up, accept you were wrong, and get busy doing the right thing for a change.
Once you mature a little bit, you'll likely find a mountain of acceptance from other mature individuals.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
The Berkeley study got $150,000 from the Koch brothers precisely because those who started it came largely from outside climate science, having established their considerable credentials in other sciences, and announced at the outset their skepticism about the standards of climate scientists. They expected they well might find - and the Koch brothers clearly hoped they would find - that the interpretations of the temperature records accepted by over 97% of current climate scientists were exaggerated and sloppy.
The Berkeley study leaders are now openly surprised that their conclusions - using more advanced statistical methods than have been employed previously - are within 2% of the mainstream climate science analyses. I'll bet good money they get no further funding from the Koch brothers going forward. The Kochs have many billions, and have been generous in funding the economics department at Florida State University, with strings attached to assure that department will support economic theories the Kochs agree with ("Austrian school" economics). Universities keenly court large donors. Had the Berkeley climate study likewise come to conclusions agreeing with the brothers' prejudices, that cash-strapped university could have anticipated generous funding to support a climatology institute going forward.
So which side of the bread is buttered? Were the genius scientists too stupid to see they just dropped the bread butter-side down? Why have they followed the science even when it drives away their funding?
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
"Figure 1. Surveyed USHCN surface stations"? The pie chart?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I'm sorry, calling for a proper scientific procedure, where papers are reviewed by experts before their conclusions are sent to the masses, is an "ugly" bias? I guess I didn't realize humanity had fallen so far. Perhaps I'll someday accept recently written white-papers as conclusive human knowledge someday, but it will be at the point of a gun by an oppressive government, I can tell you that. In the mean time, perhaps you can put your troll-gun away, accept that I have a point here, and acknowledge that research should go through all manner of due-diligence before being touted as "oh we've now confirmed something" in the media.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
The cognative dissonance is delicious.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
here is a picture of the CRU data they released recently. http://www.io-solutions.com/WorldTemps1700-2011wAnoAveCount.jpg
ALL OF IT. That red line in the middle is the GISS temperature anomaly. The Orange dots are the simple average of each months data. All of the gray dots are dots experienced somewhere on the planet.
My analysis.
1. GISS temps seem to match CRU temps.
2. The warming visible if you just look at the Anomaly is almost invisible if you look at the range of temperatures.
Basically you have a bunch of people examining the leaves of a tree in a forest and forgetting to keep track of the forest.
The forest does matter.
God: "I don't leave footprints!"
Um... yeah.... so, to be clear, the Skeptical community rejects the climate deniers as ideologues. They are not skeptics; they are deniers. Skeptics accept things that are clearly demonstrated by evidence, which these people do not do. We skeptics insist that our good name not be sullied by these folks. You are entitled to your (wrong) opinion, but you are not entitled to use a word which means the opposite of what you say.
Regardless of who causes global warming, humans, spagetti monsters, natural fluctuation- it is important to acknoweldge that it is real.
Why? Because- if it continues we are in for some problems.
Sea-levels rising, weather patterns changing, extinctions, crop growing suitability changing, disease from mosquitos species spreading north.
Stopping global warming (if caused by man) is only one side of the coin- the other side is WE NEED TO PREPARE because there is no reason for anyone to believe it is going to stop anytime soon.
So, we need to start thinking about- how to we stop coastal cities from flooding costing us billions every year. We need to think about how changing economies in local regions will change. If Nebraska is no longer capable of growing maize- how will that affect the economy there?
Lots of cities are already seeing increased flooding because they can't handle the increased rainfall they get as weather patterns change.
Chicago is smart- they're upgrading their sewers with an increase in heavy storms expected so they won't retroactively be dealing with floods.
I don't care if you think man is not responsible- if you're republican or democrat- spreading denial of climate change is dangerous. We need our elected officials to take the threat seriously and prepare for the changes BEFORE they happen.
I don't want to sensationalise or be a scare-monger... we don't need to run into the streets screaming- but we do need to calmly, on a local by local basis sit down and analyse- what will climate change mean for my community and what needs to be done about it. Do we need to build flood walls, prepare the economy for a new agriculture (or loss of it)?
We can adapt to a changing climate- but we need to take it seriously and act now- rather than wait until it is too late.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
I read the wrong paper. The caption in the correct article is "Figure 1. Ranking of stations".
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
But if you read the pdf, you probably also saw this:
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2011/10/arguing-with-your-crazy-uncle-about.html
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
That doesn't settle any of the debates:
1. How bad is it?
2. Are humans causing it?
3. Will it continue?
Personally, if it's happening and it's going to affect the world I live in, I think we should stop arguing about whose fault it is and just find ways to correct it. If it's natural -- for example more cloud cover, ash, etc. in the atmosphere = more retained heat -- then maybe we should be looking for ways to control nature. If it's man-made, maybe we should be looking at the ways we've caused it -- carbon emissions? Water consumption? Deforestation? -- and correct those. Likely, it's a combination of both natural and unnatural causes, and we'll need a bit of both to fix it.
In my mind, the one thing that's NOT an option is to continue life as usual without attempting to address the problem. I don't care how many jobs it creates, IF deregulating leads to the degradation of the planet we live on it's not worth it. I'd rather have a planet to live on than a job, if I had to choose between the two.
