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NASA's Greenhouse Gas Observatory Captures 'First Light'
mdsolar (1045926) writes with news that NASA's second attempt to launch a satellite to map carbon dioxide levels across the globe succeeded, and its instruments are operating properly. From the article: NASA's first spacecraft dedicated to studying Earth's atmospheric climate changing carbon dioxide levels and its carbon cycle has reached its final observing orbit and taken its first science measurements as the leader of the world's first constellation of Earth science satellites known as the International 'A-Train. The Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2) is a research satellite tasked with collecting the first global measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) — the leading human-produced greenhouse gas and the principal human-produced driver of climate change. The 'first light' measurements were conducted on Aug. 6 as the observatory flew over central Papua New Guinea and confirmed the health of the science instrument.
The "first light" in the summary is just the initial measurements to confirm the health of the equipment. It's not capturing some cool phenomenon. This is apparently a term of art in astronomy, according to Wikipedia.
It's like saying "the satellite booted up for the first time." Good news, but I'm going to keep my pants on.
All this money wasted on actual measurements could have gone to generating computer models with baked in hockey sticks.
It's like saying "the satellite booted up for the first time." Good news, but I'm going to keep my pants on.
Thank you.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I don't think it's climatologists who are the ones dismissing results they don't want. Actually, everyone would love to see that carbon dioxide emissions cause very little warming, but that's just not what the bulk of the data shows.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
First light is significantly more than bootup. After launch, typically at least a few days to weeks are spent doing initial power-on and checkout of various subsystems before collecting science or mission data. The initial health checks (monitoring component temperatures, voltages, currents, communications, powering on subsystems in order, etc) are much more analogous to booting up.
Once initial checks are complete, then the instrument is commanded to collect real data. That is first light. For any satellite like this which is years in the making, first light is most definitely a "cool" milestone.
Source: I work on (unrelated to this) remote sensing satellite systems and have supported at least 8 launches / early orbit testing phases over the years.
You seem to be assuming it's linear and immediate, as opposed to being a complex system with built in lag and other factors -- which would boil down to "if I release X amount of CO2, tomorrow the temperature will go up by Y".
It doesn't work that way, and is much more complex.
Much like if you turn up your thermostat, your house isn't instantly warmer, because, thermodynamics.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Most of the heat is going into the oceans and causing the sea level to rise due to thermal expansion. Much of the rest of the heat is continuing to melt the ice caps in the Arctic and Antarctic.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
That's called the temperature escalator.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
actual warming has kind of flatlined,
I keep hearing this, but I really don't see it.
It's like the repeated statement that "there has been no warming [since the record-setting global average in 1998]". Nobody ever claimed that global temperature would rise monotonically year-on-year; fortunately, we are allowed to look at the trend line across years and draw the quite obvious conclusion that yes, temperatures have been rising in the last two decades as well.
(You'd think the 1998 argument would lose steam after the 2005 and 2010 global temperature anomalies actually surpassed the 1998 record, but I guess it was never an argument made in good faith.)
This is exactly what I referred to above. When "skeptics" can't argue the issue, they dismiss the evidence they don't want by labeling it "propaganda". You can also take a look at my signature.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
If CO2 were a leading cause of warming, why would the temperatures not be spiking along with CO2 levels?
If you notice closely, they attempted to pose a slightly different question...
carbon dioxide (CO2) — the leading human-produced greenhouse gas and the principal human-produced driver of climate change.
If you ask the question like this, it's true. However, leading causes of warming is the sun and the other main gas driving global climate change is methane, neither of which is technically human produced.
If you want to get technical, if factor in our desires for growing plants, industrialization, keeping warm and eating beef, then both CO2 and methane are somewhat similar in that regard. There's about 200x the CO2 than methane in the atmosphere, but methane is about 86x better at trapping atmospheric heat.
It's easy to forget humans are likely responsible for only 25Gtons of the CO2 released, where the natural carbon cycle is about 750Gtons (+- a extra volcano eruptions which are about 40Gtons)... Human contribution is non-negligible, for sure, but natural variations are of the same scale. Certainly there is case to be made that doing something is better than nothing, but even if somehow we could collectively reduce our carbon footprint to zero (likely impossible), it's likely that some warming is already inevitably started and the only long term solution would be to adapt our planet to sink the additional carbon output we will be producing...
Truth be told, all the CO2 we humans are likely to responsible for is dwarfed by the Methane Clathrate Ice timebomb at the bottom of our oceans. All that stuff was there long before humans and has been theorized to be the source of historical global run-away climate events. It's probably already too late for this, so it's likely that adaptation for a higher climate variation is something we just have to adapt for...
Cite your facts and your science, because otherwise we conclude you're doing nothing more than making an ad hominem attack on science.
Oh, wait, you don't have any facts, right?
Sorry, but if you want to be given any credibility, you need to show some science which refutes it.
Otherwise, it's the same as if I said "Pino Grigio will reject any science which doesn't fit in with his childish worldview, and nothing he says can be taken as more then the rantings of a deluded idiot".
If I had to choose between the integrity of the NASA scientists and the intelligence of your post, I'm going to have to go with NASA on this one.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
has gone up since Sputnik.
Right now, most of the world's CO2 emissions numbers are based on what gov claim that their nation consumed in coal, oil, and nat gas. Yet, it does not take into account issues such as inefficiencies, etc. Most of the numbers dealing with 3rd world and even some of the western nations are really wrong.
With this, it will show the TRUE flow of CO2 outward, as well as into, of nations.
Sadly, it will also become controversially once the far left realizes that America is NOT the massive polluter that they claim, but that instead, it will turn out that most of the 3rd world nations are some of the WORST.
BUT, where the real issue will come in, is once it shows that China produces more than 40% of the CO2, and not the 33% that is expected.
At that point, does the world finally point to China and say enough is enough, or will the far left still insist on giving them a MASSIVE out?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
And based on your completely ignorant and idiotic posts, I assume you have nothing at all to refute any of this, other than your firmly held idiocy and conviction that they must be wrong?
