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Scientists Explain Why Chairman of House Committee On Science Is Wrong
Lasrick writes "Michael Oppenheimer and Kevin Trenberth take apart Rep. Lamar Smith's (R-Tex.) Washington Post op/ed on climate science saying: 'Contrary to Smith's assertions, there is conclusive evidence that climate change worsened the damage caused by Superstorm Sandy. Sea levels in New York City harbors have risen by more than a foot since the beginning of the 20th century. Had the storm surge not been riding on higher seas, there would have been less flooding and less damage. Warmer air also allows storms such as Sandy to hold more moisture and dump more rainfall, exacerbating flooding.'"
I was 100% on board with global warming until the email leaks of a couple years ago - it seems like someone is not shooting straight here...I am not a scientist but I can tell you I now have some doubts about the validity of the climate science.
We have to make poor people pay more for energy, deepening their everyday poverty, so rich people with beachfront houses don't have to worry about quite as much flooding from a storm once every 25 years.
Man, I certainly can't think of any better candidates for the chairmanship of the House Comittee on Science, Space, and Technology than a lawyer without any technical or scientific background, a big fan of SOPA, expanding the DMCA's restrictive elements, and PCIP. Just as icing on the cake, the guy is a Christian Scientist, so he probably has a worse-than-average relationship with medical science.
Honestly, how do we end up with these jokers?
Lamar Smith is to climate change what Antonin Scalia is to gay marriange. Scientists say to Scalia/Lamar: "we have no doubts, we've established X beyond reasonable doubt". Scalia/Smith says to the public: "As everybody knows, there's great controversy among scientists as to whether X is true". Fuck them both.
Ezekiel 23:20
I have always had an honest question about the data on global warming that no one can seem to answer so I will try here...
It seems that the past 5 decades or so of accurate satellite and temp data is way to small of a sample. It would be like looking at my speedometer while on the freeway on ramp and extrapolating that 45 minutes down the road I will be going 25,000 MPH not accounting for the fact that I will stop accelerating and maybe even break in that time...How can we know with precision about Earths climate 300 years ago, much less 3,000 or 3,000,000 years ago
I'll quote Feynman on this one, because I couldn't say it any better:
"I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the laymen when you're talking as a scientist. . . . I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, [an integrity] that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen."
... is he still wrong?
Nice quote and so apropos to the climate 'debate'. I do think that the scientific process will win out in the end (how can it lose?). I just don't think that the current bunch of 'climate' scientists are backing the right horse, that being C02 as the primary driver of global temperatures.
97% consensus, har har.
Am I the only person who initially read this as "Lamar Smith (T-Rex)" ?
One foot in one century. Take a timestamp of the quality of life today.
Then reverse time and put in place the necessary quash on industry to stop the warming causing most of the rise.
Now fast forward time and assume, for the sake of argument, it worked. Technology will be somewhat behind where it used to be, with attendant more deaths and lower quality of life.
Net result: More death. Lower quality of life. Fewer inventions.
This effect, which is obvious in places like China or India, in the West 200-100 years ago during the Industrial Revolution, still plays a major role in the advancement of the human condition.
The point is don't assume you will be doing anyone a favor by heaving still another $trillion or twenty of regulation and control on top of the economy.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Unfortunately, nothing of what you said stops people from rating my comment -1 troll ... as expected.
... and you are not outraged by the deceptions and manipulations on the part of the advocates of AGW then you are either one of the authors, or you are a fanatic who accepts any act, no matter how bad, as long as your side does it; this makes you a dangerous, anti-intellectual sycophant.
Legitimate scientists do not need to rig the peer review process and rig the paper publishing systems.
By their actions these people outed themselves as charlatans and frauds who lacked sufficient confidence in the "science" they were pushing... they clearly did not believe the quality of their work could withstand the scrutiny that all other (actual) science regularly gets as part of the normal order
Also, I don't even have a problem with saying that CO2 is the primary driver of increased temperatures - but I do have a problem with
a) anything that goes beyond CO2 (that is 1.3K for a doubling) that is pure speculation, consists of poorly researched feedback mechanisms, with the poor state of research in cloud formation being among the worst offenders and most important negative feedbacks that are currently being ignored due to the poor state of knowledge and
b) I do have a problem with the constant one-sided discussion of the effects of increased temperatures. They are always held in the tone of horoscopes and greek oracles to avoid any clear statements that could be easily contradicted. "Extreme weather events" being the worst offender. That's says nothing and is obviously taylored to feed a constant media frenzy. This is combined with a complete lack of reporting on past "extreme weather events". Thus even decidetly average events like hurricanes Katrina or Sandy (in their historical and geographical context!) become "unprecedented monster storms", which is just laughable for anyone who bothered to look into the history of hurricanes on the US south and east coast.
if you don't want to get slurred as a denier you do.
only if you are a climate change denier. you guys don't know how things work so the only answer you can come up with is that it must not work that way. here's what you guys sound like. i can't get an answer i like to question x therefore x is false. i can see why this mindset is so alluring though. i can't get a good answer to prove god exits therefore he doesn't. man, this works great! you guys are onto something.