I still don't understand why this wasn't more broadly reported, but CO2's role may not be the cause... http://news.yahoo.com/nasa-data-blow-gaping-hold-global-warming-alarmism-192334971.html
When did data analysis become science?
Forever. There's a reason why CERN has more data storage and processing capabilities than God.
Science is about testing hypothesis
Yes.
with controlled experiments.
No, it isn't, not outside high-school classes.
Where's the control?
What, exactly, is the control for the hypothesis "the Earth's climate is increasing in temperature"?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Regardless of who is visiting us, other-humans, spagetti monsters, little-green-men it is important to acknoweldge that it is real.
Why? Because- if it continues we are in for some problems.
Possible interplanetary war, damage to Earth, extinctions, famines, possible new viruses from alien contact.
Stopping alien visitation (if caused by man) is only one side of the coin- the other side is WE NEED TO PREPARE because there is no reason for anyone to believe it is going to stop anytime soon.
So, we need to start thinking about- how to we stop coastal cities from being abducted, depriving us of our families. We need to think about how alien activities in local regions will change our way of life. If Nebraska is no longer capable of growing maize because of alien attacks- how will that affect the economy there?
Lots of cities are already seeing increased fear because they can't handle the increasing encounters they get as the aliens get aggressive.
Chicago is smart- they're upgrading their anti-aircraft with an increase in alien attention so they won't retroactively be dealing with lost population.
I don't care if you think man is not responsible- if you're republican or democrat- spreading denial of alien visitation is dangerous. We need our elected officials to take the threat seriously and prepare for the changes BEFORE they happen.
I don't want to sensationalise or be a scare-monger... we don't need to run into the streets screaming- but we do need to calmly, on a local by local basis sit down and analyse- what will alien war mean for my community and what needs to be done about it. Do we need to build large lasers, prepare the economy for a new agriculture (or loss of it)?
We can adapt to a war with the green men but we need to take it seriously and act now- rather than wait until it is too late.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
They show a nice picture of a weather station at an airport. How many do they have in cornfields in the middle of Kansas? Airports tend to be in urban areas with large growth, and we already know cities create bubbles of higher temperature around them. Any station in such an area is simply documenting population growth and not saying much about global change.
So, now you're claiming that you were born a climate denier? Otherwise, fortune has nothing to do with it.
Likely, people treated you exactly how you treated them. Maybe you should reflect on your past words by putting yourself in the shoes of the ones at whom they were directed. Might give you some important perspective and insight that will help you a little bit with that rather large chip on your shoulder.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Question #1: Is the Earth appreciably warmer lately? Answer: Yes. There seems to have been some skepticism over this question but this appears to be where the nutjobs on the 'denier' side fell (we'll get to the nutjobs on the other side in a minute). To some extent we 'already knew this,' but the point of this study appears to have been that we need to start from this point -- that if we can't even agree whether the Earth is warmer, we certainly aren't going to agree on why or what to do about it.
Question #2: Is it our fault, i.e. is it anthropogenic global warming (AGW)? Answer: This study doesn't have anything to say about that, but as others have pointed out, it is 'consistent with AGW models.' This seems to be the most difficult question because there are so many variables. The earth is warmer, sure; but it's been warmer before without our having done anything to it and the crucial piece of information that would easily answer this question -- what would temperatures be if we hadn't been mucking about doing things for the last 200 years -- would require a control planet. I've been trying to educate myself about global warming for a while but it's been very difficult filtering through the noise and vitriol. It doesn't seem possible to me that can conclusively answer this question, and to some people, that's a reason to forget the whole thing -- but the realization that we can't prove it doesn't excuse us from having to make a decision. It just means that we have to make a decision with imperfect information.
(Question #2A would be 'if the Earth has been warmer before, is it necessarily a bad thing that it's warm again -- is that just a natural cycle? This is an interesting question but let's set it aside for the moment. Even if we assume that there is a natural cycle, let's still also assume that what we're concerned with here is the extent to which humans are changing that natural cycle, not whether 1 degree celsius is going to cause an apocalypse.)
Question #3: To what extent should we handicap our own consumption of natural resources or industrial production to alleviate AGW? If we aren't entirely certain about our answer to #2, it's difficult, but by no means impossible to make a quantitative analysis of the 'value' of reducing carbon emissions by, say, one ton a year. But this question is so political that it'd be tough to have a reasonable conversation about it even if it didn't depend on equally, but differently perplexing questions like #2, because it allows for a scenario where an elected leader has to make a judgment call that is going to favor the environment over his or her constituents' jobs. We don't like to think about it in those terms -- we prefer to just imagine that everyone will buy a Prius or bicycle to work -- but it's important to realize how far-reaching these decisions are. It's also quite naive to imagine that industrial interests only exist on one side of this equation. The green industry has just as many crooks in it as the oil industry does, as any industry does, because it is composed of homo sapiens. Throwing money at solar and wind is well and good, but it's a luxury that a rich country ('rich' being relative these days) like the United States can afford; it's a joke to imagine that India or Indonesia or China are going to handicap their economies when they've only just lately (to varying degrees) got round to having economies in the first place. That's not to say that they won't invest in wind and solar (China certainly has) but this is merely diversifying their own energy portfolio -- reducing their dependency on oil -- which is related to but not the same as pursuing green energy for its own sake.
