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Droughts Linked To Global Warming
Layzej writes "Two new papers indicate that we are likely already seeing some of the predicted impacts of global warming. The first used Monte Carlo simulations to analyze how many new record events you expect to see in a time series with a trend. They applied the technique to the unprecedented Russian heat wave of July 2010, which killed 700 people and contributed to soaring wheat prices. According to the analysis, there's an 80 percent chance that climate change was responsible. The authors have described their methods and how they improved on previous studies. The second group studied wintertime droughts in the Mediterranean region. They found that 'the magnitude and frequency of the drying that has occurred is too great to be explained by natural variability alone. This is not encouraging news for a region that already experiences water stress, because it implies natural variability alone is unlikely to return the region's climate to normal.'"
I first read that as "Doughnuts Linked to Global Warming".
Stands to reason I suppose.
Evil people are out to get you.
The unusual weather events we've been seeing around the world the last year aren't proof that global climate change is real... at least not yet. Weather != Climate and all that, not over the period of a single year anyways. But eventually if the trend continues and we continue to see more and bigger weather related disasters over the coming years then eventually even the non-scientist deniers will have to admit there is a problem. When that does happen, i wonder if any of the deniers will actually step forward and admit they were wrong? Every time i see a denier post on Slashdot that seems to come from someone who sincerely believes what they're saying i'm tempted to write their name down and ask them about it when that time comes, but i'm far too lazy to actually follow through on that.
(And turnabout is fair play. If ten or twenty years from now the temperature hasn't gone up any more and the weird weather events go away without us taking any action about it i'll be willing to stand up and say i was wrong. In fact i'd be quite happy to have that event come about.)
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Critics of the first paper have questioned why a 100 year period was used and implied that this is cherry picking. These critics are ignoring the fact that the paper examined 100 years, 100 years excluding the last (very hot) year, and also the entire record since 1880 - each time coming to the same result http://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2011/10/25/roger-pielke-jr-just-cant-help-himself/
It's called "climate change" NOT "global warming".
It doesn't matter a bit. Until the consequences reach such catastrophic, region-depopulating proportions that the changes occurring can't possibly be ignored the denalism will continue to be sponsored (because that's convenient for certain big businesses in the short term, and they're too stupid to see they're shooting themselves in the face in the medium and long term).
By then it'll almost certainly be too late to do anything, either to prepare or attempt to moderate the changes. But I have no doubt that when that time comes, the denalists will pretend they are innocent and will continue to defend the handful of corporate interests that manipulated them. Remember how long the tobacco-sponsored lies about how smoking doesn't cause cancer kept up?
Stop with the hot air about trying to push the less threatening term "climate change" - you're contributing to global warming.
is how the Earth's temperature has remained essentially static (with a slight downward trend) for the last 12 years. That's from figures that everyone agrees.
If the temperature is static/slightly decreasing while the CO2 levels keep rising, then the CO2 hypothesis CAN'T be right. You can do clever stats as much as you like - the fact remains that the theory and model predictions say that the temperature should be increasing rapidly - and it just isn't. That really is the elephant in the room...
I am sure that the current +0.6-0.8K degrees really makes a huge difference whether it will snow in October ;)
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
It's called "climate change" NOT "global warming".
It's called both. It is anthropogenic (human-caused) emissions of CO2 causing global warming of mean land, sea, and lower atmosphere temperatures which is causing global climate change.
Seriously, cap-n-trade works IFF all nations participate. Well, Not only is USA not participating, but the worst polluter, china, will not either. In fact, if USA does, then it is CERTAIN that China and 3rd world nations will actually make a grab for American businesses by quickly building up electricity (probably following the chinese model of illegally subsidizing it and then dumping the goods on international market). And what is the fastest way to build up CHEAP electricity? Coal plants without ANY pollution control (in fact, china has nearly all, if not all, of their pollution controls turned off).
So, what is the best solution? Have nations tax ALL goods (local and imported) based on the CO2 that comes from the nation where the final assembly and the primary sub-components (depending on size of item, much even want several of the largest sub-components). Ideally, we would tax based on CO2 emissions from a nation on a per sq km basis. With that approach, it forces ALL major nations to lower their emissions, while nearly all 3rd world nations are all ready at low levels. However, with this approach, it will reward those nations that actually take the initiative to drop their emissions, while punishing those that choose to ignore it. That includes the nation that invokes the tax itself.
America is to launch OCO2 in 2012. It measures CO2 emissions. Rather than playing guessing games, this would simply measure CO2 into a nation's border, as well as CO2 OUT of the nation. That approach would allow us to find exactly how much CO2 a nation generates and not worry about the source. That is up to the nation to solve. They may wish to kill coal plants. Or they may elect to kill cars. etc. However, this approach combined with per sq km basis, allows a nation to decide if the issue is a business issue or a ppl issue and then adjust accordingly. However cap-n-trade and combined with per capita is about the worst idea going. It is already failing in EU. They are losing businesses to China who will continue to cheat all the way through this.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We have nothing to be worried about, just live your everyday fully and happily. http://www.impressiveshow.org/ Nike Free Run
Since the Russian heat wave was determined by NOAA to not be related to Glowbull Warming, that makes real proof that this "new" analysis is just more of the same old political panic-mongering bullshit.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/08/19/noaa-on-the-russian-heat-wave-blocking-high/
Hot shots.
This only shows the consequences of an earth that heats up. It does not show that man is responsible for the earth heating up or that man has any control over it.
Work Safe Porn
Unpredictable events due to an increase in the overall energy of a chaotic system? Global warming!
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
Mmmmm.... doughnuts!
If doughnuts are wrong, then I don't want to be right.
They need money for levies to hold water back, not money for Carbon Tax to be paid to the UN's banksters
Most people call it "global redistribution scam", but potato, potahto.
The data is available. Anyone can attempt to replicate the temperature series. As a matter of fact, skeptic Richard Mueller did just that recently with the Berkeley Earth Surface temperature project. He found that warming had actually been under reported by Phil Jones. Being a true skeptic he was persuaded by the facts and now accepts that the rate of warming is very well understood. http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2011/10/20/breaking-news-the-earth-still-goes-around-the-sun-and-its-still-warming-up/
How do you explain all the green leaves still on the trees on October 30. When we moved here 18 years ago, the leaves were turned and generally falling off.
All the long-term-average indicators I know of point to a warmer climate. Short-term indicators are not so meaningful.
That's part of what this study in TFA is about -- we can't point to any single weird event and say "that's global warming!!!!" but we can start to look at sequences of events, and get a handle on how likely that collection of events would be, with and without warming.
It also snowed here (near Boston) on October 29, 2005: http://www.flickr.com/photos/32419497@N05/sets/72157627882228751/
As the unlimited power is at our disposal (CO2 free), the Cold Fusion test wildly discussed yesterday is declared "success" (by Rossi), it has made Wired frontpage in the UK already. Scam artist or a messiah?
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-10/29/rossi-success
interesting video about the subject by CBS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OabYImeDSc
You misunderstand what he means (probably deliberately, but I'm not ruling out ignorance - I'm erring on the side of you being intelligent enough to be able to understand what he means).
What he's talking about is specific special interests out to call his methods and data into question rather than the science and theory that is involved. This is not the same as "the theory not being falsifiable" - the main aim of the denailists has been to question the competence of anyone who disagrees with them - for example, the whole red herring around the temperature data in the ice cores. They're not questioning the theory based on science, they simply wilfully (most likely) or ignorantly (possible, but unlikely) misinterpret the way to read the data from those cores, then using that incorrect method of data analysis to "prove the AGW people wrong", and then even worse - getting people to believe that.
They've been very good at that sort of thing because they are very well funded and learned a great deal about how to do this during the whole "smoking is good for you, and no we had no idea it caused cancer, honest!" propaganda campaigns they ran for the tobacco industry.
Talk to any climate scientist (or scientist in general who is working tangentially in the field, like chemists with a specialism in spectroscopy) and they'll be more than happy to discuss the theories and models and the way they improve them using the scientific method as you discuss above. This is how the models work - testing and experimentation, and verification.
If you think the entire field of climate science (and all those other peripheral fields that skirt the edge of it but aren't directly climate-only sciences) are all wrong because of one quote from a single scientist during a time when they were being hounded like McCarthy-era "commies" then I'm really not sure what there is to be done.
It's funny how no one seems to have a problem with, for example, spectroscopy, when it applies to something other than climate science - and not in a sense of "how do you know your results are accurate way", in a way that says "I have no problem with your results for experiment A, but when you do the exact same method in Experiment B that is designed to take measurements for climate data, now I think everything you say is lies!"
A few dishonest conservative nutcases call it "global redistribution scam", but potato, potahto.
FTFY.
You kill me.
Now do the one about how CO2 is necessary for life, so how can there be too much.
You're the best, RG. If I didn't know better, I'd almost think you were a real right-wing troll.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I strongly disagree with the premise. The only observable change large and proximate enough to the problem is deforestation not "global warming".
It kills O2 generation which increases CO2 a disproportionate amount given it also is a soil issue and a population dislocation issue.
Please reforest. In the mean time put tourist venues on the north coast of Russia, Norway and Canada. We need the money.
Replace hydrocarbons with algae. Do all transportation of end users by electric means. Done.
irvineeconometrics.com :( (governments only please)
It's statistical variability. Just because you experience an outlier doesn't mean the world is falling apart.
Posting from the Northeast where we are supposed to get a foot of snow...it's not even November yet!
Every one knows that the lack of pirates cause global warming.
http://www.venganza.org/about/open-letter/
If it were true, then I'd have to change my lifestyle and I don't want to, therefore global warming is a scam.
