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Little Ice Age: It Was Not the Sun
vikingpower writes "The Little Ice Age, lasting from the end of the Middle Age into the 17th century, may very likely have been caused by the combined effects of four major volcanic eruptions and increased sunlight reflection by increasing sea ice, the so-called Albedo effect. ... The University of Boulder has a press release with maps and photographs. Bette Otto-Bliesner, one of the scientists behind the 'volcano + sea ice' thesis, fields an earnest warning against drawing conclusions too quickly from this research: 'I think people might look at the Little Ice Age and think that all we need to save us from rising temperatures are some volcanic eruptions or the geo-engineering equivalent [...] But when you see what happened when global temperatures dropped by just one degree and you look at current predictions of six or seven degree increases for the future, you realize how precarious things are for life as we know it.'"
Not the University of Colorado at Boulder?
After 5 billion years, the sun is basically in steady state. I would not expect to see fluctuations over the type of timescales that human beings exist on. Yes, the sun is slowly getting hotter, but that's a long term trend.
No doubt this item will produce reasoned, well mannered discourse in droves! Pop some popcorn, enjoy the highbrow debate!
It always astonishes me that on a geeky site like Slashdot with an audience that in theory puts such a high value on science, you get so many global warming denialists.
Canwedo it with beer and make it lowbrow?
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
We deny that.
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
A post that says 'the fact of the matter' is unlikely to have any facts. Said twice it's 4 times as unlikely (it's an exponential formula).
Shouldn't all science be questioned? If we unanimously accept a scientific theory to be fact, is it still science?
Canwedo it with beer and make it lowbrow?
You betcha.
The theory of anthropogenic warming is quite obviously crap. It only survives because it's a potent token of social status. If global warming were daggy, no-one would care about it.
> Shouldn't all science be questioned?
Yes - intelligently questioned by people who are qualified to criticize it. And who "question" it by doing their own research, investigation, hypothesizing and testing... which is not the same as digging up spurious out-of-context quotes and raising biased, uninformed objections for political reasons.
Anything some moron tries making you believe as stone cold fact without any evidence to back it up should be questioned.
Stay negative.
It always astonishes me that on a geeky site like Slashdot with an audience that in theory puts such a high value on science, you get so many ice age denialists.
The Official Site of 1337 Pwnage
Shouldn't all science be questioned? If we unanimously accept a scientific theory to be fact, is it still science?
All science should be questioned but once consensus is reached for instance "There is a meteor heading for earth and will strike it in 3 months wiping out all surface life." you should probably act upon that if you know what's best for you. "Sure maybe all of our deep space instrumentation might be on the whack at the same time and sure it might be independently verified by every astronomical scientific society through repeated observation... but how do we reallllly know about space?"
Should we continue questioning the existence of the holocaust? Isn't it the job of historians to question and challenge preconceived notions about history?
The trouble is, most questioning of the science related to global warming is politically motivated. It's not, "Hmm this new evidence has come to light, what are its implications?" That's not to say it might not happen from the other side on occasion. The difference is, however, that there is an overwhelming scientific consensus when it comes to global warming -- not on every specific detail, but on the fact that it is a real thing and that it's related to human activity and that it's consequences are awful. We have a ridiculous situation where in the interests of media "balance" (not to mention a number of media outlets that have denialism as an editorial policy) you have crackpots and talking heads with no relevant scientific credentials presented given equal weight to prestigious scientific organisations. So it makes it look like there's some kind of real debate about the fundamentals, when there's really not.
Cool word score +5... Anthropogenic.
Just bought a new quantum computer, but I'm uncertain how it works.
There's a difference between questioning a theory based on evidence to the contrary and questioning it simply because it is controversial. One of the few other scientific theories that seems to enjoy this distinction is the theory of evolution. However, you'd be hard pressed to find as many slashdotters making the same argument against that theory.
Still #1 -- Lonely Gay Geek
To anyone that looks at the long-term ... it's obvious that the earth has been warmer before and colder before. Most, if not all, of the "global warming denialists" are not debating THAT argument. The debate is whether mankind (specifically America) is to blame for the "warming".
When you have people Al Gore shilling AGW, when he stands to make Billions of dollars off of it, it come across as insincere. When he tells his followers (and everybody else) that they have to drive electric cars ... yet he flies in his inefficient private jet ... it's just a little hypocritical.
I dunno ... I guess I'm one of those "denialists" that would rather drive a car that runs on oil (with great range), versus one that runs on coal (and can't leave the city).
It always astonishes me that on a geeky site like Slashdot with an audience that in theory puts such a high value on science, you get so many global warming denialists.
Someone interested in discussing science would not use words like "denialist" with the obvious intention of provoking an angry response. Pot, meet kettle.
The sun's output did matter in the Little Ice Age.
And your evidence for this is...?
make it Löwenbräu.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
All it took for me was learning that all their predictions are based on computer models. That alone made me extremely skeptical.
There is NO way some group of people have figured out all of the variables and equations that affect global climate. Garbarge in, garbage out.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Reasoned questioning and debate based on scientific fact should alway she welcomed. I think the point the parent was trying to make is that we see, all too often on slashdot, debate that has little basis in fact.
There are a lot of reasons to doubt that AGW will cause a disaster.
And honestly, you SHOULD doubt evolution, and let that doubt propel you to find the mountains of evidence that support it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Yes this is a good point. But it's kind of bizarre. Another commenter made the point that evolution is also 'controversial' in the US (but obviously not so much among the Slashdot crowd). I guess I just feel down that when it comes to this issue so many people consider themselves 'experts' because they read an article or two once.
I fail to see how a 1 degree average change can make any significant difference (In Phoenix, if one day the temperature ranges from 80-110 degrees F, and the next day it's 81-111 degrees F, you won't notice).
That said, one thing that's consistently missing is how much the standard deviation of the temperature changes. You might not notice a 1 degree standard deviation shift, but you will notice a 5 or 10 degree standard deviation shift.
Why is this data never present in global warming arguments? Any climatologists care to explain?
After 5 billion years, the sun is basically in steady state. I would not expect to see fluctuations over the type of timescales that human beings exist on....
the sun is pretty steady, a middle-aged star, but there are still some small variations in solar intensity. The hypothesis was that the Little Ice Age was correlated with the solar "Maunder Minimum," a 75-year period during which the sun had no sunspots (and hence presumably was about 0.07% lower in brightness).
What this work did was put a good date to the start of the Little Ice Age; using radiocarbon dating to determine when the plants killed by the advancing glaciers died... and the dating shows the Little Ice Age began well before the Maunder minimum. The Maunder minimum didn't cause it, very definitely.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
There are at least 5 reasons I can think of for that phenomenon:
1. Some are shills for by the majorly carbon-emitting industries. There's no reasoning with this group, because they aren't here to reason or discuss, they're here to do their job of sowing doubt about whether global warming is real. Similarly, there may be commenters who aren't paid PR people, but work for these companies (e.g. a friend of mine who does geology on oil rigs for a living), for whom the "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it" truly applies.
2. Some believe that placing a high value on science involves being skeptical of anything not definitively proven. With anthropogenic global warming, because there's only 1 planet Earth (that I'm aware of) there's no way to definitely prove things one way or the other. This is true even if the vast majority of the research supports the theory that AGW is causing significant changes to the climate of the Earth.
3. Some are politically libertarian and tend to strongly oppose government action not concerned with enforcing contracts, protecting property rights, or preventing violent attack and/or sexual assault on a citizen. If AGW is true, and private enterprise can't or won't act to stop it, then stopping it requires significant government intervention in the markets, which dismantles the idea that libertarianism can solve all human problems. It's not dramatically different from a reaction you might get to a devout born-again Christian discovering definitive proof that Jesus never existed.
4. Some are unwilling to make the dramatic changes to everyday life that would be needed to reduce CO2 emissions in the short term. It would mean changes like having to move your home so you can commute to work without driving 30 miles, or having to put your washing machine on timers so the load runs at 3 AM rather than right now, or keeping your home at 55 F in the winter rather than the 70 F you find comfortable. Nobody wants to do that if they can think of a short-term alternative. This also manifests itself in an absolute faith that scientists and engineers will somehow come up with a solution that will solve the problem completely without requiring any kind of conservation effort.
5. Environmentalists have been guilty of overstating their case in the past, so some are reluctant to believe anything they say.
I am officially gone from
Shouldn't all science be questioned?
Yes, but the problems with the deniers is that they don't listen to the answers.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The US is one of the few places where you'll find a lot of people who actually believe the earth is ~6000 years old, and Adam and Eve were literally the first two humans. Since many Americans believe this, even more believe that evolution is false. I've read that Turkey also has a lot of people who believe in Creationism. But there aren't many Turks on Slashdot, whereas there are tons of Americans here. Probably not that many that believe Creationism (but who knows how many do, but don't say so publicly?), but still many more than you'll find among the rest of the posting population here.
Same with anti vaccination loonies, and creationists, they all use the same tactics of internet circle jerk where one denialist site quotes another as a reference. The facts whilst interesting are considered irrelevant.
I have got to the point where i dont even bother to challenge them anymore, as their objections are based in their self interest allowing them to ignore relevant facts and use nit picking irrelevancies to support their case.
For some reason what seem to be otherwise intelligent people here on Slashdot show a remarkable degree of stupidity on this issue. Then again a lot of them propound libertarian claptrap too, so I guess I shouldnt be too shoucked.
One of the few other scientific theories that seems to enjoy this distinction is the theory of evolution. However, you'd be hard pressed to find as many slashdotters making the same argument against that theory.
Actually, you will. Check any Slashdot story dealing with evolution, and you'll see a ton of comments pushing creationism (usually in its "intelligent design" guise) very often using the same "we should always question theories" argument. Sadly, almost none of these people seem willing to question the theory of gravity in the most obvious manner.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I have never seen a case where they ask questions, their minds are made up already and no ammount of evidence/answers will change it. After all they might have to drive their SUV overcompensationveichles a bit less or something, and we cant have that!
A much bigger problem is that western economies, having their medium exchange controlled privately, rely on perpetual (and infinite) economic growth to avoid deflation.
The second more important issue is that the west is continually building their economy to rely on an infinite (and cheap) supply of oil when it's quite clearly a finite commodity.
Fix these two world collapsing issues first.. and then worry about whether the planet's getting a little bit warmer or not.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
...something catholic church would disapprove of.
The sun's output did matter in the Little Ice Age. Sol doesn't put out constant energy, perhaps it was coincidentally at a low during that period and that contributed to cooling.
Some sort of ... er proof for your alternate theory might be useful.
This climate system of ours is more complex and dynamic than the AGW devotees are willing to admit.
If it is as complex as you say, I have to wonder why you are so comfortable making such bold predictions. Particularly given that you don't offer any evidence for you contradictory theory.
Someone interested in discussing science would not use words like "denialist" with the obvious intention of provoking an angry response.
Sorry, there's no other word that fits -- and no, "skeptic" doesn't cut it. Rationalwiki has a nice explanation of the difference. There's no reason to play nice with people who have the capacity to understand scientific evidence but refuse to do so.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
> Shouldn't all science be questioned?
Yes - intelligently questioned by people who are qualified to criticize it. And who "question" it by doing their own research, investigation, hypothesizing and testing... which is not the same as digging up spurious out-of-context quotes and raising biased, uninformed objections for political reasons.
And yet if these unqualified non-scientists believed in said theory, you would have no quarrel with them. Even though they don't believe it as a result of being qualified, doing research, investigation, hypothesizing, and testing (redundant after "investigation"?).
The unspoken, probably unacknowledged even by you, message here? "Don't question authority."
I never believed that science was meant to be a priesthood. Back when we had priesthoods and considered that normal, don't we call those times the Dark Ages? The moment you are told that you're not qualified and therefore have no business forming your own position, that's the moment you have established a priesthood.
I have an entirely different take. I think this science has a problem most sciences don't. We have only one planet that's practical to use for this model. We can't modify the system to test different variables in a rigorous way, and we can't compare what happens to a control group. There is too much uncertainty that there's no clear way to resolve. So, it becomes a political issue. It boils down to some authority's opinion concerning what makes the most sense. That's great fun when the authority is wrong, or there are multiple authorities who disagree with each other, or there's no positive way to rule those out.
If you don't understand that, you wind up passionately judging the stupidity of people you know nothing about, not because they demonstrated stupidity but as a feeble attempt at shutting them up. After all, they followed the "wrong" authority. Do you realize that popular ideas which people were absolutely certain about, and sometimes would have fought and died over, that anyone would have been ridiculed for doubting, have turned out to be wrong in the past?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
How do you make billions of dollars off of Global Warming (other than by selling more oil)?
Shouldn't all science be questioned? If we unanimously accept a scientific theory to be fact, is it still science?
If AGW is not a testable theory and it does not produce a falsifiable hypothesis, is it scientific at all?
> Shouldn't all science be questioned?
Yes - intelligently questioned by people who are qualified to criticize it. And who "question" it by doing their own research, investigation, hypothesizing and testing... which is not the same as digging up spurious out-of-context quotes and raising biased, uninformed objections for political reasons.
See, that's the problem. Any scientist that questions it is immediately deemed unqualified or even unethical simply because they have bothered to question it.
Can you name a me a single AGW "denialist" that you deem to be qualified enough to have their theories and research taken seriously?
Exactly!
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Yeah, computer models suck. That's why airplanes keep falling out of the sky, why missiles never hit their targets, and why you can never get the temperature of the brew head on your espresso machine just right. Er, wait, you can do all of these things. Because of computer models.
Remember when the weather forecast was always wrong? It's been really remarkably precise recently when I've followed it, which I do a lot, because I enjoy outdoor sports. It's been scarily precise. Predictions a week out come true with astonishing regularity. This is weather, which is rapidly changing and chaotic, not climate, which is slow and relatively predictable.
The problem with your completely ignorant assertion here is that in fact the models do appear to be getting more accurate, not less. The debates are not over whether there is warming, but over how much, and what the effect will be, and how soon the effect will come. Nobody is debating whether it's coming except people who are making a short-term killing on carbon externalities.
Most people probably wouldn't deny that the climate keeps changing (e.g. Ice Age) but so far I've personally not seen credible evidence for the idea that mankind has much if anything to do with it - temperatures appear to have changed substantially even long before the industrial revolution. On balance it's probably natural for geeks (many of whom are naturally inquisitive) to question ideas which insist on substantial changes to our lifestyles with tenuous evidence behind them.
Incredibly well stated.
Well, except for Satanic blood-sacrifice. And witchcraft. I almost forgot about that.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
"Fact's" that aren't questioned...what's that called...umm.....oh yeah Faith! I thought faith and science didn't mix? I personally believe they mix together as well as toothpaste and orange juice..
Amazing how you manage to make yourself seem a victim of the moneygrubbing AGW scammers.
There was actually some non-politically motivated criticism, and a group of scientists lead by a renowned physicist set out to double-check the work of AGW science (who had doubts regarding AGW) and sponsored by AGW doubters. What happened? Do you even remember or did you filter that out...
There was some questions on the issue of bias due to the sponsorship, yet most in the AGW community seemed to welcome the effort to independently verify claims of global warming. And what was the result? AGW was confirmed as happening.
... and the dating shows the Little Ice Age began well before the Maunder minimum. The Maunder minimum didn't cause it, very definitely.
The only logical conclusion is that cold temperatures on earth somehow prevent sunspots. Which means, obviously, that global warming will blot out the sun due to a proliferation of sunspots caused by warmer temperatures here.
We're doomed!
Shouldn't all science be questioned?
Yes, but the problems with the deniers is that they don't listen to the answers.
Terms like "denier" or "believer" have no place in this debate. Both imply an unwillingness to consider what is known and what isn't.
On balance it's probably natural for geeks (many of whom are naturally inquisitive) to question ideas which insist on substantial changes to our lifestyles with tenuous evidence behind them
To quote Wikipedia:
No scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion; the last was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, which in 2007 updated its 1999 statement rejecting the likelihood of human influence on recent climate with its current non-committal position.
And so all these organisations came to the conclusion that human activity is playing a key role in global warming without any "credible evidence" (to use your phrase)?
Therefore the fact that people do not like the implications of AGW does not, in anyway, make it less true. We are not choosing clothes from a rack. We are not debating whether the purple shoes will go with my slacks. And it's the implications that denialists do not like. Notably, no-one ever questioned Tyndalls experiment, nor whether the greenhouse effect was real until it became clear from the numbers that we needed to change our habits. Then suddenly, the whole theory was controversial.
Is it a theory that the sun does not put out constant levels of energy? There's nothing bold about that, there's recorded data to back my statement up.
"The sun isn't predictable" is actually a huge problem for climate research, no? Maybe I'm blowing this out of proportion, I don't claim to be climate scientist. I welcome your skepticism of my skepticism.
Please, educate me.