The problem with people like Lamar Smith is that they are still putting distortion ahead of science. We've listened to 12 years of distortion and a lot of overstated facts. By now most agree that we are in a warming trend and more now believe it's man-made. What we really need is for a science team dedicated to putting all the facts up for broadcast and distribution with no spin. XL pipelines to bring in more oil no direct impact on climate science. We will burn and eat that oil regardless what it gets pipped in. Burning forests on the other hand are directly related with carbon contribution. So are the effects of hurricanes and rising property insurance. Insurance already have actuarial tables based on real science data. Building codes have been revised in almost all coastal regions and places of high risk of catastrophic damage. Now we just need to get that data honestly to people that can make a difference and not fights on capitol hill.
Not even gonna check who the scientists in question are. This is going to be another disappointment. "Warmer air also allows storms such as Sandy to hold more moisture and dump more rainfall" is such a misleading argument that no one with even a modicum of understanding of science would make it. Warmer air in local vicinity of a specific hurricane can cause the stated effect. Warmer average temperature on the globe would not necessarily cause warmer temperature in the locality of Sandy. This argument is sooooo misleading. They are local vs global effect (temperature increase at particular locality vs average temperature on the planet) and they are mixing hypothetical vs observed effect (warmer air in SOME locality vs warmer air in the locality of the specific hurricane Sandy). Experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weren't talking about impossibility of any hurricane getting worse because of warmer air. They said Sandy. And so did Lamar Smith. Oh vey. Sometimes I just wish I understood less science. Joining pop science pitch forking seems to have become a litmus test for being "nice." Somehow "nice" doesn't include "sane" anymore.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
do they let any Republican into any house committee with science in its name? These are the people who have yet to catch up with high school biology.
Both sides can make their claims. But unless someone can do a proper experiment with a control planet, and make that experiment repeatable while you're at it, its all speculation. Not proper science.
And Smith forgot to make an important point about the Keystone Pipeline. Stopping it doesn't mean that carbon stays in the ground. It means the Chinese will burn it. And they will do so with less rigorous emissions standards. But then I can't prove that either. Its all speculation.
Have gnu, will travel.
Well, you aren't giving it.
True, but incomplete. Sea levels have been rising steadily since long before industrialization:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Post-Glacial_Sea_Level.png
Therefore, although warming can cause sea level rise and sea levels have risen, there is no conclusive evidence that anthropogenic emissions have contributed significantly to sea level rise.
True, but that could mean anything from totally insignificant to significant increase in damage; nobody knows how much increase there is. Since the sea level rise isn't attributable to human emissions, however, that point is academic.
The actual problem is that people build in flood plains and too close to the ocean, because Congress bails them out with taxpayer money. That problem is much easier to take care of than carbon emissions.
True, but nobody knows whether that is a significant effect (likely not) either or how much of it is due to human emissions.
So, the scientists actually haven't said much factually wrong, but their statements are misleading and full of weasel words, and their policy recommendations are unfounded and ineffective.
Lamar Smith is right: "wait and see" is the right approach for the US. To that I'd add: eliminate federal flood insurance and disaster aid. If millionaires want to live on the beach, they should self-insure and not have the tax payer assume their risks.
I do think that the scientific process will win out in the end (how can it lose?).
when theres no one to practice it cause homo sapiens went extinct cause the planets on fire. ... it could happen!
If you are genuinely skeptical because of the emails leaked from the university of east anglia, then I suggest looking at them again. /Read/ the emails. If you have any basic level of scientific literacy, you'll see through the climategate charade. If you need the cliff notes version, then this and this give pretty damning information on the "scandal" surrounding the leaks.
Then you can read one of numerous official reports on the leaks.
Even with the kindest interpretation of "skeptic" arguments surrounding the emails, I have found it hard to find anything of interest. It is a classic nothing burger.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
AGW then you are either one of the authors, or you are a fanatic who accepts any act,
You sir, are an ideologue. There is a third option. The person you are denouncing may actually have some scientific literacy. See this entertaining video on skeptics and climategate.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Let's see here...
the University of East Anglia..... But of course if they had decided that they and their people had done wrong, they'd have lost lots of prestige and funding. Nixon declared that Watergate was just a 3rd rate burglary and everybody should just ignore it and move-along too....
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.... yeah and the IRS cannot name any of its employees who have done wrong, and the ATF couldn't not when it investigated its people; there's nothing new in big government agencies being unable to find any wrongdoing in their own people. The IRS cannot currently figure out how much their party in Long Beach cost, nor can they figure-out who signed-off on the costs...
In fact, the very site you linked to which hosted the list is the super-left-leaning UCS... those mental midgets spent the entire cold war trying to convince Westerners that the Cold War could not be won and we ought to just disarm (and essentially surrender). Some people, like the guys at UCS, are proof that if you spend too much time in the ivory tower of academia pursuing a PhD, you'll end up a gullible fool with no remaining common sense and a sheepskin that unambiguously proves you are very good at regurgitating the nonsense that an earlier generation of people who spent too much time in academia spoon-fed you
EVERY SOURCE you rely on for your argument IS AS LINKED TO WHAT THEY INVESTIGATED, and exonerated, AS NIXON was to Watergate but I bet you would not have accepted Nixon's word that there was no wrongdoing. For that matter, I'd bet you would not accept Dick Cheney's word that there was no need for concern over his dealings re Halliburton... Would it be OK if the captain and crew of the Exxon Valdez investigated themselves and produced a bunch of reports in which they exonerated each-other?
