Past Measurements May Have Missed Massive Ocean Warming

An anonymous reader writes "Previous estimates of global ocean warming have been significantly underestimated due to historically sparse temperature data from the Southern Ocean, new research has found. From the article: "Earth's oceans have absorbed more than 90% of the warming caused by greenhouse gases, researchers estimate, with the stored heat showing up as warmer seawater. But a new analysis suggests scientists may have underestimated the size of the heat sink in the upper ocean—which could have implications for researchers trying to understand the pace and scale of past warming."

Comments

please no

[Anonymous Coward]

nonono, the science is settled.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

> nonono, the science is settled.

Science, by definition, is never settled. What's far more difficult is to bring a scientific attitude to the table if there is a political dog (or two) in the fight.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

The basic science has been settled for a long time now, the Earth is warming. Models of the extra heat distribution may undergo changes though, as data accumulate and better models are developled.

Re:please no

[flyneye]

The Earth warms, it cools, it warms, it cools.
Models will NEVER be accurate enough for any real predictions, causes or illustrations. Why? Because the input to the models will NEVER have enough, or even appropriate data. If we don't have the Oceans data, and we don't, as highlighted recently by the breakthrough in mapping, we couldn't even begin an approach to modeling the future. What else don't we have? Other criteria, bits of relevant information, which acts on other data, producing results unknown, which again makes up the whole. No, this modeling business could be done on ALL the worlds computers networked together and you'd still have shit. Simply, you don't have enough criteria to accurately say, one way or the other, let alone pinpoint anything.
          I'd love to see the gravity models and the data on magnetic poles with compensation for shift. Yeah, thought so...
Leave predictions to gypsies, weathermen, stock brokers and sports pundits. All are on par with a flip of the coin even with all the data they crunch. Don't tell me how damn accurate science is predicting fuck about the Earth.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

The Earth warms, it cools, it warms, it cools.

Exactly. And the historic reference point alarmists love to use to prove global heating wasn't called "little ice age" for nothing.
Greenland hasn't stolen its name, you know. That was the color it had when it was discovered and colonized by Eric the Red, roughly around 1000 AD.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

depends on what you mean by basic
if you mean, the earth heats via solar photons, cools by radiation at night, with a tiny contribution from internal heat, yeah
If you mean, how does CO2 cause increased water in the atmosphere, and how does this water distribute between vapor (warming) and cloud droplets (cooling) and how do photons escape the optically dense lower atmosphere to the optically thin upper atmosphere, then no, the
basic science is not settled

as scientists often say, all models are wrong; some are useful
the question is, how seriously should we take predictions about the next 100 years ?
if the models are not capturing major aspects of the global climate - like the oceanic heat sink - then the models are not useful
the effects of climate change might be more or less serious then you think; the point is, if the models are so wrong, we shouldn't use them as a basis for policy without more caveats as to their unreliability.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

>>models will never be accurate enough
and how do you know this ?
given the almost unbeivable advance in "big data" and automated instrumentation and satellites, the idea that we won't have enough data for accurate enough for practical use models seems silly - but maybe you are right: you have some data ???

Re:please no

[ThePhilips]

Models will NEVER be accurate enough for any real predictions, causes or illustrations.

I heard that modern weather models have accuracy above 80%.

Good enough, IMO.

Re:please no

[BinBoy]

The computer models immediately diverged from reality and haven't returned. As Richard Feynman said, "If it disagrees with experiment, it is wrong."

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

Big Gay Dick Feynman was one fine man.

Re:please no

[BitZtream]

Really? The same models that predict that result in the weather man telling you its going to be a beautiful sunny day while it pours down rain?

Weather models are an absolute joke.

Re:please no

[dywolf]

Ah yes.
"The Little Ice Age" myth.

Here you go, since you dont seen to know what youre talking about:
  http://www.skepticalscience.co...

Re:please no

[dywolf]

Myth: The models arent accurate

Fact: The models are accurate.

"Models successfully reproduce temperatures since 1900 globally, by land, in the air and the ocean."
"While there are uncertainties with climate models, they successfully reproduce the past and have made predictions that have been subsequently confirmed by observations."

http://www.skepticalscience.co...
http://www.skepticalscience.co...

Re:please no

[conquistadorst]

The Earth warms, it cools, it warms, it cools. Models will NEVER be accurate enough for any real predictions, causes or illustrations. Why? Because the input to the models will NEVER have enough, or even appropriate data. If we don't have the Oceans data, and we don't, as highlighted recently by the breakthrough in mapping, we couldn't even begin an approach to modeling the future. What else don't we have?

Yes, it's true it's not 100% accurate... but so are you saying we should give up trying? You can use that argument to vaporize all of the research & theoretical sciences. Yikes.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

They grew vineyards in northern Canadian coastline. That's warm.

Re:please no

[Whibla]

Really? The same models that predict that result in the weather man telling you its going to be a beautiful sunny day while it pours down rain?

Weather models are an absolute joke.

What?

Your weather forecasts are wrong every day? And in every conceivable way (Temperature, Cloud cover, Humidity, Rainfall, Windspeed, etc.)?

Honestly, that would be an achievement in itself!

Or, maybe, they get it right most of the time, but it's only the times they're wrong that stand out?

However, while I'm sure that both 'sides' in this debate are equally guilty of seeing what they want to see, that which confirms their observer bias, I'm not sure that ridiculing weather forecasts is a valid argument against the accuracy and predictive power (or lack thereof) of climate models.

Re:please no

[dywolf]

Cognitive filter. Example: you.

You do know that your local man on Tv usually isnt an actual meteorologist? And what's on the teleprompter may or may not have been based on NOAA's official forecast. Weather modeling and forecasts are very good, boasting >95% accuracy over the first 3-4 days, with accuracy decreasing the further ahead you go.

"This claim is based more on an appeal to emotion than fact. The inference is that climate predictions, decades into the future, cannot be possibly right when the weather forecast for the next day has some uncertainty.
In spite of the claim in this myth, short term weather forecasts are highly accurate and have improved dramatically over the last three decades."

http://www.skepticalscience.co...

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

That site doesn't deny that the little ice age existed, it just tries to explain what caused it, and says that it can't explain the amount with which temperatures have risen.

Is the author referring to the model with that last point, or to measured temperatures? Because I thought that was the problem with "the model", that it predicts more increase than thermometers have been showing lately.

And "lately", the way I see it, has begun after a certain NASA report about fixing the "bad" data from historical measurements.
I used to be a believer until they made themselves guilty of that cherry-picking of historical temperature records over the 20th century, and tried to convince us that cherry picking is the way to get better, more reliable data.
Bad news for them, their cherry-picking seems to have proven things only for those cherry-picked results, and not for the new measurements after that.

Re:please no

[Jason Levine]

The "models aren't 100% accurate therefore we shouldn't trust them until they are" argument is essentially the same as the ones the anti-vaxxers use: Vaccines aren't 100% safe and therefore we shouldn't use them until they are 100% safe.

The fact is that the groups plan on never trusting climate models or vaccines because they realize that neither will never reach 100%. Even if we were able to improve climate models by leaps and bounds above the current ones (which themselves are pretty accurate), there would still be *some* uncertainty. We might get it to 99.999%, but there would still be that 0.001% that deniers would point to. Same with the anti-vax groups. If one person gets sick due to a vaccine (e.g compromised immune system & shouldn't have gotten the vaccine or allergy that wasn't known at the time) then this will be proof that vaccines aren't 100% safe and therefore shouldn't be used. Never mind that a 99% safe vaccine is orders of magnitude more preferable than any of the vaccine preventable diseases.

Both arguments use the Perfect Solution Fallacy.

Re: please no

[mattwarden]

Just because your model predicted the outcome of something does not mean your model is accurate.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this The Pause Explanation #51 or #52? Can't keep track anymore.

Re:please no

[Crazy Taco]

What? Your weather forecasts are wrong every day? And in every conceivable way (Temperature, Cloud cover, Humidity, Rainfall, Windspeed, etc.)?

No one claimed they are wrong every day, just that they aren't nearly 80% as the grandparent claimed. They seem to be wrong about 50% of the time (at least) here in Minnesota too. We are talking major, predicted sunny skies and got one of the worst storms of the summer with four inches of rain kind of wrong. And when I say wrong 50% of the time, I'm talking about major wrong. I'm not talking about "predicted 83 degrees but it ended up being 85" kind of wrong (in which case the models would approach 100% wrong). They are wrong in some more major way, such as predicted temp off five degrees or more, wind off by several mph, heavy rains when sun was predicted, snowfall either doesn't arrive or has way more inches than predicted, etc. I know that's anecdotal to you, but I'd have to see some very good data to concede that they are correct 80% of the time. My observations make me believe it's probably otherwise (although maybe other parts of the nation are more accurate and bring the average up).

Re:please no

[durrr]

I have a model that reproduces past winning lottery numbers, for only a million USD: far less than what I predict you to win, you are allowed to use it forescast the future ones too.

Hindcasting is easy. Forecasting is hard. And the climate models fail miserably at the latter.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

Cherry Picking is what cartoonists do.

You realize that site is run by a cartoonists, right?

Re:please no

[Crazy Taco]

Weather modeling and forecasts are very good, boasting >95% accuracy over the first 3-4 days, with accuracy decreasing the further ahead you go.

Not a chance. Bring some data before I will believe that accuracy rate. I don't even believe 95% is accurate for forecasting on the day of, let alone 3-4 days out, since our forecasts here in Minnesota have predicted sunny skies in the morning when I go to work, and we later get storms that drop four inches of rain. And I'm not using the "main on TV", but forecasts that are based on NOAA, which does have actual meteorologists working there. So again, bring data... I think your accuracy ratings are hugely inflated, especially for 3-4 days out.

Re: please no

[ThePhilips]

Ever wondered what for the first super-computers were used?

Weather models.

Who are one of the longest-term buyers of the supercomputers?

National weather agencies.

Weather predictions are important (if not crucial) part of the modern agriculture. Without the modern agriculture, the large cities and metropolis wouldn't be able to exist.

The accuracy of the weather models is judged not simply over days or weeks. They are run continuously over years if not decades. Their accuracy is judged over very very long period of time.

The climate change added complexity to it, since the weather models right now are in flux and are not able predict the weather as good as before. IIRC over the past years, a couple dozen new models have been developed which account for the climate change, but they are still being evaluated.

Re:please no

[oodaloop]

No. Out of 100 times they say there is a 10% chance of rain, it rains 10 times. Weather models are extraordinarily accurate. You're just clueless.

Re:please no

[LWATCDR]

You may be correct but your source reference is terrible.
The website you offer has few reference to papers.
The author does not seem to have any real academic background one Graham Wayne.
CV:"My name is Graham Wayne. I live in Devon, England and I spend as much of my time as I can writing, principally about the science and sociology of climate change. To make ends meet, I repair computers and teach people how to get the best out of them.
My background is a blend of work in the arts, engineering (audio, IT) and management. This broad spread of experiences lead to my becoming a full time business consultant, accredited by the (then) Department of Trade and Industry. Eventually, after spells in Germany and Canada in management roles, I accepted the position of CIO on the board of The Mastertronic Group of companies, my last full-time role, which I left in 2006."
http://gpwayne.wordpress.com/a...
And the author of the article he is attacking is someone with massive academic credentials in the sciences, one Freeman Dyson.
cv:"Freeman John Dyson FRS (born December 15, 1923) is an English-born American[5][6] theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering. Dyson is a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...

So even if you are correct and I think you are your supporting documentation aka the links to that site are worthless.

Re:please no

[sycodon]

There are NO American Tanks in Baghdad!

Re: please no

[jrumney]

Viking wines were made from berries, not grapes. So significantly less warm than "vineyards" might imply.

Re:please no

[khallow]

Fact: The models are accurate.

I think what annoys me the most about climate alarmism is the false certainty such as conflating opinion with fact. The second most annoying thing is the lack of scientific grounds for the arguments made.

For example, the above two links in the parent post show considerable divergence between the models and reality (sea level and polar ice extent while substantially and suspiciously downplaying the temperature difference between model and reality). The "myth" is confirmed but the writer portrays it as affirmation of their desired conclusion.

Meanwhile the assertion that models fit past events is near irrelevant since that is data which is already known and it is expected that the models would have been adjusted in the first place to fit that data). For example, I can construct an interpolation of any temperature (or other numerical) data to perfect precision using an even degree polynomial of sufficiently high degree, yet it'll be completely irrelevant once I attempt any sort of extrapolation into the future (odds are good, about 50% I'd say, that it'll predict temperatures far below absolute zero by 2100).

We see this attitude in action in the current story. First, the story noted that these models don't actually predict past events when they're run backwards from a current state. Then someone rationalizes that it's because the observations are wrong, not the models. This not only runs counter to your empty assertion that the models predict the known past, but also is profoundly anti-scientific.

Here are two examples where the most FUD-inducing interpretations are used. The climate models are "too conservative" because they allegedly underplay sea level rise, but the corresponding inability of the models to predict temperature increase is not (though that means the models are exaggerating sensitivity of carbon dioxide temperature forcing, the most important of the unknowns in climate research.

Similarly, when models are shown to be out of whack with past observations (as they were with future observations), the interpretation is that the observations are wrong, not the models even though it is more likely to be the other way around.

This profound inability to admit error is why I don't trust current climate models or the doomsday predictions they spawn in the least. That's why I'm going to wait a few decades and see what happens. If it genuinely is as bad as claimed, then we'll see something by then.