Tracking all the airplanes on the planet, while precisely firing every missle ever manufactured and brewing the perfect espresso is nowhere near as phenominal of an accomplishment as claiming you've identified the exact cause of a 0.6 degree average warming over the entire planet over a 100 year period.
Regardless, I said was skeptical.. and I think I provided a valid reason to be. Of course I'm not an expert in this field... but that doesn't mean I have to take everything self-proclaimed experts say as gospel. If history shows us anything it shows an astonishing and consistent track record of smart people (for the day) getting shit dead wrong. Generation after generation then, instead of finding humility in this, smuggly assumes intellectual dominion over those that came before them. I see no reason to assume we've grown out of this hubris at all.
Ultimately I may be ignorant... but the mere assertion that there's 'consensus' is not enough for me to get on board. I'm sorry if that offends you.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
I'm sure someone can help me on this; wasn't science settled on numerous things before? Like ulcers, smallpox, the earth was the center of Universe, D=RT (distance = rate times Time), Bird Flu will kill us all( new one every year). All these things were proved true and many more beliefs, and it was needed to be proven untrue- I know an oxymoron. Prove GW and quit with the name calling, to me, right now, it's just a religion.
Can you name a me a single AGW "denialist" that you deem to be qualified enough to have their theories and research taken seriously?
Yes. Richard Lindzen. If you ask for 2 it gets difficult ... there are a few "luke-warmers" though.
Now can you name me a single scientist who denies the existence of gravity, that you deem to be qualified enough to have their theories and research taken seriously?
Exactly!
0) The people shouting loudest about how important this is stand to gain a significant amount of money, power, and public notice if people believe and act on their claims.
Analysis of incentives goes both directions. If you're a paleoclimatologist, which is more likely to advance your career? A report that says current climate variations fit the historical pattern and there's nothing anyone needs to do differently, or one that says that significant government regulation and societal reorganization is needed?
I'll probably get modded down for this comment and someone will tell me I'm wrong, even though everything I've posted is OPINION. But that's kinda how this site works. If someone disagrees with you and has mod points, they will mod you down, usually "overrated", in an attempt to silence views that differ from their own.
Proof?
(Score:0, Flamebait)
Global Warming Alarmists try to silence the opposition to prevent you from hearing any views that may disprove their own.
If you disagree, post a reply.
From the moderator guidelines:
Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it down.
(Although, my post was absolutely full of typos. It's hard for me to read and I wrote the damn thing!)
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Have any sources to cite? This seems interesting!
Feel free to mod me down, just know that unlike some Anonymous Cowards I'm not afraid to express my views as myself.
I'll just leave this here for you.
So there's no evidence to back up global warming in your view?
The only thing is, a meteor is an easily provable phenomenon. The factors are well known, and predictions can easily be made and verified. I can go and reproduce Newton's equations, or re-measure the speed of light, or retest hundreds of other theories that have been proven. These are not contested.
I have yet to see anybody make a verifiable prediction with regard to climate change on anything less than what will happen decades from now. If the science is so settled as claimed, shouldn't the scientists be able to isolate a few variables, and say that if this happens (with regard to sun activity, and any other variables they want to quantify) and lay down some solid numbers so we know what is predicted. Nothing like last year's after the fact statements that year's winter storms or tornado activity was caused by human activity.
I want real prediction that say if sun output is low, temperatures will be stable or slightly down. If sun output is average, temperature will be up .1 and if it's high temperatures will be up .25. If they want to add in modifiers for cloud cover, and other weather conditions and any other factors they can think of, great. Then if their predictions are accurate, we have some sort of confidence that they model actually takes into account all of the necessary variables. If the numbers come in significantly different than what they predict, then we know that the models are far from complete and the science isn't settled yet. Until I see the science actually giving us predictions that conform to reality, I choose to believe that the scientists don't haven't it all figured out. Extraordinary claims (like complete confidence in predictive powers concerning climate) require irrefutable evidence. Since these predictions haven't been made yet (since I'm sure they would be big news and nothing of the sort has ever been printed), and the time scale of all predictions concerns what will happen at mid or end of century, it's entirely possible that scientists are making claims that can't be falsified in their lifetimes.
Sure there is. If you want to defuse the politics of the debate and stick to facts because you are thoroughly convinced that the facts back up your side, you stick to them. You do not denigrate your critics through political-style mudslinging as that only gives credence to their claims that your position is not fact-based but politically-based (thus a grab for power, money, interns, etc.). You play nice with your critics because that way you fail to give them ammunition to use against you.
Of course, if you don't think that all the facts support your hypothesis, then, by all means, throw the mud. Because then it really is political.
(This applies regardless of the topic of debate, which is why I'm not actually mentioning the topic here, despite it being obvious in context.)
Climate change aside, isn't reducing pollution incentive enough to look into alternative energy sources? We do only have one earth after all, and I believe common sense dictates that pollution is bad for it. Personally, I don't care if changes in climate are man made or not, but I can't think of a reason why reducing pollution would be a bad thing. Despite our differing political views, can we agree on this much?
Feel free to mod me down, just know that unlike some Anonymous Cowards I'm not afraid to express my views as myself.
Ehhh. I suspect trolling more-so then true denial. I actually had no idea people denied there was an ice age to begin with. Guess i'm not up on my conspiracy theories.
The hypocrisy doesn't help either. The ones screaming the loudest are the ones in the biggest houses with the largest fleets of SUV and private planes.
Here is Tom Brady's wife, a goodwill ambassador for the UN Environment Programme, lecturing us all about our responsibility to the 'environment.'
Here is her new house.
Bring it to this malcontent backwater though and you're 'flamebait.' We suspend our outrage for our 1% when they say the right things and bury all those fools with the temerity to point out our group-think.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
Consensus has no place in scientific discourse. Galileo was not a consensus kind of guy.
How many people in some category (such as how many scientists) share the same opinion on a subject has no bearing on the search for truth about that subject. It definitely has an effect on the politics involved, but that is not science. That is politics. Setting up a carbon credit system is politics, maybe good, maybe not, but definitely something involving politics (and a little engineering), but not science. Choosing who gets the research grants is politics and has nothing to do with the underlying science of the proposed research.
Make sure you understand the distinction between science and politics. Recognize that there are a lot of people with political motivations who want to have you confused about that distinction.
Will
You are trying to use logic and reason, supported with a reasonable link to a source, when discussing an issue with an audience that is universally unwilling to accept that they are wrong. :P :(
Its like trying to deal with Creationists. Its not going to work, period. The other side has their opinion and is going to stick to it.
Now, to be fair they have that right. Everyone has a right to their own faith. I just wish people wouldn't try to use that as a basis for logical discussion. If I believe Wombats secretly control the world's politicians with their psychic abilities (arguably no less believable than Creationism since neither is based on a whit of scientific evidence), I can share my discussions with other Wombatists, but its pointless to try to explain my position to those who have not "seen the light"
The Anti-GW crowd will still be posting their denials when the first 100 million people have died from flooding, when major coastal cities are under water, when the poles are completely melted, and when most of the equatorial region has been in a drought for 20 years.
Sadly in the US they will probably be in the majority position in Government as well
"The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
"Gravity" is not a theory. However, there are plenty of scientists that doubt various theories on how exactly gravity works (string theory, loop quantum gravity, etc).
Comparing gravity to AGW is preposterous. Human scale Newtonion gravity is easily demonstrated. F=G(m1m2/r^2) is easily tested by high school physics students again and again every year.
Whoosh!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Which is why the label "denier" is appropriate.
So how many times do you answer the same question before you realise you're dealing with a troll or a shill? How many people still link and quote Anthont Watts thoughroghly descredited claims? Should the time cube guy be allowed to chew up research dollars just because he has a bunch of ideas contrary to modern physics?
I think you are also bluring the "argument from authority" thing (which is about relying on a single source), science does in fact carry a certain authority in it's calim to have the best answer, if not the correct answer. It's authority comes from a meritocricy that Popper called "the republic of science" and what everyone else calls "consensus". It's the difference between "science says" and "a scientist says".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The truly astonishing thing that those idiots do not understand is that climate modelling is so well established that we have a hundred year old climate model (southern oscillation index) that's been producing good results ever since it was developed. They seem to imagine that the field is so new that any bug-eyed suduko column writer (and snake oil salesman) can step in and pretend he knows better than any actual expert on the subject.
See, that's the problem. Any scientist that questions it is immediately deemed unqualified or even unethical simply because they have bothered to question it.
Oh come on Archer. The criterion for "suitably qualified" is not whether they personally agree or disagree with any position. It is simply whether they are literally suitably qualified, which is to say, are they working and publishing (in an ISI listed peer reviewed journal, i.e. not a phish journal like E&E) in the field, the holder of a chair in the relevant discipline etc.. And ultimately it's not what scientists say, but what the bulk of the published science says that we must defer to.
Nor is there universal agreement among most expert climatologists. But the baby questions, such as is anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere rising; are mean global temperatures rising; and are the two causally linked, are now settled in the affirmative. The scientific debate has largely moved on. And recent attempts to revive these questions by the very few suitably qualified scientists who do disagree with the mainstream has invariably resulted in disaster: Witness Lindzen & Choi (2009) (In Lindzen's favour, once the flaws in this paper were pointed out he withdrew it without hesitation), or the debacle surrounding Spencer and Braswell (2011).
Now once he was presented with the body of the science, the editor of Remote Sensing (where Spencer and Braswell appeared) realised he'd been duped and took the appropriate course of action (for which see the link above). When are you going to wake up Archer, and face up to the fact that you've been duped too?
The inherent problem with this observation is that there is no way to tell the difference between the two scenarios below:
1.) Few scientists doubt global warming.
2.) Few scientists are willing to admit to doubting global warming.
To the public, both these scenarios appear identical, which should scare anyone interested in the end result and not the politics of scientific consensus. There needs to be a way to publish studies, raw data, and the like, without jeopardizing one's career. The obvious answer is simply submitting AC like I am, but there's a whole host of accountability issues that pop up as a result of doing so.
I think it's time we develop an open and secure (for the scientists) method of posting research. I have no idea how this would be done, but I think it needs to be addressed soon. We really can't afford not to have trust in our scientists.
The original article is about the Little Ice Age primarily, and the only tie-in is the comment warning against relying on volcanoes to save us from warming / geoengineering man-made "volcanoes" to fix warming.
But, ok, you want to ask the question "is it actually warming?" I'm a climate scientist-ish, I'll throw in a line. I recommend skepticalscience.com for it's superb evidentiary support for the theory of anthropogenic global warming (a.k.a. climate change).
Yes - we have ample data demonstrating that it is warming, not only in the air but in the surface waters of the ocean (water absorbs some of the heat, it turns out - if only it would absorb more of it!). We have really really obvious evidence (seriously, just look at the satellite pictures) of dramatic summer sea ice loss. The troposphere (where we live - where our weather happens) has warmed about 1.3 degrees F over the last 100 years. This might not sound like a lot, but just integrate 1.3 degrees over the whole planet, and you're talking about a significant amount of energy.
The stratosphere has cooled up to 6 degrees Celsius (yeah, that's right, mixing up the units) in some places, and higher atmospheric layers have cooled even more. Now, you might ask, why the cooling - this is supposed to be global WARMING, right? The mechanism behind stratospheric cooling is a bit complex, but think about it this way: Greenhouse gases (GHG's) trap more heat (absorbed and re-radiated long-wave energy) in the Troposphere (the lowest layer, where weather happens) than we would otherwise have. If that extra heat weren't trapped in the lower atmosphere, it would have to go somewhere else, right? So where would it go? It turns out, it would go back into space or, more importantly, into the upper layers of the atmosphere (stratosphere, mesosphere, ionosphere). Essentially, the GHG's play favorites with the atmosphere - they give the lowest layer more heat while depriving the higher layers of their ordinary allowance.
Incidentally, this phenomenon allows us to distinguish GHG-driven heating from sun-driven heating. If global warming were caused by the sun alone, the temperature would increase in all layers of the atmosphere - the sun doesn't play favorites.
But wait, how do we know it's people? Physics tells us CO2 absorbs long-wave radiation (and then re-radiates that energy in all directions). Simple energy balance calculations tell us that without CO2 and other greenhouse gases (but mostly the CO2, as it is slower to enter/leave the atmosphere than H2O) the earth would be too cold to support most life forms. Over and over again in Earth's long history, higher concentrations of CO2 are associated with higher temperatures (the very early Earth was very warm, despite a weaker sun - this is known as the Faint Young Sun paradox - but greenhouse gases were more abundant). We're pumping this gas into the atmosphere with careless abandon, and we can measure and observe that much of it stays there (removing CO2 from the atmosphere permanently by natural processes takes a loooong time). Even if we didn't measure warming and we couldn't measure CO2 (did I mention we can measure warming and CO2? We do it all the time) the laws of physics and the principles of chemistry allow no other possible conclusion than a future of warming (for most of us) and cooling (for anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck in the upper atmosphere).
Sorry for the long post. Also, don't think for a minute someone does serious climate science without asking the questions "are we sure we know what we know?" or "are the computer models any good, like, at all?" about 3 times before breakfast. Seriously, people, we're pretty smart apes, this isn't "too complicated" or "too difficult" for us humans to figure out.
He probably does not even realize that some of the persons he interacts with on a daily basis are Wiccans, Gardnerians, BTWs, hedge witches.
He probably does. And smirks inwardly every time he thinks about it.
Just because a certain kind of people are everywhere doesn't mean they aren't funny. Crystal healers are my favorite.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Terms like "denier" or "believer" have no place in this debate.
What convenient one-word label should we use for the anti-science side of this debate? Bearing in mind that using 'sceptic' for deniers is completely unacceptable to sceptics such as myself?
Both imply an unwillingness to consider what is known and what isn't.
A denier is simply someone who denies what is known is in fact known (inasmuch as anything can be "known"). If people are out there simply denying what is known why is it wrong with to call them 'deniers?'
Am I allowed to call Syrian President Bashar al-Assad a 'dictator?' Or is that forbidden too?
I wish more people would realize what you just said.
I wish even more that people would wake up and realize these are issues they can understand and investigate for themselves. We don't have to rely on a priesthood to guide us.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Why can't we simply accept it was the will of god and leave it at that? The amounts of money spent on all this science hasn't done the church one bit of good and it has to stop now. We need more people donating more money and come to church more often, but they have no time or money if they spend it all on science.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
LMGTFY: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/6491195/Al-Gore-could-become-worlds-first-carbon-billionaire.html http://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/energy/stories/what-are-carbon-credits
Which is why the label "denier" is appropriate.
The use of "denier" in this context sounds no different than a religious zealot blindly assuming that whatever is "denied" is in fact true. When it comes to arguing global warming, there appear to be more parallels with religion than with actual science.
Maybe because we do value science so highly and we utterly detest the politicisation of science that is such a huge feature of the climate debate.
If you actually listen to both sides, then the scientists are debating one very small thing: how sensitive the climate is to the small forcing from human gaseous emissions.
Both sides agree there is some warming. The extent of the current warming and whether it has paused/stopped for the last ten years is disputed (for a variety of reasons, but there are credible peer-reviewed climate scientists discussing the pause). The political AGW movement denies there has been any pause ("9 of the hottest 10 years on record have been since 2000", for example, which is shrill cry to keep believing the warming, but is also completely consistent with a pause in warming). The anti-AGW movement says that we have had some warming, but it's not a pause and we're due for another cooling period.
Both sides agree that at least some of the warming is due to human emissions. Again, the dispute is over how much. The political AGW movement says all the warming is human-induced. The climatologists say some of it is. The anti-AGW movement say very little of it is, and there are a variety of other more important causes.
Both sides agree that the majority influence on the climate are the various feedbacks involved in this chaotic system. The climate papers and models are very firmly saying that the current warming will increase water vapour in the atmosphere which will cause further warming. The political AGW movement says there is a 'tipping point' imminent beyond which all feedbacks become runaway positive feedbacks and the planet burns (I exaggerate only very slightly). The anti-AGW movement says that the feedbacks are unknown, there's no evidence that the models are right on this, and the water vapour feedbacks could be as strongly negative as positive.
Both sides agree that the outcome of continued warming is unknown. The climatologists get quiet on this point, but there are a number of other disciplines, notably the biosciences, that have published papers showing that any climate change is bad (which makes sense from a worldview where any changes to an ecosystem are seen as 'damage' and the current state of the ecosystem is the ideal state of that ecosystem, which is the prevailing view). The political AGW movement insist that the outcome will be catastrophic. The anti-AGW movement tend towards the view that a little warming would actually be quite nice, but accept that some places would have a negative outcome.
