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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.'"
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?
Six official investigations have cleared scientists of accusations of wrongdoing.
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/global_warming_contrarians/debunking-misinformation-stolen-emails-climategate.html
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 am not a scientist
Thank you, you could have saved the rest of your comment.
Ezekiel 23:20
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."
If you really want to play the 'OMG Poor People!' card, it'd probably be worth considering the impact of even relatively modest shifts in climate or precipitation on the billion or two economically marginal subsistence dirt farmers and 'squalid urbanites who spend 50% or more of their household income on staple foods'...
The value of some highbrow beachfront property is highly visible; but total chickenshit compared to perturbations in the low-rent side of the agricultural sector.
So you obviously have made up your mind on the argument without looking at any evidence. You willfully accept propaganda and when someone offers you actual evidence you claim it is propaganda. You really should work for Fox News.
people who stand to profit from climate change
If you think that anyone would profit from even the average predicted scenario, you must be living comfortably on another planet. Droughts, floods, food shortages, heat waves, extreme weather patterns, economies destroyed? Where's "profit" in that, for any economy?
Ezekiel 23:20
We have centuries of data, and - most importantly - from different sources. Yes, the accuracy deteriorates the further back you go, but with things like dendrology you can improve the accuracy by making comparisons with samples from different regions, as well as comparing ancient patterns with recent ones. Also, ice cores from both the poles and from glaciers give very long timescale information.
Well, professing your ignorance and parroting a disproved talking point on slashdot is one option if you don't know something. Or you could just fucking google it.
We know due to lots of stuff, like tree rings and lake sediments. While they all have margins of error, they are all in broad agreement that the temperature rises in the last century have been exceptional. We also have CO2 data from ice cores that shows that for 0.5M years CO2 levels varied between about 180 and 280ppm, in step with the ice ages and Milankovitch cycles, while in the last 100 years it has risen suddenly to 400ppm.
It's pretty obvious many/most of the people here on either side of this argument haven't bothered to educate themselves on the subject - so responding with insults is all they can do.
#DeleteChrome
Am I the only person who initially read this as "Lamar Smith (T-Rex)" ?
It depends on how you ask. Here are two examples:
Q: All you arrogant scientists want us to believe this AGCC nonsense; yeah, well prove it to me!!
A: Go F*** yourself.
Translation: You're a troll. I'm busy doing my work. I don't have time for trolls.
Q; Wow, thousands of scientists have spent decades studying this, and they appear to agree for the most part. Gee, I'd really like to know more about this, can you help me understand?
A: Well, it's really complicated, and I only know part of the science behind it. I can explain what I'm doing, but if you want an overview, perhaps you should start with the IPCC report, and maybe track down the references on the Wikipedia article. After that, I'd be happy to answer questions to the best of my ability. Again, though, I'm a specialist, so I won't be able to answer all your questions
Translation: I understand the sincerity of your question, but this is like asking a biologist to teach you all of biology while you stand on one foot. Really, you need to dive in and get past larval stage before you're in a position to ask meaningful questions.
Note: this is hypothetical, I'm not a climate scientist, nor do I play one on TV.
Or if you bothered to read the emails or follow the findings of eight separate panels: The conversations were taken out of context and there was no evidence of any wrongdoing. The other thing is even if the email leaks were true, the issue was with a few scientists. So you are going to discount the work of possibly thousands of other scientists that had nothing to do with the email? That sounds legitimate. That's like saying a few doctors were found to be manipulating data on aspirin, therefore all data on aspirin is not valid.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I'm not an expert on the matter; but my understanding is that there are all sorts of tools for drawing inferences about historical climate. The resolution tends to get coarser, and the precision isn't as good as having a network of contemporary monitoring stations; but it isn't a total shot in the dark.
Ice cores, if you can find suitably deep drill sites and observe good handling practices, can be very helpful. I don't think we have any that go back more than ~800,000 years; but that's certainly something.
For older stuff, plant and animal fossils can help you map out what climate zone a given area was subject to when the fossils were laid down. The geologic record should also provide some information on how active volcanic activity has been as a greenhouse gas source at various points in time.
For relatively recent; but pre-contemporary-monitoring, you can draw inferences from records of crop yields/successes/failures(a matter that has been of considerable interest, often complete with tax records from the relevant authority, for most of human civilization) and, once fossil fuel use kicks up, economic historians can provide decent estimates of burn volumes for much of modern human history.
It seems that the past 5 decades or so of accurate satellite and temp data is way to small of a sample.
Actually, we have a few centuries of fairly accurate data on temperatures. Granted, not in high-resolution grids, but in many places, there are temperature records going back to the 18th century.