Why don't you go visit the creation museum or something, you might find other people who care about what you say.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Repeating a lie does not make it true.
Everything on Skeptical Science is referenced, if you have some complaint tell us what your problem is.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
yeah, climate science is where the money is.
Because, based on other issues, we were supposed to be cooling off. However, the truth is, that we continue to climb.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
just like the fact that they cant explain why there has been no warming for the past 17 years??
Still pushing that same old bullshit canard?
yes, temperatures have been rising in the last two decades as well.
Of course they have but the point is that CO2 emissions have been constantly high over that period, which should have accelerated the trend line upward way more than it has.
In order to reach some of the gloomier temperature increases predicted to occur by 2100, you now have to have a massive increase in temperature gains that year by year is increasingly unlikely. At this point it's pretty obvious CO2 alone is not much of a danger.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Oh noes, the idiot troll is onto our conspiracy!
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Yes, and really, really huge (many orders of magnitude bigger) amounts of profit would be lost by oil companies' shareholders if we decided to believe the absolutely overwhelming evidence that carbon dioxide causes global warming. Being a global warming scientist is a lot less lucrative than using those same skills to do just about anything else, so it's really hard to believe that job security is the motivational basis for roughly 99% of scientists who study climate change saying that we have a problem. Chances are that they just want to try to prevent their children seeing the last days of civilization and then dying painfully.
The double irony is that a lot of climate change deniers are the same people who stockpile weapons in case of the collapse of civilization. It's almost as if you bloody well want to spend your last days futilely defending the dwindling supplies in your bunker.
If that's your best argument, it sounds like you've come to the debate unarmed. Congress is notoriously hostile to climate science.
Warming hasn't flatlined. Atmospheric warming hasn't even flatlined. But sea warming has been consistent and substantial. Google clathrates if you're curious why you should care about that.
This person probably lives downwind of the great lakes, which froze last winter because the polar vortex moved off the poles (which were above freezing at times) and landed on Minnesota. We had a great winter in Vermont. OTOH, they are experiencing unseasonable high temperatures in California this summer, and Europe has had some really hot summers recently. Unfortunately people confuse their local climate with the global climate.
Then there's nothing to worry about from CO2 if the oceans are absorbing the heat - even with all that melting and expansion we are getting at worst around a foot of rise in the next few hundred years. That's easily dealt with by coastal communities, especially over such a long period of time. Whole towns (and nations!) rise and fall over that kind of timescale...
The situation is even better if you believe the IPCC:
"The IPCC Fourth Assessment Report described studies that estimated sea level rise for the 20th century between 0.5 and 3.0 mm a year. The most likely range, according to the IPCC, was between 1.0 and 2.0 mm a year."
2.0mm/ year or rise means 8 inches in 200 years... Why does that panic you?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Thank you for the intelligent comment. I worked on the original instrument design at Hamilton Sundstrand over 10 years ago, and it was heartbreaking to learn of the original launch failure. A lot of us suspected but had no evidence that the failure was someone's desired outcome... now that OCO-2 is on station and collecting data we finally feel a sense of accomplishment.
And we'll not only learn who's contributing CO2 to the atmosphere, (and when, and where) but also what's consuming it, so we can not only reduce emissions but we can also sequester it better (e.g., by planting forests in the right places).
I guarantee we'll learn something we didn't expect. And scientists, being scientists, will embrace the surprises rather than reject them. This instrument will help us understand the problem better, produce better model forecasts, and plan better solutions.
I can see the fnords!
We don't have a completely satisfactory theory of gravity (getting GR to play nice with quantum mechanics). Yet, we are very confident that the hypothesis that "things tend to fall" is correct.
Gravity is exceedingly complex, yet there are certain things which are evident from even a rudimentary theory of gravity -- namely, things tend to fall. CO2, likewise, has a complicated relationship to the climate -- but it is a known greenhouse gas, which has certain implications.
Sure, facts can explain that:
a) considering only the endpoints of an interval does not describe the middle of an interval
b) using an outlier as one of the endpoints of an interval makes the end-to-end comparison look more extreme than the trend would suggest.
Combining this two con consistent with either not knowing how to represent statistical data, or knowing that your audience doesn't know how to present statistical data.
So yes, that is an excellent example of the "how to lie with statistics".That is to say, the actual facts DO explain why there HAS been warming.
At that point, does the world finally point to China and say enough is enough, or will the far left still insist on giving them a MASSIVE out?
That 'out' is the best thing that we can do. If you look carefully, China is moving as fast as it can towards fast breeder reactors, hydro, etc. They're cheaper in the long-run than carbon-based energy sources and much better for their air (and ours) but the capital expense is really high. Look, nobody in Beijing is happy about breathing diesel soup for breakfast.
If you want to reduce China's available capital, you're just going to delay their cleaning up their act. Even the IPCC models count on economic development as a major source of reduction. All the "Scare Numbers" that politicians quote are based on IPCC's worst estimates based on a throttling of economic development.
Economies are dynamic, not static (sorry, Mr. Keynes, your fantasy failed). China has learned the foibles of central-planning - we should not do worse than they did.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The launch of the spacecraft is effectively the start of 'Phase E' (operations) for the instruments ... but there's a lot of things that still have to happen:
They refer to this whole period as "commissioning". They're not always run in order (eg, for the missions to the outer planets, which might take *years* to get to, they try to check on the health of the instruments before they get to the planet). For some instruments, it might take years to validate the data.
There's also typically a press conference with the "first release" of the data, after the first calibration is done, but that's more to do with scientists on the ground than the spacecraft itself.
disclaimer : I work for a NASA center, but I don't deal with spacecraft directly; I just manage the data after it's downlinked & processed.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Who said anything about panic? Anyway, you're using linear extrapolation to estimate future sea level rise, because it gives you results you like. The actual estimates of future sea level rise are far larger than your naive and optimistic guess.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
not in climate but in other topics it has been done before by the government. Just look at the research done by the NIH on marijuana in the 70s, the study showed that marijuana was not harmful. what happened? the study was buried and no more studies were allowed to be done for wuite some time. His theory that if the government doesnt get the results it wants that it would cover it up are not unfounded.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
roughly 99% of scientists who study climate change saying that we have a problem
if you are going to make a claim about something, get the claim right at least. 99% of scientists not NOT believe that there is a problem, no where is that stat ever said except for in blogs and bad reporting.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
The ability to accurately model the details of a system is usually not required to model the average, long term, behaviour of the system.