I'm guessing Smith believes if we all pray more/harder all these storms will go away. It's either the devil's fault or god is mad at us.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
I'll quote Feynman on this one, because I couldn't say it any better:
"I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the laymen when you're talking as a scientist. . . . I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you're maybe wrong, [an integrity] that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen."
Feynman was absolutely right. The context, of course, is the individual scientist, who should not by lie of omission misrepresent the way that his work may be wrong. To either the public, colleagues, or himself "...you are the easiest to fool."
Now, are you saying that its fair to extrapolate this to the entirety of climatology, and the related disciplines that touch it?
The "leaks" worst offense was that in some cases scientists' felt pressure to modify the way they presented their facts to the public.
I disagree with that. The worst offense was that some of the scientists privately expressed frustration at denialists trolls who play political games, and waste their time. I don't think the emails show that the scientists were modifying how they presented anything to the public. But they do show occasional defensiveness and frustration from scientists.
/should/ provide everything and the kitchen sink to "skeptics" even if you know they are going to be intellectually dishonest with the information. Doesn't matter. Let politics be politics, and science be science.
The smear campaign works by being completely unreasonable, and then demanding to be taken seriously. Whenever people get frustrated, you just claim that they are being unreasonable, and are ideologues. It is classic projection.
So the way I see it, a bunch of trolls pissed off some scientists, and privately expressed defensiveness over the issues. The scientists in question should not be defensive (though it is understandable), and
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Also, I don't even have a problem with saying that CO2 is the primary driver of increased temperatures - but I do have a problem with
I would hope not - that it's a greenhouse gas has been well established for about 100 years.
a) anything that goes beyond CO2 (that is 1.3K for a doubling) that is pure speculation,
On what basis is it purely speculation?
consists of poorly researched feedback mechanisms, with the poor state of research in cloud formation being among the worst offenders and most important negative feedbacks that are currently being ignored due to the poor state of knowledge and
What feedbacks, and ignored by whom?
b) I do have a problem with the constant one-sided discussion of the effects of increased temperatures. They are always held in the tone of horoscopes and greek oracles to avoid any clear statements that could be easily contradicted. "Extreme weather events" being the worst offender. That's says nothing and is obviously taylored to feed a constant media frenzy. This is combined with a complete lack of reporting on past "extreme weather events". Thus even decidetly average events like hurricanes Katrina or Sandy (in their historical and geographical context!) become "unprecedented monster storms", which is just laughable for anyone who bothered to look into the history of hurricanes on the US south and east coast.
"precedented monster storms" don't sell papers/eyeballs. Keep in mind who characterizes them in this fashion. Protip: it's not the scientists. Sometimes, one needs to pick up a better news media. Personally, I just go to the weather service web page. As to past weather events, keep in mind that forecasting then used to be axioms such as "red sky at night, sailor's delight...".
... we got a doofus lawyer " without any technical or scientific background" as President who had no experience running anything or employing people or being employed. A guy who cannot speak without a teleprompter, thinks there are at least 57 states, thinks he has the authority to drone-strike any person anywhere on Earth any time he likes (it's MUCH more fun, and civilized, too, turning a human body into a pile of offal than pouring water onto somebody's face, like the Evil Bush-Cheney monster, after-all...)
As for a worse relationship with medical science.... Obama claimed doctors chop off the feet of diabetics because they get paid more to do that than to give-out insulin. He also clearly does not understand why doctors take out tonsils, thinks you will lower the cost of a hip replacement by adding taxes to the artificial hip joint, did not know what Navy medics were, etc. Someday there will be a library of the stupid things this moron has said and it will be at least as big as the equivalent Bush facility... the only reason most people do not know all the crap that this guy has uttered is that you have to see it yourself on video... 90% of the journalists in the US admit to being democrats and they just refuse to be critical of him or to run the sort of over-the-top headlines on his errors the way they do for any Republican or Libertarian
This article is about one scientist and it is definitely fair to demand this from him, as he obviously did the very opposite.
As for the rest of climatologists, who are a large bunch of individuals, of course it is fair to demand the same from them. There are those among them who see this as natural and do inform people about both the contents and the limits of their knowledge.
Unfortunately, those are few and far between in the public debate and especially in the media, who dislike true scientists exactly for their habit (or should I say second nature?) of making very careful statments with lots of background to make sure their statments can be understood at all and a litany of ifs and buts, necessary to make it clear on what assumptions and which conditions their statements rest.
Hence, the media are filled with so-called-scientists willing to dispense with all scientific standards to the point of leaving the realm of anything resembling nature and giving the press a nice-to-read story instead. Do I think it is fair to extrapolate from TFA to those "scientists"?
Hell yes.
Was there some freak storm somewhere? Let's blame it on global warming. It's the secular equivalent of the Westboro Baptist outfit blaming every single bad thing that happens in America to God hating something about America.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
You have convinced me that Lamar Smith is a great guy of sterling character with good morals and a great logical mind.
If your measure of what's good is calibrated against a yardstick of mental disorder, perversion, and sexual deviancy, then you're the one with the problem... and your resort to expletives just seals that deal... in any argument, the guy who ends-up swearing or yelling is clearly the one without the facts or logic on his side.
Scientists != all Scientists
Scientists != climate scientists
Statistics != causality
Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t."
It is rather funny to watch the 'AGW IS GONNA KILL US ALL' crowd and their sycophants. They run around claiming that The Science is on their side and label anyone who dares question any aspect of their research as a denier.
