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Study Links Pacific Coastal Warming To Changing Winds
tranquilidad writes: In a paper published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, two authors ascribe the majority of northeast pacific coastal warming to natural atmospheric circulation and not to anthropogenic forcing. In AP's reporting, Ken Caldeira, an atmospheric scientist with the Carnegie Institution for Science, says the paper's authors, "...have not established the causes of these atmospheric pressure variations. Thus, claims that the observed temperature increases are due primarily to 'natural' processes are suspect and premature, at best." The paper's authors, on the other hand, state, "...clearly, there are other factors stronger than the greenhouse forcing that is affecting...temperatures," and that there is a "surprising degree to which the winds can explain all the wiggles in the temperature curve."
What really need are some big fans to increase coastal winds and cool off the world. I recommend them in large quantities. We'll call them fan farms. Maybe power them from those reverse fan farms that generate electricity and drain our global wind supply causing global warming!
That's an interesting thought process... "some warming is natural" means "no warming is artificial." It's like claiming at your murder trial that someone's death was natural, so therefore humans can't cause other humans to die. Talk about grasping at straws!
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
"Clearly" means "I have no evidence for this, but it's plausible".
What is *really* so bad about global warming? The majority of the world's population lives in warm climates, while the rest of us face like 9+ months of cold miserable weather and unable to grow food. The worst that could happen, maybe we lose California and gain Alaska. I won't complain, especially if there is beach-front property here in the central US :D Call me selfish if you want, but I for one, welcome as much global warmth as I can get!
Surely they know better than to not yield before the awesome explanatory power of AGW; which succinctly explains every possible and conceivable observation. I am relieved that more learned people than them are quick to point out that those causes have in turn their own causes and those causes are almost certainly where AGW manifests.
This is apostasy and can only be punished by academic death. They will never get a grant in this town, again!
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
You're aware that changing wind patterns still don't mean squat for the global thermal energy balance? The winds are just moving the heat around a bit.
Ezekiel 23:20
You're right of course, it's terribly flawed logic. Just as flawed as the logic in "The greenhouse effect is demonstrable in a test tube, therefore it is the primary factor directly controlling the temperature of Earth."
Real scientists don't make such simplistic and unjustified steps in their logic. Unfortunately, because real scientists remain silent when they don't have verifiable mathematics and experiment to back a theory, we only get to hear the charlatans for whom contributory data is equivalent to understanding the whole thing.
Denier: anyone who does not agree that the earth's climate is being significantly warmed by the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration.
... Underscores the real problem here. This is far too politicized to be judged scientifically anymore. There are very few open minds left and those few that are open are not listened to by anyone.
Consider for the sake of argument if everything you know about this issue is wrong. Just for the sake of argument. Now reexamine these little niche issues one at a time to see if they have anything interesting to say WHILE in that frame of mind.
This is something I do every time I get new information. I take all my opinions, convictions, and beliefs... and I put them in neutral. Then I read it all IN that frame of mind. Often I will be reading something that contradicts my previous understanding. And unless I kept that frame of mind I would probably prejudge and discount it without properly considering it.
Everyone does this from time to time. The best scientists in the world have been caught doing this occasionally. You never stop being human.
What is so distressing about AGW for me is that we're all so polarized on the issue that we can't even talk about it anymore without breaking into our little factional camps can calling each other names.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
People questioning Global Warming — and the humans' responsibility for it — are traitors and war-criminals, contemptible human beings, who ought to be punished.
Science is settled! People demand show trials NOW!!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
no.
They have shown that a local effect, pacific northwest, might have had a bigger impact on local winds. The fact tat ther wind changes can be do yo e;levate GLOBAL energy trapping isn't addressed in any clear way.
The fact that they used global model and tried to apply them to a local event is suspect.
No matter, it's one study. Lets see follow up.
NOTHING in the study refutes the fact that the lower atmosphere of the earth is warming do to excess CO2 trapping energy.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
AGW is a self-correcting problem.
It's like claiming at your murder trial that someone's death was natural, so therefore humans can't cause other humans to die.
While this isn't a bad way to put the Denialist reaction to this paper, it is worth pointing out that these guys have done more than produce one number: they have also produced predictions for regional variation that a) match the data and b) can't be replicated by a global forcing model. Since a critical component of the evidence for ACC is the regional variation of the predicted warming, this should at least give one pause.
Of course, letting it give one pause would be a disaster for members of the Warmist religion, whose mantra "The Science Is Settled" implies that any modification to the conclusion "almost all warming observed everywhere is the result of ACC" is equivalent to "the Denialists were right after all!"
This is nonsense, of course: the Denialists are wrong. Doubling the CO2 levels in the Earth's atmosphere are almost certainly increasing the effective insolation by about 1.6 W/m^2, which will likely have appreciable consequences on the climate.
However, how those consequences work themselves out is an extremely uncertain business, and no competent computational physicist puts nearly the trust in our unphysical climate models that Warmists do. This paper is a good example of how science (as opposed to politics and religion, which is what most of the public debate about ACC amounts to) works: they have squeezed a plausible hypothesis (that regional changes around the Pacific are explicable by global forcing) and found it questionable.
I expect we'll see a lot of work in the next decade on the interaction of natural variations and anthropogenic forcings, with Warmists continually playing a game of catch-up and Denialists continually repeating that the manifest uncertainty in our conclusions proves that "humans can't possibly have doubled the CO2 level" (or something like that... why Denialists believe humans can't have a global impact is beyond me.)
This is the damage to science done by Warmists: by claiming something that is not just false but actively anti-science ("the science is settled") they have encouraged their equally ignorant opponents to disbelieve science when it is working exactly as one would like it to.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
You're right of course, it's terribly flawed logic. Just as flawed as the logic in "The greenhouse effect is demonstrable in a test tube, therefore it is the primary factor directly controlling the temperature of Earth."
