Slashdot Mirror
BEST Study Finds Temperature Changes Explained by GHG Emissions and Volcanoes
riverat1 writes "The Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature studies latest release finds that land surface temperature changes since 1750 are nearly completely explained by increases in greenhouse gases and large volcanic eruptions. They also said that including solar forcing did not significantly improve the fit. Unlike the other major temperature records BEST used nearly all available temperature records instead of just a representative sample. Yet to come is an analysis that includes ocean temperatures."
If we just plug up the volcanos, everything will be fine!
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The question is: what is "human nature"?
Your post, and you, just demonstrated this true answer.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The summary makes it sound like volcanoes are the explanation for greenhouse gases, which is completely false. It doesn't say that at all. Actually, it's the opposite.
RTFA and you learn (as quoted from the .PDF supplied by the article): "According to a new Berkely Earth study released today, the average temperature of Earth's land has risen by 1.5 C over the past 250 years. The good match between the new temperature record and historical carbon dioxide records suggests that the most straightforward explanation for this warming is human greenhouse gas emissions." (Emphasis mine.)
The .PDF article explains that human CO2 contribution, volcanic activity, and ocean activity (e.g. Gulf Stream and El Nino) are the biggest contributors that are needed to match the graph of temperatures over time. But volcanoes follow the drops in temperature on the graph, not the rises in temperature. Contributions from solar activity exist but were determined to be negligible. They explain that CO2 doesn't prove to be responsible for the warming, but is by far the best contender. As stated by the scientific director, "To be considered seriously, any alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as does carbon dioxide." So denialists can't simply supply "common sense" alternatives: the alternatives must match the data at least as well (or better) than CO2.
Uh-huh, big whoop. We've had heaps of models that fit the historical data - that's the easy part. It's all there, you can tweak your model as you like until it fits the historicals just right. The value of a model isn't in how well it fits the historical data, but how well it predicts future data.
So crank a prediction or two out of this puppy and get back to us in a decade.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Yep, "peer reviewed". This is apparently volume 1, issue 1 of a new series of journals started by an Indian publisher that decided to simultaneously launch 53 new journals. In order to fill them, they took pretty much anything that anyone wanted to publish.
Taking a larger set of stations would seem to mean that this study includes stations that other studies eliminated as poor-quality. For example, stations with siting issues, stations that have moved over time between rural/urban locations, stations suffering UHI in unknown amounts.
Given the need to work in corrections for all of these quality issues, and given a pre-stated conclusion, it is very easy to make the corrections in a way that supports your desired conclusion.
In short: not credible.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
1. Temperarature rise for the last 250 years of 1.5 degree C is entirely because of increased CO2 emissions.
2. Vulcanic activity can seriously lower the earths temperature and affects the curve with downward spikes.
No other activity shows any significant colleration towards earth temperature. They have checked against solar flares and other activites and all they compared against has had no impact. CO2 rise looks to be the major cause behind it all.
Basically they are saying: Critics of AGW are wrong.
The data will be fully available on their webplacce form 30 july with abilities for visitors to test the data themselves and to toy with how the temperature rise has affected their local temperature.
Just saying it like it are.
Isnt this the group that was funded by the Koch brothers and hand picked with denialist?
Muller was rather more of a skeptic than a denialist.
I'm not aware of David and Charle's Koch specific opinions on the BEST results, but in the denialist blogosphere, Muller and BEST went from white knights to treacherous scum overnight. Compare Anthony Watt's comments before the announcements:
I have no certainty nor expectations in the results. Like them, I have no idea whether it will show more warming, about the same, no change, or cooling in the land surface temperature record they are analyzing ... I’m prepared to accept whatever result they produce, even if it proves my premise wrong. I’m taking this bold step because the method has promise. So let’s not pay attention to the little yippers who want to tear it down before they even see the results.
and after:
And still, he hasn’t published anything and his papers have not passed peer review, but the political apparatchik wants to showcase the incomplete and rushed, non quality controlled, error riddled BEST science as if it were factual enough to kill off “denialism” worldwide. That’s political desperation in my opinion.
