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How Well Do Our Climate Models Match Our Observations?
bunratty writes "According to recent articles by Roy Spencer and John Christy, our climate models have done a poor job of predicting warming due to humans burning fossil fuels. They claim that we've observed only a fraction of the warming they predict. But when I look at the source they claim to use, the State of the Climate in 2012, I see that it shows a warming of 0.7 degrees Celsius worldwide since 1980, close to the 0.8 degrees Celsius warming predicted by the climate models. Take a look at the data for yourself. How well do our predictions match our observations?"
I've always wanted someone to explain to me why 0.7C matters. I know its a measure of average global temperatures. But still, isn't that a very minor fluctuation?
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
try selling your global warming bullsh!t to someone in Winnipeg ...
It's pretty easy to "predict" temperature trends in years that have already gone by.
That's because you are looking at climate models calibrated against that data that you are comparing to. Circular logic.
If you look at the predictions from past IPCC reports, very few of their predicted temperature profiles match the later observed conditions. That is a failure of the models' predictive power. That doesn't mean there isn't warming, just that the Earth's climate is a more complex system than can be accurately simulated with modern computing hardware.
It's almost as if there aren't big walls in the sky that keep emissions from leaving the countries that produce them.
Ergo, there is no Global Warming.
But seriously, California is drying up and the South has to buy more snowplows.
That's one observation.
Spencer has contributed specific work in peer reviewed journals that is part of the scientific discussion, but his overall opinion on climate change is motivated more by his own religion than anything else. He's both sympathetic to intelligent design and signed a statement which said among other things ""Earth and its ecosystems – created by God's intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence – are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_(scientist)#Climate_change Essentially he believes that climate change isn't happening because his religion won't let him. Note how that statement wasn't even just about climate, but about ecosystems as a whole. Christy doesn't seem to have that same sort of underlying motivation and might make more sense to pay attention to, but in this context, the vast majority of experts disagree with both of them, and when dealing with complicated scientific issues, using expert consensus is a useful heuristic, that's before we get to the serious issue that not only is the expert consensus clear, it is a consensus about some very bad results, not just a consensus about an issue which doesn't have substantial impact.
A more interesting question is why Spencer never publishes any of his alleged massive critiques of AGW in peer reviewed journals. He seems to be quick to a check from the Koch Brothers and various other pro-oil interests, but oddly never seems to actually publish these resounding rebuttals in any kind of scientific venue.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"since 1980, close to the 0.8 degrees Celsius warming predicted by the climate models" - Where does that pre-1980 prediction come from??
How many pre-1980 predictions failed, and why did you pick that particular one?
Since it only needs 2C to drop and you get an ice age starting, I fail to see how you can claim 0.7C a minor fluctuation and wonder how it would matter.
That is a perfect example on how to misalign graphs to make them match your agenda. He should be jailed for that.
Because minor global fluctuations have significant affects globally, leading to entire local climates changing. An ice age is only a small change in average global temperature. You're used to weather, this is climate. It's like if I raise your taxes 7% yearly but keep your expenses the same or higher, that doesn't seem like much until you realize that the affects of that compound on each other, but unlike taxes you're just losing it, not theoretically getting something back for it. Over the long term it's a major difference and is why there is significantly more drought and a massive species extinction going on right now.
An invitation to speculate and draw our own conclusions based on a model that everyone will pick apart?
Bring in some pre-conceived ideas from Slashdot readers and we have a real festive discussion ahead of us today! Popcorn time.
I'm taking wagers on how many posts this one gets within the next 2 days. My computer model puts the number at about 535.
We should learn what we need to know about issues, before we decide what we need to feel about them.
True "3D" climate modeling is still out of the reach of a majority of scientists. We're still calibrating the proportional influence of various factors, and we're finding new ones all the time, like the full extent of the methane deposits on the ocean floor. Really, the biggest factor in climate change is the ocean and we're still struggling to come to grips with how variable it is. Most of the talk these days revolves around causal forces that have huge impacts beyond their comparative size: exotic GHGs like the CFCs we've mostly banned, cloud albedo, high latitude ice melt, ocean temperature, pH and salinity, plankton growth rate (the Gulf of Mexico "dead zone" has a significant impact), and yes, the proportion of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Businesses, especially resource extraction outfits, hate discussing climate change, from oil and coal magnates making climate studies a pariah (see what the Harper government is doing in Canada and the coal lobby has done to West Virginia) to mining concerns putting profits above pollution worldwide.
...which is why support for this alarmist guff is decreasing, worldwide.
The snow is due to the melting of the artic ice which sent down a blast. We've still had a warmer winter than in the past. Stop pretending you know how to science.
almost like pollutants don't give a shit about borders.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm sure this will be an intelligent discussion since we have so many people visiting here who are solid scientific thinkers, are experts in the field and will be able to intelligently discuss the nuances of this subject. I doubt we will see personal bias. I'm sure the discussion will be well reasoned and without hyperbole.
I personally don't feel I have to check back on the discussion since I have already made up my mind.
(for the impaired)
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
Using your comments. We should also cancel out avid atheists too then? I'd be curious to see if there are any REAL people in the middle when it comes to scientists in either way. In same same vein, we should cancel out studies by scientist who get paid to do studies by any person, organization or government that wants to prove global warming is man made. Try to find some real neutrality by honestly curious scientist, I'm wondering if you really could.
I can't speak to the accuracy of historic weather data or modern weather models, but I can say this:
Global Warming / Climate Change (pick one, please) alarmists do themselves an incredible amount of damage when they do the following:
1. Grossly exaggerate predictions and base everything on the worst case they can find.
2. Manipulate charts to make changes look far more significant than they really are.
3. Instantly ridicule anyone who disagrees with them on anything, even if that disagreement is valid.
Let's say for the sake of argument that all of the predictions from these weather models are 100% accurate, all of the research and data is correct, and that the climate is indeed warming because of CO2 emissions, and that the climate will warm 5 Celsius degrees in the next 200 years. Let's pretend that the science is completely perfect.
Even if all of that is true, you will find a lot of people who won't even bother listening because they remember crazy predictions like "New York city will be underwater in 20 years!" and "We're all going to be cannibals! Cannibals, I say!"
Do you see why so many people don't listen to those who are trying to push human-caused climate change?
Politics needs to be taken out of the equation. Completely. Everything needs to be 100% transparent. The science needs to be broken down in ways the average person can understand. Even if that happens, it will be decades before the damage the global warming alarmists have caused can be reversed.
Love sees no species.
China are experts on big walls, though.
The State of the Climate 2012 paper is... get this... from two years ago. After they had to start "adjusting" their models to reflect reality.
When you look at the actual historical AGW models, we're below their "optimistic" model (the one where we cut CO2 drastically over the last couple of decades - which didn't happen). And a good 0.2 C below their "probable" models.
If you're looking at predictions, go back and look at the climate models from the late 1980s and early 1990s. They're off, by a ridiculous amount.
Out of 90 models (yes, ninety), a grand total of TWO managed to predict the current temperature.
Wait, are you implying that some of these walls are missing and/or faulty?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Really I just looked at the average temperatures in Massachusetts where I shoveled over 5 feet of snow this year and it seems right in line with average...maybe you're just wrong? in fact precipitation for the year might be right on the mark. It's like you don't understand averages...or maybe it's not like it and is that you don't understand how climate or temperature works.
FU editors
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Spencer's scientific views are being affected by his religious beliefs. He is a signatory to a document called An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming, which holds that Earth was created by "God's intelligent design" and that ecosystems are therefore "robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting". Whatever you might think of this, it is definitely not a scientific statement. Basically, he refuses to accept, for religious reasons, that humans can have an effect on the Earth's climate – in his theology, only God can do that.
Spencer is also a major proponent of the "intelligent design" scam. And both he and John Christy are based out of Alabama, one of the most backward and scientifically illiterate states in the U.S.
For several years Gavin Schmidt, one of the principals of the NASA/GISS Model/E climate model, has been doing a comparison of model output to observations. There isn't an update for 2013 yet but the comparison through 2012 is available here.
These guys are well known climate change deniers with links to the petroleum industry. Their goal is not to enlighten but to sow doubt.