No one says the greenhouse effect is the primary factor controlling the temperature of the Earth. It is, however, a significant factor. Have you ever done the black body radiation calculation for the temperature of the Earth given the radiation from the Sun? It significantly undershoots the actual mean temperature of the Earth even if you account for heat due to radioactive decay and residual primordial heat from the formation of the Earth. The greenhouse effect is necessary to explain the current surface temperature. It would be about 255 K without it.
To think that people could have any measureable affect on a natural system as large as the entire earth is ludicrous.
Why do you think it would not be measurable?
Non-solar and non-solar derived human energy use is about 400 Quads/yr (about 12 TW). Total Earth insolation is about 10 PW. We have altered Earth's total energy flux by about 0.1%. It doesn't require cutting-edge methods in other fields to measure differences of that magnitude. Three sigfigs is child's play--literally. That's high-school level lab work.
This is simply showing a new climate driver that has not been factored in before. There is still much to learn. It kind of makes those that claim local extreme weather is a result of GW look silly. At this point, there really is no model that ties weather patterns to GW with any confidence. Certainly there are theories on the long term impacts, but there are great uncertainties involved. Ultimately, with advance GW, wind shifts in a warmer climate could carry more water to presently drier areas, or something totally different could happen. We don't have the models to really know at this point. Ice melt and ocean level changes would seem much easier to model and predict.
The winds are just moving the heat around a bit.
"Moving heat around a bit" has a tremendous impact on global climate. This is why ENSO in the south Pacific is so important: by moving heat around it changes global circulation patterns, which changes the overall energy balance of the Earth. This is why the simple achievement of getting reasonable agreement that anthropogenic CO2 is adding about 1.6 W/m^2 to the Earth's heat budget is such a huge scientific achievement, and while that conclusion is still subject to significant uncertainty: because adding heat changes the winds and currents which themselves influence the radiative balance. There are even (very unlikely) models in which adding sufficient heat causes global cooling due to increased transport of energy to the poles, where it radiates back into space more efficiently.
Climate is a non-linear, strongly coupled system. Treating it as if one could draw simple conclusions dismisses the complexity and difficulty of climate modelling. It also results in underestimating the uncertainties in models.
Any competent computational physicist (me, for example, but other people a lot smarter than me as well: http://online.wsj.com/articles...) will tell you that climate models are far less certain than their public, political proponents are claiming. This does not mean that "global warming is a hoax" or any such Denialist gibberish. It means that models are uncertain, and we should not get bowled over when they are subject to correction, even significant correction.
In the meantime, we can do some pretty universally agreeable things, like shift income and corporate taxes toward carbon taxes. After all, income and corporate taxes apply to something that is basically good--making butt-loads of money--while carbon taxes apply to something basically bad: burning irreplaceable fossil fuels and dumping garbage into the atmosphere. I guess anti-capitalist crusaders might oppose carbon taxes, but I can't think of any other reason to do so. If anyone is really in favour of keeping income and corporate taxes high, do feel free to make your case, though.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
This is just confirmation of what most people knew all along - that human beings don't have anywhere near the kind of impact that the climate nutters claim we do. To think that people could have any measureable affect on a natural system as large as the entire earth is ludicrous. Now we just need to figure out a way to stop pissing away money with study after study showing the affects are random. The gravy train must end.
So are you:
I'm curious.
You are wrong. I am not a climate scientist. Almost all the people here are not climate scientists. However, if 97% of climate scientists around the world agree on something, it tends to sway me into their favor. Arguments to the contrary are always welcome but, from what I've seen, they aren't credible (because they are so easily debunked in ways I can understand). When the community of climate scientists is swayed, those of us with open minds will be swayed, too. Same goes with relativity, evolution, and whatever else. I have an open mind but if the overwhelming majority of the experts in a field agree on something, it gets my attention. It seems that what gets the attention of deniers is only what they want to hear.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
One of the main problems is quantifying the energy in the ocean. The boundary conditions are poorly define, a detailed thermal profile is non-existent, and small changes in water temperature resolve to large changes in air temperature.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
The fact is that the planet is trapping more heat due to more greenhouse gases. The actual manifestations of it may vary with time. But eventually all heat sinks will saturate. And that wont be nice.
STOP IT!
You can't TAX the WIND!!!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Consider for the sake of argument if everything you know about this issue is wrong. Just for the sake of argument. Now reexamine these little niche issues one at a time to see if they have anything interesting to say WHILE in that frame of mind.
This is something I do every time I get new information. I take all my opinions, convictions, and beliefs... and I put them in neutral. Then I read it all IN that frame of mind.
This is such a great idea.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
When the community of climate scientists is swayed, those of us with open minds will be swayed, too
That's not what is meant by being open minded.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
They tell us that
We lost our tails
Evolving up
From little snails
I say it's all
JUST WIND IN SAILS
Are we not men?
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It is my experience that it is the believers that mostly try to not do anything to control the climate, they instead concentrate on efforts that will primarily cripple modern civilization.
Thermal expansion, ocean currents, how the heat uptake/loss changes as the ice melts, salt concentrations, etc.
There are a LOT of variables here that we either have little to no data on or little to no understanding of how it will impact climate. The climate is very complicated. As with another poster I think the climate models are being a bit alarmist in their predictions but the fact is there is so much we don't understand about how it's going to be affected that we'd be remiss if they weren't alarmist because they could be vastly wrong, in the wrong direction! We could find out 20 years down the road that melting the north pole 50% dilutes the salt levels to the point that the ocean currents halt or speedup in some way that dramatically changes climate worldwide (what would happen if the desert band shifted 200 miles toward the poles?). We know almost nothing about the bottom of the ocean and these currents. And that's just one variable. There are dozens that there has been little to no research on.
Maybe it won't be a gradual warming, maybe it will hold for a period as the oceans suck up energy then it will be like a cork popping and within a decade temperatures will jump several degrees (which would be far far more catastrophic than the models are predicting right now). I find global climate change rather scary, adding 1.6watts per m^2 is a tremendous amount of energy and we probably won't know exactly what it does until after we've done it.
The catch 22 is in order to be a climate scientest you have to basically sign on to beleiving in AGW, so it is a bit like saying 97% of Catholic preists believe in god.