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) — An unusually early and powerful nor'easter along the East Coast began dumping several inches of wet, heavy snow Saturday that weighed down or toppled leafy trees and power lines and combined with high winds to knock out power to hundreds of thousands.
rewriting history since 2109
Thought experiment: if we're still in an ice age (due to ice still being in the artic and greenland) then if we're seeing droughts now, then what will happen when we get out of this ice age? More water in the environment means more available water everywhere, therefore less drought?
So isnt the answer simple? We purposely go and melt as much ice as possible and fix all our deserts in 1 go. I think that is the answer, following the logic of this article and study. Drastic things need to happen to fix this imaginary problem because the computer simulations never lie.
In other words, don't think about the mounds of scientific evidence, rather think what you tell us to think in spite of it?
I'll get back to you on that. Hold your breath until then. Don't worry about the "need for air", that's just a liberal conspiracy. If you start feeling lightheaded, take a toke from a CO machine. Michelle Bachmann said it's perfectly harmless to breathe and she's not a liberal.
Omnes tuae crepidines sunt nobis sunt. Ascendo tuum!
Global warming can never be disproved because everything is caused by global warming. Summer too hot? Global Warming. Winter too cold? Global Warming. Floods? Global Warming. Droughts? Yep, global warming. More big hurricanes? Global Warming. Less big hurricanes? Global Warming.
I thought the whole idea of the scientific method was that the method was above and beyond whether any individual scientist was right or wrong either by good luck or good management. If Phil Jones puts being right above the rough and tumble of surviving criticism, he's not doing what I recognize as science. My version of science does not limit criticism to authorized lab coats.
Richard Mueller, doing science, out in the open under scrutiny from all comers, came up with the same answer, and did the entire debate a huge favour. If Jones turns out to be as brilliant as Srinivasa Ramanujan (and as lacking in mainstream convention), I might cut him more slack. Hardy nearly had a coronary demanding proofs from Ramanujan that he couldn't supply in the form Hardy desired. Nevertheless, Ramanujan risked everything to join Hardy in collaboration to bridge the divide.
What was Jones' excuse? He's hardly the first scientist faced with the prospect that nearly 100% of his peers (to say nothing of the gadfly rabble) are mainly motivated by the finding of fault. He should have a brief conversation with Daniel Shechtman about the reality of his chosen profession.
droughts? Global Warming! cold weather? Global Warming! average temperature dropping? Global Warming!
While phrased facetiously and fairly modded down for it... the AC has a point. There are a hell of a lot of things that are blamed on global warming... and it's very easy for laymen to point that out and very easy for other laymen to say "well a global trend in warming can cause strange, unpredictable results in this chaotic weather system". I say stop BLAMING things on global warming. Droughts are the result of climate change, because they're a change in climate. Global warming, global cooling, global stayingthesameing, they're all going to affect weather in strange ways... what we have is an upward trend in temperature that may or may not be the direct result of human activity and droughts that may or may not be a direct result of this upward trend in temperature. I can tell you this much: We had a drought here in California that lasted several years and actually ENDED last year and we've been having record-breaking rains (and snow) that lasted well into July (SKIING IN TAHOE FOR JULY 4TH??) and then we had our first rains a couple weeks ago... is that caused by global warming too? Maybe. Who knows? Who cares? Does it really matter? No not really. The only thing that all these situations definitely have in common is that they are all occurring. If global warming is truly caused by human activity (which the jury is still firmly out on), we need to take rational action to solve it based upon scientific research... and that does not mean throwing money at anybody who claims to have the solution. Articles like this only serve to fuel the emotional bickering which has absolutely no place in science.
Why are people commenting on this story as though it made a case for Anthropogenic (human-caused) Global Warming?
It doesn't.
So, in a scientific paper one computes "alpha", which is the probability that the results are due to chance rather than a true relationship. Thousands of papers are published each year, so we simply accept that 5% of them happen to be wrong by convention*. (Plus, alpha is inversely correlated with "beta", the chance that a relationship can be found if it truly exists, set at 80% usually.) The summary implies that these researches have an alpha level of 0.2, which supports the null hypothesis (no relationship). A one in five chance of being wrong is not acceptable.
IOW, how is global warming falsifiable if you're just going to call everything a positive result? Or is it that you release sensational information to the media if you can't get published in journals? (OTOH, I have no idea what level of evidence climatology journals accept, obviously randomized controlled double-blind trials are impossible, so the level of evidence is going to be quite low just by the nature of the field...)
* Technically, most studies aren't even reproducible if people later try (kinda rare given expense). Bias creeps in despite the many safeguards. Much of it results from researchers being passionate about their theory, not so great at math, and forced to "publish or perish". Researchers tend to be fairly smart, so even their bias may reflect reality, so this problem is somewhat masked.
What was NOT said by the Mueller report, but is true nevertheless: Mueller simply confirmed the historical temperature record. His study had absolutely nothing to do with any difference between natural causes and man-made causes, nor (unlike the Jones, Mann et al.) does it pretend to make any predictions about future trends.
So in fact, the Mueller report is not even remotely evidence of, or confirmation for, AGW.
With all that ice melting we should have even more water available
According to a survey, 90% of scientists from the relevant fields and 90% of all scientists ascribe to anthropogenic climate change. That is what we call a "scientific consensus", and you don't get a consensus that strong without an awful lot of data to back it up. I know, I know, the good pro-science guys at FOX News and on the Rush Limbaugh show and from the rightist think tanks keep saying this is "bad science", but let's take a look at the "science" the rightists use to make their arguments, shall we?
The most prominent, most cited, and most published climate change skeptic scientist is one Ross McKitrick, who is either an amazingly sloppy scientist, or someone deliberately engaging in fraud in order to promote a purely ideological view. I'll let you read for yourself: http://crookedtimber.org/2004/08/25/mckitrick-mucks-it-up/.
This guy who either literally doesn't know a degree from a radian or is deliberately doing bad science in order to deceive people is the best of the bunch. The others are even worse. It is on the basis of work by men of this caliber that you conclude that 90% of the scientists on the planet, representing people from every conceivable walk of life, economic status, nationality, set of political views, etc. is part of a vast international conspiracy to... what? Make American rightists feel bad? I was never entirely clear on what this vast, incomprehensibly complex conspiracy is actually supposed to do.
"natural variability alone is unlikely to return the region's climate to normal"
Where "normal" is defined as "what it was 10 years ago". I wonder if the descendants of Ice Age megafauna are wondering when the climate will return to their normal.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
LIBERAL BIAS LIBERAL BIAS LIBERAL BIAS
Just wanted to get that out of the way, not my actual opinion an all that.
The point is, Mueller required nothing of Jones to perform his research. This has been replicated time and time again. Most recently by Mueller, but also notably by NASA and NOAA - each of whom have provided their data and code. Whether Phil Jones wants to give his permission is irrelevant. It is easy to test whether he is right or wrong. Scientists have done this. Skeptics have harped over the personalities and ignored the science.
The debacle, as you refer to global warming, comes from the number of scientifically illiterates who seem to, through their irrational denial of a worldwide scientific consensus as to the evidence supporting man-made global warming, prevent some pretty common sense, coordinated efforts to address a very serious threat before that threat grows beyond our ability to respond. As a teacher, I'm frustrated that the same crowd that denies almost all science it doesn't understand, (or is told to deny by those to whom these Neanderthals have surrendered their thinking facilities), such as evolution, ecology and global warming, have had such an impact upon public school curriculum. Terrified to teach certain subjects in science deemed "controversial" by politicians, (not scientists), we now have generations who don't understand that we live on a dynamic planet, where polar warming affects currents and weather patterns throughout the rest of the world. I want to spit when some cracker looks at snow on the ground and repeats, "well, so much for that global warming theee-orr-eee." That all-too-common evidence of ignorance reveals a lack of understanding about what a dynamic ecosystem means.
Err, you were claiming that Jones was stonewalling efforts to replicate the CRU temperature series. As it turns out Jones has no power to prevent that. Mueller is among the MANY scientists and hobbyists who proved that. Not sure what you are referring to above regarding proof of AGW.
Sorry, I don't get where this "flasify" myth comes from on /.
How exactly do you falsify the "Darwin Theory of Evolution" or how do you falsify the "Laws of Gravity"?
The scientific way is to find "prove" ... or to design experiments to support your thesis ... at least that is how we do it here.
If you find a way "to falsify" a theory, the theory is already gone and no longer valid. In other words, all existing theories on which we base our current science, may it be physics, chemistry, biology or thermo dynamics ... are not falsified (and not falsifiable).
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It has long been predicted that global warming would cause weather extremes and weird climatic events. But there are interplays with other factors that, while they might mitigate those events, can have other, as yet unknown, effects. The research into global dimming and its effects on the African monsoon cycle makes for interesting reading - and a desire to stay the hell away from the Sahara. And of course there's the increase in ocean heat content at various depths and what that might mean for ENSO events in the future. And it's too late to complain about bickering - it's become politicized and you have various senior (non-scientists) policy-makers who only listen to those who tell them what they want to hear, refuse to believe the evidence in front of them and say ( and I'm only paraphrasing slightly ) that Jesus Christ won't let us destroy ourselves.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
You sound more like a religious zealot than any scientists I've ever heard of. What you are engaging in right here is the exact kind of "witch hunt" you decry. Except here you are performing your own little inquisition on the scientists.
And what about Richard Muller's study? It didn't use Phil Jones' data.
Your exclamation points speak more eloquently than your words. They tell us everything we need to know about how carefully you have considered your position.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The ORBIT of the Earth around the Sun is not static. Sometimes the orbit is closer, other times is farther away. The change in distance is more than just the difference in Earth's elliptical orbit around the Sun
As time passes, the planet will get closer to the Sun (just like satellites do around Earth orbit) causing a increase in temperatures. Then if/when another mass causes a change in the gravitational field, it may move away from the Sun causing the temperatures to drop (ie: another ice age), People should realize that it only takes a slightly small change (as low as 1.5 degrees) in the orbit around the Sun to drastically change the temperature of the planet.
