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Scientists Say Climate Change Is Damaging Iowa Agriculture
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Radio Iowa reports that 155 scientists from 36 colleges and universities in Iowa are jointly issuing a call for action against global warming and calling on the US Department of Agriculture to update its policies to better protect the land. 'The last couple of years have underscored the fact that we are very vulnerable to weather conditions and weather extremes in Iowa,' says Gene Takle, director of the Climate Science Program at Iowa State. Both years were marked by heavy spring rains followed by droughts that damaged Iowa's farmland. 'This has become a real issue for us, particularly with regard to getting crops planted in the spring,' says Takle adding that Iowa had 900,000 acres that weren't planted this year because of these intense spring rains. 'Following on the heels of the disastrous 2012 loss of 90% of Iowa's apple crop, the 2013 cool March and record-breaking March-through-May rainfall set most ornamental and garden plants back well behind seasonal norms,' says the Iowa Climate Statement for 2013 . 'Iowa's soils and agriculture remain our most important economic resources, but these resources are threatened by climate change (PDF)." When the Iowa climate change statement was first released in 2011, 44 Iowa scientists signed on and last year's statement was signed by 137 Iowa scientists. "It's easy to set up a straw-man argument, to say, 'Oh, well climates always change; there have been changes in the past. This might just be natural,' " says David Courard-Hauri. "And often that gets played on the Internet as, 'Maybe scientists haven't thought about the fact that there have been natural changes in the past and maybe this is related.' " Of course scientists have thought about that possibility, says Courard-Hauri, but the evidence strongly suggests the climate is changing faster than could be expected to happen naturally."
I take it that they're going to allow us to adapt to climate change this way rather than have to, you know, stop polluting.
2. Profit!
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
Because Iowa should see perfectly consistent weather every year so our crops can be planted right on time and produce 100% harvest without fail.
Ordinarily there is no love for high fructose corn syrup growers around /., but today they'll get all the climate change kudos they can stand.
Is that you, Bobby Jindal?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
More or less the entire scientific community of the planet has been in a consensus about this for most of the last decade or two and our government still does not give a fuck. Iowa is not going to accomplish by itself what the whole freaking world didn't all together. The only way we'll ever start making progress on climate change is if somebody finds a way to outspend big oil, the car manufacturers, and every other petro-lobby.
A bullet may have your name on it but splash damage is addressed "To whom it may concern."
The first Earth Day took place on April 22, 1970, to " to create awareness for the Earth's environment and to encourage conservation efforts."
The phrase "Damn tree huggers" has been heard ever since. Yeah, even in Iowa. So, 40 years of deliberate ignorance and acrimony is coming home to roost? Tough grid.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
Is it any coincidence that Iowa is like right next door to Nebraska, and that both of these stories involve so called "scientists"?
I smell a conspiracy to pollute our precious bodily fluids. Or communists. Or something.
And Isn't Area 51 almost also next door to Iowa? You never can be sure, since the government also makes all of the maps.
Three Squirrels
3D printing will rescue us all.
excerpt:
U.S. Corn Belt Expands to North "Warmer Climate, Hardier Seeds Help Crop Gain on Wheat, North Dakota's Staple
RUGBY, N.D.—Wheat has long dominated the windswept farm fields of the northern Great Plains. But increasingly, farmers here are switching to corn, reflecting how climate change, advancements in biotechnology and high corn prices are pushing the nation's Corn Belt northward.
...
The shift, which is occurring in northern Minnesota and Canada's Manitoba province as well, shows how warming temperatures and hardier seeds are enabling farmers to grow corn in areas once deemed inhospitable to the crop."
When the overwhelming majority of scientists working in fields related to climatology say "AGW is real", and even the very small number of researchers working in fields related to climatology who are publicly skeptical rarely if ever actually publish papers in journals backing up their skepticism, I have to say, seeing some random AC on /. posting links to notorious denier sites doesn't exactly convince me that said AC actually a. knows what the fuck he's talking about, b. cares about what the fuck he's talking about, or c. is ever going to be willing to even consider really actually fucking learning a fucking thing about what he's talking about.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's all propaganda made up to discredit climate science.
See: How a Bad Rye Crop Might Have Caused the Salem Witch Trials.
so...
Maybe they're petro dollar shills too. (Nah, just kidding, they're grant mongering shills.
And Science doesn't work on the consensus of people who never studied the actual evidence. Science depends on repeatability of experiments which are publicly available and carefully state their premises, assumptions, findings and raw data. The biggest names in Climate Science haven't been practicing "science" at all.
No, peer review by your buddies doesn't count.
No, hiding methods and data behind the proprietary wall of a university doesn't count.
Make it public or it didn't happen.
You know what's awkward for the deniers?
When you talk about the ozone layer.
The same people who said "if we stop using halons and CFCs, we can fix the hole in the ozone layer"
are the ones saying "hey, this global warming stuff is a problem"
Unlike the denial industry, the scientists have already been proven correct once.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
AGW is real, in that humans have caused the climate to warm, but that doesn't mean we can or should do anything about it.
Yes, that's the only way, and fortunately that's not going to happen. When all is said and done, if you could give people a choice between driving their cars and economic growth now, and a few degrees warmer temperatures and a few feet of sea level rise, they are going to prefer driving and growth.
Of course, the idea that we even have that choice is an illusion. Global warming is inevitable and we better just learn to live with it.
rice?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Make what the fuck public? Jesus, fucktard, the evidence, the models, all of it out there.
How about you actually go look, instead of hiding up your own ass and only visiting denier sites that function as you're echo chamber.
You have absolutely no fucking idea what you're talking about, and worst of all, you think that's a good thing.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No. There will be more food problems. Food prices will increase, so people in poorer countries will starve. Western world will not care, but just buy their food and say something about capitalism having it's way.
Climate will change and nature will adjust as it did for millions of years. The question is not if the "new" climate will be habitable. It will be. The question is if will fit in.
Privacy is terrorism.
When the overwhelming majority of scientists working in fields related to climatology say "AGW is real"
And yet the AGW models The overwhelming majority of scientists working in fields related to climatology today get paychecks that rely on people being focused on their alarmism.
Regardless of that: I find it interesting that with the release of the IPCC AR5, which has toned down its predictions of things like warming, and weather extremes (in fact they dropped claims of AGW driving extreme storms such as cyclones altogether), and with AGW climate model predictions showing ever-increasing divergence from actual observation, the "sky is falling" cries have become even more shrill.
We have had a 50 meter rise in sea level in about 20,000 years. Does that give ANYONE a clue? Do you think any government could have stopped that?
Egypt was the most powerful nation on earth about 5000 years ago because of its fabulous growing regions. They are now desert caused by NATURAL climate change. Could any government reverse that change?
Based on lack of Sunspots of late, we may have an inordinately cold hard winter (climate change?) and some areas in the upper midwest already had 20,000 steers freeze to death. Climate change? Well, the same thing happened back in the 1960s, so was it climate change? Tell me when the next Maunder Minimum will occur? No solar scientist knows if or when. We still don't understand the long term variations of climate due to the variability of the Sun's output. Vary the sun up or down .01-.02% and the earth has large changes.
Scientists afraid of losing their job don't necessarily want to publish papers that go against the grain of politics. To do so may eliminate one's income.
There are damn good reasons to eliminate pollution where they occur, but the U.S. is not going to eliminate Asia's soot, carbon and heavy metals and chemical pollution. About 25% of the Los Angeles air pollution was noted in the paper recently to be from Asia/China. The US is NOT going to stop that by spending large sums in the US.
If we start spending massive sums before we really understand what is needed or even after, we may doom society to merely working for the government bureaucrats on a futile search for "stability" that can never be reached meaning we will all be serfs to an omnipresent government.
Here in New England, I've noticed that the fall foliage season (October, so we're at peak right now) has been much less impressive than I've remembered in decades past. The leaves change color but they're mostly wilted, so you don't have an overall effect of brilliance. My guess is that global warming has a lot to do with it.
I guess the only objective measurement you could get would be on the statistics for "foliage tourists" travelling to New England from overseas.
http://albertaventure.com/2013/06/albertas-farmers-adapt-to-climate-change/
“It’s jokingly been said by some people that we’ll eventually become the grape producers of America.”
The Good:
One of the ways this is measured is through the boundary for corn heat units, which measures where corn can be grown in the province. The northern boundary for these units has moved up a couple hundred kilometres since the 1910s, and it’s advanced about 50 kilometres since the 1940s.
The Bad:
His county was flooded four years ago, but he didn’t get any rain at all in July or August of 2012. “You can go from one wet year to extremely dry with no gradual buildup. Basically you just get hit with it and you have to survive it,” he says. “Nothing is consistent anymore. You think you have things figured out and then it throws a loop at you to say to you, ‘No, you don’t.’
Follow The Money:
agriculture-oriented investment funds have taken an increased interest in Canadian farmland?
We are looking at a high probability of the complete extinction of our species, and that very soon . . . possibly within the next twenty years. There have been five major extinctions on our planet. Two of those extinctions appear to be from impacts, perhaps from asteroids, but three others appear to have followed a very different path; a climate change path very similar to the one that we are now upon. This sequence of events is described in an article by Peter Ward which was published in Scientific American in 2006 (http://www.chicagocleanpower.org/ward.pdf). In this scenario the oceans and atmosphere are contaminated with lethal levels of hydrogen sulfide gas that, at least in the case of the end-Permian extinction, killed from eighty to ninety-six percent of all species on land and in the sea.
In a recent novel (Hubris Ark, William Bradford Cushman) the author argues that the timeline of these events is best understood by thinking in terms of the “hockey stick” shape of exponentially occurring events, and that we are now at the point in our climate change where the curve begins to rise very rapidly. In addition to Ward, the book also cites the work of Dr. Lee Kump who has modeled the H2S concentration of the end-Permian extinction --- a model which finds the atmosphere going from life-supporting to lethal between two data points just one hundred years apart.
We have got to get the bribery that now runs our government stamped out, or these coin-operated idiots are going to get us all very dead. The IPCC predictions have proved to be about seventy years too optimistic so far. Which is to say that this problem is not going to wait for a fix nearly as long as those making oil profits keep saying.
The irony about this issue with regards to Iowa growing seasons is that one of the driving trends of global warming is the movement of the start of the growing season earlier in the year. This last year the unseasonal cold in March and April pushed the start of the growing season way back.
The extra spring rains may be a global warming related trend, but the later start of the growing season is not something that is expected due to global warming, it fact is is counter to the expectations and the trend.
Iowa agribusiness has been cultivating more land than ever due to high commodity prices. Between 2001 and 2011 Iowa went from under 1700 million bushels of corn to over to almost 2400 million, while soybean is nearly the same during that interval.
We did not become 40% more efficient at growing corn since 2000. That growth represents more land use; land that was considered marginal when commodity prices were low is now viable. Marginal means flood plain, land with poor drainage or limited access to water. What's actually happened here is that since the marginal land is now in the rotation, farmers incur higher risk of big losses during outlier years.
Two bad years after apparently 10 good years (at least) is not Climate. It's weather. And "Weather Is Not Climate." Or so I'm told whenever we get a cold spell.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Iowa has 36 colleges and universities?
I own about 500 acres that I rent out. Last year we had our best yielding soybean crop yet plus the prices were up there. I know we sold most of ours at about $15 a bushel last year and even booked a bunch this year @ $14 a bushel.
Rice yields last year were up, but not by a large amount. This year's rice looks to be a slight improvement over last year and the beans are still in the field, yet is the most consistent stand I've ever seen in 20 years on the farms.
The farm income and my work income are about the same and the farms earn more than my wife's salary and she's a corporate attorney at a Fortune 300 and makes decent money.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Stop saying there is no consensus. There is a quasi consensus *on the science*. Once politics , denier, and teh conservative STARTS tio admit that point and stop trying to denie it with all their strength, we MAY take a step toward a solution. But as long as news media trump up some fake "let both side speaks" as if there were two side of the debate, and all the associated shenanigan to refuse admit the science is real, there cannot be any step toward a solution as long as people/politician deny the science. Once that hurdle is gone, solution will be found. But we haven't gone past that step.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
The entire Human Created climate change theory was created, financed, pushed through science and the mainstream media through the Rothschilds.
The lizard people? David Icke, is that you?
Stick Men
Good post Jane Q Public. Let's stick to the science, whether it supports AGW or not (at the moment the probability of AGW being the most significant factor in our climate is decreasing - as far as I can tell). So please keep posting the facts as you find them, and ignore those for who it is a 'cult' one way or the other.
Oh no, a "notorious denier site". You 'denier' you.
You idiot.
Did you READ anything on ClimateDepot? Too challenging for you?
AGW is an obvious scam. Your pathetic 'rebuttal' didn't convince anybody, especially your last sentence.
How the alarmists must be laughing as useful idiots like you back up their position at any cost, rather than THINKING about it. Cretin.
Has anyone noticed that they now describe Man Made Global warming, which nobody uses anymore to describe climate change based on man made contribution, or that is, to initiate a world wide carbon tax, is now generic Climate Change?
Which, nobody will argue that climate change happens, which is I think why they are starting to try and deceive people by suggesting historic climate change is the same as mane made climate change, which there is not one shred of evidence to support, and in fact is false.
We should have no winters by now, and extreme changes in climate when Al Gore and his crony investment banker buddies were setting up a Global Carbon Exchange to make billions.
Climate Change used as a term to masquerade as Man Made Global Warming is a gigantic scam.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
155 scientists from 36 colleges and universities in Iowa
That would mean there are more scientists and universities in Iowa than there are in the country I currently live, which is one of the more civilized in Europe. Now I may have been sleeping for all those years, yet....
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
And yet the AGW models The overwhelming majority of scientists working in fields related to climatology today get paychecks that rely on people being focused on their alarmism
Where are you suggesting these pay checks issue from? What would the UN, say, stand to gain by influencing IPCC research toward alarmism -- or bias in any direction, for that matter? In the other corner, as it were, who is bankrolling the denial camp?
Also I am pretty sure the latest IPCC report made a point of stating more clearly and unambiguously then ever before that climate change is real and man-made. We discussed it here on /. at the time.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
You know what's awkward for the deniers?
When you talk about the ozone layer.
The same people who said "if we stop using halons and CFCs, we can fix the hole in the ozone layer"
are the ones saying "hey, this global warming stuff is a problem"
Unlike the denial industry, the scientists have already been proven correct once.
Well the ozone layer hasn't been fixed, we have seen a marked slowdown in ozone depletion which still proves that the ban on depleting gasses appears to have had an effect. We won't start seeing a statistically significant recovery until the 2020s or 2030s. Complete recovery to 1980 levels will not happen until the second half of the century.
Anything made of atoms (including gases) can change temperature. The gases/particles we have added to the atmosphere are slightly heated by Earth and then cool down. Some of this captured/lost heat returns back to Earth.
Let's stick to the science, whether it supports AGW or not (at the moment the probability of AGW being the most significant factor in our climate is decreasing - as far as I can tell).
Then maybe you should be looking more closely at the actual science, as the IPCC AR5 review upgraded their assessment of the majority of climate change being human-caused to "extremely likely" (95%+ probability). And while a few specific effects of climate change are now considered less likely, others such as polar ice melt have been outstripping projections.
Be careful about cherry picking your science, or letting others do so for you. Read the AR5 executive summary for yourself; it's by far the most comprehensive review of the actual science. And its conclusions are not that everything's fine - quite the opposite.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
You seem blissfully unaware of two things:
1) Weather != climate
2) Weather is an inherently chaotic system, and adding more energy (c.f. global warming) increases the chaos, i.e. makes for more unexpected/extreme weather.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
"Where are you suggesting these pay checks issue from? What would the UN, say, stand to gain by influencing IPCC research toward alarmism -- or bias in any direction, for that matter? In the other corner, as it were, who is bankrolling the denial camp?"