There are plenty of people and institutes that are willing to fund research to disprove AGW, so someone with a sufficiently convincing theory could easily have a good career as a climate scientist. So what's the catch 22?
You're just proving my point.
This issue can't be discussed rationally unless you're able to be unbiased for five seconds.
And no... science is not a democracy.
ONE scientist can be right and every single other one on earth can be wrong. Science is not a popularity contest and it is not a democracy. YOU are thinking politically. Science is not politics.
If you can't grasp that then you have no value to any scientific discussion because you don't know what science is in the first place.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
This is far too politicized to be judged scientifically anymore.
The problem is that Warmists have politicized the science almost from the word "go". You can tell this because prominent political organizations like Greenpeace say on the one hand that climate change could be a civilization-ending event, and on the other hand we must not ever even think about using nuclear power to solve it, even though nuclear is the only proven, sustainable, economic and practical alternative to coal (this is even more true since the Japanese demonstrated practical extraction of uranium from sea water.)
Greenpeace says the only acceptable solutions to the problem of ACC are reduced consumption, de-industrialization, and various command-economy initiatives of a kind that would represent a massive expansion of government control. This is not surprising, because Greenpeace is a far-left political organization with no interest in the environment whatsoever (it was founded as a science-based organization, but changed to politics after a few years when some of its leaders recognized that politics was a lot more lucrative.)
So having made "the solution equal to the problem" in the public discourse, Leftist political organizations are now upset that Rightwingnutjobs are denying there is a problem. The rightwingers aren't responding to the science, they are responding to the Left's insistence that if there is a problem, it only has far-left solutions. That's obviously stupid (what the Righties are doing) but hardly surprising. Politics has always been a game of power and opposition, and the Right is taking the role of opposition in this case.
Me, I care primarily about the science, and defending the integrity of science from both sides. I acknowledge ACC is a problem, and I've arranged my life so my carbon footprint is tiny. I work at home in a mild climate, don't drive, almost never fly, etc. I support carbon taxes because the data show pretty clearly they work and have some nice side benefits, like reducing CO2 emissions. By "they work" of course I mean "they work to reduce income taxes and corporate taxes", which surely anyone who isn't some socialist nut-job would be in support of. But I also support the development of nuclear power and research into geo-engineering, because it would be utterly evil to believe we are risking the end of industrial civilization and not be open to all possible solutions.
But because the issue has been politicized since the '80's, I get accused of being a Denialist by Warmist nutjobs. It isn't enough that I agree a) there is a problem and b) support some economically defensible solutions. I have to quack the mantra of "the science is settled" (which it isn't and never can be) and "97% of climate scientists agree!" (which they don't and it's irrelevant) or I'm the enemy.
If Warmists cared about science, they would discuss the science, and reasonable policy alternatives. Instead, they rally people against pipelines and oppose nuclear power and complain that the science has become politicized, to which I say: they have only themselves to blame.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Why must they be a factor in changing weather patterns? Do you have evidence that the numbers of them or the frequency or scale of their eruptions has changed over the past hundred or so years?
That isn't productive either. You can't just say "well those people did it first"... I don't really care.
Both factions can go fuck themselves. No one can have a rational discussion with those two four year olds poking each other, pulling each other's hair, and calling each other names. Its impossible to have a rational discussion on the issue with either group or possibly ANY group because if they are GROUPS they're not being scientists. They're fighting petty political battles at everyone's expense.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
But that's not the way to bet.
Especially if you're not an expert in the field.
have a good career as a climate scientist.
But one has to be ordained as a climate scientist first. Not many of their seminaries are going to graduate non-believers.
Have gnu, will travel.
Burn them at the stake!
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Oh Al gores' been blowing wind up our global skirts for a while.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
97% of anthropologists thought piltdown man was the missing link and he turned out to be a human skull attached to a monkey jaw bone. The real missing link ended up being found by a guy those assholes mocked.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
You are wrong. I am not a climate scientist. Almost all the people here are not climate scientists. However, if 97% of climate scientists [nasa.gov] around the world agree on something, it tends to sway me into their favor.
That again? 72 people. Do you know exactly what it is those 75 people actually agree on?
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
In the meantime, we can do some pretty universally agreeable things, like shift income and corporate taxes toward carbon taxes.
(If by universal, you mean everyone in the EPA and those who plan to profit from hedges on carbon credits: then I might agree.)
But I digress, you said pretty universal, i.e. partially universal, which is pretty much a contradiction.
Any day now, we may find that it is a lie. That's how science works. The proven always has the potential to be disproven.
Why is the word 'global' so hard for people to understand?
Hint: 'coastal' means something different from 'global'.
Answer me one simple question: How do you know one specific scientist is right, and the others are wrong?
Fact is, for any question outside our own fields of knowledge, only those suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect can answer that with any certainty, What may seem obvious to you or I could be completely wrong, if we aren't aware of other evidence, or of all the details and factors and nuances and caveats that underlay any moderately-complex scientific statement. This is why we rely on those who have specialised in that field to make those judgements for us.
Science isn't done by consensus - but correctness is certainly decided that way. In mathematics, your new proof may look bulletproof to you, but it's not accepted as fact until your peers have examined and judged it. A single study won't overturn a whole field of knowledge until it's accepted by the majority in that field. This is an essential aspect of the scientific process, and is crucial for weeding out plausible-sounding studies that turn out, on closer examination, to be wrong.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
And now the 97% consensus have updated their models to include the new data. Prior to that discovery, their assumptions were based on what they previously knew or thought to be true. Once including that new information, their assumptions have been updated and the vast majority now assume differently.
But, most importantly, they are still aware the difference between what they hold as assumptions/beliefs and what has been observationally confirmed.
That and a cursory glance at the main spokesmodels for the pro-AGW crowd ('Litigious' Mann and 'Often Wrong' Al) should be more than enough to at least warrant a consideration that the science and political ramifications are not settled.
There are about 600,000 hits on google scholar to the search phrase "Global Climate Change", excluding patents.