Speaking as an American business owner for a moment, it's tough for me to accept that the solution here is to make it even more expensive to conduct business via something like cap-and-trade, though not because it will affect my own business (it won't, much). This is clearly a problem that requires huge expenditures of capital to solve, and a
The graph from the BBC article was drawn by the Berkeley team, not a local ass clown:
http://berkeleyearth.org/analysis.php
Good grief, I thought we were past this already. Science has already establish the earth is indeed heating up. Any idiot who's been alive for more than 10 years & who goes outside (no offense /.) can plainly see the earth is heating up.
If you still doubt, try this simple exercise:
Step #1: Look at old pictures of glaciers from all over the world.
Step #2: Compare pictures of those places to current pictures of the same places from any point in the year.
----- OR -----
Step #1: Go outside.
Step #2: Hike in the high country for multiple years.
Step #3: Take pictures of the same areas of the high country each year, including glaciers in your photos (assuming you can find large glaciers in your neck of the woods).
We've had glaciers recede by MILES. We've had chunks of ice the size of Rhode Island break off the Antarctic and melt. What causes ice to melt? Hmmmmm, could it be.... heat? In long-standing ices case (e.g. glaciers, the Antarctic) could it be heat that wasn't there before? DUH! Figure it out for yourself people... it's not that hard.
The only debatable questions are:
1. What is causing the earth to heat up?
2. How fast is the earth heating up?
3. What will the ramifications be as the earth heats up?
4. What, if anything, can we do to counteract the trend?
5. Should we counteract the trend?
However, considering that deniers still exist (mainly due to vested interests), how highly politicized an issue this has become (again due to vested interests), how polarized most countries have become, and as a result of all of the above, how long it has taken to answer this most basic of questions... we are all hopelessly lost, at least until wars begin over fresh water, and the front page of every major newspaper hits deniers in the face with undeniable truth. Unfortunately, that's making the MAJOR assumption that people will put the pieces together, and that they won't be more worried about their bank accounts than drinking water.
As long as people will agree that the earth is warming up - will a long discussion about whether man caused it really serve any useful purpose?
Here's how I see it:
Picture yourself as a passenger of the Quantas A380 plane whose engine exploded mid-flight. The moment the engine exploded, what would you look at first:
a) trying to figure out what CAN be done?
b) trying to figure out whether it was caused by humans or not (terrorists or material faults vs. meteor or lightning strikes)?
Think that you will have to decide what to focus on, while the plane is having trouble staying in the air.
My guess is, that getting to land safely ANYWHERE was the top priority... But - it's just my guess...
Maybe you want to fund a study into the event asking everyone on board to see what they did first...
_OR_ we might try and focus on how to get the situation under control as safely as possible - by reducing the number of maneuvers that could contribute or increase the problem, and thinking about counter-maneuvers.
I bet you, even if the wing of that A380 would have gone, and even if chances of the pilot making ANY difference AT ALL - I bet you, they would have tried EVERYTHING to even minimally increase the chances of ANYONE surviving.
Name one thing that we have dumped tons of into the local environment that has been good for us long term?
Just one.
Biowaste? Even the romans had sewers.
Fertilzer? Not good for the water systems
Sulpher in fuel? Acid rain.
Flurocarbons ? Ozone Hole
DDT ?
Industrial Waste ?
Think CO2 is that one magic thing that will not have consequences ?
Their donations are everywhere, especially at PBS and MIT, graduating a few years before I did. Some of my MIT friends were worried about working in a group funded by them, but there has been no overt censorship so far. Ditto PBS. They are more libertarians than conservatives. They mainly want to drastically shrink government, but not tell people how to live their lives.
It is inappropriate to draw any conclusions from this research because it has not yet been peer reviewed. Watts of wattsupwiththat.com fame was shown a draft, and found some problems with the study, specifically with the selection of weather siting data. No doubt there will be other issues that need to be corrected, that's the whole point of having peer reviews. Everybody wants to skip to the end, but we need to let the process work.
You'd think that the /. crowd would be a little more sophisticated about this kind of thing than the average MSM reader, but apparently not in this case, given the comments I've read thus far.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
wouldn't it be laughed out of the college, not printed anywhere and get moderated as a troll/flamebait like this post probably is going to be?
OK so now we have proof that there has been a recent warming trend. Where is the proof that it was caused by human activity?
Gotta love the knife-in-the-back lows that deniers are willing to go.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
The question isn't "Is global warming real?". The questions (among others) are
Those "cards" were laid on President Johnson's desk some time back. It wasn't contraversial back then. The "debate" happened when people who don't like the idea of any sort of change heard of it and started giving money to a PR company called the Heartland Institute to stir up what turned into a circus. Once Al Gore stood up to try to counter a circus with another cirus it divided neatly on political party lines instead of being left to the experts as it had been with a few earlier Republican and Democrats administrations.
You're not even any good at reading a graph. This study - the Berkley Earth study - is the solid black line. The 2005 peak is higher than the 1998 peak.