There are ancillary debates about, for instance, ocean level rises, ocean acidification, the causes and consequences of sea-ice and glacier retreats and other stuff, but basically it for the most part seems to be pretty good, open, honest debate. The anti-AGW movement has a core of competent scientists, mathematicians and amateur/retired climatologists who do know their stuff and can talk reasonably about it. For example, the original scepticism was sparked by McIntyre who is a statistician and had some legitimate questions about the statistics used in the climate science papers, those questions were subsequently borne out by the UK enquiries (no-one did anything 'wrong' but the enquiry did conclude that there were valid questions about the statistics methodologies used).
However, this is all surrounded by a haze of politics, so that professional climatologists have to be careful about what they publish in case it can be seen as supporting the 'other side', there are calls to censor publications on the subject to maintain a united front on the subject, the image of a 97% 'consensus' must be maintained at all times. The only place there can be a sensible debate about it is on the blogs, because they're not censored (though there are some people who would love to). And all the time there's a constant drumbeat of 'DENIALIST' whenever someone questions the political "truths".
This is bad. The use of the word Denialist is bad. Attempting to censo
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
It always astonishes me that on a geeky site like Slashdot with an audience that in theory puts such a high value on science, you get so many global warming denialists.
For some reason, everyone, both liberal and conservative, seems to take it as an obvious given that if a human influenced on the climate is happening, something should be done to stop this. This means that people who like our current way of life have no choice but to deny a human influence on the climate.
In my opinion, this is the wrong way of looking at it. Whether human activity influences the climate is a scientific question, best answered by scientists who have actually done the work to study the matter. It should not be a political question any more than research into the cause of cancer or earthquakes.
The political question should be: given that evidence shows that human activity influences the climate, what should be done with this data. A very valid answer could be: nothing can realistically be done about it, so stop talking about it.
The economic and social cost of reversing our effect on the climate would be staggering, and vast amounts of political and military force would have to be used to make sure every country cooperates (because any unrestricted outlier will soon start to dominate the world economy). People would have to get used to living in a state we would now consider poverty. No personal cars, very few gadgets, no airco, definitely no air travel. A huge sacrifice, and all just to keep the climate very slightly colder, which doesn't necessarily benefit everyone equally. Many parts of the world will become more pleasant and productive with a slightly warmer climate...
You are not convinced (though there is credible evidence but it might not meat your threshold)? Try a risk management approach to the issue then.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
6. Some have listened to both sides of the argument and have realized that the skeptics have driven a bus through the theory of man made global warming and just don't believe the scientists who tend to support that theory anymore.
I have never seen a case where they ask questions, their minds are made up already and no ammount of evidence/answers will change it. After all they might have to drive their SUV overcompensationveichles a bit less or something, and we cant have that!
This. This is the problem I have.
There are a lot of reasons to not drive an SUV in cities, so don't get me wrong I'm all for things that make people behave less stupidly.
But you're using a cudgel to attempt to beat sense into their heads instead of educating them as to why their behaviour is harming everyone around them. So it's not surprising they're taking it as an attack and stubbornly resisting every step.
Let's just follow the chain of logic you're using:
- Global Warming is caused by human CO2 emissions
- Cars emit CO2, and bigger cars emit more CO2
- Therefore people should stop driving cars, or drive smaller cars if they must drive cars
It's perfectly logical, but completely wrong.
If we assume the first step as true, then cars are not the only thing that emit CO2, and in fact they're not even in the top 10. There are lots of other things that will make more difference to the climate if we cut them than cars.
But if we assume that the second step is true, then we just need to switch fuels to something that doesn't emit CO2, or clean the CO2 from the exhaust fumes, and we're still good to drive massive overcompensating cars again.
Trying to drive people to more ethical sensible behaviour by screaming at them 'the world will burn unless you do this' is just going to backfire sooo badly.
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
denies the existence of gravity
No, but there sure as hell are a lot who disagree on how and why it occurs, and the mechanisms behind it.
We know the Earth changes global temperature, often wildly (we have testable records of this). We know the current global temperature is (we have multiple measurements of this). What we don't have is another spare Earth running with accelerated time to test whether injecting the quantities of CO2 that have been released (along with aerosols, particulates, and other assorted crap) will have a long term net warming effect, cooling effect, or something else, and the magnitude of that effect. We can create models to predict the effect, but we only have training data (past records), but no control data. To only current way to test to see if what we think will happen in 100 years is correct is to wait 100 years.
"Gravity" is not a theory.
Neither is the mass of raw data which is routinely challenged by climate deniers, you know "warming has stopped it's been getting colder for the last x years ..."
Comparing gravity to AGW is preposterous.
I think you've missed AC's point which, if I may, was that an argument along the lines of "if you can't name any scientists you regard as reputable who disagree with a well-established sciency then you criterion for selecting reputability is obviously politically biased ... exactly!" is not a valid argument. I think that still stands even if gravity can easily be tested by high school physics students.
One more thing. As a self proclaimed skeptic I wish the people who are for the man made global warming theory would stop trying to shoot the messenger and take the scientific findings of the skeptics and address them. Those findings are not based in skepticisim they are based on real evidence. People like Dr. John Christy should be cheered for their skepticism because with that skepticism we will discover the truth.
The people who are pushing this card like to say there is no impact if the theory of AGW is wrong. Well there is an impact. That impact is the world economy and the very thing that has helped improve the longevity of human life.
Of course gravity is a theory. All scientific generalizations are theory. The facts or the observation. "I dropped this ball and it fell to the floor" may be a factual observation. "Balls fall when dropped" or "there is a force that attracts masses together" are theories--they can never be proved, because they are generalizations: you can never test every ball, or every pair of masses.
More for #0: The people shouting the loudest haven't given up air travel. They don't keep their (often multiple) houses at 55 degrees F in the winter instead of the 70 F they find comfortable. They don't run their washing machines on timers so the load runs at 3AM. They're typically a wealthy and self-styled elite class who, even if they aren't setup to directly benefit from AGW measures, are largely insulated from the hardships they would impose on the rest of us.
If the choice is between risking warmer weather and having our lives micromanaged by an arrogant, deceitful ruling class of elite technocrats who hold ordinary folks like me in contempt, then I'll take my chances with warmer weather.
If I believe Wombats secretly control the world's politicians with their psychic abilities (arguably no less believable than Creationism since neither is based on a whit of scientific evidence), I can share my discussions with other Wombatists, but its pointless to try to explain my position to those who have not "seen the light" :P
I may not believe you, but I'd certainly subscribe to your newsletter!
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
All theories, from gravity to evolution generalizations that can never be exhaustively tested, but that are to some degree accepted because they make testable predictions that have turned out to be correct. For example, we theorize that all masses, past, present, and future exert a gravitational force on all other masses, but almost all of the masses in the universe are not directly accessible for testing--we have tested only an insignificant fraction of them.
Here's a list of some of the predictions of climate science that have been tested and have turned out to be correct
Also, Roy Spencer has enough credibility to get a serious response from others in the field.
The term came into common usage because the target group referred (incorrectly) to themselves in their state of cognitive dissonance as 'sceptics'. Scepticism also has a precise meaning. It doesn't refer to people who reject scientific theory without presenting contrary evidence.
Consensus is not when scientists get together and decide "We're going to have a consensus!" Consensus is what you have when (nearly all) scientists in a field no longer argue seriously about a particular subject except at the minute detail level because it isn't interesting any more.
The use of "denier" in this context sounds no different than ... assuming that whatever is "denied" is in fact true.
Yes exactly, you finally grok it! A denier is simply someone who denies facts. And if they did not deny what we must assume (based on the best available scientific knowledge) to be true, we wouldn't be calling them deniers. Or to quote AC: "Which is why the label "denier" is appropriate."
When it comes to arguing global warming, there appear to be more parallels with religion than with actual science.
I agree. Anyone arguing against global warming, which is after all an observed phenomenon, is clearly not arguing scientifically. We really should not be arguing about it, we should be taking some action to alleviate and mitigate against it.
The use of "denier" in this context sounds no different than a religious zealot blindly assuming that whatever is "denied" is in fact true.
No, it indicates the assessment that the "denier" is blocking his ears and shouting la-la-la at anything that contradicts his preconceptions. Same as evolution deniers. I won't Godwin the topic and equate them with Holocaust deniers though.
Bullshit. You can make more money putting tattoos on teenagers.
From the post:
I think people might look at the Little Ice Age and think that all we need to save us from rising temperatures are some volcanic eruptions or the geo-engineering equivalent [...] But when you see what happened when global temperatures dropped by just one degree and you look at current predictions of six or seven degree increases for the future, you realize how precarious things are for life as we know it.
That's an important point. If you consider the disruption that occurred with one degree of temperature drop in the Little Ice Age can you expect the same level of disruption with a one degree rise in temperature? How about two degrees or the 6-7 degrees mentioned?
Is it a theory that the sun does not put out constant levels of energy?
Well, it is - but I'm referring to your theory as stated in the GP:
perhaps it was coincidentally at a low during that period and that contributed to cooling. 1. Was it, or was it not a factor?
2. What proportion of the cooling was due to fluctuations in solar output?
3. Where is the evidence for your theory of solar forcing?
4. What does this have to do with the current warming trend?
And show working.
"The sun isn't predictable" is actually a huge problem for climate research, no?
No.
I don't claim to be climate scientist.
Which is just as well, under the circumstances.
Nobody's ever denied the Little Ice Age. It was obvious from the historical records. What they are saying is that the Maunder Minimum made what was already a cooler era for other reasons that much worse.
Can you name a me a single AGW "denialist" that you deem to be qualified enough to have their theories and research taken seriously?
More than likely no. Why? Too much money tied up in it now. And if you're proposing a competing theory, you're likely to be blackballed right out of the sciences for speaking heresy against doctrine.
Om, nomnomnom...
If AGW is not a testable theory and it does not produce a falsifiable hypothesis, is it scientific at all?
AGW is easily falsifiable - simply repeat Tyndall's experiment to prove that CO2 is not a greenhouse gas.
It's therefore quite telling that no denialist has ever done that.
I'm interested in why you think hiding the decline was boneheaded. I agree, the phrase taken out of context is certainly jarring and worth investigating, and investigating it yields a very interesting slice of the work being done in climatology.
Since accurate instrumentation is a modern tool, climatologists have researched several different temperature proxies to reconstruct (with appropriate error bars) historical data. Tree rings, dendrochronology, provides one such tool. In general, over the sample of time and areas where we have both tree ring data and temperature data, the width of each ring is well correlated to the temperature, and has been checked both with instrumented values and with other proxy techniques. However, there is a subset of tree ring data where the correlation declines: high-northern latitude forests after 1950-1960. This is the "divergence problem", and was well published and studied in the literature.
Certainly we would like to know what caused this divergence for a subset of the dendrochronology data, and various hypotheses are being investigated (temperature stress, dimming, etc.). And the divergence problem does have an impact on the error bars associated with the tree ring data. But just because a model is incomplete doesn't mean it isn't useful (Newtonian physics vs. relativity, for example). Graphing the combined results of temperature proxies and, for the time period where they are available, instrumentation data, seems a very reasonable way to help analyze climatological trends. Yes, this "hide[s] the declin[ing]" correlation of high-northern forest tree rings from after 1950, but given that that specific issues seems to be an outlier in the data I don't see the analytic technique as unreasonable.
Most people probably wouldn't deny that the climate keeps changing (e.g. Ice Age) but so far I've personally not seen credible evidence for the idea that mankind has much if anything to do with it - temperatures appear to have changed substantially even long before the industrial revolution. On balance it's probably natural for geeks (many of whom are naturally inquisitive)
Since, as you confess, you have not personally looked the evidence, it follows that you are an exceptional geek. :p
No, the periods just didn't stand out the way you want them to. Here is a graph of a number of temperature reconstructions for the past 1000 years including Mann's hockey stick graph (the dark blue line). They pretty much all agree that it was warmer 1000 years ago than it was 400 years ago.
I love that straw man you set up there.
What "responsible" party has been predicting 6 or 7 degrees within 100 years? Nobody I know, including the IPCC.
The most extreme predictions I have seen from reputable sources have been 2 to 3 degrees within 100 years.
Interesting. How exactly do this students test if the exponent for the dependency on the euclidean distance r is exactly -2?
It always astonishes me that on a geeky site like Slashdot with an audience that in theory puts such a high value on science, you get so many global warming denialists.
While I don't think you should have been modded flame-bait, if you're interested in intelligent debate instead of polarised trash-talking, you'd be better to leave out labels like denier and denialist - these have been fashioned to ridicule those they are attached to rather than advance the debate.
It is perfectly scientific to be sceptical about anthropogenic global warming, and that does not mean you put no high value in science, it may just mean you are not convinced by the evidence so far presented that global warming is caused solely or mainly by human interference. It should be noted just as a baseline that we are not sure exactly how fast the climate has changed in the past, however we are sure it has changed in radically more profound ways than the current spate of warming and swung from very high temperatures to very low. Even in recent memory (Little Ice Age), we've had a period of cooler weather which we can't fully explain.
I believe in anthropogenic global warming but am also of the opinion we don't really understand how our climate works or what the triggers and turning points are, does that make me a denier or a believer?
Yes, because you're the same type of person who would follow an MD's advice on heart surgery after what? maybe two concurring opinions. Yet when it comes to accepting science that conflicts with your political views, you say "Well hold on Buster. 98% of the people qualified to make an assessment isn't good enough. And I'm a victim too!. You big meanies!".
brandelf -t FreeBSD
However we can create objects of known mass and test their attraction at various distances. As far as I know no one has created a model of the earth to test global warming or bred a large number of animals to create a new species.
It's a strange kind of "priesthood" that has to show its work and changes its mind when new evidence comes in.
The weird thing being that a lot of the policy options are things we'd want to do anyway: increasing energy efficiency, building more nuclear power plants, and reforestation are examples.
The fact that the models don't predict everything completely accurately does not necessarily mean that they are far off, it just means that they haven't been extended and refined as well as we could yet. Furthermore, science gives us predictions that conform to reality literally every day.
But you illustrate your cognitive dissonance when you say that you "choose to believe that the scientists don't haven't [sic] it all figured out." Scientists will NEVER have it all figured out, because this universe that we have found ourselves in is so intricately beautiful that our species could spend the rest of its days studying the cosmos and still not have a complete picture of how everything works. But, expecting science to figure everything out perfectly is missing the picture - the point of science is not to arrive at a conclusion and stay there forever and ever amen, it is to continuously refine and extend our theories until we have models that approximate reality to the degree that we are comfortable with.
In addition, there is no such thing as irrefutable evidence (except in religious matters, and even that is debatable). There have been predictions (see the many posts in this discussion about Tyndall's experiment) about global warming, and nobody (to my knowledge, and apparently to the knowledge of everybody else who posted about it) has refuted the fact the CO2 increases global temperatures. And lastly, while there are scientists who are making claims that cannot be falsified in their lifetimes, that has no bearing as to the accuracy or inaccuracy of those predictions, and it has everything to do with how quickly climate changes occur (hint: slowly). Would you restrict science to making predictions that cannot be tested immediately given the current state-of-the-art equipment? I think you will find that you have to make those predictions and then get the funding to develop the state-of-the-art equipment to test your claims, as it simply cannot work any other way. And that is currently where cimate science is at this point. The only problem, as you have complained about, is that the predictions that climate science makes are long term, but that is no reason to reject those claims out of hand.
So, I suggest you refrain from commenting about global warming and the logic, philosophy, pragmatic implementation (is there any other kind?), limitations, and results of science, and stick to commenting on things you actually know something about.
I have an entirely different take. I think this science has a problem most sciences don't. We have only one planet that's practical to use for this model.
I think it's a problem of abstraction, the higher the level of abstraction you go to, the more the little details are thrown out, and the devil is always in the details.
Of course, abstraction is necessary, we aren't capable (nor are we likely to ever be) of doing simulations of the whole solar system at a sub atomic level in a time scale that would be useful to us. So we throw out information or not care about the lack of it in coming to whatever conclusions they do, they simply try their best.
Compare a sociologist with a physicist, the physicist can give you fairly definitive results from a known beginning state etc etc. Ask a sociologist exactly what a person will do and they will only be able to give generalities that could be extemely off because of all of the little details that have been left out.
"Intelligent debate"? What kind of nonsense is that?! Everybody worth listening to knows full well that Slashdot posts aren't written, they're generated from a QRNG in CmdrTaco's basement, and comment scores reflect natural selection.
Evolution is not really contentious because it doesn't have much relation to politics outside of "batshit crazy religious" angle - which is not exactly popular among geeks.
AGW, on the other hand, has very profound implications - if it's true, then we need to do something about it. And that, generally speaking, means more environmental government regulations. Now, it so happens that there is a not very large but still vocal political group called libertarians who are, as a matter of principle, opposed to government regulation, and believe it to be unnecessary in most (some of them say "all") cases. And it also happens that this group is well represented among the geeks. Now, if you look at comment history of most people who regularly make anti-AGW posts here, you'll quickly notice that they tend to draw libertarian on most matters where it makes a difference...