The problem I have with the GW alarmists is that they completely ignore basic facts in favor of unproven theories. And the worst part of all is that all the bs COMPLETE DIVERTS THE ATTENTION FROM THE REAL PROBLEM ..... POLLUTION. In fact, ever since the "carbon credit" scam was created, the pollution levels of the most polluting companies around the world have LEGALLY increased ..... with the excuse that the fees paid for "carbon credits" will negate the extra pollution as an investment in some some "green" projects in other countries (projects that for the most part aren't new or starving for money).
Sorry, I don't get where this "flasify" myth comes from on /. ... If you find a way "to falsify" a theory, the theory is already gone and no longer valid. In other words, all existing theories on which we base our current science, may it be physics, chemistry, biology or thermo dynamics ... are not falsified (and not falsifiable).
The "myth" comes from the scientific method. You're supposed to construct your hypothesis such that it is falsifiable. ie "if the experiment results are X, then the theory doesn't hold water" to do the process of falsifying, you need the experimental data.
I added emphasis to the part in question. Here's more on Falsifiability.
Again, emphasis added. By declaring that it's not unnecessary to have falsifiable theories you align yourself with "creationists". Is that really where you want to be? It's certainly not real science.
Good old self-serving greed is one. That is no small part of why I work to conserve. Use less, have more, more usually being money. I'm a big fan of LED bulbs for that reason. Ya they cost more up front but they use way less energy and you have to replace them literally like once every decade or two. In the long run, I spend less money which means I have more money.
Same even with small things like turning off lights in rooms I'm not in, having a remote controlled power strip on my home theater setup (Home Depot sells them, they are great) and so on. Doesn't make a big difference, but it adds up.
A bigger one is biking to work. I save a ton on gas, and even more on parking (I work for a university and they charge everyone, including staff, for parking). Not something that is feasible for everyone, but often more feasible than you think and if you can pull it off the savings are significant.
I always work to try and make my usage of things more efficient. It isn't towards any particular end goal, because I believe some huge catastrophe will happen if I don't, it is because I believe in conservation as a general rule of life. Use less, have more. There are a great many reasons why conservation is a good thing and it generally makes economic sense too so why the hell not?
The global redistribution scam has been going on for a while but wasn't linked to climate change. Now those who benefited most from the previous decades of the scam are crying foul because they may not be on top of the heap this time round.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
And it's too late to complain about bickering - it's become politicized and you have various senior (non-scientists) policy-makers who only listen to those who tell them what they want to hear, refuse to believe the evidence in front of them and say ( and I'm only paraphrasing slightly ) that the world will come to a halt tomorrow and we will all die a horrible tornado/hurricane/monsoon/earthquake/asteroid/explosion-filled death if we don't spend billions of dollars on stopping global warming NOW.
See? It goes both ways... and this is precisely the emotional bickering that I'm talking about. We will never reach any real conclusions until we stop listening to the stupid zealots on the extreme ends of BOTH sides... because they're BOTH wrong and BOTH retarded. But the human race is bullheaded and emotional, so I guess we're forever destined to have massive amounts of our money wasted by the sky-is-falling zealots and we're forever destined to watch the everythings-fine-jesus-will-save-us zealots make fools of themselves on CNN. Well... I guess both parties are guilty of the latter.
Ooh, look's like I am gonna get done for heresy, no more cult meetings for me!
Scientific_method
Falsifiability
Falsifiability
Scientific method
Where I live we (Long Island, NY) are experiencing record rain fall. In fact August was the wettest we have had in recorded history! We could use a drought right about now!!!
Water stores an immense amount of heat compared with air. It takes more than 1000 times as much energy to heat a cubic metre of water by 1 degree Celsius as it does the same volume of air. Since the 1960s, over 90% of the excess heat due to higher greenhouse gas levels has gone into the oceans, and just 3% into warming the atmosphere (see figure 5.4 in the IPCC report (PDF)). Globally, this means that if the oceans soak up a bit more heat energy than normal, surface air temperatures can fall even though the total heat content of the planet is rising.
Find a 50,000,000 year old modern human skeleton.
Throw a rock in the air - and it doesn't come down.
Of course, those have been tried and failed to falsify, so don't go breaking any windows trying to "falsify the Laws of Gravity". Which coincidentally has been falsified many times in the history of science. Ptolemy then Copernicus then Newton then Einstein each falsified the previous scientist's work making the obsolete work, well, obsolete. You know what? Go read The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (or at least the wiki) and get your paradigm on.
We can't accurately predict the weather but now we claim to accurately attribute it causally on a grand scale? Seriously?
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
So, based upon this one scientist's stupid statement, you decided that all of the other scientists who have found AGW are wrong?
That doesn't sound right. And anyway, you can get the actual data of the scientist who said the stupid thing now. And lots of other data that says the same thing.
I don't think it's very scientific to base your conclusion on a statement of one scientist out of the many who have done work on this matter. If you really care about science and the "scientific method" wouldn't you want a slightly bigger sample than one? And wouldn't you actually want to look at the experimental data and not at some comment the scientist made in the media.
That sounds backwards. Isn't it up to other scientists to shoot holes in the theory? At least I thought that's how it's supposed to work. But hey, I'm not a scientist.
Me, I'm just uncomfortable about the idea of dumping tons and tons of fossil fuel exhaust into the atmosphere and expecting there to be no negative consequences. Like eating nuggets out of a cat's litter box, I haven't done experiments proving that it's unhealthy, but it just sounds like a bad idea.
See, because I'm not a scientist, I have to go by what scientists say. For and against. And then I have to evaluate how credible those people are and then act accordingly. I'm not smart enough to create the models myself and do the work. I never went past a 300-leve math course, for chrissake. If credible people tell me that it looks like a century of fossil fuel burning is fucking things up, then I take it seriously.
Plus, I look at how credible the people on the other side of the argument are. Again, that's the best I can do, since I hated statistics and spent most of my education otherwise engaged.
Same thing with quantum mechanics. I've kind of got to go by what the experts say, though keeping an open mind. If it turns out that there are all of a sudden lots of scientists saying "Hey, nothing wrong with all that burning of fossil fuels. It's really OK". then it's not going to be such a big deal for me when I go to the ballot box.
I've got to tell you though, the people who are on the "against" side in the global warming discussion don't really inspire a lot of confidence. I'm looking at their reaction to this announcement by the Berkeley group that did an independent analysis of different data (I think). They said "OK, this Muller guy is a skeptic and he's going to take a hard look at the data and let us know and what he says goes. Muller comes out and says, well, it kinda looks like we were wrong and the AGW guys were right and all the people that previously said Muller was the Last Honest Scientist in the World was really a shill for all that big money behind the global warming scientists who want to pick on the downtrodden energy companies and they sound a lot like my daughter did when she was three and didn't want to eat peas.
And if the earth is getting warmer, the anthropogenic part doesn't matter all that much to me, personally. We're going to have to deal with it. "Greenhouse effects" have been proven in models. CO2 is a greenhouse gas and we're making a lot of CO2. If the earth is getting warmer, then can we please not do as much to make it worse? Like continuing to accelerate our use of fossil fuels? Does that not make any sense to you? And no, the argument "Well, China's still doing it" does not make any more sense than when my daughter, at age 13 said, "All my friends are going to parties where there is drinking, so I should too!"
You are welcome on my lawn.
Global Warming is dumping 8 inches of snow on me right now.
I'm not basing my opinion on one statement. I'm basing my opinion on the fact that the theory cannot be falsified. I used the quote to illustrate that at least some of the pro AGW scientists have no interest in using the scientific method and are so biased towards proving their own theories true that they aren't willing to allow it come under scrutiny. If a theory can't stand scrutiny from basic logic why defend it? Read about AGW more, find out how it can be falsified and prove me wrong - or - you may just have to admit that this is a non-scientific theory.
Methane is twenty times more potent as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, according to the EPA.
http://www.epa.gov/methane/
Even assuming the methane originates from a "carbon neutral" source (such as grass), most animal feed lots produce a large amount of excess methane which increases the effect of global warming. That is why preexisting farms, such as this one in Brazil, are eligible to receive "carbon credits" by capturing the methane from their animal waste and burning it before returning it to the atmosphere. (As a side effect, this "methane capture" system produces a significant amount of electrical power, it nearly eliminates the risk of environmental pollution due to animal waste run-off, the "digested" animal waste can be used as high-quality and environmentally-friendly fertilizer, and the rancid stench that usually permeates and surrounds an animal feed lot is greatly reduced. The system is also financially solvent and according to the workers at Preto farm, it actually reduces the amount of labor required to run the farm.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fFIg5WLnm0
China and 3rd world nations will actually make a grab for American businesses
Not sure about "American businesses", but certainly they would make a grab for the natural resources. If we make it artificially expensive for ourselves to use our fossil fuels, it will make it cheaper for China to buy them. And they won't restrict their use. In fact, given that EVERY country subsidizes international campaigns which favor their own business interests, for all you know, the AGW campaign could be sponsored by China behind the scenes.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Sorry, in that sense everything is falsify able. So your original post makes even less sense.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Wasn't it you who claimed AWG "science" was not falsifiable?
OR did you only answer by chance to my curiosity?
The links you provide make sense, however it is still astonishing that you use the term "falsify able" as it is a magic keyword. It seems the more proper term is refutability. Nevertheless I have the strong impression that the non american world use the term "provable" or "verifiable" or "testable" instead.
No wonder you have problems with creationists if your wording is so "in appropriated" ;D
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Sorry, as I said before, at least for a non native english speaker, the word "falsify" makes absolutely no sense at al in this context. Or the translation of falsify is wrong in my dictionary.
Obviously.
However we call that "proof" and not "falsify" ... or more correct, we don't call it proof but "support".
The theory is only "falsified" if you find contradictions or in other words results that contradict your hypothesis.