Rolling dice is a complex chaotic system. Yet despite my complete inability to predict the results of any roll, I'm confident that casinos will make money on craps tables.
Then there's nothing to worry about from CO2 if the oceans are absorbing the heat
The oceans are absorbing the CO2, causing ocean acidification. Nothing to worry about, right?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You might be misunderstanding the difference between short-term forecasts and longterm projections. I know I failed to understand the scientific nuance until recently.
You see, "global average temperatures are going to rise X by 2100" is a projection. It's based on pretty basic thermodynamics (ie. this much carbon increases the greenhouse effect by such-and-such). This science, because it's so basic, is pretty solid.
At the same time "global average temperatures are going to rise by Y by 2025" is a forecast. It's based on computer models that are perpetually being refined to more accurately predict the short-term trend. Most recently, these models were found to be missing el-nino/la-nina cycles which is why they have lagged over the last decade.
This is why people get confused when I tell them the science of global warming is actually extremely basic. It's just thermodynamics, but then they confuse projections with forecasts and wonder why the models haven't accurately predicted the last 10 years. It's the "weather versus climate" debate all over again.
Why do scientists even publish forecasts when they know they are still very much a work in progress? Politics. You see, your local representative couldn't give a damn if your children's children suffer from today's lack of leadership a century from now. So scientists are tasked to find out what the short-term effect will be on the constituency to inform politicians whether or not they might suffer some voter backlash on the issue.
In other words, our children's children are doomed to shell out billions to fix this mess.
i ~ Celebrating Science, Cyberspace, Speculation
Of course they have but the point is that CO2 emissions have been constantly high over that period, which should have accelerated the trend line upward way more than it has.
The NOAA source I linked can tell us that the 1990-2014 trend has been a rise of 0.14 C per decade, and that 2013 was already 0.78 C above the 1880 pre-industrial level. A simple linear extrapolation gives us a temperature of (2100-2014)*0.014 + 0.62 - (-0.16) = 2.0 C in the year 2100, coincidentally the same 2 C used as the critical limit beyond which global warming will have alarming consequences.
Some may contend that the 2000-2014 trend has been a rise of only 0.04 C per decade, to which I'll note that the 2012-2013 trend was a rise of 0.47 C per decade. Unsurprisingly, short periods make for bad statistics. But when you pick a longer period - whether you go back to 1990, 1980, 1970 or even 1960 - you consistently get ~ 0.14 C per decade.
(Please substitute "degrees celsius" for C above, since Slashdot apparently supports neither Unicode nor even Latin 1...)
Thank you for the work. I worked on Mars Global Surveyor and Suspect that I had the same feeling when we lost MGS
And yeah, when OCS's shroud failed to release, I was miffed, but far more miffed when they got the next contract for OCO2. Thank god that it was turned over to ULA. Oddly, not sure if you have noticed, but 100% of OCS's failures were earth sats. That has always struck me as interesting.
But, I suspect that when the initial batch of numbers come from OCO2, that it is going to drive a lot of politicians crazy. We continue to focus just on America, when I THINK that we contribute only about 13-15% of total. The idea that so many focus on stopping America, while ignoring China and their constant growth in CO2 is just amazing to me. In fact, it is scary. There is a real lack of logic by both the far right and left WRT to this issue and others like it.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
coincidentally the same 2 C used as the critical limit beyond which global warming will have alarming consequences.
Why, when that is still far less warm than it has been in the past?
The danger of CO2 was always advertised as runaway warming, with a feedback loop of warming that could not be ended - not a slow linear ramp up of just 2C over 100 years.
That amount of increase still does not show any reason to worry about CO2 emissions. If there were something to worry about it would be because of an exponential increase, not a simple linear increase that could just as easily be natural climate variability as CO2.
As you say the trend has been constantly 0.14C /decade, even as CO2 emissions have increased. Again it's pretty obvious that CO2 is not factoring much into that warming.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No, China is NOT moving as fast as possible. They could stop producing new coal plants and buy nuke plants that are produced in America. However, that is EXACTLY what they are avoiding. Chinese leaders do NOT care about the lead, mercury, CO2, etc that they dump into the air and water. What they care about is holding on to power, while winning the cold war that they have with the west.
China claimed that they were going to spend 100's of billions on doing Solar and Wind for China, BUT, for the amount that they put in, the Chinese gov would have been paying 10x what America paid for our solar/wind. Basically, that money went not into developing China's AE programs, but about destroying companies in Germany, Japan, and America.
We NEVER should have given them a single thing about thorium plants. That will come back to haunt us.
And as to the Chinese economics, they are still a centrally planned system. The only parts that are really free market are companies that export to the west. However, to work there, you have to have gov. permission. Otherwise, the gov still tells you where you will work and what you will earn.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That EPA article is scaremongering published before the IPCC (you know, the INTERNATIONAL panel on climate instead of just the U.S.) revised estimates significantly downwards...
If there's no need to panic then why care about CO2 emissions? We should instead be focused on REAL pollution.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yes, yes it is required. You must understand every aspect of the system if you want to make predictions of a real=world system by modelling it. The analogy would be you trying to make predictions thinking a dice has 6 faces when in fact the real dice has 13. Kind-of screws up your crap tables doesn't it.
By implication you are suggesting that the evidence for gravity existing is the same as the evidence that the AGW hypothesis is correct? Really? And what implications are there apart from that Al Gore earning £100m, taxes needing to rise and scientific institutions being handed billions of dollars to "study" it? Who is studying the positive effects of a warmer climate? Anyone? Why is that I wonder...