Are you suggesting that Mike wrote them all, and you only know about them because Al Gore has publicized his work?
There are tens of thousands of primarily climate science researchers on the planet. You'll need a *much* broader ad hominem that that.
So the winds are slowing down, are they? What has mankind done that could possibly be responsible for that? Well, we put up lots of wind-turbines to extract energy from the wind...and because of conservation of energy, the winds can't blow as strongly afterwards...and slowly, wind turbines grind our planet's winds to a halt.
Hey, I can dream...
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Since a critical component of the evidence for ACC is the regional variation of the predicted warming, this should at least give one pause.
Really?
When I looked at it, my understanding was that models reproduce the global mean surface temperature very well, but regional climate change is expected to be more affected by systems that originate on scales smaller than the cells of current climate models.
Where do you get this claim that the regional variation is a critical component of the evidence for ACC?
This is why ENSO in the south Pacific is so important: by moving heat around it changes global circulation patterns, which changes the overall energy balance of the Earth.
Not directly. To change the energy balance of the Earth you have to move energy on or off the planet. Not around the oceans.
Most of the research being done in the US at the moment is being done by post-docs.
They're not ordained climate scientists, but many of them get published.
You're going to need a broader reason why all the climate scientists have come to agreement. (I suggest, that's what all the evidence shows).
Clearly you don't know how science works.
Let me expand this a bit because you seem to think science only applies in some situations.
Lets say something is too complicated for the human brain to understand. Simply beyond us as a species. Then lets say scientists study this thing which is beyond us. Can they make up results or half ass it on the basis that they cannot understand it?
No.
See, if you actually valued science you wouldn't just accept what people say because they're experts. That isn't science. That is just the old "appeal to authority" fallacy followed by the just as old "ad verecundiam" which is basically the fallacy that because someone doesn't have certain qualifications their argument is inherently wrong and therefore should just accept whatever someone else says.
Look, you can spout logical fallacies at me all day and they'll never get traction. I know them all. They're mostly done because people are lazy. They think "if I say this, I win, and I don't have to actually defend my position."... Well, you always have to defend your position. If you're not defending your position you are not defending your position. End of story.
Which is fine. No one says you have to argue about this stuff on the internet. But if you want to argue about it then you have to argue about it. No shortcuts.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
"Can" is not equal to "is", or "is likely to be", or even "there's a high probability that" ...
Your confidence in the 3% is not very scientific either. I shudder to think of the p-value at which that gets confirmed!
Why do you think falling temperatures are "best case"? Cold is far more detrimental to biological activity than warm.
And to put things into perspective even more: That 0.0000004 is responsible for all the plant life on the planet. Trying to make numbers feel insignificant is pathetic. Stick to science - leave emotion out of this.
And all their pesky science which backs them up... Compare that to those who think it's bunkum, who at best have niggling doubts, scant criticism, and oft-played shrink-wrapped arguments which have been shown to be nonsense for years, but which still get trotted out as if they're the latest and greatest discoveries of mankind, worthy of Einstein himself.
have a good career as a climate scientist.
But one has to be ordained as a climate scientist first. Not many of their seminaries are going to graduate non-believers.
If you have complaints about the way climate science is evaluated, you will have to be more specific than this. Abstract references to religious institutions are insufficiently clear to discuss and address such complaints.
Has anyone taken into account the number of active underwater volcanoes?
Yes.
Next question?
The catch 22 is in order to be a climate scientest you have to basically sign on to beleiving in AGW, so it is a bit like saying 97% of Catholic preists believe in god.
So Judith Curry is unemployed? John Christy is no longer at UAH? Richard Lindzen was forced to retire?
97% of anthropologists thought piltdown man was the missing link and he turned out to be a human skull attached to a monkey jaw bone. The real missing link ended up being found by a guy those assholes mocked.
Untrue in all particulars.
Almost from the outset, Woodward's reconstruction of the Piltdown fragments was strongly challenged by some researchers. [...] G.S. Miller, for example, observed in 1915 that "deliberate malice could hardly have been more successful than the hazards of deposition in so breaking the fossils as to give free scope to individual judgment in fitting the parts together."
There is, of course, no "real missing link".
Of course, if the Forbes link is too "right wing" for you, you might prefer the get the 97% bubble popped by a left-leaning source
I'd hardly describe Richard Tol as a "left leaning source". Do you think that leftiness is catching? That just by getting published in the Guardian you become a lefty?
Richard Tol disagrees with the 97% figure, but what does he think the real figure is?
The consensus is of course in the high nineties.
So, not 97%, maybe it could be 95%, or 99%.
Spot the scientist that relies on climate grants.
Need Mercedes parts ?
Cool, what state?
And it caused the Artic ice region to melt; that's a fine wind?
Seems to me that a single study, experimental result, etc. can overturn a whole field of knowledge. It's just that the majority of that field will take a while to understand that it's happened.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
It kind of reminds me of the Unicorns invited to Noah's Ark, their comments were pretty much the same.
Maryland's rain tax is a fine monument to, and classic symptom of its lefty/progressive entrenched government monoculture.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
... two four year olds poking each other, pulling each others hair, and calling each other names.
Sounds like the majority of Slashdot discussions to me.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Yeah, and think of all the money being channeled into funding anti-AGW theories. The fact that there's a LOT of special interests and few scientists to spend it on means they actually have a ton of money to throw around.
People are spending millions trying to find a sound scientific basis to deny AGW. If there are credible theories, then the incredible resources available to do those studies should find it. And it's unlikely such a theory would consume all the resources, so it's possible to repeat the tests over and over again and come up with results that are convincing.
Interests are such that if you're anti-AGW, grant money should be basically turning on a tap. And if the people really cared, it can be repeated over and over again for a number of years to prove the theory correct.
Money available for AGW - a lot, but spread over lots of people.
Money available for anti-AGW - a lot, but spread over less people and thus more resources to spend.
Really? So, you'll be vacationing on Venus.....