That, and the fact that some forms of pollution change the albedo of the atmosphere and reflect more light back. The fog of pollution around Beijing probably reflects enough light to make it locally slightly cooler. But globally, the greenhouse gases contribute to an average higher temperature. In any case, I feel that the other effects of the pollution, consumption, and destruction of our environment will have more disastrous consequences sooner than the average change in global temperature will. Not denying global warming though, lest anyone misread me.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
A big reason you won't see any critiques of that sort is that the influential folks in the AGW alarmist camp made a big effort to block any critical papers from even being considered. Threats to blacklist journals for publishing "anti-AGW" papers, for example, or to take behind-the-scenes action against anyone who tried to submit such papers.
This all came out in the Climategate emails. But you never heard about those, did you?
They also admit in those emails that most of the actual criticisms of "mainstream" AGW were valid, and discussed ways to cover it up.
"Hide the decline" ring a bell?
Or "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on ... shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate."
Where does the 0.7C warming since 1980 figure come from exactly? I make it roughly 0.7F (note: FAHRENHEIT) from 1980 until the last point in 2012. That's an anomaly of around 0.4C, which seems to tie in with the graph on the R Spencer page.
Look back before that, the period from 1950-1974 (approximately). How well do the models match there?
Cherry picking is bad science. You have to look at the whole record from the start of the Industrial Age... and the models haven't been particularly good.
That's not an anti anthropogenic global warming statement, by the way. It's a "science is hard and you can't understand a subject after ten minutes of reading" statement.
#DeleteChrome
Temperature is not climate. Scientists can tell you that for most people in the northern hemisphere temperatures will get warmer in two months. That's climate. They can't tell you that in June it will rain on the 6th but clear up just long enough to cross the English channel. That's weather.
My prediction for a warm day is now shot to hell.
Just so you know: That "97 percent of all scientists in the world" silliness came from a rigged "poll."
Basically, an AGW-supporting scientist polled a number of his AGW-supporting scientist friends and co-workers - 30 or so - and asked them if they thought AGW was real.
That's where your number came from. Which should tell you something about the actual support for AGW among the scientific population at large...
They recently came up with another poll, where they cherry-picked a bunch of papers, and said "97% of scientific papers agree!" While not mentioning that only about a third of them actually addressed AGW, and they got their "new" 97% by only looking at 65 papers. Out of 12,000. Oops.
Most of the well sited models don't take into account very well deep ocean dynamics, or even consider things like the magnetic field (might be nothing but who has really looked into it?). Also interdecadal oscillation in the Pacific is not really factored in that much either.
Are humans affecting the planet? I'd say yes. Do we know well enough to trust climate models? I'd say we need more data and more work.
" It needs a continuous temperature shift of 2C "
Yup: all it needs is a 2C drop. Therefore 0.7C can't be a minor fluctuation and not matter.
I'm sorry, but these guys are right. The measured change is only a fraction of what was predicted.
7/8 is a fraction. As is 8/8 or 4816/8.
The scientists should have predicted a global warming of pi.
A regional variation in weather doesn't mean the global climate hasn't warmed. Easy enough or do I need to break it into smaller words?
An event can be both true and overhyped, e.g. Y2K, the speed of propagation of AIDS, peak oil, overpopulation.
All of those are real concerns that need to be addressed but also have a legion of "oh my god we are all going to die" supporters.
For example, the raise in the level of the oceans will likely not be catastrophic. Many places are subsiding or already below water and they sort of manage (see Netherlands). At the same time, the fact that this particular aspect of AGW is overhyped does not mean that other changes will not be dire e.g. possible desertification of current bread baskets.
Some would call this denial, irrational denial simply because the guy promotes something you disagree with.
Or the fact that we are still coming off of an Ice Age that lasted for more than 100,000 years, and ended less than 10,000 years ago (Or the little Ice Age that ended in 1850). Several models predict that the average temperature at the END of the last Ice Age was 15-20C lower than today.
So over 10k years temperature raised 20C, that is (20 / 10000) * 10 = 0.02C per decade, very far from 0.7 / 3 = 0.23 per decade that we see now.
I don't have sources from your numbers, and it's probably safe to assume that the rate of temperature change isn't constant either... So maybe we shouldn't try to model this at all, my calculations above are certainly as ignorant and non-sense as your postulation of numbers...
Is global warming happening? Yes. Is the human race a contributing factor? Probably to some degree. Is the human race the only cause? No.
True, there are many factors that affect the environment, but non other does it with the same speed as humans.
Global warning is primarily man-made, it's a real problem, that's the scientific consensus. And I'm fairly sure that most people on slashdot as just as qualified to discuss the scientific consensus around global warming, as soccer moms are qualified to discuss the merits and "dangers" of vaccinations.
They are exporting all their products, including emissions, to the west.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
At my place in winter it is rouchly 20 - 30 degrees celsius warmer, in summer it is about the same as before, but had a peak around 1997 - 2001 where it was about 10 degrees centigrade warmer. ... it was always 'warm enough'.
About spring and autumn I have normal opinion as I never really cared when I was young
So, we have an average increase of 0.7 degrees, or 0.8. My personal experience is something like a 10 to 20, if not 30 degrees increase (actually with cherry picking I can make that a over 50 degrees increase: -30 degrees at 27th december of 1971 and +23 degrees on 23th of december 2011 - these are degrees celsius btw.) Obviously my real life experience has no relation to the 'averages'.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Many of these surface temperature records are heavily "adjusted" adding to recent temperatures, and subtracting from old (from the 1930s!) records to make the warming look worse.
Un-adjusted data at least for the US shows little trend of increase for the past 50-100 years.
There are other games with "homogenization" and removing rural thermometers retaining urban or airport thermometers, producing a warming trend.
Certainly not a record trust worthy enough to make trillions of dollars of economic decisions upon.
They predicted (guessed?) a 1C increase, but it ended up only increasing by 0.8. Is this a big difference? I think so at 20%
Until roughly 18 months ago, the biggest contributor of CO2 was the USA.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
WTF are you talking about? I'm in the continental US, and it's been the WARMEST winter in at least 20 years. We've been breaking record highs daily for almost two months.
Just because it's cold where you live doesn't mean it is cold everywhere.
-- Sometimes you have to turn the lights off in order to see.
Did he take funding from the public? Did he hide his data and refuse FOI requests? Did he splice together separate graphs or choose outliers?
Anywhile, still waiting for someone, anyone on the Warmist side to admit that Mann was, or even could be, wrong.
You've both ignored the fact that the models showed rising warming through the 90s, 2000, 2010, and so on, yet there has been no overall warming for over 15 years. And before you dismiss that, the IPCC and the Warmists have admitted that their models failed to predict the trend reversal.
FU GodfatherofdSoul
you might want to think about that one a bit more....
In a plain reading of the graph presented, I found that we are only about 0.4 above the line. Which makes the statement in the OP false. It's not 0.8, it's 0.4.
But even if warming has happened (and we have good data saying it has) it does not mean it is CO2 related. The entirety of the body of evidence for anthropogenic warming is identical to non-anthropogenic warming. So we're at a loss. Melting glaciers, ice-less arctic, weird weather. None of it points a finger at CO2, it only points the finger at heat. There is no tell-tale sign that is specific to CO2. That's why we turn to the models. The models are substantially wrong. I'm sorry, but "climate science" is not a science in that we can make predictions and test them, but we fail to validate those predictions far more than we validate them. Furthermore, we cannot experiment on the environment without substantial outcry.
Do I hope we get models that are accurate. I really do.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
From the article;
Since 1976, every year including 2012 has had an annual temperature above the long-term average. Including the 2012 temperature, the rate of warming is 0.06C (0.11F) per decade since 1880 and a more rapid 0.16C (0.28F) per decade since 1970, according to the 2012 annual report from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center.
Take look at the graph they are referring to. Between 1880 and 2010 there is a change of 1.43 F giving a per decade increase of .11F. But wait, that is not the whole picture. It ignores the period between 1880 and 1910 when global temperatures were decreasing. If you look at the increase since 1910 you get 2F over ten decades which is .2F per decade. It also ignores the time between 1910 and 1940 where the temperature changed 1.1F or 0.37F/decade. Compared with the time between 1910 and 1940 global warming is slowing.
