Dialing Back the Alarm On Climate Change

An anonymous reader writes "A leaked copy of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made the rounds and the good news is that the predicted temperature rise expected as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than predicted in 2007. From the article: 'Admittedly, the change is small, and because of changing definitions, it is not easy to compare the two reports, but retreat it is. It is significant because it points to the very real possibility that, over the next several generations, the overall effect of climate change will be positive for humankind and the planet. Specifically, the draft report says that "equilibrium climate sensitivity" (ECS)—eventual warming induced by a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which takes hundreds of years to occur—is "extremely likely" to be above 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), "likely" to be above 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and "very likely" to be below 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 Fahrenheit). In 2007, the IPPC said it was "likely" to be above 2 degrees Celsius and "very likely" to be above 1.5 degrees, with no upper limit. Since "extremely" and "very" have specific and different statistical meanings here, comparison is difficult.'"

Comments

In before

[Orp]

CLIMATEDERP!

Re:In before

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Like a tin-teardrop!

My dear God in heaven! We can even predict Brownian motion and particle distribution in 20 cubic meters, with percentages and concentrations involved with this "modeling".

Yet, with the introduction of additional variables, let us say n variables, which include surface interaction with seas, the presence of ice-sheets and glaciers, solar activity, volcanism, etcetera, ad infinitum... Somehow, a reliable and predictable model of planetary atmospheric climate - without prejudice or bias - is expected to be produced within the statistical expectations required to make policy decisions?

I hate Koch Brother-sponsored "make me obscenely richer" propaganda, much as the next free-thinker does. But there is also a giant, Billionaire-fueled machine at setting the agenda for individual and collective behavior, based on making dramatic assertions about "Global Climate". If you don't believe it?

Well, then Albert Gore has a bridge to sell you, and you've already made the first couple of payments - at the low, introductory "teaser" rate.

This whole business is a war between old-school resource robber-barons, and new-global capital, which looks to establish cooperation on permanent rentier concessions. Both spend tens-of-millions shaping perception (insert standard Edward Bernays reference), in the form of "research science", think tanks and public policy forums. None of these players are charities...

Re:In before

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

QOTD on Slashfooter, at time you responded:

"You can fool all the people all of the time if the advertising is right and the budget is big enough."
-- Joseph E. Levine

So you declare the film, and Gore's powerpoint, "largely accurate" through the single citation of single "Expert Witness" - Dr Philip Stott - in a court case?
Stott gave evidence, for the distribution of a film, in which he appears.

"The producers would like to assure you the public, that no actual research funding was hurt in the making of this film."

In "Inconvenient Truth" Gore told lies - provably false - about "hockeysticks" and polar bears. Manipulation. The only "six metre rise" factually indicated, was the level of bullshit - and the rise of my gorge, at such. Oh. And Kilimanjaro isn't thawing. Lake Chad is safe. Katrina was a disaster made by hubris and broken infrastructure - not human impact to a weather event.

Who funded the effort? Who was going to underwrite the proposed 50,000 copies distributed to schools? Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama? ;-)

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"Also, the inconvenient truth was largely accurate: http://www.skepticalscience.com/al-gore-inconvenient-truth-errors.htm"

Skeptical Science is hardly an unbiased source. Lots of other sources have some rather scathing things to say about "Inconvenient Truth".

Skeptical Science is a propaganda machine. They adopted the "skeptical" monitor in order to try to infiltrate the actual skeptics.

Just sayin'... I'm not claiming they're wrong but like any other obviously biased source, any true skeptic is obligated to take their word with a large grain of salt.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

s/monitor/moniker

Damn You, Autocorrect!

Re:In before

[I'm New Around Here]

Look, the human body is a massively complex thing, but we can still say that calorines in > calories spent it = weight gain.

The problem with that analogy is that is seems people forget about the fact that a human can start exercising, therefor burning more calories that previously, and lose weight while taking in an even larger amount of calories.

In other words, models are based on one scenario, and then not accurately corrected as reality shows them to be wrong.

Re:In before

[rolfwind]

Skeptical Science is hardly an unbiased source.

If it's human, it's biased.

Skeptical Science is a propaganda machine. They adopted the "skeptical" monitor in order to try to infiltrate the actual skeptics.

Citation?

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"If it's human, it's biased."

There is "human error" - type bias, and then there is deliberate bias.

"Citation?"

The whole damned site.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"The problem with that analogy is that is seems people forget about the fact that a human can start exercising, therefor burning more calories that previously, and lose weight while taking in an even larger amount of calories."

It's actually false in another way. When you begin to get into decent shape, you lose inches but actually GAIN weight, because muscle is 3 x as dense as fat.

Re:In before

[jc42]

When you begin to get into decent shape, you lose inches but actually GAIN weight, because muscle is 3 x as dense as fat.

It might be interesting to figure out where that silly claim originated. A quick check finds a number of sites online claiming that actual measurements (imagine that ;-) find mammalian skeletal muscles to have a density of about 1.06, and mammalian fat has a density of about 0.9. A quick division turns up a ration of 1.18 between those, nowhere near 3.

If you want people to believe you, you really shouldn't use numbers that can be debunked by measurements that can be done fairly easily in any well-equipped kitchen with a few chunks of meat and fat that you can get at your local grocery stores. Yes, you can vary the results a bit, e.g. by cooking the fat out of the meat and the water out of the fat, but you won't get anywhere near a ratio of 3 for their density.

And "dense" isn't a difficult concept. Density is measured in grams per cc. Your kitchen scale can measure the grams, and the water-displacement method popularized by that ancient Greek guy is a very easy way to measure volume of oddly-shaped chunks, if you have a largish measuring cup. This is good enough to get 2-significant-digit measurements, or 3 if you have good tools and are more careful.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

"Citation?"

The whole damned site.

The Earth was created by God.
Citation? The whole damn Earth!
(An appeal to your opinion that something is self-evident is neither a citation nor evidence. You fail at logic.)

Re:In before

[TheRealHocusLocus]

> "Citation?"

CITATION: http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4216793&cid=44858311

A recursive definition means never having to say you're sorry.

Re:In before

[riverat1]

If the energy coming in at the top of the atmosphere is less than the energy leaving at TOA the Earth is going to heat up. It really is that simple.

Re:In before

[sycodon]

"Citation Needed" or variants should be a key word that cause the person uttering it to be attacked by 20 skanky female environmentalists who have been living in a tree for the last year.

Re:In before

[worldthinker]

The question has been asked before. What is the consequence of we as a collective through our governmental policy of lowering human contributed GHG producing particles? It's not economic ruin. Indeed, as we are discovering, whole new industries are being born and matured that pay living wages in proximity to local and regional populations as well as contributing to our societal wealth. And yes, some people will also get rich in the process. But ecisions about land use and urbanism create more efficient cities and the prospect of continued affordability and rising equality. Decisions about how we produce food raises the prospect of better quality and healthier foods which gives rise to a healthier population. It means that we look ahead and plan for the inevitable dislocation that already observed climate change is making. It also means fewer things that unprincipled Capitalists can exploit to create human misery.

The likes of the Koch brothers are spending their billions to convince you to do nothing because their ability to exploit you and extract more billions out of you depends on your doing nothing. They salivate at the prospect of your paying them for the misery that climate change will bring to your locale. For the shortages of food, the shortages of potable water, the deluge of climate in places like Colorado are already bringing. A superstorm wipes out your town whether its on the gulf of Mexico or the Eastern Seaboard who will be there to wholesale commandeer whole cities and properties? They will. Who will control the re-construction? They will. The cycle will repeat again and again.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

It isn't recursive.

The whole site is evidence that it is biased. Literally. If you look at it in its entirety, and you are objective, you could not honestly reach any other conclusion.

Just the fact that it is called "Skeptical Science", and yet the ONLY topic of discussion anywhere on the site is global warming (or the inappropriately-named "climate change", if you prefer), is pretty good evidence that its title was intended to mislead.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"If you want people to believe you, you really shouldn't use numbers that can be debunked by measurements that can be done fairly easily "

Very well, granted. Mea culpa.

However, if you're honest you also have to admit that while it's inaccurate, it's also a very frequently quoted figure.

And if you're honest, you also have to admit that it's still MORE dense, so the basic premise is still true: you CAN lose inches while gaining weight.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole site is evidence that it is biased. Literally. If you look at it in its entirety, and you are objective, you could not honestly reach any other conclusion.

People who reach a conclusion other than yours are dishonest? Is that accusation helpful?

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

if you're honest you also have to admit that while it's inaccurate, it's also a very frequently quoted figure.

Another preemptive accusation of dishonesty. Okay, I honestly admit that you very frequently quote inaccurate misinformation.

But none of this makes the analogy that "calories in > calories spent = weight gain" false as long as you're in a constant gravitational field. Its truth is due to conservation of mass-energy, which is also why changing the top of the atmosphere radiative forcing changes the climate's total heat content.

Re:In before

[TapeCutter]

Skeptical Science is a propaganda machine. They adopted the "skeptical" monitor in order to try to infiltrate the actual skeptics. Just sayin'...

Let go of the politics, Gore did a slide show of the then current IPCC reports. I have never seen his movie since I had already read most of the reports. The main authors of those reports were the "source" I listened to when I read the reviews, they said he did a good job of disseminating their contents to a wide audience. Knowing what the primary source actually says (ie actually reading the reports) is why I believe the sceptical science site is a reputable source. Another positive sign is they are admitting a "retreat", I have never seen a pseudo-sceptical lobby group exercise self-skepticisim in the face of evidence, have you?.

TFA itself (which I haven't read) is good news in a scientific sense, it implies that feedback models are now considered good enough to put a hard upper limit on climate sensitivity which when you look at the "most likely" numbers hasn't really changed that much since it was first estimated in the 70's. That hard upper limit is a significant step forward since they have been looking for it for about 40yrs now. It also implies they have ruled out catastrophic feedbacks such as the frozen methane deposits in the N hemisphere. Mathematically it's obviously "difficult" to compare a bounded and unbounded curve, I expect pseudo-skeptics are already weaving that into their bullshit. Some lobbyists is probably banging out a WSJ opinion column as we speak, the obvious argument being that it was done so that nobody could track their predictions.

Propaganda depends solely on the ignorance of the audience to be effective, for instance your post implies that somehow climate scientists are not by definition skeptics? I mean no offense when I say that you don't know what your talking about and your ignorance on this subject is getting in the way of your intelligence.

Any true skeptic is obligated [to rectify that]

.

Re:In before

[russotto]

The question has been asked before. What is the consequence of we as a collective through our governmental policy of lowering human contributed GHG producing particles?

Pascal's wager is dumb with gods and it's dumb with greenhouse gases. In any case, so far drops in greenhouse gas emissions have been the result of, not the cause of, economic ruin.

But ecisions about land use and urbanism create more efficient cities and the prospect of continued affordability and rising equality.

Those of us in the first world are negatively impacted by "rising equality" -- it means China and other countries not covered improve their own standard of living (by emitting GHGs like there's no tomorrow) at our expense.

Re:In before

[TapeCutter]

Oh, I didn't notice it was you Jane. Don't bother replying, my community service is done.

Re: In before

[mixed_signal]

Citations?

And which of these was on either a per reviewed paper or IPCC report and which were in some other media?

The "hockey stick" graph has been found to be fairly accurate... See summary on Wikipedia, for example:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_stick_controversy

The basic declarations of the IPCC have been consistent for years, namely increased severity of storms with more water content in the atmosphere, and more variation in global weather patterns.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"People who reach a conclusion other than yours are dishonest? Is that accusation helpful?"

No, you distorted my words. Or at least my clear meaning.

I did not write "if they don't feel as I do they are dishonest." What I wrote was that if THEY are honest, they will reach the obvious conclusion. The difference may be small, but it exists and it is important.

Very obviously I was stating an opinion, but it is an honest one. The site carries nothing but articles about global warming, and SUPPORTS only one side of that argument. On the whole site. So, "skeptical" it ain't.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"Another preemptive accusation of dishonesty. Okay, I honestly admit that you very frequently quote inaccurate misinformation."

Nonsense. If you want to talk about "another", this is another distortion of what I actually wrote. I accused nobody of anything.

Fact, not opinion or accusation: the idea that muscle is 3 x as dense as fat is commonly quoted. If you are honest (and not mentally disabled), you WILL admit that.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080715161832AASDWuj



http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=35908

http://forum.t-tapp.com/showthread.php?16220-YOU-BET-MUSCLE-WEIGHS-MORE-THAN-FAT!

(I could find hundreds more if I wanted to.) So I wasn't accusing anyone of dishonesty. If anything, I was accusing them of NOT being mentally disabled. I'm wondering a bit about you, though.

"But none of this makes the analogy that "calories in > calories spent = weight gain" false as long as you're in a constant gravitational field."

Which is completely irrelevant to MY comment, which was about consuming more calories but losing inches.

The only accusation I'm making is that you're being an ass and deliberately picking on me, again. Go away. Your comments continue to add nothing to the actual discussion and I don't particularly like being harassed.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"Its truth is due to conservation of mass-energy, which is also why changing the top of the atmosphere radiative forcing changes the climate's total heat content."

And further, since you want to re-raise an old issue: another fact is that nobody is arguing with you about that. But the fact that you seem to think someone is, calls into question your intelligence.

I do not know anybody who argues that changing radiative forcing can change the heat content. The only question *I* have is whether the forcing is actually being significantly changed.

So, I say again: knock off the bullshit, and stop arguing with me about things I'm not even arguing. All you're doing is proving, yet again, that you're a clueless asshole.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

Correction: I don't know of anyone who argues that changing the forcing would not change the heat content. Again, the only question I have is whether such change is taking place.

Wait... I will amend that. I question whether the forcing is being changed in a way that is consistent with "greenhouse gas" warming models.

But the question is whether such a change in forcing is taking place; not whether such a forcing (IF you assume it exists) would change heat content.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

Is Talk Origins "skeptical" using your criteria?

Re:In before

[SteveFoerster]

Depending on what you mean by "attacked", I'm down.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, the human body is a massively complex thing, but we can still say that calorines in > calories spent it = weight gain.

The problem with that analogy is that is seems people forget about the fact that a human can start exercising, therefor burning more calories that previously, and lose weight while taking in an even larger amount of calories.

In other words, models are based on one scenario,

No they're not:

Climate models are used to generate projections showing the consequences of various courses of action

Then you said:

and then not accurately corrected as reality shows them to be wrong.

And it's you that's wrong, again (from the above link, itself well documented with links):

In order to gain useful insights, we need climate models that behave realistically. Climate modelers are always working to develop an ever more faithful representation of the planet’s climate system. At every step along the way, the models are compared to as much real-world data as possible. They’re never perfect, but these comparisons give us a sense for what the model can do well and where it veers off track. That knowledge guides the use of the model, in that it tells us which results are robust and which are too uncertain to be relied upon.

Do you have issues with other scientific models, or are you a climate expert? Do you tell particle physicists that their models are wrong based on your gut feeling too?

And the problem with your scenario is that you fail at skepticism, per the article again:

Skepticism is certainly not an unreasonable response when first exposed to the concept of a climate model. But skepticism means examining the evidence before making up one’s mind.

Actually, the real problem with your post is that while you do point out that a human over-consuming food can begin exercising to put themselves back into a better state, you're also dismissing the current climate models without links of any kind, never mind links to peer-reviewed science. It this attitude that prevents action from being taken to address the "exercising" issue.

Re:In before

[PapayaSF]

This whole business is a war between old-school resource robber-barons, and new-global capital, [...] Both spend tens-of-millions shaping perception [...] None of these players are charities...

I hope you don't believe that just because an organization is a charity, their opinions are unbiased and reliable. Non-profits, though officially not partisan, are often quite political and often lie to advance their agendas.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

... completely irrelevant to MY comment...

Oops. I mistakenly thought you said the analogy that "calories in > calories spent = weight gain" was "actually false". That mistake is probably related to my being a mentally disabled clueless asshole...

Re:In before

[Capsaicin]

There is "human error" - type bias, and then there is deliberate bias.

True, but it's largely irrelevant whether the bias is in error or deliberate since bias is not the problem when exhibited by a scientists as it would be if exhibited by a jurist. 'Bias,' that is, as in Einstein was biased in favour of relativity, Galileo was biased in favour of a heliocentric solar system. On the whole climate scientists, of course, are similarly biased, which is the say that overwhelmingly they really do believe the model is supported by their data.

More pertinent is the fact whether talking points are properly founded upon the reported science. skepticalscience.com provides citations for all the arguments that are put in favour of the orthodox position. That is something that few sites on either side of the political debate surrounding climate science do. Perhaps this highest quality sceptical site was Roger Pielke Sr's now sadly missed Climate Science blog which was similarly founded in science rather than invective.

Reference to the actual (published) science allows for a truly scientific debate. Which is to say, one that involves investigating the original work, its methodology, maths etc and comparison with other work. Everything else, such as the discussion we are having here, is just so much hot air.

Denigrating an obviously high-quality site such as skepticalscience.com as a "propaganda machine" fails to rise up to the level of debate expected from intelligent people.

As far as the "skeptical" moniker: the site's prominently displayed byline "Getting skeptical about global warming skepticism" gives the lie to the notion that it is attempting to "infiltrate the actual skeptics." Actual sceptics, for course, being very far and few between. Rejecting orthodox science while unquestioningly swallowing anything that confirms one's pre-conceived ideological position does not qualify as scepticism. And that is what the name skepticalscience.com highlights.

Re:In before

[guises]

It's in the summary. You are in before nothing.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"Is Talk Origins "skeptical" using your criteria?"

I have never seen the site before, so I don't know, I don't care, and it is irrelevant to anything *I* have written here.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"True, but it's largely irrelevant whether the bias is in error or deliberate since bias is not the problem when exhibited by a scientists as it would be if exhibited by a jurist. 'Bias,' that is, as in Einstein was biased in favour of relativity, Galileo was biased in favour of a heliocentric solar system. On the whole climate scientists, of course, are similarly biased, which is the say that overwhelmingly they really do believe the model is supported by their data."

Since I was referring to journalistic bias, all this is moot.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

I would hardly call it "public service", since there are parts that are provably untrue.

For example, the IPCC didn't present a giant chart of two trends that had an approximately 300-year time differential, and "conveniently" forget to properly label the the axes.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

It carries nothing but articles about evolution, and SUPPORTS only one side of that argument. On the whole site. So, "skeptical" it ain't. Right?

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"Oops. I mistakenly thought you said the analogy that "calories in > calories spent = weight gain" was "actually false". That mistake is probably related to my being a mentally disabled clueless asshole..."

Apparently so, since your own statement here is actually false in at least two different ways.

First, the sentence was actually

"calorines in > calories spent it = weight gain. "

... which makes no sense. But even if it was what you wrote above, it is still untrue. Calories aren't weight, and a simple difference between calories in and calories burned is simply not representative of the actual process.

As a general concept it may be fine, but we're being actual here.

So since you actually just fucked it up, does that make you brilliant?

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

Correct.

skep ti cal [skep-ti-kuhl] adjective 1. inclined to skepticism; having doubt: a skeptical young woman.
2. showing doubt: a skeptical smile.
3. denying or questioning the tenets of a religion: a skeptical approach to the nature of miracles.
4. (initial capital letter) of or pertaining to Skeptics or Skepticism.

If they present one side without question or doubt, they aren't being skeptical.

On the other hand, they may be forgiven for not being skeptical, since evolution via some natural-selection-like means has been a theory for over 200 years, its predictions have been tested, and it has consistently shown to be correct (or at least more correct than prior theories).

AGW, in its current form, on the other hand, is a very new theory, is still soundly being debated by real, reputable scientists, and has been pretty terrible so far at making actual predictions.

I know what you were getting at, but I laugh. They are not even remotely comparable, from a scientific perspective.

Re:In before

[gnoshi]

By your implied definition of bias, presenting only material consistent with reality would constitute a bias.

Being 'skeptical' entails rationally examining the claims made about (and from) the science associated with climate change, which may at times mean criticising overreaching claims about the future impact of climate change. It doesn't mean commenting on "ZOMG! Arctic sea ice is up since last year! Global warming is teh h0ax".
On that note, I'll leave open the question of whether the Skeptical Science site is truly skeptical.

Re:In before

[interkin3tic]

Why is it with climate change, we always end up talking about Al Gore?

Imply all the sinister things you want about Gore. He's in it for the money? Sure. He's a hypocrite? Okay! He's lying? Hey, he's a politician and his lips are moving. He's just doing it for a carbon credit scheme? I believe it totally. In fact, I'm just going to go ahead and say that Al Gore is literally the devil. Everything bad you could say about him, I accept as truth.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way... why the fuck haven't we started doing anything serious about climate change when pretty much everyone agrees it's real?

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

No, Talk Origins is skeptical about evolution because they critically examine the evidence regarding evolution. The fact that the evidence supports evolution doesn't make them unskeptical. Despite your hand waving, the same is true for SkS and AGW.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

": Skeptical Science is a propaganda machine. They adopted the "skeptical" monitor in order to try to infiltrate the actual skeptics. "

What a load of paranoid codswallop. Naive Skepticism in the Descartian sense (I doubt everything except that I doubt) hasn't really been what Skepticism as a praxis has been since Popper codified the modern rules of science as we know them today. Specifically Skepticism has been about a defence of the scientific method and its insistence on evidence, and in this respect the site works well.

Look, whatever you might think about climate change, the evidence for it is utterly overwhelming, and comes from tens of thousands of data sources and thousands of studies. We also know that largely its caused by humans (We knew that since CO2s effect on infrared absorbsion was demonstrated in the 1800s when concern about CO2 and climate change first emerged in the literature). We also know for it to NOT be true would require either a fundamental rewrite of the laws of physics or the discovery of an unseen countermeasure that not only is supressing climate change, but somehow also affecting multiple lines of instrumentation to disguise itself and create some sort of pretend-temperature.

As such the scientific consensus is firmly set here. There actually isn't a debate about it in climate science anymore, only amongst non experts, in the same way non experts debate if evolution is real or if we really landed on the moon. Its an interesting debate, but only from a sociological perspective.

So to claim that its fraudulent to call what skeptical science does skeptical is to perform violence on language itself. Why would they need to "sneak In" when its quite clear they are doing whats written on the label?

Re:In before

[Maritz]

Your opinion of the site is more revealing about you than the site.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just conservation of energy, which is actually very well established.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

"Citation Needed" or variants should be a key word that cause the person uttering it to be attacked by 20 skanky female environmentalists who have been living in a tree for the last year.

I'm so desperate that even THAT sounds good. Do I need to bring a chain saw to get them down all at once? Or will just slowly pulling petals off a live daisy be good enough?

Re:In before

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Climate change has been occurring since the Earth, ejected as a lump of molten iron form the heart of the Sun, settled into orbit and began slowly cooling...

You want to stop hypothesized, anthropogenic contribution? Downsize the US navy to coastal defense. You will remove enough human-released C02 from being projected into the atmosphere, to prevent imposing tax-based austerities on the captive population. This will also block the creation of a speculative secondary derivative market for carbon credits - which is the real motivator behind this farce. Getting more of your limited financial resource into the pockets of the - already - super-rich.

Re:In before

[riverat1]

When they can't attack the science they attack the Mann (or Gore or Phil Jones, etc.).

Re:In before

[riverat1]

The greenhouse effect theory will be 200 years old in another decade. Fourier first talked about it in 1824.

Re:In before

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

C'mon. I'm talking about general perception, real or not, of "latter day, saintly self-sacrificing types" - and sarcastically.

My point is that someone stands to make a bundle, for decades - by setting the agenda for grade-school indoctrination. They don't go to court for the right to give away free books and DVDs to the whole country out of altruism.

There are numerous, more imminent calamities, killing the population globally - right now. But there aren't organizations being funded to solve these crises and provide you with facts about them in primary education. Solving them doesn't make these people rich.

The AGW boondoggle is another neo-liberal "shape the world" agenda, this time focused on taxing the air you breathe, instead of reshaping the sovereignty of resistant nations.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

So? In that time, what has been its predictive value when it came to climate?

Until a few years ago, exactly zero. And since then, not much. Nearly all AGW models have consistently overstated warming.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

I'm wasn't "handwaving". I quoted the fucking dictionary.

You arguments have been a great deal less than impressive.

Re:In before

[Alef]

Ironically, your comment and the comment you respond to shows exactly how easily one can get caught up in the details of the complexity, and forget about the underlying logic.

Save for the effect of fluid intake/loss (causing temporary changes in weight), the GGP was pretty much spot on. Your weight change is the difference between energy consumption and energy expenditure. The only reason you are able to gain muscle mass when exercising (and I then assume you mean weight lifting, since endurance exercise doesn't really cause muscle hypertrophy), is because you are eating enough. Try exercising while fasting, and I will guarantee you that there is no weight gain whatsoever.

The difference when exercising is that you increase energy expenditure (the "calories spent" part of the equation), and that you gain weight in the form of muscle mass instead of or as well as adipose tissue (i.e. "fat"), provided that you eat enough.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"No, Talk Origins is skeptical about evolution because they critically examine the evidence regarding evolution."

Not no. Yes. Just in case you did not understand my prior comment: you do not get to redefine English words to mean whatever you want them to.