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 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
You do realize that the XKCD comic on extrapolation was a joke and not an illustration of how scientists work, don't you?
How can we know with precision about Earths climate 300 years ago, much less 3,000 or 3,000,000 years ago
Perhaps not with the precision that we have for contemporary data, but there is a large number of proxy indicators. Visit your library and borrow a textbook on paleoclimatology. It's fascinating stuff.
Ezekiel 23:20
I agree in the belief people aren't pushing false information for profit but you'd have to be foolish to not see that the climate and weather related damage has a market.
Contractors and firms bid for infrastructure before and after as well as clean up. This trickles to increase sales on most equipment they use. It wouldn't be hard to think of more instances.
This is not science class. The people asking the questions are not looking for real answers. The average person is simply not even qualified to ask questions.
Do you ask questions about how nuclear reactors are working to power your home? No. The experts know. If you ask a question of them. If they are nice they could give you some dumbed down version. But you will never really understand without spending YEARS of your life.
There comes a point where you simply have to trust the experts. We are well beyond that..... VERY well beyond that. The people asking questions publicly are simply doing it for political reasons. They are disingenuous and the enemy of scientific understanding.
It is reasonable to ask questions. However if you go around questioning if F=MA is applicable to every day life, your not questioning your a fucking troll.
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.
Or we could, you know, develop cleaner technologies so that we improve the quality of life without having to set fire to hydrocarbons in order to obtain our energy. Just saying...
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.
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
On one level, you are correct, we do not know how the CO2 level in the various ice core being sampled correlates to what the average temperature on of the planet was at that time. On the otherhand, we do know that the more CO2 and other greenhouse gases, the warmer the average temperature will be until it becomes a runaway system like Venus. We also know the approximate age of those ice core samples and we know from the fossil record elsewhere on the planet what the flora was and we can come pretty close to estimating what things were like.
Here is a simple car analogy for you. When you put your foot on the accelerator you expect it to go. When you put your foot on the brake, you expect it to stop. How do you know that will happen, since we do not have thousands of years of data to compare those actions with? The simple answer is you don't need thousands of years of data. You need reliable data points that are consistent enough that you can extrapolate the likelihood of something happening.
You don't know for certain that your car will go forward if you put your foot on the accelerator, but you expect it will, because the probability is high. Scientists don't know for certain what is going to happen with the climate if we continue as we have been, but they have very strong expectations because, based on the data, the probability is high.
Here's another way to think about it. How do we find sub-atomic particles? Somebody proposes how such and such particle should behave and then we go to the collider and look for something that behaves like it was predicted. If we find it, we confirm it. That's an example of the scientific method. Likewise, climate change makes certain predictions about the increased frequences of certain types of weather patterns and their severity. However, when these predictions are manifested in reality, certain powers that be deny it. So, why is this methodology acceptable in all other areas of science but not this one?
But, maybe the naysayers are right and it isn't climate change. I and many others would like to hear their hypothesis as to what is causing the changing weather patterns, melting polar caps and rising seas. If it is just a cyclical phenomenom as many opponents say, well, I am sure they have the data over the last 100,000 years to back that statement up. Otherwise, that is more wishful thinking than scientific methodology.
This is a classic tragedy of the commons situation. If everyone pollutes everyone looses. If only you pollute and no one else does.... you win. If you dont pollute and everyone else does... you really loose. If no one pollutes everyone kind wins.
I have no idea why tards on the right who get all huffy about free market economics would not recognize this economics 101 situation. Given a free market situation we will always turn to the WORST possible outcome. Since it is always better for the individual to pollute the Nash equilibrium is achieved when everyone chooses to pollute.
Now how to deal with this flaw in the free market solution is more up to debate. But in general this is the EXACT situation where governmental regulation is needed and will produce the most net surplus. The free marketer solution is that every single potential polluter gets together and negotiates who gets to pollute..... I like to call this solution a "government". But repubs get all pissy about that name for some reason. They think every individual entity should negotiate... They seem to forget there are a thing called transaction costs which make this completely crazy in the real world.
" Vegan bakeries?"
It can't be economica; to ship baked goods across 26 lightyears, and it wouldn't be very fresh by the time it got here.
The emails were bad enough, but the worst part was all of the comments in the source code for the programs used. Shit was just made up out of thin air.
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
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
If you're more worried about the money than the science you're doing it wrong. Do you really think that the vast majority of climate scientists from around the world are falsifying science for the sake of money when they're smart enough to know that their falsification will eventually be discovered utterly destroying their scientific reputations? I don't doubt there are a few scientists around who are that venal but not enough in the long run to overcome the vast majority who are honestly seeking to understand our physical world better. To think they're all in on falsifying climate science is to postulate conspiracy on an impossible level.