Nice one, screaming "denialist!" based on a misleading summary of an an article that's gung ho in favour of anthropogenic climate change (or whatever we're calling global warming this week). A better example of greenwashed "thinking" I could not hope to find.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So... what do you think we should do about it? We need some form of energy to keep running society. The default option is coal. You can try playing around with wind and solar, sure. I say 'play around' because the fact that you can't make money on them is an indicator of the deeper issue: they aren't efficient enough to actually run society. As such, attempts to use them wind up eating up a bunch of money and resources, and not meeting the actual needs of society, and so we fall back on the default option, coal. Geography permitting, you can use hydroelectric and geothermal, but it doesn't always permit. Also, even when it does, some people get pissy about dams 'destroying natural habitats' and similar bull; result being that the plants don't get built, and so we fall back on the default option, coal. Nuclear would be the best option; we know how to build efficient Thorium reactors, and we can put them anywhere, and we know how to keep them safe, and we know how to properly dispose of the spent fuel... but it's like there's some switch inside people's heads that makes them turn into frothing idiots when nuclear power gets mentioned, and so we can't actually build nuclear plants, nor places to safely store the spent fuel, and so we fall back on the default option, coal. When enough people fall back on coal, price fluctuations get it competing with natural gas and such, but it's basically the same thing; more burnt hydrocarbons, more CO2 in the atmosphere. If that was actually something you cared about minimizing, you'd get behind energy sources that actually produce the way we need them to produce, instead of producing the way you'd like them to produce.
Every major industrial force on the planet will continue as they are so long as their quartlerly reports show 'growth.' It's a system we can't change or undo. The major industrial forces will not allow it to change. They can't see or don't believe in a future that exists beyond the next year. When was the last time you heard "5 year plan"? And they are playing chicken with the future of humanity whether they realize it or not. Whoever hesitates or turns back will 'lose' as market forces will crush anyone into insignificance who isn't pushing forward.
They don't "lead" the markets let alone control them. With such short vision, how can they? The market is still in the hands of the consumer... sheeple consumers mostly. If anyone has been paying attention to the increase in guns and ammo and especially the market effect the government's billions in ammunition purchases, then it should be pretty clear. This gun control talk and scarcity of supply isn't only causing a rise in prices, it's causing a rise in interest. People who had no interest in buying guns and ammo are now interested.
Consumers can shape the next quarter. And the quarters to follow. Keep buying green. Keep buying things that do as little harm as possible. *I* don't make a difference. *You* don't make a difference. But *we* do. Talk to people, but don't argue or preach. Short, simple statements and move on. They won't think you're a crazy person if you don't come off that way.
If you're thinking about moving, I would consider moving away from major weather areas... you know, like the coasts, or places where mountains have significant impact. That's what all this climate change is about anyway--the weather, the redistribution of water, the content of the air and what it does with the sun's energy. Take up a hobby like gardening. It could be useful. (Just don't grow things indoors too much... UV lamps attact cops.)
Global Climate Change (which I believe in) proponents should publish a model, with a margin of error, and STOP CHANGING IT and agree that they will go away and start over if they are wrong, Instead, as each new bit of data comes in, they modify the "model" to better match the new data on a regular basis. Come on -- predict, and cast in concrete, the average tropospheric temperature from 2013 to 2018, with a low margin of error, and "lock it in". Cancel most "global climate change" funding, conferences, papers etc. for the next five years. If the prediction holds five years from now, then it has creds, else it's back to starting over.
Faith is cast in concrete and chiseled in stone. Science is more of a wiki page.
Actually I seem to recall that gas produces far less CO2 for energy produced that coal or oil. The thing is though, that we should take this as an opportunity to move to clean energy because it is better all round. No pollution, no digging dirty great holes in the ground (and I am in Australia, we are famous for the size of our holes in the ground). Sure it will be more expensive in the short term, but maybe that reflects the TRUE cost of energy, and you can bet your bottom dollar that it will plummet in price if the world made a commitment to full conversion. As a side benefit there would be huge investment into energy storage which should finally give us flying cars.
There was a recent study on how green energy could provide all of our energy needs in Green:tech http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/how-about-99.9-percent-renewables.
Incidentally I was in Saudi Arabia in December and while I was there the king announced a US$25 billion program of investment in solar PV. He must know something we don't...
I fail to see how a crappy Murdoch rag could be responsible for global warming.
Despite what you say, many people DO deny global warming, and just like the creationists they change their arguments when they are on a loser. Perhaps you would care to postulate as to why thousands of experts in their field are wrong, and posit an alternative theory as to why the CO2 we are pumping into the atmosphere is not following the laws of thermodynamics and heating us up like a frog on a barbie.