Wow! Just for me. I feel so privileged! :^D
However, I'm not sure I agree with you. You can say, "Gosh, the sun may have caused it!" And you might even be right. The point I make is that what you have is conjecture. You could just as easily say that space aliens caused the little ice age with their freeze rays--after all, space aliens are odd creatures and you can't predict them so there's no way you could know that they didn't cause it. Therefore, it's reasonable to reject all studies that don't include counts of UFO sitings.
One of the differences between the law and science is evidence. Here in the US, for example, to convict a person you must convince a jury that the person is guilty "beyond a reasonable doubt." Thus, the prosecution will come up with their theory of what happened the the defense will attempt to poke holes in it in order to create "reasonable doubt" in the minds of the jurors. They don't have to create another theory and support it with evidence. All they have to do is convince people that the prosecution got it wrong.
You bring up a good point about solar output. But by saying that you reject any study that treats the sun's output as a one-dimensional number, you're being more a lawyer than a scientist. You're right that the model may not be completely accurate. The question is, is it accurate enough--does the output of the model show the effects that we have in the records. If so, then it's a possible explanation. Solar output may also be the cause. However, we don't have precise readings for solar output during this time, so the best we can do is "guess."
Those guesses have some backing--we've never seen solar output above or below a certain amount. The sun has cycles where it tends to be higher in some years than in other years. So we use numbers in those ranges and based upon the cycles we have seen. But could there have been some change in the cycles during that time? Sure, it's possible. But that theory--without evidence--is just as valid as space aliens with freeze rays.
That's what I meant about "And your evidence for this is." Is there a reason to believe that solar output was dramatically less during this time? All we have for information is what hit the Earth--and that could have been affected by volcanic ash, as the study suggests.
Sadly this post is a bit of a joke. This sort of paper comes out at least once a month. People just really, really want to believe this it seems. They are slowly getting more convincing, but as you can see in the paper, the timing doesn't exactly match very well. Some of the changes occur rather a long time after the earliest eruption, which throws their whole thesis in serious doubt. If the plant disasters they claim indeed occurred at the dates claimed, why isn't that massive sudden cooling in the history books along with a few revolutions occurring at those dates ? Why did the cooling last so much longer than similar volcanic eruptions ? At the very least they're missing something, at worst, they're just wrong.
They're also invoking feedback effects. That's cute, but feedback effects obviously never cause anything, it's a cop-out. This sort of claim gets weaker and weaker once you realize that they claim a tiny, tiny effect (slight albedo reduction, a sort of (tiny) "nuclear winter" caused by volcanoes) and everything else followed by necessity (it cooled further because it was cooling. Great ! If so, why did it stop ? No answer).
What this paper claims is that the little ice age occurs in simulations of their events, after tweaking the values a few times. Which values ? They need to rather greatly prolong the expected cooling a volcanic eruption causes. Great. But the Mauder minimum just happens to coincide really really well with the little ice age. And the timing matches a lot better than their volcanoes. Is that just a coincidence ? Nobody really thinks so, and this will be one of the many papers that fails to convince people of that fact.
If this paper is true, that little ice age should probably be classified as a "false start" of a real one. It tried to start and sure enough, temperatures started dropping (enough to cause the extinction of several countries), but for some reason that this paper doesn't go into, it didn't happen (and the modern world wouldn't have happened if it did, we'd be back in the stone age if not extinct instead of on the moon). The feedback loop cooling the planet got triggered, ran for a while, and then just ... died. Why ? It doesn't seem to have had any false starts the previous times. In fact this feedback system has proven extremely unstoppable in the past, including a few times with a massive co2 increase, which failed to halt temperature drops (at least in the long term it failed, in the short term we're guessing). They could at least have said something akin to that the sun may not have started the little ice age, but it looks like it ended it (at least the Sun may have sufficient power to do so).
That's another bit of an elephant in the room. It is "about time" (give or take 5000 years) for another huge ice age to start. Was the little ice age a "false start" ? If it is, that seems a rather unique event. We don't yet know what causes ice ages (and no, it's not an iceberg blocking the gulf stream as half of the internet seems to believe, that would suck for Europe, as last years' UK snow disasters would become yearly events, and rock for Canada (unless Canadians like skiing), but it doesn't really change temperatures). We just know that ice ages happen with alarming regularity in the past, and that their alarm clock is about to go off.
Regardless, this paper is one of many with this claim, and it's not exactly better than most. They have some new, real-world data which is rather unique, but otherwise ...
There's another problem I'd like to point out about these simulations. They show us the real nature of causality. No one cause "causes" something else. In this paper the "cause" of global cooling during the middle ages is "a number" of volcanic eruptions, which activated a number of physical effects due to their location and their distribution, which were followed after a century and a half by another 3 volcanic eruptions, and the warming between the two caused a change in ocean salinity in one or t
It is simply whether they are literally suitably qualified, which is to say, are they working and publishing (in an ISI listed peer reviewed journal, i.e. not a phish journal like E&E) in the field, the holder of a chair in the relevant discipline etc
And why does this make a person qualified? Why is a person unqualified if he does not hold these distinctions?
And ultimately it's not what scientists say, but what the bulk of the published science says that we must defer to.
Really? We must?
Nor is there universal agreement among most expert climatologists. But the baby questions, such as is anthropogenic carbon in the atmosphere rising; are mean global temperatures rising; and are the two causally linked, are now settled in the affirmative. The scientific debate has largely moved on.
Right. And according to mainstream economists, their model is the absolute best representation of how the economy works. Government spending causes economic growth, and lack of government spending causes stagnation and deflation. The mainstream economic debate has moved on from the people who claim the opposite. Except we still have booms, busts, crashes, etc, and nobody seems to know why. If someone speaks up about a competing theory's take on the situation, and this person doesn't subscribe to the mainstream theory or hold a distinguished economics position, are you saying his beliefs aren't worth listening to or thinking about just because of those two facts alone?
And recent attempts to revive these questions by the very few suitably qualified scientists who do disagree with the mainstream
Clearly you personally know every single scientist in the world--including those who haven't published--are intimately familiar with all their work, life history, intelligence level, theories, etc, and are therefore able to judge the exact persons who are and who aren't "suitably qualified" to tackle this subject.
The sun's the largest energy input into our climate system. Again, this is not a theory that I need to prove due to clear evidence.
Your 'No.' is quite certain, you're quite set in your ways. Some sort of ... er proof for your alternate theories might be useful.
Shouldn't I be skeptical when I hear "No, the sun's energy output not being predictable isn't a problem" when I know the sun is the largest input? Shouldn't you be skeptical too??
But I'm not even allowed to wonder aloud in your book. I said,
I mean, that's a fact. The sun has to be there for there to be climate, so indisputable. Then, I said,
Again, true. I am clearly a master of observation. Finally, the line that you doomed me to AGW hell with,
By your reaction, you would have thought I just stabbed grandma and called her names. How can either of us prove or disprove that supposition? We don't have any data from the 1600's on solar output. I KNOW THAT! Can't a guy ask a question or think aloud 'round here without getting their head cut painfully from their torso?
And how was my statement a theory at all? Don't I need to posit something or some such for there to even be a theory?? You've hanged me over something I didn't try to do, which was, to prove anything! (Sheesh, getting on my case, so dang serious...)
And hey, I was just being honest about myself when I say I'm no climate scientist, no need to be such a sourpuss. But, do you claim to be some sort of expert? (NASA badge number, please.) Or, do you just pig out on pop-science junk food from hard hitting news sources like Newsweek and The Huffington Post like everyone else in your position seems to? You are what you eat, I suppose.
I lay here, prostrate, on the AGW altar at East Anglia - ready to be sacrified by you to Gaia!! I am ready for the TRUE knowledge floodgates to open and wash over me like a melting glacier fresh water tidalwave!! Oh, swoon!
Look at how much fun we're having! I'm laughing pretty hard rereading what I wrote to you, hehe. Whee, it's so late.
I'm finding the list of beers most stimulating.
"What Are They Gonna Do When Were All Using Freenet"
Good lord, I love the dickens out of you. You just stared that smug weenie down, gave him squinty-eye, and then made him heel like it was nothin'!
Seriously, I love you in a platonic cuddling sort of way, almost!
> As far as I know no one has created a model of the earth to test global warming or bred a large number of animals to create a new species.
No-one that is, apart from those that have. There have been a fairly large number of the latter, both observing and inducing speciation in plants and animals.
There are plenty of earth models for climatic and other purposes. It's clearly not practical to make physical models, so we have to make do with software ones which don't have such practical constraints. Their accuracy can be tested by seeing if older data can be used to predict more recent data (hindcasting), for example can data gathered from 1900 to 1960 in a given model be used to predict what the conditions were like in the 1960s? If they do, then you might consider some of that model's future predictions trustworthy too. This technique is used to test models of individual parts of an overall climate model, such as temperature changes, cloud actions, El Niño events, gas mixtures etc. Generally these models will only ever get better as research improves and computing power increases. Still, they are an approximation (as all models necessarily are), but as the IPCC said: "Despite such uncertainties, however, models are unanimous in their prediction of substantial climate warming under greenhouse gas increases". More info.
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A fair response, and a long and reasoned one at that. Thank you.
You are correct, it was complete conjecture (fancy, even) when I wondered if the sun's energy could have potentially been lower and that would have been a factor in the LIA. I didn't intend my statement to be otherwise.
On the climate studies and one-dimensional sun representation, I would say I'm more of a skeptical lawyer than a scientist, yes. That's fine, scientists are boring and the world needs more agitators like me. The bar for AGW is higher already, and I've hardly lifted finger-to-key. :D
The sun's the largest energy input into our climate system. Again, this is not a theory that I need to prove due to clear evidence. Your 'No.' is quite certain, you're quite set in your ways. Some sort of ... er proof for your alternate theories might be useful.
You've made such an effort to change the subject that I almost feel sorry for you. Almost.
Shouldn't I be skeptical when I hear "No, the sun's energy output not being predictable isn't a problem" when I know the sun is the largest input? Shouldn't you be skeptical too??
You made it quite clear that you know nothing about climate science. You said so yourself. So you aren't in a position to judge the veracity of that statement. In any case, am I supposed to care whether or not you are 'sceptical'? Because at the moment, I don't.
So why does your 'scepticism' matter?
Show working.
By your reaction, you would have thought I just stabbed grandma and called her names. How can either of us prove or disprove that supposition? We don't have any data from the 1600's on solar output. I KNOW THAT! Can't a guy ask a question or think aloud 'round here without getting their head cut painfully from their torso?
Well, I've got a better chance than you -since
a) You didn't read the article, or even adequately peruse the attached comments, which would have revealed the answer to you
b) You've made it clear that as far as climate science goes, you are ignorant. I'm not - being possessed of at least a rough knowledge on the subject.
c) In this case, I didn't make the assertion, you did, so I have nothing to prove, and you do.
Which neatly brings us back on topic: which is your assertion - perhaps it was coincidentally at a low during that period and that contributed to cooling
1. Was it, or was it not a factor?
2. What proportion of the cooling was due to fluctuations in solar output?
3. Where is the evidence for your theory of solar forcing?
4. What does this have to do with the current warming trend?
And show working.
See, that's the problem. Any scientist that questions it is immediately deemed unqualified or even unethical simply because they have bothered to question it.
Not true. Any scientist who genuinely questions the science, by presenting evidence (e.g. Spencer) will get a science based response. There isn't much debate because the alternate theories have - so far - been easily disproven.
Anthont Watts thoughroghly descredited claims
and what claims were discredited ?
I'll take my chances with warmer weather.
If it was only about warmer weather, then that would be fine. Unfortunately, warmer leads to more violent weather, with all the consequences that will flow from that.
So, I'd rather put up with a hypocritical elite, which really is little more than an annoyance compared to the big disasters that we can expect.
0) The people shouting loudest about how important this is stand to gain a significant amount of money, power, and public notice if people believe and act on their claims.
Everywhere I go, I see teachers driving Ferraris, research scientists drinking champaign...
As a research scientist, the best that they can expect to get, and in fact the goal that so many of them have in mind after 10-20 years of hard research is... a job which isn't guaranteed to terminate in 3 years.
And, the best way do do that is to make a big name for yourself by turning over the old scientific establishment and coming up with something striking and new (supporting AGW definitely does not qualify as anti-establishment).
If you think there's a cabal of scientists banding together on global warming for the money and power, then you are either astonishingly ignorant or a total moonbat.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I've personally not seen credible evidence for the idea that mankind has much if anything to do with it
So you've researched the literature? Tell me, which journals do you subscribe to (or get from your local library)?
If your claim of "never seen" is based on discussion forums and popular science and news then you've never looked, so it's no surprise that you've never seen any.
On balance it's probably natural for geeks (many of whom are naturally inquisitive) to question ideas
Don't try to lump us all together as some sort of poor rationalization of your decision. If you're inquisitive then go look (I doubt you have).
Basically with science you have pretty much three choices
1. Be a scientist and check for yourself
2. Accept the scientific concensus
3. Be a moonbat and reject 2 for a variety of poor reasons
changes to our lifestyles
Ah and there's the reson. Everything else is just rationalization.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
See, that's the problem. Any scientist that questions it is immediately deemed unqualified or even unethical simply because they have bothered to question it.
Wrong. Just go to a climate science meeting and you'll see them debate / argue / fight over endlessly about some constant value, whether or not some model is better than the other, etc... They certainly do NOT all agree with each others. But they are qualified to debate the issue at hand atmospheric physics), unless denialists who failed high school maths or work for political 'think' tanks.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
The term denialist has a well documented entomology.
http://xkcd.com/1012/
. There needs to be a way to publish studies, raw data, and the like, without jeopardizing one's career.
Of course there is. JUST PUBLISH IT. If it's valid, you're famous, the oil companies can quite legitimately shower you with money to continue your research. This continued assertion that there is a conspiracy to prevent dissenting views on global warming is just idiotic. Is Al Gore going to leave a horse's head in your bed?
Is there a word that combines "retarded" with "denialist"? There should be.
Sorry, economics and climate science suffer from not having repeatable experiments. Both are not science. Real provable science.
If you're a paleoclimatologist, which is more likely to advance your career? A report that says current climate variations fit the historical pattern and there's nothing anyone needs to do differently, or one that says that significant government regulation and societal reorganization is needed?
Both will do just fine. The first report will get you a cushy job or generous grants from the American Petroleum Institute, the second report will make it more likely that you get a tenure-track university position.
I am officially gone from
Economics is not science, it is the equivalent of voodoo. A bunch of superstitious beliefs built around rituals of illusion, deception and desire.
Feel free to try and identify a control group for economics, if you can.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Climate change aside, isn't reducing pollution incentive enough to look into alternative energy sources? We do only have one earth after all, and I believe common sense dictates that pollution is bad for it. Personally, I don't care if changes in climate are man made or not, but I can't think of a reason why reducing pollution would be a bad thing. Despite our differing political views, can we agree on this much?
Absolutely! I'm all for alternative forms of energy. I just don't like to give government power over my energy consumption. Between health and energy, the government will have complete control over all of our lives.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
...offering why those large volcanoes in particular had this effect.
According to http://www.volcano.si.edu/faq/index.cfm?faq=06 (which admittedly doesn't go back that far) it seems that volcanic activity has been relatively flat over time.
As presented in the blog summary (which may or may represent their actual paper accurately) it looks very much like a case of observer bias - they had a cooling period, and they looked just before it to see if anything happened, which seemed to be these 4 big eruptions. That (alone) can't be the basis for a compelling theory.
Without comparing the larger frequency of eruptions over time, this data is meaningless. If these 4 eruptions were an outlier, then indeed this is interesting. If they weren't (ie if either a) this was a typical frequency of vulcanism over time, and/or b) there were periods of comparable or heavier vulcanism without such observed climate effect) then this theory loses a lot of its traction.
Looking at volcanic megaevents - the HUGE collection of eruptions about 132 million years ago, and again about 30 mya - doesn't seem to present ongoing climatological effects, but then the Little Ice Age phase is so short (centuries) it wouldn't really even be a blip on a paleoclimatological chart.
-Styopa
Or here is a better idea, if using tree rings leads to inaccurate results, then maybe we shouldn't use tree rings to figure out past temperatures. I'm absolutely certain that tree rings are no where near the accuracy required to judge changes withing the 1.6 degrees C they are predicting will end the world.
If you have to manipulate the data to make it fit what you think happened, then the data is no good.