The science is nearly 200 years old now starting with Fourier who discovered the greenhouse effect in 1824 and it's just been building since then. In the past 20-30 years it's been subject to intense scrutiny yet no one has come up with that magic bullet that explains the current climate change better than the current explanations. If somebody does I'll pay attention.
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...".
Geology. It is all recorded in the rocks. Earth Story (1998) is probably the best and most complete explanation of general geography you will get in documentary form.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I don't understand gravity, and I don't believe in it. Every scientist who has committed murder has believe in gravity. Hitler believed in gravity. That's proof enough that believers in gravity are bad people, and thus we should all not believe in gravity. But I'm "impartial" because I'm ignorant of science, so I should be listened to more than anyone who can explain gravity, as they are all just apologists.
Learn to love Alaska
Which is precisely the problem. We have a legitimate issue with pollution and climate change, but then we have assholes like Al Gore profiting off the whole mess and turning it into a political issue. Al Gore should have realized that he would turn the debate into a left verses right issue and kept his stupid mouth shut... if he really wanted to make a difference he should have secretly funded some non-profit to get some politically neutral members of the scientific community to spread the word.
They wouldn't have to be bombarded if they simply made all of the data public to begin with for anybody to look at. If this is something really truly important that we must all make life altering decisions, then why is it such a closely guarded secret? Empirical science depends on peer review. How the hell are you supposed to peer review top secret data?
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
Could you be more specific? TFA looks fine to me, especially how it starts:
The two of us have spent, in total, more than seven decades studying Earth's climate, and we have joined hundreds of top climate scientists to summarize the state of knowledge for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the World Climate Research Program and other science-based bodies. We believe that our views are representative of the 97 percent of climate scientists who agree that global warming is caused by humans. Legions of studies support the view that, left unabated, this warming will produce dangerous effects. (This commentary, like so much of our work, was a collaborative process, with input from leading climate scientists Julia Cole, Robert W. Corell, Jennifer Francis, Michael E. Mann, Jonathan Overpeck, Alan Robock, Richard C.J. Somerville and Ben Santer.)
Please tell me: where, exactly, are you hallucinating this lack of care and honesty?
Which is precisely the problem. We have a legitimate issue with pollution and climate change, but then we have assholes like Al Gore profiting off the whole mess and turning it into a political issue. Al Gore should have realized that he would turn the debate into a left verses right issue and kept his stupid mouth shut... if he really wanted to make a difference he should have secretly funded some non-profit to get some politically neutral members of the scientific community to spread the word.
You are correct. The fact that George W. Bush's home was "greener" than Al Gore's shows that this is not a left/right issue. It also shows that Al Gore does not truly believe global warming.
The best way to pull the left/right tension out of the issue would be to stop calling people names and using hyperbole. Capitalist pigs are not out to destroy the world or enslave the masses just as commie-tree-huggers are not out to destroy business (most of them anyway). For example, those who believe that GW is a real problem would make better headway selling money (energy) saving solutions to business rather than force regulations down their throats. Capitalists love money. Use that.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
OK, now you are in a position where the burden of proof is on you.
It's legitimate to look at somebody's evidence and say, "it doesn't convince me." It's sometimes *also* legitimate to say "I've seen enough evidence to convince myself beyond a reasonable doubt, so I won't bother thinking about your evidence; otherwise you'd have to take the time to examine the workings of every proposed perpetual motion machine.
What you can't do is say, "I'll dismiss your evidence because there's a possibility you have a conflict of interest." Everyone *always* has a vested interest in any position they've taken in the past. If you go there, if you call a man a liar because he has stated a professional opinion you disagree with, it's *your* responsibility to show evidence that lying has taken place. If you can't, STFU.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Imagine Oppenheimer and Trenberth were surgeons. Then the dialog would go something like this:
OT: You need a costly and risky operation, but we can handle it, trust us.
Patient: What's wrong with me? I don't really feel sick.
OT: You have some kind of tumor, but it's too complicated for you to understand. Just trust us. That cold you had last month, and the headache, and feeling queasy after the Thanksgiving lobster? We can't be 100% sure, but we think they were all probably caused by your disease!
Patient: What's the risk of the operation?
OT: Just trust us that it's less risky to get this expensive operation than not to get it.
Patient: Are there alternative treatments?
OT: None that we recommend. Just trust us, get our operation. We are the experts.
Patient: If I get the operation, how much longer will I live?
OT: Just trust us, you'll live a little longer.
