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Study Rules Out Global Warming Being a Natural Fluctuation With 99% Certainty
An anonymous reader writes "A study out of McGill University sought to examine historical temperature data going back 500 years in order to determine the likelihood that global warming was caused by natural fluctuations in the earth's climate. The study concluded there was less than a 1% chance the warming could be attributed to simple fluctuations. 'The climate reconstructions take into account a variety of gauges found in nature, such as tree rings, ice cores, and lake sediments. And the fluctuation-analysis techniques make it possible to understand the temperature variations over wide ranges of time scales. For the industrial era, Lovejoy's analysis uses carbon-dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels as a proxy for all man-made climate influences – a simplification justified by the tight relationship between global economic activity and the emission of greenhouse gases and particulate pollution, he says. ... His study [also] predicts, with 95% confidence, that a doubling of carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere would cause the climate to warm by between 2.5 and 4.2 degrees Celsius. That range is more precise than – but in line with — the IPCC's prediction that temperatures would rise by 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius if CO2 concentrations double.'"
There are dozens and dozens, multi-proxy reconstructions of temperature records.
https://www.skepticalscience.c...
https://www.skepticalscience.c...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
Its called science.
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Its called data reconstruction, and the existing large scale records factor use multiple proxy methods of records of reconstructing the temperature records.
There are multiple indirect ( or proxy ) ways of obtaining temperature history, and all of these would have to be invalidated to prove the existing reconstructions wrong.
The reconstruction models match with accurate instrument measurements that we have for a past hundred years or so.
Educate yourself
https://www.skepticalscience.c...
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I wonder why this topic is so much discussed in the USA. In every other country climate change and the fact that we, humans, are causing it is accepted as a scientific fact. However, in the US, there is still a large fraction who doubt it or ignore it. And I am wondering why is that so?
>> the proxies can not be independently verified
The proxies are VERIFIED against each other, and over the time span that we DO have accurate instrumental records. Guess what, they match up, minus normal statistical uncertainty which is continuously further and further reduced by incorporating as many independent observations as possible. There are literally many dozens of methods of recovering climate data from human records and paleoclimate records.
There is this whole field of science called statistics and data analysis, try looking into it some time.
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The US has seen a minor decrease in carbon emissions over the last 5 years or so, but this likely at least in part due to the financial crisis. There has been no long-term decrease over the "last 20 years", as you state, so the US isn't setting an example in cutting emissions. What matters, then, is total current emissions, where the US second only to China. The US emitted 5.4 million tonnes in 2010. By comparison, India (one of the countries you single out) and the EU have combined emissions of 5.7 million tonnes. India and China have very much larger populations. The US emissions per capita for 2012 are 16.4 tonnes, whereas China's are 7.1 and India's a paltry 1.6. Clearly the US has a lot of work to do.
soylentnews.org
Spoken like a true ideologue.
Spoken like someone who's never put a paper in for peer review.
A hint: they'll try to tear your paper to shreds no matter what it says.
If you actually did science you'd know that.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Which track record is that?
Be careful putting too much faith in almighty science. They've been wrong before, you know. A lot. And people died because of it.
You show a bunch of ideas that, when exposed to science, got shot down as objectively wrong pretty quickly. Sounds like the process works.
Want to list 6 current sciency ideas that are wrong but the scientific community considers reasonable? I'll give you a few to start you off:
1. Humans are not changing the climate. Current verdict: wrong. Supporters: a few loons. Evidence: about nil.
2. Evolution is wrong. Current verdict: wrong. Supporters: a few loons. Evidence: nil.
3. Vaccines cause autism. Current verdict: wrong. Supporters: a few loons. Evidence: nil.
I'm sure Slashdot2114 will be debating the bad science ideas that existed in 2014. Some will claim history shows science is death. Smarter people will note that imbeciles, public relations people, lobbyists, and trolls have always added noise and generally slowed the dissemination of knowledge.
Where do you stand, PR Man?
The causality of *all* prior changes appears to have been dismissed.
On the contrary, if you actually read the article (for example), you'd note that it is about testing the causality of *all* prior changes to the climate, and see if they are sufficient to explain current changes. Notice how you missed that?
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
You're confusing sophistry with science.
Spontaneous generation comes to us by way of Aristotle. It was finally challenged by the emerging field of science.
Lamarckian inheritance was not borne out by empirical evidence, so was effectively discounted. Modern understanding of genetics does recognize some mechanisms that resemble Lamarckian inheritance.
Miasma is an ancient greek magical revenge curse. Emperical scientists like Ignaz Semmelweiss worked away from that idea. For his trouble, he ended up dismissed from his position and replaced by Carl Braun, who stopped the handwashing program Semmelweiss had started and introduced a ventilation system to extract miasmas. The death rate went back up by an order of magnitude from when Semmelweiss was in charge.
Bloodletting goes back to belief in the four humours, which comes down from Hippocrates. Science is what has partially dispelled these ideas in modern times.
Aether is the fifth of the traditional Greek four elements. Once again, the idea comes down from fairly non-scientific thought. The name has cropped up to describe a number of different concepts in science, generally to describe something that may fill the universe in spaces in between regular matter. Science has mostly ruled out most of those theories. The general idea still lives on a bit in concepts such as the quantum foam.
Java Man... You've really got us there. A scientist dug up fossils of ancient hominids and... um... what's the smoking gun supposed to be there?