There are two simple reasons for this. They are a) not very good scientists and b) they have a belief system that they bought into (The world will end! Unless you listen to US!).
Instead of watching the people on both sides of the issue argue and insult each other, why don't you take a look at the data.
For example, the models aren't any good.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means1.png
The models and observations are parting ways, rather quickly. And, to Trenberth's dismay, the observations are what matter, not the models. Notice the mean of the models is .5 higher than observation. That puts the observations outside of the error bars.
The other flaws with the models, the shoddy data handling, the bad math, the lack of source control, etc, have been covered here before.
Woodfortrees.org has the data and analysis tools. Go look. Play with the data and see what it shows you.
Second, the data they are using is mangled all to hell. They 'adjust' the data on a continual basis.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/ushcn-adjustments.jpg
When the trend one is looking at only appears after adjusting the data, there is a problem. HadCrut and GISS have continually changed data and it is always the same, the past gets colder and the present gets warmer. One would hope that, at some point, the past remains constant instead of changing all the time.
http://climateaudit.org/2010/12/26/nasa-giss-adjusting-the-adjustments/
Third, the data itself is suspect. The G.A.O. did a survey of the USHCN climate station network. The G.A.O found that 42% of the weather stations did not meet the station sitting requirements. In other words, you can't trust the data. AND THAT IS THE BEST SURFACE TEMP NETWORK WE HAVE. The rest of the worlds surface temp stations are worse.
"According to GAO's survey of weather forecast offices, about 42 percent of the active stations in 2010 did not meet one or more of the siting standards. With regard to management requirements, GAO found that the weather forecast offices had generally but not always met the requirements to conduct annual station inspections and to update station records. NOAA officials told GAO that it is important to annually visit stations and keep records up to date, including siting conditions, so that NOAA and other users of the data know the conditions under which they were recorded."
http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-800
The reconstructions also suck. They use very limited data sets and the outcome changes drastically depending on which data is included. Plus they did wonderful things like disappear the Medieval Warming Period even though we have eye witness accounts from people who moved because it got too warm.
Add in things like Glieck and fraud or stating that "Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” and pretty soon it is clear that climate science is a mess.
So we have a lot of things we don't know very well, things that people are making up and a whole lot of things we don't know we don't know. Yet jokers like Trenberth want to enact policies that will directly cause hunger and poverty to increase for the poorest parts of the world.
We need to take care of our environment. But we need to actually know what the hell is going on before we can enact rational, useful changes.
Slee
Al "The Pope" Gore, who sells dispensations from liberal guilt over the environment has made how many billions off of climate change?
How about all of Obama's "Green Energy" crony capitalists? Yeah, Solyndra went bankrupt after how many Democrat donors cashed in?
If I loan the money to the farmers to upgrade their farms, lend the money to the populace to buy their houses, cars, gadgets and toys. They pay me interest. The smart ones will pay off the principal too, but many won't be able to. So, in the end, they will not be able to afford the payments, and I will own the land, the houses, the cars, and the gadgets. If the propositions to eliminate bankruptcy, that i have heard about in the US, go through, then I will still be owed all the money as well as owning the properties, and toys. I think that is akin to slavery, but to me, that would be profit. I could afford all the food I can eat, while those arond me strive to survive. The profit is not for the economy, it is for the bankers - those few that own the biggest of the banks. The same ones that got all those bonuses when Obama handed out that big cheque a few years ago.
If the "threatening" now-faster-rate of sea level rise is on the order of a 3.3 mm/year, then how is it that the sea levels in NY harbors have "risen more than a foot since the beginning of the 20th century (which would be 1900AD.)
1000mm / cm ...we're talking 30 centimeters.
2.54 centimeters / inch
12 inches / foot
Wikipedia (linked above) says the *current rate*, which is *faster* than previous, is 3.3 mm / year. 113 years (since 1900) is 372.9 mm if we count 3.3 mm / year for EVERY year since then. That's a total of 3.72 cm (isn't metric easy?) or between one and two inches.
And actually, Wikipedia reports sea level rise this way: "Between 1870 and 2004, global average sea levels rose 195 mm", which is less than an inch.
So, a foot, how? [grumble]
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If this is something really truly important that we must all make life altering decisions, then why is it such a closely guarded secret?
Yes, democracy requires an informed electorate. You have been deliberately and expertly misinformed, there was no "secret".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Oppenheimer and Trenberth are NOT scientists ! They are "Ayatoliahs" of the Carbon Anthropogenic Global Warming sect.
Also, I don't even have a problem with saying that CO2 is the primary driver of increased temperatures - but I do have a problem with
a) anything that goes beyond CO2 (that is 1.3K for a doubling) that is pure speculation, consists of poorly researched feedback mechanisms, with the poor state of research in cloud formation being among the worst offenders and most important negative feedbacks that are currently being ignored due to the poor state of knowledge...
Bullshit. You're ignoring the decades of research on these topics. You're ignoring the physics, and the simulations built on those physics. Now you may simply be ignorant of this, or you're being willfully deceitful, but either way these are certainly not "poorly understood phenomena".
b) I do have a problem with the constant one-sided discussion of the effects of increased temperatures. They are always held in the tone of horoscopes and greek oracles to avoid any clear statements that could be easily contradicted. "Extreme weather events" being the worst offender. That's says nothing and is obviously taylored to feed a constant media frenzy. This is combined with a complete lack of reporting on past "extreme weather events". Thus even decidetly average events like hurricanes Katrina or Sandy (in their historical and geographical context!) become "unprecedented monster storms", which is just laughable for anyone who bothered to look into the history of hurricanes on the US south and east coast.