You are wrong.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

Further, while Fourier postulated an "insulation effect", and it is even called a "greenhouse effect", it bore very little resemblance to current CO2-based AGW theory, which is only a few decades old at most. Just for example: Fourier considered convection, which is notably absent from significant mention in the majority of current climate models.

Re:In before

[advocate_one]

explain low-carb high-fat diets then... They work, I'm on one myself. I was losing some 2 lbs a week yet eating more calories per day and doing hardly any more exercise per day than I did before switching. I'm now in maintenance phase having achieved my target weight and have excellent blood glucose control (the reason I went onto the diet in the first place). The calories you get when you combust food in a bomb calorimeter do NOT equal the calories released when that same food is metabolised in the body. Unfortunately, all calorie figures in the nutrition info are based upon the burning in presence of excess oxygen method of calculating them.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

you sir, are completely full of shit.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

you sir, are also completely full of shit.

Re: In before

[Pino Grigio]

The basic declarations of the IPCC have been consistent for years

So what? You can be consistently wrong your entire life. It's meaningless.

The "hockey stick" graph has been found to be fairly accurate

Very funny. Did William Connoley edit that page? I doubt Mann's hockey stick will feature in the new IPCC report at all. Here's what Keith Briffa had to say about Mann's methods (from "climategate" emails):

I am sick to death of Mann stating his reconstruction represents the tropical area just because it contains a few (poorly temperature representative ) tropical series. He is just as capable of regressing these data again any other “target” series, such as the increasing trend of self-opinionated verbage he has produced over the last few years

Poorly "temperature representative"? Oh dear!

Re:In before

[Pino Grigio]

Mann and Jones aren't doing science. They're doing grant farming and calling it science.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

... it bore very little resemblance to current CO2-based AGW theory, which is only a few decades old at most.

Please define "a few decades" so we know if you're talking about research performed in the 1930's, 1950's, or more recently.

Fourier considered convection, which is notably absent from significant mention in the majority of current climate models.

Citation?

Re:In before

[Pino Grigio]

Look, whatever you might think about climate change, the evidence for it is utterly overwhelming, and comes from tens of thousands of data sources and thousands of studies

Stop right there. Climate Change is always happening and always has. It's a straw man argument to suggest anyone thinks anything differently, or that any of these studies should come to any other conclusion. There aren't thousands of data sources and thousands of studies showing man's emissions of CO2 are responsible for that change. There's a hypothesis, baked into models, which seems to be largely inaccurate if you compare the output of those models to actual reality.

That fact that there are billions of dollars in grants to be had from gullible tax payers to institutions and NGOs researching this coming "catastrophe" should make you pause for thought if nothing else does. Why would the IPCC conclude it wasn't a catastrophe, if by doing so their very existence could be called into question? They don't want their gravy train to stop.

Re:In before

[TapeCutter]

Primary sources, do us all a favour and start using them!

Re:In before

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

That's Mister "+5 Insightful full-of-shit Sir" to you.

Now, back to your cogent argument, and evidence-ridden point of view?

Re:In before

[riverat1]

See what I mean.

Re:In before

[riverat1]

Ok, in 1896 Svante Arrhenius wrote:

if the quantity of carbonic acid increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression.

To further quote the Wikipedia article on Arrhenius:

The following equivalent formulation of Arrhenius' greenhouse law is still used today:

                [delta]F = [alpha] Ln(C/C_0)

Here C is carbon dioxide (CO2) concentration measured in parts per million by volume (ppmv); C_0 denotes a baseline or unperturbed concentration of CO2, and F is the radiative forcing, measured in watts per square meter. The constant alpha has been assigned a value between five and seven.

Based on information from his colleague Arvid Högbom (sv), Arrhenius was the first person to predict that emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels and other combustion processes were large enough to cause global warming. In his calculation Arrhenius included the feedback from changes in water vapor as well as latitudinal effects, but he omitted clouds, convection of heat upward in the atmosphere, and other essential factors. His work is currently seen less as an accurate prediction of global warming than as the first demonstration that it should be taken as a serious possibility.

That was nearly 120 years ago.

Re:In before

[bzipitidoo]

That fact that there are billions of dollars in grants to be had from gullible tax payers to institutions

No, actually, much science has had funding cut.

You accuse scientists of conspiring for grant money, but give Big Oil a free pass on the anti global warming propaganda we know they've pumped out.

It's okay to build the Keystone XL pipeline because it creates jobs, but funding scientists to create jobs isn't okay?

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course if you deny the greenhouse effect, you'll have a hard time explaining why the earth is warm enough for us to live on it. So you can easily dismiss anyone arguing that the greenhouse effect doesn't exist.

A more complex question is how human actions change the greenhouse effect, and if that change is large enough to cause a significant climate change. That involves questions of how much the human action actually modifies the greenhouse gas content (as there are natural processes both producing and consuming greenhouse gases, so you cannot simply equate the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities with the change of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere), and questions on how the climate reacts to that.

Of course hidden subventions masquerading as anti-AGW measures (see: ban of incandescent light bulbs) don't really help either.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that we've gotten that out of the way... why the fuck haven't we started doing anything serious about climate change when pretty much everyone agrees it's real?

Only fringe nuts dont think climate is changing. However there are also fringe nuts who think its definitely humans, definitely lethal and all because CO2 has 2 horns. For the rest of us in the middle we have a choice to believe either of the fringe groups or to wait for scientists to figure out how the climate actually works. We know the climate changes naturally, thats a given. CO2 is proven a greenhouse gas but that means nothing in isolation. The climate is a complex web of interactions which we barely understand. This is a learning opportunity.

For all the talk of science there are a lot of people in the MMCC debate who are willing to jump behind whoever claims to have the easy answer.

Re:In before

[raynet]

Are you really eating more calories per day or do you just believe doing so. Did you keep track what you ate before your low-carb diet? I was on Atkins and noticed that I actually had trouble getting to 2000+kcals per day when eating stuff that was near zero carb. With high carb foods it is way too easy to reach 2000, 3000 or even 4000 kcals per day.

Re:In before

[HappyClown]

My dear God in heaven!

You lost me right there. While there is a vast and increasing amount of evidence for role in Earth's changing climate, there isn't any evidence at all for this "God" character you're referring to. Your argument against climate change basically appears to be "it's too complex to know" (granted, for you perhaps...) and "we're getting the wool pulled over our eyes with all the propaganda". How about you forget the hype and actually spend some time looking into the science?

I was going to suggest you read the following article but it sounds like you've already made up your own mind without really giving a crap about the underlying facts.

climate-change-contrarians-5-stages-denial

Re:In before

[rioki]

Simply, because your energy intake is less.

Fact 1: You are actively monitoring your food consumption. Do not underestimate the amount of energy you take up through snacks.

Fact 2: Although fat has a higher energy density than carbohydrates, normally you don't eat that much. For example you can easily eat 250g of bread (a hot dog bun), but eating 250g of butter (a stick of butter) plainly disgusting.

Fact 3: Most "high fat" diets are actually high on proteins, which have about the same energy density carbohydrates.

The reason why most high fat low carb diets work, are because you can still eat tasty food. Nothing kills you will do diet, than a month though with only salads and lightly cooked vegetables. Most, if not all diets, the "scientific" idea behind it are bogus and easily disproved. Yet they work because the actual energy intake is lower.

For example my wife does a "sleep slender" diet, which mandates no carbs for dinner. The idea is that it depletes the carbs in the blood stream while sleeping and thus fat gets burned. It turns out that this is complete and utter nonsense, yet it works. Simply because it reduces the portion, there is just so much meat and vegetables you can eat. In addition, if you follow the week plans they have, you will also just plainly eat less.

Re:In before

[internerdj]

Death by Snu snu.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

There aren't thousands of data sources and thousands of studies showing man's emissions of CO2 are responsible for that change. There's a hypothesis, baked into models, which seems to be largely inaccurate if you compare the output of those models to actual reality.

Nope, you're wrong. There are literally thousands that show a link and most of them aren't even doing it on purpose. Man made climate change is as obvious as your bias. Whether it's the amount of water we consume, cities that change temperatures and change air patterns, algal blooms caused by farm runoff, species extinction, ice caps melting at expanded rates overall(yes I know there are outliers). When you trace almost any deleterious effect on the environment it usually comes back to man, because plainly, we're the biggest force there is. We have reshaped the planet and expelled tons of gasses into the environment, sure we're not like volcanoes which can cause a very large and sudden change, but give credit where it's due, we've been rather consistent in the damage we've caused.

Why would the IPCC conclude it wasn't a catastrophe, if by doing so their very existence could be called into question?

Yes, because science couldn't exist without global warming. It's not like in a universe so entirely vast, that they couldn't be focusing on something else, like terraforming, volcano prevention, pollution as related to childhood asthma, the impact of dams on areas of high desertification, water desalinization that doesn't cause an increase in the salinity of the water in the immediate area. Nope, you're right nothing else they could be doing.

Here's a protip, the reason hard science is done by the government is because it doesn't bring in money. No company benefits from climate change science. No company benefits from knowing Voyager is leaving the solar system. No company makes money from a flag on the moon. You do it, because it causes aspirations and because it provides hard science to businesses for no cost to them and allows them to use that to spur the economy.

Why don't you take your Ayn Randian philosophies and your money to Detroit and do something useful.

Re:In before

[TWiTfan]

Careful, brother. This is Slashdot, where even modest questioning of the Church of Global Warming can get you modded right into Hell.

Re:In before

[Bongo]

Look, the human body is a massively complex thing, but we can still say that calorines in > calories spent it = weight gain.

Funny, after 50 years people are starting to question that very equation, the calorie balance equation. Basically, it is technically true, no thermodynamic laws were harmed, but it ignores the real driver of weight gain: your hormones and how they react to certain types of food, and how they program your appetite and exercise and metabolism levels.

Consider, a child overeats to gain the extra energy needed, because he is growing. But he is not growing because he overeats. He grows because his body and control system, the hormones, are actively in grow mode and part of that is to raise his appetite for food. Simply eating more without that hormone control system will not make him grow.

Using the bad science around diet to support the bad science around global warming / climate change / climate disruption is a good mirror -- both are mistaken about the real processes which are the big driver in the system.

Re:In before

[tbannist]

I did not write "if they don't feel as I do they are dishonest." What I wrote was that if THEY are honest, they will reach the obvious conclusion. The difference may be small, but it exists and it is important.

Actually, I don't think the difference exists and even if it did, it wouldn't be important. The end point is dismissing any opinion that is contrary to yours because it is contrary to your opinion.

Very obviously I was stating an opinion, but it is an honest one.

You may believe it, but it is not an honest opinion, it's a ad hominem. It probably means your rationality has been compromised by an emotional response.

he site carries nothing but articles about global warming, and SUPPORTS only one side of that argument. On the whole site. So, "skeptical" it ain't.

I'm not sure you understand what a sceptic is. It's not about refusing to pick a side in an argument, it's about looking at the evidence to find out what's true. The fact that they support "one side of that argument" has less to do with bias, and more to with the simple fact that all of the evidence is on that side of "the argument".

Re:In before

[TWiTfan]

Al Gore deserved Matt and Trey's mocking and MUCH more. Look, whatever anyone thinks about Global Warming, the one thing that I am sure of is that Al Gore is a political opportunist who, like every other scumbag politician, would climb over his mother's dead body to win an election or advance the his own chief cause--himself. His glomming onto global warming as a means to further his own political and personal interests has fuck-all to do with whether or not he's a decent person in the end, and he's no less deserving of mockery than any other professional politician. The fact remains that he's a life-long politician and a well-established hypocrite, who has and will continue to waste prodigious amounts our planet's resources to live an extravagant lifestyle, all while lecturing the rest of us on *our* wastefulness. Matt and Trey's parody was mild compared to what he (and pretty much every politician) deserves.

Re:In before

[TWiTfan]

Agreed. "Skeptical Science" is a one-trick pony. One look at their website will tell you that, despite their broad name, they are focused on one issue and one issue ONLY. They have an agenda to push, and they hide behind the pretense of real science and real scientific skepticism to do it.

James Randi is a skeptic. "Skeptical Science" are just cause monkeys.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that why the Koch brothers get singled out so often?

Re:In before

[Xyrus]

Indeed. The Wall Street Journal's science reporting in regards to climate science is about as credible as Wile E. Coyote's Guide to Physics.

Thanks, but I'll wait for the real report.

Re:In before

[rolfwind]

QOTD on Slashfooter, at time you responded:

"You can fool all the people all of the time if the advertising is right and the budget is big enough."
-- Joseph E. Levine

Slashfooter? What the heck are you talking about?

Re:In before

[I'm New Around Here]

If your post was accurate, and my post was wrong, then why are the climate models not 99% accurate?

You have misread what I said, because you only think skeptics are wrong by default, on any point they make. You prove the worst characterizations that skeptics make about "your side", while trying to do the same about "the other side".

My first statement was that the models are based on a scenario. They are. The scenario is called "Earth".

My second statement was that the models are not accurately corrected. If they were accurately corrected, they would be accurate. So which model accurately predicted the our current temperature level within their 'probable' range?

Of the dozens of models available, which ones from 2009 predicted our temperature today? As opposed to how many of the models simply have the temperature increasing consistently with minor variations of a positive slope?

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

Biased and "unwilling to evaluate evidence contrary to their opinion" are two very different things.

Re:In before

[serviscope_minor]

where even modest questioning

Yes, indeed. If by "questioning" you mean raising an obvious and well covered point and claiming it as some great new insight (actually this isn't limited to global warming threads) or pretending that the political and popular media viewpoints somehow represent the science and thereby dismiss the science based on them.

Re:In before

[angel'o'sphere]

Sorry, sometimes you write quite correct stuff.

But here you write such a nonsense:

1) Further, while Fourier postulated an "insulation effect", and it is even called a "greenhouse effect",

Correct.
2) it bore very little resemblance to current CO2-based AGW theory, which is only a few decades old at most.

Would you kindly elaborate what exactly is the difference between 1) and 2)

Everyone here in europe is convinced both is just the same. So it would be cool if you americans enlighten us ....

Fourier considered convection, which is notably absent from significant mention in the majority of current climate models. Convection has nothing to do with a greenhouse effect. It means only hot gas is raising and is replaced by cooler gas. Which leads to a circular gas flow. What exactly should that have to do with the fact that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and an "insulator"? Why would there be any reason to talk about "convection" in a climate model?
I would say everything you ever read about it is so low level science for lay men, that convection has no point in it.
Hint: the convection in my Sauna is more or less the same, regardless if I heat it up to 80 degrees or to 95 degrees.

Re:In before

[Pino Grigio]

No, actually, much science has had funding cut.

This isn't science, it's climate science. You know, the end of civilisation. Regardless, you argue my point even more forcefully: There's now even greater competition for funds, meaning even greater reason for hype and dissembling.

You accuse scientists of conspiring for grant money, but give Big Oil a free pass

The energy production industry has a dog in this race, yes, but the amount it spends on its propaganda is an order of magnitude less than government spends on its policy based evidence making.

Re:In before

[angel'o'sphere]

There aren't thousands of data sources and thousands of studies showing man's emissions of CO2 are responsible for that change.

There are thousands of such data points.
Only deniers like you claim there aren't.

That fact that there are billions of dollars in grants to be had from gullible tax payers to institutions and NGOs researching ...

Any link / citation for any single dollar payed at all by US government (US taxpayer money)?

Not even considering "billions"?

Re:In before

[Pino Grigio]

Your argument is: Mann and Jones are scientists, therefore they can't be attacked. Given the juxtaposition of Phil Jones quotes shown below, please tell me why I shouldn't attack him.

Phil Jones on Horizon:

"The basic science is in the peer-reviewed literature, and I wish more people would read that than read the emails."

Phil Jones in CRU email:

"Kevin and I will keep them out somehow - even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is! Cheers, Phil"

Re:In before

[angel'o'sphere]

The problem with that analogy is that is seems people forget about the fact that a human can start exercising, therefor burning more calories that previously
You seem to be bad in math. Which part of "intake greater spend" don't you get?
Regardless how much a human exercises: if intake is greater than the consumption then he will gain weight.

And which "exercise" do you suggest for the planet Earth?

Re:In before

[angel'o'sphere]

I would suggest to read a book about food or nutrition.

The reason why most high fat low carb diets work, are because you can still eat tasty food

That is wrong. It works because the insulin level is low when there are no carbs. That means the body is not accumulating the fat in the blood into the fat cells.

The idea is that it depletes the carbs in the blood stream while sleeping and thus fat gets burned. It turns out that this is complete and utter nonsense, yet it works.
This does not work at all. The very last thing the body is doing is touching the fat it carries around. And certainly not in the sleep.
If your wife is reducing their weight with it, then it is because she changed more than only "no carbs at night".
if you follow the week plans they have, you will also just plainly eat less. Exactly, that will be the reason it works for her.

Re:In before

[I'm New Around Here]

First, you completely failed to read my post. Your response is based on 2/3 of a sentence that is responding to another person's analogy.

Second, you are factually incorrect in at least two major ways.

Have a nice day.

Re:In before

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

The MOTD banner, at the footer of the Slashdot pages.

Re:In before

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

My dear God in heaven!

You lost me right there. While there is a vast and increasing amount of evidence for role in Earth's changing climate, there isn't any evidence at all for this "God" character you're referring to.

"My dear God in heaven" is an explanation of surprised indignance - used by me here with a deliberate irony - and not an opening declaration of:

1. Theology
2. Ontology
3. Possessive ownership
    

Re:In before

[Thugthrasher]

There's a hypothesis, baked into models, which seems to be largely inaccurate if you compare the output of those models to actual reality.

You do realize that that is false, right? Last year, they did a comparison between what the 1990 IPCC models predicted and the actual change up to 2010. If you used actual emissions data and included the other actual climate-forcing data (volcanic eruptions, etc.), the model was very accurate in it's predictions at the 20 year mark. It's hard to judge the models since then, as there has not been as much time, but the models up to that point proved accurate. One can only assume that as our knowledge of climate has increased, our models are more accurate now.

Re:In before

[Eunuchswear]

Ok, what grants have Mann and Jones received? How much cash did they get to shovel into their bulging pockets?

Re:In before

[Eunuchswear]

What papers exactly were Jones and Trenberth trying to keep out the the peer reviewed literature? Were they wrong to want to keep them out?

Re:In before

[DMUTPeregrine]

No, we want to keep the earth livable for humans, and in such a state that it allows further growth of society. WHY climate change happens is irrelevant to the goal of preserving the status quo. The cause is only important in that if it's caused by humans it may be cheaper or easier to stop the change. Even if climate change was primarily caused by the sun alone we'd still want to either stop it or find a way to mitigate its negative effects.

Re:In before

[Eunuchswear]

That fact that there are billions of dollars in grants to be had from gullible tax payers to institutions and NGOs researching this coming "catastrophe"

How many billions?

US Federal science spending is around 30 billion: http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/fy2014/BasicRes.jpg

Half of that is the NIH, so we're talking about 15 billion for the rest.

(roughly 5 billion for the NSF, 4 for DOE, 2, for DOD, the rest shared between NASA, USDA and "other").

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

I still have not seen a good argument as to why climate change in the warming direction is "bad".
I have yet to see anyone involved in the public debate acknowledge the fact that good or bad, change happens, and we as a society need to learn to ADAPT to the change, instead of bleating and doing everything we can to STOP the change.

Frankly speaking, it's not all that important if humans are "interfering" with the natural processes. Nature is not kind, and all that crap about nature "striking a balance" is the result of hippies who are too short-sighted to pay attention to anything outside of a very narrow slice of time.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

That fact that there are billions of dollars in grants to be had

This should be easy to prove. A couple of links to grant proposals for funding announcements should be able to back up the magnitude of the money in question.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

"Now that we've gotten that out of the way... why the fuck haven't we started doing anything serious about climate change when pretty much everyone agrees it's real?"

Because it isn't real. It is an artifact of bad models. There is no warming problem. In fact the total opposite is the serious concern. A cooling of the planet following our pause (15-20 years and counting) is a very real possibility. In fact it it looking more right the longer the "pause" lasts.

If your models/theory doesn't match reality then your model/theory is wrong. Global warming is not caused by CO2. Get over it.

Re:In before

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Whoa, dude. Did I step on your tits?

Chasing Ice is a well-intentioned anecdotal document, used by the multi-national, macroeconomic boondoggle of "Climate Science", to emotionally sell their agenda.

The sad thing is, all the energy that could be directed at real justice and compassion: ending wars, feeding people, raising real living standards... End fuel and chemical pollution of vital aquatic ecosystems... Block the poisoning of 1/10th of the planet by leaking radioactivity... This energy is channeled away from doing real good, where people are instead misdirected to "save the earth" from the dodgy prospect of the sky falling.

This is by design. Channel the real good intentions and activist spirit of people high up the Maslow scale, direct it into an area that can tap into survival threat, and point this at a marginal problem over which they are largely powerless, instead of a civic and political effort to actually challenge the structure of elite power and dominance.

As your response shows, they have been able to tap into basic human fear. You are afraid for your OWN ARSE, not the well being of the planet or other people. If you gave half as much concern to general well being as your post suggests, you'd be down at the fucking rescue mission - handing out blankets to kids that live in freeway under passes, 'cause Lehman bros took down their Daddy's job with their market gambling .

There's also a narcissistic appeal to this AGW nonsense. Subscribers to this doctrine - and it IS a doctrine - congratulate themselves on their intelligence. Challenging the doctrine means challenging the self-image of those adherents, who take it as a personal injury - feeling their vaunted intelligence is being degraded, and that they are accused of being fools. In that way? The adherence to climate-doctrine is exactly like popular religion.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"It's just conservation of energy, which is actually very well established."

No, back-radiative forcings are not JUST "conservation of energy". There is a lot more going on there (and a lot more assumptions) than JUST that.

If it were ONLY about whether conservation of energy were real, I would have to agree with you. But it isn't, and I don't.

By claiming that ONLY conservation of energy is necessary for the phenomenon of greenhouse warming to exist, you are lying. If not deliberately to me, then to yourself.

You are also distorting the whole argument, by implying that I disagree with the concept of conservation of energy. That's ridiculous.

Re:In before

[bzipitidoo]

Big Oil definitely engages in propaganda. That is, they tell the public things that they know are not true. They lie. Knowingly lie. And go unpunished. What are the consequences? Few, and that only if they get ugly, as the Heartland institute did when it claimed that the Unabomber "believed" in Global Warming. A few organizations stopped supporting Heartland. But no one stood trial for anything.

Scientists who are caught lying get disciplined swiftly. No one will trust them, no journals will want to publish their lies, no schools who care about their reputation will want them on the faculty. Think about Hwang Woo-suk, once a star researcher in cloning. Other scientists could not reproduce his results, and that is how he was eventually found out. He lied. Seoul National University fired him. There was also the infamous Cold Fusion research that turned out to be wrong. Here it seems the scientists were simply mistaken, not lying. And also, were rushed. What happened is that the university was too eager, and wanted to patent it if they had indeed discovered a way to do cold fusion. To improve their chances of securing a patent, they rushed out preliminary results about cold fusion before the scientists were finished checking. Nevertheless, the consequences to the 2 scientists behind it were severe. They had to move. Couldn't continue at a university where such rash actions had lead to such a big mess.

You talk like you don't understand how research works, but you think you do. Researchers are always building on prior research. If that prior research is wrong, this will be suspected the moment someone tries to extend it and can't reproduce the original results. Other scientists will weigh in, trying to reproduce the results themselves. This will lead to further scrutiny, which can often reveal whether it was an honest mistake, or deliberate cheating. Either way, a scientist gains by exposing errors. If it is actually fraud, the risks of playing along are so high as to be hopeless to expect that the fraud can be continued. Every time other scientists look, they have to be brought on board. If just one won't play along, the whole thing collapses. And why should anyone play along? They risk their careers if they play along, for no gain at all, whereas blowing the whistle scores them points.

And you think there's no difference between corporate propaganda and scientific research?

Re:In before

[Pino Grigio]

That's just the US. Europe/UK are spending a lot too. That's notwithstanding subsidies for inefficient renewable energy, which adds to the tax-payers bill by around 30% (at least here in the UK - don't think you have that in the US).

Re:In before

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Changing climate?

It got you across the Siberian Bering land bridge, 12,000 years ago, in the close of the Pleistocene Epoch.

Of course, you can always play "Sorcerer's Apprentice" with the climate. I'm sure that will work out as well as, say, efforts to fertilize the plains around the Aral sea...

Re:In before

[Pino Grigio]

The hilarity continues. A letter from Michael Kelly in today's Times:

Sir, In any form of exact science or engineering, having a discrepancy of a factor of two between theory and experiment would be a source of grave embarrassment. This is not so with climate science where the climate models have overestimated the effect of increasing CO2 on the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere by a factor of two over the past 25 years.

For this reason, the divergence between the predictions of theoretical models and real-world data is growing. If the forthcoming fifth assessment report does not address this problem and its implications in an open and candid manner, the validity of the report will be widely questioned.

Why should they be trying to keep out any paper? They should be dispassionately evaluating the evidence. That they don't do that is one of the reasons they're no longer taken seriously by policy makers.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"Primary sources, do us all a favour and start using them!"