I didn't write anything about "bankrolling" a "camp". That sound suspiciously like conspiracy theory to me. As for paychecks... they do come from somewhere, yes? I'm not suggesting any kind of big conspiracy, as you seem to be doing. I'm simply saying: AGW is what they're doing, and they are getting paid for it. Is there something about that with which you disagree?
"Also I am pretty sure the latest IPCC report made a point of stating more clearly and unambiguously then ever before that climate change is real and man-made. We discussed it here on /. at the time."
Yes, the report does make a point of saying so, in their executive summary. Which is just proving my point. Because the actual science in the report (pdf) does not justify the claim. If anything, the actual evidence is weaker than before. (That is a peer-reviewed paper published in Nature Climate Change, by the way). 117 climate models were studied. Of those, 114 overstated the actual amount of warming (by, as I stated before, an ever-increasing margin), and the mean divergence between those 114 models and current reality was 100%. In other words, the models, on average, predicted 100% more warming than has actually been observed.
Put that together with the increasing number of new studies that contradict the very foundations of most AGW climate models, and the only reasonable conclusion is that these ever-more-shrill pronouncements are nothing but hot air (pun very definitely intended).
2) Weather is an inherently chaotic system, and adding more energy (c.f. global warming) increases the chaos, i.e. makes for more unexpected/extreme weather.
Which seems like a reasonable conclusion. But even the IPCC is backing off that claim, apparently because they underestimated the ability of natural systems to "deal with" that extra chaos.
The IPCC is no longer claiming that AGW will drive increasingly energetic weather events. Unlike all the past reports, they don't even mention it in the latest.
Nonsense! Government subsidies are destroying Iowa agriculture. Last time I was there I saw a pro-subsidy billboard every mile. It's a religion to them. For a supposedly conservative state want a big and bloated DoA. What's wrong with the subsidies? Go fly over Iowa and look down. EVERYTHING is corn and soybeans. It's a monoculture from border to border, with a few isolated dots that might be hog barns. This is not healthy for the soil, it's not healthy for our diets, and it's not healthy for our economy.
What are you talking about? "You're quoting Fox"? Huh? I gave a LINK to an ARTICLE on Fox, which says that the Los Angeles Times is CENSORING any comments which don't 'toe the party line' on the AGW scam. You idiot, you can't even read.
Which is probably why you follow whatever the T.V. global warming alarmists tell you.
Watch 'The Great Global Warming Swindle':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-m09lKtYT4
Scary - you might have to THINK. Idiot.
The Rothschilds? The 19th century called, they want their anti-Semitic conspiracy theories back...
"Then maybe you should be looking more closely at the actual science, as the IPCC AR5 review upgraded their assessment of the majority of climate change being human-caused to "extremely likely" (95%+ probability). And while a few specific effects of climate change are now considered less likely, others such as polar ice melt have been outstripping projections."
If you want to pay attention to the "actual science", then you should not be paying attention to the summary, because as Dr. Richard Lindzen rather gleefully points out, as the actual science in the IPCC reports has been progressively offering weaker and weaker evidence of AGW, those summaries have become ever more alarmist.
Your comment is really just more evidence of what I was saying.
Too cold, too hot, too much rain, too little rain, it's all the fault of that evil Bogeyman climate change.
The long term trend is warmer, wetter, greener, which has overall been good for food production.
When 20 something year olds are the experts of course you have to wonder. http://www.amazon.com/Delinquent-Teenager-Mistaken-Climate-ebook/dp/B005UEVB8Q
Paul: Father... father, the sleeper has awakened! - Dune
Screw you. Unaware that weather is not climate...
I freaking state that in my post!!
The trend, from a climate perspective is for the start of the growing season to get earlier. This means that on the trend line for that variable, last year's value will be an outlier in the overall climate trend.
I'm getting sick of chaos being used as the trump card to invalidate any measure that doesn't meet the expected values.
A large portion of North America last March and April were unseasonably cold. Where I live, we had 20 days in April with snowcover on the ground (the first 8 being some of the days without snow). It was unprecedented weather for that time of year (i.e. unseen in my lifetime). The icing out out lakes in the area set records or were close to the records for lateness.
I am not disagreeing with global warming or that it can cause anomalous patters in weather. But all predictions and forecasts were opposite to what actually happened. This can not be waved away by your two points. I can only be factored in by making better and more reliable models.
It can also be factored in if the same thing doesn't happen again for a long period of time. Then the data from last year is just like what I said it might be and is an outlier from the trend. But in that case the trend has to move back to a general earlier data for the start of the growing season, like the models predict.
If I were in Iowa I'd worry less about the impact of climate change on the agriculture, which will take decades versus the immediate impact diverting massive amounts of ground water into ethanol production for fuel, which scientists estimate will take centuries to replenish. Stopping climate change today won't refill the underground aquafiers and without water, there are no farms, nor rural communities to farm them.
You were clearly implying that a bias in favour of what you call alarmism would somehow be related to these scientists' compensation. Many of whom are publicly funded (and therefore typically subject to various kinds of oversight, budgets included). So I just meant to ask you, how do you believe that would even work?
On the other hand, the skeptics are mostly funded privately, or at least that's how it looks -- often donors remain anonymous (I am not saying that is a bad thing per se, but cones with different expectation of accountability). So I guess I see why you would accuse me of conspiracy theorizing. But aligned interests of a very few big hitters paired with some think tank to shovel cash into is really all you need.
There is a big difference, it seems to me, between doing climate research and noticing patterns we now call, for better or worse, AGW, and presupposing that "AGW is what they're doing" and therefore their jobs somehow depend on alarmism.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Human civilization is doomed if this site is representative of "intelligent" humans.
Ok, why is this awkward for "deniers"?
This theory suffers from the main problems of AGW, observation and confirmation bias. Here manifesting as a lack of evidence that it was actually a problem coupleld with a desire to see the model confirmed. Sure, there was an ozone hole. But there might have always been an ozone hole (as long as there has been an Antarctic continent) and it wasn't until we looked for it that we saw it.
No, I tend to look at what climatologists say. You know, sort of how if I was wondering about quantum mechanics, I'd probably prefer to read what a particle physicist had to say, rather than what Archimedes Plutonium had to say.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I didn't write anything about "bankrolling" a "camp". That sound suspiciously like conspiracy theory to me. As for paychecks... they do come from somewhere, yes? I'm not suggesting any kind of big conspiracy, as you seem to be doing. I'm simply saying: AGW is what they're doing, and they are getting paid for it. Is there something about that with which you disagree?
They are paid to research the climate. The climate exists and needs to be studied regardless of what it's actually doing, so as long as their research is based on actual data they would be getting paid to do their job no matter what... so there is no logic in asserting that funding grants are biased toward researchers who advocate AGW. Such bias would be pretty easy to show, since there seems to be a complete lack of angry climatologists whose grant applications have been repeatedly denied.
So the idea that researchers are crying AGW because that's what gets them funded seems to be a total non-starter. Got any others?
=Smidge=
Just as a point of reference, Iowa has been an incredibly fertile place to grow many types of crops. It is one of two places in the world that had huge loess deposits. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loess:
"Loess tends to develop into very rich soils. Under appropriate climatic conditions it is some of the most agriculturally productive terrain in the world."
Now, it's another thing entirely that Iowa farmers have been systematically killing their soil with heavy application of ammonia, fertilizers and the practice of fence-to-fence planting rather than the traditional "steward of the land" approach that prevailed so long ago.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Climate is defined as the statistics of weather, climate is not mathematically chaotic, weather (turbulence) itself is mathematically chaotic. This has been pointed out to you several times in the past, please try and pay attention since that fact is absolutely fundamental to understanding what you are talking about.
And no, despite what the opinion pages of the Washington post says, the IPCC are even more pessimistic about the outlook than they were in 2007 and much more certain that the warming trend seen over the last century is entirely due to man. The IPCC revised the lower bound of climate sensitivity down by 0.01degC, the "most likely value" has not changed.
What's next? - Are you going to claim it was a "leaked report" too?
And yet the AGW models The overwhelming majority of scientists working in fields related to climatology today get paychecks that rely on people being focused on their alarmism.
You have willing put your mind in a political cage and it has blind sided you to common-sense and introspection.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I suspect you are being deliberately obtuse - the disturbing aspect to the ozone measurements wasn't so much the finding of a hole, but that the levels were reducing markedly from year to year.
The cookies are disappearing from the jar. The typical red-face response is "it wasn't me". You go further and say "the cookies weren't ever there". Yet day by day the cookies continue to disappear.
Hint : IT WASNT A THEORY
I guess you're unaware of what a theory is. Theories of gravity are still theories despite being confirmed to a lot of decimal places for the regimes where they apply. The speculated effect of surface emitted CFCs on the ozone layer is a theory.
Any rational person would be concerned about the lack of good data collection before the era of satellites. This problem cripples all of climate research.
I find it interesting how people babble about how bad "deniers" are while simultaneously demonstrating profound ignorance of scientific matters.
If you actually bothered to just even look at historical climate records, you'd realize that your statement is total bullshit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:All_palaeotemps.png
Even if it were true, it would make no difference, because it is hard to image climate that's less hospitable and stable than the climate that has existed during the past 7 million years, with regular glaciation cycles covering much of the northern hemisphere.
"You were clearly implying that a bias in favour of what you call alarmism would somehow be related to these scientists' compensation. Many of whom are publicly funded (and therefore typically subject to various kinds of oversight, budgets included). So I just meant to ask you, how do you believe that would even work?"
Well, perhaps that was clear to you, but it wasn't clear to me. I see: [A] Evidence that they have tended to be alarmist (as opposed to unbiased scientific opinion), [B] Evidence that more has been spent in that field, apparently in reaction to (if not in proportion to) that alarmism. Those are just observations on my part. Make what you want of them.
"So I guess I see why you would accuse me of conspiracy theorizing."
I wasn't accusing, I just mentioned that it kind of sounded like that. The only reason I mentioned it at all is that AGW advocates (I'm not referring to you), have tried to call other people's observations about bias "conspiracy theory". I figure what's good for the goose is good for the gander, as they say. Nothing personal.
"There is a big difference, it seems to me, between doing climate research and noticing patterns we now call, for better or worse, AGW"
I agree with you as far as that goes, but again: there is very real evidence that is not what many of them did, or are doing. I'm not drawing conclusions; I'm simply saying there is evidence.
Most of that is probably due to the PO, when in el-Nina conditions the eastern pacific is cool and wet and the west warm and dry, in el-Nino years the opposite is true. We are set for our hottest year ever here in Australia, thing is, it is not an el-Nino year.. The next el-Nino will be disastrous for us here in Australia, the recent Sydney fires are what we normally get in an el-Nino summer, a fire like that in mid-spring is unheard of, it's at least 2 months too early. Spring is normally the season to deliberately burn undergrowth to reduce fuel for the summer instead the spring weather is such that total fire bans have been declared throughout NSW.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The same people who said "addressing CFCs will destroy the economy" are the same people (the very same) who said "addressing acid rail will destroy the economy" are the same people (the very same) who say smoking isn't linked to cancer, are the same people who say "addressing climate change will destroy the economy". And these people call their detractors "alarmists", and themselves "skeptics". It is madness through and through.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
That should read "PDO", Pacific Decadal Oscillation.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
But there might have always been an ozone hole (as long as there has been an Antarctic continent) and it wasn't until we looked for it that we saw it.
You obviously don't realize that there is a whole history to the debate of the ozone whole. Did you ever look it up? Nah... just throw out an unfounded charge. Why not? You're probably right anyway.
I mean, those scientists are really clueless ideologues, suffering from a liberal bias and all. For example, maybe the dinosaur bones were put in the earth's crust to make it LOOK like the earth is billions of years old, and really, it was created a few thousand years ago!!! That sounds smart, I must be a GENIUS.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Climate scientists say a lot of things that they have to filter first.
The overwhelming majority of scientists working in fields related to climatology today get paychecks that rely on people being focused on their alarmism.
This is such a stupid claim, because scientists in general are hungry for grant money, and oil companies are hungry for shills. You want money, you just have to sell your PhD, and feed at the trough. But if you have real integrity like Muller did, then watch the deniers turn on you when you fail to say what they want to hear.
But sure, scientists are all just paid off by a government conspiracy.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
"Climate is defined as the statistics of weather"
I know what climate is, and you know from our past conversations that I know that. If you intend to engage in adult conversation, kindly cease your condescension. Nobody ELSE in this thread has so far seen fit to engage in that kind of behavior.
"And no, despite what the opinion pages of the Washington post says"
I didn't pull any of my information here from the opinion pages of the Washington post. The ultimate sources have all been from peer-reviewed and/or science-oriented journals, except for THIS exchange with Dr. Richard Lindzen, which was quoted online elsewhere and in some newspapers.
"the IPCC are even more pessimistic about the outlook than they were in 2007 and much more certain that the warming trend seen over the last century is entirely due to man"
Repeat: those are the conclusions in their summaries. The question is (and this was the entire point of this thread): does the science contained in the reports actually support those conclusions? Many scientists are saying no.
"You have willing put your mind in a political cage and it has blind sided you to common-sense and introspection."
This is pretty hilarious. I have cited peer-reviewed papers, and statements by scientists who support the position I have described. Do you feel like rebutting what they had to say? Links are above. Feel free. Until then, I have no reason to take you seriously.
The IPCC is no longer claiming that AGW will drive increasingly energetic weather events. Unlike all the past reports, they don't even mention it in the latest.
I'd be tempted to take that at face value, except that you almost certainly have no clue what you're talking about. Care to provide a citation to the recent IPCC report that says that they are no longer claiming such? Bet you have not idea where to even start.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Obvious troll is obvious. Don't bother replying to this idiot.
Is there something about that with which you disagree?
Yes. You are making a charge that has no basis in how science works. The Nobel Prizes go to the iconoclasts. So do the paychecks, and all the glory. But you gotta have a substantive criticism to break a theory. Whining about Galileo doesn't cut it. Any idiot can do that.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Isn't Dr Lindzen lead author of Chapter 7 of the recent IPCC report. I thought that document sounds like it only includes one point of view. If you choose your "expert" based on what you want to hear... then sure... the IPCC reports _are_ progressively weaker. Of course, the rest of the climate science community thinks of Lindzen as a crank, but to you he is Galileo. And what that fuck is he talking about? Who cares! He's sticking it to them alarmists!!!
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Lol climate depot has zero credibility to anyone with a brain. Which of course rules out denialists morons like you.
Has anyone published a comprehensive plan for world-wide replacement of fossil fuels? One that address the loss of the benefits of fossil fuels. Much of the quadrupling of the population of Africa in the last 50 years was fed by the over production of subsidized Western farms. A self impoverish West will not be sending food anywhere. India and China will not re-impoverish themselves, who is going to make them?
Posters on another thread voiced the dangers of a world wide economic collapse from an American debt default. The American money machine runs on oil, sun beams and unicorn farts will not power it.
I know that there isn't a long history to the ozone hole and not a lot of evidence past the last few decades. Trying to extrapolate long time behavior from short term data is fraught with peril.
the disturbing aspect to the ozone measurements wasn't so much the finding of a hole, but that the levels were reducing markedly from year to year.
Since we don't know what ozone layer behavior was like before the modern era, we don't know if this was unusual behavior for the ozone hole or not.