Re:please no

[fuzznutz]

What is the accuracy rate 3 weeks out?

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd how they keep referencing the same agenda sight.

Luv the name though. Skeptical Science. Just like Military Intelligence, Equal Oppertunity, or Homeland Security.

Re:please no

[abies]

No, 99% safe vaccine is not ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE better that disease. It is not even better than disease itself. Will you get yourself vaccinated against AIDS if it has 1% of chance giving you AIDS in first place?

Vaccines are safe to 99.9999% or more. And you always have to put it into context. If Ebola will spread to billions, 99% safe vaccine might be acceptable. If AIDS is perfectly preventable in normal case, even 1:million safety might be not enough. But please be careful with 99% and 'orders of magnitude' in same sentence - there are not that many orders of magnitude in 1:100.

Re:please no

[Kernel Kurtz]

A paper published today in Nature Climate Change finds climate models have greatly exaggerated global warming over the past 20 years, noting the observed warming is "less than half" of the modeled warming.

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot....

A new paper by prominent German climatologists Dr. Hans von Storch and Dr. Eduardo Zorita, et al, finds "that the continued [global] warming stagnation over fifteen years, from 1998 -2012, is no longer consistent with model projections even at the 2% confidence level

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot....

Re:please no

[itzly]

Whatever it is, it's not very relevant in the global warming discussion, because climate != weather.

Re:please no

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Thanks to the butterfly effect, it's been calculated if you had a measurement every cubic foot of temp, pressure, wind, and humidity, you could only predict weather about a month in advance. Which you couldn't because of the computer wimpiness.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? The same models that predict that result in the weather man telling you its going to be a beautiful sunny day while it pours down rain?

Weather models are an absolute joke.

Climate models ARE NOT THE SAME THING AS WEATHER MODELS.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

The Earth warms, it cools, it warms, it cools.

Right. It warms from the combination of solar irradiance and our planet's atmosphere, and it re-radiates that energy at a longer wavelength. Unless you invent new physics to transfer more heat away, or heretofore unobserved eccentricities in the Earth's orbit, or similarly unmeasured increases in solar radiation, then increasing the partial pressure of a greenhouse gas must lead to increased heat energy on Earth. That's the part that is simple, settled physics: how things radiate. See also conservation of energy, the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, and the absorption spectrum of CO2.

Beyond that, neither of us knows enough to criticize climate models. You very obviously have no idea what they do or don't contain, or what that has to do with the predictive power. It's really irrelevant; you're focusing on the models because you're hoping to confuse them with the fundamental science. We're not working backwards from the models (or the temperature data) to draw conclusions about how CO2 behaves in the atmosphere. We can directly observe how CO2 behaves in the atmosphere. The science does not rely on the modelling, it's the other way around.

The argument that the Earth is somehow irreducibly complex is a religious one, and you'll pardon me if I don't subscribe to your Cult of Ignorance.

Re:please no

[whistlingtony]

I'm pretty sure it's pause explanation #1. The global temp hit a little pause. We wondered where all the extra heat was going. It turns out it was going into the oceans. Done in one.... This isn't new. We've known this for a while... This is simply that more of that has been occuring than we previously thought. Keep your snark.

Re:please no

[whistlingtony]

I go hiking a lot. I check the weather forecast. it's usually right. I wouldn't trust it 10 days out, except as a vague guidline, but I'd trust it three days out. I do, regularly. I live in Oregon. It's important to have your raincoat here....

So no, weather models are NOT a joke. They're incredibly accurate for just about every use case I've ever used them for. The absolute joke must be you...

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

Please, any reference to Skepticalscience.com simply identifies you as a John Cook supporting newbie warmista.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

Enough bullshit:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/admin/ed-assets/2013/06/CMIP5-73-models-vs-obs-20N-20S-MT-5-yr-means1.png

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

This also makes me wonder if scientists are out there looking for "lost" data that fits their model while ignoring "lost" data that does not fit their model.

Re:please no

[whistlingtony]

I'm pretty sure it was you that diverged from reality... The earth is getting warmer dude... The data is easy to see. It's really easy to see. You can look up satellite pics of ice coverage. A simple Wolfram Alpha search will tell you global mean temperatures, and show you the data sources so you can investigate them better.

How do you people keep insisting nothing is going on? The excuses keep changing. "It's not warming. Ok, it is, but it's solar! Ok, it's not solar, but it's not man made.... It's natural cycles! Ok, it's it's moving too fast for natural cycles, but it paused for the last few years! It's warmer, but it stopped, so it's not warming! Ok, so yeah, Arctic sea ice is dwindling, but antarctic is growing! Ok, sure, arctic is sea ice and antarctic is land ice, but.... It's scientists, just making a grab for lucrative grab for government money! Ok, so that money is shit and it's pretty obvious all the real money is in private industry, but..."

On and on you people go, changing your story. Diverging from reality, if you will.....

furthermore, it's quite obvious that several industries just don't want a drop in profits that would come with regulation. It's quite obvious they've spent a TON of money to muddy the conversation. My question is, in 30 years when we can look back on this, will you !@#$holes fess up that you were wrong the whole time? Will you admit that you all were duped and spent decades ignoring your betters? Will you finally shut up?

Don't worry, I know the answer....

Re:please no

[NeutronCowboy]

Meanwhile the assertion that models fit past events is near irrelevant since that is data which is already known and it is expected that the models would have been adjusted in the first place to fit that data). For example, I can construct an interpolation of any temperature (or other numerical) data to perfect precision using an even degree polynomial of sufficiently high degree, yet it'll be completely irrelevant once I attempt any sort of extrapolation into the future (odds are good, about 50% I'd say, that it'll predict temperatures far below absolute zero by 2100).

Shockingly, scientists are aware of that issue, and have developed methods to test models against existing data. They do that by training on one chunk of the available data, and testing against another.

You're making two more mistakes in your analysis.
One, you complain that models that fit old data perfectly are wrong because all they do is fit data. Then you complain that the models don't fit the data perfectly - precisely because they don't just fit data. Which is it? You can't have it both ways.
Two, you think that we have direct measurements for everything. We don't. We'd like to, but we don't. And even the direct measurements we have need to be transformed into data that can be compared across measurements. All of that is subject to being wrong.

This profound inability to admit error is why I don't trust current climate models or the doomsday predictions they spawn in the least. That's why I'm going to wait a few decades and see what happens. If it genuinely is as bad as claimed, then we'll see something by then.

Unfortunately, that inability to admit error is only in your head. The models have been changed countless times over the last decades, and have gotten better in response. Lastly, if you wait a few decades, it'll be too late to head off any meaningful changes. As the joke goes: what if we'd make changes for a better planet when it's not necessary?

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

So it wasnt going into the oceans before and all of a sudden started going into the oceans all at once? Thus creating a "pause"? Why wasnt the heat going into the oceans before the "pause"?

You know, if people who arent climate scientists are not qualified to question the science, then people who arent climate scientists are also not qualified to defend the science.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

The "sociology of climate change" - too fucking funny! My my, what a rigorous discipline that must be!

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

Since there's a lot of data variables involved (e.g. temp ranges throughout periods of the day, cloud cover, wind speed/direction, precipitation: (type, probability, volume)), it's actually rather difficult to define a singular metric for "how accurate is the weather forecast?" that makes any intuitive sense in these conversations.

However, I'm a bit of a weather geek, I do use good sources, and I have multiple vested interests (beyond "should I wear a jacket?") in getting accurate weather forecasting. One of my hobbies is large-scale gardening out in the country (accurately knowing just about everything but wind variation up to a week ahead of time matters for optimally and efficiently running that), and racing cars (weather predictions being critical predictors of upcoming track conditions to adjust for so that you're not caught off guard).

My anecdotal input based on the above (which I think it's a pretty well-informed anecdote) is this: in folk terms, the content of the best short-term weather estimates (next 7 days) are generally about 80% correct on the basics that matter, but temporal accuracy is still a huge problem. In other words: it's reasonably accurate that the forecast can tell me "Sometime in the next 3 days, a 1-2 day period of rain accompanied by a 10 degree drop in temps will occur". However, the accuracy of the exact start time and duration of that pattern are pretty abysmal on the short scale. Sometimes on Wednesday afternoon, the best predictions say that the 1-2 day rain will start Thursday morning and end Friday afternoon. Thursday it doesn't come and it's updated to be Friday morning through 3AM Saturday morning. Friday at noon it still isn't there and they decide it will be Friday late afternoon through late Sunday. It finally arrives Saturday at 10AM, lasts only until about 10PM, and Sunday is clear and the temp is back up.

Especially when those boundaries shift across a weekend barrier (what should have been a clear weekend is suddenly a rainy one, or vice-versa), people tend to bitch about highly-inaccurate weather predictions ruining their weekend planning, and you can't really fault them for that perception. The whole point of forecasting is accurately planning around it. That the upcoming "patterns" are non-temporally accurate is irrelevant when the exactly timeline is so hit-or-miss.

Re:please no

[whistlingtony]

argh.... Just... what do you think HAPPENS when you release a few million years of stored up carbon in a measly few hundred years as CO2. Just... think about it. It's not that hard... Fossil fuels are quite literally millions of years of stored CO2 from dead plants.... And you release it in this HUGE surge in just 200 years... We KNOW CO2 is a greenhouse gas. We know it prevents us from radiating heat back out into space. This is not disputed..

I need to stop arguing about this. I know the people that argue against global warming are morons or have an agenda... Why do I do this to myself?

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

This.

I am reminded of my ex-wife, who when confronted with evidence contrary to her opinion would simply make up new evidence supporting her opinion. No matter what you say, she always has some comeback.

Same thing with the amateur climate scientists who just rely on some cartoonists website.

Re:please no

[phantomfive]

Location is very important. Some places (like California's central valley) have such consistent weather features that you can predict tomorrow's weather with near 100% accuracy (most of the time, rain is preceded by a change in the wind direction; detecting that alone will give you 80% accuracy).

In other places, with interesting land/mountain/ocean configurations, a storm system can build up in a few hours, in almost a chaotic manner. In those places it's very tough to predict the rain.

Re:please no

[jovius]

So far they have been hugely more successful than the models made by the more skeptical scientists. The only thing is that there aren't any scientific counter-arguing models, or those models have not lived for long. The models can only get better with new data, and more precisely they are modeling a warming earth based on the anthropogenic energy input. If you think models fail miserably then they should be failing even more. But that's not happening. Besides at the moment the warming trend is well in the area the long term models have predicted.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

dywolf: "Climate models have successfully reproduced the past and have made predictions about the future that were later confirmed.
You: "I can accurately reproduce past lottery drawings. Your argument is invalid."

You are a fucking moron. Try to actually read the post you are responding to next time.

Re:please no

[phantomfive]

If you'd like to actually look at science papers instead of a crappy website, here's one in Nature that shows the models are inaccurate

Re:please no

[phantomfive]

Unfortunately, he's right. The models are wrong.

Re:please no

[rgbatduke]

One knows this because one studies nonlinear chaotic systems (in systems with far simpler coupled DEs), learns about things like the Kolmogorov scale, turbulence, Lyupanov exponents, one monkeys about with solving nonlinear coupled ODEs with both adequate and inadequate integration stepsize. From this one learns that the climate models are arguably some 30 orders of magnitude shy of a spatiotemporal step that one might reasonably expect to be able to integrate over some significant time to get an actual solution.

This gap is bridged two ways. One of the two ways is to make pure assertions about the physics in between the Kolmogorov scale and the scale we can afford to integrate. For example, forget local dynamics of thunderstorms -- thunderstorms are phenomena that are basically invisible on a 100x100x1 km grid. Assume that one can use some sort of probability distribution of thunder-storminess in the dynamics and that this is adequate to describe all of the violent and rapid heat transport vertically and laterally in thunderstorms with sizes distributed on length scales of 2 to 10 km and with time scales of significant variation of a minute or longer (the time required to get out of your car and reach the house, of course). Do this repeatedly, with everything -- tornadoes (and other small scale velocity fields with nonzero curl) -- gone, replaced with and assertion regarding averages. Don't worry about the fact that none of these assertions can be formally derived and that we know perfectly well that we won't get the right answer for any other chaotic system studied by mankind (for example, try this for a simple damped driven rigid oscillator, replace the driving force with an average of almost any sort and see what happens) thus far if we do this, but don't forget to shout that the models are based on physics if anybody dares to point this out.

The other is even better. When the models are run, they are still nonlinear iterated maps, even if they are integrated with approximated dynamics and an enormous spatiotemporal step, so they still exhibit chaos and make lots of nifty patterns that "look like" weather (and even are a theoreticaly and empirically defensible approximation to weather, for integration periods of a week or so from reasonable well-known initial conditions before the chaotic trajectories diverge to fill phase space and render them worthless for weather prediction any more). One gets, from even tiny perturbations of the initial conditions and/or physical parameters, butterfly-effect divergences that create an entire bundle of "possible microtrajectories" for the model system being solved which is, note well, not even arguably the actual equation of motion for the coupled Earth-Sun-Atmosphere-Ocean system, it is a pure toy model that nobody sane would expect to actually work. And of course it empirically does not work, not even close. The microtrajectories produced, which generally only work across a reference period (trial data) by carefully choosing large, cancelling forcing terms in the approximated dynamics, end up having far too much variance (compare to the actual climate), the wrong autocorrelation spectrum (direct evidence of the wrong physics but who is counting), and range from (for CMIP5 models) a handful that actually cool over very long time scales to some that go sky high.