As opposed to the money we piss away on corporate subsidies - hint, it's more than we spend on climate research.
point
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
Did you just get modded insightful for basically saying "some people have different opinions so let's sit down and listen to them all"? Do you think that would have worked with the moon landings? You could have sat all day listening to people discussing how terrified they were of setting the cheese on fire or you could launch a fucking rocket and go there because that's what the scientists say is right. Which technique will prove more successful?
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Straw man argument. Venus atmosphere is 90% CO2 and it's much closer to the Sun than the Earth.
If you have complaints about the way climate science is evaluated, you will have to be more specific than this.
I first heard of Johnstone and Mantua's study on NPR. The overarching response from other climate scientists was 'This is wrong since it doesn't support current dogma'. Not 'Gee, we had better look at adding wind data to our ocean temperature models'.
That something as critical as wind velocities effect on ocean evaporation and heat transfer have not been considered suggests to me that these climate models are nowhere near complete enough to provide any useful predictions.
It's back to the drawing board, folks.
Have gnu, will travel.
That is the plan. We can not have modern civilization without fossil fuels. If you look for any plan to continue without them all you can find are some vague suggestions about solar panels, conservation and maybe composting and organic farms. Great for a few hundred million healthy people. What are the other seven billion going to do?
I can't say why I have been modded up or down. It is often puzzling why it goes one way or the other.
That said, I would like to think that I was modded up because some people agreed with my statement that this whole AGW issue has been turned into a childish over politicized hissy fit between the two primary political factions.
And as such that it doesn't really have anything to do with science anymore despite the protestations of both factions to the contrary.
I'm not going to get into the misdeeds of one faction or the other because that just causes the partisans to get defensive which turns their brains off. You say X side did Y... and invariably X will say that Y was totally justified even though if the alternative side did Y it would be the worst thing ever.
It is stupid and I'm tired of idiot partisans bringing their mindless "yes he did/no he didn't" bullshit into every discussion.
Are there real issues here that can be scientifically examined? Absolutely. But it became totally impossible to do that the instant BOTH sides politicized the issue. Here some idiot partisan is going to say "but the other side did it first." First... that justifies nothing. And second it doesn't matter at that point. The point is not to be morally superior to your rival. I don't care which of you fuckwits started it. What matters is that it happened and there are consequences. It is like nuking a city... does it matter to the people living in the city who fired the nuke? Not really... they're extra crispy. And that's what happened. This argument has been under constant bombardment for years. And at this point even the partisans are so bored with it that they just reflexively gainsay the opposition without even bothering to listen to anything they have to say on the issue.
That means discourse is officially impossible... until the partisans get given some apple juice boxes and take a nap like good little 4 year olds. Short of that... madness is all you're going to get out of this issue.
There is real science here and I would love to discuss it... but I can't because the political morons pollute every discussion on this issue trying to turn it to their political favor rather then just understand it.
Disagree? Should we just skip right to the bit where we call each other terrible names and move on?
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It doesn't matter who is spending money either.
The most evil, corrupt, and stupid person on earth could say something that was scientifically correct and the most good, honorable, and intelligent person on earth could say something that was scientifically invalid.
Science is not about moral virtue. Saying "the evil oil companies did X" is fucking irrelevant if you're talking about SCIENCE. If you care about POLITICS which is quite clearly your primary concern... then of course the actions of your political rivals is something you need to watch. However, science is not politics. It doesn't matter who says it.
Consider if you will the fucking Nazis... you know them? Killed millions of people... tried to take over the world... terrible taste in mustaches? Yeah, well, they were pretty good scientists and engineers weren't they? So what does that tell you? It tells you that you can be a complete scumbag and be a great scientist at the same time.
Morality, ethics, and politics do not make science good or bad. Science isn't an ideology or a belief system. It is a tool.
Science is like a gun... or a pencil... or a fork. Any group of people can use it so long as they know how to use it. With the gun... you know that the bullets come out of the tube and generally you want to point it at the people you want to make holes in. And so on.
So really, I don't care who is paying whom. It doesn't matter. There is no logical reason to conclude that the evil oil companies are wrong sans an argument that invalidates their argument scientifically. Now if you have that... then fine. But that argument won't be based on whether the oil companies made the argument or whether they were evil. That is at best ad hominem.
The oil companies you would have to admit are very technically proficient. They do a lot of very impressive things on a regular basis that are the envy of nations and other industries. Some of their deep sea extractions are about as complex space programs. Seriously look at some of it. They have guys in pressurized apartments for weeks. They go below the ocean in what look like space suits... and weld pipes in conditions as hostile as anything you'll find in orbit. And is there any public fan fare over that? No. That's what the petro chemical industry likes to call Tuesday.
These are not stupid people. Now you want to claim they're lying? Fine... prove that. But short of that you're just making political arguments.
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All of it what you say is true though the blade cuts both ways.
Are you willing to impale yourself on that blade? I am... the price will be that neither of can say what is going on definitively. Which means more study and examination.
Which from my stand point is fine.
Checkmate. *yawns and walks away*
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Sure, my side is all about science... it is that other side that isn't scientific!
*yawn*... both sides are massively politicized at this point. The only people that don't know that are the deluded.
Both sides have senators yelling at each other. Both sides are arguing their bullcrap in the united nations. Both sides are throwing little protest marches. Both sides are releasing books and movies and giving people stickers.
This is a media campaign, sport. It stopped being science around the same time Al Gore stood up and decided to make a political cause out if it. On that day... it became politics.
Just like all the other stupid political fights we have in this country... about birth control or schools or the fucking budget. Science isn't on your side or the other side. Science doesn't take fucking sides. Science doesn't have your back. Science is a process. A methodology. A means. It isn't a fucking ideology and it doesn't bless one side or the other like some fucking made up god in some fucking holy war against some fucking evil enemy.
I swear to god... why is my society filled with barbarian fuckwits? I'd very much like to have my peers be men and women of reason and not just another sad collection of tribalistic superstitious fanatics that listen to the mumblings of their various witch doctors, get high on the local boiled weed of choice, paint themselves blue/red, then run naked at the opposing tribe screaming.