Can't you understand this basic argument? What are the incentives here? Are climate scientists and institutions incentivised to support the hypothesis or not? And if they are (which of course they are), how is that any different to oil companies being incentivised against it? Is there another planet somewhere where the climate scientists are robots with absolutely no interest in their careers, tenure, professorships and the various career development opportunities that may be contingent on their ability to publish and attract grant funding to their institutions?
Science is corrupt. It progresses one funeral at a time.
I suppose you think that NASA can bend objective reality to their will as well. In science, particularly a physical science like climate you can maybe get away with fudging things for a little while but sooner or later (usually sooner) objective reality will destroy your fudging.
He said "scientist who study climate change". You can't find even 5% of that group that says there is no problem
In 1896 Svante Arrhenius said "if the quantity of carbonic acid [CO2] increases in geometric progression, the augmentation of the temperature will increase nearly in arithmetic progression." Expressed as a formula (and working with Slashdot's font limitations) that is:
(delta)Temperature=(alpha)Ln(C/C(subzero))
Where (alpha) is a constant between 5 and 7 and C is the concentration of CO2 and C(subzero) is the original concentration. That relation still holds and can be verified in the laboratory. In the atmosphere there are complications from interactions with other factors which is what models help us explore but the basic relationship between CO2 concentrations and temperature still exists.
You seem to be confusing science and politics. You'd do well to ignore the politics and look at the science.
Who is studying the positive effects of a warmer climate?
That sounds rather unscientific. Surely one should study the effects of a warmer climate, not bias onesself to positive and negative.
But anyway why are your fishing for these red herrings? The effects on people has nothing to do with climate science. Climate scientists don't stufy the positive or negative effects, because they're too busy figuring out how the climate will change.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
ou must understand every aspect of the system if you want to make predictions of a real=world system by modelling it.
No you're flat out wrong. We certainly do not understand all aspects of physics. There is no way of unifying quantum mechnics and gravity yet. Yet both complex CPUs and GPS works just fine without understanding "every aspect".
SJW n. One who posts facts.
No, 2mm/year means 16 inches in 200 years.
Or is an inch 50mm where you come from?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Because the climate is a complex system. And because you like to start looking at the year of an El Nino effect, and we're currently in a La Nina period,
Now just because there has been a satellite launched to measure CO2 is no reason for your denialism memes you be repeated once again, you tedious asshole. So fuck off.
Sadly, it will also become controversially once the far left realizes that America is NOT the massive polluter that they claim, but that instead, it will turn out that most of the 3rd world nations are some of the WORST.
You seem to be assuming something that couldn't be measured till now. Maybe you're right and maybe you're wrong. BUT you're probably not even framing the question right. If American companies are contracting 3rd world nations to make products or product components, that are then consumed in America, then that CO2 should rightly be assigned to America, not the 3rd world countries.
That's not "a massive out". That's just rather more sophisticated thinking.
What do you mean by "magic mechanism"? Nothing is happening that is outside of thermodynamics. It is well known that over 90% of the heat of global warming is going into the oceans.
n the basis of that data, I wouldn't bet much on what the temperature will do next. Only a fool would go all in on a prediction of warming, cooling, or stability.
So the warming could in fact be much worse than what the models predict? Talk about your doom and gloom.
It's easy to forget humans are likely responsible for only 25Gtons of the CO2 released, where the natural carbon cycle is about 750Gtons (+- a extra volcano eruptions which are about 40Gtons)... Human contribution is non-negligible, for sure, but natural variations are of the same scale.
Lately human caused emissions of CO2 are closer to 35 GT/year and volcanic eruptions are around 0.3 GT/year. When you say natural CO2 emissions are 750 GT/year that's kind of misleading if you don't also mention the ~770 GT/year that are naturally absorbed. That's why for thousands of years before human industrialization the CO2 level was around 280 ppm while the yearly seasonal variation was about 10 ppm.
Actually, with america not able to directly control what a nation does, it is neither fair nor sophisticated. In fact, it is akin to telling a rape victim that s?he owes their rapist for services rendered.
Instead, we should put an increasing tax on all goods based on where the parts come from. In addition, the normalization should be co2 / $GDP. With this approach nations like India which actually has a low emission / $GDP will have a lower to none existent tax, while nations / states such as China, or wyoming , america, will have high tax unless they change their way.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You can throw all of the incentives you want at scientists but in the end they still have to reflect the objective reality they are studying. In the end the value of what they produce will be judged against that and only that.
Giving it a label doesn't mean it exists. Note that climate models don't predict a "temperature escalator". And the graph in question only goes back to 1970 which happens to be a local minimum.
The scientists were about evenly divided on whether they thought the effects of global climate change over the next 50 to 100 years were likely to be near catastrophic (41 percent) or moderately dangerous (44 percent). About 13 percent saw relatively little danger.
While this is a group of knowledgeable outsiders, it's a group of knowledgeable outsiders with somewhat less conflict of interest than those who study "climate change".
Your cited article was from 2008. It would be interesting to see how the results reported by that poll have changed in the ensuing 6 years. The poll was conducted among geologists and meteorologists, most of whom were not directly studying climate so it doesn't really negate my point. And finally 41 percent plus 44 percent means that 85 percent of them thought there will be problems from global warming. I don't know about you but for me in most cases if 85% of scientists agree to some extent about something I'm going to listen.
just like the fact that they cant explain why there has been no warming for the past 17 years??
Still pushing that same old bullshit canard?
Keep modding me troll, deniers. Keep on suppressing discussion. Whatever; you're helping destroy the world.
What has changed in six years aside from a modest amount of backtracking by the IPCC?
Problem is, when I look at your signature, I see one comma too many.
Not that I'm disagreeing with your statements re "skeptics" and "propoganda"
You might want to read the science on that skippy, the claim is that the oceans are ABSORBING HEAT.
This is exactly why the global warming debate is so absurd, the people who claim they are on the science are not using science, but fear and calling that science.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I miscalculated but I thought that was too low, thanks for the correction.
