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More Hot Weather For Southern California, Says UCLA Study
The L.A. Times reports on a study by UCLA climate researchers who conclude, based on supercomputer analysis of a model "2,500 times more precise than previous climate models for the region" that the area around L.A. will experience more (and more extreme) hot spells in decades to come. From the article: "The study, released Thursday, is the first to model the Southland's complex geography of meandering coastlines, mountain ranges and dense urban centers in high enough resolution to predict temperatures down to the level of micro climate zones, each measuring 2 1/4 square miles. The projections are for 2041 to 2060. Not only will the number of hot days increase, but the study found that the hottest of those days will break records, said Alex Hall, lead researcher on the study by UCLA's Institute of the Environment and Sustainability."
Precision is not the answer. Lorenz pointed that out rather a long time ago. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Norton_Lorenz
Move away while you still can!
Most of the people reading this sentence will be dead by 2041. So that's kinda cool.
"2,500 times more precise than previous climate models for the region"
At least they make the distinction between precision and accuracy. But 2500 * .00001 is still .025. Yeah.
Hurr! You're FUNNY!!
This global warming stuff is baloney! It was COLD during winter!!
Actually I was going to say: '30 years is plenty of time to soak up more grant money before being proven wrong' :)
... does not mean 2,500 as accurate.
Predicting it will be 72.2334 degrees doesn't help much if it's actually 101.
So, past climate simulations were so awful, yet people tried to use them? Maybe we should wait for even ones which are 10,000 times better.
Just a slight shift in ocean currents would make that entire region a barren desert anyway, from coast to Nevada.
And a prediction of temperatures thirty years from now is either right or wrong.
"2,500 times more precise"
Which, of course, does not mean "2,500 times more accurate."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Enough of these ignorant blurbs.
I dont care if this shit is accurate or not, I am going to attempt to do what is right, not what is cheaper.
History has proven that cheaper is not better for us, for the environment, or for our future.
If it were, we wouldnt worry about lakes catching on fire, cancer eating our bodies, and carbons heating up the earth (this is true BTW, look at historical evidence, and not just 50 years ago, more like 5 million years).
So shut the fuck up, make your decision, and die in your environment, or live in it.
This is what air conditioners are for.
Do not mod this down. This is exactly the kind of thing that needs to be said, and loudly.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I have lived in SoCal all my life and there was a period in the 70's when pollution was rampant to the point you didn't trust any air you couldn't see, and even warm says resulted in eye and lung pain from acids in the air. It also served as a microclimate greenhouse effect.
We now have more than double the cars, more than 4x the degree of traffic jams, a lot less pollution that is feelable or seeable. But the greenhouse effect is still about the same. Greenhouse gases in order of magnitude are:
Water (dihydrogen monoxide)
Methane
Carbon Dioxide
As we deplete our groundwater in SoCal I expect the water level to slightly decrease, but moderated by the coastal breeze and morning low clouds off the ocean. Reverse air flow we call Santa Ana winds coming off the desert more often than usual would have a far stronger impact on that as the desert we live in has lower humidity when it is dominant. LA is surrounded by desert and ocean. The mountains act as a wind wall to channel the flows in their natural directions but contain it in the "valleys".
The key word I picked up in the original article is "model". The model might be 2500x as good as it was before, but it was crap before and they might just be talking about resolution not results! Probably so. Bragging about 2.5 mi square resolution! That's 6.25 sqmi each or 6 sections of land to the real estate folks.
On an actual experience basis the average temperature is down. The peak temperatures are up and the peak wind speeds are up. The rainfall is down.
You want to have a real impact on global warming in a good way? Replentish groundwater sourced from flood areas. One big water pipeline going 24/7 would do it. Run it from the Great Lakes Area to the area west of the Sierras. Done.
JJ
Then you can tell me precisely what the temperature will be in Burbank tomorrow down to 1/2500 of a degree?
I think you can't.
Wow. Southern California gets hot weather, eh?
Gosh, who'd have thought it?
I don't remember ever seeing a plus and minus value on a climate prediction either. I guess the value would be so large they would be laughed at.
So why did they predict 2041-2060? Something wrong with the next 20 years? Or is that a little to close to test their predictions?
As far as more precise, it is like those ING radio commercials..." THREE times the national average interest on your savings" Three time zero is still zero. [or 3 times 0.00125 is still close enough to 0 for most of us.]