However that has not much to do with "must be falsify able". I would call it "must be provable" or "verifiable". Your idea of "falsification" is then just a logical extension from that.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Hence the reason why I oppose Cap-n-trade, but support a tax on ALL goods predicated on the amount of CO2 that came from where the good was produced.
And I seriously doubt that China was anything to do with AGW other than generating it faster.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We already know that you are not interested in the truth, so why should anyone continue to waste time with you?
The fact that human activity is the source of most of the CO2 increase has been documented. CO2 outputs can and have been measured, and there is no doubt that human activity is the cause of the increase. That *you* can doubt this shows that you are being influenced by the denialists.
We are rapidly approaching the point where we will be unable to prevent global temperatures from rising higher than they have ever been during the existence of humans. Do you really think it likely that we will do *better* in an environment that we did not evolve to live in?
"If we make it artificially expensive for ourselves to use our fossil fuels, "
You know all that oil in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Saudi Arabia and the other arab states doesn't exactly belong to US.
There is a simple solution -- put a tariff on goods produced in countries that pollute. Fair's fair.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
US is #1 producer of coal and natural gas in the world. China is on its to becoming a #1 consumer of coal.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Obviously we need to repopulate the seas with enough pirates to stop these droughts.
The problem is that, in America, the extremists who don't believe in global warming are well-connected to the levers of power and are doing a masterful job of obstructionism and obfuscation. My slight paraphrasing which you exaggerated considerably was made not long ago by a US congressman or senator. The doomsday scenario of global warming are still decades off into the future. The concern is if there's a tipping-point ( widely believed ), how much warming it'll take to get us there and when we'll reach it. Some believe we may have already crossed that point - trouble is that we won't be sure for a long time. You make it sound as though there just a bunch of ordinary people who disagree, with some wingnuts on the edges but there are powerful companies lined up to defend their interests. I hear a lot of talk, especially after Climategate that Gore is just doing this so he can make a billion dollars in carbon credits and that there is a rich cabal behind the greens and the IPCC and we should just "follow the money", overlooking the $1 TRILLION in US oil corp PROFITS in the last 10 years - a trillion reasons to support the status quo for some folks, no?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
The theory assumes thing if these things are not true then the theory is false.
You may not agree with those but they are falsifiable statements.
If you increase the concentration of CO2 in a mixture of gases like the atmosphere with infrared radiation passing through it it will warm up by capturing more of that IR. That's simple physics. Human burning of fossil fuels has put more than twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere as it takes to raise the level from 280 ppmv in 1830 to 390 ppmv in 2011. You're going to need some pretty extraordinary evidence to show the increase in CO2 is not the primary cause of global warming and humans are not the primary cause of the increase in CO2. Good luck with that.
From: Dictionary.com > Falsifiable
More importantly, you already knew the word was a valid and widely used word, but for some reason disregarded the link I already gave you. In the link it says
So ya, Falsifiability, is actually a requirement of the Scientific Method.
Falsifiability <- In our context
"It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." —Mark Twain
Yeah, the global warming is hitting the NorthEast pretty hard right now. They're supposed to get a few feet of global-warming before the storm is over. Thank god we've got the eco-terrorists to remind us that Cold = Weather, Heat = Global Warming, Drought = Global Warming-induced Weather Changes. Sure, they can't tell you what the temperature or the weather will be like 2 weeks from now. But what it will be like a hundred years from now? No problem. We've got that one nailed. ;)
but there are powerful companies lined up to defend their interests
There are powerful companies and trillions of dollars at stake on both sides. Oil companies have been privately researching renewable and clean fuels so that they will still be viable when the market inevitably shies away from fossil fuels, as well as doing what they can to protect their current market. There are many companies out there trying to profit off the environmentalist side... solar, wind, this "carbon credit" bullshit, etc... and they are also doing what they can to make themselves relevant, which includes taking advantage of the infinite amount of misinformation out there about what is actually happening to our planet (and what we might be able to do to reverse it) and using such information to drive a psychological emotional response in their favor among citizens and politicians. What a lot of people don't seem to understand is that very little of the allegedly-"green" technology that's currently in wide use is even nearly profitable. Instead, almost all of it has to be propped up by significant subsidization and legislation in order to stay afloat... and that's just not economically sustainable. RATHER than allowing a few extra years to develop technologies that COULD actually be profitable on their own, the world has been tricked into believing that our planet will surely shrivel and die if we don't take action IMMEDIATELY. So now we're stuck paying for these incredibly expensive, incredibly inefficient technologies (that are for the most part less than a decade old) to supply an incredibly small amount of our nation's energy needs.... while today we are getting very close to having some real progress in the sustainable energy field with technologies that are inexpensive and efficient enough to support themselves without ridiculous subsidies. And that's without mentioning nuclear power which people still have an irrational fear of.... even though it would solve (and more) our environmentally-unfriendly energy production with its extreme efficiency, inexpense, and safety record.
There is an old line about you might not believe in the Devil but he believes in you. Saying it isn't human induced climate change doesn't change the facts. I find it assuming that people on the site make fun of people for denying the science of Evolution but find the science of make made climate change unconvincing. It started out with the deniers claiming there was absolutely no change which is insane because the climate is always in flux. Most of the mainstream deniers have started to admit there's change but they are now claiming we can't possibly be the cause. Saying it isn't so has no affect on the world and the climate it will continue to change no matter what people think. Why is it such a stretch believing that billions of tons of man made CO2 is affecting the environment when people accepted we were destroying the Ozone layer? Unless you live in the extreme southern hemisphere most have had little impact from the declining ozone where as the climate shift is already having a major affect on everyone's lives. We had record heat this summer in Arizona and even the north had record temperatures all summer long. Even the sudden winter storm is likely caused by it. A late hot summer often causes a backlash of sudden cooling in the winter since there's a delayed cooling. I wouldn't care about people sticking their heads in the sand if it it didn't have such an impact on my future. It's likely too late to reverse the worse of the problems but that just means we are facing degrees of bad. Since there has been virtually no effort made to drop the CO2 down to a reasonable level we are facing the worse case scenario. Severe temperature increases and major sea level rise. What we are seeing now with the droughts and heat waves is NOTHING! Nature is barely clearing her throat. I've never heard anyone yet make a case for the obvious. It's been known for decades we are supposed to be in a cooling trend no a warming trend. That's what is natural. That in of itself is the strongest case for it being man made. Billions of tons of CO2 and methane have an affect. People used to think we couldn't fish out the Grand Banks but we did a century ago. The Great Plains were turned into a corn field and only a percent or two of the original Great Plains grasslands still exist. It's actually considered the ecological devastation caused by man. An entire ecosystem was wiped out. Lake Eric, a Great Lake was effectively dead for decades but they reversed a lot of the pollution and it's come back so we can have an affect.
as in "never-seen-this-time-of-year-since-the-1860s" freaky. I am sure sooner or later someone will write a paper that this one is caused by global warming too. BTW, what happened to that scary ozone whole over Antarctica? Weren't we all supposed to die or something?
Renewables are getting better and the manufacturing techniques that are being developed to improve them will pay dividends in the future, assuming the US doesn't allow China to run away with them. I hope to see the day where renewables can stand on their own - and it looks like that day isn't too far off for solar, which is a good thing for the southwest. But, it's disingenuous to criticize the subsidies when the Oil and Coal industries benefit from tens of billions in federal and state subsidies - how is that defensible? The nuclear argument is an interesting one since it seems the real barrier to getting them built ( outside of Germany, at any rate ) is financing. I've never understood why the supposedly cooler financial heads don't see nuclear as a slam dunk. Also, a number of proposals based on the AP1000 were rejected, are in limbo or were withdrawn, mostly because of safety issues with the designs. I don't know anywhere near enough to decide if those were warranted but the industry will have to work extra hard to allay fears. That said, you used the term "inexpense" to describe nuclear - based on its capital cost, that's hardly accurate.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Grand scales are broad and generalized - we can't accurately predict the weather because that is really complex and extremely chaotic. We predict winter and summer despite our inability to predict the weather-- how is that possible??!
Over the long term with a broader stroke you can see emerging patterns; see the forest instead of just the trees.
Individuals can't accurately predict how many marbles are in the jar. The more people you average into the prediction the more it approximates the actual number of marbles in the jar. You may have heard "wisdom of the masses" well, this actually quantified it a long time ago. (I leave it to you to wonder why I mentioned this.)
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-26-2011/weathering-fights---science---what-s-it-up-to-
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
> oil companies are funding little if any of the serious research on global warming
FTFY
The oil cartel is not interested in actual science on this issue. But they do spend 7- and 8-figure sums on propaganda campaigns and lobbyists, including hefty donations to conservative think-tank "institutes" which, in turn, do fund a fair amount of "fake science" which is favorable to the industry.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Please provide me with links to at least two examples of actual research on global warming that was funded by the oil industry.
Never mind. In your next paragraph you acknowledge my point, and contradict your own "FTFY".
I did not ask about propaganda; my point was about research. Both "sides" of the issue are guilty of large amounts of propaganda containing large amounts of bullshit. I won't deny that. But it wasn't what the conversation was about.
But, it's disingenuous to criticize the subsidies when the Oil and Coal industries benefit from tens of billions in federal and state subsidies - how is that defensible?
You're absolutely right. Maybe not about the actual number (I honestly have no clue exactly what amounts of money the oil and coal industries receive from the government), but at least the idea. I, for one, am in favor of elimination of subsidies in all industries... alongside a broad tax cut that would approximately equal the amount of money that's no longer being given to them. People need to realize just how much money they're paying for that gallon of gas, or that loaf of bread... or that kWh of solar power. Right now, much of that cost is paid for by our taxes so the actual cost is shrouded by the check we write to the IRS every year. That makes it extremely difficult to make informed decisions about any sort of investments or purchases. Of course, the industries love their subsidies because that's guaranteed government money that's not affected by the marketplace... and because of that, subsidies only serve to stifle innovation by reducing or eliminating incentive to develop ways to ensure efficiency and profitability. If you're receiving subsidies that do that for you, then what's the point?