Patient: How much is it going to cost me?
OT: We don't know, but just give us everything you have and we'll see what we can do.
Patient: I'm thinking about getting a second opinion.
OT: Sure, just go down the hall and ask my good friend Dr. Smith about what he thinks about this operation. We are all experts in this disease here and all know this wonderful way of curing it.
Patient: Isn't there some independent doctor I can go to?
OT: No. Everybody who isn't here is a charlatan and you can't trust them. All doctors here agree that this operation is the best thing since sliced bread, even though it's expensive.
Patient: You know, I don't really trust you. I think I'll take my chances and wait a bit longer.
OT: You're obviously in denial. You must be forced to get our operation for your own good. We'll just declare you mentally incompetent, institutionalize you and force you to undergo this procedure. Orderly, put him in a straitjacket.
You don't have to be an expert in a field to conclude that you don't trust someone or their advice.
Yes, and the same data tells us that if we continue that way, we will invariably head for a civilization destroying glaciation event, likely within a few thousand years.
And the same data tells us that this is far below the carbon or temperatures that Earth experienced during most of the time that mammals and primates evolved and that there is no reason to believe that higher CO2 concentrations are anything but favorable.
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]
There are only 10mm in 1 cm. So that would be 37.2cm, or 14.68 inches, since 1900. I think you'll find thats more than a foot.
If you need the cliff notes version, then this and this give pretty damning information on the "scandal" surrounding the leaks.
What we have there.
1 proponent of AWG is angry and frustrated because data he works with doesnt support his theory.
2 another proponent of AWG discards some data, but only portion that was inconvenient for his theory. Doesnt try to explain why the data is "wrong". Still bases his theory of warming using same data for the cold periods, but ignoring it for the hot ones.
Sure, nothing to see here.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
the short answer is that sometimes CO2 trails temperature increase, sometimes it doesn't.
Usually when CO2 trails climate, it's because of orbital forcing, but interestingly, sometimes that temperature increase will increase ocean acidification and amply carbon feedbacks.
Hey, the carbon/feedback cycle is complex, no doubt about it. But carbon is a forcing -- no doubt about it, and right now GHG are responsible for the lion's share of the present and future temperature increase.
Here's deeper discussion of this issue: http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature-intermediate.htm
Here's a video that responds to the CO2 trails climate meme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ3PzYU1N7A
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
It is possible that there are aother factors regarding the sea level in New York, like isostatic rebound, or ground sinking due to aquifers being depleted, or other phenomena. There are places in the world where the land is rising compared to the sea level, an example would be around the Baltic. It is entirely possible that New York harbour could be seeing sea levels rising faster than the global average, I don't know if it is or not.
This is nonsense. How dare you post false accusations without bothering to provide a source! A real source like CNN/NYT or even any credible science magazine, not Fox or some fossil fuel lobbyist's blog.
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
It's both. More CO2 drives warming. More warming causes CO2 to bubble out of the ocean, permafrost to thaw and organic matter to rot and release CO2, etc. And thinks to the practice of carbon dating, we can say reasonably well that a large part of the current CO2 increase is from long-buried carbon sources--aka fossil fuels.
Yes, it's the rate that's troubling. Because in the past it took thousands of years to see the sort of warming the gradually resulted in tropical conditions in Canada's latitude. But with the rapid rate we're seeing now, the honest fear is that even if we were to simply stop fossil fuel CO2 emissions completely, we'd still continue to see the unprecedented rapid temperature rise because of the previously mentioned warming->CO2 release.
Except that your point is sort of superfluous. Even if what you state is true--which I'm not certain of--, the fact is that we know pretty confidently that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and higher CO2 concentrations means a greater temperature. We also know, pretty confidently, that greater temperatures have the above mentioned forcing cycle. That there have been possible exceptions to this cycle isn't comforting unless we have a good reason to believe the mentioned cycle won't repeat itself. That is, even if someone could come up with a good explanation for past higher temp/lower CO2 periods, it doesn't resolve the current higher temp/higher CO2 period. A better place to look would be lower or flat temper/high CO2 periods and consider why or how we could take that track. To that end, I haven't remotely heard anything to suggest we could be or are on that track.
The closest I've heard about anything along those lines is considerations on combating global warming with things like mitigating global warming with dust clouds (either in the atmosphere or in space). The general problem with that is a matter of scale--that human CO2 emissions are so great, countering them with dust would be of similar scale great, and that introduces a lot of unknowns like (a) how much dust to use, (b) how to remove dust if we go too far, (c) all the atmospheric (if done in the atmosphere) risks of increased dust, (d) the cost/risks of doing the same in space (a dust cloud could slow asteroids and increase the risk of them hitting Earth), etc. In essence, anything of the scale that could fix the problem are probably also of the scale of the problem itself. So, we have the real risk of solving one problem just to produce another one. Hence, it'd seem a lot wiser to head off CO2 release as much as we can and only really consider alternatives as a last resort.