We'll just need to switch everyone over to the night shift. Ya, that's the ticket.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem
And a lot of folks won't give a rat's ass anyway, if an overheated LA burned down, fell over, and sank into the swamp.
Call it Urban Improvement.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Isn't anyone else sick of these climate prognosticators? There can be no confidence to this resolution of predictions made 30 years out, or even 30 minutes out. Anyone who's ever used a differential equations knows that the more iterations of a simulation, the more errors stack up. Furthermore, if you can't even simulate past weather with your models then what the hell good are the models? That should invalidate any work done with climate models, at least until they become more accurate. It would be like using a ruler to measure something, but you knew that all the marks on the ruler were wrong, but you measured it anyway. Until there's a single climate simulator that can measure past weather I see fraud in all these pseudoscience prognostications.
Why do they get to have all the fun? I was looking forward to seeing global warming hit Death Valley hard, and setting a new high, and breaking it's own record for hottest recorded temperature, ever.
Instead, the deserts have been having pretty mild summers for the past few years, as well as unusually large amounts of snow. And instead, a spot like L.A., which is 72F degrees year-round and only gets out of that long-sleve weather temps for a couple weeks, is going to get all the warming instead? Wha??
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Yes this makes sense now.
-- A computer without Windoze is like a choclate cake without mustard
I always trust my old Indian weather stone that hangs in my garden.
If it swings around, it's windy.
If it casts a shadow, it's sunny.
If it's wet, it rains.
It was never wrong 'til this day.
So...the weathermen can't do a good job predicting what the temperature will be tomorrow, but we're supposed to believe that somehow we can for 30+ years in the future? ROFL.
Here's a prediction of human reactions to Lovelock’s interview:
1) Attack his age. "Oh, he's an old doddering fool! He's lost his mind!"
2) Call him irrelevant because he's not publishing. "How can he know anything about climate science? He hasn't published a paper for so long!"
3) Attack the media source. "This paper is in the pocket of big oil!"
4) Attack using a straw man. "Oh, but the ice is thinning in Greenland! This proves everything I say and proves you wrong!"
What you won't hear, and what makes this more religion than science as Lovelock says, is an argument against Lovelock's actual critiques of the state of climate science. It's because his points are too logical and irrefutable, so rather than try and engage in that uphill battle they will change the question posed and make up their own questions to answer. Its something along the lines of cognitive dissonance but worse.
Why not predict something verifiable* like say 2020? Or, given this astounding accuracy, 2014?
* verifiable during the career of the guy releasing this study. As it is now the results seem to be designed not to put the author's reputation on the line.
I hope I am dead way before those years! :P
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
That's because you don't go read the original papers which always contain information about the uncertainty. Instead you read journalist's accounts of the papers which usually leave the uncertainty out to avoid confusing readers. Mostly the journalist probably doesn't understand it well enough themselves to convey it accurately to their readers anyway.
The published study can be found here and it does contain uncertainty information. Here is a downloadable PDF of the summary of findings.
Lovelock was always out on the far extremes and the serious, thoughtful scientists were never in his camp. Not Hansen, not Schneider, not Santer, not Alley nor even Jones and Mann.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Man both can and has altered the Earth's climate. The only reason we are not back in an ice age now is due to the effects of agriculture over the past 8000 years or so. While that had apparently had a positive influence on Earth's habitability, it does not appear that is the case with the current sets of changes. And the Earth's human population was much lower at the time of those past changes, and there was lots of fertile, lowly-populated areas for humans to move to in response to climate change, particularly pre-agriculture when we had a lot less investment in infrastructure. That's not so easy now with a population in excess of 6 billion and all of the good land already taken.
I laughed my ass off... Sure, the uncertainty is in the pdf you referenced...
Did you notice, the uncertainty is ON THE ORDER OF THE PREDICTION!!!! In other words the prediction is meaningless!!
Thank you for providing documented evidence why the articles NEVER include the uncertainty... It is way too embarrassing to say the temperature will rise 4 degrees with an uncertainty Plus and Minus 4 degrees!!!
"Breaking records" sounds horrible and scary but is utterly bogus.
We have, what, a couple hundred years of records? That means each day of the year has at most a couple hundred recorded samples. Less if the records are incomplete or earlier measurement methods were not accurate enough to qualify. Call it 180 to make the math easy.