Remove subsidies from oil and coal. Remove subsidies from wind and solar. Hell, remove subsidies from wheat and corn while we're at it. I support some government-funded public research, but once the research is done it had better be able to support itself in the independent marketplace.
"Err, you were claiming that Jones was stonewalling efforts to replicate the CRU temperature series."
Err, no I wasn't. Where the hell did that come from? You must have confused me with somebody else. In fact I wasn't part of this sub-thread at all until I made the above point about Mueller.
"Not sure what you are referring to above regarding proof of AGW."
Many people have been referring to the Mueller paper as though it confirms AGW, when in fact it does nothing of the sort.
The CRU temperature data is the starting point. It is nothing more than historical data. AGW is a THEORY about the reasons why the data shows what it shows. Support for the validity of the initial data can in no way be construed as verification of any theory about that data that extrapolates into the future.
Even though a lot of people have been saying that, the very concept is silly. That would be like seeing a confirmation that the days in summer are indeed longer than those in winter, and calling that support for the idea that it's because the days in summer get hot, so they expand.
I should mention as an aside though, however much it is unrelated to the point I just made, that Jones, Mann, et al. did conspire to stonewall release of said data (to the point of actually violating Freedom of Information laws, in fact), and that it was the "climategate" release that made much of their stonewalling moot.
If AGW eventually turns out to have any validity, Jones, Mann and friends should not get any credit for their theory because their refusal to release the data made it (at the time) impossible to verify any of their findings. Which is unscientific.
The claims that scientists are under no obligation to release their raw data is disingenuous: that may be true for experimental research but this was not experimental research. It was merely a study of historical data. As such, EVERYTHING in their work depended on the initial data and every step of every "adjustment" they made to it. Experimental research can be duplicated by others. Studies of historical data cannot, without access to that data.
At the time it happened, the Hadley-CRU-Pa findings were NOT verifiable because nobody else had the data and they weren't letting anybody have it.
Regardless of whatever else has transpired or may transpire, Jones, Mann, Bradley, Hughes, et al. behaved more like a bunch of irresponsible children than researchers we should trust.
If you increase the concentration of CO2 in a mixture of gases like the atmosphere with infrared radiation passing through it it will warm up by capturing more of that IR. That's simple physics. Human burning of fossil fuels has put more than twice as much CO2 into the atmosphere as it takes to raise the level from 280 ppmv in 1830 to 390 ppmv in 2011. You're going to need some pretty extraordinary evidence to show the increase in CO2 is not the primary cause of global warming and humans are not the primary cause of the increase in CO2. Good luck with that.
You presented simple, indisputable facts to support your argument; you're going to make his head explode, or maybe he's just going to continue to call people names and watch Fox news.
"there's an 80 percent chance that climate change was responsible"
What the hell does that even mean? It's just a way to get the attention of laymen, anyone who understands a shred of statistics will laugh at this meaningless suggestion.
Improve at backgammon rapidly through addictive quickfire position quizzes: www.bgtrain.com
The humans can adapt and thrive in changing circumstances!
Now excuse me while I fend off the hordes of displaced people who showed up on my front door...
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
That humans are burning fossil fuels to make energy (TRUE)
That this burning releases CO2 into the atmosphere (TRUE)
That the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere are rising (TRUE)
That the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is not accounted for by natural causes *Problem 1
That CO2 is a greenhouse gas and therefore will cause temperature rise in the atmosphere *Problem 2
That the global temperatures are rising (OK)
That the temperature rise is causing the climate of the earth to alter (OK)
I don't think you understand what Falsifiability is. And I've taken the time to explain it because I really want you to understand it.
The two items I pointed out on your list cannot be disproven by observation because they are unobservable. If they cannot be observed they cannot be falsified. Because the corner stone of the theory is unobservable the theory is not falsifiable. There is just as much proof of ghosts existing. You just can't see them, but they must be there. All we need is a device that will allow us to see the ghosts then, if the ghosts actually show up, I can prove (by falsification) that ghosts do exist. So all you need is a device that can measure the organic C02 output of the natural planet, observe the static C02 output from organic sources and the rise of the total C02 output, and you'll have a solid theory, otherwise, it's just a weak unproven theory that actually has no evidence to support its claims.
This is the hypothetico-deductive model of the scientific method.
#4 in that list is completely ignored by AGW proponents. The importance of step 4 cannot be understated because that is what separates hard science from soft science (or pseudoscience). The only thing that can disprove their theory is conveniently beyond the scope of what man can know. Because there is no way to prove or disprove the assertion that man is creating too much C02 relative to natural process it cannot be falsified. As I said, that's the linchpin in the whole AGW argument and it is completely unscientific.
Besides this baseless assertion there is no other proof that man is driving the climate higher though C02 release. That's called "weak inductive logic" and is the sort you should stay away from when formulating a theory. Here's a question, how about you show some evidence that backs that up? How much C02 is released from all the volcanoes of the world? Forest fires? Nobody knows. Then how are the estimates made? I will let you draw your own conclusions.
Problem 1) It cannot be known using the tools currently available how much C02 the earth organically creates. Nobody has a clue how much C02 is organically released because we have no way to measure it. We don't even know how many volcanoes are in the oceans or how much biomass is naturally burned much less how much C02 any of thes
So the supposed sins of Phil Jones prove that all climate scientists are lying? That's pretty scientific./sarcasm
Well, large amounts of data are available now so it's a moot point. And the BEST study provides even more evidence that there was nothing to be found anyway. Phil Jones may have a prickly personality but there is little evidence his science is wrong.
Average surface temperatures have had an almost insignificant drop the last 5 years or so ... but ocean temperatures are still on the rise.
I grow tired of all the people trying to prove global warming without offering solutions. I understand that the solutions are outside the area of expertise of those doing the research in "climate change" but all the lobbyists and politicians that are trying to convince people of the existence of global warming caused by human activity rarely have anything to say about what we should do about it. When they do come up with solutions they typically involve more money being flushed down the toilet trying to prop up failed companies that for some reason cannot stay in business making solar panels, electric cars, or what ever, and then passing the bill onto the taxpayers.
How about we talk about some real solutions.
When it comes to "electric" cars those cars are powered by electricity produced by something. In most every case that "something" is coal. An "electric" car is really a coal powered car so long as we are burning coal to produce our electricity. Solar power might have a very small carbon footprint compared to coal but it is so outrageously expensive right now that no one has been able to turn a profit without heavy taxpayer subsidies. Solar has other problems, such as being unreliable as it only produces power when the sun shines.
Wind is relatively cheap, has a small carbon footprint, and can share the land with crops. (I suppose it could share land with solar panels but I've never seen it done. Might have something to do with putting too much expensive equipment in the same place. One storm will bust up the expensive mills but also the extremely expensive solar panels.) Wind power has the same problem as solar, it's unreliable. This problem must be solved with either backup power (usually natural gas) or over-sizing the mills and panels and have some sort of electric storage system. These storage systems are not cheap, this makes any significant usage of wind power very expensive.
If we use natural gas to back up the wind or solar power then we need to have domestic drilling for natural gas. Natural gas tends to be where the oil is located. Without domestic oil and gas we don't have wind or solar. Natural gas is very expensive to ship in, it is only viable if carried by pipes. Shipping in natural gas means not only very high prices but dependence on the willingness of a foreign nation to sell us this natural gas.
When it comes to the amount of energy produced compared to carbon output nothing beats hydroelectric power. Problem is that we've already dammed up all the rivers worth a dam. Next in line is nuclear power. If we build more nuclear power plants then these "electric" cars are not coal powered any more. Nuclear power is not dependent on the weather, does not require foreign sourced fuel, and it's as cheap as coal. The only problem with nuclear power is that the federal government has an effective ban on any new construction of nuclear power plants.
Okay, there is another problem with nuclear power. It cannot be ramped up and down like natural gas. We'd still have to have an expensive electric storage system and/or a natural gas backup for the peak loads. Hydroelectric dams can be a relatively cheap electric storage facility if only outfitted with pumps to pump the water up the hill when there is a surplus of electric capacity. This is only a partial solution as there are only so many dams to go around.
If we assume that human activity, from CO2 output, is causing global warming then we need to stop burning coal yesterday. They only things we have to replace that "dirty" power source is the not much cleaner natural gas or nuclear power. We can add in some wind and solar only so far as we have a means to store that power and/or provide a backup. This storage and backup solution means a mix of natural gas and hydroelectric. More natural gas means more domestic oil drilling, something else the federal government has effectively banned.
I've grown tired of all the talk of how we are destroying the planet with coal and oil. If coal and oil is the problem then we need a solution. The only solution I see in the here and now is nuclear power.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
You'd have better luck if you at least said "There is no scientific evidence to support anthropogenic Global Warming". The BEST study was just further confirmation that the globe is warming.
Burning fossil fuels does great harm. There is no doubt of that. But covering the land with asphalt and concrete and removal of trees fro large areas as will as destruction of the oceans all are causes of warming. We are rather like a race car at full speed headed for a concrete wall. But that is not what our eyes tell us. It seems to be an issue with very slow consequences. Yet in fact the consequences are severe and a lot faster than they seem to be. In order to have much of a chance of surviving this emergency we need to stress population reduction, the end of urban sprawl, the restoration of natural areas, control of chemical pollution and a host of other things that are painful. For example a total ban on all salt water fishing would have an astounding effect on restoring fish in our seas. We also need to make use of invasive plant species in absorbing CO2. Plants such as kudzo can go a long way in helping restore our planet. Bamboo is fast growing and could eliminate a lot of softwood harvesting for paper and fabric fiber and bamboo grows almost everywhere.
You seem to missinterpret my question.