Not that the particular year matters in climate research. Climate is what happens over periods of at least 30 years, not single years. If you don't understand that, you'd do better to keep quiet and not show your stupidity.
This was a pr campaign by the warmest. Smoke and mirrors...
No, this was a cynical operation by a bunch of physicists who went out and trolled people and organizations that fund the usual anti-warming losers saying that they'd give them a credible bit of anti-warmist propaganda for a few hundred thousands.
(I get the feeling that the smug physicists thought they'd discover some sloppiness by the climatologists that they could magnify).
But what they found was that the climatologists had it exactly right.
Whoops. Oh, well, no repeat funding, but it was fun.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
When did data analysis become science? Science is about testing hypothesis with controlled experiments. Where's the control?
Hey, look, another earth! Let's use that as the control!
No, let's colonize it and build lot's of fossil fuel based industry.
Oh bugger, back to the drawing board.
(Is astrophysics a science on your planet?)
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Think CO2 is that one magic thing that will not have consequences ?
The extent to which CO2 has consequences or not has surely got nothing to do with the facile suggestion that, because some by-products are harmful, we should cease ... what? Existing? Every industrial process has by-products. I don't think anyone suggests that these are 'good' things. The point is to mitigate the level of bad things, and to do that, we have to know which ones are bad, and how bad they are.
I haven't taken the position that CO2 has no effect on the environment, but reasoning like this is why debates on AGW go into the toilet. You aren't trying to analyze the effect of CO2 on the environment, you're just taking the tired, far-left position that having ANY impact on the planet whatever is terrible. You're also retroactively making the assumption that, every time we come up with a new technology, we know right away what its effects on the environment will be. Sometimes we do, and sometimes greedy people don't care and employ it anyway. But this kind of 'humans are ruining the earth with their technology' fearmongering doesn't bring us any closer a mechanism through which we might actually try and determine what the impact of anything we use in our daily lives is on the environment.
even if the energy coming from the sun was multiples of that, the biosphere would still have evolved according to the energy coming from the sun. and any undue disturbance introduced into the system would upset the balance. thats what BALANCE means.
Read radical news here
Today, it really does look like all the people in the "BEST" project were just puppets used in a bigger, pre-planned propaganda game."
Oh bugger! They're on to us! Quick, back to the secret hideout!
Watch this Heartland Institute video
I love that man. *sigh*
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
To answer your questions, the warming we see is consistent with anthropogenic climate change models, it is going at a rate which requires remedial action within a century, and I have yet to see anyone outside of the lunatic internet fringe claim that climate change is going to kill us all off, Roland Emmerich style.
It seems fairly clear that the only ones who stand to gain and are adamant on attacking the scientists are corporations selling oil, cars, and their lobbyists. Anyone else has basically been misled by the same corporate PR/propaganda lobby. PR, lobby and advertising nonsense does work very well on all of us - if it didn't there just wouldn't be much of it. Anyone would do well to question exactly where do ideas originally come from and exactly who stands to gain the most from whatever stance...
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
I wasn't aware of any research centers which don't have a very large vested interest in the global climate?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
These are all facts that should be considererd, and have been glossed over in the research.
Seriously, WTF?
No, this study did not confirm that the warming is caused by man. There is an alternative hypothesis:
1. Although it has been known for a century that CO2 can produce warming, and although the degree of modern warming is in agreement with that predicted as a result of increased atmospheric CO2, there is some other unknown mechanism (something to do with clouds, maybe?) that limits CO2 warming.
2. Although none of the known mechanisms that have been identified as responsible for earlier warming episodes in earth's history, such as changes in the earth's orbit or the sun's output, have been found to be present today, there is some other unknown (but natural!) mechanism that is producing the modern warming, which only coincidentally matches the warming predicted from CO2.
3. And whatever the cause of this natural warming might be, it is temporary, and is just about to give way to natural cooling (in fact, I think it's a bit cooler today than yesterday, so doubtless it has already begun!)
Again, this has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with the fact that I resent being told I can't use fossil fuels in order to improve the quality of someone else's life, yet when all it would have taken was some teachers telling other kids 'be nice to johnny or we will punish you' there was no such desire to do that little thing to improve the quality of my life.
You resent being told that you should be doing the right thing when you claim it isn't the right thing? Better shutter yourself up in your basement, as that's kind of basic in social interactions. It is like saying "I resent being told I can't punch you in the face" while claiming that punching people in the face is no big deal.
Stop expecting other people to coddle you, and you'll go a lot farther in life.
so it is victim blaming then? Are poor people poor because of what they did?? do you even know what lengths i went through to try to help myself? Maybe I have problems, maybe I needed help, but there was no accomodation to be found.
Bottom line: everyone had the freedom to treat me like shit, I should have the freedom to burn fossil fuels.
No, it is bully-blaming and calling out "playing the victim card". Likely (I don't know, as I don't know anything about your situation, other than what you have related), you mistreated other people in your objections to what they were saying, and they responded in kind. That's the way it happens the vast majority of the time.
As for your bottom line, it doesn't make any sense. You accept that burning fossil fuels is bad, but because you were on the losing side of an argument over it, you're just going to keep on burning them to spite everyone. In what way is that even logical, let alone mature? How does that make any rational sense?