Assume the climate is completely unchanging (rather than systematically drifting) and the measurements are randomly distributed (a multi-modal distribution around the various weather patterns typical for the date). Then this year's new sample is exactly as likely to be the new record (in a given direction) as any of the others. 1 in 181.
With 365 days in a year the expectation, with no climate change at all, is just over two "record high" days every year. Law of small numbers says some years have a bunch more than that and others less or none.
So the newsies get to run a couple "WE'RE ALL GOING TO FRY" news stories a year. Much more exciting filler than "I'ts unusually hot today" to get the viewers' adrenalin up to make the commercials more effective.
Ditto with record lows - which they can ignore (or treat properly as "it's unusually cold today") while the template is "global warming" rather than "next ice age".
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I am not going to quibble over whether their predictions are right or not, all I have to say is, way to take the safe road ... a generation out meaning no one will remember the prediction.
If you cannot predict accurate within five years why should I believe you can project out thirty to forty or believe that accuracy is better?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
I can see how you could say something was 2,500 x bigger, lighter or some other measurable aspect but how can a model be 2,500 more accurate? How exactly that defined? Almost as bad as something I saw the other day that claimed something or other was 10x more digital. WTF?
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
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There is not a confirmed single cause for the Little Ice Age which started before and finished well after the Sporer and Maunder Minima. Volcanos are likely factors as well as reduced insolation.
If there ZERO GHGs in the atmosphere, the Earth would be too cold for life as we know it ( well, too cold for us ), even if our orbit were perfectly regular and if insolation was constant at the max irradiation we've experienced in the last few millennia.
If we are able to cause a significant change to the concentration of GHGs, partcularly long-lived ones, we are potentially capable of affecting global climate.
Who is liable if we RAISE the temp by several degrees?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
You know, you're proving my point. I don't believe the question was "Is Lovelock an extremist, and/or does he agree with other climate scientists?" I only wish I could go back and add #5 to my list. "attack him for not agreeing with other scientists and call him extreme". It would be really cool if you actually addressed his valid critiques instead of "making up your own questions".
Here's an easy one, and try to answer this question without making up a new question in its place: If we can't predict past weather with any confidence using our climate models, how can we have any confidence in their predictions of future weather?
From the summary.
Uncertainty in future warming is represented by range projections. For example, the uncertainty range for the warming averaged over the region’s land areas is from 1.7 to 7.5F. This is a 95% uncertainty range, so that there is a 19 out of 20 chance that the correct value lies in this range. The uncertainty is due to variation in the global models and the complex seasonal and topographical features of the L.A. regional climate. Even the lower bound is positive though, indicating extremely high confidence in the likelihood of warming by mid-century.
Sounds reasonable to me.
It's really sad that these climate theorists consider computer models the equivalent of science. Hypothesis testing and peer replication of results is science, running 25 scenarios through a supercomputer is conjecture and speculation. How many trillions of variables affect the earth's atmosphere? We don't know how much heat is reflected from clouds. We don't know how sunspots and flares affect out atmosphere. We don't know how much carbon dioxide is trapped by the ocean. We don't even know what the average temperature was for any years before 1880. To pretend that we KNOW at a 95% certainty that man is causing global warming is the height of hubris and deception.
Stay skeptical, my friends.
http://www.s8int.com/crichton.html
I'm assuming this is a troll, but since it has triggered responses: Global warming = very long term increase in average temperatures worldwide.
Weather = whether it's raining, snowing, none of these, the temperature, etc. outside your house right now.
And our local meteorologists were predicting a colder than usual winter last November; and it was the 3rd warmest on record. But sure, I'll trust these new awesome predictions that go decades into the future.
Phhhttttt!
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Hansen and Mann are serious and thoughtful? Just making sure I understand your calibration on the subject.
weather != climate.
Ok, that's an easy answer: yes, predicting the weather is still hard, although modern predictions are actually very good most of the time, and certainly not as bad as common `wisdom' thinks they are.
However, climate models are about climate, not weather. They predict average weather, and that is easier than predicting the weather on a particular day. In a very similar way you cannot reliably predict the next roll of a dice, but you can very reliably predict the tallies of the next hundred rolls.
When predicting the next rolls of the dice you can even predict the expected error in the prediction: the standard deviation. The climate model of this article is apparently so good that they can also predict the expected deviation, which allows them to predict that there will be these hot spells, even though they are not able to predict the exact days these hot spells will happen.
This one's really easy.Simple answer: Wrong predicate.
