Slashdot Mirror
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.)
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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/
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...
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.
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/
I see only one explanation for the recent warming -- increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to humans burning fossil fuels. Do you think there's another plausible explanation? I've heard increased solar output, and a change in the flux of cosmic rays, neither of which we seem to have observed. On the other hand, increased temperatures due to excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to burning fossil fuels was predicted over 100 years ago, long before it ever happened. It sounds like the best explanation available to me.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
If it were true, then I'd have to change my lifestyle and I don't want to, therefore global warming is a scam.
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.
Why are people commenting on this story as though it made a case for Anthropogenic (human-caused) Global Warming?
It doesn't.
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.
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.
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.