We do, however, know that CFCs are harmful to the ozone layer, and there obviously were no CFCs up there before the modern era.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Right, because the scientists never thought of that either. And you know, the economy was going to be RUINED by addressing CFC pollution. It would also lead to global world socialist government. This is really what people on the far right said. They really believed it. And they called environmentalists alarmists. I suspect you have no interest in learning anything about the ozone hole, and how what is known is known, and what the error bars are. I mean, who needs error bars when "extrapolating long time behavior from short term data is fraught with peril".
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Right, because the scientists never thought of that either.
So what? It's still a huge problem no matter how much thinking goes on.
And you know, the economy was going to be RUINED by addressing CFC pollution. It would also lead to global world socialist government.
Phasing out CFCs had higher profit margins for the chemical companies and no significant opposition from anyone else, thus it was done.
I mean, who needs error bars when "extrapolating long time behavior from short term data is fraught with peril".
Who needs to think when you can babble on the internet? "Error bars" don't magically create data that doesn't exist.
This is what you get when completely idiotic people think they have any idea what's going on. THERE IS STILL A HOLE IN THE OZONE LAYER!
The ozone layer is actually completely relevant to this, just not the way your defective brain makes you think it is. The ozone layer is created by sunlight, just as is climate change. More intense sunlight due to higher than usual solar activity is responsible for the slight increase in ozone levels, just as it is also responsible for slightly higher than usualy temperatures.
Rather than proving the retarded so-called scientists right, the ozone layer has proven conclusively that people who believe that shit are completely stupid.
I'm getting sick of chaos being used as the trump card to invalidate any measure that doesn't meet the expected values.
You aren't the only one. It was clear to me the moment the AGW High Priests invoked chaos to explain what was happening that they'd made it impossible to falsify their claims because if things go the way they predict, it's considered to be proof that they're right, and if it doesn't, they just invoke chaos. IANACS, but to me, at least, ever since they started explaining inconvenient events with chaos, AGW became, as Popper would phrase it, a meaningless noise.
That being said, I do think that cutting back on CO2 emissions is a good thing and that the farmers in Iowa should be taking better care of their topsoil, because that's just common sense, and AGW has nothing to do with it.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
why is this modded +3? this is a sophomoric rant with no content.
CFCs are naturally emitted by Earth volcanoes apparently in small amounts. As an interesting bit of off-topic trivial, there's some speculative research that CFCs may be a significant part of lunar volatile compounds (based on some thermodynamic modeling research), but nobody will know for sure until someone drills into some trapped volatiles.
Lol climate depot has zero credibility to anyone with a brain. Which of course rules out denialists morons like you.
hahaha what kind of person would mod down an AC? oh yeah... an AGW zealot. Moron. Try commenting on the data instead.
Phasing out CFCs had higher profit margins for the chemical companies and no significant opposition from anyone else, thus it was done.
Oh, it was the chemical lobby. You know there is a real history to this that you can look up. I recommend doing so, because it is a fascinating window into how power structures really work regarding these types of issues.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Monsanto and co will just genetically engineer the crops to grow in whatever conditions the climate throws at them...
Scientists Say Climate Change Is Damaging Iowa Agriculture
If I were the scientists, I will focus much more on the diminishing aquifers underneath Iowa first
It is true that global climate changes have effected agriculture patterns all over the world, but by screaming " CLIMATE CHANGE DAMAGING IOWA AGRICULTURE ", to me at least, is a little bit too thick
All agriculture needs water (plants need water to grow) and the aquifer system beneath Iowa has seen its water disappearing in an alarming rate
Make sure you guys get the water supply problem licked first, scientists !
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Do you even know what a scientific theory is? Do you understand that a theory doesn't actually have to graduate to anything more? A scientific theory is a statement that describes all current known evidence and is contradicted by none. Furthermore, a theory should be able to predict the results of new experiments in the same field. There is no such idea as "just a theory" in science because a theory is a very powerful and well vetted tool. It is entirely different than the use of the word in the vernacular.
Satellites are not the only means of collecting climate data. Ice cores go back tens of thousands of years and even human recorded history goes back thousands of years.
You know, actually, I read something interesting a while ago.
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?org=NSF&cntn_id=127688&preview=false
Sooo, as I read that, as sea ice shrinks, ozone hole shrinks.
Which is kinda interesting given past few decades.
It'll be interesting to see if that changes if sea ice/snow increases as it has in antarctic for a while.
(this year was slightly improved over past for the arctic too)
-- perl -e'print pack"H*","6e656d6f406d38792e6f7267"'
The point is that you can't extrapolate what weather to expect in a single year. The reason we in the central US got snow in early May this year is because of warmer air forcing polar air southward.
You're cherry-picking your data, dickhead.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Dipshit, what you deniers don't understand is that we humans (and our crops, and our livestock animals) have evolved to survive in a certain climate range, and that we're not going to evolve quickly enough to survive what we're doing to the planet - temps are changing faster than they ever have since humans have been here.
PS: humans haven't been around for 7 million years. We and our immediate ancestors have been around for about 500,000 years.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
A scientific theory is a statement that describes all current known evidence and is contradicted by none
Please stop speaking on behalf of scientists.
What's it to you whether climate disruption is real or not? Why are you so hot to deny it? You don't want to feel guilty for living a western lifestyle that generates lots of CO2, something like that? Makes you angry that you could be accused of contributing to the problem? You'd really throw our future away over such a petty emotional response? Really?
We're looking at the facts. And the facts say that big changes are happening, that we're the cause, and some of those changes are very bad. Yes, so bad that civilization could collapse. I know you think that's alarmist. You'd better wake up and pay attention. Do you understand why civil war is raging in Syria now? At the root it is crop failures thanks to an extended drought. If our food production falters, watch out. As Syria goes, so we all might go if we screw this up. Climate disruption has destabilized many civilizations in the past. The Mayas and the Pueblo Indians fell, and even the Roman Empire took a hit. If you think we are immune to that, because we're much more technologically advanced than those ancient civilizations, think again.
As to the accusations that scientists are making this all up to secure more funding, think more carefully about that. Not saying that such pressures can't lead to the production of less than stellar science, but this is beyond ridiculous. Any scientists who could show that climate disruption is not caused by us, and convince others because they are right, would publish in a heartbeat. The rewards for such groundbreaking work would be so great that some would break ranks to publish. There are so many organizations eager to publicize such work that it would be no problem finding a publisher. Yet this has not happened. Why? Because climate disruption is real.
Now, many of the more rabid environmentalists indulge in shaming. That's counterproductive. Try to get past that, and let's look at the problems, and think what is best to do about it. It's not only climate disruption, there is also ocean acidification. It may be that we need not be proactive, and the problem will fade away thanks to peak oil. We may be able to engineer our way out of this. Build dikes, scrub CO2 from the air, build more canals to maintain water supplies, and other measures of that sort. We can also act now, try to shift our energy production towards carbon neutrality. We will have to eventually anyway, so why not start now? We certainly should shift towards processes that save us money regardless of whether climate disruption is a problem or not.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
For one thing the code to the models. Second, the raw data that was fed into the models. Where have you been?
'I don't know what it's called. I just know the sound it makes, when it takes a man's life.' ~ Four Leaf Tayback
You might want to re-read this bit:
Be careful about cherry picking your science, or letting others do so for you.
Dr Lindzen's claims about climate change have so far failed to convince most of his colleagues. While I sincerely hope he turns out to be correct, most climate scientists disagree with him - and the conclusions of AR5's broad review of recent science papers reflect that (as do numerous other surveys and studies). A summary of the results of thousands of peer-reviewed studies carries considerably more scientific weight than a lone dissenting voice with unconvincing evidence. Further, choosing to believe a single scientist's opinion while dismissing nearly all other climate scientists' opinions is a prime example of selection bias.
Your comment is really just more evidence of what I was saying.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
You know what's awkward for the deniers?
When you talk about the ozone layer.
The same people who said "if we stop using halons and CFCs, we can fix the hole in the ozone layer"
are the ones saying "hey, this global warming stuff is a problem"
Unlike the denial industry, the scientists have already been proven correct once.
The people who said halons and CFCs were the problem also said the problem would last for a long time. Has it?
Dr Lindzen is not listed as a lead or contributing author of any AR5 chapter, though a few of his recent papers are cited and discussed.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Right, he was lead author of Ch7 of the 3rd report.
Ok, what if the climate scientists are wrong. But not in the way you think.
What if they're being too conservative in efforts to not sound alarmist. What if we're looking at 4-6 degrees celsius, and the consequences end up being ecosystem collapse on a massive scale, food harvests dropping 20%+, sea levels and storm surges force people to push back from the shoreline of coastal cities, and the combination of warming and ocean acidification causes large ocean creatures to simply go extinct.
There's uncertainty and denialists always assume that it's going to be less severe than scientists assume, but it's also possible for it to be worse.
I stole this Sig
Modelers predicted a rise in ozone once HFCs were reduced. Which didn't happen, Ozone levels have remained fairly constant. What's more further research has shown that the loss of ozone in the 1990s was overstated. At best we stopped the further reduction in Ozone, and the claimed catastrophes never materialised.
Sounds remarkably like the climate change modelling which failed to predict the 15 years of stable surface temperatures, while C02 emissions have exceeded their worst case scenario. And looks more like a case that all statements made without good evidence should regarded sceptically.
Here they are quoting selectively and simply complaining about the weather over 3 years not climate. They claim that one spell of cold weather damaged the apples, and one spell of dry weather was also bad. They ignore that the IPCC finds that there will likely be a small average increase in precipitation for the region by 2065. And that combined with warmer minimums and high C02 this will boost crop yields for the next few decades. They claim that warmer minimums will result in reduced meat and egg production without evidence. Chickens evolved in the jungle of Asia and people raise cows in Texas without any problem and there are many cattle that thrive in tropical conditions.
They are using this to make claims for urgent unspecified actions that will have undefined effects. Everybody makes up whatever unproven assertions about Global Warm, or its absence. Why should spin from 155 people be correct, or determine policy.
The code for one of the major models, the GISS Model E is here.
Links to other models and both raw and cooked data can be found on this page.
All of what you ask for is out there, you just have to be willing to put in the time to look for it.
The climate models don't get fed much raw data, just starting conditions and whatever scenario they're evaluating for a particular run.
The ozone hole over the Antarctic is a problem but ozone depletion in general has also been an issue. To quote the article referenced:
In middle latitudes it is preferable to speak of ozone depletion rather than holes. Declines are about 3% below pre-1980 values for 35–60N and about 6% for 35–60S. In the tropics, there are no significant trends
Dobson started measuring atmospheric ozone in the 1920's so we have a reasonably long period of measurement.
All we've done so far is slow down and maybe stopped further depletion of ozone. Ozone levels in the ozone layer are not expected to return to pre-1980 levels until the 2160-2175 period. That's a long lifetime for an individual.
You made the statement:
That statement was completely and utterly false. It shows that you know nothing about the climate.
That's totally irrelevant. I was simply drawing your attention to the fact that the climate was much warmer, and more stable, more than 7 million years ago, countering your idiotic claim that warmer temperatures make the weather chaotic or unstable. If anything, the opposite is true.
Now, you add more b.s. to your statements:
Our crops and livestock animals haven't "evolved" into crops and livestock at all, they have been selected and bred. And humans can survive in just about any climate on earth, from completely frozen to dry desert to high mountains.
That too is b.s. Over the last 20000 years, temperatures, sea levels, and climate have changed dramatically, both over extended regions of the planet and global average temperatures, and people have obviously thrived.
You do realize there are humans living right now in both the coldest and hottest areas of the planet? The vast majority of normally habitable areas on the planet won't even come close to approaching those temperatures in 200 years of continued warming, and both humans and most animals can survive temperature ranges far above and far below the worst predictions for current global warming. Add to that our current drive in technology is already being focused on more energy efficiency and environmental friendliness, so it's already being dealt with, no fear-mongering required.
Also, learn to read a chart. On that link stenvar provided, see that bit between 10,000 and 500,000 years ago (ie: 98% of humanity's existence)? That right there is more extreme temperature changes more often than the minimal waddle we've been seeing for the last 10,000 years right up to today.
This is really getting monotonous.
Deforestation caused this. Read enough and you'll figure it out.
I know, I know, they'd never lie to you. Read.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Chaos in climate is a completely separate thing from chaos in weather. At its base climate statistically describes of the chaos of weather. I'm not convinced that climate is all that chaotic. On any short term basis it's primarily an energy balance problem. Energy in minus energy out equals energy retained by the system. Everything that happens in climate comes down to energy.
Let me guess, when you say "the same" you mean "everyone who isn't me".
If you realize that everyone you talk to reasons differently you might start to get more support for your thoughts. As long as you keep thinking of everyone else as a homogenous group "they" will resist you.
I see: [A] Evidence that they have tended to be alarmist (as opposed to unbiased scientific opinion), [B] Evidence that more has been spent in that field, apparently in reaction to (if not in proportion to) that alarmism. Those are just observations on my part. Make what you want of them.
"Just sayin".
You descend to new levels of hypocritical fuckwaddery.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Climate change is already damaging a lot of other stuff.
Well we have had many phases:
- There is no global warming
- There is almost no warming and it's not global
- There is some global warming but the consequences are far less than actually doing something about it
- There is global warming but it's not our fault!
And thus now: there is global warming but we can't be bothered to do something about it (which was the motivation for all the denialism all along of course).
If you intend to engage in adult conversation, kindly cease your condescension.
Sorry about that, most of the links you have ever provided me with are full of tabloid ad-homs about "greedy scientists selling their soul", so I figured snaky catches your attention. ;)
Nothing below the above sarcastic apology is intended to be insulting / snarky / sarcastic / offensive / condescending. I have used "scare quotes" in places where I lack a more descriptive phrase.
Seriously Jane, why do you go to Senator James (coal state) Inhofe's propaganda site to read their interpretation of what "peer-reviewed and/or science-oriented journals" say about climate change? Why not go directly to where the cream of the climate science community hangs out ?
I know you pride yourself on being a skeptic and we've talked about self-skepticism before, so in all seriousness here's the challenge.
Take a random climate depot article about the AR5, take a random climate science article about the AR5. Pick out a few random contradictions between the two articles that can be resolved by checking the AR5. Let me know how you go, no need to respond here if you don't have the time right now, I will remember for next time we cross paths. In the spirit of non-snarkyness. I'm willing to spend an hour or so to do a similar self-assessment on my own claims if you can offer one that you think may help me see "the error of my ways".
Personally I think that if your not concerned about climate change and the current political response then you are simply not paying attention. So use the PRIMARY source Jane, it's more ardours than the myriad he-said-she-said sources but it will free your mind as it did mine in the mid 90's. When/if that happens you will understand why I (unintentionally) haunt your posts. There is no shame in ignorance or falling for corporate propaganda, however refusing to use basic research techniques such referring to primary sources to resolve apparent contradictions, is just another way of saying "wilfully ignorant".
Seriously, I was you in my early 20's, albeit with a different subject, when you try the exercise above your going to get pretty pissed at the people who have "brainwashed" you into doing their bidding. If you want a "mastermind propagandist" to focus you anger then Inhofe is the common thread that runs through the vast majority of links you have thrown at me. When you see one of their victims in the future you will want to shake them like I shake you every now and then (often without realising it's you before I hit submit). So here's a couple of obvious questions you might ask about me...
Why do I care if you or anyone else is "brainwashed" by corporate propaganda?
Why did I spend 30 minutes typing up this reply??
Simple succinct answer from "the greatest polymath of all time" - "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities" - Voltaire.