The actual Earth, of course, only has one trajectory and it doesn't look anything like any of these model trajectories. So now comes the best part. The "ensemble" of microtrajectories is actually averaged and used as a prediction for the trajectory.

Words fail me. Again to fall back on a trivial example, imagine taking a damped driven rigid rod oscillator operating in the chaotic regime, starting it from an "ensemble" of slightly perturbed different initial conditions, integrating it on so coarse a timestep that one gets chaos but perhaps chaos that is not even qualitatively similar to the chaos observed with an adequate timestep, and then

Re: please no

[Anonymous Coward]

Viking wines were made from berries, not grapes. So significantly less warm than "vineyards" might imply.

Just for reference - wine from grapes was made around Berlin, Germany long after the Medieval Warming Period way into the Little Ice Age - and that's north of Saskatchewan by half a degree latitude. And far enough east that the Gulf Stream plays a tiny role compared to England. Today we have wineries in southern Scandinavia and Scotland. Anybody still playing the "wine in England (or 'WineLand')" card is playing baccarat at a poker table.

Re:please no

[mean pun]

You know, if people who arent climate scientists are not qualified to question the science, then people who arent climate scientists are also not qualified to defend the science.

Then why are you asking questions on /.?

I don't think the people here at /. are doing such a bad job explaining climate science, but you can always ask your money back and go find answers from real climate scientists.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

So, someone claims they can predict the future, and someone else says "no you can't".
By your logic, if the skeptic can't product an accurate model, then the initial person is correct?

What?

Re:please no

[itzly]

Why wasnt the heat going into the oceans before the "pause"?

Change in ocean currents.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

I need to stop arguing about this. I know the people that argue against global warming are morons or have an agenda... Why do I do this to myself?

Most smart people abandoned Slashdot many years ago. Now what is left is mostly bitter, aging, retrogressive anti-intellectuals. You can clearly see that in just about any article or discussion on this site. The kind of discussions you see now on Slashdot could be on found on Drudge Report, Redstate, Brietbart, or any other conservative hotspot. The same types of people saying the exact same things. Slashdot is basically indistinguishable from those sites now. You have to go back 10-15 years here to find a time when the large majority of participants were smart, educated, and well read. Just look through the really old articles and see for yourself. Don't see many really low UIDs around here do you? You see the kind of ignorant junk that gets rated Informative these days? Well there you go.

Oh yeah, lots of people here work in the oil industry, typically in oil exploration. Techies are big in that industry. Many of them are here making the arguments you'd expect them to make. Some of these people simply refuse to change their lifestyle, or think they shouldn't have to change anything, regardless of the implications. You'll see posters here actually bragging about how big of a vehicle they drive, how much gas they burn, how big their utility bills are, etc. It's like a dick waving thing for some of these guys. "My numbers are bigger than yours." You get an idea of what you're dealing with here?? Man made global warming necessitates drastic changes, which is why the resistance to the "man made" part is so fierce and unyielding. So long as it isn't man made then nothing can be done and so nothing needs to change. But you're right - the entire premise that people can dump so much pollution and greenhouse gas into the atmosphere and not affect serious change is idiotic.

About the 30 years in the future thing, many of these people will probably be dead by then. Slashdot has practically become an online nursing home for old libertarians. It won't be their problem to deal with so why should they care? It really is that simple. So yeah, you (and I) need to stop trying to debate with these people. You'll never convince them of anything, and furthermore many of them won't be alive long enough to see any repercussions.

Re:please no

[Cabriel]

What?

Your weather forecasts are wrong every day?

Pretty often, yes. I mean, take a look at the weather report today for the predicted weather on Thursday. Screenshot it on your spiffy phone, and compare it to a screenshot three days from now. If you live on the coasts or the northern US or Canada, then three days is all it takes for the Meteorologist to be wrong--sometimes fewer.

Re:please no

[mjm1231]

Go to weather.com or accuweather.com and check the hourly forecast. For me, it is almost always spot on. Forecast for tomorrow? I'd say accuracy is much better than 80%. Forecast further out than that? Usually pretty good, again seems better than 80% accurate from what I can tell.

Not sure what year you are living in that weather forecasts are still so poor.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

The data is availabel for you at NOAA.

Go knock yourself out.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

>Science, by definition, is never settled.

That was *literally* the joke the AC was making.

Re:please no

[MatthiasF]

[quote]In the Southern Ocean in particular, they estimate past heat tallies were 48% to 152% too low. Globally, past estimates could be as much as 25% off. [/quote]

So, article states there was a massive underestimation of measurements but you state that past models were accurate. Yet if they were accurate before then they are not now. Which is it? They were accurate before but not accurate anymore or they were inaccurate before and are accurate now?

Hint: They were never accurate.

Re:please no

[multimediavt]

So it wasnt going into the oceans before and all of a sudden started going into the oceans all at once? Thus creating a "pause"? Why wasnt the heat going into the oceans before the "pause"?

There are some really simple explanations for this: one, the ocean currents changed (due to changes in the atmospheric climate) forcing more of the warmer water deeper into the ocean than before, two, no one said it was an "all-at-once" thing, and even if they did their perspective on "all-at-once" may be decades where you may be thinking more immediately, three, no one said that the rise in air temperatures WASN'T heating the oceans all along. As a matter of fact the continuing rise in ocean temperature has always been a priority concern to climatologists because of the impact on the entire food chain.

Re:please no

[Ralph Wiggam]

Keep your snark.

If you're going to oppose overwhelming scientific consensus for political reasons, snark is a very important weapon.

Re:please no

[riverat1]

Is this The Pause Explanation #51 or #52? Can't keep track anymore.

Why would you think that there can be only a single explanation of "The Pause" (really just a slowdown in atmospheric warming) rather than multiple things coming together to cause the effect?

Re:please no

[I'm New Around Here]

I live in south Florida, on the Gulf of Mexico side. The weather reports are almost always right.

The summer is usually: "It's going to be warm and sunny this morning and early afternoon. The evening will see some rain as the saturated air inland cools off and moves toward the coast."

The winter is usually: "It's going to be warm and sunny."

Occasionally is is: "Hurricane!"

Re:please no

[multimediavt]

One thing is clear from all the data, and you can get the same data online as it is free access and abundant, there is a direct correlation between the rise in fossil fuel use starting with the Industrial Revolution (~1850) and the incremental rise in global average temperatures. Yes, I know, correlation and causation don't necessarily go hand-in-hand, but in this case there is a very strong indicator of cause and effect, beyond a (sane) reasonable doubt. The graph of the two data sets show linear consistency over time with very few outliers. This is why anyone who has actually taken the time to research climate change on their own has come to the conclusion that humans are changing the climate through our burning of fossil fuels. If you disagree you either have money involved in the fight, are burying your head in the sand and hoping it all goes away, or are completely out of touch with reality and need immediate psychiatric care.

Re:please no

[I'm New Around Here]

And he just told us that the data that he does get from the NOAA is not reliable where he lives.

You've been knocked out.

Re: please no

[multimediavt]

Umm, did Vikings make wine? I thought they made mead, which comes from honey, not berries.

Re:please no

[Cyberax]

Dude, you're incoherent. Climate models start from one veeeeeeery simple fact: more heat is going in then going out. That's been measured by the satellite albedo measurements and can be directly quantified.

Then we have a direct causative agent - the rising amount of CO2. It's directly measured without any integration or even differentiation needed! So what do you say to that?

No need to invoke Lyapunov or Kolmogorov. Do you think you're the only one here who knows that ODEs are?

Re:please no

[riverat1]

So it wasnt [sic] going into the oceans before and all of a sudden started going into the oceans all at once? Thus creating a "pause"? Why wasnt [sic] the heat going into the oceans before the "pause"?

Considering that over 90% of the heat from global warming goes into the oceans in the first place and that the top 10 feet of ocean contain as much heat as the entire atmosphere it doesn't take much of a shift in heat absorption by the oceans to have a profound effect on atmospheric temperatures. Heat has always been going into the oceans, the distribution has just shifted a little lately.

Re: please no

[multimediavt]

Just because your model predicted the outcome of something does not mean your model is accurate.

Correct, but if the model predicts the outcome more than half the time, or up to ninety percent of the time, then it's pretty accurate. It may not be precise, but it is accurate.

Re:please no

[multimediavt]

That comment should be modded up to 1 million!

Re:please no

[radtea]

I heard that modern weather models have accuracy above 80%.

But weather is not climate, as we get reminded by Warmists every time there is a cold snap (they are mysteriously silent on this issue when there's a heat wave.)

Furthermore, predicting "the weather will be the same tomorrow as today" gets you about 70% accuracy (http://www.weatheranalytics.com/wa/weather-report-forecasts-improving-climate-gets-wilder/) so the increment to a shade over 80% at a cost of millions in hardware and enormous computational complexity is nothing to write home about.

Furthermore, this new report, if it withstands the test of time, is one more demonstration that anyone who says "the science is settled" is a political shill (likely for the far left: http://thebreakthrough.org/ind...)

Every few months we get an announcement of a new way in which climate models are wrong. For purely political reasons this is usually couched in terms of "worse" or "better" (usually worse, because that's what sells eyeballs) but to a scientist what matters is "correct" or "incorrect". The sign of the error is relatively uninteresting when evaluating the quality of the science.

And don't get me wrong: anthropogenic climate change is real and significant, and we should be aggressively pursuing changes. Carbon taxes, in particular, are an proven-effective policy that both reduce CO2 emissions and reduce income taxes and corporate taxes, so anyone who opposes them must be in favour of higher income taxes and corporate taxes.

And anyone who says both "ACC could result in the end of civilization" and "We should not be building new nuclear plants" is beyond evil. Nuclear power is a significant component of the climate change solution because it is the only generally-available, proven-effective replacement for base-load coal, and coal is a huge contributor to GHG emissions.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

So it would seem that contemporary models can be off by a factor of two. Unfortunately uncertainty goes both ways, so it's entirely possible that the temperature increase in the next two decades will be twice the model prediction.

Re:please no

[LWATCDR]

As someone that lives in Florida I can say that I find them no joke. The Hurricane models are pretty good for path. Strenght is getting better but still not as good. Of course if you are dumb and look at the line and not the cone that is your problem.
Back when I was a kid a very long time ago they really didn't work at all. Back 20 years ago they where not all that great to be honest. Today they are good enough to give you a solid 3 day warning for the cone.

Re:please no

[multimediavt]

No, 99% safe vaccine is not ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE better that disease. It is not even better than disease itself. Will you get yourself vaccinated against AIDS if it has 1% of chance giving you AIDS in first place?

Vaccines are safe to 99.9999% or more. And you always have to put it into context. If Ebola will spread to billions, 99% safe vaccine might be acceptable. If AIDS is perfectly preventable in normal case, even 1:million safety might be not enough. But please be careful with 99% and 'orders of magnitude' in same sentence - there are not that many orders of magnitude in 1:100.

Except we're talking about billions of people, not one hundred, so yes, orders of magnitude and percentages do apply in context. Nice try. And yes, if AIDS had become a pandemic like Ebola threatens to become I would definitely take a 1% chance of getting AIDS if it meant that I would not get AIDS at all should the vaccine work. The bottom line on that is if I didn't get the vaccine the odds of contracting the disease could be much higher than 1% of six billion (and change). Some of us do have the capacity to work with numbers larger than 100, and do floating point math on those numbers in our heads, i.e., we're over the age of 12 years.

Re:please no

[I'm New Around Here]

Never mind that a 99% safe vaccine is orders of magnitude more preferable than any of the vaccine preventable diseases.

As abies says, you are full of it. But to add to Ebola and AIDS, what about other diseases we vaccinate against? Polio, whooping cough/pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria? What is the percentage of non-vaccinated people who get those, compared to your 1% unsafe vaccine?

Also, it isn't 99% safe versus getting the disease, it is really 1% chance you die or are permanently disabled from the vaccine. Afterall, the anti-vaxxers aren't saying the vaccines are not effective defense against the diseases, they claim profound injury or death from the material in the vaccine.

You are claiming models are in that realm.

Re:please no

[dywolf]

So it wasnt going into the oceans before and all of a sudden started going into the oceans all at once? Thus creating a "pause"? Why wasnt the heat going into the oceans before the "pause"?

Yes. The scientists are saying that it never went into the oceans until they noticed that it was going into the oceans.....

You know, if people who arent climate scientists are not qualified to question the science, then people who arent climate scientists are also not qualified to defend the science.

This statement is dumb. Let's go to a more obvious example: if people who arent gravitational physicists are not qualified to question the science, then people who arent gravitational physicists are also not qualified to defend the science...even though we can all see the apples falling from the tree. Or the ice melting from the Arctic.

Re:please no

[Sique]

Greenland was never green, and even through the warmest period since the early Middle Age, it wasn't warmer than today.

In the Graenlandinga Saga, Bjarni Herjulfsson travels to Greenland, and the description in the Saga fits today: Mighty glaciers, mightier than those of Iceland, cover much of the land, and only a few green stripes were to be seen at the Western coast. The name Greenland is called bogus and chosen as an euphemism in the saga.

Re:please no

[dywolf]

the words "absolute joke" "rain instead of sun" were used.
that pretty much qaulifies.

Re:please no

[khallow]

One, you complain that models that fit old data perfectly are wrong because all they do is fit data. Then you complain that the models don't fit the data perfectly - precisely because they don't just fit data.

I don't actually. I was pointing out first, that boasting a model fit known data was a red herring since it was easy to fit data without having extrapolation to the future. Second, that the story indicated that the models weren't even getting that right.