As I said before, even if you dont believe it: that term is very likely only used in the USA. Or the definition for "scientific method", like that is likely only used like this in the USA.
However it seems that genuine questions are not really welcome ;D especially if you imply I would not read the links you provide ;D
E.g. "Models, in both science and mathematics, need to be internally consistent and also ought to be falsifiable (capable of disproof)." is usually written simply like this (to avoid misunderstandings) Models, in both science and mathematics, need to be internally consistent and also ought to be capable of disproof. And hence the confusing word is gone ;D
Everybody who ever studied anything or has a higher lever school education (in fact EVERYONE) who went to school knows that a scientific 'claim' must be capable of disproof.
That brings me back to the original discussion. someone (was not you i think) claimed AWG theories would not be falsifiable ... which is clearly wrong.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Systems theory, read about it. Systems in equilibrium tend to stay in equilibrium until some outside shock sends them to a new one or into chaotic behavior. The human race is performing a giant experiment with the atmosphere and oceans. How much heat trapping gases can we pump in before really fucking up our planet to the point where the atmosphere+ocean causes so many droughts and floods where we humans just cannot keep up with it any longer? How many many changes can the ocean handle before it ceases being a food source? How many droughts will totally spike U.S. farm output?
Care to wager anything on whether "Who cares?" will sound dumb?
What do they mean "natural variability"? 20,000 years ago, New York state was under 2 kilometers of ice. Now that's variability. Seems to me any swing in temp is inside 'natural' variabiliy. I'm just hoping the current warming trend will forestall the next ice age, which would crush society.
If AGW eventually turns out to have any validity, Jones, Mann and friends should not get any credit for their theory because their refusal to release the data made it (at the time) impossible to verify any of their findings.
Nonsense. It's not their data. They did not collect it, they just compiled it. It can be obtained by others the same way that they obtained it. They have no power to block that. In fact NASA has had it nicely bundled and available on the internet for almost a decade.
Both the paleoclimate reconstructions and instrumental reconstructions have been replicated dozens of times by scientists and hobbyists - all well before climategate. If the skeptics really believed that the findings were invalid then they would 'do some science' of their own and find out the truth. As it turns out, no matter how you slice or dice it you get the same answer. So instead of doing science they focus on the personalities and their private emails.
I agree but it will never happen, coal and especially oil are of strategic importance to the military.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
No, it could not. It can NOW, but now is a much different story from then. Obviously you haven't done your homework on the subject.
First off, they would not reveal all the sources of their data. Some of it was public, true, but some of it was arranged via private business arrangement with international sources, not all of which they would name. And they would not release those data, precisely because of their claim that the sources wanted confidentiality.
Now, I admit that the following is only my opinion, but I do not feel that research that is being done with public money, and researchers who are being paid with public money, should be making deals that keep their data hidden from the public. But the fact is that much of the HadCRU data was based on confidential sources, and much of it was never seen by others until the "leaked" data and emails hit the internet.
It was only a couple of months ago that they finally released the rest of that data, YEARS after it was requested by others, some of it under Freedom of Information laws with which they did not comply. And in fact, Mueller would not have been able to do the work he did unless they had.
So say what you want about "deniers", but you don't have your facts straight. The data was not in fact available. When it finally DID become available, somebody did something with it. Imagine that.
"If the skeptics really believed that the findings were invalid then they would 'do some science' of their own and find out the truth."
But as I pointed out above, that data was not actually available, so they could not. Some of the data, as you point out, was available from both CRU and NASA. But by not means all of it; a very significant portion was not released to the public until just a couple of months ago.
So your entire argument here is based on a faulty assumption that does not fit the actual facts.
Further, the Mueller study does not confirm their THEORY of Anthropogenic warming, at all. All Mueller did was confirm the initial data, from which they formed their theory. That is not confirmation of the theory, at all. It merely says they didn't fake their initial data.
The problem with saying "prove" is that it is not logically correct in the context. When setting up a theory, one is supposed to create it in a way that it can be disproven, in a negative sense. It's actually quite easy to set up theories that cannot be disproven. I'm hoping that it's a translation problem.
"...because it implies natural variability alone is unlikely to return the region's climate to normal"
The whole notion that a "stable" climate is the "normal" condition is a gross misconception. Climate never has been stable. It has always been changing, and not just on timescales of tenthousands of years: also on (much) shorter timescales. And I am not talking about 'change' here in terms of: a statistical scatter around a mean. I am talking about real change: trends towards colder, trends towards warmer. Climate has always been trending.
So statements that include things like "return the region's climate to normal" are nonsense. It are statements made by people who have no clue about what climate and climate history entails.
We humans are inept to deal with change. We prefer to keep a status quo. Change upsets us. But the reality is, that climate doesn't care about a status quo. The fundamental character of climate is that it is always changing. There is no such things as "normal".
The real fear mongering neocons are the Humanity hating climate blamers that have condemned billions of children to a CO2 death just to make them more environmentally aware.
But as I pointed out above, that data was not actually available, so they could not. Some of the data, as you point out, was available from both CRU and NASA. But by not means all of it
No no no no no! That is flat out wrong! NASA doesn't OWN any data to release. They don't own any weather stations. Anyone can get the data from the owners - just like NASA did - just like BEST did - just like hobbyists did - and replicate the findings.
NASA did (about a decade ago) package up and publish on the web ALL of the data that they used, but there was no impediment to replicating their results prior to that release. When it was released, there was no epiphany from the skeptic crowd. They simply moved on to pester CRU.
If the skeptics were interested in science then they would have created a reconstruction of their own and publish the methods and findings.. Roy Spencer did this with UAH. Mueller did this with BEST. These guys were interested in science. Both found (to their surprise) that yes, temperatures are rising by the amount that NASA and CRU have stated. That is true skepticism
The 'skeptics' that you refer to are not interested in science. They are only interested casting doubt on science.
First off, they would not reveal all the sources of their data. Some of it was public, true, but some of it was arranged via private business arrangement with international sources, not all of which they would name. And they would not release those data, precisely because of their claim that the sources wanted confidentiality.
The sources were governments who wanted money, not confidentiality. You don't need to use the exact same weather stations to replicate the results. Roy Spencer didn't even use weather stations for UAH. He used satellite data. The BEST team didn't go to CRU for data, they went to the sources (and likely payed). NASA didn't go to CRU for the data, they went to the sources. Hobbyist gathered publicly available data. All performed an independent analysis and came up with the same answer. The fact that they all came to the same answer using different data and different methods means that we can trust the result. This is science. Very highly corroborated science.
Simply running the same code against the same data proves nothing. This is what the skeptics seem interested in. They are not interested in science, only on casting doubt on science.
this all sounds manufactured. we can't wait for proper data to come
in because it's such an emergency? really? that's your scientific
argument?
sounds more like manipulation to me.
don't get me wrong, it's likely that gw is real, but what is certain is that
people in general perfer gw to going without. the only way that might
change is if gw means going without.
so hastily slapping a label on something in an unscientific manner doesn't
help a thing.
It is evidence of AGW, at least indirectly. He confirmed the planet is rapidly warming. In order for warming to occur, the Earth either needs to be getting more energy from the sun or the Earth is radiating less energy out into space. A review of the solar record shows that the Earth has not been receiving any significant increases in solar energy.
So that leaves the option that the Earth is absorbing more/emitting less energy into space. The question is, what has changed on the Earth over the past 100 years that could cause this? A big clue comes from upper atmosphere temperature measurements. The upper atmosphere has been cooling.
So what does this mean? If the the lower atmosphere has been warming, and the upper atmosphere has been cooling, then something in between the surface of the planet and the upper atmosphere has been absorbing more energy. And what has changed significantly over the past 100 years that could do that?
I leave that question to the reader.
~X~
For the oil industry, the NYT reports the subsidies are currently $4 billion/yr and these measures go back nearly 100 years. The petroleum industry claim to pay more in taxes and at a higher rate than other corporations but accounting for any corporation of that size is going to be very complex. And the companies have been setting up shops in tax-haven countries for a long time - the Deepwater Horizon is registered in Panama. Another interesting fact - they've spent $350 million in lobbyists in only the last 3 years; close to $1 million per member of the House of Reps. Looks like they won't go down without a fight.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
If these Monte Carlo simulation predictions are so accurate that people around the world are willing to spend billions if not trillions of dollars (of someone else's money) as a result, why wouldn't these researchers use Monte Carlo simulations to predict...Monte Carlo and make a fortune in the casino and forever live a life of luxury?
Eugenics was widely accepted in the U.S. academic community.[6] By 1928 there were 376 separate university courses in some of the United States' leading schools, enrolling more than 20,000 students, which included eugenics in the curriculum.[12] It did, however, have scientific detractors (notably, Thomas Hunt Morgan, one of the few Mendelians to explicitly criticize eugenics), though most of these focused more on what they considered the crude methodology of eugenicists, and the characterization of almost every human characteristic as being hereditary, rather than the idea of eugenics itself.[13]
By 1910, there was a large and dynamic network of scientists, reformers and professionals engaged in national eugenics projects and actively promoting eugenic legislation. The American Breederâ(TM)s Association was the first eugenic body in the U.S., established in 1906 under the direction of biologist Charles B. Davenport. The ABA was formed specifically to âoeinvestigate and report on heredity in the human race, and emphasize the value of superior blood and the menace to society of inferior blood.â Membership included Alexander Graham Bell, Stanford president David Starr Jordan and Luther Burbank.[14][15] The American Association for the Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality was one of the first organizations to begin investigating infant mortality rates in terms of eugenics.[16] They promoted government intervention in attempts to promote the health of future citizens.[17]
Source.