I'm not immune to that law of human behaviour and neither are you, I have no other motive to convince you AGW is a problem other than my 3 grandkids will have to live with our collective decisions. I may "take the piss" every now and then but if you can manage to take a step back from the verbal duelling thing we have going, you might be able to see that I am a
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Link description was supposed to read "random real climate article", my "R" key is dying, and the spell-checker cocked up "arduous".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I love how the climate debate causes people to start insulting each other. As if this might change someone's mind instead of causing them to fight even harder for their POV and achieving the opposite of the desired outcome. Your observation is correct. Your delivery removes it's force. Why argue at all if it just makes things worse?
I have determined that my sig is indeterminate.
Do you even know what a scientific theory is?
Yes, I do.
A scientific theory is a statement that describes all current known evidence and is contradicted by none.
No, that is not a theory because no one is knowledgeable enough about all current known evidence to even put together such a statement. Theories routinely have "contradicting" evidence such as the flat Earth and spherical Earth models.
There is no such idea as "just a theory" in science because a theory is a very powerful and well vetted tool.
Well, talk to the person I was replying to. They were the ones unclear on what "theory" means in this context.
Oh, it was the chemical lobby. You know there is a real history to this that you can look up. I recommend doing so, because it is a fascinating window into how power structures really work regarding these types of issues.
Well, I was working at Du Pont at the time as an intern. They were pleased as punch to be able to phase in all these profitable CFC alternatives and be green at the same time. So yes, by all means look into the real history.
1. The overwhelming majority of scientists neither endorses nor denies AGW. Cook, et al was a farce and a premeditated lie. Don't tell me you fell for it...?
2. Labeling those who disagree with you ("deniers") and using ad hominems as your argument indicates a lack of rational thought.
I have to say, seeing some random guy on /. ranting about "notorious deniers" doesn't exactly convince me that said random guy a) actually knows what he's talking about; b) cares about what he's talking about, or c) is ever going to be willing to even consider really actually learning a thing about what he's talking about.
Ok, I take back point b: you clearly do care about your agenda, but you don't appear to care about seeking the truth, because it might contradict your agenda.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
The evidence! The models! It must be true! Someone wrote SimEarth and it shows that AGW is real, so it must be! Look at how much happier the Sims are when I spend simoleans on solar plants and fusion plants!
If only we had cheat codes for real life, we could actually pay for all that.
What's really sad is that irrational rants like yours that make literally zero logical arguments get modded +5 Insightful. Either most people really are so gullible that they fall for it, or there really is a giant conspiracy to dupe people...or both.
You have absolutely no fucking idea what you're talking about, and worst of all, you think that's a good thing.
The hypocrisy is killing me...wait, I mean, the planet...
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
so we have a reasonably long period of measurement
Too bad we don't have reasonable measurements to go with those reasonable periods of measurement.
Is this 'climate change' the one they falsely predicted or the one that actually happened.???
Is this the 'climate change' the result of natural cycles (since those studies quoted by so many apparatchik no-nothings and that scientific moron algore turned out wrong and things were the opposite of what they said they predicted)???
Are the policies going to be decided by big government politicians to help their own agenda and we are being asked to turn control over to them ??
This is the Internet. We don't need /reasons/ to insult one another.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
You don't want to feel guilty for living a western lifestyle that generates lots of CO2, something like that?
I don't know about the previous poster, but why should I feel guilt? My western lifestyle does a lot for the future. The guilt argument is based on the assumption that generating CO2 is bad for the future, the world and our descendants. That assumption is not founded in reality since we don't just generate CO2, we generate it to do useful things that help both our world and our future generations.
We can also act now, try to shift our energy production towards carbon neutrality. We will have to eventually anyway, so why not start now? We certainly should shift towards processes that save us money regardless of whether climate disruption is a problem or not.
The obvious rebuttal is that these processes don't actually save us money. That is why we don't do them.
Care to provide a citation to the recent IPCC report that says that they are no longer claiming such?
How about the most recent IPCC report? That would be the definitive citation here and one which Jane Q. Public already provided. Or it might be that Jane Q. Public was expressing an opinion, in which case the definitive citation would circularly be the post that states the opinion.
While there is a place for providing references backing one's words, this demanding for "citations" is getting silly. I'm sure I can still find the tobacco lobby funded research somewhere to back my claims that smoking doesn't hurt anyone. Then the demand for citations has turned a reasonable argument about the dangers of smoking into an insipid argument about whether or not to take this particular research seriously.
Or what happens if I should happen to make a factually correct statement and can't be bothered to look for a citation - say because I don't have the time or the research isn't easily searchable online? Did I just lose the internets?
And in the above post, we have a demand for citations just because a poster is lazy. How hard could it possibly be to grep for "extreme weather" or the like in the relevant parts of the IPCC document?
And the topsoils are made of what? Did I just hear a good carbon and Nitrogen?
we humans (and our crops, and our livestock animals) have evolved to survive in a certain climate range
It's worth noting here that a) that the "certain range" is a really broad range and b) the Earth's climate is not expected to leave this temperature range. So I wouldn't call this an issue of understanding but rather one of relevance.
The fucks means he's mad. Or serious. Or madly serious.
Calm down, your douche quotient is abnormally high.
Many of whom are publicly funded
That's a particularly obvious connection. Politicians or bureaucrats need a scare to increase funding for a "green" or "western guilt" project. Climatologists release reports on the fearsome consequences of "climate change". End result is that the politicians/bureaucrats get the propaganda they need and the researcher gets the funding they need.
Well, I was working at Du Pont at the time as an intern.
There was resistance from US industry -- all the usual disinformation campaigns, all the cries of economic chaos, and then US industry switched when the timing was right technologically speaking. It was advantageous for them to do so. I knew someone who worked on designing a new coolant for Fisher-Paykel, and he described some of the difficulties those guys had. You can also read about the political shenanigans in Naomi Oreskes' book "Merchants of Doubt". Switching away from CFCs was supposed to destroy the economy. It cost next to nothing.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Actually, i hope that true to science, they are getting a paycheck. from a patron of science. But for the obvious, they dislike the Patron?
Science always starts with a question, but this sounds like the start with a fact, and are looking for the answer.
1. Global warming is good, look at otherwise and see what is different.
2. "Most" science is good, if done right. I disagree with bombs and such, but their applications can be helpful.
3. What has the UN done lately that is good? Cholera to hati, good? But inspectors to Syria, okay that is good, but who used the bad shit there, they know, but won't say. So I bet it was one of the other involved parties.
4. I keep going back to the leaked e-mails, they massaged the science to fit what they wanted, and changed the records to match the massage. that ain't science but propaganda.So how can you trust the records. Then they change the goalposts, with each new arguement. That ain't nice. Thats propaganda again.
I'm going to have to reread the article again. check out the writers, and their cites, I wonder who their patron was...
But sure, scientists are all just paid off by a government conspiracy.
You are all over imaginary connections between oil companies and AGW skeptics while ignoring that "scientists" who happen to propagate a desired outlook on climate are openly funded by government parties with an interest in generating AGW propaganda. Whether or not there is a "conspiracy", there is a blatant conflict of interest being ignored here.
What if they're being too conservative in efforts to not sound alarmist.
Then their model predictions would be undershooting observed global warming not the other way around.
I don't see oil companies being particularly hungry for shills else they'd have a pile of them.
But they *do* have a pile of them..
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I don't see the evidence for that claim in the link you provided.
Ok, so you agree. What is the point of your post aside from dropping a link to that book again?
Apparently proper crop rotation along with cover crops in the winter does wonders for the soil. They should change their farming practices even if they insist of trying to fight CO2.
Is this guys practice a good idea? Seems to work for well for him.
omg, you read the entire book already? And you also checked all the references! You are a GENIUS!!!!
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I was supposed to read the book? It wasn't online at the link.
So in other words, we've still got AGW, it's just happening half as slowly as some reports stated? And to you that means there's nothing to worry about? Boy you are a fucking moron Jane.
The midwest has never suffered from floods and dustbowls before in modern history.
*yawns*
Honestly, the poor agricultural techniques practiced are probably more to blame than anything else. Corn, Soy, Corn, Soy, Corn, Soy, oh and Alfalfa on occasion.
Miles of mono-crop with poorly tended farm soil and bad farming practices. There is a reason the dustbowl happened. And no, we didn't change ANYTHING except discover a deep underwater aquifer.
Well, go to the library then. Not everything of value is available free on the interwebs. Serious scholarly articles and books sometimes exist behind paywalls, you you gotta, you know, buy them or borrow them from libraries. If you really are interested in understanding the discourse on environmental issues, Oreskes is a good place to start.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
As proof, I offer what this one guy said, thereby invalidating what these thousands of other scientists(frauds) are agreeing on.
We are pointing out one of many predictions that have failed on the part of AGW. In fact, AGW has an extremely poor track record on predictions.
Second, we're not the one who keeps writing articles about every variance of weather as a sign of global warming. Record hot, record cold, record rain, record snow, record temperate mild temperature with perfect rain and a smattering of snow = proof GLOBAL WARMING
We just wish you dumb !@#$% would live by what you preach. Every time you guys say weather != climate, I sit there *facepalming* and exclaiming "That's what we've been trying to prove to almost every author of these dumb articles."
(I am an Iowan)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Iowa_products_2006.jpg
Agriculture (tied with Forestry, Fishing, and Hunting) is only a minor driver of Iowa's economy. However, it clearly takes up the most land of all of Iowa's products. But calling our soil our most important economic resource is just plain wrong.
Now, I realize that a significant chunk of the non ag industries probably have an indirect relationship to ag. (For instance, I worked at one time for a concrete contractor that built pig lots.) However, there are indirect relationships for all industries, so I'm not concerned about it.
Hey dumb !@#$
You do realize that humans have survived far warmer and far colder weather. And honestly, we usually do better in the warmer. Less deserts in warmer climate periods too.
Maybe...just maybe...it's cause so-called experts have so often been WRONG!!!
REALLY.....sorry....yes, we have a chance of complete extinction within 20 years. But it's more likely due to us missing that big ol' rock headed toward earth *ka-BOOM*
Intelligent
Informative
Thank you.
Chaos is actually a quite well understood phenomenon. The science of statistics can make some quite sensible conclusions from data which, at first glance, appears to be chaotic. Looking at a couple of examples which seem to be against the trend of AGW might make you think that it's not really happening, but if you take a step back and consider the whole picture it becomes more clear. It is indeed falsifiable if the temperature goes beyond the bounds of what is predicted, but that hasn't happened yet.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
Steward of the land approach did not work. Yields to low, loss to high, hard to predict, and doesn't feed enough people.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You do know what scientific models are, fall back to a conspiracy, and use Ad Hom attacks.
Nice argument~
DO you know the facts all this science is based on? at all?
Let me clue you in:
1) CO2 is transparent to visble light
2) CO2 is opaque to infrared light.
3) Visible light creates Infrared frequencies when it strikes something.
Predictions form these faces:
1) The globe will trend up on top of preexisting cycles. Check
2) The upper most atmosphere will not warm: Check.
and so on and so on
What do you propose will happen with the extra energy that is trapped?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You mean like the people who found out that genetic traits carry over from one generation of animals or plants to the next had great success in breeding, were perfectly correct ... and went on to say that we should rigorously apply the same to human beings no matter how atrocious those methods would be in any human context?
Being right in one question does not confer upon anybody any distinction whatsoever to be right with the next question as well. All you are doing is making one great big appeal to authority in order to avoid any factual discussion of the topic.
Honestly, I don't get your comment at all.
1. Your first prediction doesn't "check" out at all (assuming I know what you mean by "trend up on top of preexisting cycles").
2. Your "clueing" me in amounts to, "CO2 is a greenhouse gas! And the sun is shining on us!" Thanks for that insight, Sherlock. But it doesn't prove anything whatsoever about AGW.
What do you propose will happen with the extra energy that is trapped?
What extra energy? What would "extra" energy even be? What qualifies as "extra"? And who says it's trapped? The earth is radiating energy constantly.
What are you going on about? Honestly, this nonsensical banter is what seems to pass for "evidence" and "science" nowadays, but all you're really doing is tossing around a few terms, cliches, and facts that no one argues with but which don't support the AGW hypothesis at all.
The current Slashdot quote is so appropriate: You see but you do not observe. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in "The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes"
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
This seems like more Climate Alarmism? It appears that Iowa has an extensive history of periodic droughts
Iowa overdue for drought
"Elwynn Taylor, an Iowa State University Extension climatologist, said the state averages an extended dry spell every 19 years. Tree rings from the past eight centuries prove it, he said.
Despite ample moisture the past six months, history and emerging weather patterns indicate the spigot could abruptly shut off.
Taylor, who's also an agronomist, said the longest time between droughts is 23 years. The last one was in 1988.
"Yes, we're certainly due looking at history," Taylor said. "A lot of people would be happy if it was dry next week, but not for six weeks (or more)."
The most substantial drought indicator is the developing weather phenomenon called La Nina, Taylor said. Pacific Ocean temperatures are cooling, which often leads to dry and hot weather in the Midwest. Taylor expects on official start of La Nina within weeks."
http://wcfcourier.com/news/local/iowa-overdue-for-drought/article_9f872012-a993-51bd-94b3-13793d4c57e9.html
Drought, heat wave of '36 were devastating to the nation
(And to Iowa)
"The year was 1936. The place: Midwest farms. The scene: desolation.
Record heat scorched crops. Damaging hail fell, but rain did not. Great clouds of dust billowed across the Plains from the southwest, blacking out the sky. Plants and people withered, but bugs thrived. Like great Biblical plagues, grasshoppers and chinch bugs devoured what remained in fields.
To be sure, the 2012 drought is severe and will be an economic hardship. But to know the true struggle against relentless cruelties of Mother Nature during drought, we must look back 76 years to find the worst summer in Iowa history.
The 1936 heat wave devastated the nation. As many as 5,000 people died because of the heat. Things became desperate.
"Weather was the dominant feature of our existence," recalls Neil Harl, 78, an Iowa State University professor of agriculture and economics who was just shy of 3 years old in the summer of 1936. "We were just trying to survive."
Harsh conditions were nothing new to rural America and Iowa in particular by 1936. Cities mark the beginning of the Great Depression with the 1929 stock market crash on Wall Street. But the rural economy had been in turmoil for most of the 1920s. After World War I ended, other countries imposed high tariffs on imported foods. That closed foreign markets. Land values and crop prices crashed. Poverty set into agrarian society well before it overtook cities."
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-08-12/iowa-midwest-drought/57011352/1
"The 18th century seems to have been a relatively wet century in North America, but there were apparently droughts in Iowa in 1721, 1736, and from 1771 to 1773.[22]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drought_in_the_United_States
Chris Shaker
Organic sustainable agriculture anyone? Taste an organic apple. Be fair. Try them for a month. Not only do they taste better, they're better for you! And, send the scientists home.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/amsdrought.pdf
"we bring together evidence of a greater range of drought variability than found in the instrumental record, from all
available sources of paleoclimatic data, including historical documents, tree rings, archaeological remains,
lake sediment, and geomorphic data, to evaluate the representativeness of twentieth-century droughts in
terms of those that have occurred under naturally varying climate conditions of the past several thousand
years."