Still not a figure that is hard to deal with, and nothing like the 20-40 feet in a few decades some people are throwing about.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe so although I'd call it refinement rather than backtracking. But you're still left with 85% of the scientists in the survey who consider it moderately dangerous to catastrophic.
You're forgetting that "truth" has a half-life and that group-think dominates the process from bottom to top.
The oceans transfer heat into the atmosphere. The oceans themselves are heated by that yellow-white thing in the sky that seems to get completely ignored here on slashdot. The point remains, the oceans have 1000 time the heat capacity of the atmosphere. So how is it that the atmosphere is warming the oceans? The whole argument is completely ridiculous.
Just so I understand, when you simulate a GPS on a computer or model that CPU on a computer, does the model produce predictions that turn out to be completely wrong? If it does then you have not understood important aspects of the "system".
Because of this I can only conclude you haven't really thought the point through and your arm-waving about Quantum Gravity a somewhat distracting irrelevance.
Just so I understand,
No you don't understand. Your posts are full of red herrings, moving the goalposts and straw men. You then adopt a smug attitude when I did not answer to your satisfaction a question that you never raised.
In the previous post you claimed it was impossible to simulate anything without understand every single aspect of it.
That is demonstrably false and I demonstrated it. I though you were merely ignorant and figured I'd correct you. It turns out you're not ignorant, you're an idiot with a massive agenda.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I referred to "the system", not every single law, field, particle, force and property of every single object in the entire Universe. So I ask you again, in what respect am I wrong?
Let me put it another way as you seem to be having trouble understanding the point: What do I learn if I model a system with my current understanding of its properties and that model fails to reproduce actual observed behaviour in the real world?
Although it is quite a clever piece of polemic, it is at heart just a dumb strawman argument and infers a point of view which is not, nor ever was articulated by any CAGW skeptic that I am aware of.
Well you just made one of the arguments that the graph dispells: "The pause is real and merits an explanation", so presumably you know at least one such person. Case in point one of the many points the graph addresses it easy to choose many different periods and say "there is no trend for this period" and confuse that with "there is no trend". In fact, you can pretty much cover the entire temperature record with cherry-picked periods that show no statistically significant warming despite the obvious historical warming trend when you look at forest and not just the trees.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I referred to "the system", not every single law, field, particle, force and property of every single object in the entire Universe. So I ask you again, in what respect am I wrong?
And the difference is...? Nothing.
No, you simply go the no TRUE scotsman and define the system as "everything required to model global warming but not so big it means I don't have to answer award questions about GPS and relativity".
What do I learn if I model a system with my current understanding of its properties and that model fails to reproduce actual observed behaviour in the real world?
Let me put it another way as you seem to be having trouble understanding the point: stop moving the goal posts. Since you lack the mental capacity to remember, let alone look up your own posts, let me refresh your lousy memory. You said:
Yes, yes it is required. You must understand every aspect of the system if you want to make predictions of a real=world system by modelling it. The analogy would be you trying to make predictions thinking a dice has 6 faces when in fact the real dice has 13. Kind-of screws up your crap tables doesn't it.
See how you mentioned nothing about the point that you allege that I have trouble understanding? Are you really too thick to understand that you are bringing up that point afterwards and it has nothing to do with me tearing down your original argument[*].
So do you now admit your original arfument was fallacious or are you going to continue to misrepresent and lay on the logical fallacies so you can pretent that your utterly unscientific "viewpoint" is not as stupid as it appears to be?
[*] Since you clearly have an agenda to push and won't quit until you've "proven" something, then go ahead. WTF are you talking about. The actual climate trends pretty much matched what was predicted. So after moving the goalposts you still lose.
Maybe you should try your hand at young earth creationism. You might have better luck there.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I see you haven't actually answered my point but instead written a wall of vague flannel. Shocking. So, answer it. If you model something and then compare your model results to actual reality and they're wildly divergent from that reality, what do you conclude?
And before you say it they are wildly divergent. They might look close at first but that's because (and many people don't realise this), they're tuned against past data. Yes, they're trained to match past data. That cannot in any way whatsoever take a current state and hind-cast it with any accuracy (which you might expect a good physical model to be able to do). Worse, much worse, the further forward in time you run them the more they diverge from the initial state they become.
Yes I have an agenda. The agenda is to not be a credulous prick, which you appear to be.
Yes, it's like a bath where the taps are on and providing X litres/s while Y litres/s are going down the plughole. X only needs to be a little bit bigger than Y for the water level to rise.
They've already tried to "explain" the colder temperature due to something about the oceans absorbing gasses.
Hilarious.
What a retard.
So, answer it. If you model something and then compare your model results to actual reality and they're wildly divergent from that reality, what do you conclude?
Climate models are not expected to reproduce short term noisy variation. Therefore you can't conclude anything from comparing short term model outputs with short term measurements.
Going back to the dice analogy, the model is: given N rolls, you expect N/6 sixes. The fact this this does not give accurate results for small N does not allow us to conclude anything.
Increased infra red radiation from the atmosphere heats the ocean's cool skin layer. This reduces the cool skin layer's temperature gradient, thus slowing the rate of heat flow from the ocean. Thus more heat is retained in the ocean and it warms.
Yes, it's like a bath where the taps are on and providing X litres/s while Y litres/s are going down the plughole. X only needs to be a little bit bigger than Y for the water level to rise.
Of course, which is why I also said this...
...but even if somehow we could collectively reduce our carbon footprint to zero (likely impossible), it's likely that some warming is already inevitably started and the only long term solution would be to adapt our planet to sink the additional carbon output we will be producing...
It's not a matter of TRUTH. It's a matter of objective reality. If scientists are deliberately skewing their results it shouldn't be that hard to show they are wrong, yet it hasn't happened.
That's fascinating riverat1. Truly fascinating. What you're talking about is the ideal world of scientific inquiry and publishing in your head, not the corrupt world of scientific inquiry and publishing that exists in the real world.
It fascinating to me that you think that scientists would think they could get away with ignoring objective reality and still maintain their credibility.
I see you haven't actually answered my point but instead
I did answer your point. You're a liar anf a fraud and keep pretending that you did not make the point you did in fact make.