To me it looks like they are picking data that agrees with their conclusion.
Farmer's Almanac which is based on historic patterns, called this one.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
The reason why the UN and the Democratic party are putting so much effort into raising alarm about CO2 is it suits their political objectives. It can be used to justify regulating nearly everything and all sorts of tax increases. Wealthy contributors to the Democratic party who live in California are a major driver for this. Californians revel in their lovely climate and are especially paranoid about any change. The planet may be getting warmer, but not at a rate that justifies the expensive government policy initiatives like a 30% subsidy for the construction of wind turbines or 55 MPG as the average for all cars.
-Ron Scubadiver
The Church of Climatology has Ordained through the Prophet Al Gorleone that all weather aberrations in any time context in the Neogene or Quaternary periods when illustrating warming effects will be decreed as Gosple and Truth.
However, any time period in the Neogene or Quaternary that shows cooling or temperature fluctuations within normal parameters, plus any illustration the CO2 levels can vary greatly in said time periods, anything that contradicts the Religion of the Church of Climatology is to be labeled as false, as heresy and as untrue.
Said utterances shall be dealt with as all heretics against the Police State are dealt with - defunding by government, ostracization and lambasting in the yellow press, media and yellow journalism professions which are now only to allow to report whatever The Chairman (peace be unto him), now, as of Feb 20 2014, his FCC, his minions, brown shirts and cabinet approves as true and their version of The Truth.
Tsarkon Reports Has Spoken in deference to the Supreme Leader of the USSA, peace be unto him.
Note here that the misspelling of Gospel as 'Gosple' is part of The Chairman's, peace be unto him, effort to change over to NEWSPEAK, especially on ecclesiastical issues where terms traditionally used MUST be defined by The Police State and disseminated as TRUTH.
The problem with these models is that the data used to generate them are often selectively hand-picked to support their theories and here's why:
It’s well known to scientists that “climate change is amplified at the poles.”
As the icecaps melt, more radiation from the Sun is absorbed by the surrounding ocean instead of being reflected back out into space:
http://www.climate.gov/news-features/videos/explaining-why-climate-change-amplified-poles
What makes this even worse is that the protective ozone layer over Antarctica has nearly disappeared:
http://www.gmes-atmosphere.eu/pressroom/
Note: Scroll to bottom.
I am always suspicious when I only hear one side of any story. Our climate has changed throughout history and all evidence suggests that it’s happening again now. And finally the loudest voices in the world have begun to offer more than just carbon emissions as an excuse for the shift. Make no mistake, CO2 both anthropogenic and natural does play a role along with methane and water vapour.
The greenhouse gas correlation to temperature has been remarkably more stable than alarmists would have you believe for hundreds of thousand of years. This is according to the Vostok ice core data taken back in 1999:
http://www.globalwarming.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Vostok-Methane.jpg
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/icecore/antarctica/vostok/vostok_data.html
Why it has been so stable even in within questionable periods may to some small degree have something to do with how life has evolved on this planet. Everyone now knows that as CO2 levels increase so does the rate at which plant life grows. As for Methane, there appears to be a type of bacteria that thrives on ingesting this gas before it even hits the atmosphere:
http://www.aaas.org/news/2011/01/06/science-gulf-bacteria-quickly-digested-spilled-methane-research-says?sa_campaign=Internal_Ads/AAAS/RSS_News/2011-01-06/
If we step back and take a second look at life in the warming Arctic waters, we see that phytoplankton, the keystone to the oceanic food chain and a devourer of CO2, has bloomed to enormousness scales.
http://www.earth.columbia.edu/articles/view/2993
As for monitoring current CO2 levels within the atmosphere, it appears we will hit 400ppm by 2016 according to this site which monitors it in real-time:
http://co2now.org/
However on a longer time scale we see that the correlation between CO2 levels and temperature has officially deviated from one another:
http://www.southwestclimatechange.org/figures/icecore_records
On a scale spanning hundreds of millions of years things become a lot less certain. Even if these experiments have a high margin of error, they are currently our best guesses:
http://worldview3.50webs.com/6globalwarming.html
One thing is for certain is that even if atmospheric CO2 levels jump to the thousands, the average global temperature (which currently is no where near the historic high mark) will remain unaffected on a geographical time scale.
Those pushing for a lone carbon causation like to show that the Sun’s energy has remained consistent since this has all started:
http://www.climate.gov/#dataServices
Note: At the bottom of the page under Global Climate Dashboard click Sun’s Energy button.
This is where the alternative hypothesis begins. But first, the Sun’s energy absolutely does ebb and flow and has generally increased over the last 70 years even if only slightly. NASA recently joined this discussion, forcefully asserting that slight solar variability can have drastic changes on our climate:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/
Scientists are observing that this is one of the most influential climate forcing factors:
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/JCLI-D-11-00411.1
“The spectral analysis showed periodicities of ~2.6, 4, 5, 12, 16, 39, and 105 years that coincide with some l
There isn't one climate projection that by the end of this year won't be completely outside of even the widest margin of error and getting worse by the day!. i.e. Not one as been even remotely accurate! FUD.
There have been times on earth with no liquid water, it was all ICE. (see snowball earth / Paleoproterozoic)
There have been times on earth with no ICE, it was all liquid. The Jurassic period. This was the most diverse life period on earth by the way. It had 1950 ppm CO2 (which promoted massive greening). It had 26% O2 atmosphere levels which allowed for gigantic bugs who have different respiration this allowed gigantic. Some Arthropods like Arthropleura were 8.5 feet long due to over 30% atmospheric O2 levels combined with 800 ppm of CO2 in the Cretaceous.
Neither in the cretaceous, jurassic nor "snowball earth" periods such as the Paleoproterozoic were humans present.
It seems based on what is known of the previous eras and epochs is that higher CO2, higher heat and higher O2 levels (in a large part due to higher CO2 feeding plants to convert to O2) and more liquid water makes planet earth FAR more hospitable to life and life diversity.
This AGW stuff is a rounding error - and compared to a supervolcano goes off or a large asteroid hits (Chicxulub crater).
I would implore people to control toxic substances in the environment, mercury, acids, CFCs, particulates in the air, noxides, poisonous fertilizers, pharmaceuticals being flushed and urinated into the food chain, radioactive waste. Please focus on that and not this CO2 and AGW stuff. Please. You all seem to love bisphenol, toxic flame retardants, halides everywhere and autism rates skyrocketing but have a serious issue with CO2 which is a form of plant food.
Plant a tree, clean up the toxic stuff, and stop worshipping this AGW Church of Climatology junk please.
Tsarkon reports
Roy Spencer was widely discredited years ago for fraudulent and misleading work. Not a good place to go if you are looking for a peer-reviewed perspective.
On a global scale, indeed: 0.7C is a small variation. The Earth has had larger variations before, and this is not unusual on a geological scale (although to be fair, its happening at a faster time scale than most of the climate changes in the past.)
However, 0.7C pretty much validates the models. If the anthropogenic greenhouse effect is not real, you need three things:
(1) You need to find an explain an explanation for why the radiative forcing does not increase temperature
(2) You need to find a hitherto-unknown effect that is causing the warming that we measure, and
(3) You need to find an explanation for why the amplifier that amplifies effect (2) to be large enough to increase the temperature doesn't also amplify the greenhouse effect. (and, contrawise, you need to explain why whatever effect it is that cancels out the greenhouse effect, (1), does not also cancel out effect (2).)
While 0.7C may be small, you should also note that we are continuing to put carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"7. Glaciers are retreating almost everywhere around the world"
And that is a good thing. When glaciers are advancing almost everywhere in the world, it is called an ice age.
And humans do poorly in cold, crops fail, and people die.
C02 is essential for plant growth, and a little warming is good.
Any negative consequences will cost 20 times less to mitigate than to try and prevent by massive dissruption of our energy infrastructure.