Nope. Not a tariff. A tariff is applied ONLY to incoming or outgoing products. Instead, you put it on ALL products, including your own. That way, there is no discrimination.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
the evidence and truth has been out there for years. If you were honestly interested in the evidence then you would have already retrieved it. Of course, since we already know that you are not interested in actual truth, but rather slanted BS that allows you to pretend that your opinions have weight, you avoid actually seaking out this evidence. Instead, morally challenged individuals like you keep rehashing the same old lies and hope that you can waste so much time of your betters that they will leave, allowing you to pretend that you have won some wort if intellectual debate. Instead the truth is that we are simply fed up with wasting time with you. Just like when dealing with a young child who thinks he can get his way by constantly bothering the adults around him.
We are nearing the solar maximum for this ~11 year cycle. "Chill out" - exactly what's going to happen in a few years if some of the solar models based on long term declining magnetic field strength are accurate.
Yes, that translates the problem. And the assumption that this is true is simply wrong.
Sorry, but exactly this is the misconception I'm arguing against.
For the majourity of our days laws of physics don't exist any "disproves". E.g. the law of gravity, (how does your anti experiment for Gallileos drop experiments look like???) for thermodynamics, for the Bernoulli Principle, for the Maxwell Formulas for general and special relativity theory etc. etc.
It is nearly impossible to set up a theory and place a set of "disproves" besides it ... and what exactly would you conclude from it if you had "disproves"? Obviously to give the theory any credibility the disproves need to fail. So what worth would they have? Oh: my nice new theory! I have 4 disproves designed, and all fail! So my theory must be right! That is just silly!
The correct term is "testable". Usually you hope your tests are *positive* however if your test fails you either assume you have to correct your theory or your test is not good enough (measurement errors, sensibility etc.)
Back to the original point. If it is not even testable it can not be falsified. Obviously.
If you look at the "scientific method" link from Wikipedia, that one you linked me, you see the term and the sentence "falsifiable" only is mentioned once in the middle. And it is in context of a model and a calculus concerning this model and means that the calculus must be able to disprove its own model.
That is something completely different than the "Oh CO2 is causing warming: we need a falsifiable theory now!! Quick!!"
My impression is (not coined against you ... after all the discussion is very fruitful) that 99% of the /. posters that use "theory/falsifiable" and "in my house we obey thermodynamics" only repeat stereotypic phrases and have no idea what they mean/imply.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
""It is true that human emissions of CO2 are small compared with natural sources."
One keeps seeing so many who think that natural sources of carbon dioxide are small compared to human created carbon dioxide. All the volcanoes in the world produce about 220,000,000 mT of carbon dioxide annually. Humans produce about 30,000,000,000 mT of carbon dioxide annually, about 1,000 times that created by volcanoes. The amount of carbon going into and out of the environment due to respiration and decay must be very large, but because organisms die roughly in proportion to the number that are born, which should not be surprising given that no organism, save perhaps some bacteria, live forever, the net effect is largely close to zero on average from year to year.
When one stops to think that humans will raise global mean temperatures within 100 years between 4 and 6 degrees Celsius, and we haven't even yet started to burn the bulk of the oil in tar sands and the carbon based gasses trapped in rock that hasn't been in the atmosphere in the past several hundreds of millions of years of earth history, one thing is absolutely certain: its really going to get incredibly hot around here soon. Humans will have to begin to learn to adjust to an 8-12 degree Celsius raise in the mean global temperature in just a couple of hundred years. By the end of the first hundred, it will be over a hundred degrees F in Kansas City more than 100 days out of the year. Makes one wonder what they will do when it goes to 135-140 degrees F for 135 - 140 days out of the year. Certainly, a lot more praying in Texas.
Daily Mail and Georgia Tech point out that temperatures have not changed for last 11 years.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2055191/Scientists-said-climate-change-sceptics-proved-wrong-accused-hiding-truth-colleague.html
If it increases the risk of cancer because it results in physical effects that often lead to cancer, what is really the difference other than sophism?
Besides there is about as much chance that carbon dioxide does not causes global warming as their is that smoking doesn't eventually cause cancer and HIV doesn't eventually cause AIDS.
about 30,000,000,000 mT of carbon dioxide produced by humans annually, entering into a system that otherwise would have seen only a 220,000,000 mT of carbon dioxide entering per year from natural sources (volcanoes).
Methane is about 30 times more capable than carbon dioxide in increasing global atmospheric temperatures and are known to be associated with major extinction events in the past, such as in the Permian. Your right we do have big problems, but ignoring the tremendous heat trapping effect of ever increasing amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will only make them much worse. It is not as if we can simply blow off the effects because we find them inconvenient to our portfolios.
The only problem with your argument is that the Chinese recognize that it is in their interest to get off fossil fuels as fast as they can and are doing so by dramatically increasing their production and use of solar technology, while in the USA we have have to do battle with the fossil fuel industry operatives, who want to postpone the day of reckoning as long as possible. Last year China lost more soil to drought than the US so they have incentive to do something about it.
Suggesting that the US oppose China by making sure that we will not get out in front of them technologically to do what will be inevitably be required (get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible but instead cling to fossil fuels for as long as possible, is to make your concerns about China moot, since you seem more than willing to surrender the future to them in doing so.
Has it every occurred to you that if we could run the US entirely on solar and wind power then we wouldn't have to pay the Iranians, Iraqis Libyans, and Saudi Arabians for it and all that money would stay in the US?
If we make fossil fuels artificially expensive, not only will we burn less and reduce the amount of greenhouse gases added to the atmosphere, but also it will save us a great deal of money and destruction to of our environment, not to mention stimulate our economy as it shift toward 21st century technologies rather than attempting to compete using 19th century technology. But heck we don't have to make it artificially expensive, we can just cut subsidies to the fossil fuels industry and save even more. Current subsidizes, such as the oil depletion allowance, actually make oil artificially inexpensive to the producers and distributors at taxpayer's expense.
That the increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is not accounted for by natural causes *Problem 1
How about the observable fact that human burning of fossil fuels has released more than twice as much CO2 as it would take to raise the atmospheric level of it from 280 ppmv in 1830 to 390 ppmv in 2011? So if the atmospheric level of CO2 is from natural causes you have to propose some mechanism that removes all of the human released CO2 and some natural mechanism that releases CO2 to increase the level.
That CO2 is a greenhouse gas and therefore will cause temperature rise in the atmosphere *Problem 2
How about the observable fact that the difference between upwelling longwave radiation at the surface and from orbit shows a clear signature of CO2 absorption of that radiation. That shows that CO2 is capturing IR radiation in the atmosphere. How would that not increase the temperature?
If CO2 has increased pretty much continuously since the industrial revolution, why has the warming stalled for the last decade?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Registering ships in Panama is pretty much SOP in all Maritime vessels, even Disney does it.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
No, that's simplistic physics.
If you increase the concentration of CO2 in a mixture of gases like the atmosphere with infrared radiation passing through it it will warm up by capturing more of that IR. Because the air is warmer, it will rise higher before cooling, because warmer air is lighter than cooler air. THEN more heat radiates out into space, BOTH because the warm air is higher, and because it is warmer. ALSO, the evaporation of ground water accelerates (more heat, remember?), taking warm moisture into the atmosphere, radiating more of THAT heat to space as well, and returning greatly cooled moisture as rain as the water condenses out, thus countering the IR heating effect. This is known as a "feedback loop" and it's just one of a very large number of them involved in coming to the actual atmospheric temperature at any one location.
And you know what? That's still simplistic physics. I guarantee you three things: One, no one can describe this issue adequately in a slashdot post, and two, that scientists have not resolved exactly what is going on to a degree where there is a clear path to specific ameliorative responses on our part, and three, change is constant, as is our response to it, which may, or may not, appropriately include attempting to counter the forces that are driving whatever change is currently making itself most obvious.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Without knowing how much of that CO2 was organic I don't see how you can conclude that "man is responsible for the increase in CO2" . I guess you're inferring that the earth released zero CO2 and absorbed half of that released by man? Maybe it would be more accurate to say "I don't have any clue what's happening". That would be the truth, but it would also hamper the AGW theory. No, to support your theory you must make an illogical leap.
Without knowing how the climate works I don't see how you can conclude that increase in CO2 = increase in temperature. So what if CO2 is capturing IR radiation, that does not prove the temperature will increase. The climate is complex and without explaining how that increases the temperature you're left with pure conjecture. AGW is not my theory, and it's not my responsibility to disprove it, it's the responsibility of the proponents, and they avoid disproving it at all costs. And since nobody as of yet understands how the climate works, all you have is pure conjecture. Anything subjective (and it's all subjective since the data has to be interpreted) always ends up supporting their theory. The problem with that is a real scientist would try to disprove their own theory, these people only want to prove their theory through supporting evidence. It's not science if you constantly have a finger on the scale.
You're talking about a gas that makes up only a tiny fraction of the gasses in the atmosphere. Trying to calculate the absorption rate of CO2 and not accounting for heat radiating into space, or cloud cover, or dust or any other factors that are way more influential is just stupid. CO2 has been grasped upon because leftists see it as a tool to control people. Everything that you do produces CO2 so it's the holy grail to socialists who would just love a reason to control every aspect of your life. CO2 is not a pollutant, it does not harm anyone, plants require it to grow and grow in more abundance when it is in higher concentrations, it only makes up 0.0387% of the gasses in our atmosphere. And nobody knows the amount produced by natural sources so nobody knows how much of the CO2 in the air is from man and how much is from nature. Even if you were able to determine the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere there is no evidence that CO2 drives warming.
CO2 is not harmful but is about to be called a pollutant and taxed by the government. Do you think that the taxes are going to do anything but kill jobs? Do you think the government is going to "fix" something with that money? Nothing here is well understood, except the fact that the government wants more of your money to fix something they cannot fix that may or may not be a problem.
You know that's not the only model, don't you?
Oh, knock it off. You're repeating an argument from some denialist web page and trying to associate AGW with belief in the paranormal.
You used to argue that the earth was not warming, but now the evidence has mounted and you feel stupid trying to argue against that, so you're looking to increasingly obscure reasons.