We don't have confidence in long term weather predictions but we do have confidence in long term climate predictions. This is because the former is chaotic while the latter isn't. Remember that the first quantitative predictions by Hansen in 1982 we quite on the money (if a little on the conservative side.)
thegodmovie.com - watch it
If all that climate scientists did was to run computer simulations, you might have a point. However, there is much more than that. You can take your simulation, run it backwards, see if it predicts previous climates. You (or others) can go dig up fossils, rocks and other assorted data bits and come up with climate models from earlier in the earth's life time.
"All models are wrong. Some models are useful." (George Box)
Modeling is part of climate science, but not all of it by any means.
Your argument can be used to denigrate pretty much anything but pure mathematics as not being 'science'. There are people who believe that. Most of the time, the rest of humanity just lets them fool around with their pencils.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Climate models are one way of testing climate related hypotheses by synthesizing what we currently think we know about climate into a coherent whole. In general they do better at projecting the future than simpler methods. There may be "trillions" of variables affecting climate but once you get past the 5 or 10 biggest factors the rest are just vernier adjustments. As for the rest of your post, heat (and visible light) reflected from clouds is measurable but it's difficult to do on a global scale, we know something about how solar activity affects the planet and are learning more all the time and the change in pH of the ocean is a direct measurement of carbon dioxide trapped by the ocean. To me it is an example of hubris that you think you know more than actual climate scientists.
To pretend that we KNOW at a 95% certainty that man is causing global warming is the height of hubris and deception.
At least in what was quoted they didn't say there was a 95% certainty that man is causing global warming.
Computer models are nowadays also used to design aircraft, and they are so good that new aircraft routinely perform nearly perfectly on first flight. Modern highly complex ICs in bleeding-edge processes are supposed to work at first tape-out, all design and verification is done by computer. As long as you know the limitations of your model, computer modeling is a very valuable tool.
And look here, the authors of this article do know the limitations of their model:
Doesn't sound like hubris to me.
The problem is that Lovelock has absolutely no precise critiques that would allow you to do much deconstructing. His one specific critique, that it hasn't warmed in the last decade, makes the classic mistake of cherry-picking the starting point of his timeline to coincide with the absolute record high. As a result, his argument holds little water from a purely scientific perspective.
The other two points that the paper makes, and which put the interview squarely in the propaganda/flamebait category, is that Lovelock is somehow the godfather of Global Warming (at best, that would be Hansen) and that he has ever been anything close to an authority on Global Warming. His Gaia hypothesis was controversial (to put it kindly), and the one time he did venture into climate science on earth, he got the impact of CFCs in the atmosphere wrong.
So he has not published anything that can be deconstructed, he is not an accepted authority so that we could take him at his word, and somehow we are supposed to just nod when he gives an interview? Where is this sort of blind acceptance when someone like Hansen or Mann gives an interview?
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
It's all been done, starting 30 years ago, and the results are in. It happened exactly as you wrote, except for
8. Begin a massive disinformation campaign to avoid having to act on the results.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
I don't have confidence in long term climate predictions. Hansen's made a lot of predictions.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Did you read Hansen's 1982? If not I suggest you do, and the comparisons with reality this year on its 30-year anniversary.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
If the weather cannot be accurately predicted 100% of the time for three days in advance, why would anyone believe they can predict it based on some trending for the next 50 years? Or maybe this is perhaps generated by some political agenda to get a government grant..? Follow the money. This happens far more than people might suspect.
Next up from the university: predicting earthquakes and stock market indexes for the years 2041-2060!
It's really sad that these climate theorists consider computer models the equivalent of science.
What's sad is that you think that "climate theorists consider computer models the equivalent of science" is in any way an accurate description of how climatology works. But your post illustrates perfectly why it's impossible to have a rational debate on climate change: one side is talking about science, while the other side is talking about their idea of what the first side is talking about, and that idea has no connection with reality.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
Yes, I have, and his 1988, and various other pronouncements of doom from that man over the years.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
title says weather
once you get past the 5 or 10 biggest factors the rest are just vernier adjustments...we know something about how solar activity affects the planet and are learning more all the time
The claim that we can possibly reduce global climate models to 10 major factors and produce precision results is ludicrous. You admit yourself that we only know 'something' about cloud reflection but don't have concrete data in any form. If they climatologists have 95% confidence in their predictions, why don't they publish predictions for the next 10 years? It's because they would lose all their research grants before they retire. Science with no accountability and cannot be reproduced should not be used as a basis for making public policy decisions.