"Many of the tree-ring reconstructions suggest that the droughts of the 1930s and 1950s have been
equaled or, in some regions, surpassed by droughts in the past several centuries. This is illustrated in the
graphs of PDSI reconstructions from Cook et al. (1996) and Cook et al. (1998) for grid points in eastern Montana, central Kansas, and north-central Texas in Fig. 6. Other studies support this finding. Stockton and Meko (1983) reconstructed annual precipitation for four regions flanking the Great Plains (centered in FIG. 2. Locations of sources of historical drought data for the Great Plains, 1795–1895. Green shaded areas represent climate regions based on cluster analysis from Mock’s (1991) analysis of nineteenth-century climate records. The dates (dark green) represent years in which droughts were reported in more than one region for two or more consecutive seasons. Brown areas are regions of sand dunes and eolian activity, accompanied by the years (in red) in which active sand movement was reported (Muhs and Holliday 1995). The gray region represents the general region of early meteorological stations from which Ludlum (1971) derived drought years (in blue). Newspaper accounts are from a variety of newspapers in eastern and central Kansas (Bark 1978).Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 2697 Iowa, Oklahoma, eastern Wyoming, and eastern Montana). Although they found the individua l years of 1934, 1936, and 1939 to be among the driest
10 of 278 years investigated (1700–1977), they found several periods of widespread prolonged drought (3–10 years) that
equaled or surpassed the 1930s drought in intensity and duration: the late 1750s, early 1820s, early 1860s and 1890s. Periods of extreme drought revealed by other dendrochronological assessments for the west-central
Great Plains coincide with these periods (Weakly 1965; Wedel 1986; Lawson 1970; Lawson and Stockton 1981). Stahle and Cleaveland’s (1988) reconstructions of June PSDI in Texas showed the most severe and uninterrupted drought since 1698 was the 1950s drought, but the three driest decades (with some interspersed years of nondrought
conditions), by decreasing severity, were 1855–64, 1950–59, and 1772–81. Another dendroclimatic study
from the southern plains found prolonged (10 years or more) droughts in Arkansas around 1670, 1765,
1835, 1850, and 1875 that were comparable to twentieth-century events (Stahle et al. 1985), whereas
a study in the Texas–Oklahoma–Arkansas region found the drought of the 1950s was exceeded only in
1860 in the last 231 years (Blasing et al. 1988), a particularly noteworthy year in the historical data, as
mentioned above. In a reconstruction of precipitation for the corn belt of Iowa and Illinois, no droughts in
the past 300 years were found to be appreciably worse than the 1930s drought, but two were of about the
same magnitude (late 1880s–1890s and around 1820) (Blasing and Duvick 1984). Reconstructions of precipitation in Iowa (1640–1982) indicated that four 10-yr periods were drier than the period 1931–1940, and in order of decreasing dryness, these were 1816–25, 1696–1705, 1664–73, and 1735–44 (Cleaveland and Duvick 1992)."
Chris Shaker
Article about historic droughts in North America from the 1996 New York Times
Great Plains or Great Desert? The Sea of Dunes Lies in Wait
"AS devastating as the present drought in the southern Great Plains has been, scientists who study ancient climates are finding that droughts, floods and severe cold far surpassing anything in the modern era have punctuated the 10,000 years since the last ice age.
The discovery has surprised experts because the climate of this most recent period in earth history, called the Holocene, has long been considered relatively stable and serene, and its comparative tranquillity has long been thought essential to the development of civilization.
Now, paleoclimatologists are finding in case after case that the Holocene climate has been more volatile than had been believed. The disturbing implication is that these natural catastrophes could come again at any time, quite apart from any change in climate that might result from emissions of waste industrial gases that can trap heat.
"We like to think of whatever climate we're in as normal," said Dr. Daniel Muhs, a geologist with the United States Geological Survey in Denver, "and our natural assumption is that it will keep on that way -- that's a very tenuous assumption.""
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/28/science/great-plains-or-great-desert-the-sea-of-dunes-lies-in-wait.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
Chris Shaker
Or perhaps I'm just seriously mad!
I get so tired of these accusations of conspiracy, when a fair chunk of the information is out there on the Internet, available for the price of having to read it (as in, its free other than in time taken to read and understand). Yes, some is behind a paywall, which sucks, whatever the particular scientific discipline, but plenty is freely available.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"... except that you almost certainly have no clue what you're talking about."
And why would you make that claim? Have YOU seen the report? I have. If you'd like to, you can download the final draft chapter-by-chapter HERE.
I would like to make it clear that I am not trying to weasel-word anything. But I meant "weather extremes" in the sense of greater storm energy, as I mentioned up above in this thread. Section 2.6.3 of the report, Tropical Storms:
"In summary, this assessment does not revise the SREX conclusion of low confidence that any reported long- term (centennial) increases in tropical cyclone activity are robust, after accounting for past changes in observing capabilities. More recent assessments indicate that it is unlikely that annual numbers of tropical storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes counts have increased over the past 100 years in the North Atlantic basin. Evidence however is for a virtually certain increase in the frequency and intensity of the strongest tropical cyclones since the 1970s in that region."
But please note that even though there are periods of higher cyclonic energy in the North Atlantic, it was lower elsewhere, with the net being LOWER than before, not higher. Even for the periods of high cyclonic energy in the North Atlantic, We have been in a 30-year-long slump in total global cyclonic energy.
2.6.4, Extratropical Storms
"In summary, confidence in large scale changes in the intensity of extreme extratropical cyclones since 1900 is low. There is also low confidence for a clear trend in storminess proxies over the last century due to inconsistencies between studies or lack of long-term data in some parts of the world (particularly in the SH). Likewise, confidence in trends in extreme winds is low, due to quality and consistency issues with analysed data."
NOTE: ALL of these summaries report a lower incidence or lower confidence of increased incidence, than prior IPCC ARs. And there are more.
FAQ 2.2:
"There is strong evidence that warming has lead to changes in temperature extremesâ"including heat wavesâ" since the mid-20th century. Increases in heavy precipitation have probably also occurred over this time, but vary by region. However, for other extremes, such as tropical cyclone frequency, we are less certain, except in some limited regions, that there have been discernable changes over the observed record."
(The "observed record" in this context means since 1850.)
Considering that temperatures are still within the 95% uncertainty range I don't think it's justifiable to say the model projections are overshooting temperatures yet. If the situation remains that way for another 20 years then you may have some justification for saying they're overshooting.
If that's the way you feel you better turn in your geek card.
"Isn't Dr Lindzen lead author of Chapter 7 of the recent IPCC report. I thought that document sounds like it only includes one point of view. If you choose your "expert" based on what you want to hear... then sure... the IPCC reports _are_ progressively weaker."
I chose Lindzen as one example. I offered others... did you bother to look at them? Here... I'll repost this one for you.
There are many more. If YOU claim to be "objective", then why haven't YOU seen them before?
"What's it to you whether climate disruption is real or not?"
I have a great deal of interest, as a human being, in whether science is being performed properly, or is just a politically-driven ploy.
"Why are you so hot to deny it?"
I am not "hot to deny it". What I am "hot" to do, is point out bad science. Because that hurts everybody. Especially when it is being strongly pushed by big governments and there is so much of the global economy riding on it.
So, to answer your questions, even if they were worded in a slanted way: I do what I do as a public service.
"As to the accusations that scientists are making this all up to secure more funding"
Who made that accusation? Certainly not me. If that's how you read what I wrote, you are mistaken about my words. I simply wrote that they are doing demonstrably bad science, and are getting paid for it. No great conspiracy was implied.
"You don't want to feel guilty for living a western lifestyle that generates lots of CO2, something like that?"
I don't feel guilty, in the slightest. Because THE ACTUAL DATA from the IBUKI CO2-mapping satellite show that developed "Western" nations are net CO2 absorbers, not emitters.
Far more CO2 is generated (and less absorbed in proportion), in the tropics and third-world countries. So even if I subscribed to AGW theory, why should I feel guilty?
yeah, I seen the report. Why would you link to WUWT, when you can download it directly from the IPCC. So, what is the confidence interval on the lowering of the confidence interval? Nah... you're probably right. I mean if a confidence interval was lowered just a tiny bit, then there is nothing to worry about at all!!! Nothing, except those damn liberals and their agenda 21 agenda. Of course, I'm not paranoid, and since I read WUWT, I know more than career scientists. Heck, I should apply for a job at the Heartland Institute. Then I could feed at the trough of oil money while I spread my genius around the internet. I mean, you don't need to do research to be right. All you need is a strong feeling of being correct, and you know it is true.
A large portion of North America last March and April were unseasonably cold. Where I live, we had 20 days in April with snowcover on the ground (the first 8 being some of the days without snow). It was unprecedented weather for that time of year (i.e. unseen in my lifetime). The icing out out lakes in the area set records or were close to the records for lateness.
Where in North America do you live? I ask, because according to NOAA, you only saw colder temperatures along the west coast in March, whereas the midwest saw temperatures up to 15 F higher than average, making it the warmest March on record since 1895. We also saw lower than average snow fall west of the Mississippi in April. There was a late-season snowstorm in the Appalachians in April 2012 though, but despite this, it was the third warmest April on record, nationally.
I am not disagreeing with global warming or that it can cause anomalous patters in weather. But all predictions and forecasts were opposite to what actually happened. This can not be waved away by your two points.
Then let's provide more data! After all, North America isn't the whole planet, and in March 2012, Europe also had one of its warmest Marches on record, Australia had record rainfalls, and the Greenland ice sheet had it's ninth lowest sea ice extent on record. (On the other hand, the Antarctic had one of its 4th largest.) Averaging over the globe, it was the 16th warmest March on record.
April, on the other hand, turned remarkably chilly in Europe, making it one of the coldest on record in several countries, and the Greenland sea ice "rebounded" to become one of the greatest since 2001 (still 1.8% lower than the 1979-2001 average). Globally, this was still 0.65 C over the historical average, and ocean temperatures were the 11th warmest on record for April.
Overall, 2012 was about the 8th or 9th warmest year on record. I find it amusing that you cite regional weather for one or two months in one part of the world as evidence that the whole world isn't warming and chide the GP for only providing "two points."
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"Further, choosing to believe a single scientist's opinion while dismissing nearly all other climate scientists' opinions is a prime example of selection bias."
You accuse me of cherry-picking, yet YOU are ignoring the great many scientists who do disagree with IPCC. I have linked to quite a few in the last few days... why don't you go check them out? Lindzen was only one example.
Be careful about accusing others of cherry-picking their data, when your own behavior suggests you're doing exactly that.
Further, your reliance on consensus as an argument suggests that you actually don't know much about how science really works.
"You descend to new levels of hypocritical fuckwaddery."
Hahahahaha. And in comparison, this is supposed to be intelligent, adult conversation???
Hahahahahahahahahaha.
Lots of Paydirt if you search Google Scholar for 'droughts iowa'!
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=droughts+iowa&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C38
Drought Recurrence in the Great Plains as Reconstructedfrom Long-Term Tree-Ring Records
Charles W. Stockton and and David M. Meko
Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University ofArizona, Tucson 85721
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0450(1983)022%3C0017%3ADRITGP%3E2.0.CO%3B2
"Abstract
Recently collected tree-ring data were used to reconstruct drought from 1700 to the present in four regionsflanking the Great Plains. Regions were centered in Iowa, Oklahoma, eastern Montana and eastern Wyoming.Reconstructions derived by multiple linear regression explained from 44 to 56% of the variance in regionallyaveraged annual precipitation from 1933 to 1977. Years of widespread severe drought clustered into droughtepochs lasting 5-10 years. A weighted mean of the four regional reconstructions pointed out the severity ofthe 1930's drought; the years 1934, 1936 and 1939 ranked among the driest 10 of 278 years. When droughtconditions were averaged over periods of three or more years, the 1930's drought was equaled or surpassedin severity by droughts in the 1750's, 1820's and 1860's. Spectral analysis of the 1700-1977 reconstructionindicated that precipitation averaged over the four regions had a penodicity of 16-19 years, but reconstructions for the individual regions deviated considerably from this result. The Iowa region was dominated bya 22-year periodicity, the Oklahoma region by a 17-23 year periodicity, and the other two regions by arelatively strong 60-year penodicity. Separate analysis of 88-year subperiods of reconstructions indicated thatevidence for a 22-year periodicity was strongest in the most recent period (1890-1977), weaker for 1802-89and lacking entirely from 1714 to 1801."
Chris Shaker
"yeah, I seen the report."
I didn't ask you. I asked a specific person, for a specific reason.
"Why would you link to WUWT, when you can download it directly from the IPCC."
Because in the Google search I was doing, it was the first one to come up. Why does it matter? Are you implying that the WUWT version of the final draft is different from the IPCC version of the final draft? If so, why not just say so, and do us all a favor and point out where the differences are?
"Nah... you're probably right. I mean if a confidence interval was lowered just a tiny bit, then there is nothing to worry about at all!!! "
Did you even bother to read the thread you are commenting in? My original point was: while the science in the AR reports is showing ever weaker arguments, the summaries have been using ever stronger language. Your admission that "confidence interval was lowered just a tiny bit" is an admission that I was correct.
Thanks for that. And by the way: the only people who have brought up "conspiracy" or "agenda" here have been people who were arguing with me. Why do you insist that there must be some kind of conspiracy? Why do you insist that *I* must believe in some kind of conspiracy, when it has only been people like YOU who have even been mentioning it? Methinks thou dost protest too much.
Twentieth-Century Drought in the Conterminous United States
KONSTANTINOS M. ANDREADIS, ELIZABETH A. CLARK, ANDREW W. WOOD, ALAN F. HAMLET, AND
DENNIS P. LETTENMAIER
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/
See Results on pages 990 - 997 for drought data expressed two ways, in terms of soil dryness, and in terms of rainfall
Effects Of The Great Drought On the Prairies of Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas
From 1936
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1932761?uid=3739856&uid=2&uid=4&uid=3739256&sid=21102808123143
http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1468&context=agronomyfacpub
Iowa climate reconstructed from tree rings, 1640–1982
M. K. CleavelandD. N. Duvick
Article first published online: 9 JUL 2010
DOI: 10.1029/92WR01562
Abstract
"Tree ring indices from an expanded network of 17 white oak (Quercus alba} sites in eastern and central Iowa were used to reconstruct state average July Palmer hydrological drought index (PHDI), annual precipitation (previous August to current July), and other climate variables for 1640–1982. We removed nonclimatic variance trends caused by changing sample size and senescent growth. July PHDI correlated better with tree growth than annual precipitation. Occurrence of prolonged droughts throughout the reconstruction suggests that decades like the 1930s occur about twice per century in Iowa. Iowa climate is correlated with the Southern Oscillation Index (SOI) from June in the year of El Niño onset (Yr0) through the next February (Yr+1), with negative SOI (El Niño) associated with wetter conditions. When the June (Yr0) to February (Yr+1) average SOI reaches extremes + 1.0 or 1.0, it correlates significantly with observed and reconstructed July PHDI (r = 0.37 and 0.56, respectively). Climate during solar cycles centered on sunspot minima alternates between wet and dry regimes that differ by an average of 1.21 units of observed July PHDI and 46.7 mm of annual precipitation for 1877–1982. The solar relationship has been stable since 1640. Combining solar and SOI influences in forecasts may improve prediction of Iowa climate"
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/92WR01562/abstract
Chris Shaker
The Actual Data, huh? Take a look at this. I'll quote the relevant part:
Unlike other stories (specifically, John O'Sullivan's) that improperly cite this study as evidence for global warming deniers, the real story behind this study is that climate scientists are getting closer and closer to being able to accurately measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere using satellite data.