Do you want to argue with what I actually wrote, or not? You are attempting to argue with me about something I didn't claim. But then, it's hardly the first time you've done that.

Let's look at your argument in the context of what I said:

First, the article you pointed me to is not a "primary source" in this context, since it is a discussion of the movie. Therefore, it was written after the movie was made. (Apparently before it was RELEASED, but that's irrelevant.)

Second, it is a joke to pretend that RealClimate is an unbiased source .

Third, there is no mention in that article of the unlabeled axes, which is the issue I actually raised. Remember that the movie was made for the masses, not for scientists. Responsible people do not give their axes misleading scales or leave the labels off altogether. The only time someone with half a brain does that, it's for propaganda purposes.

Re:In before

[Pino Grigio]

What are you talking about "false"? Here's how accurate the models actually are. It's so terrible it's embarrassing. Is there a scientist alive who'd validate and defend models that are so utterly shite? Would you base policy on such rubbish? The bit they got almost right is only almost right because it's been tuned to fit it backwards in time.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

Fourier considered convection, which is notably absent from significant mention in the majority of current climate models.

Citation?

I could choose from many, but HERE is mention of Fourier's consideration of convection.

HERE is a discussion of cooling via convection vs. radiation at differing pressures.

HERE is a discussion of how the climate models do not properly account for convection. (Paywalled but you can read the abstract if you don't want to pay for the paper.)

And also HERE. (NOTE: I do not claim the site that offers the paper for download is unbiased, but that is irrelevant to the content of Dr. van Andel's paper. It is also available elsewhere.)

Re:In before

[angel'o'sphere]

No, my post is based exactly as you write on your FAILED answer to another person POST.

You tried to correct him, and you did wrong so.

If you could point out how I was "factual incorrect in two majour ways" you likely had pointed it out, don't you think so?

I honestly doubt you can :D

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"Would you kindly elaborate what exactly is the difference between 1) and 2)"

The difference should be obvious if you know about (or were to read about) Fourier's work. It consisted of "closed" systems, and was not intended to be extrapolated to the atmosphere.

Also, see the links I posted above to papers that show how current AGW models do not properly consider convection.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that we've gotten that out of the way... why the fuck haven't we started doing anything serious about climate change when pretty much everyone agrees it's real?

Because:
1. No scientifically valid determination of scope of problem.
2. No well-defined problem as a result of GW.
3. No obvious solution to GW.
4. No consensus that GW is a problem in the first place
5. No scientific consensus regarding how much impact humans are having
6. No scientific consensus regarding how much humans could change it.
7. Many, many vested interests in ignoring any problems
8. Many, many dollars to be made in allowing problems to happen and then 'solving' them.
9. People in general do not care about things which occur on a generational scale.

There's more, but that's the bulk of it.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

Okay. Maybe current AGW theory is based on Arrhenius' work, which in turn was based on Fourier's.

BUT, your quotation confirms what I stated before: current AGW theory does not account properly for convection (see the links, above, that I posted a few minutes ago), and as your quotation confirms, neither did Arrhenius.

So, I concede that Arrhenius' work may be the foundation of current theory. However, THAT idea only reinforces my argument that it does not properly account for convection. Again, see the papers at the links I posted earlier.

Re:In before

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

...While there is a vast and increasing amount of evidence for role in Earth's changing climate, ... Your argument against climate change basically appears to be "it's too complex to know"

Climatology is another quasi-science, like Economics. They are both intrinsically linked.

Re:In before

[Thugthrasher]

You know that models don't return 1 temperature, right? Looking at a chart like that tells you nothing about how accurate a model is. Models depend on a lot of inputs and, depending on what the inputs are, usually return a range for what they are forecasting. Usually, when talking about a model, there are multiple variations of inputs put in when trying to predict the future (as it's hard to know exactly what will happen). The proper way to validate a model is to take the original model, put in the actual data for the inputs and see if the predicted output matches the actual output. Just looking at a previously published paper tells you nothing unless you know that they correctly predicted the inputs.

THIS is how you test how accurate models actually are. The fact that you think that particular graph means all climate models are terrible (and the fact that you think it's a big deal that they tune models to fit past data, as that is the CORE of modeling in general) tells me all I need to know about how much you know about forecasting models. Which is obviously not much. (Note: my knowledge isn't about the specifics of climate change models, so I don't know exactly how much weight they put on various factors; my knowledge is about forecasting models in general and my specialty was population modeling).

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

And I would also like to repeat: the predictive value of AGW models has been nothing short of awful. So, even if the theory is 120 years old, since a theory is only as good as its predictive value (ask any scientist), it isn't a very good one.

You might also want to loop up Dr. Pierre Latour's analysis which claims that the Stefan-Boltzman law actually refutes the notion of AGW, directly contradicting Arrhenius. Whether you agree with him or not, it is at least interesting.

Re:In before

[worldthinker]

Except that China is now putting more effort into building Renewables than we are even though they are still operating on diametrically opposing policies (e.g. building highways and suburbs in addition to building massive High Speed Railways; Massive wind and solar in addition to building more coal plants). Their rising standard of living is a result of decisions made in this country, on Wall Street to massively outsource our manufacturing base and the middle class jobs that went with it.

And while it is good to think globally in terms of equality, I made my arguments on the effect of policies in this country affecting the economic vitality of people in this country. There are international agreements that were signed ages ago that much of the world has agreed to, EXCEPT the United States. Can't blame China this time...

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

Also, as "riverat1" mentions above, the extrapolation of the greenhouse effect to the whole Earth was done by Arrhenius, after Fourier's work.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if climate change was primarily caused by the sun alone we'd still want to either stop it or find a way to mitigate its negative effects.

The only "problems" are "problems" because of how the world's various societies choose to function. Climate change was never a global problem when humans could simply move to different places which had a better climate. It's only now, when we're about 6 billion people too many, that we run into issues. More modern notions of property ownership, whether on an individual or national level, is what makes climate change into a problem.

Seems to me it'd be easier and more effective to fix people than it would be to try to "freeze" the planet at a point in time where it suits us.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

s/loop/look

Re:In before

[riverat1]

I'd like to see the specific evidence that "climate models have overestimated the effect of increasing CO2 on the temperature of the Earth's atmosphere by a factor of two". From the evidence I've seen atmospheric temperatures are still within the 95% confidence envelope of the climate model projections for the A1B scenario which is the one closest to the real world changes.

The primary reason to keep papers out of peer reviewed journals is that they are poor science that would waste the time of people in the field to read and respond to. When I see evidence that they are keeping out papers doing sound science then I'll get concerned.

Re:In before

[riverat1]

Despite all the vitriol directed at him Michael Mann's infamous hockey stick graph is still standing and has been well supported by subsequent work by other researchers. Yet Mann is still attacked on the basis that the HSG has been disproved.

Jones did make that statement yet there is no evidence that he has been successful. In fact the specific paper(s) he was referring to in that comment did get a mention (not favorably) in the IPCC AR4 report from 2007.

Re:In before

[I'm New Around Here]

No, my post is based exactly as you write on your FAILED answer to another person POST.

No, your post is in response to part of a sentence. A sentence that was explained by the following sentence, which you choose to ignore. Bully for you.

You tried to correct him, and you did wrong so.

Again, you failed to read my actual post. I didn't try to correct him, as in his analogy was inherently wrong. I did point out that his analogy is only part of the solution.

If you could point out how I was "factual incorrect in two majour ways" you likely had pointed it out, don't you think so?

First, if you are going to use quotes, use copy-n-paste as well. Second, I likely would not have pointed it out (which I didn't, by the way), because I like to see if people (you or other readers) can come up with scenarios that validate my position on their own. You can't, apparently, and no else chose to bother.

I honestly doubt you can :D

So now I have to slap that smile off your face, with three examples.
1. Liposuction - The removal of extra fat by surgery. Has no bearing on calorie intake, does make a person weigh less.
2. Water - Drink a lot more water, you weigh more until you pee it out. Drink a lot more water and eat salty foods, you will retain it a long time. Go without extra water in a hot region, while eating the same number of calories, you will weigh less.
3. Eating organic material that the human body does not digest - "Calories in" generally includes all calorie counts of the food we eat, including the calories found in high-fiber vegetables, despite the fact we don't use those calories. Also, that fiber traps other pieces of half-digested food, and keeps some of it from being absorbed in the small intestines. Those calorie-laden bits exit the body along with the fiber.

You may say that the argument of "calories in" is limited to what is absorbed in the intestine, but that isn't the focal point of everyone's "2000 calories a day" diet. That measurement is strictly measuring the calorie content of food/drink that a person consumes.

Hhhhmmm, maybe these systems are a bit more complex than you think they are. Maybe there are things that are not initially thought of, that affect the end result in unexpected ways. Maybe the model based on the original scenario has to be modified in complicated ways to account for unforeseen situations. Maybe that sounds familiar. Maybe that is because it was my original post, which you failed to read.

Re:In before

[Pino Grigio]

(and the fact that you think it's a big deal that they tune models to fit past data, as that is the CORE of modeling in general)

Forget "how you test how accurate a model is". Simply look at the divergence between the model output and actual reality. Actual reality is the arbiter of how good the model is especially if you're going to use that model to predict the future. That graph is from a Nature Climate Change Study. It shows the average of the top 32 climate models.

Re:In before

[Pino Grigio]

Here's the paper. The top 32 climate models overestimate temperature by between 71 and 159%.

Re:In before

[Pino Grigio]

Despite all the vitriol directed at him Michael Mann's infamous hockey stick graph is still standing

Are you suggesting that because people keep using his graph, his graph is therefore correct? Just wait and see if it appears again in the next IPCC report. I guarantee you it won't be seen for dust.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

I would suggest to read a book about food or nutrition.

Written my Dr Atkins or one of his followers?

Re:In before

[angel'o'sphere]

Well, perhaps I did not get what your point is.

Nevertheless now you again post what I consider bullshit.

1) you get it back very quickly if you don't change your eating habbits. In other words, the formular: eat more calories than you burn leads to ore weight is still true.

2) does not make sense at all, you seem to confuse weight as "metering on the scale" with the fact how fat you actually are

3) regardless of your nitpicking in 2) : plain wrong. "Calories in" generally includes all calorie counts of the food we eat All mentioning of calories on food do include the way how humans digest it. That means 100 calories (or more likely kilo calories) means a human will digest 100. So your statement above is simply wrong.

Hhhhmmm, maybe these systems are a bit more complex than you think they are
More complex than you think, perhaps. But if you understand it it is super simple. There are only about 3 things influencing your "weight" ....

All easy to read up, unfortunately not in the country of the super fat ppl ...

Maybe there are things that are not initially thought of, that affect the end result in unexpected ways. Maybe the model based on the original scenario has to be modified in complicated ways to account for unforeseen situations. Maybe that sounds familiar. Maybe that is because it was my original post, which you failed to read.

I did not fail to read that.
It is however completely irrelevant to the human body, its digesting system and your fatness.
So the complete side track with analogies about human fatness is fail. Hence I answered to that part.

Re:In before

[angel'o'sphere]

Names don't matter.
I'm a sociopath. I can not remember names nor recognize faces.
Point is: the question about CO2 and its warming effect is known since ages.

Re:In before

[angel'o'sphere]

Well,

simply put: I doubt you have the scientific background to claim soundly that current AGW models do not properly consider convection

"Fourier's work. " is for this discussion only relevant to the extent that here are still people arguing that CO2 is no greenhouse gas or dos not affect the climate or that humans don't produce CO2 or that the amount we humans produce is to small or what ever.

I don't care if Fourier made a mistake in his model, or intentionally left out some aspect, or unintentionally left out an aspect or simplified his math or what ever.

If I drop an ice cube into a warm liquid, the ice cube will melt.

I don't care if the liquid is oil, water, alcohol or a mixture of those.

For that it is irrelevant to ask: is the glass running over? It is is simple enough to know: the ice will melt.

Re:In before

[riverat1]

Despite all the vitriol directed at him Michael Mann's infamous hockey stick graph is still standing

Are you suggesting that because people keep using his graph, his graph is therefore correct? Just wait and see if it appears again in the next IPCC report. I guarantee you it won't be seen for dust.

I'm suggesting that other researchers have done the same work Mann did to produce his graph using different sets of proxies than Mann used and using different techniques and they produce graphs unrelated to the original hockey stick graph that are in close agreement with it.

They probably won't use Mann's original graph in the upcoming IPCC report since it's 15 years old now but they may use one produced more recently that will show essentially the same thing. For instance they may refer to this graph from the Marcott et. al. 2013 paper which supports Mann's graph.

Re:In before

[Xyrus]

Gore is not a climate scientist. He isn't. He hasn't written any peer reviewed science articles. He is not a member of the IPCC. Therefore, he has not and does not represent the body of climate science in any way.

He has his opinions and viewpoints that may incorporate some of the science. But his presentations/movies/what have you are not scientifically reviewed and should not be taken as such.

There is no billion dollar machine behind climate scientists. There isn't. A mediocre programmer makes more than an established climate scientist. The combined funding for all climate research programs adds up to squat. Exxon makes enough profit in a single quarter to fund all the climate research in the country many times over.

Climate scientists do not make policy, they do science. Policy is decided by politicians. Keep your political views and scientific results separate.

Re:In before

[Xyrus]

Climate change has been occurring since the Earth, ejected as a lump of molten iron form the heart of the Sun, settled into orbit and began slowly cooling...

Exactly what part of climate change do you not understand? Climate scientists are well aware of the fact that Earth's climate has changed many times throughout it's history, usually at the detriment to any life forms present at the time.

You want to stop hypothesized, anthropogenic contribution?

Hypothesis my ass. AGW Theory as been around since the 1800's. The theory behind the greenhouse effect of atmospheric gases is almost 200 years old. Both of these theories are built upon known and well established physical principles that are used practically every day in one form or another.

Downsize the US navy to coastal defense. You will remove enough human-released C02 from being projected into the atmosphere, to prevent imposing tax-based austerities on the captive population. This will also block the creation of a speculative secondary derivative market for carbon credits - which is the real motivator behind this farce. Getting more of your limited financial resource into the pockets of the - already - super-rich.

Nonsense. The emissions of the US navy are negligible compared to the emissions from transportation and power production.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"Point is: the question about CO2 and its warming effect is known since ages."

YOUR point is.

Yes, we have known for a long time that a "greenhouse effect" exists... in small, enclosed systems. I can easily demonstrate it myself with an aquarium, a light bulb, a CO2 source, and a thermometer.

But that is a VERY long way from showing that it is a significant driver of global warming. Modern climatalogists did not start making that assertion until the 1990s. Before that, in the 70s and 80s, they were warning us of global cooling. While some younger people have (hilariously) tried to tell me that didn't happen, I WAS THERE, and I had to put up with the seemingly endless BS about it in the news and consumer "science" magazines.

And even now, in order for it to be a theory of any value, it would have to be of some use for predicting actual warming to be worth a damn as a scientific theory, since science says the ability to predict is the whole measure of what a theory is worth.

Yet AGW has actually been terrible at predicting .

So while the basic greenhouse effect has been known (for small enclosed systems), it is still very much in question whether it has any significant effect on global climate.

Re:In before

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

So? You merely argue for their cost effectiveness.

Re:In before

[Xyrus]

Then what about the other 20,000 or so climate scientists out there? They're just grant farming as well, right?

Hmmm. I guess that's what all scientists do then, right? Because after all, they're just in it for the money. I mean, why would any self-respecting scientists actually want to do actual science? That sounds too much like work. They can just get together into these big conspiracy groups, make up some research proposal technobabble, and get grants until they can retire.

Hey wait a minute. These climate scientists are doing it all wrong then. If they're in this for the money, why squabble over the scraps coming from grants? I mean, grants are crap. Someone like Exxon would pay A LOT of money for a quality climate scientist to come on board and say climate change is a load of crap. In fact, that's a win-win for the the fossil fuel industry. They could make every single climate scientist a millionare without batting an eye, and instantly turn climate change into a non-argument. The scientists get their greedy little hearts satisfied, and fossil fuel companies continue business as usual. And all it would take is maybe a few quarters of profits being "invested in climate science".

Now that sounds like a plan. I wonder why that isn't happening?

Re:In before

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

1 US Navy destroyer consumes the amount of fuel-oil in a day, to heat the average US home for 100-150 years.

This used to be a factiod that they would dispense as public information, on ship tours - even into the mid-1970's.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"simply put: I doubt you have the scientific background to claim soundly that current AGW models do not properly consider convection "

That's fine, because I didn't make that claim. I was quoting others. Maybe you could actually read the papers at the links I gave, or spend a few minutes looking it up on Google. But I already gave citations, so my obligation has been met. I could easily give you more, but I'm not going to bother because I think it's evident that you didn't read the existing ones.

"'Fourier's work.' is for this discussion only relevant to the extent that here are still people arguing that CO2 is no greenhouse gas or dos not affect the climate or that humans don't produce CO2 or that the amount we humans produce is to small or what ever."

Maybe YOUR discussion, but based on the other things you are saying here, YOUR discussion is not the same as mine. I frankly don't give the slightest damn about whether ice melts. That is a straw-man argument. Even if we were to accept that the Earth is warming right now, that isn't evidence that it's caused by CO2, which was the REAL discussion here.

Re:In before

[Xyrus]

The problem with that analogy is that is seems people forget about the fact that a human can start exercising, therefor burning more calories that previously, and lose weight while taking in an even larger amount of calories.

I don't think we'd be here long if the Earth decides to "start exercising".

In other words, models are based on one scenario, and then not accurately corrected as reality shows them to be wrong.

That's quite a load of horse manure you're hauling. No scientific model (climate or otherwise) is based on a "scenario". They are based on PHYSICS. A "scenario", as you call it, would be a SINGLE CONFIGURATION of the model (starting parameters, initial conditions, model component configurations, etc.). Typically, a scientific run of a model will include 100's to 1000's of these configurations and the results will be statistically analyzed. Then those results are used by the scientists to help them make predictions, adjustments, etc. for whatever they are doing. The models are the result of the science, not vice versa.

Re:In before

[StoneyMahoney]

Okay, I'm too flu'd up right now and my temp is on the way down from 100, so maybe I'm a bit snappy right now, but here goes.

Chasing Ice is very important as a visualisation of what has until recently been a purely statistical argument. Of course it elicits an emotional reaction, but it doesn't sell any agenda except the one that you can see with your own eyes - the climate is changing and there's a whole stack of evidence that we did it. If you don't get emotional from that realisation, you aren't a human being that's worth keeping alive.

To be honest, I've also been somewhat skeptical of the phrase "Save The Planet". Earth is not in jeopardy - if we nuked the crap out of the land and sea, Earth would continue to orbit, perhaps some new lifeforms would evolve to be as numerous and diverse as life is now, and within 8 billion years the Earth will be gone - either taken out by an asteroid or consumed by the Sun. To the individual human, what's the practical different between "Preserve the habitability of our biosphere" and "Save the planet"? Save the planet is catchier. If you want to argue the toss over it, go ahead - just don't expect anyone to give a shit about anything you say ever again if all you want to do is split infinitives that fine.

Regarding your assertion that AGW is nonsense, I smell the whiff of a hypocrite. You accuse me of congratulating me on my own intelligence, yet you are obviously very self-congratulatory of your own. Climate change deniers always seem to me like the folk who root for the underdog no matter how outgunned they are. I do it during international Rugby matches (Fiji vs New Zealand - of course you want to see the All-Blacks lose!) , you're doing it despite the overwhelming evidence for the existence of man-made climate change and the highly questionable motives of those who oppose it.

But the really interesting part is that you automatically assumed I undertake no philanthropic activity of my own. How the fuck would you know? Have you any idea how much of my life I've dedicated to encouraging to helping the homeless find stable employment and encouraging young people in their artistic expressions? How much of my own resources I've donated to helping cure Alzheimers disease? How much I've fought against homophobia and religious intolerance in my local community? Funny how you tried to direct the argument in that direction instead of something that might actually have been pertinent to the subject matter - perhaps critisizing the solar panels on my roof or my lack of a car, or perhaps my decision to avoid the organic produce shop down the road, or that I advocate for green building methods... because you can't win the argument if you actually stay on topic, can you?

Seriously, kill yourself now, put yourself out of your future misery.

Re:In before

[StoneyMahoney]

...and just to help me out when I'm sick, I head back to the Slashdot front page and Christmas has come early!

http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/09/16/229256/another-climate-change-retraction

I'm going to bed now, take your time and write a decent rebuttal this time, one that isn't laughably transparently denialist-fingers-in-my-ears-lalalalacan'thearyou

Re:In before

[Moofie]

"it means China and other countries not covered improve their own standard of living (by emitting GHGs like there's no tomorrow) at our expense"

What do you propose to do about that?

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

why the fuck haven't we started doing anything serious about climate change when pretty much everyone agrees it's real?

What do they agree is real? The change? Or the notion that the change is man-made?

Your post is another example of the epidemic of imprecise communication on this issue. There are multiple issues here: Is the climate changing? And: If so, is the change a result of human activity? And: Is the climate "broken"? And: If so, can human activity "fix" the climate?

This epidemic of imprecise communication is why everyone is just spinning their wheels on this issue and we're getting nowhere. Here's the typical scenario:

1. Person A says "climate change is real", but really means "climate change is man-made".
2. Person B interprets A's statement literally, and responds accordingly.
3. Person A can't understand w.t.f. Person B is talking about because B responded to something different than what A meant.
4. Each side thinks the other side is an idiot. All because of the massively poor communication skills that both sides have.

So, no, it's not true that "everyone agrees it's real". With this horrible clusterfuck of miscommunication we have, you have no basis to legitimately say that "pretty much everyone" agrees on anything.

Haven't you wondered why there's such an incredible clusterfuck on this particular issue, so much more so than on other issues? It's all due to an epidemic of mass miscommunication and mass misunderstanding.

Re:In before

[Truth_Quark]

> Yet, with the introduction of additional variables, let us say n variables, which include surface interaction with seas, the presence of ice-sheets and glaciers, solar activity, volcanism, etcetera, ad infinitum... Somehow, a reliable and predictable model of planetary atmospheric climate - without prejudice or bias - is expected to be produced within the statistical expectations required to make policy decisions? Models. It's kind of surprising that you can put a railway carriage into a computer, and check it for resonances. And then fix it by changing where the seats are bolted.

But you can.

Climate models are certainly less controlled but for some factors they've been surprisingly good: Why are climate models reproducing the observed global surface warming so well? (Reto Knutti, Geophysical Research Letters (2008))

But there are also constraints. Conservation of energy requires that with a given energy imbalance at the top of the atmosphere, there will be a given amount of extra heat in the earth. And because we can estimate the economic consequences of that, we can sensibly notice that reducing emissions will be generally cheaper.

Re:In before

[Pino Grigio]

Yes. Other researchers using invalid statistical methods, just as Mann did, have managed to generate hockey stick graphs too. That doesn't surprise me.

Re:In before

[Eunuchswear]

So you don't know. "A lot" is not a number.

Also, money spent on "subsidies for inefficient renewable energy":

1. doesn't come from the tax payers, it comes from the electricity bill payers
2. doesn't go to "nstitutions and NGOs researching this coming "catastrophe"", it goes to energy companies.

Re:In before

[Eunuchswear]

Why should they be trying to keep out any paper?

'Cos that what peer review is. Crap papers don't get published in peer reviewed journals.

And, as I asked you, what paper(s) were Jones and Trenberth writing about. You do know it was specific, not general, don't you? Or are you just a quote miner?

Re:In before

[Pino Grigio]

The paper was already peer reviewed.

Re:In before

[Anonymous Coward]

Possessive ownership

Awesome retort. You win!

Re:In before

[angel'o'sphere]

But that is a VERY long way from showing that it is a significant driver of global warming.
Sorry that is just nonsense. The laws of physics are the same on every scale.

Modern climatalogists did not start making that assertion until the 1990s. Before that, in the 70s and 80s, they were warning us of global cooling. Nevertheless that warning was even at that time unfoundated. So the correct statement would be: "some climatologists" warned of global cooling. And even more correct: and got debunked right away at that time However: the wrong warning is more in the public mind than the correction.

Global warming is not a theory. It is a physical effect based on the theory of Thermodynamics and the chemistry of the atmosphere and the amount of radiation received from the sun. The later part varies short term due to distance to the sun and sun activity and long term (basically also distance and orientation due to various orbit fluctuations). The various interactions make this a complicated system. E.g. CO2 increases the temperature and that increase leads to more water vapour which is also a potent green house gas. So bottom line we have to make predictions over a chain reaction where the very first variable drives all the others. And the others drive more effects down the chain ...

It is very unscientific to believe we would need "a new theory" to work on the global warming problem.

Regarding "predictions" ... so far I find the predictions pretty conservative and in that frame accurate.

Do you know any particular prediction (made by creditable scientists) that was later revised?

Re:In before

[martinQblank]

"Depending on what you mean by "attacked", I'm down."

Citation needed.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"Sorry that is just nonsense. The laws of physics are the same on every scale."

No, what is nonsense is your argument. There are FAR more issues than just "scale" involved.