Two, you think that we have direct measurements for everything. We don't. We'd like to, but we don't. And even the direct measurements we have need to be transformed into data that can be compared across measurements. All of that is subject to being wrong.

I don't do this either. I merely point out that we have direct measurement of global mean temperature in the past few decades.

Lastly, if you wait a few decades, it'll be too late to head off any meaningful changes.

Where's the evidence for this urgency? This is just a FUD tactic. Nobody, including Europe is anywhere near being able to reduce their activities in a way that can meet the requirements of these "meaningful changes". And the consequences just aren't that dire. Adaptation is the option that is never discussed.

Re:please no

[dywolf]

Not sure what you mean by few references...All these were on that page.

http://www.grida.no/publicatio...
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncli...
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/...
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs...
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/...
http://www.copenhagendiagnosis...
http://www.iac.ethz.ch/people/...
http://www.aip.org/history/cli...
http://www.aip.org/history/cli...
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/resea...
http://www.realclimate.org/ind...
http://www.realclimate.org/ind...
http://web.archive.org/web/201...

As for Dyson...two imporat words you dont find in his biography are "climate scientist".
In fact, he rather quite well falls into the science trope of the phsycist who insits on talking about things outside his realm of expertise.
(There's even an XKCD for that, though I am missing the link atm)

Re:please no

[dywolf]

No, the models always were accurate.
Its simply idiots like you that fail to understand or pay attention to timelines and logic.

Real world observations kept falling within the IPCC projections. The projections dont say "On Januray 1st 2015 it will be 20C." They give a range of outcomes. The IPCC projections gives 4 projections, ranging from very conservative at one extreme, to very not at the other. At no point did they actually fall outside those projections. From that standpoint alone the models were always accurate.

What was noticed though was the deviation between the projections (specifically the middle 2, the balanced projections) and the actual observations was increasing. Observations were trending more towards the more conservative projection, a projection considered unrealistic.

This is what let to the entire "pause" thing.
We knew the energy is being dumped into the planet.
We knew it wasn't leaving.
So the question was, where was it going?
Answer: Oceans.

And now the oceans, because of measurements like those in the /. submission, are being included and refined in the models as we get more data about how much heat they can abosrb, and how they react to it.

Re:please no

[Xyrus]

So it wasnt going into the oceans before and all of a sudden started going into the oceans all at once? Thus creating a "pause"? Why wasnt the heat going into the oceans before the "pause"?

You know, if people who arent climate scientists are not qualified to question the science, then people who arent climate scientists are also not qualified to defend the science.

You know, if you could engage your brain for 5 seconds instead of going to your default ideology routine, you may be able to figure this one out for yourself. The oceans are not static objects. Ocean currents can and do have periods that can span a couple decades. These currents can bring warmer or cooler waters to the surface.

Form there, it's basic physics. If the air is warmer than the water, the water heats up. If the air is colder than the water, the air heats up. If the net energy balance of the system is positive, then the water (having much greater heat storage capacity) will gradually warm up over time. As the currents cycle there will be periods where air temperatures will be cooler and periods where air temperatures will be warmer. And again, if the net energy balance is positive then temperatures will stair-step higher and higher (which is what we've been seeing).

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

it's quite obvious that several industries just don't want a drop in profits that would come with regulation.

There's your problem. There won't be a drop in profits. There will be an increase in cost. When regulation is industry-wide, it is not something that the industry has to compete on. Everybody down the chain gets screwed. In fact, as legitimate and unavoidable costs increase, profits rise based on similar operating margins and increased volumes. All "industry" has to do is not tighten it's belt over dramatically and total net profit rises.

The effect of any regulation simply raises the price of admission. Most of the world does not like the fact that your proposal keeps them in poverty so you can feel warm and fuzzy. The only logical solution is "save the planet - kill yourself".

Re:please no

[rs79]

"we've known this for a while"

How do you tell the difference between that and "we made it up when our models fell to bits".

I'd guess a reference in archive.org to this idea prevous to 1998 would prove it. Do you have that by chance?

Climate guys learn so much. In 2010 they learned CO2 is consumed by plants and now they're learning hydrology 101. AND IT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING. Oh help.

At this rate they'll be able to make an accurate prediction by about 2637.

Re:please no

[abies]

It doesn't matter by how much you multiply it. Orders of magnitude do not care about size of numbers. If vaccine kills 10 million out of each 1 billion, then disease would need to kill at least hundreds of millions out of 1 billion to talk about _orders_ of magnitude better. Probably only Yersinia pestis is anywhere close to that, most of other vaccines prevent a lot less virulent diseases.

My point is not that vaccination is bad. My point is that 99% is absolutely not enough for vaccines and not going to be accepted unless we are in end-of-world pandemic scenario. And if vaccine would be 99% safe only, anti-vaccine groups would have a major point in raising concerns - which they don't, because vaccines are orders of magnitude (this time really _orders_) safer than 99%, which we probably cannot say about quality of AGW climate models. So comparing AGW denialism to anti-vaccine based on percentages is not really valid...

Re:please no

[BinBoy]

You're reading a lot into what I said. I'm willing to listen to actual science, not the personal opinions of scientists, not politics and not personal feelings. The computer models are wrong.

Re:please no

[khallow]

Unless, of course, the "extra heat" isn't on Earth in the first place.

Re:please no

[Xyrus]

I think what annoys me the most about climate alarmism is the false certainty such as conflating opinion with fact. The second most annoying thing is the lack of scientific grounds for the arguments made.

"Alarmism" as you call it, is social. I've yet to read any scientific papers claiming we're all going to die.

As for your "lack of scientific grounds", that's just bullshit. The basic chemistry and thermodynamics were worked out well over a century ago. The first prediction of AGW was made by Arrhenius in 1899 (he also created the first climate model and is considered the father of modern chemistry). If you want to go further back you could talk a look at the preliminary work on greenhouse gas theory from Fourier (1825).

For example, the above two links in the parent post show considerable divergence between the models and reality (sea level and polar ice extent while substantially and suspiciously downplaying the temperature difference between model and reality). The "myth" is confirmed but the writer portrays it as affirmation of their desired conclusion.

Irrelevant. Those aren't scientific papers. They're not peer-reviewed. Any idiot on the web can say whatever they want. That doesn't make them a legitimate source of information.

Meanwhile the assertion that models fit past events is near irrelevant since that is data which is already known and it is expected that the models would have been adjusted in the first place to fit that data). For example, I can construct an interpolation of any temperature (or other numerical) data to perfect precision using an even degree polynomial of sufficiently high degree, yet it'll be completely irrelevant once I attempt any sort of extrapolation into the future (odds are good, about 50% I'd say, that it'll predict temperatures far below absolute zero by 2100).

Ignorance only hurts your argument. Climate models are physical simulations. They work based on physics, not some statistical curve fitting which is what you seem to be implying. Climate models are initialized with some historical set of conditions, and then run forward to see how well they model climate responses.

That's why physical models in general (fluid dynamic models, gravitational models, weather models, climate models, etc.) can be used for helping make useful decisions and research.

We see this attitude in action in the current story. First, the story noted that these models don't actually predict past events when they're run backwards from a current state. Then someone rationalizes that it's because the observations are wrong, not the models. This not only runs counter to your empty assertion that the models predict the known past, but also is profoundly anti-scientific.

You have terrible reading comprehension. The article (which isn't the paper) says the scientists used climate models to look into the past, not "run the models backwards". Running them backwards doesn't even make any sense. You can read the paper to see their methodology.

The issue the paper is addressing, which you fail to grasp, is that the the data from recent higher accuracy observations (namely the ARGO network) are reporting a lot more warmth than was previously estimated from earlier, lower quality observations. They then analyzed the discrepancies and discovered that global ocean heat in the upper 700m may have been off by as much as 25%, which would have potential impacts on things like CO2 sensitivity studies.

Here are two examples where the most FUD-inducing interpretations are used. The climate models are "too conservative" because they allegedly underplay sea level rise, but the corresponding inability of the models to predict temperature increase is not (though that means the models are exaggerating sensitivity of carbon dioxide temperature forcing, the most important of the unknowns in climate research.

You are viewing a c

Re:please no

[Atzanteol]

There are vineyards in NH and upstate NY today. Not all grapes need warm weather. And not all wine made is "good" wine.

Re:please no

[riverat1]

The accuracy of models is not a binary condition. They were accurate in the past given the state of our knowledge. They are more accurate now because the state of our knowledge has improved. They will be more accurate in the future as we learn even more.

Re: please no

[stonecypher]

Generally, actually, yes, the model predicting outcomes does mean that the model is accurate. That is the purpose and evaluation of models.

If you disagree, please inform us what does mean that the model is accurate, or possibly assert that models are not judged as accurate.

Re:please no

[khallow]

The basic chemistry and thermodynamics were worked out well over a century ago.

And that turns out to be insufficient. Weather, particularly clouds and storms, turns out to have a much larger effect than expected. That's why the most recent IPCC report has estimates and error ranges very similar to Arrhenius's original estimates despite that century of advances in climate research.

reading at least the summary sections would allow you to make much stronger arguments for your case.

The IPCC's "executive" summaries are notorious for pushing politics over science.

The observations weren't "wrong". Did you even bother reading anything? The ARGO observations are higher resolution and more accurate. Even allowing for that they noticed a considerable discrepancy between the ARGO observations and the previous observations. That's what they investigated.

I get that there's plenty of rationalizing on why the estimates were wrong. But as you say, that's not science. Data that shows your estimates were wrong is science.

Error analysis is a fundamental part of any research, and climate science is no exception. You'll see it in practically every paper. Science is confidence intervals, not absolutes. Saying otherwise demonstrates a profound lack of knowledge and experience about how science, any science, is actually done.

So what? Everyone does that. But plenty of people get it wrong anyway.

There are no doomsday scenarios in climate science. We can certainly make living on Earth a hell for ourselves if we don't smarten up, but not single legitimate scientific source I'm aware of is predicting the end of the world, or even human extinction. So stop with that nonsense. It simply isn't true.

Oh look, another doomsday prediction.

As far as the wait and see approach goes, I hear that always works out well especially when you're screwing around with climate system on the only planet we live on. By the time things are bad enough that even someone like you must face reality, it will be far too late to do anything about it. That's like getting a vaccination for polio after you're already paralyzed.

Well, that's what it will take. It is remarkable how people, even those in the climate research industry, can't show me actual evidence of dangerous climate change. It's all fluffy FUD about how we have to act now before it's too late.

Re:please no

[BCGlorfindel]

Your facts are not what you claim.

Here's the projections from the IPCC First Assessment Report in 1991. You''ll find projections of future warming based on CO2 emissions remaining at 1990 levels by the best models suggested today would be warmer globally by 0.5C. More over, the scenarios with increased CO2 emissions that more closer match whats actually happened that predicted warming of over 0.5C by today. Actual measured warming though is sitting at about 0.2C warmer than 1990.

Verifying against historical and past temperatures is good, but it leaves room for bias in your corrections if you have a lot of variables and just end up matching them to the mere 100 years of instrumental record we have. Predicting future temperature trends though, hasn't been as conclusive and solid as you suggest.

Oh, the IPCC report also projected nearly a 10cm rise in sea level from 1990 to today, in reality the measured amount is less than half that.

Re:please no

[Kernel Kurtz]

Even if we were able to improve climate models by leaps and bounds above the current ones (which themselves are pretty accurate), there would still be *some* uncertainty.

It's not that simple. No model will ever likely be entirely accurate, there will always be uncertainty. I'm not a climate scientist, but I know something about computing. In their large ensemble of models (I think there are around 30 of them in CMIP) you would expect some to overestimate, and some to underestimate, and observations (ie The Real World) would fall somewhere in the bell curve between if they represented an anywhere near realistic range of scenarios. That fact that they virtually ALL overestimate warming leads me to think there is something fundamentally wrong with the methodology across the entire group.

If they want us to trust them for anything important they should start by working on that. You don't have to be a climate scientists to think of where the problem might be.

Re:please no

[Richy_T]

Or the sea levels failing to rise as predicted or the temperature failing to rise as much as predicted or... Works both ways, you see.

Re:please no

[Richy_T]

I think you just proved his point.

Re:please no

[Cyberax]

No, I haven't. We can't predict the movement of every molecule in a car colliding with a wall, yet we still somehow manage to model the results with good enough quality.

Re:please no

[Kernel Kurtz]

there is a direct correlation between the rise in fossil fuel use starting with the Industrial Revolution (~1850) and the incremental rise in global average temperatures.

No question it has been warming since at least 1850. Nothing unusual since then.

http://www.woodfortrees.org/pl...

If you have a graph plotting CO2 emissions over that time period I would LOVE to see the correlation.

Good luck.

Re:please no

[reboot246]

Well, I think they're all full of it. Ocean temps have been rising because of increased activity by underwater volcanoes. Google for it.

Re: please no

[SirCowMan]

It's a reference to 'Vinland', generally believed to be the coast of Labrador. We have found a related settlement at L'Anse Aux Meadows, from the indications and writings it would seem the reports from the new world were a bit embellished. It's not a good reference for historical climates.

Re:please no

[LynnwoodRooster]

Whatever it is, it's not very relevant in the global warming discussion, because climate != weather.

Actually, it's quite relevant, for climate is simply the integral of weather of a pre-determined amount of time. NASA lays this out quite nicely. Note as a result of selecting a different time basis for the integration, one can have significant - or no - change in climate.