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
According to some studies, wars and social unrest are more common in cooler climates.
Actually it makes sense, after all warmth is beneficial for plant growth.
As of this post, Al Gore was only mentioned twice! Okay, three times now with my post ;)
As soon as I read the summary I was sure Gore would be the center of much of the discussion.
The cake is a lie.
Unlike the Slashdot Editors, I actually RTFA.
The study does not "confirm" global warming, and certainly not man-made global warming. It confirms that the analysis from various temperature stations over the last 100 years has been fairly accurate. This indicates a light global average increase in temperature over this period. This tells us nothing about whether the planet is truly warming, or if we are in some sort of long term earth cycle. It also tells us nothing about man-made warming, if it exists. Finally their analysis still can't fully account for the so-called "fudge factor" which has to be applied when you consider the positive effect of concrete cities on temperature readings. All they can prove is that previous samplings of the data were adequate, and that our somewhat inherently faulty data shows a positive temperature trend over the last 100ish years. They also reconfirmed the El Nino impact.
Finally, I think it's important to note that if this study had come to the opposite conclusion, it would have been derided as quack science and laughed off of Slashdot. Furthermore, the fact that the Koch brothers funded an apparently legitimate scientific study is unlikely to challenge the conception of most on this forum that they are a bunch of purely evil monsters, but it should.
The study does not address causation, but that will not stop alarmists from pushing overzealous political policies that usurp individual rights.
Since the last ice age.
Influenced by man? Maybe, if so it is too late to make a difference.
Changes made on this continent will only be offset by shifting the bad things to another continent.
We need to adapt, move underground maybe....
Rick B.
Leave religion out of this.
Yes it is. You can't be more wrong. I can only surmise you've got alternate accounts modding yourself up because that is just nonsense. All science depends on repeatable experiments. In fact your first sentence demonstrates that very fact. You are in-essence, contradicting yourself. Why would CERN need more "data storage capabilities than God." if they weren't trying to repeat experiments?
That is a problem for those trying to demonstrate humans are altering the climate to come up with. The non-existence of a solution does not demonstrate cause to take short-cuts through the scientific method.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
The debate should not be about the existence of global warming -- that debate is pretty much closed. The question should be, "What should be done?"
Nothing. Absolutely nothing should be done to mitigate global warming and here is why
1. It will be economically cheaper to relocate those people who live by the coasts. Most of the people who have beach front property in the US don't need assistance anyways.
2. The cost to freedom of giving the government powers to regulate carbon emissions is too great. Everything from the number of pets you own, to the food you eat, to the number of children cause carbon emissions. Giving the government power to regulate carbon emissions gives the government power to regulate everything.
3. Models show that increased carbon in the atmosphere will contribute to increased plant growth and after a brief adjustment period biomes will adjust to the changes.
Global warming is about control and power. If you want to do something about it: plant a tree.
how many subsidies have been paid to solar and wind power industries in the past three years?
Let the sceptics provide proof it is not caused by man. The primeval forests grew for about 100 million years before the first herbivores evolved on land, capturing atmospheric carbon and burying it under their own canopies, with the young trees growing in the debris of their dead ancestors. The atmospheric CO2 levels fell dramatically during this period, and the earth cooled considerably as a result. Forests are very efficient at capturing sunlight and using it to capture atmospheric carbon, and atmospheric CO2 is very good at keeping heat at the plant's surface. We are well on our way to burning through 100 million years of captured sunlight, and releasing the stored energy back into the atmosphere as free CO2. If someone has a good hypothesis as to how this would not change the climate, they are free to try to prove it.
Korma: Good
This is how science works.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Maybe if Motl spent the same amount of time working on his own ideas regarding Matrix String Theory (yes a string theorist is the one complaining about climate scientists not doing real science), he'd still be at Harvard instead of being a crank blogger that relies on folks like Alex Jones for his climate change denial stories.
Global warming is one thing...but MAN MADE global warming is BS, and always has been.
Maybe if you had some real criticism of Motl's arguments you'd post them instead of these lame ad-hominem attacks.
Posting a story about a news event doesn't deny the proper scientific procedure.
Complaining that posting said story about a news event somehow undermines the proper scientific procedure when, in fact, it doesn't smacks of bias.
Any more questions?
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
I don't bother with people who use Alex Jones as a source of information. Those types of people are conspiracy nut cranks. Frankly listening to someone complain about ad-homenim attacks in regards to Motl is the funniest thing I've heard today. Just read his site. He can't write about climate change without personally insulting people involved. As I said, perhaps he should focus his energy on what he's supposedly an expert at.
That was nicely done, particularly the summary video http://berkeleyearth.org/movies.php. I'm glad we can consider the question on 'warming' settled.
Oh wait, that was only a peripheral question. Most 'deniers' I know conceded that in fact the globe probably WAS warming - although this well-done study pretty much removes any question.
Of course, it's a big step from "this is happening" to "this is WHY this is happening", and an ever-larger conceptual step to "this is what we all agree should be done about it".
-Styopa
So, if I'm hearing you correctly, proper scientific procedure consists of two-sentence soundbites and article headlines about assured conclusions by scientists? I mean, you just said:
So I'm forced to conclude that, according to you, when people posted news stories about cold fusion and cures for cancer, they were performing the proper due-diligence with regards to scientific process.