And whilst all this is happening... the fucking morons say "but science is on our side."... which doesn't mean what it sounds like... what they mean is "the heavens are with us"... the spirits... the gods... the fucking tooth fairies.
If you actually knew what science was in the first place... and you clearly don't... then you'd know that science is the process evaluation and if you wish to honor that process... you actually have to do it. Not just support a side that says they're with science, paint yourself the tribal color, and attack.
seriously, dude... you want to get scientific? Because its going to involve putting down the pointy stick, washing that shit off your face, and actually talking about this like rational people. Short of that... I have more then enough frothing fanatics to hide behind. I don't need to fight you. Fuck it... I'll make some sandwiches and enjoy the show from the sidelines. I can giggle as you crack each other's skulls open in one pointless clusterfuck after another.
If you want to actually accomplish something. I you want to be more then a pawn in someone else's political game... you need to stop being a tool. The politicians don't care about the environment. They want to win their political fights because they want to win them. Right or wrong. They don't care. They want to win because winning is power. And you are more meat for their shield wall. Nothing more.
I do not say any of this to support one side or the other. They're both contemptible. And until you grasp that you're just going to be a pawn. I refuse to be a pawn. And the only way to do that is to fucking walk off the chess board and do something more useful.
Can you do that? Or are you going to tell me again "but the other side started it" or "they don't follow science but we do."... or other assorted nonsense?
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natural winds that yield a higher temperature do to Global Warming... The temperature in my fridge is very low, yet we are not in the ice age yet.
-- 29A the number of the Beast
And Mercury is much closer to the Sun than Venus, and yet is much cooler because it has no CO2 atmosphere trapping the heat.
Observed atmospheric CO2 concentrations are increasing in line with our easily-calculated CO2 emissions, and we understand pretty well how much solar energy retention each additional unit of CO2 causes, and it works out to be that the CO2 from burning one gallon of gasoline will capture roughly one million times as much solar energy as was released by burning the fuel during it's time in our atmosphere. We're currently globally consuming about 450exajoules of fossil-fuel sourced energy per year - call it 1000exajoules to account for the horrible efficiency of combustion engines (and to make the math easier) So that translates to adding (on a delayed fuse) roughly 1,000,000,000 EJ of solar heating to the planet every year.
To put that in perspective the "Little Boy" nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima released about ~65TJ of energy. The Tsar Bomba device, the most powerful device ever detonated, comes in at 210,000TJ. All nuclear testing as of 1996 combined comes in at 2,135,000TJ, or ~2EJ. An average sized hurricane supposedly releases ~50EJ of energy per day in the form of rain and cloud formation (wind is a negligible component of hurricane enerrgy).
So basically humanity is directly releasing about 20 hurricane-days worth of energy into the atmosphere every year - not so bad, all in all. But we're also indirectly causing about 20 MILLION hurricane-days per year of indirect heating. That's ~55,000 hurricanes every day, all year round. The Earth's surface area is about 500,000,000 km2, so that's about 100,000 km2/hurricane, while the average hurricane is about 600 km in diameter (~300,000km2).
So final verdict: our CO2 emmission are causing excess solar energy capture on the scale of 3x what would be released if the entire planet were permanently covered by average-sized hurricane.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Whether or not action is needed is one question.
What that action should be is another question.
What the current situation is indifferent to actions needed or what they should be is another question.
They are three separate questions.
The third is the only one that is entirely scientific.
That is "whether something is happening and what that thing is"...
As to whether something must be done and what that thing is that must be done... that is political. Not scientific.
Now let us ask a simple question here.
Do you have China and India on board with your little plan here? Are they doing to agree to cap their carbon emissions?
If the answer is no... then... what are we talking about here? Because at best it seems like all this AGW talk is simply exporting CO2 emitting industries to china and india... often where environmental controls are worse... and increasing the amount that has to be shipped which increases carbon emissions... and costs people in the west jobs as we shut down our industries in favor of the chinese and indians doing it.
Do you feel like you're accomplishing something? Because simply exporting your CO2 to china accomplishes NOTHING. US CO2 emissions went down for yet another year... and I think we've been reducing emissions for over a decade. Global emissions are of course higher then ever.
The fact of the matter is that by focusing on the politics and allowing partisian factions to use the environmental issue as a domestic political weapon... you've lost sight on the actual goal. The politicians don't care about CO2. They don't care about AGW. They care about winning elections. And the vast majority of people talking about AGW are utterly blind to the fact that they're being used for a cause that has no net benefit to the environment what so ever. If anything, the environmental movement is hurting the environment these days.
If you want to help the environment... then you need to bring more industry back into the first world where it can have some pollution standards applied to it.
That is going to mean relaxing those same standards. You've heard that you need to spend money to make money? You're going to need to attract dirty industry to reduce dirty industry. And there after you might be able to apply some international import export laws that apply a carbon debt to imports and exports.
Short of that... you keep doing this... we'll just export all our dirty industry to china and you'll have accomplished less then nothing.
Open your mind and think.
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It's certainly possible, and has even happened.
What happens far more often is that studies that claim to overturn existing knowledge simply turn out to be wrong - usually bad methodology, where other factors have not been sufficiently controlled for.
Most of these get weeded out before publication by peer review. Most of the rest have their flaws pointed out by other scientists in the field. A few remain in limbo, where their evidence is unconvincing but not demonstrably wrong, and are not accepted until further studies add more convincing evidence.
The point is, how are you or I to know which is which? What looks correct to us may simply be our ignorance of the mistakes in the study, which aren't obvious until they are pointed out by more experienced people. And if 9 out of 10 experienced people say that such-and-such a flaw is fatal to the study's proposition, are you going to believe the one who claims it's still OK?
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Clearly you don't know how the Argument from Authority works, if you assume it is automatically a fallacy.
Nobody is claiming that the consensus view is 100% unassailably correct, just because it's a consensus. Like Occam's Razor, it's merely an aid to choosing between uncertain alternatives. Any rock-solid evidence could challenge the consensus view successfully - if you could be certain it was rock-solid.