Showing that an effect exists in a small, closed system does not prove that it has a major effect on a much larger, open system. And you are just reinforcing one of my points: current models (according to peer-reviewed papers I linked to here yesterday) do not account for convection in the atmosphere.

So sorry yourself, but no. You can't just say "Look, it happens in this box" and then extrapolate it to the entire global atmosphere. It's far more complicated than that, and denying it just shows that you don't know what you're talking about.

"Regarding "predictions" ... so far I find the predictions pretty conservative and in that frame accurate."

That's hilarious.

"Do you know any particular prediction (made by creditable scientists) that was later revised?"

Pretty much everything in the latest IPCC report. Temperature is not predicted to go up as far as they said before. They've pretty much dropped any claim that "global warming" will make hurricanes worse (in fact they're saying it isn't even mentioned in the new report). Etc.

The "science" in the IPCC reports has been continually revised, and it has been revised downward in each successive report.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

Correction: "open system" should be "more open system".

The Earth is not a "closed system", but it is largely self-contained except for radiation, some "cosmic" dust, and the occasional rock that enters the atmosphere.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"Nevertheless that warning was even at that time unfoundated. So the correct statement would be: "some climatologists" warned of global cooling. And even more correct: and got debunked right away at that time However: the wrong warning is more in the public mind than the correction."

So they've said, but I was there. That statement isn't intended as evidence or to convince you, but nevertheless I do remember.

"Global warming is not a theory."

I don't recall claiming it was. ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING (AGW), however, IS a theory.

"It is a physical effect based on the theory of Thermodynamics and the chemistry of the atmosphere and the amount of radiation received from the sun."

You contradict yourself. A physical effect is not based on theory. It exists or it doesn't. Further, I suggest you read Pierre Latour's paper on why thermodynamics actually DISproves AGW. To date, nobody has successfully refuted it, though there has been a lot of handwaving.

"It is very unscientific to believe we would need "a new theory" to work on the global warming problem."

Again you contradict yourself. Because if so, then we don't need AGW. Parts of it have been around a while, but parts of it are new.

Re:In before

[angel'o'sphere]

I don't recall claiming it was. ANTHROPOGENIC GLOBAL WARMING (AGW), however, IS a theory.

No it is not, and never was. It is a fact.

You contradict yourself. A physical effect is not based on theory.
Ofc an effect is based on a theory. Or is does a stone fall to ground because it wants to fall? No it falls because of the theory of gravity.

Further, I suggest you read Pierre Latour's paper on why thermodynamics actually DISproves AGW.
A physical effect that MUST happen if the right conditions are there can not be disproved. So reading such a paper si a waste of time.

Again you contradict yourself. Because if so, then we don't need AGW. Parts of it have been around a while, but parts of it are new.
If I'm contradicting myself it would be nice if you would point out one statement (of mine) and put it into contrast of another one.

We don't *need* AGW, what a stupid statement is that? It happens right now, and as far as we can tell we rather won't let it happen.

Re:In before

[angel'o'sphere]

And you are just reinforcing one of my points: current models (according to peer-reviewed papers I linked to here yesterday) do not account for convection in the atmosphere.
That does not matter.
Because it only can show that the effect will be worse or that the effect is less. It does not make the effect disappear.

The "science" in the IPCC reports has been continually revised, and it has been revised downward in each successive report.
Wrong. It only had minor adjustments.

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"No it is not, and never was. It is a fact."

If you really think so, then this discussion is completely pointless. Goodbye.

Re:In before

[angel'o'sphere]

It has nothing to to do with "think" or "believe" it is knowledge ;D

Re:In before

[Jane Q. Public]

"It has nothing to to do with "think" or "believe" it is knowledge ;D"

That's really quite amusing. But I repeat:

"If you really think so, then this discussion is completely pointless. Goodbye."

Re:In before

[Truth_Quark]

> Mann and Jones aren't doing science. They're doing grant farming and calling it science.

With all due respect, and I do mean none, this is not only absolute bullshit, but personal attacks on scientists is the cause of the problem.

Re:In before

[Truth_Quark]

> What papers exactly were Jones and Trenberth trying to keep out the the peer reviewed literature? Were they wrong to want to keep them out?

Absolutely not.

The only thing that stops a scientific journal from dropping its standards is its reputation. A private discussion about the quality of the papers in the AGU, including suggesting a boycott, is not only entirely appropriate, it's the only mechanism for maintaining scientific standards.

Re:In before

[Truth_Quark]

> Ok, what grants have Mann and Jones received?

I don't know, but when you do good science, your applications for research grants should be well received.

The distortion is when otherwise mediocre scientists have raised their income through books and talks about denialism, advertised and published by the fossil fuel industry's PR groups.

Re:In before

[Pino Grigio]

Personal attacks on people who aren't upholding the principles of the scientific method are absolutely in order. People who're using their positions in science to `manufacture' evidence to support a political and (for their institutions) financial cause is reprehensible.

Re:In before

[rs79]

It turned out Gore funneled money to (at least) one of them. One of Gores companies funded his initial work.

Follow the money.

Excellent!

[stoploss]

I look forward to the calm, rational, and coherent discussion!

For once, there may be a thread on this site that avoids tangenting off into politics. It will be refreshing to witness a debate that does not invoke Nazis, gun control, or the results of previous US elections, because those are totally offtopic and everyone will realize that.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding? Climate change was out of control when Bush was president. Notice how now that Obama is president the climate change is not a big deal anymore? President Obama saved us! Thank goodness that all those people voted for Obama when I, as a very uneducated voter, voted for the other guy.

Re:Excellent!

[Jawnn]

I look forward to the calm, rational, and coherent discussion!

For once, there may be a thread on this site that avoids tangenting off into politics. It will be refreshing to witness a debate that does not invoke Nazis, gun control, or the results of previous US elections, because those are totally offtopic and everyone will realize that.

Yeah, good luck with that.

Re:Excellent!

[93 Escort Wagon]

I look forward to the calm, rational, and coherent discussion!

Yeah, exactly the sorts of discussions they NAZIS led before the confiscated all the GUNS, Obama-style!

640K ought to be enough for anybody!

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

>> Notice how now that Obama is president the climate change is not a big deal anymore?

No way! When Obama flies around nilly-willy on Air Force One he dumps tons of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. Are you saying there's no climate change when he does that?

Re:Excellent!

[I'm New Around Here]

He's saying it isn't front page news every week. He's implying that if a Republican was in the White House, the media would be preaching global warming at every turn, just like they used to.

Re:Excellent!

[I'm New Around Here]

I look forward to the calm, rational, and coherent discussion!

640K ought to be enough for anybody!

Hey, when you take the initiative to invent the internets, you can make that claim. Not until. ;^)

Re:Excellent!

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Nobody ever made that claim about 640k by the way. Not Bill Gates, or anybody else.

Re:Excellent!

[MightyMartian]

Translation: I'm a whiny little bitch boy who doesn't want to face up to what we're all doing to the planet, so I'll use words like "Nazi" and "anti-business", because I lack honor, adult coping skills and jeezus christ basic intellectual capacity,.

Look, you fucking moron, do you think that the universe gives one flying fuck about your fucking ideology? Do you think AGW hinges on whether it feeds into your notion of ccapitalism, you fucking halfwitted toad excrement?

Re:Excellent!

[Jane Q. Public]

Um... in case you hadn't noticed, it has actually been the Republicans who have been trying to marginalize the idea of CO2 - based warming, not the Democrats.

Re:Excellent!

[HornWumpus]

Don't forget homelessness. It's never a problem when a democrat is in charge.

Re:Excellent!

[hedwards]

If the GOP had the Whitehouse it would need to be in the news regularly because they'd be looking for ways to make negative progress on the issue.

Obama has actually done some things to move things forward, it's just that he gets crap from the right for doing it, even as the GOP refuses to assist in any way. I take it you didn't notice a while back when the gas mileage requirements were raised.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, if it upsets you that much, post your address and we'll be glad to mail you a hanky. A nice pink one to go with your politics.

Re:Excellent!

[mysidia]

Translation: I'm a whiny little bitch boy who doesn't want to face up to what we're all doing to the planet [...]

I think you missed the point which was just to go item by item and flaunt everything the post above had stated.

You look like a raging lunatic, with your reply.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot Nazis and gun control.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying there's no climate change when he does that?

Only if a flock of Canadian geese get caught its wake turbulence which causes a tsunami to wipe out the Yucatan Peninsula 50,000 years from now.

Don't kill that mosquito!

Re:Excellent!

[sycodon]

"this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth."

AAAahhhaaahahahahahahahaha!

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is what we have to look forward to as AGW falls apart piece by piece...All the folks who wanted to seem so scientific and educated losing it in spectacular fashion.

Popcorn please.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I noticed the Republicans (except for a few exceptions like Bob Inglis and Jon Huntsman) digging their political graves with their own bare hands...

Re:Excellent!

[surd1618]

Obama is obviously using his powers to get this IPCC 'panel' to confuse everyone with 'leaked' documents. This is to distract leftists from the fascist activities of our government. Those Nazis want to take all of our guns away.

Re:Excellent!

[srmalloy]

Notice how now that Obama is president the climate change is not a big deal anymore?

“This is the future we must avert. This is the global threat of our time. And for the sake of future generations, our generation must move toward a global compact to confront a changing climate before it is too late. That is our job. That is our task. We have to get to work.”

Hardly sounds as if Obama considers "climate change" to be a sideline. You just have to look at Obama's Climate Action Plan to see for yourself. In his speech on climate change in June, he declared that he would be invoking his executive authority to invoke a number of measures aimed at curbing climate change and 'preparing' America for its costly impacts. In that speech, with the quip "We don't have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society", he summarily dismissed any possibility of considering that the holy doctrine of anthropogenic climate change might be wrong, despite the repeated failure of climate models to reproduce the global cooling of the last fifteen years.

--
"You are charged with preaching wrongful, pernicious, and misleading doctrine about anthropogenic global warming."

Re:Excellent!

[Archangel Michael]

Noise. Obama, like GWB before him, hasn't done SHIT for "AGW" crap. Why? Because he can't do anything about it. It isn't his job. But that doesn't stop the likes of you who give one guy a pass while lambasting the other, for the sole purpose of "noise". Here is the test. Do you drive a car? Do you enjoy petroleum based plastics that make your life easier? Do you enjoy products created by factories using coal and natural gas based energy/electricity?

Conservation is good, and we should be all for it, for conservation purposes alone. We don't need to scare people into voting for (D) just because "evil republicans" are ignoring the hype. What gets me, is people like you are "damn the facts" even as the horror you expected is actually not manifested, but the opposite is.

Cry wolf young boy, cry wolf again and again. There are no Polar Bears drowning and the ice sheets are bigger. Next up, "Climate Change" is the new "ice age", once predicted in the 1970s ignored in the 90's and 2000's. Why? Because damn the facts, it is human caused!

Re:Excellent!

[riverat1]

... and the ice sheets are bigger.

That statement is simply false. The ice sheets on Greenland and Antarctica are both losing ice. The only part of the cryosphere that's gained some ice is the Antarctic sea ice and that's such a small part of it you can practically ignore it.

Re:Excellent!

[tbannist]

There are no Polar Bears drowning and the ice sheets are bigger.

According to the WWF, there are 19 distinct populations of polar bears. 7 out of 19 populations are declining, 5 out of 19 populations are stable, and the rest there's not enough evidence to determine population status. They also list climate change as one of the primary threats to the polar bear population. You may be technically correct though, in that the polar bears tend to starve to death (or die from malnutrition complications) rather than actually drowning.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding? Climate change was out of control when Bush was president. Notice how now that Obama is president the climate change is not a big deal anymore? President Obama saved us! Thank goodness that all those people voted for Obama when I, as a very uneducated voter, voted for the other guy.

When Obama was running on "Hope and Change" I for one was hoping that we would have some change. Instead, all we got was some more cow bell.

Re:Excellent!

[Archangel Michael]

The report wasn't declining populations, it was there was not enough ice, and they were drowning. which was false. Which you obviously missed. On purpose.

Re:Excellent!

[Archangel Michael]

"Simply false" ? Only to the left wing AGW proponents driving their SUVs and flying around every week in their private jets, while living in the huge mansions, buying carbon offsets from a company they own.

Oh, and here: http://www.climatedepot.com/2013/09/01/antarctic-ice-sheet-growing-study-mass-gains-of-the-antarctic-ice-sheet-exceed-losses/

Re:Excellent!

[MightyMartian]

Nothing has fallen apart. The WSJ article was pure spin. The world is still warming.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

The report wasn't declining populations, it was there was not enough ice, and they were drowning. which was false. Which you obviously missed. On purpose.

The report was of seeing one bear. Do you have evidence that observer lied? No one else does.

The bigger question is, why are you so interested in this one poor bear? It's doesn't show anything scientifically, yet people are suing each other over it. It's a side show that people who want to discredit scientists are focused on. If you honestly cared about the truth here, you wouldn't been bringing this bullshit up.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

The ice caps are not bigger. During my lifetime in Alaska I've been able to see glaciers shrink dramatically. Note the numbers on the map. The mean annual temperature in the region has been climbing rather more drastically than at lower latitudes. See also weather data, and also this report on exactly how many cubic kilometers of ice have been evaporating as a result of elevated temperatures there.

The Arctic is undeniably melting. I can see it all around me. Argue about the cause as you may, but to deny that it is happening is a malicious and despicable lie.

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

-1 Troll

Retarded moderators are retarded.. Film at 11

Re:Excellent!

[Anonymous Coward]

Obama is not a dictator - just the president, and you must admit that they (Republican house) have kept his feet and hands tied together - so don't imagine that he CHOSE not to do something about climate change. He was also a little busy trying to salvage the Republican-born economy wherein the top 1% get to pilfer from the bottom 90% thanks to the Reaganesque elimination of regulation. The other 91-99% are immobilized by fear of falling off their precarious perch which has been giving them health insurance through their jobs, but no retirement plan or safety net.

Capital gains taxes are lower than earned income. In what imaginary world is that fair?

Cheers to my old teacher

[stkris]

I remember in second grade ca 1974 my teacher explaining that the Earth were slowly heading into a new ice age.

If I ever meet him again I'll buy him a beer!

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I remember in second grade ca 1974 my teacher explaining that the Earth were slowly heading into a new ice age. If I ever meet him again I'll buy him a beer!

Except that was a fringe idea that was obliterated in peer review fairly quickly. But people for some reason tend to fixate the weirdest shit in their memories, instead of the actually useful stuff.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[rolfwind]

Oh, is that based on the Time news cover back then? That's cute. I also get all my knowledge of those devious "hackers" from the mainstream media as well.

Now for real science:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm

Survey of 68 Scientific Studies from 1965 to 1979, 10% predicted cooling, 62% predicted warming, 28% had no stance. Today, more than 97% scientist agree on warming.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know why people keep bringing this up as if it somehow negates global warming.

1) We *are* slowly heading into an ice age (read up on Milankovitch cycles), but it is not due for tens of thousands of years, so it's kind of irrelevant on century scale;
2) On a shorter time scale (the next century or two), we're expecting the Earth to warm up due to higher CO2 concentrations, and that is a concern.

There is nothing inconsistent about these two statements because they are at different timescales. Your logic is like saying you don't have to worry about the ski jump you're about to run into because over the long term the mountain slopes down. No, you should probably pay attention to what's in front of you and worry less about the long-term until the short-term is sorted out.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Arker]

In fact we arent heading *into* an ice-age, we are living in one. The climate we consider normal is an ice age climate, specifically the interglacial, periods colder than typical for earth, but not the most extreme cold in earths cycle - times when there are solid ice caps at the poles, but they dont extend very far from them. The next phase of the ice-age climate is the shift from interglacial to glacial, a period of greater cold when the glaciers will grow down towards the equators as they have done many times before. And that's 'imminent' on a timescale of tens of thousands of years.

What we're being told to worry about now is that our co2 emissions will cause such drastic warming as to over-ride the Milankovitch and other natural cycles and vault us quickly OUT of our current ice-age, into a hot-house earth state - a much more common state for earth in general but one we should naturally have a few million years to prepare for. In that state, the ice-caps disappear entirely, and the next thing you know you have alligators and palm trees in London again.

Frankly I suspect the forces involved need to be understood a little better before anyone is going to know for sure what will actually wind up happening. Climatology is a rather young discipline tasked with sorting out some incredibly complicated subject matter.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Anonymous Coward]

Now for real science:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm

I don't read crap from blogs from delusional skeptics. Probably paid by Charles Koch to make that crap up. Do you have any links from actual scientists, not corporate shill skeptics?

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I don't read crap from blogs from delusional skeptics.

Except it's the non-skeptics who are delusional: homeopaths, chiropractors, religious people, astrologers etc. It's quite difficult to have negative delusions.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[riverat1]

When the ice caps disappear London will be under more than 60+ meters (200 feet of water).

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[siride]

Uhh, the site linked is not in any way an AGW denialist site, and the article actually refutes a standard claim from the deniers that there was some global cooling craze in the 70s.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Arker]

Are you certain of that?

I suspect if you've bothered to try and calculate it you have left a few things out. There was a time a few million years ago when the planet was that hot, and London was not under nearly that much water - it appears to have been a swamp.

Calculating the end result of changes like that is extremely complicated, and even people that have spent their entire life on the subject may easily miscalculate. Melting ice caps historically have *increased* elevations across Scandinavia, for instance, though that doesnt affect London directly.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Geoffrey.landis]

Do you have any links from actual scientists, not corporate shill skeptics?

How about Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
  http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[LynnwoodRooster]

Oh, is that based on the Time news cover back then? That's cute. I also get all my knowledge of those devious "hackers" from the mainstream media as well.

Now for real science:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age-predictions-in-1970s.htm

Survey of 68 Scientific Studies from 1965 to 1979, 10% predicted cooling, 62% predicted warming, 28% had no stance. Today, more than 97% scientist agree on warming.

Oh yes, that 97% consensus study from Cooks that is really just 0.3% consensus. Great appeal to an imaginary authority!

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Anonymous Coward]

The idea of a new ice age coming soon was not a opinion held but the scientific community, the idea of man made global warming has be a consensus since the mid 70's, but was a respectable hypothesis even further back to the 50's. For some reason the ice age idea took of in the public despite what the scientific community was saying, who would of thought.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Anonymous Coward]

It was in no way a fringe idea. It's easy to rewrite history tho, specially when people weren't online.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Maritz]

Sounds like you have it the wrong way around. Pays to have a quick look now and again.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[riverat1]

Yes, I'm certain. Here's the math.

To simplify I'll just look at the ice on Antarctica.

Volume of the Antarctic ice sheet: ~26,500,000 km^3

Area of the worlds oceans: ~360,000,000 km^2

26,500,000 km^3 / 360,000,000 km^2 = 0.0736 km = 73.6 meters.

73.6 meters is a bit high because ice is ~9% less dense than water and as sea level rises the ocean spreads out some so the area increases but our calculation ignored the ice in the Greenland ice sheet and other lesser ice sheets and glaciers so saying greater than 60 meters for all of the ice melting is an accurate and conservative statement.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Anonymous Coward]

Fringe idea? We're in an interglacial period. These usually last about 100,000 years and the last one ended...over 100,000 years ago. Predicting another ice age is not only not fringe, it's like predicting another big earthquake in Tokyo.

Thank God for Global Warming. It's probably the only thing holding the glaciers back.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[stridebird]

26,500,000 km^3 = 2.65 x 10^16 kg
This transfer of mass over the globe will cause tectonic disturbances resulting in alterations to the continental plates - causing uplift in places. So it's probably a bit more complicated than you have it.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[angel'o'sphere]

Your teacher was "wrong".

Wrong in Quotes, as already at that time "the petrol mafia" knew that AGW will be "soon" a hot debate. And as he was "educated by 'them' ", he obviously was convinced that his opinion/knowledge was correct.

After all, we know about it since the early 19th century and the "Club of Rome" warned about it shortly after WWII.

Also, surprising for you perhaps: I came to school 1972 or so ... and no one ever in any science class mentioned that the earth could move into an "ice age" again (quotes because the correct "english" term is different ;D)

So AFAICT this "ice age" claim is an US american only phenomena.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Anonymous Coward]

I know. I mainly wanted to see how many people responded with an informative correction like yours, and how many went with my incorrect knee-jerk response.

Also, I don't like sites that confuse the masses by using names that seem to be in support of the opposite position. I would feel that way, for example, if a skeptic site was called 'globalwarmingisreal.com', and then have skeptic arguments that disprove AGW.

For the record, I agree that global warming is happening, but am a skeptic about the extent of man's responsibility.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[angel'o'sphere]

While your post is in general right, this:
1) We *are* slowly heading into an ice age (read up on Milankovitch cycles), but it is not due for tens of thousands of years, so it's kind of irrelevant on century scale; is not correct.
We know that "Milankovitch cycles" obviously have an effect on climate. However, not exactly how it works (as it is influenced by many other effects).

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[angel'o'sphere]

How high is London above the sea level? 2 meters? So yes, your parent was exaggerating, but if "all ice" melts it will be far more than 20m below the sea level.

Calculating the end result of changes like that is extremely complicated,

Not more complicated than calculating how much area a cubic meter of sand will cover if you distribute it in a 1cm thick layer.

Only the numbers are "different" (and bigger).

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[riverat1]

Of course it's more complicated than that but they're not going to change that number by more than 15% or 20%.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Arker]

"Not more complicated than calculating how much area a cubic meter of sand will cover if you distribute it in a 1cm thick layer.

Only the numbers are "different" (and bigger)."

Unfortunately you are entirely wrong. I already hinted at at least one reason for this but it seems to have sailed right over your head. You see, the earth is NOT a flat box with walls which can be filled uniformly with water. It is roughly a globe, but far from a perfect one - the surface is covered in giant plates of rock that MOVE. Ice sheets in place on most continents actually weigh those plates down, pressing them further into the underlying magma, and as they melt the continents rise up. Imagine a toy boat, floating in a pond. Put an ice-cube on it, it dips lower in the water. But as the ice cube melts (assuming it can run off instead of being trapped in the boat) the boat rises higher again.

Calculating the actual net effect of a glacier melt on sea levels is thus a much more complicated task than you imagined. And I wouldnt be at all surprised if I have only scratched the surface with this extra variable - there may well be several more I am completely unaware of.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[angel'o'sphere]

Ah, and?

For a rough estimate, is it as simple as I told you.

Who cares if we make an "evelope of a letter" calculation and figure London is 70m under water, but after taking into account of changing coast lines, we figure it is only 65m, and after taking into account that a few million years later by "rising" of continents it adjusts again back to 69m?

Sorry, your first post about this matter was WRONG, several posters corrected you, and now you try to make a lame ass post to take their side?

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Arker]

Your "calculations" remain laughably unrealistic. You even moved the number in the wrong direction when supposedly taking into account the movement of plates - which you clearly do not understand at even an elementary school level.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[angel'o'sphere]

As I said before.

If you had any critics you would state it.

1) Your "calculations" remain laughably unrealistic.
What is unrealistic?

2) You even moved the number in the wrong direction when supposedly taking into account the movement of plates
I did not. If the plates rise, the area of sea becomes smaller, so the "sea level" is rising.
If you had have any founded objections, you had stated them.

3) which you clearly do not understand at even an elementary school level
That is not an argument but an insult.

You where unable to give an counter argument to 1) and 2)
Conclusion: you fail.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[stkris]

Not only US American - I went to school in Norway.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[stkris]

I think the teacher tought us this partly because it said so in the text book. But it's a long time ago and I am not sure of that.

Could be Time magazine - but most of the teachers back then were pretty left wing and very sceptical to anything from the US of A.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[stkris]

Like I have stated elsewhere - I think it was in the textbook my Norwegian teacher used. And for trusting peer reviews I am always sceptical to the conclusions made by hive minds after a few visits to Reddit and similar sites.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[angel'o'sphere]

Interesting!

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Arker]

What's unrealistic? You are simply making numbers up, without any data to support them. I could do the same if I wanted to, it proves nothing at all.

"I did not. If the plates rise, the area of sea becomes smaller, so the "sea level" is rising."

Incorrect. There are two types of plates. When ice melts, one type will sink (the sea floors in many areas will move deeper into the mantle under increased water weight) while most of the other type will raise (continental plates weighted down under ice which will be released.) This means deeper oceans and higher land, both of which means LOWER sea levels. But it's not a simple formula to figure out the net results, which might vary greatly (Africa, lacking any ice, would see the most raise/least increase in sea level, while Antarctica, currently covered in deep glaciers, would certainly rebound heavily gaining both altitude and land area.

"That is not an argument but an insult."

Unfortunately, it appears to simply be a true observation. See above.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[K. S. Kyosuke]

If you're trying to compare scientific peer review to Reddit, then I really don't know what kind of expectations you have about science in general. You must be a really easy person to please!

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Magius_AR]

We know that "Milankovitch cycles" obviously have an effect on climate. However, not exactly how it works (as it is influenced by many other effects).

An identical statement could be made with regard to "CO2" and the size of its role in "planet warming".

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Rakarra]

I don't read crap from blogs from delusional skeptics.

Except it's the non-skeptics who are delusional: homeopaths, chiropractors, religious people, astrologers etc. It's quite difficult to have negative delusions.