I swear they give me mod points to shut me up.
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A friend of mine proposed a very interesting argument against climate change, especially human-influenced climate change. "If God created the earth, why would he have created it in such a way that we would be allowed to pollute so badly that it ruins the atmosphere?" It's pretty difficult to argue with that statement.
Is your "friend" presuming to understand the will of God?
Why would God have created a world where 6 million people can starve to death in a forest while nobody gives a fuck?
It's ineffable.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Again, it is about reciprocation. Which is the fundamental principle of society. If I have to give up something for others, it seems only fair that they give up something in return, right?
Not if the thing you're being asked to give up is causing damage in the first place. Again, if you insist on your "right" to punch people in the face, and demand that other people give up something else to "reciprocate" you giving up on that "right", then that is not true reciprocation.
What I am expecting is consistency. If it is every man for himself, then that's fine. If it is every man must look out for each other, then fine too. The problem arises when on the one hand, I am to look out for everyone when it doesn't benefit me, and on the other it is a free-for-all when it hurts me.
If you are expecting consistency, then you have to also practice it. Otherwise, you'll probably not find it.
I may be mistaken, but you are laboring under the misapprehension that this somehow started as a real-life flamefest about global warming. It didn't.
I said I didn't know, but that is generally how these things start. I severely doubt people simply walked up to you on the street and started antagonizing you about burning fossil fuels without you first bringing up the subject. If so, I apologize, as I have never experienced that.
I was not the bully. I did everything possible, within the limits of my skills, to gain social acceptance.
My antagonizing tone is not my general demenor. It is very much more a frustrated wtf. I make an incredibly conscious effort to be nice to others. I still have problems making friends.
It sounds like you are talking about different issues. Surely, your whole social life for the last 3 decades hasn't revolved solely around the topic of AGW.
Just to point out, I have never met you or discussed anything with you before; my first experience with you was a general antagonism towards everyone for something that appears to be well within your sphere of influence to control. Thus, I would say you might need to make a little bit more of a conscious effort than you displayed here. That's just my take on it, though.
It has nothing to do with being on the winning or losing side. It has to do with reciprocation.
I am curious though. What happened to me was wrong, it was well beyond any normal school bullshit. It is having an impact on me to this day, with severe bouts of depression and suicidal thoughts. Why do you defend what happened to me?
Well, I will say again, I don't know what you went through, just what you claim you went through. I didn't see anything which justifies this level and type of response, and I am not going to suggest you relate it here, to me or anyone else. If you truly feel you have been horribly abused by people, then perhaps you should seek out professional counseling (I am being serious here, not deprecating or dismissive) to see if there is something that they can help you with, as you're not going to get that kind of help in an anonymous public forum.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
If anyone has ever bothered to look, the "manmade global warming" claims began with the left, continues to be pushed by the left, and villifies the right.
Yeah, that Svante Arrhenius was a right commie bastard.
I mean
if the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression.
That's straight out of Das Kapital isn't it.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
You're right. Libertarians don't want the government to tell people how to live their lives; they want corporations to tell people how to live their lives.
Me? I prefer to have a vote in who tells me how to live my life. And I mean a real vote, not a fake vote-by-dollar, which isn't a vote at all. Even when I spend zero dollars at a store, that store still tells me that I have to drive past its billboards on the way to work. If I want a billboard-free drive, the only way to get that is by having government "tell billboard makers how to live their lives". Alas...
I just noticed these people at Berkeley are SCIENTISTS! They're just like the the other scientists at NASA and elsewhere who are obviously faking their data to get those lucrative NSF grant funds! Really, people, how can scientists be trusted at all. What we need are a panel of non-scientists, like, say, the GOP candidates for president, to carefully evaluate the data until this elaborate hoax of Al Gore's can finally be forgotten.
Not true though, about "not leaving much of a trace". We've caused one of the most dramatic reduction in the numbers of species on this planet. Only the extinction of the dinosaurs falls into the same category. If we are dying out, and hundreds of million years later another sentient species comes about - we'll be measurable in the fossil record. They'll point at that thin layer of the earth's sediment and see that something dramatic happened there.
I don't think that means we are bad - sure we should take better care of the planet for our own sake, but we came from a long line of prey animals, and decided we should be on top of the food chain. And now we run the show. For all the problems we are having: that's still damn cool. Now lets go and fix that stupid AGW problem - if anyone can do it, it's us.
You know, the whole question of coastal cities has always been unconvincing to me. If sea levels rise by nine feet, then humans will... uh... move nine feet up the hill. Yes, that means that some coastal properties will be destroyed, and new coastal properties will be created. Yes, there might be some expense in that. But nobody is going to die with a one-millimeter-per-year sea level rise. I don't know -- that always seemed like a losing argument of the environmentalists to me.
The sad fact is that there is a large group of people, primarily conservative America, who will still disregard or dispute even this most basic aspect of the global warming/climate change discussion. The right-wing has made such a strong effort to attack anything which liberals even mildly support that it's become ingrained into the culture for them to simply conclude that it's fake left-wing propaganda. They'll likely only watch one news source, or only conservative sources, and therefore get no outside information on the subject to even begin to use their own brains for comprehending the situation.