Stay skeptical, my friends.
Then you probably noticed that when compared to reality, he was generally on the conservative side.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
CAD design of a piece of machinery several meters wide is orders of magnitude more precise than climate models attempting to predict planet wide behavior. The claim here is 95% confidence based on 25 models whose accuracy is yet unproven. When they allow journalists to present their predictions as science, it is hubris.
Stay skeptical, my friends.
My point was not to answer your question but to point out that this man should never have been taken seriously.
Now, for your question about climate models, do you mean predict "past WEATHER" or "past CLIMATE". Please clarify.
In any case, it's a difficult subject and I'm not an expert. I'll start you off with one link and you can befriend Google for the rest - but I suspect you already know where to look.
http://blogs.edf.org/climate411/2007/07/18/models_how_good/
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I recall there were predictions for global cooling and a mini ice age too. Those didn't pan out so well, did they? When predictions fall all over the map, you can't just cherry pick the one that randomly turns out to be right to prove your point.
Stay skeptical, my friends.
No, only in the 1982 paper, as far as I know.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Ah, the old denier tactic of mixing up serious science with bogus science reporting in the mass media.
There is a reason why there is a "mainstream" in science. It's fact based, it's boring, and it's usually correct.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
You do understand the difference between climate and weather, right? Oh, wait, no, I guess you don't.
Title says "More Hot Weather For Southern California, Says UCLA Study". More hot weather events would be an expected result of global warming.
I recall there were predictions for global cooling and a mini ice age too.
I know this might be hard for you to understand, but USA Today and Newsweek are not peer-reviewed scientific journals. Now, would you mind showing where a serious scientific journal predicted global cooling?
Herein lies the problem. There is a need to update your definition of science. Science is hypothesis formulation, testing, publication of results, and peer duplication of said conclusions. What UCLA essentially produced is a survey 25 climate models. The models used in this exercise have not been proven accurate or inaccurate. If the study had actually the ran the simulations backwards 40 years and forward 40 years and produced 95% confidence for each scenario, then I'll STFU. Until then, stop attempting to define this as a battle between scientist and ignorant common folk.
Stay skeptical, my friends.
FTA sidebar:
In Austin, a year with only 4.6 days exceeding 95 degrees would be a miracle indeed!
In conclusion, downtown L.A., here I come!
In the course of every project, it will become necessary to shoot the scientists and begin production.
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Come on, predicting aircraft behavior is far more than just 'CAD design of a piece of machinery'. It involves predictions of aerodynamic behavior, which also requires far-from-trivial computer models, and it involves predicting 'flyability', which requires careful modeling of human-machine interactions.
Nobody is claiming that whole-world climate models are already as robust or as accurate as these aircraft models, but they are getting more and more sophisticated, and they are certainly far beyond the stage where these predictions can be dismissed as random, meaningless numbers.
But exactly what are you grumbling about? You think the error margins in their results are too large to draw any conclusions? From the quoted fragment of their conclusion it doesn't sound like that. You think they are too optimistic in their error margins? Can you give a specific reason for that? Yes, not all mechanisms that influence the climate are fully understood, but exactly why do you think the authors have underestimated the influence of these mechanisms? Or perhaps you simply think that the journalists are misreporting the results of this scientific paper?
Please quote where there's hate or vitriol in my response, or anything but observed facts.
Hansen predicted AGW quantitatively in his seminal 1982 study and the results confirmed his predictions. Doing that again just kicks the can down the road, to a point where it will progressively more difficult to do anything.
Not that I think anything will be done.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
The problem is you have to distinguish between
1)"apparently inert clean" but "cannot be transformed" and so actually "permanently deadly toxic" eg. lead, arsenic, uranium
then you can store or find alternative uses for these things.
storing is not always the practical option, until there starts to be 100s of tonnes of substance.
and
2)"immediately toxic compound" but can be "incinerated" or reacted to eventually be useful or safe. many extremely toxic
compounds fall into this category but they are not long term problems because they can be transformed.