I don't think it's that difficult. There are a fair number of "moon landing hoax" believers, and "9/11 Truthers" seems to be all the rage now in conspiracy circles.
Maybe it involves taking what could be a negative belief and turn it into a "positive" one, something to believe in rather than something to deny. Like "the moon landing just didn't happen" resonates less than "There is a large conspiracy in the circles of government to make you believe that the moon landing happened."

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Anonymous Coward]

"Skeptical Science" isn't from "delusional sceptics", it's from people who are sceptical of climate sceptics and their claims. They would say "we're sceptical of climate research, and yet, when we independently investigate the claims made, we come down on the mainstream side".

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I don't think it's that difficult. There are a fair number of "moon landing hoax" believers, and "9/11 Truthers" seems to be all the rage now in conspiracy circles.

Actually, I'd label these as "positive delusions" - in the sense that these people believe that there exists (= a positive belief) a group of people with very specific properties (who actively caused some very specific things to happen), and they only do so based on uninformed hunches, and due to strong irrational confirmation bias, they ignore any evidence (all the non-contradictory artifacts, documents, and testimonies) or mere common-sense reasoning ("you can't silence 50k engineers") to the contrary.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[stkris]

LOL my point was that even scientists are people. A more educated group than many redditors one can hope but still humans.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[angel'o'sphere]

An identical statement could be made with regard to "CO2" and the size of its role in "planet warming".

No it can't. CO2 always was the key factor to all planetary changes.

None of the cyclic changes in earth's orientation to sun has *alone* any significant effect. Several of the changes need to amplify each other to change the climate.

CO2 can do that alone, it does not need any companion factors.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[angel'o'sphere]

I have no idea about the sea floors.
I doubt they will be sinking into the magma ... but perhaps you are right.

This means deeper oceans and higher land, both of which means LOWER sea levels.
That is nonsense. If the sea floor is NOT lowering, but only the continents are rising, then the sea is rising as well as the area of the sea becomes smaller.

Perhaps you mix up that a house that is now 100m above sea level will be at 30m when all ice is melted and in a few million years when the continent is risen it is at 40m or 50m with the actual sea level. Suppose in the same situation there is an island somewhere which is after the melting of the ice just 1m above the sea. Now the continents rise, that island will be below sea level.

(Africa, lacking any ice, would see the most raise/least increase in sea level, while Antarctica, currently covered in deep glaciers, would certainly rebound heavily gaining both altitude and land area.
Exactly, and the rise of Antarctica will flood Africa even more.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Arker]

The sea-floors will certainly sink deeper as ocean rises. As continental masses rise, yes the edge of the shelf may come up, extending the coastline, slightly reducing total size of ocean. But as long as this is only coastal crust coming up we are talking about a negligible affect on the world ocean, because that is a very shallow area to begin with and the bulk of the ocean is much deeper. And you see, it is one of many effects, working at cross purposes, some things working to raise the sea level and other things working to effectively lower it. The equation to predict the actual net outcome would be quite a bit more complicated than you thought, and it seems unlikely we are even aware of all the variables involved.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[angel'o'sphere]

Sigh ...

The equation to predict the actual net outcome would be quite a bit more complicated than you thought
No it is not more complex than I thought.
Because people like me think about this.

However it is completely irrelevant for the foreseeable future.

All ice might melt perhaps in thousand years. Perhaps (that is the fear) in 100 years.

Greenland and Antarctia will start rising AFTER the ice is melted (or a significant part of it).

Then continents will rise by a few millimeters per year, while the water is rising a few cm per year in the beginning and then by a meters when the melting is at its peak.

It is completely irrelevant whether in 2000 years the water will be 70m higher or 65m or 75m.

And in fact it is completely irrelevant if it is 50m or 150m.

So nitpicking about continents and sea floors makes no sense at all.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why arguing with religious nuts is a waste of time.

You can bend over backwards and render yourself selectively blind at will. Even when you've been clearly shown to lack really basic information on a subject you pretend to be expert at, you cant even consider for a moment that you dont know what you are talking about. Your self-deceptions to avoid cognitive dissonance are well practiced and you are utterly incapable of learning anything (after all, you already know it all!) so it's simply throwing pearls before swine.

I feel sorry for you but I cannot help you. Swinehood hath no remedy.

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[Magius_AR]

Except that recent studies show we don't fully understand the scope of CO2's role on the planet...else, the models would have been more accurate and the past 15 years would have shown more warming. Why do you not find this relevant? You disregard one argument "because we just don't understand it enough" -- but when another argument (CO2) is _proven_ to be not fully understood by humans, you don't use the same tack?

Re:Cheers to my old teacher

[angel'o'sphere]

The last 15 years show less warming e.g. because of the sun, it is in a minimum and for some reasons is there longer than it should be.
Other reasons are freak weather events.
Unexpected less heating up is a good thing, until the effect that causes the "less" is gone.
Our problem is not lack of understanding of CO2, but the other effects that suddenly "break" the warming.

Also...

[Orp]

Two mistakes pop up immediately int the article - IPPC (eh? OK, typo) and "The Journal of the American Meteorological Society". It's IPCC and the Bulletin of the AMS (BAMS). Maybe this guy creamed himself while typing, it is the WSJ after all.

Re:Also...

[Jawnn]

Two mistakes pop up immediately int the article - IPPC (eh? OK, typo) and "The Journal of the American Meteorological Society". It's IPCC and the Bulletin of the AMS (BAMS). Maybe this guy creamed himself while typing, it is the WSJ after all.

So..., I am trying to wrap my head around this... You're saying that the WSJ, a periodical noted for it's business expertise, is putting spin on this report? Why, oh why, would they want to do that, I wonder?

Re:Also...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this guy creamed himself while typing, it is the WSJ after all.

With that you just initiated the /. cohort of pants creamers. Climate Change, Global Warming! ....Fap away!

Re:Also...

[Anonymous Coward]

FTFY
the WSJ, a periodical formerly noted for it's business expertise....

Cue conspiracy theorists in....

[Anonymous Coward]

3...2....1.....

Re:Cue conspiracy theorists in....

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh sorry, didn't see your cue.. I put my conspiracy theory at the end, here it is.

Still not much of a comfort

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Given the inertia of our industrial and economic processes, it only means that the unstoppable iceberg will simply crawl slower. But at least we have more time. I also don't think that this means a time-out for ocean acidification.

Re:Still not much of a comfort

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Well if these were truly big concerns, then why didn't they wipe out all life on earth 65 million years ago? 65 million years ago we had a few things: Large macroscale life like Dinosaurs and giant mosquitos, a large supercontinent named pangea, no ice caps, and CO2 levels ten times as high as they are right now. The ocean at this time was acidic beyond even the worst doomsday predictions of Al Gore. The planet was also "greener" (more plantlife) than at any point in history.

Re:Still not much of a comfort

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

We'll be better off in 100 years with the most advanced tech we can produce between then and now, regardless of any climate change.

It's like people in 1900 worrying about what kind of climate they want to leave us here in 2013, and making economic changes that weaken the economy and thus slow development. I'll take 2013 tech in 2013 over 1990-level tech (or 1980 or 1960), thanks.

Re:Still not much of a comfort

[Geoffrey.landis]

You seem to be addressing a different question.

The question being addressed is the effect of human-generated carbon dioxide on global temperature, specifically, by how much does a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide increases temperature?

As you point out, in the Cretaceous the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere was higher, the global temperature was warmer, and the Earth did not have polar ice caps. If this is relevant to the discussion at all, it is by pointing out that increased carbon dioxide and higher temperatures have, in the past, occurred together. The direction of the causation can be debated, since we don't have very good records of other climate parameters at that period, but increased carbon dioxide does seem to correlate with higher temperature.

I'm not sure what your comment "wipe out all life on Earth 65 million years ago" is about. If some people are saying that a few degrees of global warming will "wipe out all life on Earth," I don't know who they are, but they are certainly not mainstream scientists of any sort. Please feel free to ignore them. More specifically, please, in the future, try to learn what the actual scientists are saying, rather than trolling around on the web to find the most extreme misrepresentations of straw men that parody what the most extreme fringe says, and then ridicule that parody.

Re:Still not much of a comfort

[jbengt]

65 million years ago we had a few things: Large macroscale life like Dinosaurs and giant mosquitos, a large supercontinent named pangea, no ice caps, and CO2 levels ten times as high as they are right now.

65million years ago we had oxygen levels around 35%.
250 million years ago, we had ocean acidification that helped wipe out 95% of the complex life forms in the ocean.-
None of that implies that the current trends are good for us.

Re:Still not much of a comfort

[riverat1]

We'll be better off in 100 years with the most advanced tech we can produce between then and now, regardless of any climate change.

That assuming the effects of anthropogenic climate change are not so bad they will cause the downfall of our advanced technical civilization. There's no proof that's a safe assumption at this point. I realize that humans are very inventive and resourceful but major climate change has caused the downfall of other great civilizations in the past. It could happen to us.

Re:Still not much of a comfort

[houghi]

That would be the logical way to handle this. What will happen is that some people will say that this proves that there is no climate change and that we can increase the output of fossil fuel consumption and what not.

Re:Still not much of a comfort

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Large macroscale life like Dinosaurs and giant mosquitos, a large supercontinent named pangea, no ice caps, and CO2 levels ten times as high as they are right now.

We also had a Sun that was something like 0.7 percent dimmer on the average 65 My ago. Just because CO2 levels were higher in the very distant past doesn't mean much: the solar output was lower, and the greenhouse effect helped keep the conditions on Earth moderate. Furthermore, the solar output was double-digit percent lower billions of years ago, and the CO2 levels were appropriately higher back then. There seems to be some sort of negative feedback loop involving the atmospheric CO2, its absorption in the Earth's crust, the subduction of the tectonic plates, and the release of CO2 in volcanic zones from the subducted material. Now that the solar output is higher, we need less CO2, and in some distant future, no level of CO2 will be sufficient to make Earth habitable: this loop will cease to be an efficient mechanism to keep our planet habitable. Well, that's the nature of stellar evolution.

science and anonymity

[Anonymous Coward]

why anonymous? how the heck does that help science?

ok then ...

[Anonymous Coward]

So Al will be returning all the scam money he makes from his bs agenda and lifestyle, right?
Right?

OK, I'll Start

[Anonymous Coward]

It's no wonder an article like this showed up in the Wall Street Journal. They have one of the preeminent Anti Global Warming editorial boards on the planet. They specialize in global warming skepticism almost as much as finance. And why? The industries that sponsor them rely on oil and coal. So really this article is absolute rubbish. You don't even have to read it to know. Posting AC because that is the only honorable way to start off a thread like this.

The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[dryriver]

The world's climate is such a huge, complex and fluid system that the best supercomputer in existence will only be able to model its future behavior "very approximately". It should thus not come as a big shock when what the computer models predicted in 2007 doesn't happen exactly in 2013, or indeed further down the timeline. It is only when more complex & accurate simulations can be run on supercomputers that we can have any reasonable expectancy of modeling the future behavior of the earth's climate with any accuracy.----- And suppose for a moment that we happen to realize further down the line that "Climate Change" worries were a bit overblown? Well, no harm done! Without the Climate Change alarmism of the last 2 decades, nobody would have put much money into developing renewables like wind and solar or tidal energy. We also might not have Toyota Priuses or Tesla electric cars on the market today. Not to mention computers and other household devices that save a lot of energy compared to past cousins. ------ So whether Global Warming is real or not, fear of it has influenced everything from automobile to refrigerator designs to become more "earth friendly". That's a good thing in my book....

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[foma84]

[...]the best supercomputer in existence will only be able to model its future behavior "very approximately".[...]

That or the fact that man-made models might be inaccurate/incomplete/off.
Nontheless the only way finding out is, you guessed, crash-testing it.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[Derec01]

It's not a bad thing, per se.

However, it does feed the idea that the alarmism was trumped up for that purpose in the first place, a suspicion that many have had over the years. If too many people, scientist or not, subscribe to this "ends justifies the means" rationalization (instead of just saying that they were mistaken), that is not going to foster public trust in the scientific community.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[mc6809e]

It is only when more complex & accurate simulations can be run on supercomputers that we can have any reasonable expectancy of modeling the future behavior of the earth's climate with any accuracy.

The deviation from reality, though, seems systematic. Nearly all the models predicted warming greatly exceeding what we've witnessed over the past 15 years or so.

What we need are not more complex and accurate simulations. What we need are more accurate physics that we can then simulate.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[trewornan]

So whether Global Warming is real or not, fear of it has influenced everything from automobile to refrigerator designs to become more "earth friendly". That's a good thing in my book....

Yeah screw all the plebs who died unnecessarily because money that could have been spent on health care, research, foreign aid, etc was spent on emission targets to combat global warming "real or not".

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[phantomfive]

According to this recent paper, the climate models were a bit off......

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Broken Windows Fallacy.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the poor people who can not afford to heat their homes due to higher energy prices due of course to more expensive renewable energy? What about those who freeze to death in the winter time because they can not afford to heat their home? What about those poor people who start chopping down trees instead of paying for traditional heating? There is always a negative side to any political action and denying that is just as bad as denying that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Face it, lots of harm will be done regardless of what we do because that is the nature of politics. Don't stick your head in the sand and deny the truth...any bad effects will be blamed on scientists and politicians alike if they end up being wrong because that is the nature of reality and it is only fair.. You perform an action and you reap the benefits and the consequences equally. You are completely wrong. There is plenty of harm done, and if it also turns out that we have been wasting our money on research into climate change over the last 20 years, that is equally bad because that money could have been spent on other fields of science where we could have seen a tangible benefit.

So no, don't give me this immoral attitude that even if they are wrong no harm was done, because that completely ignores the billions of dollars we spend on climate change research every year and it completely ignore the billions spent on renewable subsidies that is good money that could have went to any number of endeavors in science or even in aiding other humans in this big blue world of ours. Above all else let me say this:

If decisions are made because of faulty information in science, there is always harm done and plenty of it. To simply ignore the negative effects is not only immoral, but delusional and rather crazy. This is why the scientists behind climate change MUST above all else be absolutely and positively sure if they advocate for political action because if they get it wrong and people end up dying due to energy poverty and artificial shortages of power, that blood is on their hands since those people would have only been thrust into fuel poverty due to energy scarsity advocated by same scientists.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[techno-vampire]

I've said this here before, but it's worth repeating: regardless of whether or not AGW is true or not, it's probably not a good idea for us to be running an open-ended experiment of dumping as much carbon dioxide as we can into the atmosphere just to see what happens.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[AlphaWolf_HK]

I'm a big skeptic of the global warming movement, but emissions standards are fine in my book so long as they target actual pollutants (e.g. soot, etc). Even if we cause global warming, I don't believe it will hurt us. However we can cause ourselves grief by polluting the ground, air, or water with toxic chemicals. Let's keep those two separate and not let the issue of global warming distract from the issue of pollution.

If you need proof of why we need emissions standards, go have a walk around Beijing.

Other than that, absolutely we have wasted an obscene amount of time and debate on global warming, which is a non-issue in my book.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[khallow]

If you need proof of why we need emissions standards, go have a walk around Beijing.

That just means Beijing needs emission standards.

In my book, all the money squandered on "real or not" problems could have been used for real problems that affect billions of people. I'd wager that we'll find out that the cost of addressing imaginary climate change problems has cost the lives of tens of millions of people.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[khallow]

I've said this here before, but it's worth repeating: regardless of whether or not AGW is true or not, it's probably not a good idea for us to be running an open-ended experiment of dumping as much carbon dioxide as we can into the atmosphere just to see what happens.

An "experiment" implies that we're changing at most a few variables at a time. We're not. We're building and running the most advanced society we know of with that CO2 emissions consequence.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[stenvar]

And suppose for a moment that we happen to realize further down the line that "Climate Change" worries were a bit overblown? Well, no harm done! Without the Climate Change alarmism of the last 2 decades, nobody would have put much money into developing renewables like wind and solar or tidal energy. We also might not have Toyota Priuses or Tesla electric cars on the market today. Not to mention computers and other household devices that save a lot of energy compared to past cousins.

True. Instead, if all those resources and brains had been directed towards that actually mattered, we might have cures for HIV and cancer, landed humans on Mars, and achieved artificial intelligence. That's in addition to the fact that we might have a rapidly growing economy and more developing nations might be out of poverty.

Dealing with non-existent environmental threats is similar to fighting wars: it wastes resources and lives, and keeps humanity from making progress.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[VortexCortex]

The world's climate is such a huge, complex and fluid system that the best supercomputer in existence will only be able to model its future behavior "very approximately".

It is possible to accurately model the climate change, but it will require a quantum computer more expensive and massive than any prior Electronic Arithmetic machine ever. I'll call it the ultimate eArth, or simpl--- Wait a sec... deja vu?

It seems you are absolutely incorrect, the supercomputer IS in existence, and to precisely model the future behavior simply allow the mock-up to operate outside the orbit of your black hole... Since this star system doesn't orbit a black hole, I need to see a man about a mouse.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[LordLucless]

Except that all everyone cares about these days is CO2, which isn't really a pollutant - it's a natural component of the atmosphere, and even with us pumping dead dinosaurs into the air, it's fluctuating within historical (as in, geological-timeframe historical) bounds.

Our fixation on CO2 may mean other, more harmful emissions (CO, NO2, SO2, etc) escape notice.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[riverat1]

The deviation from reality, though, seems systematic. Nearly all the models predicted warming greatly exceeding what we've witnessed over the past 15 years or so.

Here is a graph comparing the CMIP3 model output (the basis of the IPCC AR4 chapter on model projections in 2007) to the actual temperatures of the 3 major instrumental temperature records including the 95% confidence range. You'll notice that while a bit below the central projection temperatures are still well within the expected range. The full article is here.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're saying that the US budget should be spent on things that benefit the people and not wasted on expensive climate research, right? That's an... interesting political question. I was intrigued and sought for "where is the money".

A quick Google gave me this:

• $ __2.6 billion -- US climate research proposal 2013 (source)
• $ 856.5 billion -- US defense spending 2013 (source)

So, you could make the enormous climate research spending budget-neutral, by reducing the military spending by 0.3 %. Or, if you slash the military budget by a staggering 0.6%, you could spend that money on climate research *AND* on subsidizing better house insulation for poor people, because what you say is actually a really good plan, like they do in the UK. (Woops.. they planned to do in the UK; Cameron shot his coalition partner's plan down apparently

Any comment?

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, it is a good thing. The problem is: with the same resources, could "we" have come up with something else, maybe orders of magnitude better? We don't know the opportunity cost here, and we might never know...

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[BergZ]

You could say the same thing about any branch of scientific study.
Why bother studying distant stars when we could be curing HIV or cancer!
Why bother studying life when we could be putting people on Mars!
Why bother studying rocks when we could be developing artificial intelligence!

Understanding how the climate of the planet we live on behaves and changes seems like a very important thing to know.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[Areyoukiddingme]

There's a distinct possibility Tesla electric cars would still exist. Regardless of what global climate is doing, it's true that oil is becoming more difficult to find and more difficult and more expensive to extract. Exactly how much more is subject to question, but the trend is definitely upward. Certainly the price has gone up, and the studies that estimated the gas price necessary to make a modern electric car viable in the market are decades old, and look to be holding true today (sustained gas prices of ~$4/gallon was the estimate). Perhaps Elon Musk wouldn't have felt quite as much urgency as he did if not for the Global Warming drum beat, but the end of gasoline burning cars is pretty much guaranteed, if you wait long enough, regardless of what the climate does.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[Magius_AR]

You could say the same thing about any branch of scientific study. Why bother studying distant stars when we could be curing HIV or cancer! Why bother studying life when we could be putting people on Mars! Why bother studying rocks when we could be developing artificial intelligence! Understanding how the climate of the planet we live on behaves and changes seems like a very important thing to know.

Ah, but it's not the same. Because "understanding" and "acting on assumed understanding" are two entirely different things. Continuing to research climate and expand our knowledge of it will always have value. However, making snap judgments about the safety of our earth and consuming large amounts of resources to address non-problems based on hasty research conclusions -- that is something entirely different.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[BergZ]

The point is that we're not making snap judgements about "non-problems".
We're talking about reducing human contributions to the problem of Global Climate Change (the most obvious way being reducing emissions of green house gasses). Based on your comment it seems that you've never really attempted to familiarize yourself with the even the most basic information about climate change.
A good place to get started is: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[Magius_AR]

We're talking about reducing human contributions to the problem of Global Climate Change

No one has proved this to be a problem. In fact, all recent trends (last 15 years) point to the opposite. All the projections and claimed damages are just vaporware at the moment. This is especially true if the Earth starts cooling down again.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[stenvar]

I didn't say there was anything wrong with studying climate change. I'm saying that the erroneous and premature conclusions people have reached, and the resulting resources we have wasted on fighting a non-existent threat, have cost us a lot. In particular, the cheery conclusion of the original post that it wasn't all that bad because we got "Priuses and Teslas" are b.s.

Re:The Computer Models were "a bit off" then ?

[stenvar]

The point is that we're not making snap judgements about "non-problems".

No, that is not the point. The point is that Dryriver argued that assuming our judgment actually had been wrong, it still wouldn't be so bad because we got all this great stuff out of it. But, in fact, the opportunity costs we have already paid for trying to counteract climate change are already staggering, and it is only getting worse the longer we persist. Even if some of the worst case scenarios of the IPCC were true, they wouldn't justify the enormous losses we are accumulating by wasting resources on trying to counteract climate change.

The fact that is is increasingly looking like climate change isn't going to be as severe anyway pales in comparison to these other economic facts.

Useless.

[Anonymous Coward]

Something out of a Murdoch rag, don't bother.

Sigh

[jasnw]

(Sound of pooch being screwed.) This is how real science works, particularly with highly complex issues like the earth's climate. We learn new things as we go along, and when new knowledge means we need to adjust our undestanding, that's what is done. The next update by the IPCC (if it gets funded, that is) may well show that what we learn in the interim indicates that the current estimates of climate change were too small. Unfortunately, the polarization of politics will take this latest IPCC report (if it indeed says what the article states) as an indication that these science types have been lying to us all along and they should now be ignored and driven from the temple. Efforts to deal with the effects of the upcoming changes will be killed off and nothing will be done until it's too late to do much of anything other than hope to cope.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

This is how real science works

Speaking of how real science works, to RTFS...

"Since "extremely" and "very" have specific and different statistical meanings here, comparison is difficult."

Um... because the meanings are specific, comparison is more difficult? How does that work?

Re:Sigh

[AlphaWolf_HK]

If you want to know who to blame, blame the groups that try to use climate science to push their pet agendas like vegetarianism, socialism, organic, or whatever "new age" philosophies they think are mankinds next answer when they have almost nothing to do with the issue at hand.

(By the way I'm not speaking about whether vegetarianism or socialism or good or bad, just that they don't belong in this discussion and only serve to complicate things.)

Re:Sigh

[stenvar]

This is how real science works, particularly with highly complex issues like the earth's climate. We learn new things as we go along, and when new knowledge means we need to adjust our undestanding, that's what is done.

Real science also means that people don't run out and incur trillions of dollars in costs and expenses based on scientific speculation and papers that are barely a few years old and based on a couple of computer models with thousands of tunable parameters.

Unfortunately, the polarization of politics will take this latest IPCC report (if it indeed says what the article states) as an indication that these science types have been lying to us all along and they should now be ignored and driven from the temple.

"These science types" have been lying to us, not about their discoveries, but about the confidence we should have in those discoveries, and for that they should be "ignored and driven from the temple".

Rational policy based on scientific results should be based on scientific results that have stood the test of time and numerous independent replications, and even then it is prudent to have doubts.

Re:Sigh

[blueg3]

papers that are barely a few years old

The general principles and some interesting initial conclusions, which started (very slowly at first) a lot of this research, were worked out by Arrhenius in the (very) late 19th century.

Re:Sigh

[stenvar]

The general principles and some interesting initial conclusions, which started (very slowly at first) a lot of this research, were worked out by Arrhenius in the (very) late 19th century.

If all that happened with the atmosphere was what Arrhenius proposed, global warming would clearly be a non-issue.

It only becomes an issue because people postulate all sorts of positive feedback mechanisms, economic futures, and effects on biology. Those postulates are based on very recent results and computer models.

Re:Sigh

[stenvar]

By the way, you just engaged in the typical deception again, misrepresenting an old result that modern results happen to rely on as if that lent any credence or evidence for the modern result.

For example, cold fusion doesn't become any more credible just because people justify it in part with known 19th century chemistry.

Re:Sigh

[wytcld]

The notion that climate scientists are concerned with pet agendas is idiotic, totally ignorant. I know climate scientists. They couldn't give a shit about socialism, capitalism or other political ideals. They aren't vegetarians, or particularly organic, or anything of the like. They just look at the science and the science leads them to the conclusion that humanity's in serious trouble. They tend to take that not as a call to arms, but somewhat abstractly, philosophically. And then they look at the people who accuse them of cooking the science, and they think something along the lines of "Humanity's not worth saving, especially if it won't save itself."