While I think corporations played a hand in wanting to avoid emissions legislation that would cost them money, I don't think that's the entire problem, particularly since it mostly only affects this one particular issue. I think their culture has become what it has primarily because the Republican party in power has become so afraid of losing that power that they're building up this impenetrable partisan wall between their followers and everyone else, so that not only do their followers disagree with the opposing viewpoints and candidates, but they despise them. It's to the point where even when they need their followers to believe something different, they themselves have a hard time putting that new message through. Kind of like the select few respectable Republicans who kept trying to lay to rest the rumors about Obama being Muslim, or the birth certificate debacle, and how they were generally ignored since that wasn't the party consensus. Look how long it took for that to settle after the evidence was repeatedly provided and even after the original naysayers accepted it, trying to make the issue disappear due to growing negative public sentiment towards it by that point. Yet you'll still find many in the party who believe it regardless, since it was held onto for so long by so many prominent figures.
Global warming will be the same. Even if they come out with irrefutable evidence that it is also man made, it's become so accepted as liberal propaganda that we're going to have a very hard time passing any sort of legislation to help prevent further damage. That, and you'll have people who are so disgruntled at their long accepted viewpoint being wrong that they won't care enough to show any support. The Republican party and media are going to have to collectively work hard to rewrite this narrative they've created if we ever intend to get anything done.
How sad it will be for future generations to read about the history of this situation. Where not only will humans possibly have caused the climate change, but humans were too stubborn to accept responsibility for it and debated even its existence until it was severely impacting their environment. How stupid we may look. And we'll all be judged for letting it happen, not just one vocal group, because in the end republicans and democrats don't really matter. As should be the case right now.
What if the country is flat, and moving nine feet up means moving 100 km sideways ? What if millions of people live and work in the affected area ?
Will the cost of relocation be shared by the rest of the world ?
Well, I think he meant it from the sense of something obvious over geologic time.
Yes, there were events in the past which profoundly affected life on the planet, but it takes a lot of work to tease them out, as they are far from obvious to the casual observer.
Will there be any trace of us in a billion years? The planet will still be here, most likely, but the crust will have churned over almost all evidence of our presence. Creatures that attain enough intelligence/sentience to understand the concept might eventually dig up some fossil evidence of us or our creations, but it will likely be fairly difficult.
-SS "Teach the ignorant, care for the dumb, and punish the stupid."
Yeah. Then those people would move. They would all be affected, yes; they would have to build new homes, yes; but its hardly cataclysm. They would have a century to slowly migrate 100 kilometers? Yeah, I see the problem, and the problem I see is small. Why pays for relocation is a political question; my prognostication is that, no, the rest of the world would shed them a tear then tell them to move themselves uphill.
Also, yes, grain yields will decrease (maybe, if we don't engineer different grain) in traditional growing areas (USA) and will increase in other growing areas (Canada, Russia). Yes, there will be winners and losers. Yes, I see the problem, and the problem I see is small.
But hey, I'm just a guy. I've never studied this stuff. I'm open to being convinced that these are bigger problems than I imagine, or that there are bigger problems than these. Still, I haven't yet been convinced that a slightly deeper ocean is a big problem.
You can't slowly migrate.
But you're right of course. If the problems don't affect you, it's not really a problem.
Where else would anyone want to measure temperatures?
I'm the real Vorokrytin P. Winterbuttocks.
7) Let's kill some more brown people, as they are usually to blame.
From the headline above
"it 'confirms that these studies were done carefully.' The study also found that warming in the temperature record was not caused by poor quality weather monitoring stations — thus rejecting a frequent claim of skeptics."
From page 2 of the report.
No adjustments or corrections were made for systematic effects such as urban heat island warming or change of instrumentation.
So they did nothing to check the quality of the monitoring stations. They accepted the readings. This does nothing to reject the effect of these claims.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
I don't understand what you mean. Of course you can slowly migrate. Humans slowly migrated over the whole world. In fact my understanding of the world migrate requires slowness. A fast migration is called exodus or flight or evacuation or something.
It's true. I don't live anywhere near a coast today, so if I live here until I die then sea level rise won't cause me to move at all. But I've lived most of my life on coasts, like most people. And if I had to, I'd move uphill.
Some countries such as Bangladesh are set to lose MOST of their agricultural land.
Some island nations could be completely underwater under the worst-case scenarios.
Some countries such as the Netherlands have large portions of their territory already below sea-level. Would be disasterous for those countries.
For lands that are already below sea-level there is increased risk of flooding- especially in areas that are not accustomed to flooding.
It would be impractical to move a city like New York- so some sort of storm surge protection like Holland uses will need to be implented.
It's not so much people are going to drown from sea-level rises (except during the increased storms that will occur)- it's the financial cost.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
From this very study:
Goto http://berkeleyearth.org/Resources/Berkeley_Earth_UHI
Scroll down to page 10.
Look at that map, it clearly shows that the dataset they're pulling from isn't even meaningfully above the noise level. They say ~33% of the stations they surveyed had negative temperature trends (over 70 years... two stations within the same city have completely opposing trends over seventy. goddamn. years.)