I then went on to counter the point you kept pretending you first made and you claim I didn't say anything. So, not only are you a liar and a fraud, you are also stupid and cannot read. Quite a winning combination there, bucko.
That cannot in any way whatsoever take a current state and hind-cast it with any accuracy
[citation needed]
Yes I have an agenda. The agenda is to not be a credulous prick, which you appear to be.
Well you failed utterly. You bought into the tea-party-oil-company-funded-denialist patter hook line and sinker. You're also a prick because you keep trying to misrepresent yourself and me. So well done on failing on both points.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
either way even with that number 85% != 99%
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
In fact, it is akin to telling a rape victim that s?he owes their rapist for services rendered.
Huh? Consumers are choosing to consume. The companies that outsource to other countries are doing so knowingly. Increased CO2 is an inevitable outcome. How is that in any way like rape?
Instead, we should put an increasing tax on all goods based on where the parts come from. In addition, the normalization should be co2 / $GDP.
So richer countries are allowed to pollute more than poorer countries? How very unfair.
Again you've not managed to answer the point I'm making about modelling here. I don't think you really understand what they are or how they work, do you? It's a shame you can have such a strong opinion about something of which you know so little.
The pause is a real physical phenomena which the climatology community is now trying to explain, this is now broadly accepted and is not a fringe skeptic position as you seem to insist on trying to frame it. Even in IPCC AR5 Report deals with it. WG1 Chapter 9 for example: "Box 9.2: Climate Models and the Hiatus in Global Mean Surface Warming of the past 15 years". Download it and read it for yourself. This section in the report posits a number of broad explanations, statistical artefact is not one of them.
Let me elaborate further on why the SKS graph is a strawman, I assumed my initial comment would be obvious and sufficient. Anyway it is because most cogent skeptics do not dispute that the world was warmed in the 20th century, that warming post 1970 was quite pronounced and that co2 does have a warming effect; these observations are not controversial. The SKS graph implies that skeptics wilfully ignore the observed warming. It is a stupid lie vigorously repudiated, and by virtue of this that SKS continue to publish it makes them wilful liars, wilfully misrepresenting the point of view of their detractors.
I did, for the third time answer the point. You're too stupid to be able to read it. Makes sense you're a denialist seing as you cannot read or think independently.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
In the poll that came up with 85% only 41% of the scientists polled had ever published anything on climate so it makes sense that they wouldn't get the same results as polling only climate scientists.
Mostly the atmosphere does not warm the oceans (although under some conditions there can be heat transfer to the oceans from the atmosphere). But the atmosphere can affect the rate at which the oceans lose heat which affects how much heat they retain.
Let me elaborate further on why the SKS graph is a strawman, I assumed my initial comment would be obvious and sufficient. Anyway it is because most cogent skeptics do not dispute that the world was warmed in the 20th century, that warming post 1970 was quite pronounced and that co2 does have a warming effect; these observations are not controversial. The SKS graph implies that skeptics wilfully ignore the observed warming. It is a stupid lie vigorously repudiated, and by virtue of this that SKS continue to publish it makes them wilful liars, wilfully misrepresenting the point of view of their detractors.
Methinks thou dost protest too much.
Seriously, there are, in fact, many "skeptics", cogent or otherwise who dispute that the world has warmed and that CO2 does have a warming effect. For example, Jane Q. Public is a good example of self-professed skeptic on Slashdot who apparently does not believe that CO2 has a warming effect. She has several times posted "proof" that the greenhouse effect can not exist. And she is not alone, I've replied to dozens of posts from many different posters on Slashdot who claimed for various reasons that global warming does not exist. I really couldn't tell you how many more I've read and not responded but it's probably in the hundreds.
The SKS graph does not imply that "skeptics" wilfully ignore the observed warming, it simply shows why "the pause" doesn't matter in the big picture. It's happened before and will happen again, and the underlying trend continues. Frankly, you don't seem to understand that you are doing exactly what that graphs shows is wrong.
Frankly, the argument that the IPCC report deals with "the Hiatus" makes is significant is a non-starter. The IPCC report deals with because it deals with practically everything related to climate change and endless talking heads in the media have made it a significant issue which had to be addressed. To quote from the box you referenced:
and
and
So yes, the slowdown is real and sure, it should be explained, and not surprisingly, it already has been. The point you don't seem to understand is that arguments about the slowed warming are nothing but a sideshow. Every time we hit a new high temperature we start a new round of "it hasn't warmed since the last time we broke a record". It's tiresome and pointless. That's what the graph is really about, and why you don't like it. You don't like it because it shows clearly why (at least some of) your arguments are vapid.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Yes, plenty of whacky ideas out there and including some skeptics that think co2 cannot warm the planet, i.e. Sky dragon's. We are united in our belief that such views are almost certainly incorrect.
I guess it is easier to focus on the the fringe argument and try and represent all skeptics as being one and the same than confront lukewarmer arguments, which are becoming increasingly uncomfortable in light of actual observational data.
CAGW predicted rapid and accelerating warming. But the data fails to bear it out, so post-hoc rationalisations are put forth and the capacity of the hypothesis to yield falsifiability tests is shrinking : which urges the question is the development of this hypothesis robust?
Your comment " Every time we hit a new high temperature", is with respect absurd particularly given admonishments about dodgy statistics in this thread and the OP. Temp data is highly variable and auto-correlated. New high records is not special with such data and it cannot be meaningfully interpreted. Previously the message was focus on the trend, but the trend is failing to provide the correct narrative so the focus now is on 'records'. I bet you cannot even meaningfully say how many records would be considered normal and how many would be alarming. An interesting null would be to compare # high temp records against # of low temp records. I actually did that with a subset of data (Australia), last summer. There was only marginally more hi temp records than low temp, and depending on how I processed the data I could actually yield counts of low temp data that was higher, yet headlines were along lines of: OMG! So many hi temperature records! Counting records are meaningless in any sort of objective qualitative analysis, and only counting one type of record with such data is just all sorts of wrong.