Whether AGW is proven to your satisfaction or not is meaningless. There are certainly enough respected scientists who believe that AGW is happening to add it to the long list of reasons to work are way off of dependence on fossil fuels. You're starting to sound like one of those retired mechanical engineer cranks who believes he has proof that Einstein was completely wrong and that he's discovered the one exception to the Laws of Thermodynamics. Contrariness is what happens when people don't get out enough.
You are welcome on my lawn.
They are, and green tech may be too : http://www.npr.org/2010/12/03/131785448/Military-Goes-Green-For-An-Edge-On-The-Battlefield
Warming hasn't exactly stalled for the last decade. It is true that the slope of the warming trend in the 2000's is less than the 1980's & 1990's but 2010 is tied with 2005 for the warmest years on record (GISS). But a decade is too short a time period to eliminate the effects of natural variability on climate so we'll have to wait at least another decade to see if your supposition has any validity.
You missed the actual scandal in Climategate, then, hidden behind the smokescreen of the fake scandal (the allegations Jones was faking the data).
The actual scandal was that Jones was refusing access to his data and methods (saying "why should I give you data you might use to disagree with me?"), and actively colluding with Gavin of RC.org and others on ways of illegally dodging FOIA requests.
Defenders of Jones like to pretend he was being spamflooded by FOIA requests, but this is quite simply a lie from people unwilling to admit that "their team" could ever be in the ethical wrong.
Science, and especially climatology, needs openness to function.
The data has been (and continues to be) collected, analyzed by numerous researchers, and is to the point where even you or I can discern the trends after a few minutes with a spreadsheet. I'm done splitting hairs with the flat earthers and the shills for fossil fuel purveyors regarding the "reality" of climate change. It's pointless, and whether the parent realizes it or not, we're passed that.
Where we are is a struggle over what to do next. Granted, in a bad economy, it's a hard sell the sort of policies that would reduce and then stop the increase in atmospheric carbon. And, most of the likes of the parent's post really come down to that. For instance, compare Newt Gingrich c. 2011 with c. 2007.
The thing that's needed to get useful climate policies in place is to create catch up growth in the US economy, enabling the majority of voters to see beyond the next quarter. The private sector is already back to a historically normal growth rate, but we're shooting ourselves in the foot by continuing to shrink public employment. President Hoover would be so proud.
Luke, help me take this mask off
How about global warming being linked to droughts? All those rain forests being chopped down around the world in the past 60 years can't be helping the increasing CO2 problem.
Without knowing how much of that CO2 was organic I don't see how you can conclude that "man is responsible for the increase in CO2" . I guess you're inferring that the earth released zero CO2 and absorbed half of that released by man?
No, I'm inferring that humans add CO2 to the atmosphere which creates an imbalance in the carbon cycle. So the oceans absorb a lot of it to get the partial pressure between them and the atmosphere back to normal. The biosphere and geosphere also absorb a bit. But the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere is equivalent to around 43% of the total CO2 released by humans. Once a carbon atom gets into the carbon cycle it doesn't matter what its source is, it's there. Burning fossil fuels is making carbon available to the carbon cycle that wasn't easily available before increasing the total carbon in the cycle and changing the levels in all of the sinks.
Knowing how climate works is not a binary situation. You can't say that because we don't know everything about it that we know nothing useful about climate. We know more about it now than we did in the past and we'll know more about it in the future than we do now. Climate scientists dedicate their lives to understanding climate and it appears to me we understand the basics pretty well and are now filling in the details. Present your evidence that that is not the case or is that just your conjecture?
Altogether greenhouse gases are less than 2% of the atmosphere and yet they raise the surface temperature of the Earth by about 58F. What makes you think a 40% increase in the 2nd most common of those GHG's, responsible for 9-26% of that 58F in greenhouse warming, is not going to have an effect? Scientists account for the heat radiating to space by measuring it with satellites. Clouds and aerosols (dust) are also factors known to scientists and accounted for. I doubt you could name any factor that climate scientists haven't considered.
Then you get into your political objections to the proposed solutions. But that's no longer a scientific argument. I suspect your ideology drives your objections to the science.
As stated it is simple physics. Yes it is simplistic when applied to the dynamic atmosphere but it's still one of the major factors to be considered.
You are right that heat transfer in the atmosphere can't be adequately described in a /. post. It would take several major papers or a book to do that.
The actual scandal was that Jones was refusing access to his data and methods
I'm shocked to hear that the right wing media misled me, however even your 'real' scandal doesn't hold water. He didn't have any data to withhold., CRU doesn't collect data, they just analyze it. As for the methods, they were fiendishly hidden in the published literature. Their work was replicated dozens of times by those interested in science. Those interested in casting doubt on science focused on the personalities and their individual transgressions.
Sorry, but exactly this is the misconception I'm arguing against. For the majourity of our days laws of physics don't exist any "disproves". E.g. the law of gravity, (how does your anti experiment for Gallileos drop experiments look like???)
Okay, I've decided it isn't a translation problem. There is no "anti-experiment". You apparently have not taken any epistemology courses. Experimental data can't "prove" anything (it can only fit within expectations), so you run your experiments collecting data, comparing it to what you expect. But if you don't have a method for disproving your theory based on the experiments, then you can't call it science, and you most assuredly can't confirm your theory. You HAVE to have that ability to disprove. Sort of like having a base case in recursion (unless your intended purpose is a stack overflow). Regarding Galileo, anything that doesn't match the theory would work. If Galileo dropped a helium-filled balloon, he would note that it did not fall like the rocks, and would conclude his theory was flawed (didn't account for density and air pressure).
>>He didn't have any data to withhold., CRU doesn't collect data, they just analyze it
False. They collect data from people that collect data.
They wouldn't release the primary data for their work, only the results of their work.
Their critics wanted a copy of the primary data to see if they would arrive at the same results of the CRU, or not. Phil engaged in what was probably illegal behavior to deny them access to the data.
Their critics wanted a copy of the primary data to see if they would arrive at the same results of the CRU
Then they should have negotiated with the owners of the data. That is what dozens of other interested parties did. They were all able to show that the CRU results are robust. Are the 'skeptics' incompetent or are they just aware that having the data is not an effective way to sew doubt, but pestering scientists and weaving narratives is.
>>Then they should have negotiated with the owners of the data. That is what dozens of other interested parties did. They were all able to show that the CRU results are robust. Are the 'skeptics' incompetent or are they just aware that having the data is not an effective way to sew doubt, but pestering scientists and weaving narratives is.
Typical. Your "team" probably broke the law but you defend it because the AGW skeptics cannot, ever, be seen to be in the moral right.
The fact that they couldn't get the data from other sources is irrelevant. What's relevant is that Phil Jones was engaging in conspiracy to avoid having to follow the law.
Probably broke the law? Either he did or he didn't. So far he has not been convicted of anything and I am not aware of any pending charges. (Are the cops in on the conspiracy?) It looks like you are more interested in making allegations than you are in science. You can try to obfuscate the truth by weaving narratives about the personalities. The science is clear. It has been confirmed by multiple parties using multiple methods. The world is warming. We are responsible.
The fact that they could get the data from other sources is irrelevant.
Well, it's relevant if you are interested in science. If your motives are disingenuous then you would keep pestering people who didn't own the data rather than getting it from those who did.
Actually, Phil Jones (rightly) was slapped for his FOIA dodging. But don't let facts get in the way of your ad hominem there.
Obviously, you've somehow classified me as being on the "other" team, which is hilarious. Science - and climatology especially - needs openness to function, and Jones actively worked against that openness.
If you were any sort of real scientist, you'd join me in opposing people like Jones that conspired to hide data from dissenting viewpoints.
Keep trying to change the topic.
It's hilarious to watch.
Nothing you've said helps exculpate Jones from the fact that he emailed all his buddies asking for tricks to evade FOIA notices.
If that is all that climategate amounts to, then ok. Some guy didn't want to broker a deal between the data owners and the 'skeptics'. So what? Everyone who was interested in science went straight to the source. Those more interested in blogging about being refused access to the data also had their needs met.
This is the scandal that rocked climate science? Wow. Talk about over hyped!
http://planet3.org/2011/11/02/narrative-and-science-in-the-debate-on-climate-change/
The remarkable success of the anti-science position on climate change is due in large part to the development of a successful narrative plot that casts scientists as evil schemers against the public. The attempts made by scientists to respond with scientific evidence to the attacks have not been a success.
Global warming skeptics were clearly taken by surprise by the BEST results and their reaction tells us a lot on their way to approach the question. I had expected that they would fall in good order to their second line of defense; that is to saying that, “yes, global warming exists, but it is not caused by human activity”. Instead, they reacted with a vicious counterattack against the BEST study and its authors, with Richard Muller turning almost overnight from hero to traitor and being vilified in all possible ways.
It was already clear that the debate on global warming was not a scientific debate, but it is starting to be clear now how remote from science the position of the skeptics is. Their whole interpretation of climate science pivots around a single narration. It says that a group of evil scientists manipulated the temperature data in order to show a warming that doesn’t exist. They were caught red-handed when their private emails were made public in what we call the “Climategate” scandal.
No wonder that the denial side doesn’t want to abandon this narrative. It would not be the same thing for them if they were forced to battle climate science on the question of whether warming is caused by human activity or not. That becomes a battle of facts vs. facts as there is no equivalent fancy story that tells us of how evil scientists are.
>>If that is all that climategate amounts to, then ok. Some guy didn't want to broker a deal between the data owners and the 'skeptics'. So what?
Stop trying to excuse the actions of your team.
Science needs openness, and the Freedom of Information Act is a law of the land. Ignoring the latter (and conspiring with others to find ways to lie to dodge FOIA requests) was probably illegal, and harms the former.
It's certainly not the smoking gun that the AGW skeptic crowd hyped it to be, that's for sure.