And therein lies the rub. Science is uncertain. 100% certainty does not exist, outside pure math. We will never see a study that is self-evidently absolute truth to any person who views it, because a study can only roughly approximate reality, and our ability to judge these approximations varies according to our expertise with that aspect of reality and the techniques used to approximate it. Failing to realise this is the hallmark of Dunning-Kruger.
In the absence of certainty, the consensus view is more probably correct, and is therefore the best view to take, at least until better evidence comes along. And if you believe there is already better evidence, then why has it not changed the consensus view? I've yet to hear an answer for this that doesn't involve mass incompetence or mass conspiracy, either of which are far less probable than the remaining option of the "better" evidence not actually being better.
Also, you dodged the question: How do you (personally) know one specific scientist is right, and the others are wrong?
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
You don't need to have someone onboard for a plan that makes sense, ever heard of leading by example? China are going to be selling the backwater US green tech at this rate because partisans you are supporting with your "do nothing listen to every halfwitted opinion" tactic refuse to believe in the need for change. I'm not focusing on politics, just the science, which says pretty much irrefutably "burning fossil fuels is a problem and we're going to run out anyway, so lets change asap".
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
You're not leading by example. you're exporting industry to china which has no net postive impact on global CO2.
The global atmosphere is global. Moving industry to another country doesn't solve your problem. The US is not its own planet. If you want to have any relevance in this issue what so ever then you need to have a global impact by not merely moving CO2 industries from one country to another. They either have to be outright reduced GLOBALLY or they have to be made more efficient globally.
Forcing these industries out of the US did neither thing. What it did was forced them into a less environmentally efficient situation with lower environmental regulations.
You made the situation worse by failing to recognize that the a global problem is global.
End of line.
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Wrong.
1. You cannot say something is right because X people agree.
2. You cannot say something is right because the people that agree have X qualifications.
3. it might be more LIKELY that they are correct, but it does not mean they are correct.
4. As to one thing or another more probably being correct... that is fine... however that doesn't mean you're scientifically correct. It merely means you probably are correct. Science is not merely saying "well this is probably going on in absence of actually knowing what I'm talking about."
And really I have no interest arguing this issue when really what I wanted to talk about is the polarization and factionalization and politicization of the issue.
You want to say that you are justified in being factional, politicized, and polarized because science is "probably" on your side. In effect, you're saying you don't want to be open minded and methodical on the issue because you think your supposed consensus gives you license to politicize the issue.
It doesn't. It never will. That isn't science. That's just politics and political games. And the only people that push this line of reasoning are first and foremost political creatures.
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FALSE FALSE FALSE! All that needs done is adjusting import taxes to reflect the true cost, your house of strawmen must be very flammable, fortunatley it takes less than a wolf to blow it down.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
... I think I brought up that as one option actually. Try again.
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Try again, every argument you have is ludicrous, why don't you step up and explain what your policies are exactly? Bring manufacturing back to the US because it's doing so well on the environment? Immediate rise in CO2 production because it is not adequately regulated in America either. Do nothing until we have heard the opinion of every last naysayer? Good luck with that. As for your "reduce environmental regulations to save the environment" argument, that takes the biscuit as the stupidest thing I have heard this year. Congratulations.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Yes... someone suggests that the issue is too factionalized and polarized and of course that is threatening to the factional tribalized participants of the discussion.
So some moron like you says "hey, I don't know how to deal with you... take a side so I know whether you're on my side or their side."
I am on neither of your stupid sides you completely witless asshat. I want to actually discuss articles about new scientific discoveries without having them polluted and ruined by dancing twits that think every discussion revolves around their pathetic ideolgoical rivalries.
Think about how many discussions people like you have ruined utterly with your insistence on politicizing everything... seriously.
I've had enough of it. Either just discuss the issue as itself without bringing all your stupid baggage into it every single fucking time... or we can't even talk about this stuff any more. Seriously... not another environmental article ever again. Pick one. Because the alternative is that every time one is posted all anyone will be able to see is you fools slapping your bellies together and calling the other side a bigger fucktard then your side.
It was amusing at one point... But it has palled. Kindly just stop it.
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No, you said we should do nothing because the issue was too "polarised" and "politicised", which is absurd. I'm sure you think you're a free thinking rebel, in actuality you're an apologist for the deniers. I'd be the first to celebrate if you stopped commenting on environmental arguments, your logic has bigger holes than the ozone layer in the 80s. It's good to see you showing your true colours though, lay it on me, I can take it.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
You're just admitting that you're incapable of seeing this as anything but a political dispute. And that is sad. Because what you've just done is admit that you can't discuss environmental issues scientifically. You can't discuss the data. You can't discuss the theory.
All you can do is be an activist. Which I think anyway is pretty sad because you probably could have been more at one point before you were brainwashed.
I don't want to tell you what to believe or what to support. I don't really care. I just want discussions about science to be about science and not about the politics and the activism.
People like you make that impossible. You turn everything into an US vs THEM shit storm where no one can even start to examine anything because everything is covered in smug assholes that know nothing and yet presume to tell everyone what to believe despite often not even reading the fucking article in the first place.
It is sad. You could have been more then you are but you probably won't ever change... You are one depressing piece of shit.
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This is far too politicized to be judged scientifically anymore
You argue yourself into knots then get insulty when it's pointed out to you. I'd think you were a troll if you weren't so obvious.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
No, you merely insisted that everyone be labeled ideologically which is an implicit political classification... you completely brain dead waste of oxygen.
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So we agree on 1, 2 & 3. Is that "wrong"?
As for 4, I don't disagree, but my point was there is no easy way to determine absoutely if any given study is "scientifically correct" - particularly if you are not an expert in the field. That being the case, "probably" right is usually all we can determine (as most scientists themselves will tell you). And the science in question has well over 30 years of peer-reviewed observation to back it up, so climatologists do have some knowledge on the subject.
In effect, you're saying you don't want to be open minded and methodical on the issue because you think your supposed consensus gives you license to politicize the issue.