Climate IS, in fact, weather - just over a longer scale

.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

It's okay, man. I'm a PhD student in a climate-related field, and people around me are always aggravated by the blatantly manufactured ignorance among the general public on climate issues. I like to think that the best way to deal with it is to not even talk so much about climate change, but to talk about specific situations that may be caused by climate change, and approaches for how to deal with them.

For example, there's a persistent drought in the southwestern US, and at the same time, there are a lot of people in places like Phoenix and Las Vegas and Palm Springs who are watering golf courses down there. At the same time, historic water rights programs support flooded rice fields in northern CA, mostly supplied by diversions from the rivers. Without even invoking the phrase, 'climate change', can we talk about an ongoing drought that ultimately affects real people.

And it turns out that people are a lot more willing to talk about specifics that are affecting us now than generalities that will be bad in a century. But if we can start making changes to those immediate problems, perhaps we can mitigate some of the future problems a little.

Re: please no

[Anonymous Coward]

If 80% is a good enough model for you, then you dint mind if I design your house, car, or reliability that you will have a job tomorrow for you? I'm fairly sure I can hit 80% reliability.

Re:please no

[LordLucless]

However, while I'm sure that both 'sides' in this debate are equally guilty of seeing what they want to see, that which confirms their observer bias, I'm not sure that ridiculing weather forecasts is a valid argument against the accuracy and predictive power (or lack thereof) of climate models.

Really? Weather is a simpler, shorter-term analysis than climate, pretty much by definition. If we can't perform the simpler task particularly well, it argues against us being able to do the more complex.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

A million crash test dummies just began updating their resumes.

Re: please no

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this, a tautology? A prediction is a (generally, especially in this context) statistical estimate (or guess) of what will happen. We either use cross-validation (leaving an estimate out of the model building, and then estimating the residual repeatedly, i.e. jacknifing, or bootstrap) or create training and test subsamples (randomly subsample, build the model on the subsampel, evaluate model prediction of the remaining superset) or get a new sample, and test predictive accuracy. That is our estimate of accuracy (not asymptotic, of course, although given large enough samples it doesn't matter), not just the within sample accuracy. If you want to pick something to bitch about, argue that the R**2 is not the amount of variance accounted for, but the variability, since the sample is just an estimate of the variance, or that it shouldn't be used for anything other than an estimate of sample predictive accuracy.
However, nobody is arguing that making a prediction equals accuracy. That would be stupid, and in your case, a disengenious staw man.

Re:please no

[whistlingtony]

I already feel warm and fuzzy. This isn't about me feeling good about my recycling habits so I can narcicistically say I care and my neighbor doesn't. This is about me wanting to hand a world to my kids that isn't fucked over.

I'm not saying to not use the energy. Burn those fossil fules... maybe just capture the damn carbon? We had a giant SMOG problem, then we regulated and captured those emissions, and smog got a lot better. We have the tech. Just use it.... shit... If the price of gas goes up by a dollar but we don't fuck the world, I'm OK with that...

Re:please no

[strikethree]

LOL.

I remember way back in Kindergarten the teacher made fun of the weatherman. His prediction was put on the calendar every day as sunny/raining/etc. The teacher made a red X on every day that the weatherman was wrong. The weatherman was wrong more often than not. There were a LOT of red Xs on the calendar... not that I really understood the calendar that well but red is red.

There has been a LOT of progress made recently. The weather predictions are a lot more accurate nowadays. Almost worrisomely so.

Re:please no

[flyneye]

I'll disagree, because we are missing what amounts to more than 2/3 of the data needed for modeling.
To agree would be alarmist, it would be going along to get along. Without the data, attempts to convince me the model is showing this or that just sound like so much manipulation by interested parties. Such as Scientists with a job, that need to do something worthy of keeping that job or the funding alive for it. History has shown private research is hungry to produce results the dollars ask for, college research is easily biased by politics AND money. So, looking out for myself, I poke holes in their half assed research, which heats up their fanbase, but puts the obvious in the open. Like a turd in the punchbowl.

On another note, I can give an example of research for Dollars in action;
Since Seismic activity went up 1000 fold through Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, "Studies" have been done by government and oil industry to see if there is correlation between fracking and the 4.4 tremors now rocking the midwest with great frequency. OF COURSE they found no correlation, what are you nuts?
The midwest now gets earthquakes that just HAPPEN to coincide with the advent of local fracking. Just because the quakes were so infrequent and more subtle before is NO indicator that fracking has anything to do with it. THAT is the official word.

So, with all the "hippies" running the global warming show, you can see my hesitation to buy the word of a greasy, smelly, socialist, hippy waving the green flag. I'm going to need more than half assed research, no matter how much money and time has been thrown at it.

Re:please no

[flyneye]

Since Oceans cover more than 2/3 of the earth, and that data is not factored due to ignorance, I'm going to call that so far from accurate, it almost appears to be blatantly manipulation by biased parties. DUH!

Re:please no

[flyneye]

These aren't weather models, as others will doubtless tell you.
Besides, how many weathermen are very accurate beyond 3 days?
Not good enough, even if it were a factor.

Re:please no

[flyneye]

The models are missing more than 2/3 of the data necessary to begin to believe they have a rudimentary grasp of ANYTHING.
It's a fact that results up to now are a myth propagated by career scientists and college departments striving for relevance and funding,
Nice of you to drop by and wave a flag for your favorite team; we'll call and let you know if you're needed any further.

Re:please no

[flyneye]

I'm saying, instead of working their asses off to produce results, which has landed them in the question of political and monetary bias, they should work their asses off first, to include ALL the criteria necessary to produce a REAL guess.
I view this as missing over 2/3 of the data. So naturally their endeavors seem like a snake oil cure or a carnie blathering crap into a bullhorn in front of the freakshow tent.

Re:please no

[flyneye]

Yes, but what is the OCEANS effect on this. Up until last week, that data was not even considered because we didn't have that data. Now we have the data within grasp and need only the time to compile it. Water covers more than 2/3 of the planet. It is silly, misleading and ignorant to produce results based on less than 1/3 of the necessary data. Further, there may be even more criteria missing, if they were stupid enough to exclude this and try to produce an end product.
It's not that I don't "think" (which is different than "know" or "believe") something may be wrong, but, it cannot be shown in these dark ages of science where money , politics and ambition ARE included in "findings".

Re:please no

[strikethree]

Who cares about global warming or vaccine caused autism? The atmosphere is being corrupted and people are dying or being permanently disfigured due to diseases.

I want to breathe fresh air, not air with mercury, coal dust, carbon particles, and various nasty gasses in it. I would rather my children take the risk of being autistic than the certainty of a crippling disease like polio.

Fuck all of the controversy! I want clean air to breathe and a lack of terrible diseases to infect my children.

Re:please no

[rgbatduke]

Yes, you have. You missed, for example, the entire bit about the null hypothesis. You also missed the fact that I am not asserting that the Earth isn't warming, or that CO_2 increases are probably not a factor in the warming we have experienced. I can actually read a spectrograph and have a decent understanding of the GHE from the basic physics on up. I'm only pointing out that the trivial model you suggest is precisely why we should doubt that TCS is over 2 C! That is, the null hypothesis is around 1 to 1.5 C total warming from CO_2 alone, which is all we have even weak direct evidence for. Everything else is built on a shaky tower of model assumptions, physics toy models, and an attempt to solve a probably unsolvably difficult problem in a particular way to put some sort of stamp of authenticity on a conclusion that is both unfounded and so far, contradicted pretty strongly by observational fact.

rgb

Re:please no

[conquistadorst]

I'm saying, instead of working their asses off to produce results, which has landed them in the question of political and monetary bias, they should work their asses off first, to include ALL the criteria necessary to produce a REAL guess. I view this as missing over 2/3 of the data. So naturally their endeavors seem like a snake oil cure or a carnie blathering crap into a bullhorn in front of the freakshow tent.

Oh I'm sure they're *trying*. The problem is it's difficult to judge how good their models are without 1000's of years of solid data. While they do have tons of data I'm sure it's no where near what they'd want to have. A lot of the data they have to rely on from these past events has to be gathered from physical records which is arguably not as good as measuring and observing it today. Not even mentioning we're talking about us altering the current environment in ways that have not been seen naturally occurring for thousands of millennia making any climate modelling increasingly difficult because we're in uncharted territory.

So I think to say they shouldn't say anything at all until they have ALL criteria necessary to produce a REAL guess is a bit too blindly optimistic. It's true it would be ideal in a perfect world, but in reality we'd be sitting here for a hundred years or more before we'd be able to make conjectures following that rule. That's just not extremely practical. The debate in that arena has to stay healthy for it to evolve and the fact that scientists readily admit mistakes with new findings is a good sign. I'm heads over heels against sensationalizing the topic but to sit here and ignore the problem until the science is flawless would be a grave mistake. There's absolutely nothing wrong with us being good custodians and keeping our one and only home clean. It would be the responsible thing for us to do.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

He has shown no proof of his assertion.

But go ahead and show me where it was that I missed it.

Knock yourself out.

Re:please no

[david_thornley]

Minnesota weather seems to be more variable than weather in many other places. I haven't noticed 95% accuracy in weather predictions, but that doesn't mean the average across the country isn't 95%.

Re:please no

[david_thornley]

The IPCC's "executive" summaries are notorious for pushing politics over science.

Do you have strong evidence that they are pushing politics over science? They'd be notorious for it in any case, since a lot of people have committed themselves to the belief that there is no AGW, and so they have to come up with some way of disregarding the science.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

jesus said it
i believe it
that settles it

Re:please no

[BCGlorfindel]

I'm pretty sure it was you that diverged from reality... The earth is getting warmer dude... The data is easy to see. It's really easy to see. You can look up satellite pics of ice coverage. A simple Wolfram Alpha search will tell you global mean temperatures, and show you the data sources so you can investigate them better.

How do you people keep insisting nothing is going on? The excuses keep changing. "It's not warming. Ok, it is, but it's solar! Ok, it's not solar, but it's not man made.... It's natural cycles! Ok, it's it's moving too fast for natural cycles, but it paused for the last few years! It's warmer, but it stopped, so it's not warming! Ok, so yeah, Arctic sea ice is dwindling, but antarctic is growing! Ok, sure, arctic is sea ice and antarctic is land ice, but.... It's scientists, just making a grab for lucrative grab for government money! Ok, so that money is shit and it's pretty obvious all the real money is in private industry, but..."

On and on you people go, changing your story. Diverging from reality, if you will.....

furthermore, it's quite obvious that several industries just don't want a drop in profits that would come with regulation. It's quite obvious they've spent a TON of money to muddy the conversation. My question is, in 30 years when we can look back on this, will you !@#$holes fess up that you were wrong the whole time? Will you admit that you all were duped and spent decades ignoring your betters? Will you finally shut up?

Don't worry, I know the answer....

I'd like the alarmists to step first and admit their error. If you look at the First Assessment Report from the IPCC in the early 90's their projections grossly overestimated temperature and sea level rise over the ~25 years through to today. Far from any admission of overstating the danger, here are guys like you doubling down on how foolish everyone else will look in another 30 years. I don't need to guess if you'll finally shut up then, the experiment was run already and the answer is nope.

Fact: Things are getting warmer.
Fact: CO2 emissions contribute to warming.
Fact: Humans are emitting CO2.
Uncertain: What degree of impact will those human CO2 emissions have on global temperatures over the next 30 or 100 years.

Don't go advocating catastrophic changes when not all the facts for that particular position are settled, you look foolish.

Re:please no

[gzuckier]

Exactly. Models without an AGW term are pretty much useless over the past 50 years or so, despite being not too bad before that. Adding the AGW term makes the fit a lot better for the past 50 years. It's hard to argue that this means there is no AGW.

Re:please no

[Cyberax]

I very much doubt that you've ever seen a spectrograph or have any actual knowledge of physics. The greenhouse effect of CO2 is easily confirmed by simple experiments, in particular.

And what's your crap about the "null hypothesis" and "basic physics" has to do with it?

The Earth is warming. Rising CO2 concentration provides explanation why it happens. Both are facts.

The details of the warming, on the other hand, are extremely complicated.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

@Cyberax,

Do you know who you are accusing of never having seen a "spectrograph or have any actual knowledge of physics?"

Physicist Dr. Robert G. Brown of Duke University, and member of invitation-only Faculty Row, "The Official Home Of America's Top Faculty."

Re:please no

[Optali]

Sorry, but people with simplistic arguments are not entitled to question anything with silly arguments. People who have no fucking idea about science should stop trying to make arguments with others using their political ideas pretending they are science. Anyway: I bet your pals are waiting for you to go to the Taco Bell to Open Carry and Roll the Coal. Don't make them wait, else they may take you for a liberal!!!

Re:please no

[flyneye]

I'd settle for something more credible than all this. I agree with you, being good custodians IS the responsible thing to do, anyway. Meanwhile, keeping a population fed and working with a modern standard of living in industrial nations, while doing the legwork necessary to implement change that doesn't endanger the former, should be done in a trustworthy non-fanatical way. If not, lessons not learned ,they will "continue to bang their heads", "doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results" until it feels better or comes to consequence.
Do it right, and don't come running in here every 10 minutes, waving your arms and shouting, "The Sky is Falling, The Sky is Falling!" everytime one of your expensive new toys coughs up some theoretical sampling of what it could be like if only we lived in cartoonland and tell me it's credible or YOU'RE FIRED FLINTSTONE! I suppose that about sums it up.