I suggest you start by looking at the periodic table. seriously !!! this is not condescension. i am trying to make you think about which elements have what abundance, and necessity in our economy, and which are intrinsically toxic to humans.
eg. petrol must be distilled and cracked to increase the octane rating, without this the price would be even higher. look into the most efficient process, and it doesnt use sulphuric acid, that is now obsolete technology. of course each option will result in a different type of pollution
eg 2. refrigerants and propellants, Freon family chemicals are no longer possible to use in the same ways because we recognise the damage to the environment. Freons and
check out the wiki article on Ozone Depletion Potential, what does this mean for the gasses which much therefore be used, after we recognise that alternatives are unacceptable.
Now, do we leave it up to the BLIND IGNORANT MONEY HUNGRY MASSES to make these correct long term decisions as some kind of emergent property of a self-assembling-dynamic-system. as you suggest !
FUCK NO
Yes, they do admit that the models are imprecise in the paper, but by allowing the reporter to present it as fact is dishonest and dangerous. There are multi-billion dollar public policy decisions decisions being made in California right now based on their findings. If they cannot guarantee a basic level of accuracy, they should not seek to be on the front page of the LA Times.
Stay skeptical, my friends.
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That question just shows how badly you misunderstand what climate models do. What they mostly do is project what the 30 year running mean temperature average of the globe will be given the various input scenarios they use. Try reading the climate model FAQs to increase your understanding:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-models/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/faq-on-climate-models-part-ii/
But sometimes it isn't.
It's gotten to the point where upstream governments have outlawed collecting, in rainbarrels, water that falls on your roof
It didn't "get to the point." Rather, there never even was a point where things worked differently.
That is correct, but there is exactly zero evidence that current climate theory is wrong. There are minor details that scientists quibble about but the overall greenhouse theory is rock solid because it's basic physics.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Sorry but if you're still on the denier bandwagon you're either stupid, malicious or uninformed. I assumed the latter.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Any time you're dealing with a complicated system there will be theories all over the map. The consensus among the scientific community has always been for warming though, less than 10% of published papers at the time supported the cooling theory, and when the short-term cooling cycle that inspired it ended, so did what little support there was for the theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
First off they're not predicting global climate changes, the simulation is much too local for that - what they're predicting is the local *effects* of the global predictions. The general trend on a global level has already been meeting or exceeding the worst-case predictions for several decades, all we're doing these days is dialing in the models to account for more factors to improve accuracy. Whether you think humans are responsible or not the fact is that it is happening, and we need to be ready to deal with it.
The intent with this simulation is not to inspire "green initiatives" - nothing California can do on it's own will make much difference on that front, and frankly short of an immediate global ban on fossil fuels there's not much anyone can do anymore to effect the climate thirty years out - there's just too much lag in the system.
Rather what they're trying to figure out what if anything will need to be done to deal with what's coming, and what they're finding is that California is going to be in a world of hurt as snow-pack melts off, removing the buffering effect so that what precipitation they do get will tend to come in floods. They're trying to inspire civil-engineering projects (dams, better bridges, better water management, etc) that need to get started soon if they're going to be in place in time to mitigate major problems. Feasibility studies, political wrangling, design, and construction can easily mean it takes decades to get a major project from anticipated need to completion, so the conversation needs to be started now. It's not even that expensive to prepare - right now it's just conversation and brainstorming solutions, the real spending doesn't have to happen until the simulations start to prove true, even the design phase doesn't cost much. But if everything hasn't already been talked out once it becomes clear that action is needed then there will be no chance of getting the necessary infrastructure built in time.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Here's my question: if this stuff is such an accurate predictor, why isn't anyone gambling on it in Vegas? They bet on everything there. It shouldn't be too hard to find some global warming believers who like to gamble willing to put up some money against the deniers.
There's nothing like road pavement and concrete to soak up that sunshine and turn it into heat.
Many cities around the world have become "heat islands" and this is significant enough to change the local weather.
Solving Southern California's water problem should be simple - build some great big solar power generators and have them power a huge desalination plant or two. Then everyone can stop pretending that enough water will fall from the sky to keep their driveway clean and lawn green.
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You will get your experiment because obviously nobody is willing to do anything about AGW.
Just wait and see and report back in 30 years.
I refuse to argue at a rational level with people who obviously are not rational. If you want to discuss facts and physics, fine, but this meta level of accusations is not scientific at all.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
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Since the model is so accurate as the LA Times asserted, why the author doesn't make the projection for the next ten years starting from the year 2013? Instead he choose the year 2041 to 2060. If the model is turned out to be inaccurate, most everyone will forget this model by the year 2041.