This study and those like it will have zero credibility until someone can explain WHY stations right next to each other have such large discrepancies, and can ACCURATELY model those discrepancies.
Once someone can give me sensible and reproducible information on the data these studies are based on, I will start giving the conclusions drawn from it some weight. There simply is no conclusion to be made until the data is sound.
After all, you identify yourself with the group: deniers by using the word "we". Fine. Then at least admit to yourself that you believe truth is subject to political dogma, and move on.
Paranoia is a Survival Trait!
We'll have to agree to disagree. I think the fame, glory, and RICHES (all of which is the "prize") which would come from a scientist "breaking ranks" and "uncovering the conspiracy" or whatever you believe, would be far more attractive to at least one of the conspirators, than to get funding for another five years of obscurity earning a middle-class income.
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N2
Water
Helium Gas
O2
Now that we have someone else with credible standings, can we lay this to rest and just agree to recycle more, and use the bus more, etc...
Also pushed by Academia.
There was never a hole and it was caused by our magnetic poles.
We banned a CFC and the thinning gets larger!
You should try science sometime, you might learn something. If you learned something you might not be such a dumbass
I sincerely hope this will be the start of proper science in climate research, with all the politician and corrupt "scientists" from both sides getting out of it. Studying this field is very important for the future of mankind, we need results quickly, and the only thing that can provide it is unbiased research true to the scientific method.
That's a very nice strawman you've constructed there, did it take you long to make?
I never understood why people care about what causes changes to the environment? If you got skin cancer would you really give a flying rats ass if it came from a naturally occuring ozone hole vs one produced by CFCs?
I guess it would be helpful to correlate atmospheric carbon with an observed effect on climate as input to judge the benefit of removing carbon from the air.
However in the grand scheme of things it does not matter. 1/3rd of the carbon in the atmosphere is unquestionably man made. The extra carbon is unquestionably the direct cause of carbon loading of the oceans increasing acidity. It is simply not necessary to go on with an expidition to prove human cause for global warming when we already know too much carbon is doing bad things to the world even if global warming did not exist.
If you decide global warming is bad and want to drop the global temperatures it is as geoengineering projects go cakewalk. You just dump sulfates into the atmosphere reflecting more energy from the sun into space and your little planet gets cooler. MUCH easier than getting everyone to stop spewing their carbon into the atmosphere.
If you are more concerned about the direct effects of carbon screwing with the ph of our oceans then enumerate the potential problems this causes when mainge that the political case for change. Global Warming from a practical perspective is a red herring where it really matters.
Going an added step further than the parent, I'll use the analogy of warfare. The costs to avoid open combat can be budgeted and weighed. The costs to fight a war are unknown at the beginning, the scope of future battle being impossible to accurately forecast, although the costs can be inferred to be high.
For instance, the direct cost to maintain no-fly zones over and embargo shipping around Iraq rose above $1b/year only twice over of the course of ten years. The direct cost to invade and fight a counter-insurgency in Iraq ran over $100b/year, every year.
So it will go with climate change. The costs to maintain something like our current environment are fairly well known. The total potential scope of unbridled climate change is unknown, as are the potential costs to mitigate it. However, those costs can reasonably inferred to be very high, being as the last millennium of human civilization was built within the limited climate zone variation over that time.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Studies have been repeated, and verified, and (in this case) repeated again. Sending something back to committee for more study is a transparent tactic. I don't doubt that the likes of the Koch brothers will pony up for more... naturally, since the margins from their current business model depend on dumping crap into the public commons.
Luke, help me take this mask off
The environment (physical, social, economic) within which you manage your business is going to go through considerable change. Unless you're in the last 15 - twenty years of life, you are going to experience it personally. Your assumptions as to what it takes to avoid massive climate change is based on small-c conservative thinking, starting with a fossil fuel-centric focus. However, to create the status quo you're accustomed to required massive, pervasive governmental intervention to encourage the millions of economic decisions that once would have gone another way, to instead go this way. Not central planning on the scale of the USSR, obviously, but planning and action nevertheless.
And, so it will need to go this time, so that you can meet change on a scale that you can manage and anticipate, rather than one that hits you like a hurricane. A good market-oriented solution, using the same sort of successful governmental guidance we'd had in the past, will involve a cap on carbon emissions which the market can self-organize and innovate within.
You'd like climate mitigation that doesn't require much of anything from you, and that's not going to be possible, whichever way it goes.
Luke, help me take this mask off
I found this relevant: http://0.static.funpic.hu/files/pics/00029/00029517.jpg
is this something like the creationists vs. darwin or what ?
Free speech was meant to be free for all... how can anyone grow up in a nanny state ?
The question is not is the earth warming, but is it warming due to man's actions. The article doesn't add much and "pre-releasing" it just continues the politics/religion not science aspect. Oh well.
Rich Muller has been a self-important [you fill in the rest] IMHO since I first espied him in the late '70s. No one ever said he wasn't smart, or a fine experimentalist, but what did he bring to the table that wasn't already there? Did he have a real argument here, or did he want to be a denier? Is Climate Change "just a theory" until Freeman Dyson capitulates too?
United States
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That's a comically naive view of how science actually works.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?