Re:please no

[Cyberax]

And? If he can't read the absorption spectrum of CO2 then it's not my fault that he's growing senile.

Re: please no

[flyneye]

Polished off a bottle of raspberry mead this summer. Yummmm
Wonder if they ever put mushrooms in it.....

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

So no, weather models are NOT a joke. They're incredibly accurate for just about every use case I've ever used them for.

Try living on the Front Range of the Rockies. You'll learn to appreciate the easily predicted Oregon weather, after experiencing the incredible randomness of weather here. It's a notoriously challenging place to be a hiker, or a farmer, or otherwise dependent on the weather.

Don't assume that conditions in other places match conditions where you live.

You are making a classic error that many novices at science make, attempting to generalize from a very small measurement sample to a large population, without understanding how complex that can be, and how easy it is to screw up.

Perhaps you would benefit from taking a class in research design, where these issues are typically addressed at length.

Re:please no

[Anonymous Coward]

It actually means 10% of the area will get rain. That is why forecasts can be highly accurate over an area, yet terrible for an individual spot in the area covered. 10% rain means 100% rain for 10% of the area..that 10% didn't get the weather they expected, but it was the forecast weather.

Re: please no

[Anonymous Coward]

Brilliant. Over his head though.

Re:please no

[rgbatduke]

I not only have seen spectrographs of the atmospheric radiative effect, I actually own a copy of Grant Petty's book A First Course in Atmospheric Radiation", and have taught both undergrad and grad electrodynamics for over 30 years. Precisely what does this have to do with my statements above? I'm not "denying" that the greenhouse effect exists -- there is direct spectroscopic evidence for it. I can derive one simple model (a complete absorber model leading to 1.19x warming) for it on a piece of paper in three minutes. I regularly argue with people who want to claim that it doesn't exist at all, or that it violates the second law. Both are absurd -- of course it exists, and no it doesn't violate the laws of thermodynamics it is a direct consequence of them (although the actual atmospheric radiation effect is a great deal more complex than simple single layer models!)

All of this is completely irrelevant to my statements above. Let me explain the null hypothesis, since the terminology apparently eludes you. It is this: Supposed we increase atmospheric CO_2 from 300 to 600 ppm in the very simplest model planet we can imagine -- one where the only change we permit is this. One can work through the arguments for the greenhouse warming one should expect -- they involve looking at the measured spectrum of CO_2, doing a bit of work with the relevant Beers-Lambert formula, and thinking a bit about the lapse rate -- but in the end most people who do the calculation end up with somewhere between a 1 C and 1.5 C warming.

At this point one invokes the principle of ignorance -- we don't really know how the entire Earth system will respond nonlinearly to this. Nor do we have any plausible means with which to measure it -- we have no experimental Earths to do controlled observations with similar structure, e.g. 70% saltwater ocean confined in a complex pattern of continents -- and we already know that the establishment of particular circulation patterns of the confined ocean and atmosphere were the sole really plausible explanation for the Pliestocene ice age, which started when the isthmus of Panama closed between 3 and 4 million years ago.

We also know one important point from linear stability analysis. For the Earth's climate system to be stable at all, it has to respond to perturbations in forcing by opposing the change, not augmenting it. That is, at a stable point, the response to all perturbations has to be to push the system back to the stable point, not away from it, or the point isn't stable, it is unstable, like balancing a pencil on its point. This principle is taught in introductory first year physics, so presumably you are familiar with it.

The Earth's top of atmosphere "forcing" varies by roughly 90 W/m^2 every year, simply from the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit. It varies by order of a percent from fluctuations in albedo (mostly due to clouds, but also due to shrinking and expanding ice and snow fields) on a much shorter time scale, as short as days. The climate is if anything remarkably stable, at least on a short time scale (and we have the devil's own time explaining any of the longer time scale variations observed in the paleo record or the much shorter thermometric record, where the stable point itself exhibits considerable climate "drift" even while remaining sufficiently locally stable to be still considered "climate"). There is little evidence of any sort of runaway nonlinear instability from this natural variation in forcing. Quite the opposite, in fact, right up to the point where factors we do not yet really understand and cannot compute or predict seem to cause transitions like the advent of glaciation in the current, continuing, Pleistocene ice age.

Given a lack of knowledge of how the enormously complex system will respond to a small, linear variation in forcing on top of the annual periodic variation in forcing that is roughly two orders of magnitude larger and incid

Re:please no

[Richy_T]

Now drop the mike :)

Re:please no

[Cyberax]

Just admit that you know jack shit about the subject. In particular, any radiative forcing calculations have to deal with the water vapor which acts to amplify the heating. So it's not a calculation for a piece of paper and 20 minutes anymore.

We also know one important point from linear stability analysis. For the Earth's climate system to be stable at all, it has to respond to perturbations in forcing by opposing the change, not augmenting it.

Or maybe flipping between two extremes? How about that for a "null hypothesis"? Do you know that once there were trees growing in the Antarctic?

Oh, and since we're talking hypothetical shit without any real connection to the actual science, you MUST also mention the possibility of the Venus effect - runaway greenhouse warming. Why do you think it's impossible? After all, the Sun is growing hotter and this time _just_ might be nonlinearly different! If we think about the nonlinear systems then we MUST fail on the side of caution and stop ALL the CO2 emissions NOWNOWNOWNOW!!!!!!!111111



And reality check - we actually do know quite a bit about actual climate processes and we can model them with a significant precision. The models show that the global warming won't be catastrophic for the environment itself, but it'll cause wild upheavals in the human economy.

Re:please no

[Whibla]

Consider, I'm going to roll a 6 sided dice. What number am I going to roll?

Whatever your answer is, it's going to be wrong roughly 83% of the time, and your answer will differ from the actual roll by, on average, 1.9. The error factor in your answer amounts to nearly a third of the possible range of answers.

Now consider, I'm going to roll a 6 sided dice 1000 times. What will the average of all those rolls be?

I strongly suspect that your answer is going to be roughly 3.5. And, strangely, the correct answer is likely to be very very close to 3.5. It's unlikely to be exactly 3.5 of course, but the error factor in the answer is going to amount to fractions of a percent.

Well, I'm not totally taken by my attempt at an analogy, though I think it has some potential. I'll have to think on it some more.

...Weather is a simpler, shorter-term analysis than climate, pretty much by definition.

I'm not sure I'm going to agree with this statement however. Is an apple a simpler fruit than an orange?

Re:please no

[LordLucless]

Consider, I'm going to roll a 6 sided dice. What number am I going to roll?

The whole of climate science and meteorology is predicated on the fact that those systems are not random. Yeah, the more iterations of a random event, the closer you get to the statistical average. But that doesn't mean that the more variables you add to a system, the more it converges on a predictable single value.

I'm not sure I'm going to agree with this statement however. Is an apple a simpler fruit than an orange?

Is an orange the aggregate of millions of apples over a long period of time?

Re:please no

[khallow]

Well, the most recent IPCC report exaggerates the degree of certainty about extreme weather and downplays the significance of having to lower the range of estimates on forcing from human produced CO2. And notice how suddenly the language of the executive summary changed to estimating degree of certainty when it didn't hold for previous reports. While I hope that is a precursory to a more rational and unbiased report, I can't help but think that it is strictly a defensive change in response to short term climate deviating from the models.

The Sky Is Falling

[Anonymous Coward]

The sky is falling! The atmosphere is collapsing! Hop the next vehicle to the Mars!

Yours,
Isa Laura

Re:The Sky Is Falling

[Anonymous Coward]

Sky isn't falling, on the contrary it is going up. The atmosphere takes up bigger volume when it is heated.

Re:The Sky Is Falling

[Anonymous Coward]

Venusians are stealing our air! Chase those rascals to get it back!!

Re:The Sky Is Falling

[Vinegar Joe]

The sky is falling! The atmosphere is collapsing! Hop the next vehicle to the Mars!

Yours,
Isa Laura

But the temperature on Mars is rising too! We are sooooooooooooooo screwed!

Re:The Sky Is Falling

[wonkey_monkey]

But the temperature on Mars is rising too! We are sooooooooooooooo screwed!

Relax. Temperature may be rising but sea levels are remarkably stable.

Re:The Sky Is Falling

[Teresita]

The temperature on Mars is going up too? Obviously we need to drive more environmentally sensitive rovers.

Re:The Sky Is Falling

[dywolf]

It must be. That nice poltician in Kentucky said so. He said:

As you [Energy & Environment Cabinet official] sit there in your chair with your data, we sit up here in ours with our data and our constituents and stuff behind us. I won’t get into the debate about climate change but I’ll simply point out that I think in academia we all agree that the temperature on Mars is exactly as it is here. Nobody will dispute that. Yet there are no coal mines on Mars. There’s no factories on Mars that I’m aware of.

And of course it's a total concidence that he happens to own a company called Mohawk Energy.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Re:The Sky Is Falling

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-other-planets-solar-system-intermediate.htm

Re:The Sky Is Falling

[Archangel Michael]

And, Allison Grimes is "Pro Coal" ... at least for now, and for long enough to win an election. Stop pretending that only one side lies.

http://freebeacon.com/politics...

Re:The Sky Is Falling

[dywolf]

Again with your false equivalence BS.
While only an idiot would run against coal in Kentucky...where is it a reseaonable assumption that she is lying?
She's from Kentucky. A large portion of Kentucky relies on coal. Is it really that big a stretch to think she supports coal?

And its fair to point out that nowhere in her support of coal does she include blatantly obvious "even a 4th grader wouldnt something so blatantly wrong" scientific statements along the lines of "we in acadamia all agree that the temperature on Mars is the same as here".

What happens to that heat?

[wvmarle]

I wonder what happens to all the heat that's being taken up by the oceans. Is any of it released - and if so, how? Evaporation and heat needed to melt polar ice come to mind as possibilities. Or is it going to stay there, forever warming the oceans, and the oceans increasing in temperature forever.

The next thing is of course the question of how it affects the deeper oceans. Are those layers also warmed up - for example thanks to ocean currents mixing the water of the world's oceans?

Re:What happens to that heat?

[jellomizer]

The ice caps which are melting are taking some of the heat. Evaporating water will cool it down too. The currents moving the water to cooler areas will go to warm up the cold areas. That it is called global climate change. Not global weather change the whole system is changing from the imbalance.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[jandersen]

I wonder what happens to all the heat that's being taken up by the oceans.

Ah - the only intelligent comment on this issue on /. so far, on this fine morning. This is very likely what climatologists are thinking about too; heat, being energy, doesn't disappear, so it must be somewhere. My guess is that it isn't perhaps so much about where the heat went as it is about by how much the temperature increase has been underestimated - IOW, that the water was somewhat colder before than what we guessed. That is of course one of our problems: when we don't have enough observations, we have to make educated guesses, and sometimes we guess wrong. It's just one of those things that happen in science; now we will have to improve the models again.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Anonymous Coward]

>I wonder what happens to all the heat that's being taken up by the oceans. Is any of it released - and if so, how?

Heat is released and absorbed all the time There are all the year long thermal exchanges between the hydrosphere and atmosphere (Rain is not Jesus peeing). During summer, the ocean accumulate heat. This heat is restored during winter. There is some kind of equilibrium. It is some sort of a engine (not far away from a stirling engine). The climate is running all year long with a cycle.

If you unbalance one side you will increase the average temp of the whole and probably both temp will increase atmosphere and hydrosphere. The heat accumulated in the hydrosphere will be released on the average progressively earlier each year until a new equilibrium is reached. As a fact, the heat transfer from the atmosphere to the space is relatively constant.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Sqr(twg)]

Evaporation increases exponentially with temperature, so even with a lot of extra heat going into the oceans, the change in surface temperature will not be that large. Since water vapor is lighter than air, the extra evaporation will also increase air circulation above the sea, cooling it even further.

So, don't expect to notice any difference in tempearture when you go swiming. The only change that you might notice is melting polar caps, and a massive increase in tropical hurricanes.
 

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Anonymous Coward]

it causes the currents to change. including the one the keeps Europe warm.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[wvmarle]

With such temperature changes measured in the tenth of degrees, I don't expect to suddenly have a sea warm enough to swim in during winter time :)

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your physics is weak, grasshopper.

"My guess is that it isn't perhaps so much about where the heat went as it is about by how much the temperature increase has been underestimated"

No, it's the other way round. We know how much the temperature increased, but the question is how much energy was responsible for that increase? The larger the sink, the smaller the temperature increase for a given amount of energy. So if the size of the Southern Ocean heatsink was underestimated, then that means that the observed temperature increase corresponds to a greater amount of energy than previously thought.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[danbert8]

Ahh yes, we've just established that the oceans have been warmer than we expected. And just around the same time we've had a recent minimum of severe hurricanes. Climate change or not, you cannot predict severe weather patterns. Anti-deniers like to attribute every negative event to climate change and none of the positive events. Maybe a warmer planet will have less severe weather if the air temperature is closer to the water temperature as it is the differential that causes severe weather.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[AlabamaCajun]

The cycle continues. Heat rises with evaporation but the air saturates with moisture rather quickly. Cloud formation results and slows the radiation, Heat gets trapped by the clouds. Wind moves both the clouds and moisture away, over land someones parade or wedding gets ruined or if lucky framing gets it's rain. It's a rather large heat engine the cycles itself continuously day and night. Speaking of night, with longer winter night facing means more time for radiation. Summer has more time for energy absorption and less night radiance. While this is true for the latitudes closer to the poles the tropic zone is more of a slight oscillation thus serves more as a lateral heat-pump producing tropical storms and moving a lot of water vapor and releasing enormous amounts of heat. The possible scenario we see now is wind shear interfering with the tropical storms slowing the release of heat but this is dependent on the landmasses and bodies of water. Atlantic storm count is way down but the Pacific is active. If one section of ocean is getting hotter than others then that section would have reduced activity for allowing heat release. This may have to do with how the El Nino - La Nina cycles play into effect. Enough heat finally accumulates to make the currents pick up and the whole system is affected.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[wbr1]

An interesting question. Perhaps hurricane formation is down because the temperature gradient between areas of the ocean is decreasing? Maybe it is not warm water only, but the difference between the hot and cold areas that are a large factor in development/strength of large storms?