That's because you have no idea what you are talking about. And it is people like you which make scientists not even want to bother to try and explain anything. If you don't even understand the most basic research concepts and results, why bother trying to explain something more advanced. You don't want to listen. You don't want to know. And that's perfectly fine. But you have no credibility even with someone who has a passing knowledge of the actual research,
~X~
That's fair. I can't fault the principle.
Lamar Smith is the same guy who sponsored PIPA.
Not going to shut up until he goes away.
This is ridiculous. No one would take a one-time one foot rise in global sea level seriously if it wasn't being construed as a canary in a coal mine with respect to a larger threat. They would just accept the city being built with insufficient surge margin as one of a thousand things done differently one hundred years ago.
Nor would people rush to conclude that a one-time one foot rise in sea level was a high price to pay with what humanity has achieved in the last one hundred years.
Building too close to unpredictable water is an ageless human tradition.
I think it's poppycock to tie an amorphous process such as global warming to any specific counterfactual. There are many environmental carcinogens where we know it doubles the base rate, but we can't point to any one specific person and say "you died because of this".
It's unscientific in attitutude to dupe the public into thinking that science operates in these terms. One does not need a concrete case of cause and effect in order for a process to have real effects. Even if the sea level had declined by a foot, some storm somewhere would have been worse. I've never had much appetite for scientists drawn into PR.
Would an iron boot-in-the-face make slobbering lib.com climate dissemblers more prudent? How would you treat sluts who passed-around disease for their own pleasure ... oh yes, we know how lib.coms treated them ... and because of it HIV continues to kill 10s-of-thousands !
Land that was under ice sheets during the last Ice Age is still rising. The Gulf of Bothnia may vanish in a few thousand years-- the floor may lift above sea level. For land that was next to an ice sheet but not under it, the opposite is happening. It bulged up when all the ice pressed down the adjacent land, and now that the ice is gone, it is sinking. Much of the Eastern Seaboard, including NYC, is experiencing this. That's how apparent sea level rise is higher at NYC than elsewhere. The sinking of the land in combination with the rising sea levels makes global warming worse for NYC than most other coastal cities.
Other local effects can influence coasts. New Orleans is another coastal city that's in trouble. It's on a river delta, which must be constantly replenished with fresh deposits. Deltas are always eroding and packing down, but most grow because there's enough silt to more than offset those effects. Thanks to our efforts at flood control, not as much silt is reaching the Mississippi delta. But our interference has an upside for New Orleans. The main flow of the Mississippi would have probably shifted to the Atchafalaya by now, leaving New Orleans stuck on a sinking backwater, if we hadn't interfered.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Even though I'm willing to accept the idea that man probably has caused some of the warming over the last 150 years, any honest scientist will acknowledge that we can't be sure how large of a role man plays when we consider the fact that we were coming out of a little ice age. It's also disputable that we are facing "unprecedented" warming because recent studies (http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/04/11/evidence-for-a-global-medieval-warm-period/) show that there was significant worldwide warming during the medieval warming period.
In general, it's good to let scientific "consensus" drive policy. But when the major scientific organizations try to shut down all discussion and explain "the debate is over" and start drawing firm conclusions on something as complex as climate science, it makes me suspicious. Then when the AGW advocates start blatantly lying about how there is supposedly more incidents of extremely destructive weather and fire, it makes me extremely suspicious. When the UN IPCC knowingly makes up a story about the Himalayas melting in a few decades even though they know it's based on a single *opinion* from an activist making comments in the WWF magazine, it tells me that there is a systemic corruption of science when it comes to the issue of global warming.
And when I see proof that Mann et al is cherry picking data in a nontransparent manner and most of the "concensus" is based on that cherry picked data, this so called "concensus" no longer holds any credibility. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbR0EPWgkEI
And soon to be dead as a door nail.
They didn't put forward one piece of evidence that human greenhouse gas release is responsible for the increase in co2 in the atmosphere. There has been a significant impact due to other human behavior as well, like desertization or deforestation or forest/oil-well fires, not to mention how we keep our livestock. And I wouldn't be surprised if the amazing amount of plastics floating in the ocean isn't helping either.
But let's focus on greenhouse gas emissions first and foremost? And ignore the rest? Way to polarize people!
...because he is as dumb as a box of hammers.
What? We didn't say we'd tell you _how_ he was wrong, just _why_.
The ocean contains most of the heat that drives surface temperatures. 1 unit of ocean holds more than 1000x the heat capacity as 1 unit of atmosphere, hence the huge effect of El Nino and La Nina on surface temp.
Here is a link to the raw NOAA data on ocean heat content. Download the files, and do the linear regression yourself. It is trivial to do.
The "no warming since 1998" canard is based on carefully choosing the start-end years for a surface temperature time series such that the start year is at a record El Nino, and the end year at a La Nina. The p-value for a regression is almost statistically significant warming at p=0.05, even after this blatant cherry picking.