These are big picture, long-term, wide-angle thinkers. They identify with life and consciousness in the universe, but tend not to be concerned so much with humankind's tragic present. Many aren't too concerned with this civilization, or even this form of life, although they tend to enjoy it intensely. They know that civilizations and advanced lifeforms will arise again. If this one isn't smart enough to deserve to survive, so be it.

Re:Sigh

[blueg3]

By the way, you just engaged in the typical deception again, misrepresenting an old result that modern results happen to rely on as if that lent any credence or evidence for the modern result.

I didn't say Arrhenius's work lends credence to modern results. You did, as an attempt to deflect. I simply said that the general understanding of CO2 influencing atmospheric temperature is much, much older than you imply it is.

Re:Sigh

[blueg3]

By the way, you just engaged in the typical deception "again" (again?), responding to something I didn't say because it's an easier target than what I did say.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Real scientists don't ignore FOIA requests for 5 years and then when courts are threatening to force them to hand over research data for peer review they delete the data instead of "risking" someone else seeing what they did. That is what "climate scientists" do and why they have no credibility.

You can whine all you want about if we should listen to them or not, but with their unethical behaviour and absolute refusal to allow peer review of data shows that they are just running a scam.

Re:Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I work with climate scientists, too, and none of them that I am around fit this description. Guess what? They are people. And, being part of the class of people, they have a wide range of political ideals. However, I have never heard any of them express the thought that "humanity is in serious trouble". When they are accused of cooking the science, it stings. It pisses them off that some people in their field are shooting off their mouths about what we "know", when they are quite aware that we "know" very little, and are attempting to make educated guesses about what is going on. At the same time, it also pisses them off when the loudmouth's opposite numbers are screaming that global warming is all a sham. The people I work with believe the truth is between these two extremes.

You seem to know a collection of rather sick individuals.

Re:Sigh

[stenvar]

I simply said that the general understanding of CO2 influencing atmospheric temperature is much, much older than you imply it is.

I did not imply that at all. You falsely responded as if I had implied that.

I didn't say Arrhenius's work lends credence to modern results.

You didn't say much of anything, in fact. What you did was put out irrelevant statement in an obvious attempt to manipulate and mislead readers into erroneous conclusions, a common tactic among advocates for action on climate change. I corrected the erroneous conclusions that readers might have reached from your incoherent drivel.

Re:Sigh

[AlphaWolf_HK]

I'm not talking about climate scientists at all. I'm talking about people who set public policy - that is, politicians, and by extension those who prop them up to where they are - political pundits, activists, and fundraisers. Al Gore is among them for sure. He is NOT a climate scientist.

Re:Sigh

[Maritz]

"These science types" have been lying to us, not about their discoveries, but about the confidence we should have in those discoveries, and for that they should be "ignored and driven from the temple".

Motivated reasoning in action. Funny the 'skepticism' people can muster up when they have a dog in the fight. Truth is, climate change denialism is becoming more and more akin to creationism/ID. Disingenuous arguments, well funded propaganda machines, and fallacies and ad-homs galore.

Re:Sigh

[stenvar]

Motivated reasoning in action. Funny the 'skepticism' people can muster up when they have a dog in the fight.

Yeah, massive tax increases, decades of disruption in third world development, and global economic depressions are indeed a "dog in the fight".

Truth is, climate change denialism is becoming more and more akin to creationism/ID

Truth is, climate change "science" is becoming more and more akin to creationism/ID.

Re:Sigh

[tbannist]

Truth is, climate change "science" is becoming more and more akin to creationism/ID.

Because creationism/ID is supported by decades of complex scientific research?

Wait, that's not right...

Re:Sigh

[serviscope_minor]

Truth is, climate change denialism is becoming more and more akin to creationism/ID

That's only because you seem to have the utter lack of ability to separate politicians and shrill media types from the actual science. If you want to attack the science, then attack the science. Don't attack something unrelated and pretend that it has something to do with science.

But I know you won't because you seem to hold your pet ideas very dear and are unliekely to think rationally about them.

Re:Sigh

[angel'o'sphere]

The positive feed back mechanisms have not even started yet ... so what is your stupid idiotic problem?
Never had math in school or physics? If so you are not qualified to discuss ...

Re:Sigh

[gottabeme]

...Generalize much?

Re:Sigh

[stenvar]

The positive feed back mechanisms have not even started yet ... so what is your stupid idiotic problem?

Since they haven't started yet, there is no evidence for them yet. They are based on guesswork.

Never had math in school or physics? If so you are not qualified to discuss ...

Care to explain what the positive feedback mechanisms that have been postulated as part of climate change have to do with mathematics?

Re:Sigh

[stenvar]

That's only because you seem to have the utter lack of ability to separate politicians and shrill media types from the actual science.

You should tell that to Maritz; I was only throwing his unfounded accusation back at him.

If you want to attack the science, then attack the science.

I have done so, as have others: the science on which recommendations for action on climate change are based is extremely weak.

Re:Sigh

[stenvar]

Creationism/ID takes a few scientific facts out of context and then constructs an elaborate and implausible theory out of them. That's the same with climate change "science".

Re:Sigh

[angel'o'sphere]

They have to do with mathematics, because logic is part of math. But we can also focus on physics.
'Postulated' feedback effects like more CO2 leads to more vapour and vapour leads to more heating and both lead to more methane which also leads to more heating (melting of perma frost areas, release from the oceans etc.)
Exactly, this is guesswork. Nevertheless exactly that will happen if we can not stabalize the CO2 level. There is othing to prove in the physical sense as this is provene by simple logic.
We don't need to wait till we suddenly 'measure' CH4 in bigger qunstities.

Re:Sigh

[stenvar]

both lead to more methane which also leads to more heating (melting of perma frost areas, release from the oceans etc.)

And whether global warming is dangerous depends on the magnitude and speed of those releases. Mathematics doesn't tell you that. In fact, there is little experimental data or observation to make any clear predictions about that, just a lot of wild guesswork and FUD.

Nevertheless exactly that will happen if we can not stabalize the CO2 level.

Yes, some CO2 will get released from permafrost, and some clathrates will melt. There is no reason to believe that that's going to be more than a negligible blip.

And we can never "stabilize" the CO2 level because they naturally undergo wide swings. If it weren't going up rapidly now due to human activity, it would likely start going down:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg

We do know what our pre-industrial climatic fate would have been, and, frankly, I prefer that we seem to be avoiding that:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070829193436.htm

Re:Sigh

[angel'o'sphere]

WTF !!!

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/08/070829193436.htm

This is just nonsense. Regardless how "true" it could be considered it will happen over a timespan of 20,000 years or more. Who the fuck cares how the world looks like in 20,000 years if you ae not even able to consider the next 20 years?

And whether global warming is dangerous depends on the magnitude and speed of those releases. Mathematics doesn't tell you that. In fact, there is little experimental data or observation to make any clear predictions about that, just a lot of wild guesswork and FUD.
The worst case scenario is: all is released. If we run into a "runaway" feedback we obviously can't stop it. This is clear by math. That is how math works. I would not call that FUD. The only valid question is: how likely is that to happen. Answer: we don't know yet. But what we know is: if we continue to produce so much CO2: it will happen. Can we stop it? No idea. It depends whether stopping CO2 production "right now" is enough.

And we can never "stabilize" the CO2 level because they naturally undergo wide swings. If it weren't going up rapidly now due to human activity, it would likely start going down:
Playing with words again? What is that for? To extend an argument so long that one party forgets how it started?
Stabilizing: keeping it as it is (as good as you can). Means: don't enforce it, don't reduce it.
We don't really care about natural effects here as they are beyond our might to "change".
Wide swings: oh, really? I'm 1,70m tall. In relation to my size, what is a wide swing? 0 obviously is the bottom. So if we add 1,70 to the other direction we get a span of 0 to 3,40. Is that a wide swing for you? CO2 concentration reached now 400ppm. Since the 1700ds CO2 concentration has more than doubled. That is AFAIK the highest level since 25 _million_ (not thousand) years.
Claiming that we are close to an ice age/glacier period/ice aeon/ice epoch (how ever you want to call it) or ever have been the last 2000 years is just utter nonsense. (And those claims from the 1970ths where already debunked at that time).
Especially if people would look on the history of glacier periods. The previous one is just how long ago? 20k years? 15k years? If we assume there would be a regularity the next one would be due in something like 45k to 150k years or even 650k years.

Re:Sigh

[stenvar]

The previous one is just how long ago? 20k years? 15k years? If we assume there would be a regularity the next one would be due in something like 45k to 150k years or even 650k years.

The current warm period is called the Holocene, and it has been at least 11000 years long. Warm periods usually last at most 12000 years. So, absent anthropogenic warming or other unusual effects, we'd be entering a new glacial period right now, with steadily decreasing temperatures. Even small decreases in temperature are devastating to agriculture, while even significant increases tend not to be.

Earth has been through dozens of these over the past few million years,and anatomically modern humans through at least one cycle. Temperatures, ecologies, precipitation, and sea levels during each cycle have changed much more dramatically than anything projected (or even plausible) from anthropogenic warming. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that the projected changes from anthropogenic warming will be particularly harmful to life on earth, in particular since warmer temperatures (on these scales) are generally not as harmful to life as colder temperatures.

The worst case scenario is: all is released. If we run into a "runaway" feedback we obviously can't stop it.

There is no evidence for runaway feedback, no proven mechanism by which it could happen if we released "all carbon", and no precedent in earth's history. Furthermore, each warm period has ended on its own based on some unknown negative feedback mechanism that no model takes into account. So while there is no evidence for an effective positive feedback mechanism, we know there is a global and effective negative feedback mechanism.

But what we know is: if we continue to produce so much CO2: it will happen.

No, we don't know any such thing. In fact, what likely would happen if we released "all" carbon is that we returned to the kind of temperatures when all that stuff was in the atmosphere, probably about the same as the Eocene. There would be some economic costs (depending on how fast that would happen), but there is no evidence supporting the idea that it would be a global catastrophe.

Re:Sigh

[angel'o'sphere]

Warm periods usually last at most 12000 years
Where do you have that number from?
The warm period before the previous cold period was way longer.

There is no (a) evidence for runaway feedback, no (b)proven mechanism by which it could happen
You mixing two things here to "reinforce your argument", both are wrong.
Evidence: we have huge CH4 deposits in the perma frost regions.
Proven mechanism: if those melt, the CH4 gets released.

No, we don't know any such thing.
Yes we do, seem quite a bit unconcerned about how physics work.
Right now the CO2 concentration is something like 400ppm. Already it is noticeable warmer than it was 200 years ago. When we are at 800ppm it will be even warmer. We just don't know exactly 'how warm'. We also don't know 'exactly' how high the concentration needs to be to cause the melting of the tundras.

However: if the CO2 concentration continues to increase we will tipple over the point when this happens. Just like a pot of water on a stove sooner or later cooks. It is only question of how much heat you give to the pot. No one would argue: oh well, but in this case, lets watch perhaps the pot won't start boiling this time. Sorry, physics dictate that it will.

The exact same is true for a run away global warming effect, we know it will happen if we don't stop CO2 production in time. What we don't know is: how server will it be.

but there is no evidence supporting the idea that it would be a global catastrophe.
As I tried to express on /. several times: stuff that has yet not happen usually has no "evidence" or "proof". However by simple logic and simple physics we can extrapolate and draw based on varying parameters different future scenarios.

I don't need evidence that the permafrost tundra CAN MELT. (The buried mammoths there by the way are a nice evidence)
I don't need evidence that the there stored CH4 will be released then, thats a no brainer.
I don't need evidence that the plants from which the turf and soil there is made will rot and produce more CO2 and more CH4, that is a no brainer again.

If you need 'evidence' to accept this, you should either travel there and look for your self in the summer or start reading books about physics and logic.

Re:Sigh

[stenvar]

Where do you have that number from? The warm period before the previous cold period was way longer.

That's utter nonsense. Really, I'm not going to debate with you on such elementary facts. Go do some background reading yourself. If you're not completely blind, you can see that what I said is true just from the Vostok core.

However: if the CO2 concentration continues to increase we will tipple over the point when this happens. Just like a pot of water on a stove sooner or later cooks. It is only question of how much heat you give to the pot. No one would argue: oh well, but in this case, lets watch perhaps the pot won't start boiling this time. Sorry, physics dictate that it will.

Yes, there is such a tipping point, theoretically. But we can't reach it by releasing all the fossil fuel we can get at. How do we know? Because more carbon than that used to be in the atmosphere and things were fine. No runaway greenhouse effect, no dying out of mammals or ocean life. In fact, the opposite.

As I tried to express on /. several times: stuff that has yet not happen usually has no "evidence" or "proof".

But high atmospheric carbon concentrations have happened before, all the effects and mechanisms you gave went into effect, and there was still no runaway greenhouse effect. So your argument makes no sense.

Re:Sigh

[angel'o'sphere]

The previous glacier period ended like 20,000 years ago. So with your theoretic 12,000 limit we are already 8k overdue.

The naxt glacier period before that was like 80k years ago. And the one before that one was 450k years ago. And about more glacier periods: we have no data.

The numbers are from my mind and might vary by -/+ 10% or even 20%

Sorry, even wikipedia has more accurate/reliable timeframes about warm and cold periods than you.

Your imaginary 12,000 year warm period "rythm" is just nonsense.

Re:Sigh

[stenvar]

Sorry, even wikipedia has more accurate/reliable timeframes about warm and cold periods than you. Your imaginary 12,000 year warm period "rythm" is just nonsense.

You can't read, can you? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age

The Earth has been in an interglacial period known as the Holocene for more than 11,000 years. It was conventional wisdom that the typical interglacial period lasts about 12,000 years, but this has been called into question recently. For example, an article in Nature[34] argues that the current interglacial might be most analogous to a previous interglacial that lasted 28,000 years.

There is, of course, no guarantee that conventional wisdom is true. Some interglacials last much longer. But around 12000 years the usual duration. And despite recent speculation to the contrary, without anthropogenic warming, we would still have to consider it a probable (and dangerous) possibility.

The previous glacier period ended like 20,000 years ago. So with your theoretic 12,000 limit we are already 8k overdue.

Really, you need to pay better attention. Warming did indeed start 20000 years ago, but that's not the start of the interglacial. The integlacial starts when that warming stops, and that was about 11000-12000 years ago, and since integlacials usually last around 12000 years, we are close to the end, unless something unusual is happening. Two unusual things are indeed happening. First, orbital cycles might have broken the pattern this time anyway (but that's speculation). Second, anthropogenic warming likely is interrupting the pattern this time. Either is a good thing.

The naxt glacier period before that was like 80k years ago. And the one before that one was 450k years ago. And about more glacier periods: we have no data.

Do you just make up such nonsense? Are you incapable of simple fact checking on Wikipedia?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_glaciation

I mean, FFS, take a look at the Vostok core, this is the third time that I'm pointing you to it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vostok_Petit_data.svg

See the temperature and CO2 peaks there? That's the interglacials. There are five of them just in that stretch of 450ka. You can read off the start and duration of the current interglacial, as well as the start of the temperature rise leading up to it. And since you seem to have trouble with graphs, let me remind you that time goes from right to left on those graphs. Oh, and it's called a "glacial period", not a "glacier period".

Re:Sigh

[angel'o'sphere]

Thanx for the links, had no time yet to read them, but read meanwhile some german links.

Seems everyone has different ideas how long the glacier and interglacier periods where.

E.g. the german wikipedia talks about 15k instead of 12k. for the interglaciers.

But looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_glaciation it is obviously not as regularly as you implied before.

Anyway, the question that still remains if we catapult us with a runaway greenhouse effect out of the current ice age. And if so does it happen in "millennia" or in centuries.

Re:Sigh

[stenvar]

The difference in length depends on which convention you use for defining the interglacial. Either convention results in the same result though.

Complete regularity isn't really the issue here. What matters is that there is a good chance that without anthropogenic warming, temperatures might be dropping any time. Note that some of the warming periods are actually shorter. The point is that the idea that without anthropogenic warming, the climate would just merrily go along being generally nice has little support. Temperatures could be dropping rapidly, and even small drops have devastating consequences (cf the "little ice age"). Cooler temperatures are much worse than warmer temperatures.

The term "runaway greenhouse effect" refers to Venus-like outcomes; there simply is no possibility that that will happen on Earth, at least not through burning fossil fuels. Right now, it looks like all we may be able to do is skip a few glaciation cycles. It would be really amazing if we managed to get out of the current ice age (which has been going on for millions of years) and melt the polar ice caps altogether. Not only would it be amazing, it would probably be a good thing.

But none of that even has much political relevance. Politically, there is no way meaningful limitations on carbon emissions are going to be implemented globally. Any attempts to limit carbon emissions are merely going to reduce economic growth and are going to delay the transition away from fossil fuels that is inevitably going to happen anyway for simple economic reasons. So, if you care about limiting carbon emissions, just let it be. Personally, I don't care about limiting carbon emissions, I just don't like the limits on economic growth and the resulting opportunity costs, suffering and deaths that result from ineffective attempts of regulating carbon emissions.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

No change in number, just different wording

[Geoffrey.landis]

I'm finding it hard to see what the change is here.

The old number was that the doubling sensitivity was most likely to be in the range 2 C-to-4.5 C. Specifically:
"we conclude that the global mean equilibrium warming for doubling CO2, or ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’, is likely to lie in the range 2C to 4.5C, with a most likely value of about 3C."
(reference: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-5.html#box-10-2 )

This report-- if the leaked version is accurate-- is that it's "'likely' to be above 1.5 degrees C, 'very likely' to be below 6 degrees C".
That's not a "reduction" or a "retreat"-- it is, at best, a slightly higher range. But since, as the summary says, "Since "extremely" and "very" have specific and different statistical meanings here, comparison is difficult.," I don't see that there's any clear change at all-- just different wording.

This is spin-- there isn't be anything new here.

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[petsounds]

This is spin-- there isn't be anything new here.

Yup, exactly this. This report doesn't lead to any conclusion that we should "dial back the alarm" as the news title suggests. The approval of this submission by slashdot editors shows either bias towards climate change denial, or just a desire for more linkbait, button-pushing articles. Perhaps both.

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[Anonymous Coward]

The lower bound on "likely" moved from 2 to 1.5. What is difficult to parse about that?

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[Pieroxy]

The lower bound on "likely" moved from 2 to 1.5. What is difficult to parse about that?

People just see what they're looking for. Nothing hard here, just basic cognitive dissonance.

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[Anonymous Coward]

If that is the case it did not move at all 2 is the same as 1.5 since 2 can be anything from and including 1.5 to 2.5.

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[KeensMustard]

The change appears to be that after some analysis, they've determine the stability of the next equilibrium to be below 6 degrees. This means that there is low risk of the temperature increasing beyond 6 degrees. There was always an equilibrium, and six degrees or anything like six degree is well into the dangerous range, so the authors conclusion it points to the very real possibility that, over the next several generations, the overall effect of climate change will be positive for humankind and the planet seems to be dangling in the wind. How did he draw that conclusion?

A quick check of the authors credentials indicates he wrote a book some years ago expounding the view that climate change will be beneficial for humanity. The WSJ article is the author promoting his own ideas under the guise of interpreting the results of the next IPCC report for us (rather than letting us interpret the results for ourselves).

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[Anonymous Coward]

Good detective work.

Certainly, the "very real possibility" seems to come out of nowhere (ie. ass), not at all supported by the previous statements.

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[MightyMartian]

Once again, the psuedo-skeptics will play a clever etymological and semantics game to try to make it sound as if science is saying one thing, when it's actually saying something else. It's so typical of the pseudo-skeptic movement to simultaneously declare climatologists morally bankrupt communists out to destroy poor whttle oil companies while they take every word uttered by climatologists out of context to try to declare that climatology now rejects AGW.

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[Anonymous Coward]

and 4.5 went up to 6, so this isn't this more alarming?

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[khallow]

Well, thank you for demonstratin that giant straw men are a great place for sinking a few gigatons of carbon and completely solving our climate change crisis.

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[stenvar]

This is spin-- there isn't be anything new here.

Yes, nothing new here: climate change is still as irrelevant to human affairs as it has always been.

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[khallow]

Why wouldn't you think a widening of the range of uncertainty to be a retreat? My take is that the actual estimate is probably the low end of that broad range, meaning they just went from an estimate of 2.0 C doubling sensitivity to 1.5 C doubling sensitivity.

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[hedwards]

The range of the estimate increased which means that it could be from 1.5 to 6. Or possibly outside of that range, but it's likely to be between those figures. Considering the state of the economy the last 5 years, a downward revision is to be expected.

The question is whether or not that downward revision remains as the economy heats up and people can afford to go back to wasting so much energy.

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[Archangel Michael]

So is the recession still GWB's fault or is it Obama's effort to stem the tide of Global Warming?

Oh, let me guess, it is GWB's fault but Obama saw it as an opportunity to cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions, which is why he doesn't care about fixing the economy? How did I do?

(Please note, this is dripping with the sarcasm of political spin)

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[IICV]

Personally, I like how people keep on referring to it as a "leak" - this particular report might not have been published yet, but usually only because it still needs revisions. The IPCC's actual published reports are freely available, and this one will end up there as well once they're sure it's right.

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[Burz]

This is spin-- there isn't be anything new here.

Yup, exactly this. This report doesn't lead to any conclusion that we should "dial back the alarm" as the news title suggests. The approval of this submission by slashdot editors shows either bias towards climate change denial, or just a desire for more linkbait, button-pushing articles. Perhaps both.

Slashdot editors consider Rupert Murdoch / News Corp stories to be accpetable for their climate change postings. Also sites like The Register (yeah).

I'd say its "both".

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[angel'o'sphere]

Actually politicians have a ver limited option to change the economics.

And even if they do, the effect of their changes becomes obvious 10 to 15 years AFTER they introduced the changes.

So frankly said: during Obamas rule the economy is bad. This is an effect caused by the previous (was it really 16 years, 2x Bushs?) "changes" the ruler introduced.

The effects of Obamas politics, e.g. introduction of general health care, you will start feeling in perhaps 6 to 8 years, probably later.

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[HornWumpus]

So it's the Clinton recession?

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[angel'o'sphere]

No, the Clinton *boom* was during the first period of the second's Bush reign (GWB).

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[HornWumpus]

Doesn't add up with your statement above.

Clinton certainly owned the .com crash.

Re:No change in number, just different wording

[angel'o'sphere]

First of all: Doesn't add up with your statement above. What do you men, in book it does.

Second: Clinton certainly owned the .com crash.
What has that to do with "politics of the leader"?

He somehow "ordered a crash"? Or did politics, new laws that enforced the crash?

Pfffft ....

Editors?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't this immediately discredited as a false document?

What's with all the Global Warming stuff here?

[rolfwind]

Just a few days ago, there was a story how the ice in the arctic "rebounded" 60%.

The real story is in this graph:

http://postimg.org/image/hcadakghv/

We've been measuring arctic ice the late 70s. It's at it's maximum in March, melts during the summer, and sees it's minimum in September. 2012 was the record year we had so far for the LEAST amount of artic ice. 2007 has second place and 2011 has 3rd. This year we have more than 2012. This was expected among scientists because of something called regression towards the mean. That concept basically says when an extreme outlier event occurs, we expect the next event to be closer to the average. Basically, the entire hoopla is about playing math games to appear more impressive than it is.

When the story came out, it was premature the typical September lowpoint, so don't expect the 60% figure to quite hold that high, but it is higher than last year none the less. However, you can see it's still well below 00s average and that every decade has since the measurements started have less and less ice.

So there you have it? Maybe the heat is going into the oceans? Then melting the poles as the currents do a good job of distributing the equator heat around via currents. The ice melts, breaks off whatever, and like icecubes in a warm drink, cool it down.... until there is no ice left?

Come on, what is with the propraganda here? Last year was an obsolute low point in Arctic Ice extent.... and we get stories of so called "rebounds"? Just look at the graph and tell me that it trend isn't clear.

Re:What's with all the Global Warming stuff here?

[Alef]

The ice story was particularly idiotic. The ice cover of 2012 was at an extreme low; this years it's pretty much spot on the (downward) trend line, which happens to lie 60% above the 2012 record. Drawing any long-term conclusion from that difference is like saying there will be no winter this year, because it was warmer today than yesterday.

Peter Hadfield summarised it quite nicely in a video.

Re:What's with all the Global Warming stuff here?

[Solandri]

The problem is the global-warming deniers trumpet the low temperature outliers, and the global warming proponents trumpet the high temperature outliers. Last year, one side made a big deal about the least ice in the Arctic in recorded history. This year the other side is making a big deal about the ice pack rebounding. Same thing with hurricanes. In 2005 it was all about the worst Atlantic hurricane season in history being caused by global warming. Then 2006 was one of the mildest hurricane seasons in history and the other side got to crow.

It's stupid trying to use outliers as evidence. Both sides of the global warming debate are guilty of this. The average trend is what everyone should be looking at. The same goes for pretty much everything. e.g. People get their panties in a bunch about plane crashes or nuclear reactor accidents, when statistically they are the safest forms of transportation and power generation respectively. People are convinced schools are becoming more dangerous because of recent mass shootings on the news, when in fact they're the safest they've ever been in spite of those shooting incidents. We give up our rights and freedoms because of a single hugely successful terrorist attack, when once you remove that single incident you're statistically more likely (in the U.S.) to be killed by lightning than a terrorist attack. All these incidents are outliers and they should be assumed to be non-representative of the long-term average.