The danger of CO2 was always advertised as runaway warming, with a feedback loop of warming that could not be ended - not a slow linear ramp up of just 2C over 100 years.
That may be what some people say is the issue, but as far as I understand it, the mainstream science concern is not run away warming that renders the planet unliveable. That's actually considered fairly unlikely in the near-term scenarios. The actual major areas for concern are rising seas, ecosystem disruption, droughts, wildfires, floods, augmented storms and storm damage, heat-related illness and disease, and economic losses.
From what I've read about it, of particular note is that at around +4 degrees Celcius most of our staple food crops likely won't grow very well without extensive genetic modification. I don't understand the details very well, but I think there's an issue with heat stress and the way leaves work. As I understand it, at +4C the photosynthesis process in regular leaves is significantly impaired. Apparently, when the world came down from that temperature there was a massive die off of vegetation, somewhere around 90% of the flora died off, quickly followed by over 90% of the fauna. It's one of the great extinction events. I'm pretty sure that we really don't want to see the same thing happen to our crops and livestock on the way up.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
CAGW predicted rapid and accelerating warming. But the data fails to bear it out, so post-hoc rationalisations are put forth and the capacity of the hypothesis to yield falsifiability tests is shrinking : which urges the question is the development of this hypothesis robust?
Speaking of fallacies, the use of CAGW is generally associated with a strawman, goalpost moving or loaded language fallacies, depending on context. It's use is rarely associated with honest debate because there is no actual definition for CAGW.
CO2 emission records are actually what predicts accelerating warming, if C02 is a greenhouse gas and we increase the rate at which we're releasing CO2 into the air, we increase the speed at which the planet warms. And rapid is at best a relative term when applied to changes that are far too slow for human senses to observe.
Your comment " Every time we hit a new high temperature", is with respect absurd particularly given admonishments about dodgy statistics in this thread and the OP.
My comment was about the cyclical nature of some "skeptic" arguments. There is always a previous record high which we almost always below, thus the argument can always be made that there has been "no warming" for some time period. The argument goes out of style for a bit after a new record high has been set, but give it a year or two and it comes back into fashion until the next record high is set. The comment had nothing to do with presenting actual evidence of global warming.
An interesting null would be to compare # high temp records against # of low temp records.
It is interesting and has been done. According to that paper, the split for 2001-2011 temperature anomalies was about 85% high to 15% low. According to Skeptical Science, the records were split 67% high to 33% low over 1999-2009.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Speaking of fallacies, the use of CAGW is generally associated with a strawman, goalpost moving or loaded language fallacies, depending on context.
Nice try, but no. CAGW = Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming and it describes the point of view of alarmism on climate quite well. When public narrative out there uses terms like 'greatest moral challenge of our time', and slogans like 'no jobs on a dead planet', the inference is quite clear : the proponents of such points of view are clearly advocating that a global catastrophe is looming. There is an appalling barefaced hypocrisy in an article that takes um-bridge with the term CAGW, which I assert is not emotive, but factual : AGW that is bad enough to be catastrophic which is a valid hypothesis and a point of view held by many, yet willy-nilly throws the term 'denier' around. Some real class and intellectually meticulous conduct on display there.
My comment was about the cyclical nature of some "skeptic" arguments.
Maybe you can actually reference skeptics how have done this, flip-flopped on data sets, doesn't change the fact that warming is not as much as projected. And you yourself keep changing your argument without explaining why you are abandoning your prior argument, first it was all statistical quackery, then it's not a big deal this slowdown, and now you are trying the 'a good defence is an offence' strategy by asserting skeptics are cyclical and selective in their datasets, when this is exactly what alarmists are doing by abandoning discussion of trends in favour of discussing instances where Tmax records are being set.
It is interesting and has been done.
Yeah that is interesting, the NASA link though is more about how the histogram of anomalies is trending decade to decade, I assume it is yearly or seasonally adjusted anomalies here, not daily Tmin Tmax records, but it shows a growing fat tail anomaly which does support overall higher likelyhood of max temps. SKS link is as trustworthy as SKS always is (as in not at all). My original point is that record counts in a period of a pause after a period of warming is normal outcome for variable highly autocorrelated data. It does not invalidate the observation of a pause. It is actually consistent with it. The concluding point is that counting record events simply isn't a robust mechanism for qualitative analysis. When some skeptics make a big deal out of record winter lows, they are shouted down, and rightly so and they are shouted down by skeptics too. But presumably reporting on Tmax records and saying to paraphrase : "on-noes is the global warming!", is perfectly fine. Presumably. Actually... no.... it isn't okay.
Giving it a label doesn't mean it exists. Note that climate models don't predict a "temperature escalator".
Yes they do.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
that's not a fact.
that's a myth.
it is a myth, or more accurately a LIE, that there has been "no warming" for the past 17 years.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I see. So debunking the most popular myths and misconceptions of the science, using actual science, from actual scientists...is propoganda?
Fraid not. You can't just cover your hears and "lalalalalalalalala" the science away.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
He's not (primariily) an idiot, he's a troll.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
you didnt debunk anything.
you just linked to another faulty denier site that has itself been proven wrong, and an article that trots out the same "warm period and "little ice age" misconceptions.
Roy Spencer is not a valid source.
Tree ring reliability: ( http://www.skepticalscience.co... ):
The divergence problem is a physical phenomenon - tree growth has slowed or declined in the last few decades, mostly in high northern latitudes. The divergence problem is unprecedented, unique to the last few decades, indicating its cause may be anthropogenic. The cause is likely to be a combination of local and global factors such as warming-induced drought and global dimming. Tree-ring proxy reconstructions are reliable before 1960, tracking closely with the instrumental record and other independent proxies.
Medieval Warm Period: ( http://www.skepticalscience.co... ) AND ( http://www.skepticalscience.co... ):
The Medieval Warm Period predominantly affected the North Atlantic and Europe, not the whole world. While the Medieval Warm Period saw unusually warm temperatures in some regions, globally the planet was cooler than current conditions.