Don't believe me, the DO IT YOURSELF. You can download the time series. You only need year 12 math to do the regression. It is EASY.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Isn't this the nut who said all of this science comes straight from the pit of hell? And is the science committee chairman? He is still is office? and taken seriously?
I'm nearing the end of my rope with this system of ours....
Yes, it's a (potential) tragedy of the Commons, or an iterated PD, as you anticipate, where even libertarians like me think you can pull in government coercion. The right should acknowledge that honestly. However, there are a couple of additional problems to overcome to make the collective action case:
1) Costs and dynamic pricing; it's not at all clear how damaging CO2 is at various timescales and concentrations.
1a) Modest warming may well be to our advantage. Its hard to believe that pre-industrial temperatures are exactly optimum for human civilisation.
1b) You need a dynamic pricing mechnism, changing with time CO2 levels and future projections, which will require much higher modelling resolution and confidence than we posses at present.
1c) You also need to deduct opportunity costs for the low emission equilibria; how many people will poverty kill? (answer: a lot).
1d) As AGW costs will be uneven, are you going to make side payments to get to the equilibria? How will this enormous slush fund be derived and administered?
2) Deadweight costs. How much does transaction and enforcement cost? Is is more that the collective loss in the first place?
3) Enforcement dilemma Can cheating be detected? Is enforcement against cheating governments/firms credible? (What if China gives you the finger? Or is cheating and you can't prove it? Think about the Chinese hacking situation before you answer!)
You might get 1 and 2, but for me #3 is pretty crushing. Remember the Copenhagen fail? That was predicted, using, as you say Econ 101. So in short, I think you're right, but hopeless. Put your faith in mitigation, advances in solar and nuclear tech, and geo-engineering instead if you think this is a big deal.
Oh, and please drop the 'tards things. At least some of your opponents may be smart. Thanks.
It worked out ok in the end.
The problem with the Climate Change movement is that people like James Hansen, Al Gore and Michael Mann are the most vocal proponents. None of them has ever expressed any caution and seem to always err on the side of their own arguments.
Hansen predicted huge sea level rises which failed to materialize. Mann spliced together a hockey stick which is also not matching reality. Can we at least acknowledge that both of these guys were wrong in these instances? Who exactly is the zealot here? Al Gore is just a profiteer with an extremely large carbon footprint.
The biggest argument in favor of Global Warming was the loss of sea ice. But even there nothing is unprecedented and it remains to be seen if the loss is permanent or just naturally cyclical. The only thing I am sure of is that the science is not settled.
When 1/3 of your population are voting, then there's nobody that people want to vote FOR.
When 9/10 vote, it's either a forced voting block (i.e.a dictatorship) or people don't want SOMEONE ELSE to get in.
The UK has it to some extent, though that's mostly due to the ones still actually voting.
The USA has negative voting (If I don't vote for my side THE OTHER SIDE will get in!!!) in spades.
N/t
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/twenty-two-years-of-no-actual-global-warming/
and
www.climatedepot.com
Why do you cretins keep acting as if there is any man made global warming?
I like how you conflate the media reporting with the science and then dismiss the whole lot.
You very well know how inaccurate the media is with regard to anything computer related, yet you don't blame yourself for that. Finding excuses smacks of blind denialism.
I also like how you claim a whole bunch of stuff is "ignored". These are scientists, not economists and generally ignoring elephants in the room leads to a lack of getting published.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
If the moon had been in a different position when Sandy hit, the tide would have been out. I suggest a pre-emptive assault on the moon with razor mines, acid grenades, and automated laser monkeys.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Great post. I'd like to add that we're going into a solar Grand Minimum, similar to the Dalton and Maunder minima. We'll see how global temperatures fare as time progresses - the warmist alarmists have extremely poor timing. We're looking at somewhere between 20-200 years of lower solar activity. We shall see, but I really doubt things will move to better agreement with the IPCC models.
I expect continuing technological progress and market forces will act to lower CO2 output. I think advanced nuclear generation needs to be vastly expanded for many reasons, including space applications of nuclear. I hope LENR pans out as some at NASA seems to think it will. Finally, endpoint solar generation looks very promising as prices come down and the technology improves. Truly, humanity has a bright future if we don't listen to the Luddite voices of despair.
The United States needs to be a technology leader, not a regressive voice forcing us into some drab reduced future in the name of "Green".
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
The Alarmists have made many predictions in the last 20-30 years.
Here are the resulta.
Oh, if you refuse to look because it's from Mr. Watts, then you have no interest in Science; you are nothing but a Face Painting Homer.
What feedbacks, and ignored by whom?
Increased reflection of sunlight by clouds and heat radiation from storms particularly small scale weather like thunderstorms.
Bullshit. You're ignoring the decades of research on these topics. You're ignoring the physics, and the simulations built on those physics. Now you may simply be ignorant of this, or you're being willfully deceitful, but either way these are certainly not "poorly understood phenomena".
How come the range on the temperature forcing of CO2 is still a factor of two? A relevant quote from the rebuttal article:
This doubling is expected to cause a warming this century of four to seven degrees Fahrenheit [2 to 4 degrees C].
It's worth noting that a) the actual forcing may be below the "expectation", b) we've already experienced a portion of that temperature rise (it's from preindustrial levels not as the authors imply the beginning of this century), and c) it depends strongly on how much CO2 we actually generate - even laissez faire policies eventually have lower fossil fuel demand due to the exhaustion of some part of those resources.