Actually, the temperature will drop significantly, as California will have broken off in a major earthquake and either sunk into the sea or become its own island. That would result in some much cooler temperatures than they're used to.
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"Wise man admits things weren't as bad as 70's era computers predicted! Says atmosphere is still heating up, but not as much as he thought 40 years ago!"
stop the motherfucking presses. this proves nothing about anything, just that science today is incrementally better than it was in the past.
at best, the anti-warmist (or whatever they want to call themselves) agenda does exactly what the mainstream scientific consensus asks: it's a gamble.
given that the odds of GW (and AGW if you like) being a real thing are pretty good, and that it will act over the long term, i think there can't be much harm in low-risk investment now into ways to mitigate what may be:
- land is cheaper in shitty areas than "good" ones. as the climate changes, formerly good land will become shitty, and formerly shitty land will become desirable. so buy it while it's cheap! it'll either sell for the same price or much, much more.
- renewable power will always be worth getting behind, especially that which can be generated locally (or at home). when the zombies come / bombs fall / NWO takes over, you'll have power when nobody else does.
if you don't like acting responsibly for your fellow man, there are still compelling selfish reasons to green up.
And this right here is why I refuse to take people like you seriously. I offered a fair, and non-preferential solution to encourage climate change research and validity, and you respond with biased hate and vitriol. My solution provides the following;
You proposed an experiment. You suggested that we have the scientific community make predictions about the climate over a reasonable term, then judge those predictions against what happens. rrohbeck responded by politely informing you that the experiment you suggested has already taken place and that the predictions have been verified. Then he ended the comment with an observation that instead of responding to the situation (which you suggested as your step 8) that many are doing their best to deny it. Somehow you missed the message and interpreted it as hate and vitriol. The only vitriol anyone else sees in this interchange is the bit where you called him immature and a zealot. So sad. The problem isn't that science has failed you, it is that you failed to listen to science.
-- QED
What you won't hear, and what makes this more religion than science as Lovelock says, is an argument against Lovelock's actual critiques of the state of climate science. It's because his points are too logical and irrefutable, so rather than try and engage in that uphill battle they will change the question posed and make up their own questions to answer.
Okay I'm confused I read the article you linked to and saw this: "Lovelock still believes anthropogenic global warming is occurring and that mankind must lower its greenhouse gas emissions, but says it’s now clear the doomsday predictions, including his own (and Al Gore’s) were incorrect." Now I know you are focusing on the second part of the sentence, but did you read the first half of the sentence? For the rest of the article he makes arguments about what sorts of things we should be doing to minimize anthropomorphic global warming.
Now the rhetorical trick you and he are using here is sneaky. He says that the doomsday predictions including his and Al Gore's were incorrect. But his predictions and "Al Gore's Predictions" were never the same, and his predictions were always radically more alarmist than anything real climate scientists predicted. Al Gore, who is not a scientist, but has made an effort to bring scientific results to the public, never made the sort of wild predictions that Lovelock is known for. He implied that he and Al Gore made the same predicitions, and you implied that he and real scientists made the same wild predictions. Mainstream climate science never made the sort of sensational predictions that Lovelock made. In 2006 Lovelock predicted that 80% of the world population would be wiped out by 2100. In 2008 he predicted that by 2040 the Sahara will have grown to encompass Paris and even Berlin! he also predicted in 2008 that by 2040 there would be no vitually food grown in Europe. So when he goes to the media and states that his past alarmism was wrong, anybody who has been paying attention says "no shit!" Real climate scientists have never made those sorts of wild claims. If you haven't been paying attention you might say "oh look an important climate scientist is backpedaling!!" Lovelock was an attention hound then and he is one now. So, i responded to the article you liked to without attacking his age, mentioning that he doesn't publish (or really participate in science at all), without accusing the Guardian or Sun of being biased, or without using a straw man. In fact I demonstrated how he, and you, were using a something similar to a strawman argument by conflating his past hyperbole with real scientific predictions then attacking both as if they were the same. In a followup message you suggested that people "address his valid critiques." The critiques he made in the article you linked to were all about means of addressing the problem of climate change. He suggests that wind energy will never be enough. Fine, i agree. He suggests massive adoption of nuclear energy. Fine, that would be much better than burying our heads in the sand, though there are real problems with nuclear power. He suggests that the political environmental movement is prone to hyperbole. Fine, I'm glad he finally looked in the mirror. He suggests more use of methane gotten through fracking. Fine. Methane is certainly a less carbon intensive fossil fuel than coal, and though fracking is likely to be very damaging to our water supply at least getting methane doesn't involve blowing up whole mountains. So all the things he said have to do with means and methods of dealing with climate change. I think as a society we need to be open to suggestions about means and methods. I'd much rather have that discussion than this endless disinformation campaign trying to hide the fact that climate change is real.