Your clarification that the climate scientists were trying to hide the decline of the tree ring data as opposed to hiding the decline of the temperatures isn't very reassuring. If they've used tree rings to reconstruct worldwide climate temperatures as a proxy, and this proxy diverges from observations to the point that they have to "hide the decline", I think there's a definite problem with their science. Doesn't this invalidate the entire climate/temperature reconstruction that includes these tree rings? Why would they have to use a statistical method or 'trick' to make the data fit the theory? That doesn't sound like something a scientist interested in discovering the truth should have to do. Unfortunately, this isn't about pure science, as there is plenty of money and politics involved on both sides of the argument. There are reputations, careers, and honor at stake too. The email leaks revealed the science isn't as clear cut as they would have us believe. They also revealed that there are some climate scientists who are quite unwilling to even consider any evidence that contradicts their own beliefs. It's especially concerning when they advocate hiding or even deleting info, data and communications in order to avoid having to respond to FOI requests. Why would they need to do this?
Your clarification that the climate scientists were trying to hide the decline of the tree ring data as opposed to hiding the decline of the temperatures isn't very reassuring.
That was neither my clarification, nor a correct summary of the text I posted.
There is no scientific or technical error or fraud here, just as the text says. Just a valid way of joining together temperature data that was collected via a thermometer, with those that are deduced from before thermometer measurements were taken via "proxies", in order to get a longer term trend.
The email leaks revealed the science isn't as clear cut as they would have us believe.
They did nothing of the sort. Deniers hoped they would, but they didn't.
Nowhere is it written that your critique can only be taken seriously if you fix the problem you discover, propose an alternate model, or solve the problem outright. By your logic, all the people from the 1800s on into the early 20th century who said, "You know, Newtonian mechanics has a serious problem: it cannot correctly describe the precession of Mercury" were doing a poor job of critiquing Newtonian physics.
Rubbish. They were doing a superb job of critiquing Newtonian physics by pointing to something in the Newtonian model that was clearly, unambiguously, wrong. They may not have been able to realize why it was wrong or able to construct a better model, but they pointed out an important anomaly. Later on, Einstein came along and proposed General Relativity, and one of GR's greatest initial successes was its ability to correctly model the precession of Mercury.
If John Christy's reading of the facts is in error, then that's ample grounds to say he's made a poor critique. But to say that he's made a poor critique just because he hasn't fixed the models, put forward a new model, or explained the differences between model and observation, betrays you as a very poor scientist.
I vote, but it's easy to see why people don't.
Because of our voting system (first-past-the-post), we've devolved into a two-party system (see Duverger's Law). Because the two big parties cannot be challenged (without an unbelievable amount of outrage), they rarely field candidates that are good for the voters, only candidates that are good for the parties. Why vote when none of the candidates represent you, or will do the things you wish to see happen?
Unfortunately, the idea that voting is useless only occurs to those of us who have two brain cells to rub together. I'd be fine with only a few voters, if they were the more intelligent population. I can draw an analogy to jury duty. Those who are smart enough to get out of it, shouldn't. Those who are smart enough to see how the voting system is broken, should vote. It may be disheartening, but we're not going to right this ship any other way.
(Which won't correct the vote rigging, but that's another topic.)
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
And even most of the data more than a few decades back is pretty suspect.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Except, of course, that it was not "valid" at all.
When you have to hide your own results, you're doing something wrong.
A lot of dedicated alarmists have tried to pretend that "the trick" was above-board... but it wasn't.
In any other field, if a scientist had tried this sort of thing to hide a bad result, they'd be in deep trouble.
"And that is a good thing. When glaciers are advancing almost everywhere in the world, it is called an ice age."
You are making a false dichotomy. There is a 3rd (and best) option which I'm sure you "conveniently forgot" to make your statement not sound like complete nonsense. The glaciers could be *stable*. Humans (and all animals for that matter) do best in stable and predictable climates.
"And humans do poorly in cold, crops fail, and people die. C02 is essential for plant growth, and a little warming is good."
We have plenty of CO2, it is being produced faster than plants can absorb it, which is why the atmospheric levels are increasing. So adding more won't help crops at all. So now you've changed from complete denial of AGW to "well a little warming is good". It may be good for some in the short term to those in the temperate and sub-arctic zones. But for those in areas which are already hot, it will be disastrous. For those who are near shore lines it may end up causing them to have to move.
"Any negative consequences will cost 20 times less to mitigate than to try and prevent by massive dissruption of our energy infrastructure."
First of all, what massive disruption to our energy infrastructure are you talking about? No one is suggesting that every single person on earth simultaneously switch to alternative fuels. Quite the opposite, people are suggesting a gradual shift away from one or two dirty technologies towards an array of many cleaner alternatives which would *increase* the robustness of our energy infrastructure. You know, like when a storm takes out one type, there will be several others still churning along just fine.
As for the 20 times figure., any citations to back that up? I find it highly doubtful.
Let's play devils advocate for a second. Pretend that you believe in AGW., and that the recent violent storms wouldn't have been nearly as bad if it wasn't for AGW. How many billions of dollars have been spent already to repair New Orleans? How many billions have been spent to repair New Jersey and New York? How about the towns that have been basically wiped off the map in Oklahoma by Tornadoes? Prevention pretty much universally costs less than mitigation.
...with your links.
The first one? The guy who uses Rush Limbaugh and other TV folks to show how unredeemable the skeptics are? Instead of actually quoting the folks who did the research and found the quotes?
He makes a big deal about finding "trick" in scientific papers to represent a clever solution for a problem. Fair enough.
However, he pretends that the problem with "hide the decline" is about something other than tree rings... when the hinge of most of the AGW models was tree-ring reconstruction. Basically, the guys "hiding the decline" desperately needed to hide the decline in temperatures for that part of their reconstruction in order for that reconstruction to be used as a metric for past temperatures versus CO2.
Yes, it's a nice snarky propaganda video, but it's wrong.
The second one? the one you refer to as "in depth and impartial?"
You're kidding, right?
For example, he handwaves "the divergence problem" with tree rings, which is something that those particular climate models can't survive. Remember the Hockey Stick? Notice how nobody uses it any more? Based on tree ring models. So yeah.
The thing you also missed about the Climategate problem for AGW fans: a lot of what they said would be fine, in a publication, or in an answer to a paper. It was, however, stuff they never told anyone, because it poked huge holes in the foundation of their work.
At the poles you have the funny things like polar nights and polar days
You have periods where the days are longer, yes.
But don't forget the sun is also at a very low angle for much of the time during those really long days. No matter what the surface color is a lot of the energy will be reflected.
It looks really pretty but doesn't contribute nearly as much to warming as does the more direct sun at the equator being absorbed or not.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So rather than attack his science, you attack his character?
Well, yes - that's what all AGW cultists do.
It's reasonable since they have no science to stand on to refute.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is one thing that bothers me. If the natural order is for a period of glaciation to begin in the near future, surely global warming will benefit mankind. So why are we acting like we need to cool the place down? All the geologic evidence points to a risk for run-away cooling, if temperatures get a just few degrees lower than they are today. None of it points to a serious long-term threat of run-away global warming. And if the present ice-age were to end, it seems like the world would more hospitable to humans than ever. Sure over the next couple thousand years some cities would have to move to make way for rising water, but most buildings aren't occupied over that kind of time-frame anyway.
The thing is, we know because of the large rise in CO2 with very little accompanying warming over the last decade, that CO2 is metaphorically more like being slapped than being shot.
So you and your other cultists have been warning us for years that we are going to be shot somewhere, just not sure how bad. Only instead of being shot we find as I said the real result is a slap, only it's not even a slap that will hurt because warming helps produce more abundant food through the slight warming we actually get.
So in fact I don't really care where the light slap lands, because it's irrelevant - and I'm certainly not going to pay trillions for your "protection" to try and stop it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
0.7 deg C warming. Come now, look at the last 15 years, without the NASA lied to input, thru the news of the areas, generally weather forecasts, where they tell you the temperature of yesterday, and start comprehending that when it is warm up north its Summer, when its cold, it may be winter, and the opposite occurs if south of the equator, during our summer it's winter there. The3n take off your rose colored glasses, check the e-mails that "climate" scientists were sending back and forth, saying they were adjusting the records of the world eliminating hot and cool periods, and were redoing the records of that were available, pitching those that didn't agree with their agenda. So can you trust the record, guess not. So if someone lies to you once, as a authority on a subject, should you trust them again? You say as long as their are no objectors? But there were people objecting, they were writing articles that the truth was not being told. They were canned for their objection, by people discrediting their work, who were supposed to be scientists, but turned out to be schoolyard bullies instead. So now the bully says we have to pay taxes, indulgences to get rid of our carbon, which should be sequestered in grains, to feed people, But no, we have to bury it somewhere...