Don't use tools that don't work. Problem solved.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I consider myself pro-science, open to catastrophic scenarios, but also wary of cultural bias (I've lived in enough places to see how culture can affect a whole country even when the world is telling them they are wrong). Yours is the best post I've seen in a few years. It does really come down to separating the science from the politics. The political AGW crowd makes no reservations about accusing the motives and ethics of others. Big oil only interested in profit is destroying the planet, like the tobacco companies destroyed your health. OK, but the political AGW people are upholding their own ethical stance, their own sense of morality, for the planet and future generations, and THOSE ethical judgements also deserve scrutiny. Did you know that Apartheid was morally linked to a sense of natural order which came from ecology? The Western Buddhist types get it wrong -- simply being devoted to a higher morality and devoted to the good of the world and a higher consciousness does't automatically grant you knowledge of how to make that goodness a reality in practical social ways. It is those kinds of really hard questions that the political AGW crowd need to be willing to face, because feeling you are taking a higher moral stance is one thing, but actually knowing in practice what is a good solution is another thing entirely. People can be highly morally and ethically driven to do the right thing. But the biggest problem with global warming -- and global warming is just one instance of a whole class of global problems that go beyond national boundaries and seem to require some sort of global system -- the biggest problem is we don't know how to create a global system that can deal with global problems. Political AGW seem to claim more than enough practical certainty to believe that we have to act. OK, but who knows how to make the global system act? On ANYTHING? The "truth" is not enough. The globe isn't just 200 countries, it is a set of cultures that live in different ages. The Americans can't even sort out their own Republican v Democrat differences, which on a global scale, are negligibly different, and yet, the two sides sorta often hate each other, and yet, we're somehow going to unite the world under one main cause? It is one ecosystem but each culture sees that ecosystem from a very different place. People often severely underestimate the cultural differences around the world, which is ironic given how much people love to travel and "celebrate" other cultures. The reason global warming politically won't work is the same as why USA utterly failed in Afghanistan, and is still failing after 10 years -- it is a different culture, radically different, the people as a whole just don't share the same values, and there's no reason why they should, and no way to change them. They are adapted to their environment using the best cultural systems they know, codes that go back much longer than democracy or even authoritarian government. I picked up a little book, "What About China?" which purported to answer the global warming political issue of, why should the West commit to emissions cuts when China is industrialising? I was really curious to know, because I'd like to think I'm open minded. So I read the book, and it says, "we should set the good example." The naivety was astounding. China, considered itself the centre of the world and civilisation for so long that it figured the rest of the world wasn't even worth exploring, is now going to put the environment ahead of production because they want to follow the good example set by America? The irony of global warming politics is that the AGW crowd don't understand the world. They don't understand the diversity of culture. They're a clique (millions in a world of billions) who can only see their own moral stance, and can't understand the moral stances of others. This makes them as much part of the problem as anyone else in the global arena, because the world is culturally deeply fractured, and their approach of vilifying others only adds to that fragmentation. George W. Bush or Al Gore -- they both have an Us v Them attitude.
It's exactly because of being on a "geeky" site like Slashdot. The basic principles of science teach you to question everything until it's proven.
Nothing has been proven, one way or the other. Thus, the debate goes on. As it should.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Now can you name me a single scientist who denies the existence of gravity, that you deem to be qualified enough to have their theories and research taken seriously?
Now can you name me a single anonymous coward who denies the existence of hyperbole, that you deem to be qualified enough to have their theories and research taken seriously? Because that's essentially what you just asked. It's nonsense, and exactly the type of inflammatory garbage that the AGW believers are constantly proselytizing.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
6. Even if climate change is anthropogenic, they do not believe humanity has the unified political will to decrease emissions sufficiently. Even if the Western hemisphere miraculously agrees to, Asia and the developing nations in Africa and the Middle East will (somewhat justifiably) continue to use fossil fuels to continue their industrialization. And even if we somehow miraculously get the entirety of humanity weaned off fossil fuels, and this current uptick is anthropogenic, we're still coming out of an ice age, with the planet is still well below it's historic temperatures, so we'll have to deal with a warm earth eventually.
In short, we should be looking at ways to adapt, rather than commanding the tide to retreat.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
FYI: Airplanes (1910s), guided missiles (1940s), and espresso (1905) all existed prior to computers.
What was your point?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Actually the surge of interest in witchcraft and the accompanying witch trials was towards the end of the Middle Ages. The peak of the European witch trials was between 1580 and 1630. The infamous Salem witch trials were in 1692-93. A long, long time after the so-called Dark Ages (which aren't generally referred to as Dark Ages any more).
Great Windows SFTP Server!
If we assume the first step as true, then cars are not the only thing that emit CO2, and in fact they're not even in the top 10. There are lots of other things that will make more difference to the climate if we cut them than cars.
Have you ever actually looked at the amount of CO2 and other pollutants released by automobiles. I have. I tallied the numbers back in 2008.
34,254,000 Tons of Hydrocarbons, 260,462,000 Tons of Carbon Monoxide, 30,707,400 Tons of Oxides of Nitrogen and 5,086,605,000 Tons of Carbon Dioxide. These numbers are from just one year and only from automobiles and light trucks. It doesn't include trains, ships, airplanes or factories.
http://deesuniverse.blogspot.com/2011/10/what-our-vehicles-leave-behind.html
We put out more carbon dioixide in three-five days than the entirely of volcanoes do in a year. http://www.usgs.gov/newsroom/article.asp?ID=2827
Would you like to rethink your statement.
Yes, because you're the same type of person who would follow an MD's advice on heart surgery after what? maybe two concurring opinions. Yet when it comes to accepting science that conflicts with your political views, you say "Well hold on Buster. 98% of the people qualified to make an assessment isn't good enough. And I'm a victim too!. You big meanies!".
Yes, so there must then be a difference. It so happens that there is in fact a difference between modern medicine and modern climate science. Medical scientists can perform an experiment on thousands of patients, then compare the results to another control group of thousands more patients. They can clearly distinguish correlation from causation. They can modify the system (i.e. cardiovascular) with drugs; those drugs have effects also established by experiment.
How many human-inhabited planets do we have to experiment on? Do we have an easy way to say, instantly cut the CO2 level of one of those planets by 30% to see how it impacts the climate? Do we have a ton of other human-inhabited planets we can use as a control group? No? Then my heart surgeon is a tad more certain about the medical advice he gives me than anyone has been about global warming, climate change, etc.
If you can't see the difference it's because you refuse to.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Erhm, one of the most prevalent argument against the "theory of Global Warming" is that it's completely based on models...
Which, of course, is bollocks. There is no theory of Global Warming, or Climate Change. There's theory (and physics model) of Earth's Climate, and climate change is what comes out of it when you add CO2 (or any other greenhouse gas).
As stated elsewhere in this thread, these models can do both projections and predictions, and apparently with a great skill, too. Which means that science works.
It's a strange kind of "priesthood" that has to show its work and changes its mind when new evidence comes in.
What's the point in showing you my work if you're not qualified to understand it?
...
After all, the Catholic Church had plenty of Bibles written in Latin. They were not hidden. Of course, no one other than Catholic priests happened to speak/read Latin
The point is, if you can't explain the gist of it to a reasonably intelligent layman, there's something wrong with your own understanding.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
You mean two days ago? Yeah, I remember. They said it was supposed to be sunny today. It's not. What forecasts are you using that you can, with a straight face, call "remarkably precise" -- unless, of course, "remarkably precise" means something completely different to you than it does to me...
This just in: Wealthy people can afford bigger bullhorns.
Also, would like to point out that we're not talking about warmer weather, we're talking about climate change -- which, in fact, could possibly mean colder weather for your region.
Every time I see a comment like yours, I have to wonder who's astroturfing this crap.
You toss out hyberbolic claims in a scattergun fashion ("to test... warming effect, cooling effect or somethign else and the magnitude of it"), then say carefully accurate-sounding bullshit like "to (sic) only current way to test ... is to wait 100 years".
This violates two crux aspects about the scientific method, and models (or hypothesis):
1 - if nearly all the models show X (a temp increase), and attempts to find a scientifically rigorous and interesting model leading to Y are unsuccessful, it's sophistry to claim we just don't know.
2 - if the preponderance of evidence and conclusions (models) say X (big temp increases, bad things worsening throughout the next century), we don't have to wait a century to act. That's absurd. We can take precautionary measures immediately, and watch the models and adjust.
But then, I suspect you know that, since I'm convinced you're a troll...
Exactly this! I don't think anyone denies climate change... Climate has never been and will never be constant. The earth will get colder in the future, it will get hotter in the future. Which way are we going? How far will it go? Are we affecting it significantly? Those are the questions people argue about.
However, the questions I want answered that no one will seem to address are: Which way is better for human life? If the earth is going to get colder or warmer in the future and we can affect it, which way should we be affecting it? If we can affect it and push it in a certain direction, what should we be doing that has the least consequences to human life?
Personally, looking at the globe and seeing where land is situated on earth and which parts of it have more prolific life, I tend to think a warmer planet will increase human life.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Climate science is not science, it is the equivalent of voodoo. A bunch of superstitious beliefs built around rituals of illusion, deception and desire.
Feel free to try and identify a control group for climate, if you can.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
I look at it in terms of actual money versus potential money. There is an enormous amount of actual money at risk and this money is organized and concentrated. This actual money can be used today to promulgate and protect deeply entrenched interests. There is an unknown amount of potential money to be made, and it is a lot harder to spend and organize potential money than it is to spend and organize actual money.
My limited fact checking bears this theory up. Very often the skeptical pieces I find about AGW in the media are sourced from non-scientists affliated with monied interests.
. There needs to be a way to publish studies, raw data, and the like, without jeopardizing one's career.
Of course there is. JUST PUBLISH IT. If it's valid, you're famous, the oil companies can quite legitimately shower you with money to continue your research. This continued assertion that there is a conspiracy to prevent dissenting views on global warming is just idiotic. Is Al Gore going to leave a horse's head in your bed?
Is there a word that combines "retarded" with "denialist"? There should be.
Here is a post a few spots up that completely negates your statement:
Richard Lindzen. Wasn't he the guy who was recently debunked and had his papers withdrawn from publication because he was being paid for his position?
The second a scientist takes on penny from an oil company, even after his work is published, he's instantly discredited, regardless of the quality or accuracy of his work. Yet, it is perfectly acceptable for a scientist to take money in the form of a grant from a government that stands to gain power over citizens.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I'll chime in for GP, since I disagree.
I was a good person for the same reasons you state. And I went through the process of questioning altruism. Questioning. That's it. Not immediate rejection.
I came to my own ethical conclusions. They matched where I started, so I'm a bit suspicious of my decision and ethics. So I review 'em regularly. But then, recalibrating one's ethical rules and examining the edge conditions is a healthy practice, IMHO. It fits nicely into Aristotle's quote on an 'unconsidered life.'
I could wander into Aristotle's quote and my ethical disagreement with it (a process that started by my habit of questioning a stone cold fact offered without evidence), but that's a whole other story.
So the Headline is "...NOT the sun!". Then the post and the article go to length caveating the heck out it with "may" and "probably". That kind of mismatch immediately let's you know the post isn't about the science, it's about the politics.
I have yet to see anybody make a verifiable prediction with regard to climate change on anything less than what will happen decades from now.
1. There will be less glaciated area, worldwide, next year than there was last year. There will be less glaciated area, worldwide, in 5 years time than there is now.
2. The arctic ice sheets will contain less ice next year than they did last year, measured across the year. The arctic ice sheets will contain less ice in 5 years time than they do this year, measured across the year.
...and the time scale of all predictions concerns what will happen at mid or end of century, it's entirely possible that scientists are making claims that can't be falsified in their lifetimes.
Simply put, some people can see further than the end of their nose! (I apologise, implying you are shortsighted is not likely to help.)
Imagine a large pot, full of water, let's say a gallon. Now, put that pot on a stove. Does all the water in that pot, in your mind, immediately become hot, or boil? No? Why not? Is it going to get hotter? How long does it take? Is the end result in doubt? How much bigger than that pot is the Earth? Is the end result in doubt?
I'm 99% sure your answer to the last question will differ to your answer to the identical question that preceded it. To be fair so does mine, but only as a matter of degree. Or to rephrase that, the only doubt in my mind is the exact number of degrees, and that is inherently unpredictable, due to the action or inaction of others.
I choose to believe that the scientists don't haven't it all figured out.
You may chose to believe what you want, and I'll defend your right to do so. It is your actions, and the actions of everyone else (and that includes business as usual inaction) that I take issue with. The problem with beliefs is that they seem remarkably resistant to logic. And it is logic that is the basis for science, not what we wish were true, not what we believe!
Yes, because you're the same type of person who would follow an MD's advice on heart surgery after what? maybe two concurring opinions.
No, he'd ask two mining engineers for their opinion, of course.
Fandroids hate facts.
That was mostly a reaction to the Black Death.
The belief that Satan was loose in the world mostly arose out of attempts to understand how God could allow 1/3 the population of Europe (the world? possibly, but we don't have good records for the whole world, we do have them for Europe) to die of some loathsome disease....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Hmm. In your (insightful? Really?) response, I see a lot of opinion and ranting, but I don't see a single cogent statement that refutes any of the claims in the paper. They explain the lags, the feedbacks, and the modeling they used in their paper. Real climate even has a more layman's description of the mechanism: http://www.realclimate.org/ .
Of course, you're probably counting on the fact that people rarely RTFA and fewer would RTFP. But basically your entire premise is incorrect and refuted in the paper itself.
~X~
denies the existence of gravity
No, but there sure as hell are a lot who disagree on how and why it occurs, and the mechanisms behind it. We know the Earth changes global temperature, often wildly (we have testable records of this). We know the current global temperature is (we have multiple measurements of this). What we don't have is another spare Earth running with accelerated time to test whether injecting the quantities of CO2 that have been released (along with aerosols, particulates, and other assorted crap) will have a long term net warming effect, cooling effect, or something else, and the magnitude of that effect. We can create models to predict the effect, but we only have training data (past records), but no control data. To only current way to test to see if what we think will happen in 100 years is correct is to wait 100 years.
Well, we know that the Greenhouse Effect is real, else Earth would be a snow ball. We also know CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Simple logic dictates that increasing CO2 will increase the greenhouse effect. Denying any of that means you're an idiot.
Fandroids hate facts.
Can you name a me a single AGW "denialist" that you deem to be qualified enough to have their theories and research taken seriously?
More than likely no. Why? Too much money tied up in it now. And if you're proposing a competing theory, you're likely to be blackballed right out of the sciences for speaking heresy against doctrine.
That's odd, all proposing a competing theory seem to be swimming in money.
Fandroids hate facts.
And why does this make a person qualified? Why is a person unqualified if he does not hold these distinctions?
Obviously because of the next snippet you quote. It's not really to scientists, but to the published science that we must ultimately defer. If you are not publishing, or at least directly influencing what is being published, you have no seat at the table. And your opinions are just that. I was being terribly generous in allowing established Professors of relevant disciplines the right to be heard ;)
Really? We must?
We --those of use who wish to have best available factual understanding of physical reality (upon the assumption that the modern science provides the most efficacious epistemology available) --must. You, of course, are free to wallow in ignorance and delusion if you so choose. I'd suggest you don't and instead develop the skills to ascertain credible authority (let's not forget that science is 90% authority and 10% original research), but that's your choice.
Right. And according to mainstream economists ...
What economists, literary critics or astrologers believe or do provides little illumination to a discussion of how science must be conducted. Please stay on topic.
And recent attempts to revive these questions by the very few suitably qualified scientists who do disagree with the mainstream [citing two recent such attempts, Lindzen & Choi (2009) and Spencer and Braswell (2011)].
Clearly you personally know every single scientist in the world ...
Non sequitur.
--including those who haven't published
I'm sorry?! We've already established that they aren't suitably qualified. They are entitled to their opinion, of course, and I'll concede that their opinions are likely to be better founded than the ordinary person's, but they are not part of the scientific debate.
Slightly off topic, but we do have a handle on the personal beliefs of expert scientists and scientists in general on this topic, this question itself having been the the subject of some research. The popularly cited Anderegg et al. has 97% of published climate scientists agreeing on the anthropogenic nature of observed global warming. Wikipedia has a good summary here and more generally here. For the reason outline above, however, you'd be better off hitting a scientific abstracting service, or even reading the AR4 WG1 report (but wait till AR5 comes out), than conducting an opinion poll of scientists, even expert scientists.
--are intimately familiar with all their work, life history, intelligence level ...
All fairly irrelevant.
These at least are pertinent.
, etc, and are therefore able to judge the exact persons who are and who aren't "suitably qualified" to tackle this subject.
Yes I am able to make that judgement, not for the reasons you outline, but (at least in part) upon the criteria I gave in the post you are responding to. And so to could you.
>"Gravity" is not a theory.
If gravity had a political program attached like a Siamese twin to it, I think you'd probably start seeing a lot of "gravity deniers".
Let's work out some analogues:
1) theory: masses attract.
2) conjecture: some asteroid might swerve into the path of the Earth
3) political program: spending billions, even trillions of dollars on asteroid-avoidance
If scientists were solemnly intoning that we have to spend trillions of dollars on X because "the science says so", you'd see a of people denying X.