-- QED
The weather will continue to change on and on for a long, long time.
Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
It is the accuracy.
Remember back to high school science: Precision is how close results are to each other. Accuracy is how close the results are to the right answer.
So if you think of it in terms of target shooting a precise group is one where all the holes are close to each other, an accurate group is one where all the holes are close to the X ring. It is quite possible to be precise without being accurate, particularly if your sight is off.
The problem with computer models for the climate isn't that they don't give quite precise results, often spurious amounts of precision (again remember the sig figs discussion), the problem is one of accuracy. For a computer model to be useful it needs to be accurate with respect to reality. If it isn't, it isn't useful at least not for any sort of prediction. It can be as precise and detailed as you like, if it isn't accurate it is useless. In particular:
1) You need to be able to specify what it is that it predicts. What value(s) does your mdoel predict and as such what values would someone go and measure if they wanted to test the prediction.
2) To what frequency/resolution/precision does your model makes the predictions, both spatially and temporally. For example with temperature predictions is it a yearly average, monthly, daily, minute-by minute? Is it for the whole world, a continent, a state, a square inch? You need to be able to specify what level of measurements are necessary to test the model.
3) What is the error factor? Nothing is ever perfectly correct, so what is the expected error? How far off of the actual result can your model be and still be working as expected?
Basically you have to define these to define what it is for your model to be accurate, and then you have to test it against reality to see if it is indeed accurate.
You seem to be misunderstanding something: green initiatives have essentially zero impact on a local level at least where where climate is concerned. Unlike pollution which mostly settles out of the air quite quickly and remains a local problem, CO2 stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of years, and it only takes weeks for it to spread around the planet. As a result China's CO2 emissions impact us just as much as our own, more actually since they're producing ~23% of the global emissions versus our 18%. That's why cutting emissions is such a political nightmare - each city, state, and country has to bear the costs of cutting their own emissions, but they only see a benefit if everyone else does so as well. Even if all of California banned fossil fuel use tomorrow it would have no impact on the predictions of this simulation. It's very much a tragedy of the commons.
And to be clear, the simulation may not run though the intervening years at all, doing so just doesn't give you much information unless you're looking at the entire planet, which they are not. What they are more likely doing is saying assume in year X the global climate patterns are doing Y, now simulate what effect that will have on the local climate. They might let it run through a couple years to reach a stable state (assuming it even simulates the passage of time at all - it wouldn't absolutely have to), but they're almost certainly not simulating any sort of cumulative effects because there aren't any - the cumulative stuff all happens at a global level, so they can only feed that into their simulation as an input . Basically they're translating someone else's global climate predictions into local weather-trend predictions.
Then again it's possible they did run the simulation through the intervening years just to see what would happen - it may be that thirty years is simply the point where things got bad enough that it's really obvious that we need to start preparing now.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Really. Species have gone extinct before mankind existed, and they'll go extinct after man is no more.
Yet is this proof that humans didn't cause the extinction of the Dodo?
Hansen's model produced a median CO2 sensitivity of 3.4C per doubling. The actual trend gives 3.2C per doubling.
Pretty damn accurate.
thats why all the current models have been proven wrong. All the data has been "manipulated", and corrected to fit the designs of one group of people, who wanted to tax you for your money, get yu to pay for their study grants, and lie about the outcomes, and remanipulate the data, because the data didn't fit their model. Remember, all you nerds, the statement from your first computer class: GIGO.
Did you forget to take your meds? Yeah, a worldwide cabal of scientists, all out there only to get your money.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Scientists with a newer, faster, super-whiz-bang-ier computer predict that:
Oregon will continue to get lots of rain;
Kansas will continue to get tornadoes;
and Micheal Bay will continue making really bad movies.
All of this for only a few gazillion dollars in taxpayers' money!
In times of universal deceit, telling the truth gets you modded -1 Troll
um, has it ever been COLD in summer? just askin...
Have you ever heard Hansen speak? He's not a comedian; very deliberate and morose.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body