And then we get to the groupthink you exhibit. Decades of research which still hasn't been able to nail down one of the most significant parameters of AGW theory and a host of "simulations" which are based on poor data (recall that we've been able to measure directly average global temperature only since satellites were available for it) somehow translate into the confidence you project.
And it is people like you which make scientists not even want to bother to try and explain anything.
So what? It's not our job to gullibly swallow whatever someone says. If they don't like it, too bad. Either do it or throw those public funds at someone who will do that job.
Keep in mind that there is a lot of public funding at stake to the tune of tens to hundreds of billions a year. And climatologists are mostly funded by the same parties that would benefit from that public funding.
You don't want to listen. You don't want to know.
Interesting how strong the psychological projection is here.
These are scientists, not economists and generally ignoring elephants in the room leads to a lack of getting published.
One such elephant is who actually funds climate research. Government agencies that will benefit from the increased funding and power of changes in policy.
It's amazing how people such as you are prepared to spout off without being hindered by lack of knowledge.
If you'd spent any time as a practicing scientist or bothered to resarch "the elephant in the room" you would know that your accusations of bias are completely without merit.
Firstly, the government agencies who will benefit from the changes in policy are not the ones that dish out funding.
Secondly, if you've ever written a research proposal to a government agency you'll know that the proposed research will be into topic X. No one writes a proposal saying "we will prove political point X".
Third, the government agencies don't actually decide who gets the money. They dictate the broad aread, but like all the rest of science, it's sent out for peer review.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
So you accept a rather enormous leap in temperature (i.e 1.3K for doubling) but not the additional increase from positive feedback?
1. Which positive feedbacks are being overstated, and by what amount? What observations back your assertion that these are overstated - cite the paper in which these observations were published.
2. Which negative feedbacks are being ignored? Describe these negative feedbacks in detail and by reference to observations citing their true level of influence on the troposphere. Reference the paper in which your observations were published.
If you accept an increase by 1.3K that's already a BIG increase in temprature.
So: what are you going to do about it? Clearly doing nothing is not an option. And you accept that the cause is CO2. So the solution should be obvious: reduce CO2 emissions now!
Make legal binding agreements to share the cost so that everyone has the same hurdle but also can profit together from the business that will come out of this...
Watch this animation from the NOAA.
It extrapolates backwards using all of the known data (ice cores, etc) and shows that over the past 100, CO2 levels began to rise almost linearly at an unprecedented rate and are now higher than they have been for hundreds of thousands of years.
Just look at that linear upward trend. If that's not man-made, what the fuck is it?
You didn't answer his question. Ignored by whom?
is'nt because new york is slowly sinking that the water level there is a foot higher? do to all the high density building over the years.
Are O & T saying anthropogenic warming started by the turn of the 20th century? (They imply that by using 1900 as the date to start looking at sea level rise.) That is obviously wrong. They should correct that statement.
These climate scientists should be reclassified as political scientists, which, of course, isn't science at all. Just like their profession. It's all about fear mongering, fundraising and social change.
What global warming? CO2 has gone up 8-10% over the last 16+ years and temperatures have not. The temps have been flat and actually started declining over the last 5-7 years. So my question for everyone who says that CO2 is driving the climate change or is the control knob on the climate is simple:
How long with flat or falling temperatures and rising CO2 before you admit that your models are WRONG? 20 years? 30? 50? Never?
As to the one foot increase in the last century well there has been a 400 foot increase since the last glacial maximum so what is 1 foot? About 0.25% and the other 399 feet? What caused that? Certainly not human emissions of CO2.
You know the people who collect the data, they couldn't possibly have their own political motivations. All scientists are good honest people.
Minus an atmosphere, and assuming .3 albedo (based on satellite measurements), the Earth would be about -18 degrees C (255 K). The average surface temperature of the Earth is currently around 14.5 degrees C. The atmosphere traps enough heat energy to take the entire globe from deep freeze to balmy. Geothermal and tidal heating account for pretty negligible amounts of heating.
So, two points: one, the amount of energy involved is rather large, and a small percentage change is going to have a huge effect. Secondly, heating the atmosphere changes its content. The atmosphere is more or less saturated with water vapor, and any increase in temperatures increases the amount of water that it can contain. We can't do anything about how much water is on the planet, for reasons that should be obvious. On the other hand, we're really great at making CO2. A naive calculation would indicate that you can increase temperatures almost arbitrarily by adding CO2, in fact.
Oh hey look there's a textbook that has this same objection explained in detail. Apparently your objection was addressed in the 1950s. Whoops.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
The problem , sadly is that once the consensus fronm science touches on a political debate, it will meet people who will bend over backwards to say the sky is maroon and the moon is made of cheese if necessary to advance their agenda.
Such people will take the slightest admission that an unfavorable determination could conceivably be in error as a frank admission that all of science is conspiring against his backers. Such politicians not only know no truth themselves, they actively poison truth wherever they find it.
I agree w/ Feynman when the layman is a common citizen, but I don't think he imagined the toxicity of the modern political process when he said that.
The public has become addicted to sound bites and the discussion of climate modeling and global warming is anything *but* a sound bite. In fact, if you feed the public a steady stream of sound bites you will generate the exact controversy we have today. Most tidbits you find/read/hear that are either in support or against arguments for global warming are usually all "true-ish" but they fail to fully explain the broader context and see the big picture in terms of the long term trends and effects. It's nice to try to explain things in simpler terms but you run the risk of oversimplifying everything and making no sense at all.