But, seriously, we're so far from even seriously trying to deal with CO2 release. :(
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
If I may impose, could you explain how it is known that CO2 drives warming, and not vice versa?
We know that CO2 drives warming because physics. It fucking works. Now, warming may also drive CO2 to an extent, and the extensive warming we're causing may have a runaway effect, but that's not a happy story, that's a sad one.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Canadian farmers stand to do pretty well, for a start.
Actually, it'd be more along these lines:
....time passes....
OT: We, and 97% of all the doctors out there agree that you have a sickness. It's so complicated we would never be able to help another person if we explained it completely to every person who's never had any medical training who wants to have it all explained, therefor we say "you have a problem, lets see if we can come up with something to help it out."
Patient: No, i know i've never had any medical training, and i'm scared of doing anything cause Billy-Bo-Bob and his wife/daughter Mary-Beth-Bob said it wun't nothing, so you're wrong because they all got them a 10th grade edukation. I don't want to actually have to take initiative and go learn to read so i can have a chance to understand it.
OT: If we don't try to come up with a solution, you may die.
Patient: You don't know nothing.
Patient: - - - dies - - -
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
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.
Are you saying the oceans, which are all connected, are as much as a constant 4" different in level, say, between NYC and, oh, Denmark or Japan?
Yes. See, for example, this Straight Dope which mentions that there is a 8" difference between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans at Panama.
Prevailing winds push water and create a difference in sea level across oceans. When those winds change, so does the ocean level. Centripetal force has an affect, causing higher levels towards the equator. Temperature and salinity also affects water levels. Then as others mention, the land itself changes height with N. America generally still springing back from the weight of the glaciers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
How do you track down the air polluters? Sue everyone who drives by? Film the smoking cars and sue them? Things like NOx are invisible. Same with when there are 10 industries up wind, they enforce their property rights to stop you from entering and measuring pollution on their property so how to figure out who is actually polluting your air? And when it turns out that all 10 are to some degree, how do you enforce your property rights? Sue them?
Same with water, the creak you get drinking water from goes through 10 properties, how do you find the one with a leaky septic field, how to find the ones recklessly using pesticides? How do you afford to measure the e. Coli and pesticides in your drinking water? If everyone has a leaky septic field and recklessly use pesticides, how do you enforce your property rights?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
For someone who probably agrees my stance on pollution, your "counter" argument is a little misplaced and umm not accurate. For starts "Everybody has a right to reasonably clean air, as part of the property inherent to all humans on earth." Is simply not true. I do not see any laws supporting this. Beyond that in economics is entirely separate field than politics and rights and privileges haven o barring on pure economics. Thus your point is just not even relevant to my point.
However, that still raises the question of how one explains the verdant Greenland of the Norse settlement of about 1000 years ago; the medieval warm period.
The same reason that Iceland was a frozen wasteland 1000 years ago. Public relations. They wanted people to move to Greenland and they didn't want people to move to Iceland as things were actually much like they are now.
Climate does seem to respond to other forces including the Sun being mildly variable. Currently we're pretty good at measuring the output of the Sun and even in the past an active Sun affects things like isotope levels of various elements that we can dig up and measure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
They have been flat, if you define "flat" as "rising to the level of the warmest year measured to date, even without the El Niño event that helped that year become the warmest".
If the "solar activity->global warming" hypothesis is true, then why does the temperature keep being at the level it rose to due to exceptional solar activity when that activity has disappeared?
They threw out one set of data that was showing anomalous results. Since that paper was published there are many new tree ring datasets that don't show an anomaly past the 1960's. If you read the paper they fully explain the anomalous data and what they did about it.
Really? "on average those in the most extreme fuel poverty live in larger than average homes" Boy that's my kind of poverty..
The alarmist models have largely failed to model both the past and ongoing present situation, and are therefore useless in predicting the future.
This is a big steaming pile of bullshit.
Ezekiel 23:20
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.
A (relevant) note about modding on Slashdot:
I notice that the other poster, who was provably wrong (see the link I posted... the correct one that is), got modded up while I -- although I was right -- was modded down.
What does that tell you? I've had this happen left and right when it came to this particular subject matter. But no matter how much I get modded down, I'm still not wrong. Sure, I've made some mistakes. But so have everybody else.