The link you gave shows all the classic hallmarks of denial. It twists the interpretation of the data to claim something that the data does not support. It spends very little time on that part. Can't be glib if you dwell on something. Spends all its words on a pretty facade, and skimps on making sure the foundation is solid. Even gets rather emotional. Reads like one of those bad sales pitches in midnight TV commercials. What I mean is wording like this:
No, the story isn't astonishing. The article is wrong. No it didn't "scorch a hole" in "global warming theory". No, Sassano didn't upend decades of research with a 5 minute long sound bite. And no, the maps don't prove exactly the opposite of expectations. I could go on, because there's a lot more just plain wrong assertions in there, but I'm not going to bother.
Why can't you see that this O'Sullivan guy is a snake oil peddler? A demagogue? There may be grounds for skepticism, but this guy isn't providing them.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
This is another "read a book" non-answers I occasionally run across. Since you haven't actually bothered to explain your "oil companies are hungry for shills", I'll just have to give up on this conversation.
Considering that temperatures are still within the 95% uncertainty range I don't think it's justifiable to say the model projections are overshooting temperatures yet.
This overshooting is by almost all of the prediction models. It is consistent with a systematic error in all model building. Something which can be explained by a community wide bias in favor of exaggerating the effects of AGW.
If the situation remains that way for another 20 years then you may have some justification for saying they're overshooting.
This is one of the reasons I advocate waiting rather than acting on the alleged AGW threat. So that we can see if it's a temporary aberration or a bias.
The book is chock cover-to-cover with the history of oil-industry shilling. Who. What. How. Perhaps I should just type it all out for you.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
This overshooting is by almost all of the prediction models. It is consistent with a systematic error in all model building. Something which can be explained by a community wide bias in favor of exaggerating the effects of AGW.
Say a bunch of models all predict a particular type of coin has a bias of 53% heads.
Then a thousand coins of that model are all flipped 1000x, and they average to 50.04% heads. That's evidence that the coins are biased.
But we don't have a thousand coins, we have one coin flipped 1000x, and it came up with 511 heads.
There could be a systemic bias, or it could be a partially chaotic system acting slightly less biased than usual.
This is one of the reasons I advocate waiting rather than acting on the alleged AGW threat. So that we can see if it's a temporary aberration or a bias.
We've been waiting since the 70's and the evidence continues to get stronger. The longer we wait the more severe the consequences are and the harder it is to change direction. If you wait for absolutely incontrovertible evidence it will almost certainly be too late to stop serious warming. It's possible we've already passed the tipping point and are looking at an unavoidable increase of 2-3 degrees no matter what we do.
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There could be a systemic bias, or it could be a partially chaotic system acting slightly less biased than usual.
The point of evidence is to distinguish between models. As we get more data, it'll help us distinguish between these possibilities.
We've been waiting since the 70's and the evidence continues to get stronger. The longer we wait the more severe the consequences are and the harder it is to change direction. If you wait for absolutely incontrovertible evidence it will almost certainly be too late to stop serious warming. It's possible we've already passed the tipping point and are looking at an unavoidable increase of 2-3 degrees no matter what we do.
Except the evidence isn't growing stronger as a case for near future action. Instead we're seeing growing divergence between the predictions made and the actual climate.
Oh gods. Now I'm imagining what'd happen if Rupert Murdoch decided he had a financial stake in having his viewers listen to Archimedes Plutonium.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
It was more considerable than being off a few flips. I'll link to the article again. Note that for all four IPCC reports, the averages of their estimates all end up over the actual measurements.
I'm not trying to pull an Ad-Hominem but frankly I don't trust the analysis of a fancy sounding scientific organization I've never heard of, with members I never heard of, who are publishing AIDS denialists.
It's like you presented me with a 300lb fat man and told me he was an elite marathon runner and showed me all these charts, and anecdotes, and finishing times of him being an elite runner. Common sense and experience tells me there's something wrong with the claim, every other fat man who claimed to be a marathoner was actually slow, I know if I look long enough I'll find a picture of him hopping in a Taxi or walking a 10k and claiming it was 42, I simply don't trust the fat man as a source of fast running.
If the analysis in that article is correct it will be replicated in credible sources, if the analysis is flawed it will be confined to the denialist sphere.
The point of evidence is to distinguish between models. As we get more data, it'll help us distinguish between these possibilities.
The models are largely based on the same underlying science, where they vary is in different ways of applying the science. It's not like competing Copernican vs heliocentric models of the solar system, it's more like using algorithm X or Y to simulate phenomena Z, or what statistical model do we want to use to simulate phenomena W.
We've been waiting since the 70's and the evidence continues to get stronger. The longer we wait the more severe the consequences are and the harder it is to change direction. If you wait for absolutely incontrovertible evidence it will almost certainly be too late to stop serious warming. It's possible we've already passed the tipping point and are looking at an unavoidable increase of 2-3 degrees no matter what we do.
Except the evidence isn't growing stronger as a case for near future action. Instead we're seeing growing divergence between the predictions made and the actual climate.
Except it's still getting warmer, the rate is slightly slower but the abnormally high temperatures are getting higher, not lower. Scientists are seeing something that causes them to be more and more certain, I think there's a point at which you have to accept they're not all morons.
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YOU are ignoring the great many scientists who do disagree with IPCC
Not ignoring (I've read some of Dr Lindzen's papers, and others); just giving more weight to the far greater numbers of practicing climate scientists who support the IPCC's conclusions. Dr Lindzen and the others you mention are very much in the minority, according to numerous studies from many different parties, and of course the IPCC's own many authors, backed by their reviews of the last 5 years of climate papers. If you want to call listening to a 97% majority "cherry-picking", I don't really know how to respond.
your reliance on consensus as an argument suggests that you actually don't know much about how science really works
It's not consensus of uninformed opinions, it's confirmation of expert results. I'm sure you're smart enough to realise that, so I can only imagine you don't want to.
When a scientist publishes a paper, especially one that contradicts current thinking, we don't immediately throw out all our textbooks; first, other scientists try to confirm their results. Particularly in complex fields, there is debate - are the conclusions actually supported by the data? Are there any questionable assumptions, are the techniques applied appropriate, are there any important factors that have been overlooked, are the interpretations of the data reasonable, that sort of thing. Peer review catches the obvious errors, but particularly for papers that challenge the status quo, the biggest question is usually, how do you reconcile this result with the existing body of evidence? Declaring everybody else to be "wrong" doesn't get you far; you have to find other data that confirms your own results, and you have to explain how all that existing counter-evidence doesn't apply to your conclusions. If you can do that convincingly, other scientists will support your work. If you can't, your results are considered suspect and are assumed to have a flaw, at least until more confirmation can be found. After all, if two observations disagree then either they're observing different things, or one is just wrong.
This is a crucial part of the scientific process, as much as peer review. It's what saves us from crackpots and wasting time on free-energy machines, it protects us from inadvertently flawed results, and it's also what keeps the majority of science and engineering focused and on track. We can't all be experts in every field, so we defer to those that are. I personally don't have the expertise or experience to properly judge Dr Lindzen's work, but his colleagues do - and if the vast majority of them still aren't convinced by his claims after 15 years, then it's fairly safe to for the lay person to assume that his claims (and those of the handful of scientists who continue to deny the results of the thousands of other climatologists) are most probably either flawed, or just don't apply.
Of course, if you still believe that Scientist A's pet theory is right when Scientists B through Z have all produced peer-reviewed results that disagree, you either have to believe your own judgement is superior to theirs (hint: it isn't), or that they're all in a huge conspiracy to supress the truth. I'll leave you to decide which is more likely.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
If the analysis in that article is correct it will be replicated in credible sources, if the analysis is flawed it will be confined to the denialist sphere.
Similarly, if AGW really is a credible threat then it too will be replicated in credible sources, here, reality. I think you need to accept at this point that most of the world simply won't go along with AGW mitigation. The US, BRIC, OPEC, etc just aren't interested enough in vague, hysterical predictions that seem to consistently overshoot reality.
Scientists are seeing something that causes them to be more and more certain
The hand that provides the funding is the hand that rules their world.
This overshooting is by almost all of the prediction models. It is consistent with a systematic error in all model building.
Or it's consistent with our understanding of natural variability in the climate system that there will be periods when temperatures are under the smoothed trend line that climate models produce and there will be periods like the late 1990s when they are above the trend line and the models are just projecting what the expected long term average and trend will be, not the short term natural variability. What could be more telling about the skill of a climate model would be to go back and rerun it with actual input of the variations that occurred in the major sources of natural variability such as ENSO, solar variability and volcanic eruptions. There has been some recent work in that direction (see Kosaka and Xie, 2013). Unfortunately when a typical GCM model run takes 2 or 3 weeks on large expensive supercomputers it's not practical to do a lot of that.
This is one of the reasons I advocate waiting rather than acting on the alleged AGW threat.
That's rather like a smoker saying "I'll wait until I get lung cancer before I quit."
I do but only credible data not the drivel on sites like climate depot. The down mod is most appropriate.
Similarly, if AGW really is a credible threat then it too will be replicated in credible sources, here, reality. I think you need to accept at this point that most of the world simply won't go along with AGW mitigation. The US, BRIC, OPEC, etc just aren't interested enough in vague, hysterical predictions that seem to consistently overshoot reality.
Name a publication more credible than a top tier scientific journal or an institution more credible than a research University.
The hand that provides the funding is the hand that rules their world.
Who is this mysterious uber-powerful funding agency who has a vested interest in not burning fossil fuels?
And even so, you'd need climate change to be this strange impossible to prove or disprove phenomena that's impervious to science. Because otherwise doing serious research the truth couldn't help but come out. These aren't philosophers arguing abstract governments, these are scientists taking real measurements and performing actual calculations, they can't just make stuff up to appease a funding agency. Just look at drug research and how well they do with the horrible incentives and legitimately biased funding agencies.
And why aren't more climate scientists defecting and getting rich off the denialist circuit? Lots of them have tenure so they're safe and there's no shortage of conservative groups happy to pay them directly (and not just fund their research).
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Name a publication more credible than a top tier scientific journal or an institution more credible than a research University.
I already did. Reality. If there really is a credible climate-based danger, we will observe it at some point. We won't need shaky models based on unreliable data.
Who is this mysterious uber-powerful funding agency who has a vested interest in not burning fossil fuels?
The EU and a good portion of its member states, for example. There's also a lot of developed world people (I would say a few hundred million such) who've got some degree of the environmental religion where industrial activity of certain sorts is bad.
This is one of the reasons I advocate waiting rather than acting on the alleged AGW threat.
That's rather like a smoker saying "I'll wait until I get lung cancer before I quit."
These terrible, anti-scientific arguments are another reason why I advocate waiting. Reality can't be bluffed. If AGW really is harmful to the world like heavy smoking is for a person, then we'll see the effect and can act when we know and are confident of the danger. If it isn't, then we just saved ourselves from some irrational hysteria.
Name a publication more credible than a top tier scientific journal or an institution more credible than a research University.
I already did. Reality. If there really is a credible climate-based danger, we will observe it at some point. We won't need shaky models based on unreliable data.
This isn't some lame cable news show, saying "reality" doesn't cut it. I know people who think reality says that human rode dinosaurs, everyone is trying to interpret reality and your interpretation is at odds with scientists.
They believe we have seen credible climate-based danger, temperatures are up, droughts are increasing, and the longer we wait the more danger there will be.
Do you want to wait until the feedbacks really start kicking in? I'd rather not say "I told you so" in front of a starving developing world.
The EU and a good portion of its member states, for example. There's also a lot of developed world people (I would say a few hundred million such) who've got some degree of the environmental religion where industrial activity of certain sorts is bad.
Only way I can see the EU having a vested interest in not burning fossil fuels is if AGW is real.
And the existence of a subset of anti-industrial environmentalists doesn't mean they've managed to brainwash half the planet.
And if you think these abstract motives are sufficient to wrongly bias scientists in favour of AGW what about the many billions of dollars invested in fossil fuels? If a little environmental money can create the AGW consensus the piles of industry money should have been able to annihilate it.
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This isn't some lame cable news show, saying "reality" doesn't cut it.
To the contrary, Slashdot looks like the kind of place where rank amateurs go to play scientist, demanding things like "citations", "credible publications/institutions", and other gobble-gook. Reality trumps that shit easily. Show the evidence or get lost.
And if you think these abstract motives are sufficient to wrongly bias scientists in favour of AGW what about the many billions of dollars invested in fossil fuels?
What of it? They can pick up climate change money as easily as anyone else rather than oppose it.
This is one of the significant stories people miss about the global warming debate. The fossil fuel industries are the dogs that didn't bark. Sure, there's a bit of money being spent by isolated "oil billionaires" such as the Koch brothers, but IMHO it's about two to three orders of magnitude smaller than what the fossil fuel and associated industries could crank out if they really felt like it.
I think you'd notice a hard core $10 billion a year campaign if it were going on. In its place, we have this pretty hard core climate change visibility. Journalists fall all over themselves to report science news which has a climate change connection no matter how contrived. Various NGOs gets lots of money and burn it on activities which promote the climate change propaganda (for example, the World Wildlife Fund or Greenpeace).
Similarly, there's stories that US researchers in relevant fields can help their funding chances by speculating in their research on a climate change connection. Maybe they're urban myths, but there are a lot of really strained and tenuous connections made out there in the research to climate change. Something has to be encourage those people to do that.
And of course, there are national governments and supergovernments just aching to spend vast sums on climate-related causes (such as the EU spending 20% of its budget on climate-related stuff over the 2014-2020 period).
So here's the thing. When I look at actual propaganda out there, climate change wins by a big margin. At this point, I see concern about Big Oil money and such as akin to the character, Emmanuel Goldstein in 1984. He was an imaginary villain used to give the oppressed people of Oceania something to hate (with the infamous two minute hate).
The real resistance isn't powerful fossil fuel businesses or billionaires. It's people who don't want to cut back the quality of their lives just because someone got the climate change religion. There's also the developing world countries who see climate change as a reasonable price for obtaining developed world economies.
A lot of people died of cancer before we figured out the harmful effects of tobacco smoking. We've only got the one Earth so if we screw it up there's no quick fix.
A lot of people died of cancer before we figured out the harmful effects of tobacco smoking. We've only got the one Earth so if we screw it up there's no quick fix.
But at least in the case of smoking there was copious evidence that it was a serious health problem.
To the contrary, Slashdot looks like the kind of place where rank amateurs go to play scientist, demanding things like "citations", "credible publications/institutions", and other gobble-gook. Reality trumps that shit easily. Show the evidence or get lost.
You've got it ironically backwards.
It's the people trying to evaluate evidence who are the amateurs playing scientist. People looking at temperature graphs, reading about feedbacks, talking about cloud cover, solar variation, and cosmic rays, they're the ones pretending. There's a reason researchers do ~9 years of school before they're trusted to go out on their own, science is hard. It takes a lot of expertise to know what data means, to know if that temperature trend is statistically significant or just chance. To understand what evidence matters and what it means, that's not something you can understand from a blog post.
The reason I want citations and credible sources is because I don't want to play scientist, I want to know what the people who actually ARE scientists actually think.
I think you'd notice a hard core $10 billion a year campaign if it were going on. In its place, we have this pretty hard core climate change visibility. Journalists fall all over themselves to report science news which has a climate change connection no matter how contrived. Various NGOs gets lots of money and burn it on activities which promote the climate change propaganda (for example, the World Wildlife Fund or Greenpeace).
And you've got Fox News and the entire US Republican party dead set against global warming. The only place where denialists aren't represented is in climate research.
And of course, there are national governments and supergovernments just aching to spend vast sums on climate-related causes (such as the EU spending 20% of its budget on climate-related stuff over the 2014-2020 period).
So you think that the EU willing to spend 20% of its budget is evidence that climate change is false??