Actually, though, they'd be denying the attached political program, not the underlying basic science.
Similarly, no one denies that CO2 acts to warm things up in a closed glass box. That's the real basic science. They're denying the conjectures (we'll be X degrees in Y years) and the political program.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
"But the Mauder minimum just happens to coincide really really well with the little ice age."
No it didn't, according to the University of Boulder paper the little ice age (LIA) began ~1275-1300 (Mann says is covered 1400 to 1700) and the Mauder minimum only spanned 1645 to 1715.
But I think you're right that the LIA was a false start of a new ice age, indeed the current Milankovitch cycle should be causing global cooling (not warming). Indeed, under such circumstances the climate might be especially sensitive to negative forcings such as volcanic eruptions. Recall, the Milankovitch cycle involves decreased melting of spring-summer ice i.e. it is an albedo feed back that enhances high latitude cooling that causes the ice ages. Volcanically forced increase in polar ice coverage could result in an albedo feed back during this current current
"We don't yet know what causes ice ages"
Milankovitch cycle causes ice ages, Oh, dear.
Mann, M.E., Zhang, Z., Rutherford, S., Bradley, R.S., Hughes, M.K., Shindell, D., Ammann, C., Faluvegi, G. & Ni, F. 2009. Global Signatures and Dynamical Origins of the Little Ice Age and Medieval Climate Anomaly. Science 326(5957), 1256 -1260
Hays, J.D., Imbrie, J. & Shackleton, N.J. 1976. Variations in the Earth’s Orbit: Pacemaker of the Ice Ages. Science 194(4270), 1121 -1132.
If you can't see the difference it's because you refuse to.
I can see why you'd like to paint those in disagreement with you as irrational, yet we are not the one making an extraordinary claims about how 98% of scientists in the field simply aren't good enough to do their job. And what evidence to do you bring to this claim? Talking points from climate change deniers and bizarre assertions about causation. I'll go out on a limb say you're not a statistician nor even taken an entry level course on it.
If you want to find out what happens to another planet suffering from global warming, you need look no farther than the closest planet to Earth.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
The entire point behind a "liberal arts" education was that free men were supposed to be educated to enough of a degree in many different subjects so they could intelligently discharge the duties of citizenship.
Ideally, that would mean
-people have enough of a grounding in computer science/applications to know about encryption and privacy issues
-people have enough knowledge about DNA testing to know when it useful and when it's not
-people have enough knowledge about science to ask useful questions of climate and other scientists
If we're just going to leave things to a priesthood, we don't need to question prosecution attorneys, judges, the police when they ask for more powers, the government when it makes certain claims, car companies, Goldman Sachs, etc.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I could stop reading after "feedback effects obviously never cause anything" - insightful? you have got to be kidding me
With all due respect Oligonicella, you are outrageously misinformed. Almost all the data is freely and publicly available, and at least for GISS even the source code is available. You can run it at home.
A shady secret conspiracy? Seems like someone has been playing you for a sucker.
Extra apropos: Eisbock. More alcohol, less water!
We have a huge number of locations on earth and in the atmosphere where we can make observations to test theories of current climate and how and why it has changed in the past. We have other planets that we can study from a distance to test predictions of how climate will differ with different atmospheres and different solar irradiance. Although our gravitational models of how planets and stars move cannot be tested experimentally, we can carry out small scale experiments in the lab to test the fundamental physics on which models of planetary motion are based. Similarly, while we cannot carry out planetary scale climate experiments, we can carry out laboratory experiments to test the fundamental physics on which climate models are based, such as radiation absorption and emission by atmospheric gasses. In both cases we have computer models that can be used to make predictions about "natural experiments"--climate models, for example, make predictions about how climate will be affected by volcanic eruptions.
In the case of evolution, we can carry out laboratory experiments with microorganisms to test whether genetic change as a result of selection over hundreds of thousands of generations matches the predictions of evolutionary theory. We can also sequence the genes of the immense number of kinds of living things on earth (including, with modern genetic technology, ones that are long extinct) to test whether their similarity at the genetic level is consistent with the patterns of descent predicted from evolutionary theory. We can examine the genetic changes that divide species and test whether they agree with kinds of genetic changes that arise as a result of selection in the laboratory or in in the wild. We can observe the emergence of new species in the wild, and study the conditions under which they arise.
Here is a post a few spots up that completely negates your statement:
Richard Lindzen. Wasn't he the guy who was recently debunked and had his papers withdrawn from publication because he was being paid for his position?
The second a scientist takes on penny from an oil company, even after his work is published, he's instantly discredited, regardless of the quality or accuracy of his work. Yet, it is perfectly acceptable for a scientist to take money in the form of a grant from a government that stands to gain power over citizens.
Rubbish. Lindzen didn't have his livelihood threatened, that's what the poster I was responding to insinuated. Being criticised is another thing entirely. Lindzen has had a long comfortable career. He didn't suffer for his opinions.
He was pilloried though for LYING about his funding. See http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Richard_S._Lindzen : "in 2007, Lindzen wrote that "his research has always been funded exclusively by the U.S. government. He receives no funding from any energy companies." Which was untrue.
And, FYI, governments already have " power over citizens". I don't understand where you conspiracy nutjobs get the idea that global warming is a political issue that somehow helps commies. It doesn't help ANYONE. It's going to fuck us all.
So, I'd rather put up with a hypocritical elite, which really is little more than an annoyance compared to the big disasters that we can expect.
The 20th Century shows us what an annoyance a powerful ruling elite can be, with about a hundred million dead from communist regimes alone, plus all the dead from World War 2. It was even annoying for those that weren't slaughtered. But I guess it'll be different this time ...?
Versus predictions of gradually warming weather over the course of several decades. Again, I'll take my chances with the possibility of warming.
Shouldn't all science be questioned?
Yes, all science is questioned. The process is named "peer review". Do you know what the word "peer" means? It means someone who has a similar standing.
The work of scientists should be questioned by people who have gone to the trouble of studying and understanding what the subject is about. Not by trolls who repeat the bullshit spewed by corporations whose interests are hurt by the facts that scientists present.
What we don't have is another spare Earth running with accelerated time to test whether injecting the quantities of CO2 that have been released (along with aerosols, particulates, and other assorted crap) will have a long term net warming effect, cooling effect, or something else, and the magnitude of that effect.
Luckily we have physics. We know the magnitude of the effect of CO2 is dF=5.35*ln(C/C0)W/m^2 (where C0 is the initial concentration of CO2 in ppm and C is the current).
Aerosols are harder to quantify, but we can determine the outer bounds of their impact: http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-chapter2.pdf
With the information we have we can determine the direction and magnitude within certain bounds. Certain interests would prefer that we wait 100 years and see what happens.
That word, "consensus", does not mean what you think it means.
There is no consensus involved in scientific inquiry. Consensus has nothing to do with determining what is true. Galileo.
Consensus has a lot to do with deciding who should get research grants, whether carbon credits are a good idea, where emission control standards should be set. But all that stuff is politics, not science. The consensus of opinion among scientists about an issue is but one factor in those political arguments, and it has to compete with other factors, such as whether a proposed change would adversely affect import/export balances, or cost of living, or the lifestyles of the rich and the wannabees.
Stop confusing the science of AGW with the politics of AGW. You will never get the denialists to shut up, but they are only a small (but loud) minority. An appropriate way of handling them is to just say "Suppose all these scientists are right. What changes do you think we should make now, so that in 5, 10, or 20 years your lifestyle will be as pleasant as it could possibly be? Would you favor stronger emission standards or many more windmills?"
Move the conversation to that focus, and you will find that denialists will discredit themselves in the eyes of your silent audience. The discussion can move toward where it should be: what deliberate changes can we make now that would be best for us in the future?
Will
C'mon! That was "High Middle Ages"!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Being a selfish asshole doesn't necessarily make you wrong. And rich people (selfish assholes or not) often have the largest bullhorns.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
So increasing population and deforestation was the reason the temperature dropped from the Medieval Warm Period 1000 years ago to the Little Ice Age 400 years ago? Why hasn't that trend continued?
So what word would you suggest using to describe the group of people in question? The word they tend to apply to themselves, "skeptic," is simply inaccurate, unless we're willing to dilute the word until it has basically no meaning at all. "Denier" is accurate because denying the evidence is what they do, and "denialist" is more specific because the act of denial is clearly an ideology with them. Are we supposed to call them just "that group of people over there," or pretend that they don't exist as a group at all?
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Really? That's not the medicine that I recognise. It seems to be more along the lines of 'this looks about right so we'll give it to some people and see what happens'. There seems to be very limited understanding of how the drug actually works and interacts with other compounds in the body.
In that ways it's a lot like climate - both deal with large. complex, only partially understood systems. Both get reasonable results most of the time. Both acknowledge there are gaps and both are workign to close those gaps.
Will you PLEASE F off with the Fing beta now?
Both sides agree that at least some of the warming is due to human emissions. Again, the dispute is over how much. The political AGW movement says all the warming is human-induced. The climatologists say some of it is. The anti-AGW movement say very little of it is, and there are a variety of other more important causes.
Not quite true. The answer doesn't need to lie between 0% and 100%. Natural forcings are likely exerting a cooling influence. This is why the skeptics have been predicting global cooling for the last 30 years. The reason they are wrong is that the human influence is greater and positive. Climatologists put human responsibility for recent warming somewhere between 80%-120%. (See for instance Tett et al. 2000, Meehl et al. 2004, Stone et al. 2007, Lean and Rind 2008, Huber and Knutti 2011, and Gillett et al. 2012)
How much does solar irradiance vary at wavelengths below 400nm and what are the physical and chemical effects of this variance on the atmosphere and global climate? Do the variance in solar magnetic index and the interaction of the solar and terrestrial magnetic fields have any direct or indirect effects on global climate?
The problem is if we test it and it turns out to be true, we just screwed ourselves...
Shouldn't all science be questioned?
Yes, but the problems with the deniers is that they don't listen to the answers.
Terms like "denier" or "believer" have no place in this debate. Both imply an unwillingness to consider what is known and what isn't.
Let me propose some terminology. The people opposing the anthropogenic theory of global warming can be divided into three distinct categories:
*skeptics
*policy critics
*deniers
Skeptics are asking legitimate questions about the science. Policy critics deny the proposed responses to global warming, for economic or political reasons (I have no problem with this-- there should be more debate on policy.) Deniers deny anthropogenic global warming, period, end of discussion.
Skeptics and deniers are actually complete opposites. The key feature of deniers is that they are not skeptical, in fact, they are completely credulous of any argument, no matter how ridiculous, that opposes global warming.
I have a quick heuristic to distinguish deniers from skeptics: ask if they've actually read the IPCC report from Working-Group 1, "The Physical Science Basis of Climate Change" http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtml
Not "well, no, but I read a critique of it on website-X and I know what's wrong with it, the problem is -xxx--." Actually read it. Not the summary, not the analysis on some page, the actual report.
If you haven't read it, but still want to tell me your opinion on why the science is wrong-- well, your opinion is based on ignorance. You're a denier.
If you have read it-- well, congratulations. You're the one percent. It's a pity that the relentless and highly-amplified shouting of the 99% who don't actually know anything about the science is completely drowning out what you have to say.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
That's exactly what gets me. We've proven over and over that we don't understand anything even nearly as well as we think we do. The more data we find, the less we understand. We can't even accurately predict the weather with any real consistency, and we think we understand something as complex as global climate change? This is a system that's been operating for hundreds of millions of years, of which we've watched and recorded in detail a few hundred years. And we think we understand it? Seriously? That's like me purporting to know your entire life story based on one slashdot post. Sure, there's fossile records, and they help, but that's not at all the same as actually being there.
I deny AGW, not because I don't think it's possible but because I don't think anyone really has any fucking clue about it, and that includes the climate science "experts". If I know and understand about 0.02% of a system like global climatology, and a scientist knows and understands 10 times that, it still doesn't make him an expert. It just makes him slightly less ignorant than me. And that's about where we are. Wake me up when we have about 100,000 years of observed and recorded climate data, then I'll concede that we may actually be getting to some kind of real understanding.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
It's become far too easy to get modded "insightful." All you have to do is type up a long-ass post of nonsense that nobody will actually bother to read.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall, re Voltaire
While as you say everyone has the right to believe as they like, that does not make their belief correct. Relativism has run too far with the idea that everyones opinion is as good as anyone else. Science is about verifying opinion with experimentation and observation. If you want to be a Wombatist I don't care but you should be open to the idea that given contradictory evidence maybe you should reevaluate your personal beliefs, but it seems as if no one is willing to do this anymore because everyone's a unique little snowflake, who's opinions are just as good as everyone else.
They're also invoking feedback effects. That's cute, but feedback effects obviously never cause anything, it's a cop-out.
You know the big feedback loop that's going to be bad bad news? It also comes from one of your denier friends...
Water Vapor. It accounts for a vastly higher amount of the atmosphere than CO2 and is a very effective green house gas.
It's level of concentration is always tied directly to the temperature since it's presence comes from evaporation. (simplified obviously)
So now you have increases in CO2 that cause measurable effects to warm the climate. Not massive on their own, but they do make it warmer.
That temperature increase causes more water vapor to form thus further increasing the green house effect. Which causes more water vapor to be created. Rinse repeat and sweat a lot...
The mods forgot their meds apparently today as you're an idiot.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
That's great, if CO2 were the only substance involved and the rest of the planet was inert. Does an increase in temperature caused by an increase in CO2 levels result in a cloud cover increase that persists and causes an overall temperature lowering effect? Is there a positive feedback effect that would mean a sudden stop of all anthropogenic CO2 emission would not cause a change in the current temperature increase? Will any of the many, many different biological processes that are either accelerated or retarded by an increase in CO2 concentration (in both the air AND the water) have a net positive or negative effect?
The climate is complicated.
Quite the contrary. I think dicking about with half-arsed reduce-our-CO2-emissions legislation is committing ourselves to a death spiral of wilful "but we're solving the problem!"-ing ignorance. We need numerous, varied and far-reaching global geoengineering projects aimed at controlling ANY undesired global temperature variation, in the long term. Our recent few-tens-of-thousands-of-years unseasonably warm period has been a huge boon to the human race, and we're on the verge of it's end, either upwards or downwards.
You are right that consensus has nothing to do with determining what is true. I never said it did. The definition of consensus is a general agreement among such a large majority of participants on a particular point. In science it can be a useful indicator of what the practitioners in a particular field understand about it and what they don't. That doesn't necessarily mean they are right but they probably will be more often than not.
Really -- A lot of the stuff I read on his site is the links to the emails written by these so called authority discussing how to "hide the decline." I'm sorry but I think the side that has been more discredited in recent years is the AGW side, further by the release of their own emails describing non-scientific methods used to prop up their arguments.
"Remember when the weather forecast was always wrong? It's been really remarkably precise recently when I've followed it, which I do a lot, because I enjoy outdoor sports. It's been scarily precise. Predictions a week out come true with astonishing regularity"
The British MET Office would probably like to ask some questions then as they get it horribly wrong year after year.
MET Office: "OMG HEATWAVE BBQ SUMMER INCOMING!!!"
Cue a Summer of rain and cold
"MILD WINTER AHEAD"
Cue the coldest Winters in who knows how long for the fourth year running.
"Dre don't get as high as me.... I'm Cheech and Chong" - Snoop Dogg
But the tools do appear to work, except for a very particular subset in one particular physical area and during one particular time period, and work is being done to explain why the divergence occurs in that very limited subset. Just as we don't throw out Newtonian physics just because it needs tweaks at relativistic speeds, it doesn't make sense to throw out good data just because it has certain limitations. Now, it's always possible that new research will come out that shows that there is no correlation between tree ring widths and temperature, and that the current technique is based on coincidence, but given all the cross checking among instrumentation and alternative proxy methods, that seems very unlikely at this point.
Have a look at Early Warning. You'll have to root around a bit for the climate entries (some are oil, some are economic), but a recent few point out the medium-term possibility of killer droughts, and the long term possibility of not-necessarily so bad. The main issue that is very hard to appreciate (hard for me, too) is that it takes a long time (many decades, maybe centuries) to reach equilibrium. The heat capacity of the oceans is ginormous., meaning that they can absorb an extraordinary amount of energy without their temperature changing much.
What that means in the short term is that we may (articles mentioned in EW, above) hit a point where the land is warm, but the oceans are relatively not. This leads to less precipitation over land. Long-term, land and oceans are in thermal equilibrium, not so much drought, but that is not predicted to happen for centuries. A century or so of drought would suck. Centuries-from-now-equilibrium might be better, assuming that you trust the models.
Another issue caused by oceans-are-enormous is that yearly variation really does swamp slow steady change, depending on which part of the ocean is warming or cooling the air that happens to be blowing our way. We're having an insane "warm" winter here in the Northeast, but it is allegedly caused almost entirely by a change in the Arctic Oscillation -- not Nina/Nino, not global warming. It's a wind pattern, apparently it can change in a matter of weeks. AO trends might be affected by global warming, but people are still arguing about that.