I'm not sure why people feel compelled to drag politics into this issue in the first place. I certainly have no interest in doing so. And I'm happy to be open-minded to new evidence - if it's solid enough to pass peer review, for a start (peer review: consensus in action).
I have little time for anecdotal arguments however, and less for people that dismiss peer-reviewed studies (and authors of same) for being "politicised", particularly if they can't offer any more reason than "this is the same thing as said by other, politically-leaning people".
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
As to 1-3, we appear to agree. This will have implications for 4.
As to "all we can determine." that is again fine. However, in taking that short cut you lose the ability to say you are backed by science. You are rather backed by your opinions and guesses ABOUT science.
Now those opinions might be reasonable and the guesses could be educated... but they are not science. What this means is that if you DO take these shortcuts whether you had a choice or not you must show a bit of humility in stating your case.
Science as per 1-3 doesn't care if you had a hard time figuring something out or if it was impossible to get good information. Science isn't about what is and is not convenient. It is a process. You follow the process or you did not follow the process. Either/or. And if you didn't follow the process you're going to have be upfront about that, honest with yourself, and try to work with people and peers in a manner that reflects the common understanding that shortcuts were made.
Beyond this we both reserve the right to listen to whom we choose. However, if you aspire to cooperation from the public at large it is not in your interest to browbeat people for merely pointing out that you have overstated your reasonable degree of confidence on issues for political gain. This has been done repeatedly which is why many of the IPCC reports have come under such savage criticism and several of them have been sent back for massive reediting.
Beyond that, let us get to the real heart of the issue here. It is not the science and it is not whether or not the planet is warming. The heart of the issue is what some propose to do about it. It is THAT which is ultimately causing most of the controversy. Not the science but rather the political solution to the science. If you admit that point then we can talk about what we might be able to do to bring about a meeting of minds. The conceit of many that the opposition is stupid is in error. Neither side is stupid. They merely disagree on some things and have mutually enough power to prevent the other from acting without their consent. Regardless of what you think in this matter you must admit to that political reality. Which means if you care about the environment... you must either successfully suppress hundreds of millions of people in a democracy... good luck there... Or you must sit down and talk about solutions we can all find palatable. This compromise is possible. The politicians don't like it because they find factional rivalries to be better for getting voters to show up on election day. But if you care about the issue and not whether the blue team or the red team wins... you'll talk.
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You are rather backed by your opinions and guesses ABOUT science... Now those opinions might be reasonable and the guesses could be educated... but they are not science.
They are not "opinions" or "guesses". They are probabilities, backed by a great deal of evidence - like virtually everything in science. Higgs Boson existence? Probability. The Big Bang? Probability. Quantum mechanics? Yeah, a lot of that. To be scientific, a theory does not have to be a certainty at all; the probability just needs to be carefully quantified, and backed by observation and/or experiment.
...you have overstated your reasonable degree of confidence on issues for political gain. This has been done repeatedly which is why many of the IPCC reports have come under such savage criticism
Citation needed. The IPCC reports all state their conclusions in probabilities, which are carefully quantified, and are backed by citations of peer-reviewed studies at every stage. The vast majority of the evidence presented in the IPCC reports has proved under very close examination to be solid (NOT absolutely certain, but of sound scientific methodology). This is why they are accepted as, not the gospel truth, but the best information on the subject that we have, by every major scientific institution and government, as well as by the great majority of scientists (and nearly all climatologists).
It is THAT which is ultimately causing most of the controversy. Not the science but rather the political solution to the science.
I do agree that this is the source of the controversy. Solutions are indeed often political, but unfortunately all too often, peoples' political views about some of the solutions contaminate their views of the science, which usually leads to claims that the science itself is being politicised. I disagree with that.
Or you must sit down and talk about solutions we can all find palatable.
If only we could do that. Unfortunately, there are still far too many strident voices still trying to undermine the science, which blocks any reasonable discussion of solutions. If those voices actually had any peer-reviewed evidence of a quality that could convince a reasonable number of experts, that would be fine, but sadly these dissenting voices tend to rely on volume instead.
I'm also of the opinion that many people misunderstand the solutions that have been proposed (for example, see all the claims that a phased transition to a carbon-neutral economy would be a disastrous burden on society, whereas many economists are seeing it as an opportunity for actually reducing the many existing external costs of carbon emissions).
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
the distinction between an educated guess and a probability is zero.
In any case, you can't call your position science unless you're willing to put down the activism and just be coldly detracted about the whole thing.
That is what science demands. Detachment. You either have it or you don't.
The instant you get sucked into a cause... that goes out of the window.
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the distinction between an educated guess and a probability is zero.
If you want to put it that way, then all of science is educated guesses. Engineering too. Only maths is certain.
That is what science demands. Detachment. You either have it or you don't.
The scientific method recognises that absolute detachment is difficult, if not impossible, and endeavours to minimise that. Again, the "you have it or you don't" black & white viewpoint doesn't at all match what we see in the real world, where few if any scientists can claim to be absolutely detached from their work - but we've still been getting useful science done for centuries, despite that. Plenty of good science has been done regardless of attachment to the results - if you can be rigorous enough about your methodology. If your methods are beyond reproach, your results are too, despite any personal investment.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
The difference is that in science, unlike this discussion, there should not be axes to grind or political riviarlies. Rather it should be a detached search for the truth with no stake or interest in what the eventual outcome could be.
While I might be impartial, I am at least appologetic about it and trying to avoid my biases. While you are outright defending biases which render your claim to scientific superiority laughable.
Look, my point in posting in this thread was to point out that the politicization of the issue has rendered it non-scientific. You have "heard" my argument and I can't force you to agree if you do not, will not, or cannot agree for any reason.
I have made a good faith effort to make myself understood and beyond that I really don't see what else I can do here.
Good day.
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There's a lot of things there you're attributing to me which I really don't think I've ever claimed or even mentioned. I don't appear to be speaking your language, and you seem to be ignoring the points I'm trying to make, so yeah, another unproductive "discussion" on the internet. All the best.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?