Nobody can sit there and deny our society has 0 effect to our environment. Of course we are. You only have to look outside and see some garbage or go to the beach to figure that out. You can argue what kind of effects we create but you can't argue we have affected it. Second, while you can try to claim we're not causing global warming on one hand because the evidence is inconclusive - you can't say that and sit on your behind and then do nothing about it. Once you take that logical path you better be allocating a ton of research to fricken conclude the hell out of it. Sitting there and saying it's inconclusive and then being happy with that answer and doing no additional research is simply ignorant.
A lot of these comments have the implicit assertion that certainty should be required before we act. In life, I act on a lot of 60/40 bets. In fact, I pay to avoid "1 in 100" risks all the time. It depends on the cost of being wrong. To oversimplify, but still tell a lot of truth: If we take action, and it wasn't required, we've lost some money. If we take no action, but action was required, we could lose the planet. No brainer - see Pascal's wager for the original version.
Using science to prove or disprove man made global warming is just abusing a tool that was not meant for the job. How many times has science made a claim only to later retract it due to inadequate data, flawed process, or misinterpretation? Science is good for solving thing that are simple and within our grasp. When it comes to philosophical questions their guess is really as good as anyone else's.
Gang, it's time to drop the climate change charades, get back to real science, and write some proposals to do little more than rip off the taxpayers...or have you all been on the gravy train too long?
The thing this guy know about climate change is he needs to get inside when it rains.
Like all the rest his only concern is the answer to that one political question that trumps everything.
WHAT DO I HAVE TO DO TO GET RE-ELECTED?
The thought he might have to get a real job is frightening!
Whole House Water Filtration Systems
Of course they'll be plenty of jobs on each coast from global warming.......know how to fill a sand bag.
If you'd spent any time as a practicing scientist or bothered to resarch "the elephant in the room" you would know that your accusations of bias are completely without merit.
I have and I stand by the accusation.
Firstly, the government agencies who will benefit from the changes in policy are not the ones that dish out funding.
I would wager, for example, that NASA and the UK's MET would indeed benefit from a stronger case for AGW. They currently fund climatology research. With greater urgency for AGW, they probably would receive more money for such research and perhaps money for other projects.
And those agencies aren't independent, but part of a larger government whole. Other parts would do the regulating. There are also cases where agencies have creeped into a regulatory power. Like how the US Army became responsible for a good portion of the water projects in the US.
Secondly, if you've ever written a research proposal to a government agency you'll know that the proposed research will be into topic X. No one writes a proposal saying "we will prove political point X".
So you're saying that such funders have a minimal amount of subtlety and finesse so as not to tip their hand? One would have to be rather incompetent to openly reveal an ulterior motive.
Third, the government agencies don't actually decide who gets the money. They dictate the broad aread, but like all the rest of science, it's sent out for peer review.
I don't buy that at all. They get to choose the peers and they hold the money. And if one looks at actual government agencies which fund research, they routinely impose other goals and purposes. For example, the NSF back in the late 90s started on a fad of providing multilevel research (that is, funding research involving undergrads through professional researchers). That wasn't imposed by their peer review committee.
What I don't get here is why people think that with a fairly corruptible society and huge stakes, that there isn't such activity. It doesn't have to be planned by a secret and sophisticated cabal, just a huge network of people all seeking their interests which in this case happen to go mostly in one direction towards confirmation of AGW as a problem requiring considerable public spending (especially when they grant there is an opposition with similar issues, namely, the fossil fuel industry).
Just as oil companies are going to push things their way, so will renewable power generators or electric cars. And there are big insurers and financial companies looking at picking up some action, such as in carbon emission credit markets.
Instead of granting that maybe we should be looking carefully at this evidence and research due to the large, existing conflicts of interest, they emphasize the groupthink angle, such as how many scientists (however that is counted) which adhere to the current orthodoxy. This is a profoundly anti-scientific viewpoint.
How about by climate simulations for starters? Keep in mind that the spatial resolution of those simulations tends to be much larger than a thunderstorm.
It's a little naive that you think they would need the resolution of a thunderstorm to factor thunderstorms into their equations. (you appear to think they are doing meteorology rather than climatology). The IPCC report indicates they already factor in uncertainties about clouds etc.
CO2 will produce 1.2 +/- 0.1C warming per doubling.
And nowhere is there in that idiotic posting of yours assertion that the values are not known enough to make valid conclusions.
you appear to think they are doing meteorology rather than climatology
No, the problem here is that ephemeral, small spatial scale meteorological activity that can't be modeled by current climate models have an effect on the climate.
The IPCC report indicates they already factor in uncertainties about clouds etc.
The IPCC says a lot of things. It's already known to exaggerate the certainty and extent of existing research and to put special interests in charge of IPCC gatekeeping.
I think in the future when people are doing psychological studies of the developed world "climate change" hysteria, a lot of that research will center on the role that the IPCC played in building an artificially strong consensus and providing an official voice for a bunch of Chicken Little scenarios.
Perhaps I'm letting my stereotyping get the better of me, but why on earth would we let a Republican from Texas be the Chair of the Science Committee? That particular combination seems intuitively like the worst possible combination for that positionn.