Re:What's with all the Global Warming stuff here?

[stenvar]

The average trend is what everyone should be looking at.

And the average trend is a slow and gradual warming, and a very slow and gradual increase in sea levels since long before the industrial revolution. None of those are anything to worry about, and they will find a natural end when we switch to nuclear and solar for cost reasons anyway.

Re:What's with all the Global Warming stuff here?

[argStyopa]

I keep hearing this - was this the "talking point" posted on DU the day this story came out?

Because I looked it up at NOAA and this doesn't look nearly as 'scary'.

http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z36/hogan99/screenhunter_561-sep-14-06-01_zps52aaf3b0.jpg

Re:What's with all the Global Warming stuff here?

[Burz]

Slashdot played-up the climate "controversey" in the late 2000s, and now the editors are actually leaning toward denier lunacy. Much as they like to posture about the state of science reporting, /. doesn't "get" science that affects critical issues... only novelties and the stuff that leads to "cool" new products.

This site is angling to be relegated to the unread portion of my RSS reader.

Re:What's with all the Global Warming stuff here?

[Burz]

Slashdot played-up the climate "controversey" in the late 2000s, and now the editors are actually leaning toward denier lunacy. Much as they like to posture about the state of science reporting, /. doesn't "get" science that affects critical issues... only novelties and the stuff that leads to "cool" new products.

This site is angling to be relegated to the unread portion of my RSS reader.

Karma, baby.

Re:What's with all the Global Warming stuff here?

[bhiestand]

The problem is the global-warming deniers trumpet the low temperature outliers, and the global warming proponents trumpet the high temperature outliers. Last year, one side made a big deal about the least ice in the Arctic in recorded history. This year the other side is making a big deal about the ice pack rebounding.

That's unfair and very misleading. AGW deniers do over-use outliers, cherry pick their data, and resort to ad hominems regularly. However, AGW "proponents" generally point to "outliers" that are within the predicted regressions and expected to be new averages. 1998 may have been an outlier at the time, but it is near the mean for the 2000s. 2012 may have been an "outlier" for Arctic ice, but the 2020s will likely have a much lower mean.

I agree that we should be looking at trends... but it's not an outlier if it is precisely where we expect the mean to be in a few short years.

NASA Climate Change Data

[dgp]

http://climate.nasa.gov/key_indicators

The CO2 graph (direct measurement) is clearly climbing at a never-before-seen rate. How does this compare to the conclusions in the report?

Re:NASA Climate Change Data

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Never before seen? Ever? What about during the Cambrian period? CO2 levels 18 times as high as they are today.

In fact - this may come as a shock to you - we are currently at one of the low points for CO2 levels in Earths history. Not just low, but VERY low.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html

Re:NASA Climate Change Data

[stenvar]

The CO2 graph (direct measurement) is clearly climbing at a never-before-seen rate. How does this compare to the conclusions in the report?

Note that sawtooth shape? That's regular glaciation cycles, the kind that cover most of Europe, Asia, and North America in thick ice sheets.

If we're really lucky, our CO2 spike will actually finally break us out of those cycles and take us out of the current ice age, an ice age that has been going on for 7 million years.

Re:NASA Climate Change Data

[blueg3]

Let's compare.

The CO2 graph (direct measurement) is clearly climbing at a never-before-seen rate.

Okay, graphs don't climb. That nitpick aside, it's clear that what is never before seen is the rate. The rate at which a quantity Q climbs is its derivative dQ/dt.

CO2 levels 18 times as high as they are today. ... we are currently at one of the low points for CO2 levels in Earths history.

Here, you're talking about the quantity Q and not its rate of increase dQ/dt.

It may surprise you to learn that a quantity and its derivative are totally different things, and that one can be very low while the other is very high.

This is actually a good tangent, though, because it's a frequent mistake. Graphs of temperature and CO2 over very long periods of time are often dominated by sharp transitions. This causes people to say that the current situation is not unprecedented because there were very sharp transitions in the past! The problem is that if you pick an appropriate time scale, all transitions look sharp. The reader is mentally comparing two graphs (CO2 or temperature today, of the course of a few hundred years, with ages ago, over the course of thousands). Quantification is absolutely necessary. Very roughly, the rate of CO2 and temperature increase today is at least an order of magnitude higher than the "natural" transitions of the past that we have (indirectly) measured. So yes, unprecedented.

Re:NASA Climate Change Data

[stenvar]

Very roughly, the rate of CO2 and temperature increase today is at least an order of magnitude higher than the "natural" transitions of the past that we have (indirectly) measured

That's because we simply can't accurately measure temperature and CO2 concentrations changes over short time scales at all prior to maybe a million years ago. Therefore, your statement, while literally true, is deceptive and misleading.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the current rate of change is "unprecedented" over the last couple of hundred million years.

Re:NASA Climate Change Data

[Anonymous Coward]

If we're really lucky, our CO2 spike will actually finally break us out of those cycles and take us out of the current ice age, an ice age that has been going on for 7 million years.

Hint: We are NOT in an ice age.

It is astounding how people fail to understand time scales. What we are doing to the planet is nothing less than what K-T event did. Comparing current rate of change of CO2 with any historical record of ice age cycles is farcical at best.

As for any "equilibrium at +6C from normal" is stretching the truth. We have no idea what we are doing except it is convenient to continue to do it. The shitstorm is too far off - it will not affect the retirement of current ruling class like complete ozone depletion would have.

Re:NASA Climate Change Data

[riverat1]

Hint: We are NOT in an ice age.

By the scientific definition we certainly are in an ice age and will be until the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have melted away.

Re:NASA Climate Change Data

[Anonymous Coward]

Err on the side of caution. Although I hate 99.999% of people so fuck it. Let's all die.

Re:NASA Climate Change Data

[Tyler Durden]

This is actually a good tangent, though...

I see what you did there.

Re:NASA Climate Change Data

[blueg3]

Unintentional, actually, but I'll take it!

Just wait

[no-body]

what the evaluation on the CO flood will say - damage, cost, cause.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/09/15/colorado-floods-weather/2816051/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/14/colorado-flooding-climate-change_n_3926284.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX3w90YecnA

How much denials there will be and if it's all blamed on the FSM (or equiv.).
Enjoy the coming show!

Right wing not to be trusted on IPCC leaks

[Bueller_007]

The author of this article, Matt Ridley, is a known climate change denialist and of course the Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch and therefore operates under the same umbrella as Fox News.

Supposed leaks from the IPCC document have already been mischaracterized in the right-wing media. See, for example, Phil Plait's demolition of them here:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/09/10/climate_change_sea_ice_global_cooling_and_other_nonsense.html

Or if you prefer your demolition in video format:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH5D9P6KYfY

I have no reason to trust the right-wing's interpretation of the IPCC document before it is officially announced and I can check it for myself. Why don't you try WAITING for it to be released before you start spreading this very likely BS.

Re:Right wing not to be trusted on IPCC leaks

[Anonymous Coward]

http://heartland.org/press-releases/2012/02/15/heartland-institute-responds-stolen-and-fake-documents

Re:Right wing not to be trusted on IPCC leaks

[Anonymous Coward]

We need to do something about the vast right wing conspiracy. Seriously these people are nuts. What kind of person points out failed predictions? Complains about political funding as a source of scientific bias? Makes fun of Al Gore? It's just plain rude!

Re:Right wing not to be trusted on IPCC leaks

[KeensMustard]

What kind of person points out failed predictions?

Perhaps you are not asking yourself the right question.

The oft stated prediction from the industry funded denialist machinery that the temperature wouldn't rise has been proven, demonstrably and unequivocally, false.

The follow on prediction from the industry funded denialist machinery that the temperature rise, though unusual, was cyclical and due to something natural, e.g. increased solar output has been proven, demonstrably and unequivocally, false.

So the question you should be asking yourself is, what kind of person continuously believes a body of work and people whose only achievement so far is being consistently wrong?

Re:Right wing not to be trusted on IPCC leaks

[bricko]

Its Bush's fault and you are all racists

Re:Right wing not to be trusted on IPCC leaks

[Anonymous Coward]

That sounds like a pretty tidy conspiracy theory you have there.

Obviously because the man works for Fox News he is an evil lizard man who wants to make money on trashing this planet. Did I sum your beliefs up pretty well there? Because lets face it man, your entire post is one logical fallacy after another and why I will say this it does sound rather crazy when you throw in logical fallacy after another.

You have no support that this is wrong other than off-topic red herrings, and of course your first sentence is just a bunch of ad-homs thrown together rather crudely. Other than that, after you give an off-topic "proof" that something similar happened that is not this event, you conclude that this event must be wrong, sans proof simply because the lizard men of Fox News and other right-wing lunatics are just wrong. Next time, why don't you read the actual article and prove the actual article wrong.

Re:Right wing not to be trusted on IPCC leaks

[Anonymous Coward]

Because there's no need to read the article and "prove the article wrong", when we have absolutely no evidence that what Matt Ridley is citing as the IPCC report is actually what the IPCC report says.

Keep up, dimwit.

Misleading article

[Anonymous Coward]

The "dangerous" prediction of 2 degrees c in the original UN report is now, as rumored in this article, fine tuned to somewhere between 1.5 and 4 degrees. How is that better ? Spin spin spin from WSJ and the Wall Street pundits.

Re:Misleading article

[Anonymous Coward]

The "dangerous" prediction of 2 degrees c in the original UN report is now, as rumored in this article, fine tuned to somewhere between 1.5 and 4 degrees. How is that better ?

Because the previous prediction was from 2 degrees to 100000000+ degrees. Now it's from 1.5 to 4. If you take the averages of those two ranges, there is quite a difference.

Conversion

[colinrichardday]

1.5 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit)

1.5 degrees Celsius is 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature#Conversion

Re:Conversion

[Anonymous Coward]

I love that you don't just post the correction, you feel the need to site wikipedia....

Re:Conversion

[colinrichardday]

Actually, "cite" is the proper word.

Re:Conversion

[Anonymous Coward]

Trolld hard

hey more lunatic fringe climate change discussions

[Anonymous Coward]

get the tinfoil hats on!

is this GLP?

[Anonymous Coward]

i thought i was on slashdot, not another conspiracy theory site

methane

[tbonefrog]

from fracking, warming permafrost, and warming oceans. i wonder if they considered it. it could cause runaway warming.

What about chemtrails?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this is all due to chemtrails.

Sorry guys, it's all my fault

[Anonymous Coward]

I left my car idling this morning. You can blame the heat on me. /ba-da-ching!

Living in the biosphere.

[eriks]

I really wish that both "sides" in the climate change "debate" could put away the hyperbole and come to grips with the fact that we need to live in some way approaching equilibrium with the various processes happening here on planet Earth. That's not just about co2 production. Even though there is unquestionably consensus among climate scientists that the rising co2 level IS significant, there are *many* other factors at play. It won't matter if we get the co2 situation under control, but still have high-levels of fresh water pollution and half-dead oceans.

We need to pollute less, period.

We need to dramatically increase our total energy efficiency, which can largely be achieved by picking the "low-hanging fruit" of building insulation, indoor daytime lighting and industrial energy usage. All three of these can be addressed (easily!) with incentives like rebates and tax credits -- granted that takes political will, which seems in short supply, but it's all there already, just waiting to happen: just (gradually) shift the subsidies currently granted to fossil fuel companies over to businesses and homeowners that are willing to make investments in long-term energy efficiency and savings, it just makes sense: since energy saving == money saving.

The reality is that our total energy usage is increasing, so the more we stretch it, the more comfortable humanity can be in the long term. We need to be building as many solar, wind, wave, thermal gradient and salinity gradient systems as we can, all the while earnestly studying the effects and operation of these systems, and discovering our mistakes and correcting them as we go. We need better fission reactor designs: meaning serious R&D and testing. We need better (and more!) energy storage systems. And probably most importantly we need to come up with new ideas for generating and storing energy. Life is not static, we can't just say "hey, this is good enough" -- we have to make it better! Life forms don't stop evolving just because they find a successful niche. They keep going, because there's always more pressure around the corner. As humans, we've insulated ourselves from a lot of pressures, but that's really an illusion, since all we can ever really do is make buffers. Everything remains interconnected and interdependent.

As Bunker Roy says: Decentralize, demystify! People should know that they CAN provide for themselves, but they have to understand how it all works.

We are squandering our resources: geological, biological, financial and (most importantly) human. We need to refine our entire way of doing things.

The oil and coal WILL run out someday. It might be 100 years or 1000 -- but we need to be thinking truly long term here. It would be nice to still have plenty of oil and coal left for other stuff when we finally stop having to burn it for fuel just to keep the lights on. It's amazingly useful, and we have a finite supply.

Re:Living in the biosphere.

[jwhitener]

"live in some way approaching equilibrium"
"We need to pollute less, period."

Well, see, that's the problem. There is a sizable core of US conservative politicians that do not agree with those two ideas, on a very fundamental level. One of the most notorious for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Inhofe#Environmental_issues

I can't honestly tell if some of them are using religion as an excuse in order to allow businesses to maximize profit at the cost of the commons, or if most/some/whatever percent of them actually believe the religious angle. Probably a mixture of both.

The real problem is HAARP

[Anonymous Coward]

The government manipulates the weather by way of HAARP.

The oceans

[symbolset]

The oceans weigh 280 times as much as the atmosphere, so it's nice to see it start to be included in the climate models. Maybe next year they will start to consider geothermal inputs as well. Maybe do some energy flow models rather than trying to recreate the world with statistics.

Re:The oceans

[KeensMustard]

The oceans weigh 280 times as much as the atmosphere, so it's nice to see it start to be included in the climate models.

Did you post this in 1990 and it took until now to get published?

Oceans are included in GCM models. They have been for some time now.

Re:The oceans

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what you mean by "start to be included", since the oceans have been part of climate models from the beginning. Maybe if you actually flipped through one of the assessment reports, you would know what kind of things have been covered and what haven't.

Re:The oceans

[HornWumpus]

The models aren't even that complicated.

The key number is the CO2 / H2O vapor positive feedback coefficient. This number is not experimentally produced, comes from a a dark place and is how climate modelers _can get any result they want_.

CO2 is a very small part of the total greenhouse effect in earths atmosphere. To get CO2 to matter you have to posit a large positive feedback between CO2 and water vapor.

Some warmists got so carried away they proposed such a high positive feedback number that the earths environment was inherently unstable. Any warming would result in uncontrolled positive feedback, ending only when the oceans have all boiled.

Re:The oceans

[Anonymous Coward]

EVery time climate scientists talk about the the el nino cycle they are talking about the oceans part in the climate, the el nino cycle is the movement of heat from the oceans to the atmosphere.

Re:The oceans

[riverat1]

Some warmists got so carried away they proposed such a high positive feedback number that the earths environment was inherently unstable. Any warming would result in uncontrolled positive feedback, ending only when the oceans have all boiled.

That's a straw man argument because scientists have not predicted that the positive feedbacks would lead to runaway warming, just a new, higher equilibrium point.

Re:The oceans

[symbolset]

They are still working with statistics, not energy flow models.

Re:The oceans

[HornWumpus]

They didn't mean to. But in their desire to make warming as much of a problem as possible they have proposed that the earth's environment was inherently unstable. That's what happens when you play with positive feedback and don't understand control systems.

How we used to view all of this in the Olden Days

[rueger]

Just for minute let's ignore the seemingly pointless harangues about whether or not "climate change" really exists.

Instead let's examine the issue in the terms that we used back in the 1970's:

1) Burning stuff releases pollutants.
2) Putting less pollutants into the air, water, and ground is a good thing.

All I know....

[CHIT2ME]

All I know is that this report doesn't dissuade me from offering beachfront property for sale here in Missouri!!!

Because Peer review is so useful when it's wrong..

[Anonymous Coward]

Abstract computer simulations are not a substitute for experimentation.
You cannot independently validate empirical claims without access to the claimant's data, setup and methodology.
Peer review is not a substitute for independent experimentation.
Scrubbing data of inconvenient outliers is ignoring evidence that a claim is not repeatable and therefore invalid.

The pseudo science behind AGW suffered from all four. So how were bad peer reviews of bad science an example of 'actually useful stuff', again?

Blind trust in models

[Anonymous Coward]

...the predicted temperature rise expected as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than predicted in 2007.

...and how accurate were the 2007 predictions compared to the actual temperatures?

http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/04/global-warming-slowdown-the-view-from-space/

It seems, "not very".

Re:Blind trust in models

[haruchai]

There's a big omission in Spencer's graph - datasets of ground-based temp measurements.
The satellite readings have always been cooler and have needed numerous adjustments one way or the other.
If he were thinking like a scientist and not a regulator, he'd incorporate other observation-based data instead of taking the satellite measurements as, well, gospel.

Re:Blind trust in models

[russotto]

There's a big omission in Spencer's graph - datasets of ground-based temp measurements.
The satellite readings have always been cooler and have needed numerous adjustments one way or the other.

That's because they haven't figured out how to put a satellite next to the exhaust from an HVAC system.

Re:Blind trust in models

[haruchai]

I'm sure even Spencer could figure that out.

Re:Blind trust in models

[Anonymous Coward]

The satellite readings have always been cooler and have needed numerous adjustments one way or the other.
If he were thinking like a scientist and not a regulator, he'd incorporate other observation-based data instead of taking the satellite measurements as, well, gospel.

If you were thinking like a scientist, there's no way that you'd ever say what you just did. Taking the data and then giving the data "adjustments one way or the other" should yield an instant rejection of whatever paper you are writing.

You report the real satellite readings in the data section, followed by "using the blah blah blah model to account for the effects of foo, bar, baz, and quux, the model-adjusted satellite data is as follows..." so that it's clear the "blah blah blah model" you're using has been independently peer-reviewed for correctness and accuracy. That way you have a solid, traceable foundation from data to conclusions.

Do you want to be scientific?

[Anonymous Coward]

Climate change as a religion is nothing but re-branded socialism/marxism. It will continue to prey on those who believe they know what science is while they among other things in fact haven't understood any of the basic general concepts of science such as falsifiability, the impossibility of final proof, the inherent weakness of all modelling and simulations, and how the best scientific axioms or laws inherently and inescapably are far less precise than reality itself.

So to those it may concern please shut up and never say a word about scientific matters again: you are in fact nothing but ill educated anti-scientific luddites and ideological sheep. You're unwittingly part of a political and economical scam benefiting exactly the kind of scum your masters claim to oppose: bankers, lawyers, politicians, journalists, the “elite”. You are actively attacking and hurting humankind as well as the Earth itself.

Climate change is by now a stale excuse against freedom in addition to all the old; just another “proof” that validates hatred against humans (and in particular against whites) and technology.

If this post outrages you please do us all a favour and go kill yourself as well as any indoctrinated family you might have. Or better yet: kill the fuckers who dece8ived you and lied to you.

Context

[Anonymous Coward]

1.5 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit)

1.5 degrees Celsius is 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

TFS got its "4" right, you've got the "7" right, but there has to be a "3" in front of all:
1.5 degrees Celsius is 34,7 degrees Fahrenheit.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature#Conversion

It's context that makes the difference. ;)

Re:Context

[colinrichardday]

But a change of 1.5 degrees Celsius is a change of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.

Re:Context

[samwichse]

He was making a joke... at a temperature of 1.5C, it is 34.7F.

Re:Because Peer review is so useful when it's wron

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Abstract computer simulations are not a substitute for experimentation.

Which is why the US military is in no terms relying on supercomputer simulations to maintain the enduring stockpile of nuclear weapons.

You cannot independently validate empirical claims without access to the claimant's data, setup and methodology.

Well, that's the whole idea behind the reproducible research method movement, isn't it?

Re:How we used to view all of this in the Olden Da

[symbolset]

1) Burning stuff releases pollutants. 2) Putting less pollutants into the air, water, and ground is a good thing.

If burning things has caused us to avoid an end to the present interglacial, then is it still a bad thing?

Re:How we used to view all of this in the Olden Da

[haruchai]

Some of those pollutants have strong cooling effects so they slow down the warming from increased GHGs.
So cleaning up the air will proably speed up warming unless we do a hell of a lot of CCS or get a more volcanic eruptions.

Consider the source

[Alomex]

Just a note to point out that IPCC has an agenda, as opposed to the climate scientists, who, while perhaps suffering from confirmation biases, have a much more neutral stake on the whole thing either way.

Re:Consider the source

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a note to point out that IPCC has an agenda, as opposed to the climate scientists, who, while perhaps suffering from confirmation biases, have a much more neutral stake on the whole thing either way.

That is true--the IPCC report is what consensus is left over, after the world's politicians have watered down the scientists conclusions to something that the governments can all(*) agree on.

(*) all = all except for the usual USA, KSA, Gulf states etc. for obvious reasons

Ignore the evidence

[huckamania]

Ignore the pause, ignore the missing heat, ignore the solar cycles, ignore the lack of sea level rise, ignore an arctic that is not ice free, ignore ENSO effects, ignore weather stations next to tarmacs, ignore urban heating, because they don't match the models.

Ignore the money being made, ignore the cost to society, ignore the lack of true peer review, ignore the missing data, ignore academic misconduct, ignore the denied FOI requests, ignore the emails, because that is just human nature.

When you are blind, everything is 'Nothing to see here, move along'...

Re:Ignore the evidence

[Reziac]

An example of how far off it can be: There's a NWS Wx station on the bank of the Jefferson River that never reads outside of the 35F-50F range, even when all the stations elsewhere in the area (southwestern Montana) read anywhere from -40F to +98F.

Re:Ignore the evidence

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignore the money being made,

What money?

Re:Ignore the evidence

[Xyrus]

I will believe you when you can do one simple little task that I ask all deniers: provide a model of the climate system that can have an increase in greenhouse gases and not result in increased global temperatures without violating the known laws of physics.

You see, it's very easy to sit back and make ignorant accusations and nonsensical claims. It's quite another to actually construct a solid, well verified argument. To date, not a single skeptic or denier has created a global climate model, let alone one that reproduces historical and current climate conditions without including forcings from additional greenhouse gases. Now why do you think that is?

Provide that model huckamania, and you'll win at least one Nobel prize in science.

Re:Ignore the evidence

[huckamania]

But I'd settle for nothing less then the Nobel Peace Prize.

First, I don't have to provide a model, because I'm not making the claim that there is going to be catastrophic global warming. All I have to do is point to the models that the team keeps putting out and then reference reality and show that they are not happening. We can start with Michael Mann's hockey stick. Where is it? His model predicted consecutive warming year over year. Hasn't happened. That's one down, how many more to go?

The latest models have all lowered sensitivity and yet they are still running hot. Are they gonna give that peace prize back if it turns out they were wrong?

Anywhile, there is already a 'model' called orbital dynamics that plays a key role. There are also models for solar dynamics which, despite what you may have read, have not been disproven. We will get a big test of some of solar dynamics soon, as we are about to enter a protracted period of low solar activity.

Re:How we used to view all of this in the Olden Da

[rrohbeck]

2) Putting less pollutants into the air, water, and ground is a good thing.

Not if you make lots of money from selling the polluting stuff.

Wet behind the ears

[Anonymous Coward]

Gullible is as gullible does. The WSJ? Matt Ridley?

Incredibly naive.

Re:Wet behind the ears

[Bing Tsher E]

Slashdot? Anonymous Coward?

Incredibly naive.

Science is not subjective

[RogueWarrior65]

Sorry, but using subjective terms such as "very likely" is not science. It's opinion. It would be like trying to decide which of the fifty shades of grey is the "best" one.

Re:Science is not subjective

[gnoshi]

True, using such terms is science communication. The terms have clearly defined statistical meanings in the content of the IPCC report, but people not trained in statistics are typically poor at understanding numerical statistics. There are a range of cognitive biases associated with statistics. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky did quite a bit of work on cognitive biases. Some interesting work on how people incorrectly interpret statistics has also been done by Pav Kalinowski and Geoff Cumming.

Using terms which intuitively match the statistical numbers provides a means for a broader audience to get a rough handle on the predicted likelihood of certain occurrences. It lacks some precision, but the precision is there under the covers.

Re:Science is not subjective

[Mark of THE CITY]

Except sometimes all science can do is narrow a cause to a subset of the possible causes.

IPCC ... from the article ... -- whoah, changed

[Anonymous Coward]

That story is not from the IPCC

The story is about "the article" -- the WSJ's editorial article.

That's tricky drafting there.
If one didn't know better, you'd believe your and the WSJ's spin[

In 2007

[Mark of THE CITY]

The economy was still OK. The slowdown should account for much of the difference.

Comparison is not possible [No change in number]

[Geoffrey.landis]

Why wouldn't you think a widening of the range of uncertainty to be a retreat?

First, because that's not what the article claimed.

Second, because you are comparing the word explanations of the statistical analysis. (Actually not even that-- you are comparing a "leaked" paraphrasing of the word explanation of the statistical analysis). As the summary says:

"Since "extremely" and "very" have specific and different statistical meanings here, comparison is difficult.'"

Comparison is more than merely "difficult"-- it is impossible. Unless you know precisely what was actually in the report, and what the actual actual statistics are, you can't compare them.