What I don't get is how a fair proportion of posters on this site, who must be mostly tech savvy, can leave their thinking shoes in the cupboard. Maybe it is because it is a predominately US site and you seem to be more right wing than Hitler over there. I don't think many of you get that Obama is actually right of centre compared with the free world, and your country is run as a corpocracy with your politicians doing the bidding of their sponsors rather than their electorates.
What do you mean "deny climate change"? People don't general deny it; people deny the attribution.
Actually, the progression is "there is no warming", "there is some warming, but it's natural", "there is some warming, its anthropogenic, but it's good", "there is some warming, its anthropogenic, it's bad, but there is nothing we can do", "there is some warming, its anthropogenic, it's bad, but it's to expensive to do something", and then back to "there was some warming, but it has stopped". Different deniers are not always in sync - some cling to "there is no warming" when others have already reached the "its to expensive" stage.
Stephan
Seriously, this study is saying exactly the opposite - the sun has no effect, it's all CO2, and that CO2 comes from human activity and volcanic activity.
It does, but there's still a huge problem with natural gas. The reason it hasn't passed yet, is the expansion of what was previously called unconventional gas - natural gas extracted by fracking. While the groundwater issues related to fracking has gained much attention, and are serious enough, what's worse in the long run is that a lot of the gas from such operations escapes directly into the atmosphere. Since methane is a potent greenhouse gas, and fracking is itself energy-intensive (we spend a lot of natural gas to get at a little more natural gas), some studies have estimated it as on level with coal for the climate.
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
The sun's output is easy to measure.
Given that, you'd think there'd be some solid evidence to back up your claim...but noooo.
No sig today...
OK, so just stick with the "it's too expensive" rebuttal.
What do you do about global warming if it's too expensive to 'fix'? Honest question. No, I'm not saying "just ignore it", I'm saying: come up with a real goddamn solution, or at least a path which is tenable without punishing first adopters or shoving government totalitarian enforcement down peoples' throats. (No, it isn't worth living or saving the planet if we all live as eco-slaves.)
I don't think that it's too expensive to do anything. Significant expense is coming down anyways - in the form of direct effects of climate change, of increasing fossil fuel prices, and of social unrest. We can opt to handle the expense in a controlled, gradual manner, or we can wait until the midwestern corn belt turns into a dust bowl again, New Orleans vanishes behind a massive sea wall, and refugees from Bangladesh destabilise India. A simple way of changing to a less carbon-intensive economy is to introduce a gradually and reliably increasing tax on carbon emission - e.g. collected internally for fossil fuel at the point of production or importation, and at the border for products coming from states that do not have a similar policy. This can be done in a revenue-neutral way, by lowering existing taxes, or by distributing the income to the population similar to e.g. Alberta's so-called Prosperity Bonus. Even if you follow the Stern Review, the suggested tax rate of US$ 30 per ton of carbon amounts to less than 10 cent per gallon - noticeable, but hardly debilitating.
Stephan
I still wonder about those graphs that show CO2 lagging temperature by 800 years during past global warming events.
You still wonder about something that has been *explained* umpteen times, I can image not being interested enough to look stuff up, but please don't involve yourself in a debate if your knowledge is 20 years out of date... (I'm sorry to come over all agressive, but I've this exact argument trotted out for over a decade.)
Long-term climate change (tens to hundreds of thousands of years) is influenced by changes in the orbit of the moon (google Milankovitch if you want).
Slight change in orbit --> causes slight warming --> causes CO2 release --> causes more warming ---> switches between ice-ages & intermediate periods.
The delta-T between the "change in orbit" and the "CO2 release" was about 800 years, which accounts for the lag.
The current change is *different* becuase the CO2 release is not caused by changes in orbit, but by man burning millions of years of stored carbon in a few centuries.
So we're skipping the first bit that ook 800 years, and going almost instantaneously to the "more warming" bit... which is why we are now seeing faster warming of the planet than was ever seen in the climatological records, going back hundreds of thousands of years (and probably much, much longer, but the farther back we go, the harder it becomes to measure how fast temperature changes actually happened).