It's also virtually guaranteed that centuries from now the oceans will be many meters higher. Other papers, also referenced from EW, mention this. Hansen has several; one of his principal worries is that he sees geological evidence of the oceans rising 20 meters over 400 years -- that is, a meter every 20 years. Could that happen to "us"? When would it start? What we don't know is how this actually happens, because it's a rate of glacier flow into the ocean that would be outside of anything we've ever observed, and "explosive". Reasons to be nervous about this include: the IPCC explicitly ignores sea level contributions from ice caps melting; the IPCC predictions of arctic sea ice melting have turned out to be grossly over-conservative; recent satellite observations of Greenland's ice cap show an accelerating rate of loss (but accelerating how? Too early to tell).
The problem with your assertions is that from their own emails we know that these scientists have actively worked to pervert the peer review process therefore nullifying your belief that only published scientists should contribute to the scientific discussion.
That's odd, all proposing a competing theory seem to be swimming in money.
Might want to look just a little bit harder. The proponent theories happen to be the ones that are getting the slush fund money from various environmental groups.
Om, nomnomnom...
Well I don't get the official position on feedback loops ... first of all, my personal opinion is that yes, they exist, and yes, they're big ones. But ignoring ones particular beliefs about the feedback loops, there are 2 options. (to summarize, "feedback loops" here means global warming is caused by only one factor : a tiny amount of warming about 170 years ago, and the ship has sailed : no amount of co2 reduction or anything short of diverting more energy than global warming has already amassed can stop warming running it's course. Needless to say, diverting energy streams like that is a pipe dream. )
But as I said, reality is simple : either they exist, or they don't.
In case they don't, then global warming will add the direct influence of co2 and proceed to stop. Which will result in a net warming of ~0.1 degree Celsius, let's say worst possible case and call it 0.5 degrees. It's insignificant. 0.5 degrees and everything else is the normal cycle. In this case we should obviously do nothing, as there is no reason to do anything.
If they do, then the battle is lost. Expanding every last resource available to the entire human race to the point everybody dies will not make the tiniest dent in the warming effect. Again, co2 reductions are ridiculous, unless they can be implemented 200 years ago. Anything later than that is beyond ridiculous.
So can anyone please explain to me how the hell you justify co2 reductions ? They don't even work in the most optimistic cases (ie. we drop co2 production tomorrow and let everyone north of North Carolina freeze to death), and in the scenario where China does ... well the only possible option available to them (burn all their coal in the next 50-100 years or faster) ... forget about it.
I think what he was referring to is not that cars release CO2, but that the CO2 they release is several orders of magnitude less than say coal fired power plants.
If you think there's a cabal of scientists banding together on global warming for the money and power, then you are either astonishingly ignorant or a total moonbat
Either that or you read the emails of the cabal of scientist banding together on global warming.
Current temperatures are always natural in that they occur as a result of all of different factors that combine to produce them. What is not natural (in the sense that humans produced the effect) is the dramatic increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, particularly CO2. There is no known event in the past where they have increased so drastically on such a short time scale. Of course the further back you go the more difficult it is to discern anything on such a short time scale so it's kind of fuzzy but still it doesn't appear to be normal.
Did airplanes fall down in 1910? YES! We had just learned how to get them up in the air.
Did guided missiles miss their targets in 1940? YES! Almost guaranteed to miss, unless your target was really big like Greater London
Did espresso machines get the temperature(s) right in 1905? I have no idea.
His point wasn't that computers made these things exist, his point was that computers and computer models made these things accurate.
Because:
Science of the future will find better ways of dealing with it than bankrupting ourselves trying to remove carbon from all we do.
Science of the present already has cheap ways of dealing with the warming itself.
The MODELS used to predict the disaster are just that: MODELS. Since there's no reason to suspect they're any better than current weather models that cannot much predict thing more than 4 days in advance, then there is no reason to believe that they can accurately predict the calamities that they do.
These MODELS have not successfully predicted past behavior, and have no explanation for the fact that there has been no warming since 1997.
The trend in transportation, one of the bigger CO2 injectors, is toward electric cars which will cure much of the problem. The final solution is battery operated cars and trucks where batteries are ultimately charged with solar-thermally generated electricity that can run all night and for several days on molten salt, and work without PV panels that "wear out" over time and require scarce rare earth materials that may not be available into the future.
All we have to do is give this problem time, and the solution will happen because it is a good economic idea, not because we need to bankrupt society to stop mining coal NOW, stop burning anything NOW, stop using internal combustion automobiles NOW.
If they do, then the battle is lost.
I see what you did there.
So it's either that we don't really understand the climate and so the alarms being raised are false. Or - it's so bad we can't possibly understand and fix it and should just accept our fate.
We do understand quite a bit. Feedback loops are quite clear and already evident. Warmer temps means less snow cover which means more heat absorbed instead of reflected which means warmer temperatures which means less snow...etc.
Are there perhaps feedback loops we don't know about yet? I'm quite sure there are, but since we're seeing measurements moving at paces not seen previously at any time in history, it's fairly safe to say that retardant feedback loops aren't currently helping much if they exist at all.
I already gave you the CO2/H20 vapor loop. It's real, it's testable, it exists.
That alone is reason to reduce CO2. The earth is a very malleable planet, we've changed it before, we can change it again in ways that benefit us rather than hurt us. Scientists have said that if the Canadian tar sands are brought online for production it may very well be game over as far as stopping a runaway greenhouse effect but those us who actually care aren't going to let people like you stop us from trying to save both us and you.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
How much does solar irradiance vary at wavelengths below 400nm
Quite a bit! The UV component of the sun varies far more than the average luminosity with solar activity.
and what are the physical and chemical effects of this variance on the atmosphere and global climate?
That is a subject of research; a lot of people would like to know! For the most part, the UV doesn't make it to the troposphere, so it doesn't have a direct effect, but it's still an unresolved question as to what indirect effects it may have.
The best study I know of looking at the correlation of solar activity with global temperature shows only a plus or minus 0.1 degree variation from solar max to solar min, though, so it doesn't seem to be a major player in temperature (the reference is Camp and Tung, http://depts.washington.edu/amath/research/articles/Tung/journals/GRL-solar-07.pdf ) The Working-Group 1 report links to more references on the subject; you might look at some of them: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_data_reports.shtm
Do the variance in solar magnetic index and the interaction of the solar and terrestrial magnetic fields have any direct or indirect effects on global climate?
I don't know of any confirmed effects there, other than aurorae.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
That's great, if CO2 were the only substance involved and the rest of the planet was inert. Does an increase in temperature caused by an increase in CO2 levels result in a cloud cover increase that persists and causes an overall temperature lowering effect? Is there a positive feedback effect that would mean a sudden stop of all anthropogenic CO2 emission would not cause a change in the current temperature increase? Will any of the many, many different biological processes that are either accelerated or retarded by an increase in CO2 concentration (in both the air AND the water) have a net positive or negative effect? The climate is complicated.
Sure it is. So obviously the answer is to bring more and more CO2 into the atmosphere, else bad things may happen. Because if things get complicated, we should stick to simple solutions.
Oh, and lets just ignore the obvious rise in temperatures. That must be a fluke, because it can't be as simple as that.
Fandroids hate facts.
That's odd, all proposing a competing theory seem to be swimming in money.
Might want to look just a little bit harder. The proponent theories happen to be the ones that are getting the slush fund money from various environmental groups.
Mpff. You read too much bad fiction from Mickey Chrichton.
Fandroids hate facts.
Citation? When I look at the EPA's GHG inventory for the US, on page 5 I see that Electricity Generation leads with 2.2Pg (Pg = petagram = 10e15 grams). Next is Transportation at 1.7Pg. After that Industrial at .7Pg. All of CH4 (as CO2 equivalent) is .7Pg, all of N2O is .3Pg. Volcanos worldwide are .2Pg.
And, page 9: "Transportation End-Use Sector. Transportation activities (excluding international bunker fuels) accounted for 33 percent of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in 2009. Virtually all of the energy consumed in this end-use sector came from petroleum products. Nearly 65 percent of the emissions resulted from gasoline consumption for personal vehicle use." .65 times 1.7Pg = 1.1Pg, or 20% of our total CO2 (not CO2-equivalent) emissions. In the US, cars are number two, after electricity generation. What are these "lots of other things" that would be better for us to cut, and how much are their yearly emissions?
World emissions are at about 30 Pg, so US automobiles alone account for about 3.7%, ignoring cars in all other countries. World-wide, "road transport" produces 5Pg of CO2 (p. 10), or 1/6 of the total, with no breakdown into personal and not. It is possible that US personal car use alone is not in the top ten of world-wide sources of CO2, but I'd like to see a reference for that or an explanation. World wide, 41% is "electricity and heat". The next big category is "transport" at 23%, then "industry" at 20%, "other" at 10%, and "residential" at 6%. Obviously, there's some category shuffling going on here (transport includes ships and airplanes, too), but if you carved out the world-wide top two (ignoring our contribution to "transport"), our 3.7% for personal autos looms decently large against the remaining 40%. It's bigger than ships, world-wide, it's bigger than airplanes, world-wide.
This might have something to do with why people who worry about global warming don't much like big, wasteful automobiles. They have the secondary problem of making the road a scarier place for people who might like to drive smaller cars or take a motorcycle, scooter, or bicycle. And in theory, yes, we could switch to a GHG-free fuel for our cars and then people could choose them just as huge as SUVs today. But here on Planet Earth, for the next ten years or so, that is not much of an option. An E-vehicle can be more efficient, but right now a whole lot of "E" comes from coal-fired power plants, so it's best to keep them small, and use them where they win biggest (start/stop driving so they can use regenerative braking).
I actually had no idea people denied there was an ice age to begin with.
They are! We know that ice ages existed, because we can estimate climate sensitivity from a giant experiment with adding CO2 to our planet's atmosphere that we undertake now! However, some people deny that this experiment is being done, or its result, therefore, logically, they have to deny the ice ages too.
But it's not, certainly not in the US. US personal auto emissions are 1.1Pg of CO2. Total US fossil fuel CO2 emissions is 2.2Pg. Unless an "order of magnitude" is the third-root of 2 (1.26), that's not several.
If by "people shouting the loudest" you mean the climate researchers then you're saying that they're liars and profiteers who would rather make money than do good science.
Because as we all know laboriously developing climate models is pretty much the most fun someone can have and going down in history as an idiot is a great legacy to leave to your name--all in exchange for what? Maybe tenure in 10 years and a job paying 1/10th what the private sector would pay a PhD with similar intelligence and skills?
Of course! That makes perfect sense!
Some people think they can read minds, and he's figured out that there's a secret conspiracy of international elites out to micromanage his life. Never mind that the whole point of something like a CO2 tax is to give you a price signal, and let you figure out the best way for you to deal with it. I like hot showers. I don't like big cars. I know where I would spend my money.
If you can't see the difference it's because you refuse to.
I can see why you'd like to paint those in disagreement with you as irrational, yet we are not the one making an extraordinary claims about how 98% of scientists in the field simply aren't good enough to do their job. And what evidence to do you bring to this claim? Talking points from climate change deniers and bizarre assertions about causation. I'll go out on a limb say you're not a statistician nor even taken an entry level course on it.
If you want to find out what happens to another planet suffering from global warming, you need look no farther than the closest planet to Earth.
My position on it is "I don't know" and honestly, neither does anyone else. Anything from the lack of rigor, to the rebranding ("global warming" to "climate change" etc to help "sell" it), to the political nature, to the weather stations that were found to be overestimating temperature readings, to the straight up deliberate dishonesty revealed by many of the e-mails that were brought to light.
This is not like an engineer who builds a bridge and it either holds up under load if he's right or collapses if he's wrong. You may or may not understand the physical principles and mathematics of civil engineering, but you can look at the bridge and see whether it did, in fact, collapse. This is not like engineering. I say I don't know because as far as I can see, everyone involved has credibility problems.
The scientists (other than the dishonest ones) are doing their job just fine. I don't share this desire to make this into a personal attack against anyone, scientists included, and consider it a minor tragedy that people always want to view it that way. I am saying this is not a matter of the job they do. It's a matter of relying too heavily on theoretical models with no real ability to perform controlled experiments. It's not a readily falsifiable deal.
Now then, do I think pollution is great and should be ignored? No. There are reasons other than AGW to reduce emissions and other pollution. If humanity is going to be the steward of this planet, we should be good stewards and be mindful of our impact on it. Is that unreasonable to you?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
The problem with your assertions is that from their own emails we know that these scientists have actively worked to pervert the peer review process ...
What you know is a small selection of the stolen emails heavily redacted, put out of context and spun for political purposes. Both the academic and the judicial inquiries into the affair, who examined the entire body of evidence and gave those implicated the opportunity to explain context (as due process demands), while critical of the handling of FOI requests, exonerated Dr Jones and his unit of any serious academic wrongdoing. The snippet habitually cited to show perversion of the peer review process, in which Dr Jones is rather less than polite about a paper he thinks should never be published, was actually published. As it happens the peer review process is bigger than Phil Jones.
Non sequitur. There have been cases of academic fraud in the past and the whole edifice of modern science did not come tumbling down. Had it of been the case that Dr Jones really had perverted the peer review process or committed some other species of academic fraud, the result would merely have been that we have one less expert scientist who warrants our trust.
It's not a question of who "[I] believe ... should contribute to the scientific discussion," but of who is contributing. The published science is THE discussion. If you are not in the discussion, you are not in the discussion.
In any case in these post-BEST days, isn't a bit too late in the day to regurgitate the tired "Climategate" accusations.
you are right I took his 34.2M as the CO2 number incorrectly
The belief that "if you don't have replicates of some subject to use as a control group, you can't know if a theory will make good predictions about this subject" is false.
We only have one universe , with no control group, but scientists have been able to accurately predict things about our universe.
Solomonoff's inductive inference is a mathematical formalization of how to make a good prediction in a unique universe. It is a mathematical Occam's razor: shorter theories give better predictions, provided that they perfectly describe previous observations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inductive_inference&oldid=471899642
I haven't read any. In fact, I can read it straight out of the IPCC reports and see who's getting what funding from where and how, and by what groups just by looking at them. Maybe you should try the same.
Om, nomnomnom...
>But I think you're right that the LIA was a false start of a new ice age
We are in an Ice Age, and have been for millions of years. You probably mean "Glaciation Period", which are things that happen during Ice Ages.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
My understanding of the IPCC position is that water vapour (and other feedbacks) will be doing the heavy lifting of any warming. CO2 by itself is 'only' capable of around 1-2 degrees C warming, for example (methane is capable of more but is in less abundance, and there are other emissions that have different signatures, the net result is around 1-3 degrees C). However these forcings are enough to trigger the natural feedbacks which will take over and drive the temperature up much further. So human emissions are directly responsible for at least some of the warming, which as far as I'm aware is agreed by everyone.
However, you cite human influence, which is different (human emissions could be responsible for only part of the warming, but because they trigger the feedbacks, all of the warming is influenced by humans)
I'd agree that your characterisation of the debate is correct, with the caveat that the sceptics haven't actually predicted anything except 'the scientists are wrong, it's not going to get that warm'. The current flavour of the month is that the coming solar minimum will give us 30 years of cooling, but there's too many competing theories to actually get a consistent prediction of anything from the movement. To be fair, the anti-AGW movement doesn't see its job as providing an alternative explanation, just trying to poke holes in the political AGW movement and keep the science honest.
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
LIndzen withdrew the paper on his own once the errors were pointed out to him.
The catholic church has done it many times. And it will again.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
If you still believe the hyperbole from the "climategate" beat up then you are not a skeptic, you are a useful idiot who will swallow and regurgitate any old propaganda that fits your politics. Google "anthony watts dcma" to find out how Watts thinks critics (of his ideas) should be silenced, hint - it's not via intellectually honest debate.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Realclimate is known to push propaganda over science. Don't trust it. Especially when you can read the actual paper itself, which actually means something.
Known, eh.
Is the RC summary contradicted by the paper?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Really -- A lot of the stuff I read on his site is the links to the emails written by these so called authority discussing how to "hide the decline.".
So, what decline would that be?
Go on, tell us, we're dying to know.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
And as it happens I just looked up the major funding source for Sourcewatch, and lo and behold it's George Soros.
Draw your own conclusions.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Are there perhaps feedback loops we don't know about yet? I'm quite sure there are, but since we're seeing measurements moving at paces not seen previously at any time in history
This is quite a claim. Since we have no data of any real resolution once you go back 200 years you should change this claim. Before that measurement intervals are at best 10 years apart (as in we can't tell what happens during 10 years in history, only "average change over 10 years, assuming x y z, which we know corrupted at least some datapoints"). Once you go anywhere near the last ice age, which would be the interesting area for this, resolution is down to several centuries. So we have no idea if the rate of change is really unprecendented. It's unprecedented in the last 200 years, but that's not exactly a surprise to anyone. Before that it's a game of chance.