It's called putting your money where your mouth is. Something about climate change has them VERY worried and VERY convinced.
The real resistance isn't powerful fossil fuel businesses or billionaires. It's people who don't want to cut back the quality of their lives just because someone got the climate change religion.
Frankly speaking the resistance is a political tactic in the west.
Liberals generally respect science and feel they have to respond to and mitigate AGW, Conservatives know this will be expensive. Therefore the Conservatives strategy is to downplay AGW as much as possible. This makes the actions the Liberals feel are necessary more unpopular, and translates into electoral gains for Conservatives.
The reluctance of individuals to spend money to avoid global warming is being manipulated by right wing political forces for political gain.
There's also the developing world countries who see climate change as a reasonable price for obtaining developed world economies.
That doesn't really make sense, AGW hurts developing countries disproportionately and they know that. It also means they CAN'T obtain developed world economies in the way we have since the planet can't take it. The developing world is basically pissed off that we got rich using up the planet's climate budget, and the result is that not only will they be unable to do the same but they have to pay the brunt of the cost for our continued prosperity.
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What makes you imply the early measurements are faulty? Certainly since the 1950's atmospheric ozone has been measured regularly.
One has intelligent adult conversations with intelligent adults.
One can even attempt to talk to unintelligent adults, intelligent children or even unintelligent children.
It is not possible to have an intelligent conversation with liars.
Those are just observations on my part. Make what you want of them.
You are scum.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
...explain that to the next generation (your gambling the fate of the planet on 600+ scientists being wrong)
I am a scientist.
It's the people trying to evaluate evidence who are the amateurs playing scientist.
What's the point of evidence, if you don't evaluate it? At this point, I can't tell if you have a genuine concern or a mental illness.
The reason I want citations and credible sources is because I don't want to play scientist, I want to know what the people who actually ARE scientists actually think.
And the reason I want evidence, is because I want to know what is going on, not merely what scientists are being paid to think.
So you think that the EU willing to spend 20% of its budget is evidence that climate change is false??
No, I think it's an example of the large conflicts of interest on the AGW advocacy side which people insist on ignoring. That $30 billion a year (plus whatever the national governments spend on the same) only gets spent because a few hundred million people have been convinced that climate change is such a pressing danger.
And it's Other Peoples' Money not the EU's money.
Liberals generally respect science and feel they have to respond to and mitigate AGW, Conservatives know this will be expensive. Therefore the Conservatives strategy is to downplay AGW as much as possible. This makes the actions the Liberals feel are necessary more unpopular, and translates into electoral gains for Conservatives.
So what? That's how debate works. The "liberals" can then present their own arguments and sway people to their side and make their arguments more popular. It's not the job of the "conservatives" to make the arguments of their opponents more popular.
What is different about the "liberal" versus "conservative" debate here is that the "conservatives" aren't using public funds for advocacy. I've remarked on this before but the IPCC and a number of NGOs receive considerable public funding - more than has ever been claimed for the allegedly huge fossil fuel propaganda effort. For example, the IPCC and the World Wildlife Fund both received individually more in public funds over the past fiften years than AGW opposition groups did over the same period.
That doesn't really make sense, AGW hurts developing countries disproportionately and they know that.
That's your cognitive dissonance acting up. The developing world knows no such thing. Sure, they're willing to pay lip service to AGW mitigation for money or political advantage. But when push comes to shove, their economic growth is a far higher priority than the mild harm that AGW would cause.
"Unlike other stories (specifically, John O'Sullivan's) that improperly cite this study as evidence for global warming deniers, the real story behind this study is that climate scientists are getting closer and closer to being able to accurately measure carbon dioxide in the atmosphere using satellite data."
This does not even remotely refute anything claimed in the article. In fact, it's one of the points made BY the article.
"It twists the interpretation of the data to claim something that the data does not support."
In what way? If you are trying to refute something, blanket statements like "it twists" do not fly. What is "twisted", and how is it twisted? What is claimed that is not supported by the data? Specifics, please, or it's all just hot air.
"Spends all its words on a pretty facade, and skimps on making sure the foundation is solid. Even gets rather emotional. Reads like one of those bad sales pitches in midnight TV commercials."
You may disagree with the style of writing, but that's still not a refutation. YOUR comment is the hallmark of the kind of person who can't refute the science, and so resorts to name-calling and picking apart their style of prose.
"Why can't you see that this O'Sullivan guy is a snake oil peddler? A demagogue? There may be grounds for skepticism, but this guy isn't providing them."
I can't see that because regardless of the style of his writing, or whether he tends to use florid verbiage, nobody so far has been able to refute his science. And because, despite all your objections, that is the important part.
Not ignoring (I've read some of Dr Lindzen's papers, and others); just giving more weight to the far greater numbers of practicing climate scientists who support the IPCC's conclusions.
I do not understand why you fail to see the long-accepted truth that consensus does not equal science. Individual scientists have overturned long-standing consensus for the entire history of science. Copernicus, Newton, Einstein, and many, many more all fought the overwhelming scientific consensus of the day. And they were right. There are uncountable examples of lesser advancements that also did so. In fact EVERY major step forward for science in all of history was a refutation of the existing consensus. Often the work of individuals or small groups, versus the global majority.
"This is a crucial part of the scientific process, as much as peer review."
Consensus is not a "crucial part of the scientific process". As I pointed out above, it has very often turned out that the minority was right. EVERY time there was a breakthrough, as a matter of fact.
"Of course, if you still believe that Scientist A's pet theory is right when Scientists B through Z have all produced peer-reviewed results that disagree, you either have to believe your own judgement is superior to theirs "
When I can easily identify errors in a scientific paper, then yes, my judgment is better than theirs. When scientist B points out an error in scientist A's paper, which I can verify for myself is true, then yes, my judgement is better than that of scientists A. Climate scientists have been making this argument for years, even though they are generalists, and sometimes their own claims defy the opinions of the expert scientists in a given field. When that happens, who do you think is the one suffering from Dunning-Kruger?
In reference, again, to your first sentence: you claim to be not ignoring, but you dismiss recognized scientists on general principle rather than evaluating the actual science in each case. (And the principle you're claiming to use is "consensus", which isn't even a scientific principle, at all.) Then you try to chastise me for what you perceive to be the same thing: failure to evaluate the science.
Well, tell you what, man. I'd rather be a Dunning-Kruger sufferer than a hypocrite. Thank goodness I'm actually neither.
"When a scientist publishes a paper, especially one that contradicts current thinking, we don't immediately throw out all our textbooks; first, other scientists try to confirm their results. "
Funny, but that's the whole crux of the matter. A theory is only as good as its predictive value. (That *IS* a scientific principle.) And the predictive value of AGW models has been abysmally bad. According to a peer-reviewed paper, published recently in Nature, Climate Change (see the link I provided further up in this thread), of 117 prominent climate models studies, 114 of them overstated warming in recent years. (That's about 97.4%.) Of those 114, the mean difference between projected temperature increase, and actual observed temperature increase since, has been 100%. Now, I don't know about you, but I would say that having an average error of 100% in 97.4% of the "mainstream" models would appear to be rather poor science, indeed. There's your consensus, if you still insist on believing in one.
That's science for you. Actual figures, peer-reviewed paper. If you have a problem with it, refute the science, not my comment about the science.
"One has intelligent adult conversations with intelligent adults."
My point, exactly. Have a nice day.
It's the people trying to evaluate evidence who are the amateurs playing scientist.
What's the point of evidence, if you don't evaluate it? At this point, I can't tell if you have a genuine concern or a mental illness.
The reason I want citations and credible sources is because I don't want to play scientist, I want to know what the people who actually ARE scientists actually think.
And the reason I want evidence, is because I want to know what is going on, not merely what scientists are being paid to think.
I look at the evidence to understand what is going on in more detail, but I know I don't have the expertise to evaluate the evidence myself. I remember reading A Brief History of Time because I wanted to understand more about the Universe, not so I could say Stephen Hawkings was wrong about black holes.
Your claim that "scientists are being paid to think" is laughable. There's no field that has more freedom to think than scientists, or complains more loudly when their intellectual freedom is curtailed. Here's another explanation for why all the smart people with far more expertise than you all disagree with you, and all the people who do agree with you either lack expertise or have other outrageous beliefs. You're wrong.
No, I think it's an example of the large conflicts of interest on the AGW advocacy side which people insist on ignoring. That $30 billion a year (plus whatever the national governments spend on the same) only gets spent because a few hundred million people have been convinced that climate change is such a pressing danger.
And it's Other Peoples' Money not the EU's money.
So lemme get this straight.
Not spending money on AGW is clear evidence that AGW is false.
Spending money on AGW is clear evidence that AGW is false.
I'm beginning to understand all this evidence you see that indicated AGW is false.
So what? That's how debate works. The "liberals" can then present their own arguments and sway people to their side and make their arguments more popular. It's not the job of the "conservatives" to make the arguments of their opponents more popular.
What is different about the "liberal" versus "conservative" debate here is that the "conservatives" aren't using public funds for advocacy. I've remarked on this before but the IPCC and a number of NGOs receive considerable public funding - more than has ever been claimed for the allegedly huge fossil fuel propaganda effort. For example, the IPCC and the World Wildlife Fund both received individually more in public funds over the past fiften years than AGW opposition groups did over the same period.
Science receives public funding. The science supports AGW so AGW gets public funding.
That's your cognitive dissonance acting up. The developing world knows no such thing. Sure, they're willing to pay lip service to AGW mitigation for money or political advantage. But when push comes to shove, their economic growth is a far higher priority than the mild harm that AGW would cause.
No cognitive dissonance. The developing world is generally pretty worried about AGW, I don't know how much the populations understand but the political elites generally understand and are worried. But they also feel they deserve a lot of economic growth carbon or not, and the west are the ones who have to fix the problem.
And if you accept that AGW is reality it's pretty hard to argue with that assessment.
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So lemme get this straight.
Not spending money on AGW is clear evidence that AGW is false.
Spending money on AGW is clear evidence that AGW is false.
I'm beginning to understand all this evidence you see that indicated AGW is false.
You didn't get it straight. I think nothing quite illustrates your inability to think and reason like the strawmen arguments you construct.
Again, my argument here is that there is a huge conflict of interest and piles of money involved to confirm and exaggerate the effects of AGW. That doesn't meant that AGW doesn't exist or even isn't as bad as it is claimed to be.
So we have to go to evidence. Here, evidence is any fact or observation that distinguishes between two or more hypotheses, supporting one more than another. So it's not useful to us as evidence that researchers, who are paid to exaggerate the effects of AGW, happen to report that AGW is a threat requiring immediate mitigation. That's what we'd expect from them, whether or not AGW really is such a threat.
But we have other sorts of evidence, such as the cavalier actions of those developing world countries which don't treat AGW as a high priority, a surprising high level of confidence about climate predictions given extremely weak climate data (particularly everything before the modern era) and complex, opaque, jury rigged climate models, and a growing divergence between climate predictions of the past 30 years and the actual climate.
As I see it, while there is a case for a light case of AGW, the catastrophic version is still unjustified. So I'm willing to wait to see if the more extreme theory gets supporting evidence in the next few decades.
My view is that these climate models will not be vindicated and that in addition to the effects of AGW being greatly exaggerated, the ability of humans to deal with climate changes will be greatly understated.
Again, my argument here is that there is a huge conflict of interest and piles of money involved to confirm and exaggerate the effects of AGW. That doesn't meant that AGW doesn't exist or even isn't as bad as it is claimed to be.
I assume you believe in free markets, which means you believe that capital keeps things honest. Where is this conflict of interest coming from? No one profits from AGW, not seriously anyways. Political parties lose because they have to sell things like carbon caps and taxes to constituents, and they have to fight cheap coal power, SUVs, and carbon heavy industries. Journalists will right about whatever and they actually give denialists extra volume because they feel they have to show both sides of every story. There's a handful of green industries but they don't have the money and they were a result of AGW worries, not the instigator. And researchers are generally interested in the truth and getting publications. And if you can write a solid paper that debunks AGW you can get that published, and more so you get your name out for proving others wrong. A handful might exaggerate to get their names in the paper but most have a tendency to understate because scary proclamations (even when justified) hurt their credibility which is their livelihood.
As I see it, while there is a case for a light case of AGW, the catastrophic version is still unjustified. So I'm willing to wait to see if the more extreme theory gets supporting evidence in the next few decades.
My view is that these climate models will not be vindicated and that in addition to the effects of AGW being greatly exaggerated, the ability of humans to deal with climate changes will be greatly understated.
You've done nothing to convince me that the thousands of scientists who have more knowledge, more credibility, and more time to devote to the study of the issue than you are wrong.
I stole this Sig
What extra energy? What would "extra" energy even be? What qualifies as "extra"? And who says it's trapped? The earth is radiating energy constantly.
The energy coming in that the top of atmosphere (TOA) can and is being measured. The energy leaving at TOA can and is being measured. From the conservation of energy the difference has to be the change in energy within the system. The difference is positive meaning more energy is being retained. It's as simple as that.
Individual scientists have overturned long-standing consensus for the entire history of science.
This same argument is also used by the countless wrong people too.
Sure, it does happen - but only after a) the method and conclusions are shown to be rock-solid, b) confirming evidence is found by third parties, and c) the existing body of evidence is also explained in the new context. This does not happen commonly - it's far more often that attempts to challenge the status quo fail one or all of the above, and are quickly forgotten.
it has very often turned out that the minority was right
And how often has that minority been wrong?
When I can easily identify errors in a scientific paper, then yes, my judgment is better than theirs. When scientist B points out an error in scientist A's paper, which I can verify for myself is true, then yes, my judgement is better than that of scientists A.
And when Scientists A and C point out errors in Scientist B's critique, who do you believe then? You have no idea even of how much you don't know in the complex field of climatology, yet you're still certain you can "easily" identify errors that the paper's authors, their peer reviewers and the great bulk of climatologists somehow missed completely. Or perhaps you're just selecting the conclusions you want to believe.
who do you think is the one suffering from Dunning-Kruger?
My answer stands :-)
rather than evaluating the actual science in each case.
I'm not capable of evaluating the science at that level. Neither are you, unless you have a PhD and years of work in climate science that you haven't mentioned. We don't have the training or the experience, we haven't been reading all the relevant literature for the last decade, we don't even know what we would need to know to do that. The conclusions sound reasonable to me, but so do the critiques - and so do the counter-critiques. How is a layman supposed to tell who's the most accurate? It's not high-school level stuff.
That's science for you. Actual figures, peer-reviewed paper. If you have a problem with it, refute the science, not my comment about the science.
I assume you're referring to Fyfe et al (2013). And no, I have no problem with it. The models are clearly failing to robustly predict surface temperature variability, and if you read the paper itself, you'll see that it offers a number of possible reasons for this, including the ENSO and AMO oscillations, stratospheric aerosols, model base factors like climate sensitivity, or just unusual natural variability. There's a lot of factors involved, and nobody's claiming that the science is perfect yet, not even close. But we do know, for example, that ocean warming (where 90% of the heat imbalance goes) is continuing unabated, as does ocean acidification. Surface temperatures, while important to humans, are only a small part of the overall rising trend - and they can fluctuate up just as quickly as down.
What I do have a problem with, is the prodigious assumptive leap that a paper like Fyfe's somehow provides evidence that all climate science is therefore junk, that AGW must therefore be insignificant, or even that the 180-year global warming trend has suddenly ceased. This paper does not begin to suggest that, merely that our surface temperature models need more work, nothing more. Meanwhile, other peer reviewed papers like Santer et al (2013) conclude unequivocally that "Our results... underscore the dominant role human activities have played in recent climate change." (I can cite half a dozen others that say the same, if you want).