And here we all go again, fighting over something no one here has even the slightest clue about.
But frankly, I wouldn't mind warming up. We could always make more refrigerators, A/C units, solar panels, and better sun-tan lotion, and most life lives in the tropics anyways.
https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~s...
A lecture by Michael Crichton
Caltech Michelin Lecture
January 17, 2003
My topic today sounds humorous but unfortunately I am serious. I am going to argue that extraterrestrials lie behind global warming. Or to speak more precisely, I will argue that a belief in extraterrestrials has paved the way, in a progression of steps, to a belief in global warming.
Charting this progression of belief will be my task today.
Let me say at once that I have no desire to discourage anyone from believing in either extraterrestrials or global warming. That would be quite impossible to do. Rather, I want to discuss the history of several widely-publicized beliefs and to point to what I consider an emerging crisis in the whole enterprise of science—namely the increasingly uneasy relationship between hard science and public policy.
I have a special interest in this because of my own upbringing. I was born in the midst of World War II, and passed my formative years at the height of the Cold War. In school drills, I dutifully crawled under my desk in preparation for a nuclear attack.
It was a time of widespread fear and uncertainty, but even as a child I believed that science represented the best and greatest hope for mankind. Even to a child, the contrast was clear between the world of politics—a world of hate and danger, of irrational beliefs and fears, of mass manipulation and disgraceful blots on human history. In contrast, science held different values—international in scope, forging friendships and working relationships across national boundaries and political systems, encouraging a dispassionate habit of thought, and ultimately leading to fresh knowledge and technology that would benefit all mankind. The world might not be a very good place, but science would make it better. And it did. In my lifetime, science has largely fulfilled its promise. Science has been the great intellectual adventure of our age, and a great hope for our troubled and restless world.
But I did not expect science merely to extend lifespan, feed the hungry, cure disease, and shrink the world with jets and cell phones. I also expected science to banish the evils of human thought—prejudice and superstition, irrational beliefs and false fears. I expected science to be, in Carl Sagan's memorable phrase, "a candle in a demon haunted world." And here, I am not so pleased with the impact of science. Rather than serving as a cleansing force, science has in some instances been seduced by the more ancient lures of politics and publicity. Some of the demons that haunt our world in recent years are invented by scientists. The world has not benefited from permitting these demons to escape free.
But let's look at how it came to pass.
Cast your minds back to 1960. John F. Kennedy is president, commercial jet airplanes are just appearing, the biggest university mainframes have 12K of memory. And in Green Bank, West Virginia at the new National Radio Astronomy Observatory, a young astrophysicist named Frank Drake runs a two week project called Ozma, to search for extraterrestrial signals. A signal is received, to great excitement. It turns out to be false, but the excitement remains. In 1960, Drake organizes the first SETI conference, and came up with the now-famous Drake equation:
N = N* fp ne fl fi fc fL
Where N* is the number of stars in the Milky Way galaxy; fp is the fraction with planets; ne is the number of planets per star capable of supporting life; fl is the fraction of planets where life evolves; fi is the fraction where intelligent life evolves; and fc is the fraction that communicates; and fL is the fraction of the planet's life during which the communicating civilizations live.
This serious-looking equation gave SETI a serious footing as a legitimate intellectual inquiry. The problem, of course, is that none of the terms can be known, and most cannot even be es
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
http://www.michaelcrichton.net...
(Excerpted from State of Fear)
Imagine that there is a new scientific theory that warns of an impending crisis, and points to a way out.
This theory quickly draws support from leading scientists, politicians and celebrities around the world. Research is funded by distinguished philanthropies, and carried out at prestigious universities. The crisis is reported frequently in the media. The science is taught in college and high school classrooms.
I don't mean global warming. I'm talking about another theory, which rose to prominence a century ago.
Its supporters included Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Winston Churchill. It was approved by Supreme Court justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis, who ruled in its favor. The famous names who supported it included Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone; activist Margaret Sanger; botanist Luther Burbank; Leland Stanford, founder of Stanford University; the novelist H. G. Wells; the playwright George Bernard Shaw; and hundreds of others. Nobel Prize winners gave support. Research was backed by the Carnegie and Rockefeller Foundations. The Cold Springs Harbor Institute was built to carry out this research, but important work was also done at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford and Johns Hopkins. Legislation to address the crisis was passed in states from New York to California.
These efforts had the support of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Medical Association, and the National Research Council. It was said that if Jesus were alive, he would have supported this effort.
All in all, the research, legislation and molding of public opinion surrounding the theory went on for almost half a century. Those who opposed the theory were shouted down and called reactionary, blind to reality, or just plain ignorant. But in hindsight, what is surprising is that so few people objected.
Today, we know that this famous theory that gained so much support was actually pseudoscience. The crisis it claimed was nonexistent. And the actions taken in the name of theory were morally and criminally wrong. Ultimately, they led to the deaths of millions of people.
The theory was eugenics, and its history is so dreadful --- and, to those who were caught up in it, so embarrassing --- that it is now rarely discussed. But it is a story that should be well know to every citizen, so that its horrors are not repeated.
The theory of eugenics postulated a crisis of the gene pool leading to the deterioration of the human race. The best human beings were not breeding as rapidly as the inferior ones --- the foreigners, immigrants, Jews, degenerates, the unfit, and the "feeble minded." Francis Galton, a respected British scientist, first speculated about this area, but his ideas were taken far beyond anything he intended. They were adopted by science-minded Americans, as well as those who had no interest in science but who were worried about the immigration of inferior races early in the twentieth century --- "dangerous human pests" who represented "the rising tide of imbeciles" and who were polluting the best of the human race.
The eugenicists and the immigrationists joined forces to put a stop to this. The plan was to identify individuals who were feeble-minded --- Jews were agreed to be largely feeble-minded, but so were many foreigners, as well as blacks --- and stop them from breeding by isolation in institutions or by sterilization.
As Margaret Sanger said, "Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty ... there is not greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles." She spoke of the burden of caring for "this dead weight of human waste."
Such views were widely shared. H.G. Wells spoke against "ill-trained swarms of inferior citizens." Theodore Roosevelt said tha
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
The IPCC's attribution graph shows the various natural and man made radiative forcing's. Without mankind's influence, most climate models predict a very slight cooling for the 20th century. Feedbacks are far more difficult to quantify however using archaeological evidence their magnitude can be inferred. Climatologists use this information to calculate a metric called climate sensitivity, this number has hardly changed since it was first derived in the 1970's. A lot of people think the IPCC is exaggerating, observation has shown that their predictions are on the conservative side (in particular the rate of melt at the north pole), cautious conservatism is what one would expect when a couple of thousand experts agree with each other.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
1) easy, CO2 is a pretty shitty greenhouse gas water is much more important.
Water is indeed a very good greenhouse gas. It also condenses out of the atmosphere, in the form of rain. Carbon dioxide does not. As a result, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has a long-term effect. The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, on the other hand, goes in and out of the atmosphere on a short time scale, driven primarily by the temperature-- warmer air holds more water than cold air.
The infrared absorption of carbon dioxide is measured, by the way. It's not something made up.
2) we've been coming out of an ice age for 10,000 years,
Correct-- or, more correct, we are out of the ice age.
that this remains unexplained
Fifty years ago it was unexplained. It's pretty well understood now.
leaves any "blame the humans" nonsense as laughable.
The fact that there causes of climate variation other than human input does not imply that human input doesn't also have an effect. As was pointed out, the effect is small, about 0.7C so far. But it is real.