The event in Australia broke more records than you could possible shake a stick at. Go here for just the briefest scientific review of the incident. Here's a quote: "A relatively small change in the average temperature can easily double the frequency of extreme heat events. Australia has warmed steadily since the 1940s, and the probability of extreme heat has now increased almost five-fold compared with 50 years ago." What part of this do you not get. Globally, spring comes 3 weeks earlier than 50 years ago. The clear and unmistakable results of climate change measure in the ten of thousands of unique individual events and phenomena. Taken as a body of evidence you'd have a better chance of arguing against evolution (and the body of evidence doesn't stop ideologues from doing that either.) Why is it that I'm yelling "Hey, dummy your arse is burning!" and instead of putting it out and thanking me for saving your life, you choose instead get insulting and indignant.
I'm point at trends, when data point after data point in one direction you get a trend. The system is incredibly complex, melting in the arctic messes with the haline cycle (and recent changes in the Gulf Stream suggest global current changes may be imminent.) These changes would have profound effects on global climate particularly cutting warm currents to the extreme latitudes causing dramatically colder winters. So there are a number of possible outcomes, when you perturb a system as complex as global weather, it's like throwing dice, many possible things can happen because there are many competing feedback loops and we still can't produce predictive models with the subtlety to give us long term predictions of complex chaotic systems.
That said, we can look at more general possibilities and compare them against what has already happened, in other words if I create a model starting in 1850 and successfully predict general large scale climate features and event up until now, I have a reasonable probability of predicting some of the large scale events coming. As for pulling out a single anything, that's crap no single data point informs you of anything. Again, the only thing that matters are trends, and we have those, we have a whole bunch of trends.
And I wish for the love of Jebus you guys could have one of these conversation without blowing all kinds personal FUD, you can stick your presumptions where the sun don't shine. You haven't the foggiest idea what my political opinions are but its clear that if your as good at guessing politics as you are about noticing its getting hotter every year that it explains why you can't seem to make a cogent observation about physical reality. In the flagellating department I believe its better to give than to receive. Guilt is what nice people do to assuage their consciences for being irresponsible or committing unkind acts. I don't practice either, therefore no guilt. I never said the world was ending, not today or a week from Tuesday or in a thousand years. Humanity is extincting about a 1000 species a day now. Most are insects and various invertebrates. Still, in your and my lifetime, we'll see the last of all the big mammals in Africa, most in Asia, and nearly half of the world's rain forest will go away. The impact of the change we're perpetrating on the environment will come back to haunt us because our biology is intimately tied to the global biology... nature of ecosystems. Every human being is a river of biota, moving through us every moment are ten times as many cells without a human genome as with. Plow the ecosphere under and we're committing slow motion suicide. Life has ben here nearly 4 billion years and suffered far worse than us, it will get along fine without us. We're an apex predator, we'll be one of the first things to go. Or, we'll pull our collective heads out of our rear ends and design a global technology that supports human advance without turning the world into a toilet. Why is that
the sun has no effect
Ever wonder why it's so hot in Australia right now? Not only is it summer there, but Earth's orbit is at perihelion, closest to the sun on January 3. In 20,000 years or so, the northern hemisphere will be summer at perihelion. That's why the south pole is colder than the north pole; it's farther away from the sun in winter than the north pole is in its winter.
There are other cycles, such as the wobble of the Earth's axis.
Of course, there is the 100,000 year problem and other problems. "Various explanations for this discrepancy have been proposed, including frequency modulation[12] or various feedbacks (from carbon dioxide, cosmic rays, or from ice sheet dynamics)."
The carbon feedback is what we're seeing now; the sun's affects only change on huge, slow time scales (except the seasons and axis wobble, of course).
Everything I know about it is from wikipedia; I'm no expert. You should read the wiki articles, they're very informative.
Free Martian Whores!
One could also point out that the temperature changes predicted by the "scientific consensus" at the UN's IPCC had both predictions and 95% intervals. Guess what ?
Those predictions were wrong, we're outside of the 95% confidence intervals for both IPCC FAR and the first AR. Depending on the month we are either at the very bottom, or below, the 95% interval for the second AR. Futher studies did not stop the alarmism, but apparently the IPCC got the message and stopped including predictions in their most recent assessment report, an act that would draw accusations of outright fraud for any group of scientists, except of course in this case.