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
I assume you believe in free markets, which means you believe that capital keeps things honest.
What "free market"? I was, for example, speaking of governments using public funds. That's not a free market activity.
No one profits from AGW, not seriously anyways.
The finance industry does. For example, the carbon credit markets in Europe or the loan guarantees and financing for renewable energy and public transportation projects throughout the developed world.
Where is this conflict of interest coming from?
At least you're asking the question. For the scientists, the conflict comes between the obligation to try to do accurate and unbiased scientific work versus the funding incentive to report research in a way that elevates the significance of climate change.
For the funding sources, there's a similar conflict between the public obligation to fund accurate and unbiased research versus the bureaucratic benefits to be had from portraying an existential threat, real or imaginary, to modern society. The latter means larger budgets and more power to the bureaucracy that can justify them to society at large.
It also reeks to me of a con job. There's always a glib answer to every complaint, language is abused to score propaganda points (such as the widespread use of "climate change" when AGW is meant), everything needs to be done right now, when you scratch the surface on a lot of this research, questionable or sloppy assumptions quickly show up, and these mistakes always favor a more aggressive interpretation of AGW. For example, criticism of a lack of obvious harm from near future AGW were met with the magical discovery of "extreme weather" (something the IPCC is apparently quietly dropping from its latest report BTW).
When one of the first real reports, the Stern review to attempt to quantify future harm of AGW was created, it made a major sloppy assumption by assuming discount rates about half as large as world chained GDP growth (completely ignoring that chained GDP growth is a better measure of ability to pay for future harm) and justified this on a major bogus basis, that a more reasonable discount rate was "immoral". That change alone ended up doubling for every 50 year period out future estimated costs of AGW. And of course, there's the recent weakening of recent climate predictions by the IPCC to reflect that current climate trends don't agree with the old models the IPCC used in previous reports.
This reminds me of a saying I've heard credited, apocryphally perhaps, to Will Rogers. "You expect cashiers to make mistakes on occasion. But when the mistakes are always in the cashier's favor, you have to wonder."
I assume you believe in free markets, which means you believe that capital keeps things honest.
What "free market"? I was, for example, speaking of governments using public funds. That's not a free market activity.
Governments spending taxpayer money weakens the incentive effect but doesn't make it vanish. Voters don't like massive amounts of spending (and taxation) unless they think there's a very good reason. The EU politicians have every reason to spend as little on AGW as possible. The fact they're investing such a massive amount, and the voters are either OK with it or they're willing to risk a significant backlash, suggests a very strong belief.
No one profits from AGW, not seriously anyways.
The finance industry does. For example, the carbon credit markets in Europe or the loan guarantees and financing for renewable energy and public transportation projects throughout the developed world.
If that capital didn't go to renewable energy and public transportation it would go to other investment opportunities. There might be a claim that finance could get slightly bigger by regulating the carbon credit markets but that's not a particularly strong incentive, particularly when compared to the massive incentives of the automotive and fossil fuel industries.
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At least you're asking the question. For the scientists, the conflict comes between the obligation to try to do accurate and unbiased scientific work versus the funding incentive to report research in a way that elevates the significance of climate change.
So I could see a slight institutional bias but there's still a strong individual bias to prove others wrong. Plus even if you want to show X and the answer is Y you still need to hide Y in your paper, sneak it past the reviewers, and hope no other researcher find your error and scores an easy publication at the expense of your reputation. Again it's economics, the individual scientist's strongest incentive is to publish the most credible piece of research.
For the funding sources, there's a similar conflict between the public obligation to fund accurate and unbiased research versus the bureaucratic benefits to be had from portraying an existential threat, real or imaginary, to modern society. The latter means larger budgets and more power to the bureaucracy that can justify them to society at large.
There's a much stronger bias from politicians who simply want bad news to go away so it's not their fault and they don't have to fix it.
It also reeks to me of a con job. There's always a glib answer to every complaint, language is abused to score propaganda points (such as the widespread use of "climate change" when AGW is meant), everything needs to be done right now, when you scratch the surface on a lot of this research, questionable or sloppy assumptions quickly show up, and these mistakes always favor a more aggressive interpretation of AGW. For example, criticism of a lack of obvious harm from near future AGW were met with the magical discovery of "extreme weather" (something the IPCC is apparently quietly dropping from its latest report BTW).
Well "climate change" is used because while the globe as a whole is getting warmer individual climates (like Europe) could get a lot colder.
As for "extreme weather" they've got a brochure on it but I'm not really sure what you're talking about.
As for the mistakes, when someone makes a mistake that favours a too aggressive scenario the denialists go "Ahah! They're trying to scare people!" and when the mistake underestimates the danger the denialists go "Ahah! We told you they were exaggerating!"
When one of the first real reports, the Stern review to attempt to quantify future harm of AGW was created, it made a major sloppy assumption by assuming discount rates about half as large as world chained GDP growth (completely ignoring that chained GDP growth is a better measure of ability to pay for future harm) and justified this on a major bogus basis, that a more reasonable discount rate was "immoral". That change alone ended up doubling for every 50 year period out future estimated costs of AGW. And of course, there's the recent weakening of recent climate predictions by the IPCC to reflect that current climate trends don't agree with the old models the IPCC used in previous reports.
I don't know a lot about the Stern review but it sounds like it may have had some issues, but a bad report doesn't mean that AGW isn't an issue.
This reminds me of a saying I've heard credited, apocryphally perhaps, to Will Rogers. "You expect cashiers to make mistakes on occasion. But when the mistakes are always in the cashier's favor, you have to wonder."
But if you only look at the mistakes that are in cashier's favour you're going to think every cashier to be dirty.
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Governments spending taxpayer money weakens the incentive effect but doesn't make it vanish.
And if you kill a lot of passenger pigeons, you just greatly weaken their numbers, you don't actually drive them to extinction. The problem with these sorts of assertions is that you can do enough of the activity in question to make something vanish even when it was very numerous at one time.
The EU politicians have every reason to spend as little on AGW as possible.
I already explained why that wasn't true. There's a lot of room for empire building once you have an eternal crisis like catastrophic AGW or the US's War on Drugs.
No one profits from AGW, not seriously anyways.
The finance industry does. For example, the carbon credit markets in Europe or the loan guarantees and financing for renewable energy and public transportation projects throughout the developed world.
If that capital didn't go to renewable energy and public transportation it would go to other investment opportunities. There might be a claim that finance could get slightly bigger by regulating the carbon credit markets but that's not a particularly strong incentive, particularly when compared to the massive incentives of the automotive and fossil fuel industries.
I see words, but I don't see a relevant argument. The incentives I mention are just as big as they are for those fossil fuel-dependent industries, even if you choose not to recognize them as such.
Governments spending taxpayer money weakens the incentive effect but doesn't make it vanish.
And if you kill a lot of passenger pigeons, you just greatly weaken their numbers, you don't actually drive them to extinction. The problem with these sorts of assertions is that you can do enough of the activity in question to make something vanish even when it was very numerous at one time.
The EU politicians have every reason to spend as little on AGW as possible.
I already explained why that wasn't true. There's a lot of room for empire building once you have an eternal crisis like catastrophic AGW or the US's War on Drugs.
You're still left making the ridiculous assertion that governments want to spend more money and run bigger deficits.
Governments actually don't want to spend money, and they don't want high taxes. But they want certain services more so are willing to spend a lot of money and run big deficits.
I'm entirely unconvinced that governments would spend that kind of money if they weren't convinced AGW was true.
(you also have the inconvenient fact of all those private insurance companies who are convinced AGW is real and placing their bets accordingly)
If that capital didn't go to renewable energy and public transportation it would go to other investment opportunities. There might be a claim that finance could get slightly bigger by regulating the carbon credit markets but that's not a particularly strong incentive, particularly when compared to the massive incentives of the automotive and fossil fuel industries.
I see words, but I don't see a relevant argument. The incentives I mention are just as big as they are for those fossil fuel-dependent industries, even if you choose not to recognize them as such.
They're not remotely the same size. Green industry is TINY. Finance will get money from wherever. News has a big incentive to downplay the scientific consensus to generate controversy. And fossil fuels are an industry worth trillions of dollars that's at existential risk if AGW predictions are accepted.
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You're still left making the ridiculous assertion that governments want to spend more money and run bigger deficits.
If you had actually kept up with the thread, you would have noticed that I don't make that assertion.
Governments actually don't want to spend money, and they don't want high taxes. But they want certain services more so are willing to spend a lot of money and run big deficits.
"Services" that happen to require a lot of flunkies, shiny buildings, pretty hardware, and a nice view. And as I note, some of those "services" seem rather imaginary in nature.
I'm entirely unconvinced that governments would spend that kind of money if they weren't convinced AGW was true.
That's ok. You can change your mind later when you get an attack of common sense. When you actually see governments act in this way as I have, you realize that they'd do a lot worse than spend vast sums of money on imaginary problems.
(you also have the inconvenient fact of all those private insurance companies who are convinced AGW is real and placing their bets accordingly)
I see talk without action. It's only a fact, if it's actually happening. I'll just point out the often missed fact that most such alleged AGW damage is actually very specific, US flood damage which is caused by subsidizing the insuring of property in flood-prone areas rather than some climatic issue.
They're not remotely the same size. Green industry is TINY. Finance will get money from wherever. News has a big incentive to downplay the scientific consensus to generate controversy. And fossil fuels are an industry worth trillions of dollars that's at existential risk if AGW predictions are accepted.
That would have been a true statement twenty years ago, it isn't any more. And fossil fuels won't be at existential risk until the developing world and OPEC comply. That probably won't happen until fossil fuels aren't particularly competitive with the other choices out there IMHO.
You're still left making the ridiculous assertion that governments want to spend more money and run bigger deficits.
If you had actually kept up with the thread, you would have noticed that I don't make that assertion.
Poorly phrased on my part. Any bureaucracy certainly tries to capture funding but Governments still have strong incentives to reduce spending. The idea that the bureaucracy is so powerful they're able to spend 20% of the budget on nothing is essentially a conspiracy theory.
Governments actually don't want to spend money, and they don't want high taxes. But they want certain services more so are willing to spend a lot of money and run big deficits.
"Services" that happen to require a lot of flunkies, shiny buildings, pretty hardware, and a nice view. And as I note, some of those "services" seem rather imaginary in nature.
I'm entirely unconvinced that governments would spend that kind of money if they weren't convinced AGW was true.
That's ok. You can change your mind later when you get an attack of common sense. When you actually see governments act in this way as I have, you realize that they'd do a lot worse than spend vast sums of money on imaginary problems.
The only time I've seen governments spend anything comparable on possibly imaginary problems is when it comes to visceral threats like security. AGW is an incredibly abstract threat and I can't see the incentives pushing them to unnecessary spending.
And do you have any precedence for modern science making the kind of mistake you allege they're making with AGW?
(you also have the inconvenient fact of all those private insurance companies who are convinced AGW is real and placing their bets accordingly)
I see talk without action. It's only a fact, if it's actually happening. I'll just point out the often missed fact that most such alleged AGW damage is actually very specific, US flood damage which is caused by subsidizing the insuring of property in flood-prone areas rather than some climatic issue.
We just had a story about the insurance companies believing AGW. Even if their current action is just related to insurance related to flooding they still think something is changing the probabilities involving flooding.
To flip it around there's only two entities who have both the expertise to investigate and an incentive to understand the long term effects of AGW. Governments and insurance, and both are betting on AGW. Is there any entity with skin in the game betting the other way?
That would have been a true statement twenty years ago, it isn't any more. And fossil fuels won't be at existential risk until the developing world and OPEC comply. That probably won't happen until fossil fuels aren't particularly competitive with the other choices out there IMHO.
Green industries are still tiny compared to fossil fuels. As for fossil fuels, if the AGW **** really starts to hit the fan the developing world and OPEC might not be given much of an option to not comply, unfortunately by that time it might be too late to do anything about it.
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but Governments still have strong incentives to reduce spending
And they have strong incentives to increase spending as well. Why are you even trying to argue this particular point, when you can just look at actual government spending and see a large number of the governments are very out of control when it comes to spending, contrary to your assertion?
but Governments still have strong incentives to reduce spending
And they have strong incentives to increase spending as well. Why are you even trying to argue this particular point, when you can just look at actual government spending and see a large number of the governments are very out of control when it comes to spending, contrary to your assertion?
There are several reasons why governments overspend
1) Other people's money
2) Powerful interest groups who benefit from the spending
3) Bureaucracy lobbies for it.
4) Voters really value the service
5) Voters dislike taxes more than they dislike deficits. This doesn't cause specific spending so much as it causes spending to be overspending.
1 still holds for AGW spending, but for 2 contrary to your claims about green groups the balance of the interest groups is against AGW.
As for 3 the AGW bureaucracy is new, so causality wise it can't really be the cause of the spending.
For 4 the only service is mitigating the future damage of AGW, and if there's any direct effect on the voter it's a small cost.
And 5 isn't really relevant other than encouraging carbon caps instead of taxes.
The thing is almost all the factors that cause governments to overspend are absent from AGW, so you're left with the fact they feel that spending is unusually necessary.
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Ok then: given that the sun has been shining energy on us for a very long time, and given that CO2 levels in the past have been much higher than they are now, why are we still here? Why haven't we been cooked already?
The amount of CO2 being produced by humans is minuscule compared to what the earth itself produces. It's as simple as that.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
The thing is almost all the factors that cause governments to overspend are absent from AGW
Ok, which of those five is absent? I don't see a single one. I've already explained the big interests behind door 2. And bureaucracies get to expand as a result of the spending (for example, energy efficient regulation and enforcement, enhanced environmental regulation and enforcement, increased supervision of subsidies for "green" technologies.
4. is the overwhelming public support for the environmentalism religion. And 5 is irrelevant since government can always spend more even if people are eager to send in their taxes.
CO2 levels have not been as high as they are now (400 ppm) for at least 5 million years and maybe as long as 15 million years. That's before humans of any kind existed. CO2 levels have not been over 1000 ppm since before the K-T event 65 million years ago. As the Sun ages it gradually gets brighter by about 10% every 1.1 billion years so it was cooler in the past. The layout of the continents was different in the past. All of those things are factors in why we haven't been cooked already.
The amount of CO2 being produced by humans is minuscule compared to what the earth itself produces. It's as simple as that.
No, it's not as simple as that. You are completely ignoring the other side of the equation, the Earthly sinks of CO2. Have you ever heard of the Carbon Cycle? For the past 10,000 years the CO2 level was stable at around 280 ppm varying up and down by around 10 ppm in the yearly biosphere cycle. For the past million years or more CO2 levels have remained between 180 and 300 ppm depending on the stages of glaciation. In the past 100+ years CO2 levels have risen from under 300 ppm to 400 ppm all of a sudden. What changed? The obvious answer is that by burning fossil fuels humans are adding carbon that was sequestered for 10's to 100's of millions of years to the active carbon cycle. It gets distributed among the various carbon sinks like the atmosphere, the oceans (thus causing ocean acidification), the land and the biosphere but the relative balance between them remains about the same. That's why only 40-45% of human emissions remain in the atmosphere.
If you want to claim that the increase in atmospheric CO2 is from natural sources then you have to explain what changed to cause a sudden, rapid rise in CO2 to levels unseen for millions of years. You have to explain why the release from natural CO2 sources increased suddenly and/or the uptake of natural carbon sinks decreased suddenly. Without that explanation you're just blowing smoke.