3) no, you dont, see one and 2
The theory matches the data. If you have another theory, you have to both explain why the theory based on actual measured facts, like the absortion of infrared by carbon dioxide, isn't true, and you also have to explain why we see rising temperature anyway
like the sea rising... panicing about a few mm when in many places it changes on a meter scale every day.
Huh? I'm not panicking. I do, however, believe that it is important to not dismiss the science because you don't like the conclusions.
4) Warming is much better than cooling.
I agree. That is, however, no reason to dismiss the science.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
P.S.: I have NO idea how close we are to the point at which the atmosphere becomes essentially opaque to long infra-red. I doubt, however, that the scale is linear. Probably logrithmic.
Logarithmic is correct! Excellent back of the envelope physics. This was derived by Arrhenius; it's been known for over a century now. In fact, if you assume (as you did) an infrared-opaque atmosphere (a "greybody"), this is easy to derive from the adiabatic lapse rate (by defining an effective altitude at which the planet emits infrared, which moves upward as gas is added to the atmosphere).
This is why climate sensitivity is usually expressed in degrees of warming per doubling of carbon dioxide-- it's logarithmic.
So yes: once we've doubled the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we get to put in twice as much to get the same increment of temperature next time, and four times as much to get the same increment of temperature the time after that.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
If you want to assert the anthropogenic greenhouse effect is both real, and dangerous, the burden of proof is on the affirmative to come up with a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement which rules out natural climate change as the reason for observed temperatures.
OK. My prediction is that if you aim an infrared spectrometer at the sky, you will see downwelling infrared radiation from the CO2 spectrum.
This prediction is falsified if you don't see downwelling infrared radiation.
Hey, we see it! I win. Carbon dioxide actually does re-radiate absorbed thermal infrared. The greenhouse effect is real.
This was done over a century ago, by the way. The greenhouse effect has been known for a long time. Good thing, too; the Earth would be frozen if it didn't exist.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Maybe it's time you for people to understand it's a face off between 20th century science and post-normal science. If you don't know what post-normal science is I suggest you look it up on wikipedia. It's not a discussion of facts, but philosophy of science. A huge difference.
You actually wouldn't see anything, as the spectrum of water swamps most of the IR spectrum. Hydrogen bonding is funny.
If consensus were a scientifically valid measure of anything, we'd still be in the stone ages.
Perhaps that's why you have so much trouble comprehending this issue, go and read about Karl Popper's "republic of science" and tell us all how that is different from "consensus". At the end of the day Science is a philosophy, your own track record of posts on AGW indicate you are unable to apply that philosophy to real world questions. You clearly judge your sources not by their content but by their political colour, which is why you link to Anthony Watts and avoid the internationally recognised leaders in the field such as Mann or Hansen.
This post is no different, first you say a valid survey means nothing, then you say it's wrong, then you say another survey, the Petition Project, proves the opposite. Think about it like Karl Popper would, why do accept the politically inspired survey at face value but reject several other much more rigorous surveys that clearly show the opposite conclusion. If that's not enough to convince you that you are being used as a useful idiot then just look at the tortured logic of your post, all to try and prove black really is white.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Very informative, I would also like to point out that Oreskes is a Science Historian not a climate scientist, she is a frequent target of deniers mainly because of her book "Merchants of Doubt", which details the history and operations of the anti-science propaganda networks.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Their heat map has China as much cooler, yet they are one of the world's largest contributors to greenhouse gases.
The heat map is a reflection of surface temperature, not of the source of forcing gasses. One wouldn't expect changes in the composition of the atmosphere globally to manifest locally in relation to the source. Obviously.
OTOH, China has an insane problem with particulate pollution which is strong local forcer of cooling. No surprises here at all.
all it needed was one fact
So Albert was wrong more than once, who knew? The problem with that quote is that outside of axiomatic systems such as maths, there are no "facts", only observations. Karl Popper is widely credited with the modern philosophy of science, he used the phrase "Republic of Science" to describe what we are calling "consensus". Consensus is not the same as democracy, but it is very much a part of modern Science, it's the difference between "a scientist says" and "scientists say", the later of which is sometimes referred to as a "scientific fact" or a "well established theory".
Aside from that modern science says that you can never prove a theory beyond doubt, you can only disprove it. ie: Science cannot tell you if your theory is correct it can only tell you that it is incorrect. This modern view of science has been around for over a century now, it's sometimes called "model dependent reality", meaning that the model predicts the behaviour of nature but does not describe nature itself.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
You actually wouldn't see anything, as the spectrum of water swamps most of the IR spectrum. Hydrogen bonding is funny.
Yes, in some wavelength bands all you see is the water. In others the CO2 dominates. (It also somewhat depends on whether you're lookig up from sea level in the tropics, or from temperate zones).
But, overall, if you take the spectrum (especially across the CO2 band at around 15 microns), yes, you can clearly see the downwelling IR from CO2 emission.
I could show a dozen plots for you, but here's a nice one with the big CO2 emission labelled:
http://klimakatastrophe.files....
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The lifetime of water emitted into the air is so short that no, you really don't get a long-lasting greenhouse effect by directly emitting water. It condenses out. We call this "rain" on our planet.
It is, however, an amplifying effect: if you make the average temperature a little bit warmer for some other reason, that means that more water evaporates and the atmosphere can hold more water, which raises the temperature. This increases the effect of other greenhouse gasses, such as CO2.
If you ever get to the point where the amplification factor is greater than 1 (that is, 1 increase in temperature increases the atmospheric water such that it increases the temperature by another 1), you get "runaway greenhouse effect." Fortunately, Earth is far away from this condition. (It is believed to have happened on Venus, though.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
> ... failures of some people's imagination doesn't make something less true
Likewise, the vividness of some people's imagination doesn't make something more true.
Kernel Trap (ignored).
But, what percentage of the CO2 increase is due to anthropological sources?
I can't predict what your next several rolls a pair of dice will be, but I can predict what your average will be after 1000 rolls.
Except, of course, that it was not "valid" at all.
"The final analyses from various subsequent inquiries concluded that in this context 'trick' was normal scientific or mathematical jargon for a neat way of handling data, in this case a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion."
When you have to hide your own results, you're doing something wrong.
"The EPA notes that in fact, the evidence shows that the research community was fully aware of these issues and that no one was hiding or concealing them."
A lot of dedicated alarmists have tried to pretend that "the trick" was above-board... but it wasn't.
"...in this case a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion."
"...the evidence shows that the research community was fully aware of these issues and that no one was hiding or concealing them."
In any other field, if a scientist had tried this sort of thing to hide a bad result, they'd be in deep trouble.
[citation needed]
This is the problem. When you deal with old data, even if you are carefull with your training methodology to avoid overfitting, you can still decide if a model is good or not. This is overfitting of some sort.
To avoid this problem, climate models have theoretical physico-chemical and statistical arguments explaining why this model should be better than this one. These arguments are proven mathematically, or at the lab scale. This is why researchers can keep faith on models who don't fit real data that well, but provide "credible" results.
Unfortunately, there are still many aspects of the theory that don't scale up well from lab to Earth scale.
It's irrelevant to the debate if humans are a cause or not. In it's past the earth has been a ball of ice as well as a warm bathtub covered in algae. The earth, universe, and the laws of physics are not here for us, theres no god that will make sure that we aren't destroyed by ourselves or by natural causes.
The question thats left to us is, when will it be necessary to start taking control of our environment for our own benefit. When you consider the ill effects of pollution on global health, and the economic problems that causes alone, I hope the answer will be now.
Or you can read the actual truth here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveys_of_scientists'_views_on_climate_change
One rigged poll? Please inform yourself. Hundreds of scientists and thousands papers, over many polls..
"Cook et al examined 11,944 abstracts from the peer-reviewed scientific literature from 1991–2011 that matched the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'. They found that, while 66.4% of them expressed no position on anthropogenic global warming (AGW), of those that did, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveys_of_scientists'_views_on_climate_change#John_Cook_et_al.2C_2013
Well Global Warming is in God's hands after all.
So what you're saying is that things are actually WORSE than what they predicted. That totally proves your point that "nothing is happening"
Carbon dioxide actually does re-radiate absorbed thermal infrared.
so does water vapour, which is by far and away the leading greenhouse gas.