I'm the god of 4X games!

[Anonymous Coward]

Curse you, real world! You should go to Research tab right now and reassign some scientists from Power and Environment to Medicine and Space and we'll have all the miracle cures in no time!

Science doesn't work like that. Seriously, GP mentions actual innovations that _do_ help economy and people in developing nations. You are bitching about things that might or might not have happened if everyone did as you, The Smartest One, would.

By the way, how's Mars landing and AI gonna help people in empoverished countries? Energy conserving light bulbs at least help them squeeze a bit more out of their outdated power systems.

Calling All Chicken Littles

[Anonymous Coward]

Quick! Hide the decline!!!11

Edit: CAPTCHA = iceberg

Re:Because Peer review is so useful when it's wron

[sycodon]

Which is why the US military is in no terms relying on supercomputer simulations to maintain the enduring stockpile of nuclear weapons.

And we'll never know until we light try to one off now will we?

Billions of tons [Re:Excellent!]

[Geoffrey.landis]

When Obama flies around nilly-willy on Air Force One he dumps tons of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. Are you saying there's no climate change when he does that?

Have you ever heard of a form of ignorance called innumeracy? No? You should, because you have it.

If, in fact, flying Air Force One (which all presidents fly in, not just Obama, of course) dumps merely tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, yes, that would be irrelevant to climate change. If it dumped thousand of tons, that would be irrelevant. If it dumped millions of tons, that would be irrelevant.

Do you have the slightest idea how many tons of carbon dioxide are put in the atmosphere by humans every year?

Re:Billions of tons [Re:Excellent!]

[Anonymous Coward]

Sweet! Then there's no point in me worrying about my carbon footprint. It's no where near the what Air Force One dumps out, and even that's not enough to worry about changing. I guess then it's safe for everyone else to do the same, because small amounts of things don't add up to large amounts of things. Thanks Geoffrey!

Re:Billions of tons [Re:Excellent!]

[petermgreen]

Any one person's contributions to climate change are pretty tiny. Even rich gits who fly around in private planes. Even national presidents who fly arround in a jumbo jet bringing with them a massive entourage. The number of rich git's in private planes is also fairly small so the total impact of all rich gits flying arround in private planes is probablly not that high in the grand scheme of things.

However why would the commoners listen to a rich git who effectively says "do as I say not as I do" when it comes to climate change? While the impact of all commoners changing their ways would probablly be bigger than the impact of all the rich gits changing their ways the impact of one individual commoner changing their ways is going to be even tinier than the impact of one rich git changing their ways.

Re:Billions of tons [Re:Excellent!]

[Reziac]

I'm too lazy to go find the cite, but I seem to recall a stat that all the human-generated CO2 *combined* comes to something like 0.01% of the CO2 dissolved in the oceans. Which implies that through evaporation alone, oceans may 'produce' more than humans could with their best efforts.

Re:Billions of tons [Re:Excellent!]

[TWiTfan]

Do you have the slightest idea how many tons of carbon dioxide are put in the atmosphere by humans every year?

I'm breathing some out even as we speak.

Re:Billions of tons [Re:Excellent!]

[Geoffrey.landis]

you are seriously proposing that if the U.S. president simply were to stop taking any international trips using Air Force One because of the carbon dioxide it produces, this will inspire "commoners" (your term) around the world to spontaneously cut their energy consumption and that this would solve the global warming problem?

No. Sorry.

OK. Since flying it isn't a significant source of the problem, and not flying it wouldn't solve the problem, it's pretty clear that discussing Air Force One really is completely irrelevant to talking about how to solve the problem.

Who went and read the 6th paragraph of the WSJ ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ooops. The source of the submission, the Wall Street Liars, compiled a hodgepodge of leaks, innuendos and speculations then ran off to the SCHOOL OF METEOROLOGY for their conclusions.
Weathermen are not climatologists and know nothing at all about the discipline. Same old tactic you've seen a hundred times from the deniers.

Re:How we used to view all of this in the Olden Da

[russotto]

1) Burning stuff releases pollutants.

Back in the 1970s, CO2 wasn't considered a pollutant. So if you could burn things (specifically hydrocarbons) completely and produce nothing but CO2 + H2O, no problem. Now, CO2 is considered a pollutant. The only way to reduce CO2 is to not burn hydrocarbons -- burning them better is no longer an option. That's a massive difference.

2) Putting less pollutants into the air, water, and ground is a good thing.

Civilization runs on energy. Burning less hydrocarbons = less energy = less civilization. Alternatives can't even come close, not even if you bring hydro (kills fish, destroys habitats, etc, etc) or nuclear (ewww...) back into the picture.

And yet...

[able1234au]

It warms...

Re:And yet...

[riverat1]

Indeed.

Titanic Is Sinking

[Anonymous Coward]

The dial-back on ESC is actually to an estimate made in 1980!

This is a disaster! The peoples of the world countries whose taxes support such things as 'National Science Centers and Their Governmental Sponsors' are rightly going to be dismayed and want their money back!

For the USA, this means calls for the disestablishment and charges of criminal fraud on the heads and staffs of, or instance, NCAR, NCSA and their associates (universities and business corporations), NASA GISS, USGS CSC's, NOAA CPC and the ever vulnerable US National Science Foundation (a White House, read 'Unelected', agency with little meaningful to no oversight at all) just to name a few.

The 'Killing Fields' are ready.

Ah, from the WSJ

[CDPS]

So clearly a very trusted source, with extensive expertise in science. Hah! The WSJ is full of right-wingers repeating what other right wingers want to hear. Useless to even bother looking at it or at anyone that would rely on it to learn anything factual.

anticlimactic

[johnsnails]

anticlimactic?

Even your assumptions are just assumptions

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, "burning stuff" releases "pollutants".... but some of those "pollutants" are not only not particularly harmful but actually quite necessary, like the CO2 that plants need

Your second point is also just a sloppy presumption; Is it really bad/evil to put a nasty pollutant like lead into the ground??? If you are a simple-minded individual who has been thoroughly propagandized by the left using public schools and various government agencies then "yes" it is.... and you should give them more of your money and more control over your life to "solve" the lead emergency.... but lead is a naturally-occurring element that comes from the ground in the first place; lead is indeed harmful to humans at certain levels and in certain types of exposures... but that's not the same thing as saying it's "bad" for the planet. In fact, it's not even universally "bad" for humans. Our modern society could not have been constructed without lead (the technology was not in place for reasonable substitutes in past decades). There are many other things the left is hyping as "pollutants" which are quite natural and not even harmful at the levels usually encountered (like "arsenic in apple juice", which has always naturally been there because traces of arsenic are in all apple seeds and they are released into the juice in the squeezing process)

No, it's a modern myth that it was fringe

[Anonymous Coward]

It was the consensus among a certain slice of scientists who specialized in climate...

Remember that before the recent wave of government grants funding "climate studies" and "global warming" and before universities had large structures in place dedicated to milking the current political demand, there were VERY FEW "climate scientists" and even a small number agreeing on something was a significant percentage...

Now that we are awash in these clowns, they can point to the small number of people who sounded the global cooling alarm as "just a few"... it's a smart political move but it's dishonest to the core

Re:No, it's a modern myth that it was fringe

[Geoffrey.landis]

It was the consensus among a certain slice of scientists who specialized in climate... Remember that before the recent wave of government grants funding "climate studies" and "global warming" and before universities had large structures in place dedicated to milking the current political demand, there were VERY FEW "climate scientists" and even a small number agreeing on something was a significant percentage...

To the contrary. Until the politically-motivated attack machine started to be funded, there was no scientific question about the greenhouse effect-- it was considered well-understood science. Grab any astronomy textbook from the '70s or '80s and check "greenhouse effect" in the index. It was completely non-controversial.

And it still isn't controversial, in a scientific sense. The denial machine is cranked up to continue to generate the illusion of uncertainty, but so far every challenge to the science has been answered. There aren't any alternate hypotheses that haven't been disproved with data.

Re:How we used to view all of this in the Olden Da

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget to short your own stock while reinvesting into cleanup operations and 'green' product lines temporarily whenever some corporate policies hits the prime time news fan.

What facts?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is significant because it points to the very real possibility that, over the next several generations, the overall effect of climate change will be positive for humankind and the planet.

This is a bunch of crap that does not take into consideration that there are umpteen ionospheric heaters constructed around the entire planet being operated by every unknown madman under the guise of research for every major government.. boiling the ionosphere and lifting chemicals sprayed high up from the atmosphere and someone needs to get the truth out. It is not good for the planet. Jeese, what the F?

Spoiling the public's mind beforehand

[Anonymous Coward]

I see it more as: o dear, in a week or two the IPCC will come out with their updated "Working Group 1: the physical science" report.
Let's poison and spoil public opinion with shill newspaper articles, written and published on the scientifically optimal amount of days *before* the IPCC report is published,
so that the impact of the actual report on public opinion will be minimized ("didn't all the newspapers say a few weeks ago that Global Warming is a hoax?").

Or how else do you explain that the newspaper articles appear before the actual report, wouldn't it be more logical that the IPCC publishes in the week of 23 September,
and in that week or the few weeks after that, the newspapers' science reporters write up their own take on it?

There is probably a better word for this technique, but I'm no mass communication/crowd mind control specialist.
</tinfoil-hat>
fritsd.

Alkaline Streams caused by Acid Rain

[Stolzy]

One of the effects of pollution has been to cause acid rain, and one of the knock-on effects of acid rain is that it's dissolving Limestone into streams and rivers. Generally speaking, plants like a soil level of 7-7.5 pH. Obviously there are endemic differences, but this is to say, if we do manage to clean up our pollution fairly soon, those Limestone creeks may end up proving to be benificial to their surroundings. The current thinking was that the alkaline levels were causing too much algae to grow, there-by using up the available Oxegen in the streams. In any case, at least we have enough money to pay qualified people to watch these things as they develop. Spend more on Science and less (or better still, none) on War. That's what I say. /Stolzy

"Damage control"

[Anonymous Coward]

Found it, it's called "damage control", with a technical term: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/sep/16/climate-change-contrarians-5-stages-denial

In anticipation of the widespread news coverage of this auspicious report, climate contrarians appear to be in damage control mode, trying to build up skeptical spin in media climate stories.

omfg

[Tom]

Science updates its data, i.e. total non-story, it's like writing the sky is still blue and there are clouds moving - omg, moving! across it.

But of course, most people are really, really conservative at heart. Not in the political sense, necessarily. As a species, we hate change. Things that naturally change unsettle us. That's why for 99% of human history, things simply were. Fixed and eternal. You know, gods and their laws. Morality. Even today, just the idea that morals and ethics is something that changes and evolves is revolting. That fucking underage kids was perfectly fine in some ancient societies is not a topic for a polite dinner conversation, and the first instinct I bet almost everyone who just read that had was something along the lines of "what was wrong with them?".

And that is why you can make a headline out of the fact that something that everyone with three grams of working brain matter knows and expects to continuously be updated has, in fact, been updated.

Some days, I wonder how our species managed to survive at all. omfg, I think I just realized that everything else on this stupid planet must be even worse.

A political, not scientific, agenda

[hessian]

The point behind climate change was that it justified wealth transfer through carbon caps.

It advanced a political agenda, not a scientific one.

As a result, it had huge support from people invested in that political agenda, and they created a media blitz.

As the hype fades, reality returns slowly.

It's called "Progress".

[Anonymous Coward]

Mann's 1998 hockey stick isn't going to be in there because there are scores of temperature graphs that show the same fucking hockey stick, right up to the present day. One example: BEST.

So since they already have other proofs of the hockey stick, why the hell would they keep using a paper's result from 15 years ago?

Note too, the first report had the CET temperature reconstruction and that's no longer there. But I guess in THIS case it's not going to be "That temperature graph is wrong", is it. Because you chop and change your "reasoning" to fit what conclusion you wish to say is there.

And the emails? Shitlord, you're a moron.

Medical doctors have.

[Anonymous Coward]

But I guess since they're paid to be doctors, they're biased, right, and must be wrong?

High carb diets you're eating fewer calories. You merely "feel" that you're eating more. Atkins does the same. With the added advantage that you don't digest all of the carbs (see rabbit digestion cf cow digestion) and that to digest the calorific value of protein takes more energy, giving a net loss in calory biologically available.

And the only one doing that is Wegman.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, and Watts et al.

Two denialist "scientists".

And HCFCs weren't either.

[Anonymous Coward]

And tobacco wasn't considered harmful.

But guess what: some of us learn from evidence.

Others, like yourself, refuse to learn and want The Old Ways kept 100% pristine like some sort of Holy Writ From The Inerrant God Almighty.

Which is why religious nutbars are over-represented in the denialist side. Despite the guardianship of earth by this god fella to be a caretaker position, not serial rapist and abuser.

Re:And HCFCs weren't either.

[Anonymous Coward]

And some of us learn from Chemistry. Like that burning anything other than straight-up, pure carbon also releases other pollutants into the air that are at least as or more harmful than CO2, such as CO, CH4, NO, SO2, etc.

A few also recognize that a vague danger that won't be a threat for dozens to hundreds of years with unclear or clearly hyperbolic predictions of the results won't drive change anywhere near as quickly as clear and personally dangerous threats to individuals like the CFC's that were found to be responsible for the hole in the ozone layer. Boy did those get vastly reduced in a hurry once our imminent doom was observed.

So, why the pushback against AGW, since it's just another case of humans putting harmful chemicals in the air? Maybe because, unlike CFC's, CO2 release is natural in the world and the entirety of humans' contribution to the total is about 6%, yet we seem to be being blamed for the entire 100% of the problems?

There's plenty evidence.

[Anonymous Coward]

First, you made a claim WITH ZERO EVIDENCE. I.e. "This is not unprecedented". Second, you made a fallacious claim. I.e. "We've had higher CO2 before" when the claim was about the RISE, not amount. Third, there's plenty of evidence, mostly by lack of any evidence. How, theoretically, could natural processes allow a 120ppm rise in a century without showing up in the reconstructions, given that the drawdown methods available take a scale order of 10,000 years to reduce CO2?

If the meanings are specific and statistical...

[Anonymous Coward]

shouldn't that make it easier to compare them?

Positive for the humankind? Is this real?

[GameboyRMH]

It is significant because it points to the very real possibility that, over the next several generations, the overall effect of climate change will be positive for humankind and the planet.

Is this "leaked report" real or some kind of fabrication? Because the idea of "net positive change" AGW flies directly in the face of all previous knowledge and recently observed phenomena.

Right...

[Anonymous Coward]

the predicted temperature rise expected as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than predicted in 2007

It is significant because it points to the very real possibility that, over the next several generations ...

1. Make prediction in 2007.
2. Notice you've got it wrong in 2013.
3. Announce with confidence about the possibilities of the "next several generations".
4. ...
5. False prophet. Or something.

More spin

[Anonymous Coward]

I see we have all the proponents of "climate change" out again making excuses to no end as to why this means nothing and that the "actual readings" or "actual models" say the opposite. The shouting down of "it's science!" because to admit error or admit that you fell for the bullshit of a piece of shit looking to capitalize off this hoax would be too much for them to handle. I am sure if I read enough of the posts I could find some jackwagon shouting "peer review!!!" like that is not skewed in the least or that is somehow makes it indisputable.
 
  When they have to change the name of something to suit what is actually happening how could any one with any reasoning skills not doubt what they purport as fact? Nope, the lemming suck it up with a false sense they are saving the world.

Plus or minus how much, dammit?!

[fygment]

More numbers presented as spat out by models but NO mention of the error. Yes, the number spat out by the model is precise but is it accurate? That depends on the assumptions made for the model. Therefore there must be a possible error. So what is it? Why is it never mentioned?

Bottom line: if the margin of error is of the same or greater magnitude as the value, then any predictions you make must be complete eg. " the temp may rise by as much as x OR decline by as much as y. Anything else is less than honest and in the hands of politicians and an unquestioning public, dangerous.

Re:Plus or minus how much, dammit?!

[angel'o'sphere]

Why don't you work a bit in science?

If you drive a car and its speedometer indicates you are driving 30 miles. Does it also indicate the "error"?

If you look at your remaining fuel and states it lasts for 130 more miles: does it also indicate the error? Or give you three estimates about how long it will last when you drive faster ors slower?

Why do you think a model "automatically" also shows errors? That is just nonsense.

If I would work with a model I would change the parameters in a plausible way and get for every parameter change a modified result.

From the many results *I* would draw a conclusion about the *likely* result and perhaps *I* would publish the other extremes as *variation*. All that by itself is by long not an *error*.

Vidicated

[gr8_phk]

It is significant because it points to the very real possibility that, over the next several generations, the overall effect of climate change will be positive for humankind and the planet.

My stance on this issue has been vindicated - for today and until some other poor research indicates something different. May be a month, perhaps a year, but they will eventually change their mind again. That's the one thing for certain in "climate science".

Re:How we used to view all of this in the Olden Da

[Anonymous Coward]

2) Putting less pollutants into the air, water, and ground is a good thing.

Not if you make lots of money from selling the polluting stuff.

If you count CO2 as a pollutant, then you can make a lot of money selling carbon credits. There's plenty of business interests on the "warming is bad" side, too.

More Anti-Environmentalism propaganda on Slashdot!

[Anonymous Coward]

You fucking right wingers are pathetic. Really pathetic. Why do you think it's fucking great we are trashing the planet?

Coast is clear guys!

[Anonymous Coward]

The docs say that we can all keep smoking in the room with the windows closed! Hweee-yeah!

Re:How we used to view all of this in the Olden Da

[angel'o'sphere]

Burning less hydrocarbons = less energy = less civilization

That is nonsense.
Or do you consider France, Germany, Australia, Austria, Sweden, Finland, the UK etc. pep less civilized than the USA?

Why haven't we done anything about climate change?

[Mike Van Pelt]

Simple. "Doing something about climate change", phasing out burning of coal in favor of the only power source capable of replacing it, quad for quad, has been obstructed at every turn for the past 40 years by the omni-obstructionists. They still won't permit any nuclear power plants to be built.

One might easily come to the conclusion that they do not care about CO2 warming at all; that their actual agenda is something else entirely.

Collective [Re:Billions of tons]

[Geoffrey.landis]

Sweet! Then there's no point in me worrying about my carbon footprint.

Correct. No individual human has a large enough carbon footprint to make a detectable difference in climate.

.... I guess then it's safe for everyone else to do the same, because small amounts of things don't add up to large amounts of things.

I don't understand what you are trying to say. I assume you are attempting sarcasm, but since you don't seem to be very good at it, it looks like you're just saying something stupid.

Global warming is a collective effect: the carbon emissions of a large number of humans, added together, have a significant impact. The carbon emission of a single human doesn't.

This is, in fact, exactly why the problem is so difficult: it's a problem that can't be solved by an individual, or even a moderate number of individuals, deciding on their own to scale back their carbon use.

and ignores the massive ice loss

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignores that we are losing ice 6 times faster than thought and about 30 cubic miles per year.

don't be a nimrod

[ewillyb]

Educate yourself: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/09/16/climate_change_more_nonsense_by_the_mail_on_sunday.html

It's possible we're jumping the Gun.

[Truth_Quark]

While a increase in the error of the estimated ECS is possible, the denialist industry is really pumping their papers in order to swamp the impact of the IPCC reports.

These claims of what is in them are reasonably speculative. I'm going to wait for the report before deciding the consequences of what's in it.

Here's a refutation of this particular one.

Re:Comparison is not possible [No change in number

[khallow]

I consider the IPCC as having an adversarial relationship with the truth, like a lawyer in court. What is significant is what they're forced to admit. Currently, they're admitting that temperature sensitivity could be as low as 2 C per doubling. If they then go to the new range, that means the temperature sensitivity could be as low as 1.5 C per doubling. My view is that implies that temperature sensitivity estimates have dropped significantly and the IPCC is being forced to account for that.

They have to insure that their estimates include the current best guess range in order to maintain credibility down the road. That's the limit to how much they can bias their estimates of relevant physical observables in favor of the AGW theory. To be forced to lower the bottom threshold is a significant event. We'll see if it survives the political process of the IPCC.

Finally, if anyone didn't want "leaked" paraphrasing to dominate the discussion of upcoming IPCC reports, then perhaps a more open and public process is in order? In my view, a more overt politicization of the IPCC would result, but at least the results would be more credible than they currently are.

Open to the public [Re:Comparison is not possible

[Geoffrey.landis]

I consider the IPCC as having an adversarial relationship with the truth, like a lawyer in court.

You think the IPCC has an "aversarial relationship with truth," so you get your information from editorials in the Wall Street Journal ????

The mind boggles.

(And, of course, I can safely bet you don't actually read the IPCC reports. The denier never do.)

My view is that implies that temperature sensitivity estimates have dropped significantly and the IPCC is being forced to account for that.

It hasn't. The IPCC is summarizing reports in the peer-reviewed literature. The estimates haven't dropped. The information the Wally is using is contradicted by the scientists who they misquote [ref]

....Finally, if anyone didn't want "leaked" paraphrasing to dominate the discussion of upcoming IPCC reports, then perhaps a more open and public process is in order?

The report is to be released in ten days. The Wally wanted to put their spin in before the open and public process started, so they could spin the argument before everybody had the facts.

Re:Open to the public [Re:Comparison is not possib

[khallow]

The report is to be released in ten days. The Wally wanted to put their spin in before the open and public process started, so they could spin the argument before everybody had the facts.

As I see, the open and public process is not in the creation of the report. As to the IPCC "summarizing" the "peer-reviewed literature", it's worth noting that the IPCC is first and foremost a political tool for justifying a variety of public spending themed around renewable energy and carbon dioxide reduction, such as renewable energy subsidies, carbon credit markets, wealth transfers from developed world to Third World, and public transportation. So any "summarizing" the IPCC will do will be oriented towards supporting such public spending. That is the nature of propaganda. Keep in mind that a large part of the "peer-reviewed literature" is also propaganda.

But as I implied, there are constraints to what the IPCC can claim. One of those constraints is that they can't claim something that will be obviously wrong with a little hindsight. That's why I pay attention to the bottom number for temperature sensitivity to a doubling of CO2. That can't be too high or the IPCC risks being discredited at a future time.

Re:How we used to view all of this in the Olden Da

[jwhitener]

2) Putting less pollutants into the air, water, and ground is a good thing.

Not if you make lots of money from selling the polluting stuff.

Or if those pollutants taste really good, like barbecue ;)

Re:Open to the public [Re:Comparison is not possib

[khallow]

Let's ask some simple questions here. Who decides the scope of the IPCC reports, the people who become authors and reviews for the reports, and who decides what writings to include - particular of the non-peer reviewed sort? These processes aren't transparent and they were done long before the Wall Street Journal blog article of which you appear to be so critical.

Why are "government representatives" involved? What do they bring that wouldn't be better achieved in their absence?

Who decides what what the high profile "executive summary" says and why isn't that process more transparent?

As a legitimate review of current climatology scientific literature, there's a lot that would be mysterious about how the IPCC report is constructed, even what it decides is part of its mandate.

But as a work of propaganda, these things are readily explained. In order to control the message, there must be filters to exclude or downplay undesired viewpoints or messages. And these filters have to be hidden from view so that the whole work retains an air of legitimacy. Hence, the need for a lack of transparency.

Re:Open to the public [Re:Comparison is not possib

[Geoffrey.landis]

I am constantly amazed at the lengths of rationalization that deniers go through to avoid actually reading any of the science.

Yes, if you work hard, you can come up with reasons to avoid ever reading anything that will explain any of the science.

Who decides the scope of Wall Street Journal editorials, and who decides what writings to include-- particularly of the non peer-reviewed sort? These processes aren't transparent. Who decides what what the high profile "editorials" say and why isn't that process more transparent? There's a lot that's mysterious about how the Wall Street Journal editorials are constructed, even what it decides is part of its mandate. But as works of propaganda, these things are readily explained. In order to control the message, there must be filters to exclude or downplay undesired viewpoints or messages. And these filters have to be hidden from view so that the Wall Street Journal retains an air of legitimacy. Hence, the need for a lack of transparency.

Re:Open to the public [Re:Comparison is not possib

[khallow]

I am constantly amazed at the lengths of rationalization that deniers go through to avoid actually reading any of the science.

BTW, I do read some research. But I don't see why that's relevant to the problem at hand.

Who decides the scope of Wall Street Journal editorials, and who decides what writings to include

That's pretty much decided by the owners of the WSJ, who have been mentioned several times. The difference between the WSJ and the IPCC reports is that the former isn't presented as a rigorous summary of all research in an important area of climatology and then proceeds to subvert that pretense for propaganda purposes.

Re:Open to the public [Re:Comparison is not possib

[Geoffrey.landis]

BTW, I do read some research.

I see no reason to believe that; particularly since you already clearly stated that you won't read something if you think that it doesn't agree with what you've already decided.

You say you want to see evidence-- but you refuse to read it, because you won't look at it if you think it won't confirm what you already know. Good rationalizations.

The difference between the WSJ and the IPCC reports is that the former isn't presented as a rigorous summary of all research in an important area of climatology

Correct. They're not. Which is why you shouldn't use editorials in the Wall Street Journal as the source of your science information.