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Sqr(twg)]

And just around the same time we've had a recent minimum of severe hurricanes.

By which you mean that we had no category five hurricane last year? That's just a consequence of the fact that there is less than one per year on average, and the number must be integer. (If you do the count per decade, then 2000-2009 had the highest number (8) of category five hurricanes in recorded history, but this number is still too small to draw any statistically significant conclusions from.)

There is more information in the data on category four hurricanes. I found this table of category 4 hurricane statistics on wikipedia

Period Number Number per year
1851–1900 13 0.26
1901–1950 29 0.58
1951–1975 22 0.88
1976–2000 24 0.96
2001–2012 19 1.6

Re:What happens to that heat?

[dywolf]

Actually no. You completely misstated it.

The scientific viewpoint is that "No single weather event can be definitively tied to climate change", because the causal link has not yet been made definitively. But at the same time, weather events are happening more often. The phrase is "“statistically speaking, we’re seeing more extreme weather events, getting even more extreme over time”. And weather "seasons" are changing in duration; some starting earlier and lasting longer, others starting later and ending sooner.

But that could be changing now too, as a new study says to have found something in the wake of the polar vortex:

A paper just came out by a team of climatologists possibly linking global warming to these extreme weather events. It’s based on an idea that’s been around a while, but hadn't been verified. Now we’re seeing evidence for it.

The key to this is what’s called a “blocking pattern”, where a high-pressure system becomes immobile, squatting over a specific spot. Under the high-pressure spot, this can bring long, grueling heat waves that don’t go away for days or weeks. On the edges it can bring a deluge of rain, as moist air from the south is brought up to meet colder air coming down from the north. That’s what Detroit and New York just went through.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad...

Re:What happens to that heat?

[dywolf]

essentially we're tlaking about playing the game of "what if?".
as in, "what if X was different? would Y have still have happened?", and that's a difficult link to make.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[clonehappy]

...slate.com/blogs...

That is all.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Archangel Michael]

" and a massive increase in tropical hurricanes."

They have been saying this for YEARS now, and there hasn't been a major hurricane in how many years?

It is predictions and statements like this that have people like me scratching our heads. None of the predictions of doom have happened. Polar Bears are not drowning either. When people are caught lying, repeatedly, people stop believing them. This is what happens when people stop reading fairy tales and start creating them using "Science" as a backdrop.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Archangel Michael]

Interestingly, you randomly choose years to fit your criteria.1851-1900 = 49 years. 1901-1950 = 49 years, 1950-1975 = 25 years, 1976-2000=24 years, 2000-2012 = 12 years ...

See the problem yet? Of course not, the problem doesn't fit the narrative, so we ignore the problem .

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its almost as if pre-1950 it was possible to have a Cat 4 hurricane in the ocean that no one ever knew about. I wonder if that is a possibility, or if we actually did have weather satellites in orbit back in 1851.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[thrich81]

Actually I don't see any problem in the OPs statistics as stated. If you combine the 1951-1975 entries and the 1976-2000 entries you get a 50 year period, just like the two periods before. And its total number of cat 4 hurricanes is 46, well over the totals for the 50 year periods before, which perfectly fits his narrative. It isn't uncommon to reduce the intervals in statistical aggregations when things start changing more rapidly. In this case the OP did it such that we can easily recreate equal sized bins. By the way, those periods he used are 1851 to 1900 = 50 years, 1901 to 1950 = 50 years, 1951 to 1975 = 25 years, 1976 to 2000 = 25 years, not 49, 49, 25, 24 as you stated. The statistics here are pretty simple, not much room to manipulate or complain about them. Looks like a trend to me.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[jandersen]

:-)

Interesting. So I should have read the article, after all. It makes sense, what you say, of course.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[DigiShaman]

The heat of a planet gets thrown back into space as IR radiation during the night. You can end up with a run-away effect if you're like the planet Venus however (which, we're not). And if by chance a planet absorbs more energy than it radiates back out (impossible), it will detonate and explode (maniacal laughter ensues)!

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Archangel Michael]

The problem is comparing unlike sample sizes. Which you admit exists, but you ignore because it doesn't fit the narrative you like. Historical records prior to about 1900 are subject to interpretation and error. Additionally, weather (hurricanes) is not something we can count towards (or against) AGW, or so we are told when there is a five year period without a major hurricane.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Sqr(twg)]

Also, these so-called "scientists" claim that there will be "winter" a few months from now, but the weather today is actually warmer than it was yesterday, so I'm scratching my head...

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Anonymous Coward]

He is measuring densities of category 4 hurricanes per year. those densities are steadly increasing. the intervals include all the years... so can you explain why is this misleading? (with math if is not too much to ask)

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Kernel Kurtz]

New research suggests that the upper layer of the ocean has warmed more than had been thought previously while the deeper ocean has cooled rather than warmed in recent years.

http://judithcurry.com/2014/10...

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Sqr(twg)]

I did not chose the years. This was a quick copy-paste from Wikipedia. I suppose they picked the intervals so that the number of observations in each bin would be about 20, which implies a standard deviation uncertainty of about 4.5 hurricanes in each interval.

But since you didn't like that table, here's one just for you:

1851–1900 13 0.26
1901–1950 29 0.58
1951–2000 46 0.92

(Each of the above intervals is 50 years, not 49. I haven't found any statistics on the correlation between being a climate change skeptic and being unable to do simple math, but I'm sure it would be interesting.)

Now, if you really wanted to raise a valid objection, you would point out that weather satellites did not exist until the 1960:s, and that the number of severe hurricanes might have been underestimated prior to that.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[multimediavt]

Really? Simple thermodynamics must escape you. Heat is energy. That energy once absorbed has to go somewhere. In the case of warming the surface or oceans the heat radiates back toward space (eventually), but a portion is reflected back toward Earth causing a sustainable rise in overall global temperatures due to thickness and composition of the atmosphere. Yes, as the oceans warm up currents change and the whole three dimensional system is thrown out of balance and tries to rebalance itself within the new parameters, much like the air above the oceans and land does. The problem is that new balance may not be suitable for life as we know it to continue and we have mass extinctions and food shortages as a potential outcome. This is all simple Earth Science stuff learned in grade school.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's the other way around. The temperature measurements in the past were insufficient, and now they think they underestimated the amount of temperature increase the oceans have already gone through.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Evaporation increases exponentially with temperature

Citation needed.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[sjames]

It's funny you were so quick to jump on any small matter that you missed that we can easily fix that up with simple math and the point still stands.

Feel free to average .88 and .96 together and see that it is still an increase over the previous period.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Anonymous Coward]

So just wondering here....

How is the accuracy in verifying and reporting category 4 hurricanes between 1851 and 1900 anywhere near the accuracy we have in 2001-2012?

We're all pretty sure we didn't miss any?

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no such thing as "balance" in nature. The system is too complex for that. This can be proved with fairly simple mathematical models (ordinary differential equations, for example). Everything is constantly changing. Some of that change is good for our species, some of it is bad.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[riverat1]

The 2014 Atlantic Hurricane season has been mild but the Eastern Pacific season is on the verge of record setting and the Western Pacific typhoon season is going strong.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Archangel Michael]

The problem here is that AGW supporters loved to toss Hurricanes out as "proof" of global warming AND evidence that GW makes Hurricanes worse. The problem is neither is factual, and neither is even remotely accurate. Making falsifiable claims is one reason why I don't listen to AGW proponents any longer. They are just Religious nutjobs, using quasi-science to foist their belief systems on to others. Here is more detailed and significant analysis that basically makes "hurricanes" a non-issue and why the AGW proponents should stop using hurricanes as "proof" of anything.

Here is a good outline of the problem :http://www.growth-dynamics.com/news/DEC27_04.htm

Here is an outline that proves my point ... http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...

Or here: http://www.realclimate.org/ind...

Or here: http://climateaudit.org/2007/0...

Or here (pay attention to Fig 3-6) https://coaps.fsu.edu/papers/r...

Re:What happens to that heat?

[styrotech]

Also, these so-called "scientists" claim that there will be "winter" a few months from now, but the weather today is actually warmer than it was yesterday, so I'm scratching my head...

That's nothing! Here in NZ climate scientists are claiming it will be summer in a few months!

How stupid do they think we are? All this stuff about scientific consensus is a total lie!

Re:What happens to that heat?

[danbert8]

Is the Pacific warming less than the Atlantic? There have to be a lot of variables involved here... I mean we can't predict hurricanes very accurately, I don't know why people assert that we can peg more or less hurricanes with increasing or decreasing severity based on just one or two variables.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[wvmarle]

"Simple earth science stuff"? I don't think so. If it were that simple grade-school-level stuff (it was not taught to me in grade school, though maybe nowadays they do), why would there be so much discussion in the scientific world?

BTW you don't provide any actual answer to my question. Just more hypotheses. Of course I know heat is a form of energy, and there's this law of conservation of energy - that's why my question. What happens to that energy, where does it go? Does it all stay in the water? Mostly stay there? Is only the top layer affected and is the heat released before it affects lower layers as well? The answers to those questions tell how serious the ocean warming effect is and how it influences the rest of the climate and ecosystems. It's complex matter, not simple at all, and any attempt to simplify it so far has failed.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Kernel Kurtz]

The proper thing to do would be to count all categories and figure out how much energy conversion each represents individually and cumulatively.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Sabriel]

... that second graph in the first link is interesting, regardless of whether any primary causes are anthropogenic or not.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Kernel Kurtz]

No worries.

It will be either warmer or colder tomorrow too.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[david_thornley]

I wasn't aware that climate scientists were trying to prove anything with hurricanes.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[gzuckier]

Ahh yes, we've just established that the oceans have been warmer than we expected. And just around the same time we've had a recent minimum of severe hurricanes. Climate change or not, you cannot predict severe weather patterns. Anti-deniers like to attribute every negative event to climate change and none of the positive events. Maybe a warmer planet will have less severe weather if the air temperature is closer to the water temperature as it is the differential that causes severe weather.

You can't put energy into the system and expect it to quiet down. Haven't you actually watched a pot of water on a stove? When you turn up the heat, the water starts to really swirl around. The atmosphere is similar. Individual locations and/or times might benefit, but storms are a function of atmospheric energy, and more energy is going to mean more or more violent storms, or both.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[gzuckier]

" and a massive increase in tropical hurricanes."

They have been saying this for YEARS now, and there hasn't been a major hurricane in how many years?

It is predictions and statements like this that have people like me scratching our heads. None of the predictions of doom have happened. Polar Bears are not drowning either. When people are caught lying, repeatedly, people stop believing them. This is what happens when people stop reading fairy tales and start creating them using "Science" as a backdrop.

How do you know polar bears aren't drowning? Who says " and a massive increase in tropical hurricanes."? "Storm frequency decreases in the Southern Hemisphere and north Indian Ocean, increases in the western North Pacific, and is indeterminate elsewhere." http://journals.ametsoc.org/do... for instance.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually I don't see any problem in the OPs statistics as stated...The statistics here are pretty simple, not much room to manipulate or complain about them. Looks like a trend to me.

To be a competent scientist, you need to be able to think about the measurement process underlying the numbers, not just the games you can play with those numbers.

The Saffir-Simpson category system for hurricanes was created in 1971. Direct measurement does not exist prior to that date. It certainly doesn't exist going back to 1851. The accuracy and precision of older measurements are both highly suspect.

Even with modern equipment, wind speed is not a trivial measurement. It can very enormously from point to point (local variation), so the meaning of "wind speed" is ambiguous over a large enough region, and typically has to be defined in terms of a particular measurement system (and all measurement systems can be expected to show chaotic and non-linear variations over a long enough measurement period, or a large enough geographical area).

Modern versions of Saffir-Simpson attempt to get around SOME of the difficulty of defining what we are measuring, by defining something called maximum sustained wind. This is a measure taken within the eyewall at something called the radius of maximum wind, at 10 meters elevation, over a fixed time span. While this might seem extremely precise, in reality it doesn't even begin to address all the issues involved with this measurement! For example, we have issues with respect to terrain: 10 meters simply isn't that high above the ground!

All this, of course, simply makes it even harder to use historical data, which wasn't measured according to the rules!

In short, claims regarding the number of hurricanes falling into a particular category are highly suspect. We can make guesses, even informed guesses, but that's not a good basis for policy (especially since there are all kinds of issues with applying the measurement once we have it!).

Even if we were able to show a trend, of course, it might not necessarily follow that we understood the cause of the trend, but that is a discussion for another day.

Re:What happens to that heat?

[dywolf]

Yes...because that's all it takes to dismiss someone, not actually reading what was said, not checking out the source scientific paper, and just ignoring the guy's credentials. ya...cause thats the proper to evaluate statements: kneejerkage.

So yes, apparently that is all that passes for intellectual thought on your part. Namely, very little.