The planet I live on has these things called oceans.
Maybe you've heard of them?
Watch this Heartland Institute video
->The infrared absorption of carbon dioxide is measured
its absorbtion and radiation
but more CO2 definately doesn't mean a hotter atmosphere.
Because you don't just trap more heat - you also prevent more sunlight entering in the first place.
No. Take a look at the solar spectrum some time. Almost all of the energy of incident sunlight is in a spectrum range in the visible and near IR-- peaking around one micron. The energy of the exiting infrared is in much longer infrared-- ten to twenty microns. (The fact that it's longer wavelength is Wien's law). You can have an atmosphere transparent to incident light, but absorbing to exiting infrared. This was discovered in the late 1700s.
Venus isn't hot because of the greenhouse effect, it's hot because of the enormous pressures caused by an incredibly dense atmosphere.
I'm sorry, but at this point you are revealing that you don't actually understand what you're talking about, so bye, have a nice life.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
You really think the temperature of venus is from the greenhouse effect?
Yes. In fact, because the atmosphere of Venus is so opaque in the thermal infrared, it is easy to analyze-- it's one of the few planets that can be analyzed with a relatively simple back-of-the-envelope calculation.
That's funny.
If you don't understand that the temperature of surface of Venus is due to the greenhouse effect, you don't understand the greenhouse effect. It's not actually a crime to not understand something-- the greenhouse effect is poorly explained in popular culture, and few people have even a clue how to do a calculation, even a simple one-- but when you don't understand something, that might suggest that you should learn, rather than shoot off uneducated opinions.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
reprint from WUWT blog
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
rgbatduke says:
February 7, 2014 at 10:34 am
A) The increase in temperature we have experienced during the 20th century is nothing unusual and is quite normal, and,
B) the rain and storms suffered by the people of the UK are also nothing unusual.
A) Which half? The increase in the first half of the 20th century is almost identical to the increase in the second half. The two halves are so nearly identical in form that unless you have studied them enough to be able to pick out specific features, you won’t be able to tell which one occurred with the hypothetical help of CO_2 and which one occurred without the hypothetical help of CO_2 when they are plotted on the same vertical relative scale and the same horizontal relative scale but with the actual dates obscured.
In the first half of the 20th century, not even the most ardent warmists claim that there was enough anthropogenic CO_2 in the atmosphere to have any measurable effect. The global industrial revolution that started the CO_2 crank was 1950s on, and there was supposedly a lag of 30 years before that had any effect (to explain the fact that through the 50s, 60s, and early 70s the temperature was pretty close to flat, which didn’t fit in well with the instantly well-mixed, instantly more strongly forcing picture of CO_2 emissions.
So as a matter of pure fact, the increase in temperature experienced during the 20th century was not unusual or abnormal in any way that can be definitively linked to anthropogenic activity as far as we can tell from the data! We had little to no impact on the first half, the warming in the second half matched that of the first half (with our hypothetical help), both halves were part of a perfectly reasonable continuing century-scale rebound from the lowest temperatures experienced on Earth since the Holocene Optimum during the Little Ice Age.
It’s amazing how ignorant people who participate in this debate with total certainty that our climate is unusual are of the “patient’s” history. I like to keep the patient’s chart for the last 12,000 years handy to help them learn:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png
Note well, this is smoothed. Note also that the error bars (never, ever shown in climate science) are probably as wide as the total variability envelope of all contributing reconstructions — an easy 1 to 2 C. As Lief pointed out above, reconstructing things like solar activity or temperature in the pre-instrumental era is neither easy nor precise, and the tiniest hint of bias or prior belief in the part of the researcher can effortlessly further cloud the proxy-based extrapolations by causing them to make countless small, almost harmless decisions that ultimately are cherrypicking of the data, comparing low temporal resolution data to high temporal resolution data to make erroneous statements about extremes, or ignoring the possibility of confounding causes or degradation of the data sources in those sources that match their “preferred” narrative at the expense of those that do not. If you count the assumptions — most of which cannot possibly be verified in the present — that go into reconstructions, there are many and each one contributes to increased uncertainty in the final claim.
Still, taking it for what it is worth — a possibly accurate reconstruction of the planet’s temperatures in the Holocene (post the Wisconsin glaciation, but including the Younger Dryas) that is at any rate the best we can do with the data and methods available (biased or not) at this time, what does it tell us?
First, the climate now is not warmer than it was in the Holocene Optimum (do not make the mistake of conflating the high frequency, high resolution “2004 data point with the smoothed low frequency, low resolution data in the curve — even the figure’s caption warns against do
The modelers have added variables to match the past. The fact that none of the models have predicted the current 12-17 year plateau is a huge epic fail on their part. To look backwards and say we have closely matched reality is not true. What would be a correct statement is "with a lot of after the fact variable addition and adjustment we can match the past".
Now if you want something truly interesting and somewhat scary how about the prediction from the 1970s by Dr Libby and Dr Pandolfi? 4 decades of accurately calling the climate changes! Now that is a model you can at least plan around.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/05/26/1979-before-the-hockey-team-destroyed-climate-science/
And to everyone who says CO2 controls the climate I have but one question: "How long with rising CO2 and flat or falling temperatures before you admit CO2 does not control the climate? 20 years? 30? 50? Never?".
Care to provide evidence form a repuable source?
You've pointed out one *necessary* factor.
You haven't shown that because of this GHG effect, that we can rule out natural climate change.
Hell, you could do the same experiment against H2O - are you now going to claim that catastrophic global warming is caused by irrigation and increased humidity?
Again, necessary *and* sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement. Please feel to try again :)
Geoff,
You don't seem to get it, the CAGW crowd including yourself want huge sums of money taken from people to do something (like fuck the energy sector) and keep coal plants from being built by denying financing through the world bank (already happening) so poor countries are taking it in the ass economically.
No, actually, I don't.
I want people to understand the science. I want people to understand that there is science here; that the greenhouse effect has been known and studied for a long time, it is relatively well understood, and the models are well tested. I want people to stop attacking the science when they don't like the political consequences that they believe would ensue if they believed it. The argument "it would be extremely expensive if the science were correct so therefore the science must be wrong" is not a logical argument. This is worth emphasizing: the correctness of the science is independent of your beliefs about the consequences.
As for the question "what should we do about it-- well, that is worth discussing. Maybe nothing. But, as far as I can tell, whenever anybody suggests any discussion, a small group of people start shouting "Stop discussing this! The science is a hoax! It's not real! It's a scam!"
... One last thing, just what ppm level of CO2 would be optimum for you?
Me personally? I live in Ohio-- a bit of global warming would be nice, I'm in favor of it. Global warming will both have benefits and cause problems, of course. I find it amusing to notice that the three countries that have been most adamant in blocking global warming discussions are Canada, Russia, and Norway-- obviously, they've done the same calculation.)
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I understand the greenhouse effect just fine,
From the evidence, apparently not.
But the temperature at the surface of venus has nothing todo with the optical properties of CO2, and everything todo with the lava flows that cover the planet. Unless you are saying Volcanoes are caused by the greenhouse effect you are competely wrong.
In the next comment down, Eunuchswear said "Venus isn't hot because of the greenhouse effect, it's hot because of the enormous pressures caused by an incredibly dense atmosphere."
So, why don't you and Eunuchswear get together and get your stories straight. Do some calculations, maybe. Figure out which one it is you're claiming: the pressure? Or the volcanoes?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
"The final analyses from various subsequent inquiries concluded that in this context 'trick' was normal scientific or mathematical jargon".... Sorry, but 'trick' isn't scientific or mathematical jargon. Please look at the tree ring proxy in question. Please note that it matches the temperature reconstruction pretty closely for a while, and then goes in the opposite direction. The 'trick' eliminated the obvious visual contradiction. It wasn't an issue of making disparate data sets fit. You can believe what you want, and obviously you've made your choice and have proceeded to dig. I think the right thing to do would have been to come to the conclusion that the correlation of the tree ring data with most but not all of the temperature data means it should be excluded, not 'tricked' into fitting.
Yes, same thing.
The atmosphere is incredibly dense and as such conducts and retains the heat fairly efficiency from those lava flows throughout the lower atmosphere.