The Little Ice Age: ( http://www.skepticalscience.co... ) AND ( http://www.skepticalscience.co... ):
The sceptical argument that current warming is a continuation of the same warming that ended the LIA is unlikely. There is a lack of evidence for a suitable forcing (e.g. the sun) and numerous correlations with known natural forcings that can account for the LIA itself, and the subsequent climate recovery. Taken in isolation, the LIA might cast doubt on the theory of climate change. Considered alongside the empirical evidence, model predictions and a century of scientific research into the climate, recovery from the LIA is not a plausible theory to explain the observed evidence and rate of global climate change.
As for Roy Spencer himself: ...a conspiracy involving tens of thousands of scientists, and perfect secrecy...
-He believes in the "global scientific conspiracy"
-He believes that they lie to make money off research grants" myths....cause theres just so much money to be made that way...as opposed to being on the payroll of a big oil company, like him.
-Oh, and he also believes that GW cant be happening....because God.
So ya...that's a "wonderful" source you have there.
http://www.desmogblog.com/roy-...
http://www.desmogblog.com/2014...
http://thinkprogress.org/clima...
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/R...
http://www.sourcewatch.org/ind...
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
dear god, you keep saying the exact opposite of reality. each and every time this topic comes up.
the models do in fact predict both previously observations, and as each new set of observations come in, they have continued to fall within the predictions.
the graphs go back far further than that, and no, 1970 was not some local minimum.
one would almost think that you're not simply a troll, but a professional troll.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
they've infested slashdot.
they talk about the evils and conspiracys of science, proclaim trusting experts isnt valid, that non-experts have equally valid opinions...and when you point out the problems, or how they ignore reality and history, and how the gilded age wasnt a utopia, or talk about actual science and actual observations...they mod you as troll and flamebait.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
so you're pushing the old "rich scientists" myth?
You know its BS right?
As in false, made up, not true?
In fact, it's actually a projection, because the REAL money to be made in global warming is in DENYING it.
Well you should.
Come back to reality.
It's not just more rational, it's nicer over here too.
And we have cookies.
To sum up: climate research doesn't pay well, the amount of money dedicated to it has been shrinking, and if the researchers were successful in convincing the public that climate change was a serious threat, the response would be to give money to someone else. If you come across someone arguing that scientists are in it for the money, then you can probably assume they are willing to make arguments without getting their facts straight.
http://arstechnica.com/science...
http://www.scientificamerican....
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
you keep saying the exact opposite of reality
I'm not the one confusing unsubstantiated computer models with reality.
and no, 1970 was not some local minimum
I looked before I posted.
Nice try, but no. CAGW = Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming and it describes the point of view of alarmism on climate quite well.
There is no formal definition of what CAGW is, you could even stick to one definition for a single sentence, you used two very different examples of what it supposedly means. All in all, it's useful rhetorical trickery used to make sure you never have to deal honestly with people you disagree with. You always just one goalpost shift away from continuing the argument.
When public narrative out there uses terms like 'greatest moral challenge of our time',
Dealing with AGW may, in fact, be the "greatest moral challenge of our time" but that has nothing to do with your argument. It's a moral question of doing nothing now so we benefit at the cost of our inheritors, or take minor inconvenient actions now and pass the savings on to those who come after us. The cost of dealing with AGW adaptation and mitigation rises the more we delay on taking action. In addition, the atmosphere is a global commons, and dumping CO2 into it is a mostly invisible action. Can the world work together to achieve a universally beneficial goal when it's so easy to cheat the system?
You are free of course to disagree with that assessment, but my simply point is that phrase "greatest moral challenge of our time" does not need to imply that there a catastrophe lurking around the corner, perhaps you have confused it with "greatest mortal challenge of our time" which would indeed imply an incoming catastrophe.
and slogans like 'no jobs on a dead planet',
On the other hand "no jobs on a dead planet" is a union slogan, and slogans are often hyperbolic. It is a catchy phrase that clearly communicates the point that job concerns and environmental concerns are not mutually exclusive. It is possible that I am projecting my own views onto such groups, but until you mentioned it, I had never heard that particular slogan before.
Maybe you can actually reference skeptics how have done this, flip-flopped on data sets, doesn't change the fact that warming is not as much as projected. And you yourself keep changing your argument without explaining why you are abandoning your prior argument, first it was all statistical quackery, then it's not a big deal this slowdown, and now you are trying the 'a good defence is an offence' strategy by asserting skeptics are cyclical and selective in their datasets, when this is exactly what alarmists are doing by abandoning discussion of trends in favour of discussing instances where Tmax records are being set.
I have not changed or abandoned any of my previous arguments. It is statistical quackery, while atmospheric temperatures are rising slower than projected, those slower periods are common and expected. The quackery is in pretending that this is new and unprecedented and in choosing start and end dates to exaggerate the length of the period. Furthermore, the escalator graph clearly shows how if you followed the behaviour of these self-proclaimed skeptics you could always claim we are in a slow warming, no warming or cooling trend even while the temperature steadily rises. This is expected because the data is noisy and not monotonic. In every non-record year there is a previous higher record year, the slope from that year to any year except the next record setting year will always be below 0. This is simple mathematics and it is critically important to understanding how you are being manipulated. The current "no warming" rhetoric which you occasionally use is no different from the obviously incorrect use that could have been applied to any similar period in the past. Maybe you haven't been following my arguments as closely as you think you have?
Yeah that is interesting, the NASA link though is more about how the histogram of anomalies is trending decade to decade, I assume it is yearly o
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Right now, most of the world's CO2 emissions numbers are based on what gov claim that their nation consumed in coal, oil, and nat gas. Yet, it does not take into account issues such as inefficiencies, etc. Most of the numbers dealing with 3rd world and even some of the western nations are really wrong.
Well, no.
The emissions numbers are based on two powerful mathematical and physical principles known as "double entry bookeeping" and "consevation of mass-energy". Any "inefficiencies" would result in the emission of less CO2
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Wouldn't it be easier just to die and fertilise them directly - CO2 is rarely the limiting factor.
Watch this Heartland Institute video