There have certainly been more massive co2 releases into the athmosphere than all human production combined in history. And much faster ones too. They did not kill the planet.
I already gave you the CO2/H20 vapor loop. It's real, it's testable, it exists.
It's "real" only for specific cases (it has requirements such as being at very near the end of an interglacial period). It's most definitely not testable (nothing in climate science is testable, since we have no spare climates to fool around with. And please don't start with how simulations are the same as tests, or I will compare the data of the IPCC AR1 simulations with reality and let's see you explain that). However I agree the data seems to indicate this feedback loop does exist (statistical inference is what's used here, not "reality", not experiments, not empiricist science (in fact according to empiricist science you'd be pretty fucking justified in claiming it doesn't exist), it just statistically seems to be what's happening "on average").
Incidentally, what you neglected to mention is that it also releases massive amounts of co2 into the atmosphere, and by now far more than the human production. In fact, it's far past the point where human co2 emissions became insignificant. Let's call this existence of this feedback loop "fact A".
That alone is reason to reduce CO2. The earth is a very malleable planet
Great let's call this "claim B".
Can you elaborate on A -> B. You take this as a given. Needless to say I don't agree. This step is beyond unclear to me. If feedback loops exist the only reason for warming (in the last century and a half) is warming slightly before that (which may - may have been caused by anthropogenic co2 in the beginning of the 19th century aided by a few larger than life volcanic eruptions). Human emissions after that probably did not help matters, but they had but a tiny effect. So can you please explain to me what effect 1% (at best) reduction in CO2 levels in the athmosphere is going to have ? (most co2 additions to the athmosphere in the last century were the result of feedback loops adding more co2, they were not human emissions. And yes, the pace of h2o and co2 release into the athmosphere is accelerating much faster than our production is)
When saying "co2 emissions caused by humans caused global warming" that is only correct if you mean the deforestation that occured in the early 19th century in Europe and a bit in Asia, with perhaps a dash of coal burning, but not much. It is absolutely incorrect to claim it has anything to do with burning oil, or burning coal in the 20th century. Same for 21st century.
So I really, really, really don't understand. Limiting emissions does nothing about global warming (if it's real - but we both seem to agree it is).
Oil and gas started in earnest at the beginning of the 1900s.
Both quite nicely coincide with large increases in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. Do you disagree with these widely accept and studied facts?
When saying "co2 emissions caused by humans caused global warming" that is only correct if you mean the deforestation that occured in the early 19th century in Europe and a bit in Asia, with perhaps a dash of coal burning, but not much.
Seriously...you think deforestation is producing more CO2 that coal or oil? "In 2008, 8.67 gigatonnes of carbon (31.8 gigatonnes of CO2) were released from fossil fuels worldwide" compared with "land use change contributed 1.20 gigatonnes in 2008, compared to 1.64 gigatonnes in 1990." linky with refs
Did the large deforestation during the industrial revolution contribute? Sure, but that's a one time change and releases carbon that was only recently taken out of the atmosphere so it's less harmful. And once it's added the CO2 levels would stay steady and/or go down as other plants start growing. What we've seen instead is an ever increasing CO2 level, something else is continuing to add CO2. That is coal and oil.
If you can't understand that you need to go back to school, chemistry in particular. We burn LOTS of coal and LOTS of oil, a major byproduct of that is CO2. Millions of years worth of CO2 that has not been in the atmosphere for millions of years.
When you add that into the atmosphere in just under 200 years it's going to cause an effect. That effect is warming since it is scientifically proven that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Funny enough, we've seen this exact effect through studies of global temperature and observations of the vast majority of glaciers melting at record paces. Glacier National Park won't have *any* glaciers in just 20 years.
We have added/are adding lots of CO2 to the atmosphere which is causing warming. Reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will make it less able to keep heat in and thus will reduce temperatures.
How's that for A -> B? If you don't believe CO2 is contributing to global warming, well you are in the very small majority.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
Can you provide reference to these emails which brought to light the "deliberate dishonesty"? I hope for your integrity's sake, you aren't referring to the so-called Climategate emails. If you are, you have proven your bias and are simply unqualified to make a comment on the issue that can be taken seriously. Every single one of the political witch hunts on this topics flamed out in spectacularly wasteful fashion. This is what happens when a group of people want others to believe something other than the facts.
It's a matter of relying too heavily on theoretical models
Gravity is a theory as well as Heliocentrism. By relying on those models, we were able to land people on the Moon. But yeah, scientific models can't be practically used right?
with no real ability to perform controlled experiments. It's not a readily falsifiable deal.
Not according to scientists who work in the field. However, don't let that stand in the way of your sophist reasoning. I'm granting you an honorary diploma in Armchair Climate Science. Please print and display proudly at your workplace.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
I think it is the other way around, if you don't believe there is something fishy going on after reading even a small portion of the two sets of released emails then you are not willing to face facts.
The decline that is trying to be hidden, is the one from the tree ring proxy data if you continue to use it post about 1950. So they stop using the tree ring proxy data and instead splice on actual temperature readings. In their sample set the tree ring proxy data would go down, which obviously doesn't match the temperature record. This implies that maybe tree ring data is not a good proxy for temperature.
There are other statistical problems with the data they use, but that is one of the most glaring. I know they have reasons why they think the tree ring data declined at that point. But their emails show that they didn't want to display it because they thought the uninformed would jump on it, and reject their entire point because of this discrepancy. To me that unwillingness to defend the issues in their data and instead attempt to just hide it illustrates basic dishonesty.
Seeing as how the "other" side is referred to as "AGW proponents" or "global warming proponents", I believe changing the word "proponents" to "opponents" would accomplish an accurate description. It's especially relevant since the AGW crowd likes to lump "anyone who disagrees with them" into the "denier" category at the onset of any GW argument, without even trying to gauge their actual position first. For instance, the people who believe warming is occuring but the threats are exaggerated is a sizable crowd (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/mar/11/americans-climate-change-threat), yet if any of them speak up, they're frequently labeled "deniers".
That's a fallacy. We've been looking into alternative energy sources, we've never stopped. That's why we've invented solar and geothermal and wind, etc, etc. What we're talking about now is the amount of money to spend addressing what many deem an issue of "near-term cataclysmic iireversible magnitude". Hence you see the problem. If the issue is so dire and so short-term that ignoring it will end the world, and we're SURE of that, it's worth spending trillions upon trillions addressing it. If on the other hand there's a bunch of people claiming the sky is falling and the true scope of the problem is complete opinion or weak science, it makes more sense to continue our current existing pace of green energy research and implementation.
Feedbacks are a consequence of the forcing. Both should be counted. Also, keep in mind that 2C is the difference between a glacial and interglacial period - not insignificant. Human influence is both positive (greenhouse gasses) and negative (aerosols). Damn I hope you read through this post - it took way too long to compile :)
Granted, they are not a coherent movement so I can't say that all skeptics have predicted global cooling. The leaders of the movement who are willing to predict anything at all have predicted or promoted global cooling. They are right of course. If CO2 is not a major driver then global cooling has indeed been imminent for the last couple decades. Here is the solar output since 1985: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:138/from:1985
Here are examples from leaders of the skeptic movement predicting or promoting global cooling:
Joseph D'Aleo: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_D'Aleo
John McLean: http://www.skepticalscience.com/mclean-exaggerating-natural-cycles.html
Christopher Monckton: http://icecap.us/images/uploads/monckton-global_warming_has_stopped.pdf
Anthony Watts: https://www.google.com/search?q=%22global+cooling%22+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwattsupwiththat.com
Piers Corbyn: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/global-warming-skeptic-predicts-brutal-winter-warns-you-aint-seen-nothing-yet/
James Dellingpole: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100055500/global-cooling-and-the-new-world-order/
Don Easterbrook: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/12/29/don-easterbrooks-agu-paper-on-potential-global-cooling/
Henrik Svensmark http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/10/svensmark-global-warming-stopped-and-a-cooling-is-beginning-enjoy-global-warming-while-it-lasts/
David Rose: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2093264/Forget-global-warming--Cycle-25-need-worry-NASA-scientists-right-Thames-freezing-again.html
Alan Caruba, "An Icy End for Mankind?" Science and Environmental Policy Project, November 26, 2005; and Robert W. Felix, "Not by Fire, But by Ice: The Next Ice Age Now," Bellevue, WA: Sugarhouse Publishing.
Lawrence Solomon: http://network.nationalpost.com/NP/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2010/05/03/lawrence-solomon-arctic-ice-sets-records-in-april-could-auger-global-cooling.aspx
The only notable people missing are McIntyre, McKitrick, Spencer, and Lindzen. None of these people are willing or able to make predictions.
My prediction? We've just had the hottest La Nina on record - hotter even than all but one of the El Nino's of the previous century. La Nina's are cooler part of the ENSO. ENSO neutral 2010 was tied for hottest year on record. Even a small El Nino (warm part of ENSO) will push us into the hottest year on record. So the hottest year on record will come with the next El Nino. Probably within 2 years?
And as it happens I just looked up the major funding source for Sourcewatch, and lo and behold it's George Soros.
A Jewish banker. Now it's all clear.
Draw your own conclusions.
Well, it certainly confirms that you're an idiot.
A couple there that I haven't read, thanks for the references :) I've avoided the creationist nutters before, as they're clearly just anti-science rather than trying to get at the truth.
Yeah, mostly they seem to be saying the warming has stopped or paused, not that we're going to freeze. Watts generally reports on other's predictions rather than making his own.
But if you take some of the nuts predictions from the political AGW movement they're no saner than some of the nuts predictions in the sceptic movement. And to be honest, some of the predictions in the IPCC publications are verging on nuts, but then a lot of that body is increasingly political rather than scientific.
And I thought solar was declining? There's all sorts of excitement on the sceptic sites about the solar minimum we're heading into which will finally prove that solar forcings > emissions forcings. Which will be interesting to see.
My prediction? The political disaster campaign will fail over the next five years. The scientists will increasingly distance themselves from the political green campaigners, there'll be a modest backlash against green politics and towards libertarian politics, until the next crunch hits and the demand for government welfare funds increases again. The climate will continue to get warmer and colder, probably warmer than it has been at any time since the MWP, maybe even significantly warmer than that, but certainly never warm enough to threaten human civilisation.
The seas will continue to rise at a very modest rate, threatening a few low-lying pacific islands. Some parts of Siberia will warm enough to enable prairie farming, which will contribute to the global food supply. The increase in CO2 and water vapour will reduce desertification and in some place push back the deserts marginally (we may even get the North African coast back as it was in Roman times).
But then, I'm an optimist ;)
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
The problem of course is that those increases coincide with much larger increases in co2 ... They accelerated the situation, but the situation will "deteriorate" almost as fast without them.
Have you read the IPCC reports ? They pretty directly state this.
The decline that is trying to be hidden, is the one from the tree ring proxy data if you continue to use it post about 1950. So they stop using the tree ring proxy data and instead splice on actual temperature readings. In their sample set the tree ring proxy data would go down, which obviously doesn't match the temperature record. This implies that maybe tree ring data is not a good proxy for temperature.
Oh, you mean the one they "hid" by writing a paper about it.
Ok, got you.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
And I thought solar was declining? There's all sorts of excitement on the sceptic sites about the solar minimum we're heading into which will finally prove that solar forcings > emissions forcings. Which will be interesting to see.
Yes and no. It's an 11.5 year cycle. Each cycle has been lower than the previous for the last few decades, and this coming cycle looks to be lower still, but we are headed into another maximum. This graph illustrates: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:12/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:138/plot/gistemp/mean:12/scale:100/offset:70
I added global mean temp in blue to illustrate the increasing disparity since the 80's. Skeptics don't need to wait for another impotent cycle to determine whether solar activity is the driving factor.
But if you take some of the nuts predictions from the political AGW movement they're no saner than some of the nuts predictions in the sceptic movement. And to be honest, some of the predictions in the IPCC publications are verging on nuts, but then a lot of that body is increasingly political rather than scientific.
The skeptic predictions are not at all crazy assuming they genuinely don't believe that CO2 is a major driver of climate - and I believe that many of them are genuine. Global cooling is really the only sane position to take once you remove CO2. There are certainly nutters in Greenpeace/etc, but don't try to determine the scientific consensus by splitting the difference between Greenpeace and the Heartland institute. The IPCC really is a very good representation of the consensus as of 2007. I'm looking forward to the next report in 2013. One scientist with very moderate views that you may appreciate is John Neilson-Gammon. He has published with Watts and Pielk. His web page can be found here: http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/
Did you?
Read the emails?
Or just carefuly chosen out of context excerpts?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
You are right that consensus has nothing to do with determining what is true. I never said it did. The definition of consensus is a general agreement among such a large majority of participants on a particular point. In politics it can be a useful indicator of what the scientists in a particular field think they know at this particular moment. That doesn't necessarily mean they are right but they probably will be more often than not.
FTFY.
That the phrase "consensus of scientific opinion" invariably introduces a political assertion and never a scientific truth is a critically important distinction to keep in mind. If you fail to understand that distinction, then your gullibility plays into the hands of anyone who is bringing a hidden agenda into the discussion. Especially so when dealing with AGW denialists who do not give a fig about the facts but only care that the political argument goes in the direction that is best for their future profits, and see smokescreens involving the confusion of scientific proofs with "consensus of scientists" as a useful debating tool. Trying to fight that kind of hidden agenda with factual arguments is going into the fray with one hand tied behind your back. Don't do that.
Will
Yes and no. It's an 11.5 year cycle. Each cycle has been lower than the previous for the last few decades, and this coming cycle looks to be lower still, but we are headed into another maximum. This graph illustrates: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:12/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:138/plot/gistemp/mean:12/scale:100/offset:70
I added global mean temp in blue to illustrate the increasing disparity since the 80's. Skeptics don't need to wait for another impotent cycle to determine whether solar activity is the driving factor.
I hate those graphs... I'm colourblind and showing me three lines of almost-identical colour and then saying 'look, they don't match' is pretty irritating ;) ;)
However, with only two lines I can see the point hehe. I played around with the graphing options there and yeah, there's no correlation between sunspot activity and global temperature I can see...which is interesting but a little irrelevant as obviously solar activity is a forcing, is agreed on by everyone to be a forcing (again, the extent is debated by the various camps) and as you yourself pointed out above, is expected to play a role in setting global temperatures. So obviously just using the raw sunspot activity to match against global temps doesn't mean much. I persist in being interested to see what happens during the low cycle
Also, it is a chaotic system. You can't expect it to produce nice clean correlation graphs showing how the variance in one parameter influences the result in another graph. Chaotic systems don't work like that. Unfortunately political systems do, so there's a lot of effort and political capital that's gone into producing graphs that show increasing CO2 to correlate cleanly with increasing global temperature.
Business/App ideas are like arseholes: everyone's got one, they're mostly shit, but very rarely they contain a diamond
I played around with the graphing options there and yeah, there's no correlation between sunspot activity and global temperature I can see...
If you plot the 138 month mean sunspot graph alongside the 12 month mean temperature graph you get pretty good correlation up until the 70's: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:138/plot/gistemp/mean:120/scale:100/offset:70
Also, it is a chaotic system. You can't expect it to produce nice clean correlation graphs showing how the variance in one parameter influences the result in another graph.
Granted, but if you apply appropriate weights to solar, CO2, volcano, and ENSO, you can come up with a graph that is a pretty good approximation to the measured temperatures. The year to year variation is largely accounted for by ENSO. Volcanic eruptions explain most discrepancies between ENSO and the year to year hills and valleys.
The overall trend correlates pretty will with this ;) : http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/mean:12/plot/gistemp/mean:12/scale:100/offset:320
I persist in being interested to see what happens during the low cycle ;)
It will be interesting. Out of curiosity, assuming that this solar cycle is smaller still than the previous one, what effect do you suppose this will have on temperatures? Should we see the upward trend reverse?
Lindzen is an interesting fellow. Brilliant man, but a habitual contrarian. He actually does not deny the existence of AGW, but instead thinks that the climate sensitivity to CO2 is less than usually reckoned. He also thinks that smoking does not cause lung cancer.
He is the only credible anti-AGW person that isn't a quack and/or funded by oil companies.
If you don't understand any of my sayings, come to me in private and I shall take you in my German mouth.
The main problem is that none of the models can account for the extreme level of warming that is occuring.
At least around the north pole.
I'm not saying that this even means that the models are correct, however, it means that something definitely needs to be done or we will be fucked by razorsharp dicks.
They come up with the new evidence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lema%C3%AEtre
Don't confuse priests with fundamentalists.