Wow-- so you're proposing that the volcanoes supply heat, and then the atmospheric greenhouse effect traps the heat and keeps it warm.
Greenhouse effect and volcanoes!
I've got to give you credit for creativity. Why don't you do some calculations and write a paper for the AGU?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Nope.
That's not "greenhouse effect".
Do you understand that and why thicker glass in your garden greenhouse would make the greenhouse colder. (repeatable experiment - actual science).
Do you have even the slightest idea about thermodynamics at all? or are you really just repeating the drivel you read on the internet and MSM.
When you state "The atmosphere is incredibly dense... and retains the heat fairly efficiency"--that is a description of the greenhouse effect. The fact that you don't actually understand how the greenhouse effect works doesn't affect the fact that when you state that a dense atmosphere retains heat, what you're describing is known as the greenhouse effect.
I'm sorry, but we seem to have reached the point where you call me ignorant and I point out that you are ignorant. Unfortunately, you seem to be know so little about atmospheres that the conversation really isn't going anywhere. Ignorance is curable, though, so perhaps sometime in the future you'll be capable of an interesting conversation. I assume you're in high school? Well, keep at it, learn something, and in the future, you'll be able to contribute.
Have a good one. Bye.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Wow. After having exhausti(ve/ng)ly showcased your own ignorance of thermodynamics, I'd expected you to have at least the decency not to frivolously accuse others of "not having the slightest idea about thermodynamics". I'm going to call "troll".
lovin the reasoned argument backed up by facts.
I actually wavered for a minute thinking maybe I was wrong.
But after finally establishing a certain crowd think convection and conduction are part of the greenhouse effect I'm at least now more comfortable that I'm less wrong than them.
If knowing one's sources is a good thing, then you should know that Spencer is the 500th entry in the list of most-cited scientists on climate change and Christy is the 747th (see http://www.eecg.utoronto.ca/~p...). Personally, I pay more attention to the more cited individuals.
Don't forget to mention that a very sizable proportions of those emissions results from Chinese factories owned by US corporations and producing products that are consumed by Americans. One can't credibly complain about the Chinese and then simultaneously shop at WalMart or just about any store where Chinese manufactured goods are sold.
"Your clarification that the climate scientists were trying to hide the decline of the tree ring data as opposed to hiding the decline of the temperatures isn't very reassuring."
Since now that you have clearly demonstrated that all climate scientist who believe that the Earth is warming are frauds and totally wrong, can you now tell me why if its not getting warmer, all the glaciers are melting?
From a scientific perspective they have an even bigger problem to worry about than missing energy in the system. Obviously, they haven't looked at the oceans, but that aside, they seem to be totally and completely unable to explain how it is, if its not getting hotter, why all the world's glaciers are melting? If its not getting warmer, then how could this possibly be happening?
I have discovered that this is one aspect of their "alternative theory" that proves global warming is a hoax that they seem unable and totally unwilling to explain. Even worse, they slink away from any attempt to answer the question. Its almost like cockroaches immediately rushing to a dark spot to avoid the light. Here they stand poised to become some of the greatest scientists of their day by providing a cogent explanation and showing the entire world of science why virtually everyone but them got it wrong, and yet they are struck dumb and mute, unable to answer such a simple question. Why is that?
"I am still waiting for someone, anyone on the Denier side to admit that they are, or even could be, wrong."
I am still waiting for anyone on the Denier side to explain, if they are right as they assert that the Earth isn't getting hotter, why all the world's glaciers are melting?
China is one of the biggest contributors to California's pollution problems.
lovin the reasoned argument backed up by facts.
Oh, so when other people do it, it's suddenly not cool?
I'm at least now more comfortable that I'm less wrong than them.
That's the Dunning–Kruger effect for you. What other people see is someone who talks like a crackpot.
Temperature = Constant * Pressure
so as the pressure increases so does the temperature.
It's really not that hard, but hey, I'm willing to listen to these calculations, do show, I've never seen.
You are citing Amontons' Law of Pressure-Temperature, aka. Gay-Lussac’s Law. This law is only valid for constant-volume systems. A planetary atmosphere is not constant-volume; it can and does expand and contract freely. There's also a more fundamental error in your thinking; if you were right, all cylinders with compressed gas would be incredibly hot, with no way of cooling them, which is obviously absurd. Look here for a more exhaustive rebuttal.
Amontons' Law is taught in secondary school, but has few real-life applications, especially in planetary science. The fact that you're even bringing it up shows you know even less about thermodynamics than I initially assumed. Which makes it all the more ridiculous that you're trying to insult our resident professional planetary scientist for not having the slightest idea about thermodynamics. Look, kid, the level at which you're talking about thermodynamics is so basic that even a high school science teacher could correct you. You don't possess special elite insight that allows you to see things a professional scientists fails to see. All you have shown so far is ignorance of your own ignorance.
What it does is explain why the surface temperature is so hot.
regularily compressed gas to very high pressures passing over lava.
Not a thing to do with the optical properties of co2 or the sun.
Planetary scientists are all idiots! News at 11.
--why don't you write a paper with your findings? You'll be the most famous astronomer since Schiaparelli discovered canals on Mars!
Sigh.
In the absence of an atmosphere, the temperature of a planet would be follow the Stefan-Boltzmann equilibrium law, P absorbed = P radiated, or alpha Io (pi R^2)= epsilon sigma T^4 (4 pi R^2)
where Io is the incident intensity, alpha and epsilon the absorptivity in the solar spectrum and emissivity in the thermal spectrum, R the planet's radius, T the temperature (absolute), and sigma the Stefan-Boltzman constant.
Even if Venus weren't extraordinarily reflective--highest albedo of all the planets-- the surface temperature in the absence of an atmosphere would only be higher than Earth's average by the fourth root of the intensity, which is the square root of 1/distance, which is a factor of 1.179. That calculates out to about 50C above Earth's average temperature. It is actually somewhat over 400C higher in surface temperature than Earth.
Yes, it's closer to the sun. No, that isn't a sufficient explanation for why it's so much hotter than Earth.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Clever trick though, reversing the normal rules. Secular people (usually, but not always, on the left) like to say that THEY do not need to prove that God does not exist, and that religious people do need to prove the existence of God, because [a] "you cannot prove a negative" and [b] the burden of proof is on the person claiming the existence of a thing NOT on those who disbelieve.
By this reasoning, the burden of proof for AGW is entirely upon those claiming the effect is real and man-caused; those who are not convinced are under NO burden to prove ANYTHING. The people who insist that TRILLIONS of dollars be spent, and the lives of millions/billions of people be manipulated, in order to mitigate the effects must prove [a] that the effect is real [b] that it is man-caused and [c] that their proposed fixes are more cost-effective than the alternatives (because, again, THEY are the ones proposing certain actions, the burden is on THEM to sho those are the best actions). This should come as no shock to AGW supporters, given that they are frequently on the political left and usually make these demands of religious people relative to the existence of God.
The simple truth is that we all know the Earth goes through alternating periods of warmth and of ice ages. We have no proof of what causes these cycles nor do we understand the causes of the cycles (or the overall system) well enough to both accurately model the system, and demonstrate the prediction of those cycles. We know we are currently in a post-ice-age warm cycle but cannot prove whether we are currently still in the "getting warmer" phase of the warm period or in the "starting to chill-down" part of the cycle.... but we KNOW for fact that there is no "stuck at a perfect climate" pase of the Earth's cycles. I for one, will only really start to worry if/when we determine we have had the warmest day of this warm period and that what lies ahead is thousands of years of miles-thick ice...
Hansen ???? . Hahahahahahahaahahaha. The same Hansen that wrote a book about climate science and filled it with references to his grandchild and not wanting to leave the child the legacy of climate change?. Hansen is an emotive fool who has failed the science of climatology so pushes more and more to the emotive side of the issue to gain attention .
If you haven't read it already , read "storms of my grandchildren", you can see Hansen losing scientific credibility , chapter by chapter. He even refers to data that we now know as fudged, bordering fraudulently compiled.
If you have read it and still think Hansen credible, then you know nothing of the science and are a fool.