What do we do with theories that make predictions and those predictions turn out to be wrong ? Oh wait, this is a climate study, never mind. We have long since decided what to do. Also, if we base policy, like the Kyoto protocol, on predictions that are now known to be wrong, then we repeal it, right ? Nope. You see, more recent results "prove" that we were right in the first prediction. That those results are more recent results, of course, imply that there is much, much less data to test their correctness ... an exercise nobody felt was even necessary. (but don't worry, there is more irrelevant data to test them against. The only -valid- way to test predictions, of course, is to test them against measurements that were unknown at the time of the study, otherwise everybody will simply completely overfit the data, leading to invalid results ... but in climate studies, this is not done)
How do they actually arrive at those 95% predictions ? Well, the method is as follows. You take existing studies, which are extremely non-linear models with between thousands and millions of free and fixed variables (like values for cloud cover, temperature, wind speed, forcing, ... for every square kilometer on the earth). You take one of the fixed variables (temperature), massively average it across the globe within one study, and you ... and I'm not kidding here ... average it across the different studies.
Why anyone bothers arguing that this is even remotely correct ... is beyond me. The excuse for doing this is that they do not have the resources to do better. Which is sad, really, but that does not excuse using known catastrophically wrong models because they're the best ones that fit in your desk calculator.
You might think they try to figure out what makes all these studies different, decide on what's best, physically the most plausible, ... that sort of thing. Then one might decide what is the best method, and run that. You'd be wrong, they ... average them.
The problem is that by selecting the studies you average, it is possible to arrive at any result, assuming there are enough insane studies (and this article illustrates, no problems there).
I have even played with one model myself, and of course it confirmed what I thought in the first place : adding a random factor centered around 0 to the windspeed at t=0 (which does not alter the energy balance of the earth, so it should have zero effect) ... changed the prediction by massive amounts. I got the result that it would cool by 35 degrees with one random seed, others gave 5 or 2 or whatever results. The answer "well, you have to pick it well". Right ... that, it turns out, is nothing more than accepted practice, and I got that from 3 different phd students working on it. What ... the ... fuck ... ?
The "scientific consensus" is essentially hand-picked by a number of scientists, who can get any result they want, and therefore the only thing the IPCC predictions illustrate, is what the IPCC wants it to be. And nothing more.
It should be treated as such.
Ok, and how do you talk your way out of this one. Since 1990 there have been various studies on the climate. The scientific consensus in 1990 was that the temperatures on earth would rise by 0.2 degrees per decade. The scientific consensus on climate in 2000 was that it would rise by 0.18 degrees per decade. The scientific consensus in 2005 was that it would rise 0.23 degrees per decade.
The reality ? http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=global+climate+studies+last+20+years
Now we can go through the motions if you like, but looking at that graph, is it so hard to believe that we're below every 95% certainty interval for temperature prediction made at least 5 years ago (5 years, because there was an IPCC assessment report in 2007).
Can you just remind me, because I seem to have trouble remembering my philosophy of science class. What does one do with theories whose predictions (which means measurements made AFTER publication) provide completely wrong ? And, given that climate theory has failed the only test that matters for science, accurate predictions, can you please explain to me why anyone believes it ? Please note that saying "others know better than you" is wrong, as made obvious by these "95% certain" predictions the "others" you speak of made.
I agree with this exactly. The problem I have is the frequency that anyone who raises a question is labeled as a denier. There are a lot of good points that get glossed over because the points are being addressed to a non-existent group identity with a large helping of name calling. There are many different beliefs that dont swear by AGW, and some of which are loony tune deniers, and some are pointing out scientific questioning.
I like to read through all of these comments, replacing "denialist" or "denier" with "poo-poo head", then again with "person" . The arguments can be vastly different this way.
You can argue all you want about whether global warming is real or not, and if so, man-made or not. But those who believe it is real (and I am cautiously one of those) deploy a long array of data, scientific studies, models, peer-reviews and global consensus.
BUT, when it comes to deciding what action is needed, if any, then the solutions are based on nothing at all. Where are the scientific studies that prove that renewables, carbon capture and storage, fossil fuel phase-out or carbon taxation, etc. leave us globally with a better standard of living? There are other alternatives, but the hysterics only promote the ones that inflict maximum misery by returning us to caves. And the unintended consequences are rarely evaluated.
As Hippocrates would have it regarding a sick patient, "First, do no harm". I believe that doing nothing is the best strategy.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Almost everyone of those who "raise questions" just regurgitate stuff they've sucked up on internet messageboards, frequently debunked falsehoods that are still recirculated ad nauseam just because those people (look, I called them people, not denialists!) don't really care about facts. I notice that you don't mention any one of those "good points" you pretend to refer to, glossing over them yourself while blaming your strawman of the very same.