Since you're obviously too stupid or too lazy to check things out for yourself, here:

Philip Cary Plait (born September 30, 1964),[1] also known as The Bad Astronomer, is an American astronomer, skeptic, writer and popular science blogger. Plait has worked as part of the Hubble Space Telescope team, images and spectra of astronomical objects, as well as engaging in public outreach advocacy for NASA missions. He has written two books, Bad Astronomy and Death from the Skies. He has also appeared in several science documentaries, including Phil Plait's Bad Universe on the Discovery Channel. From August 2008 through 2009, he served as President of the James Randi Educational Foundation.

Basically a smaller scale Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

And here: here's the scientific paper in question: http://www.pnas.org/content/ea...
Not that it matters, since you probably dismiss any scientist out of hand based on who they voted for last election.

Good. or bad?

[x_IamSpartacus_x]

I'm on my phone. Can someone RTFA and tell me if this is good or bad news? TFS is unclear on the matter.

Re:Good. or bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is bad in the sense that the oceans are warming up rather than radiating the energy back to space.
It is good in the sense that we now know about this and can update climate models accordingly.
It is bad in the sense that we now have to wait a couple of years until further analysis has been done.

Re:Good. or bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you miss the memo? We're all going to die and it is 100% mans' fault! In all of Earth's Geological history the temperature has never varied. This is just the latest lie to keep the money and power flowing. It seems even the below 100 IQ crowd was starting to wonder why every prediction was wrong and a constantly growing percentage of them are the exact opposite of observed fact. In REAL Science when that happens, launch vehicles explode, buildings collapse, people die, those involved are discredited and lose their jobs. Without a new, ideally unverifiable this time, excuse the "science" of climate science is in great danger of being exposed for the biggest evil thrust upon mankind since Eugenics.

Re:Good. or bad?

[mwvdlee]

The internet doesn't exists.
Throughout Earth's history, electrons have always been moving about.
Just because they're moving about in man-made metal bits now, doesn't mean anything changed.

Re:Good. or bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet doesn't exists.
Throughout Earth's history, electrons have always been moving about.
Just because they're moving about in man-made metal bits now, doesn't mean anything changed.

Say what? So they have always moved about in man-made metal bits, or is that new and something has changed? Obviously something HAS changed.

Re:Good. or bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

The internet doesn't exists.
Throughout Earth's history, electrons have always been moving about.
Just because they're moving about in man-made metal bits now, doesn't mean anything changed.

Say what? So they have always moved about in man-made metal bits, or is that new and something has changed? Obviously something HAS changed.

WHOOSH!!!

Or you don't understand sarcasm.

What the commenter alludes to, and what bothers me are the people who say "Well, yes, mankind is dumping metric shitloads of heat into the atmosphere, but that is of NO consequence, and makes NO difference in the climate of the earth". I just don't believe that we can be dumping that much heat and it not have any effect whatsoever.

Re:Good. or bad?

[mean pun]

Yes, something has changed, same as with the climate. Some parts of the climate is man-made too nowadays.

Global warming is joke

[Anonymous Coward]

They have wore out the phrase climate change and so here we go with some idiot who wants to beat this global warming bullshit.... its just a natural cycle

Re:Global warming is joke

[mwvdlee]

Yes, and other words will be ass-raped by political lobbyists as well.
Doesn't change the effect it has on the climate.

Time to take action

[Anonymous Coward]

Soon even the US will have to accept that this is really happening. Simply saying "God bless us" won't help us - only changing our way of living will.

Re:Time to take action

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. I will never change the way I live.

Re:Time to take action

[Anonymous Coward]

In that case I hope someone makes you. The future of our planet (with us on it) is too important.

Re:Time to take action

[Anonymous Coward]

Europe and Australia have been slowing or rolling back their actions on climate change. China and India aren't really interested or able.

The problem isn't simply the US.

When will climate science be able to explain the 18 year hiatus in global warming?

Re:Time to take action

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is when will you read science ?

Coverage bias in the HadCRUT4 temperature series and its impact on recent temperature trends
The ups and downs of global warming

Re:Time to take action

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that we come up with a list of deniers so that future generations can blame the grandkids for the crimes of their families. It is only right that if their grandparents polluted more to get ahead or stopped progress on switching to clean technology/recycling/efficient transportation, that their descendants should be the first ones to face the costs associated with the problems that will be caused and the lack of resources caused by climate problems.

Re:Time to take action

[Anonymous Coward]

There was no hiatus (not as denialists know it; it's a denialist misnamed misunderstanding), and they've known the cause of what you're referring to for closer to a decade now. Hint: oceans.

As for China and India....they actually do care and have been making efforts. For example, China is pushing solar internally. It may be hard for a developing nation that's rapidly industrialing to control emisions,

Re:Time to take action

[Charliemopps]

Soon even the US will have to accept that this is really happening. Simply saying "God bless us" won't help us - only changing our way of living will.

Your statement is a funny example of how people completely misunderstand the hardcore religious conservative. They are fatalist. They think their lives and the fate of humanity is ALREADY doomed. Global warming, even if it is true, is irrelevant. They will die, and the earth will be struck asunder by evil. Some of us will get saved and go to heaven precisely because "God blessed us" while the rest of us will rot. From their point of view, you're trying to keep a train on the tracks that they know for a fact will hit a brick wall tomorrow anyway.

Re:Time to take action

[Anonymous Coward]

And here we have it.

Mr. AC wants to FORCE people to live in the manner HE thinks is appropriate. How many times have we seen that in the past? How many people died because of that attitude?

Regardless of the veracity of the Science here, one thing is indisputable is that the Far Left, wacko Environmentalists have co-opted the issues in order to push their oppressive and despotic agenda.

Re:Time to take action

[sycodon]

Maybe you'll send them to re-education camps. If not that, work camps where the Work will set the free.

I hear North Korea has that down to a science now.

Re: Time to take action

[Anonymous Coward]

George and David Koch, top of the list.

Re:Time to take action

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope that we come up with a list of deniers so that future generations can blame the grandkids for the crimes of their families. It is only right that if their grandparents polluted more to get ahead or stopped progress on switching to clean technology/recycling/efficient transportation, that their descendants should be the first ones to face the costs associated with the problems that will be caused and the lack of resources caused by climate problems.

Climate Theologians already want to make lists of Apostates and Infidels. How long until the beheadings and crucifixions begin?

Re:Time to take action

[Anonymous Coward]

It has already been explained.

Re:Time to take action

[Anonymous Coward]

Part of the problem is trust. We're all just supposed to change our way of life based on the hypothesis of climate scientists. Its ridiculous. As if a job title implies some sort of moral or character high ground.

Doctors, lawyers, auto mechanics - we recognize these professions are inhabited by human beings, with all the self interest that indicates; hence, we dont blindly "trust" any of them, we have legal liability built into any professional contract or statement they enter into.

What legal liability do climate scientists have in the case that we spend billions "changing our ways of life" only to fin that GCC is a naturally recurring event? Can we take their cars, their homes, make sure they never fucking work anywhere again?

Lets apply some legal liability to climate scientists and see what happens to hypothesis' of man-made GCC...

Re:Time to take action

[riverat1]

Wrong. I will never change the way I live.

At some point you won't have any choice about changing the way you live (if you're young enough to be still alive in another 20 or 30 years). The changes that will occur from global warming will necessitate that you change whether you want to or not.

Re:Time to take action

[david_thornley]

More likely it will become too bloody expensive for AC to continue his current lifestyle unchanged. Economics is a lot more sure than re-education camps.

Global Warming FUD != tech

[Anonymous Coward]

Shocker. Another non-tech global warming story from Slashdot.

Re:Global Warming FUD != tech

[serviscope_minor]

Mod parent down. Seriously? Who modded this shit up.

Science is and always has been "news for nerds". Slash dot has never ever been solely a tech blog. It was always "things that Rob Malda found interesting", including tech, science, politics (mostly US since he is American) and a few other bits and bobs.

So can people please stop harking back to a history of slashdot that never existed? It's getting really tedious.

Oh and if you modded it up merely because it called global warming "FUD", kindly fuck off because you're a complete moron.

Re: Global Warming FUD != tech

[mSparks43]

Slashdot is news for nerds.
Nerds don't care about global warming. They'll just turn the air conditioning up. If/when it ever happens.

I've had a lovely warm summer. I'm hoping for more long hot summers in the future.

Re: Global Warming FUD != tech

[Anonymous Coward]

This nerd is interested in the technology for figuring how the planet's weather systems interact.
    We already have the atmospheric sampling at 1200Z & 2400Z and the various, weather models sometimes with prediction matching reality for a few days.
    Sea weather seems a big part of this that is just beginning to be looked at seriously.

The fact that they don't have much sea temperature data is not news.
The fact that there is a realization of this and they are starting to figure out what to do about it is news.
The technical details of what they are actually doing seems nerd worthy, but perhaps only for the renaissance nerds among us.

As for turning up the AC, sure but in deference to the climate thing just close the doors and windows and turn off the fire place first.
Perhaps use the low power screen saver as well?

90% ?

[ishmaelflood]

So given that conventional atmosphere models have ignored this to date, if the oceans are storing 90% of the excess heat, why aren't the conventional models showing temperature rises 10 times as great as what is observed, say 5-10 deg C?

Either the summary or the article are slack in the extreme.

Re:90% ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those 90% are estimated by the researchers and have been known for years and are part of all climate models.
However apparently there is the assumption in (many? most? all?) models that this process takes place in the upper 700m of an ocean and this study suggests that at least in the region they've analyzed that number may be too small. According to the article this means that globally past estimated may be up to 25% off - could be less though as their numbers have a wide range and we don;t know if this applies to all regions.

Re:90% ?

[mwvdlee]

Because oceans have ALWAYS been storing excess heat.
This finding impacts the ocean's heat storage behaviour throughout it's entire existance, not just since humanity.
It's the interpretation of the summary and article that is slack in extreme.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

So to explain more fully. I looked at the article and didn't see a mention of any atmospheric model. Which is not a surprise because atmospheric models haven't been used for prediction for years - if ever. GCM models certainly take into account ocean heat absorption and indeed the 90% is the current estimate - oceans are expected to absorb 90% of the warming. The article suggests this estimate is low ( and hence the estimate of s sensitivity is low ) but it could not be an order if magnitude out (as you imply) because there is only a 10% margin.

Re:90% ?

[Bengie]

There may be 10x more energy coming in than we expected, but there's a heck of a lot more mass absorbing the extra energy than expected. We're not seeing a large temperature increase because of the huge mass of the ocean, which (Mass of Ocean * specific heat)/(Mass of Atmosphere * specific heat) = ~66. The extra energy isn't enough to increase the temperature much, but it is still a lot of energy, meaning more stuff like hurricanes or ice melts.

Re:90% ?

[JeffAtl]

Are you sure about your calculations? Not challenging you or anything, but the 66 ratio seems low.

Re:90% ?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Which is not a surprise because atmospheric models haven't been used for prediction for years

One should hope not - there aren't even any models yet that can predict basic temperature trends on any sort of fine scale.

Not that I'm complaining - aside from pushing for clean power, which will be cost effective anyway with the right technologies (sans government prohibitions) - other than protecting the real estate investments of the wealthy, the RoI on warming prevention is horrible, compared with other things to spend money on. Use the money to cure malaria first - it'll save far, far, more lives. I know, politicians don't like to hear the economics, but tough noogies to them.

Accurate climate models ought to be a laudable field of academic pursuit, but there's really not much urgent need for them.

Re:90% ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Density!

This relates back to in these posts where it was mentioned that sea level rises with heat when it expands. Consider the density of water and the number of moles per cubed area of water and you can start to calculate how many calories of heat will go into water before it raises 1 degree.

Re:90% ?

[riverat1]

I did some research and calculations and it looks like the heat capacity of the oceans is about 1,000 times the heat capacity of the atmosphere.

Mass of the World Ocean 1.37 x 10^21 kg or 1.37 x 10^24 grams
Specific heat of water 4.1813 J/g/K

Mass of the atmosphere 5.3 x 10^18 kg or 5.3 x 10^21 grams
Specific heat of air 1.012 J/g/K

1,370 * 4.1813 = 5728.4
5.3 * 1.012 = 5.3636

5728.4 / 5.3636 = 1068

I think I calculated that correctly but let me know if I got it wrong.

Re:90% ?

[JeffAtl]

Thanks, that seems like a much more reasonable ratio.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

One should hope not - there aren't even any models yet that can predict basic temperature trends on any sort of fine scale.

Which is like saying "there aren't any popsicle skyscrapers". We don't actually need popsicle skyscrapers, nor necessarily models which are operating at a finer scale than the ones we have.

Not that I'm complaining - aside from pushing for clean power, which will be cost effective anyway with the right technologies (sans government prohibitions) - other than protecting the real estate investments of the wealthy, the RoI on warming prevention is horrible,

Well, no. You need to run the numbers on that one again. For one thing there is no point at which converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary. The earth could warm 5 degrees, an we would still need to convert from the old technologies for exactly the same reason - to prevent further warming. So the choices are; (A) convert now, minimise the amount of warming and hence the economic damage associated with climate change (Stern et al). Or (B) convert later, for exactly the same cost, and don't minimise the amount of warming and thus bear the enormous economic damages associated with climate change. A B, for reasons that should be obvious.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

For one thing there is no point at which converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary.

It does. When reverse conversion to *C* and O2 becomes cheap, scalable and easy.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

So in other words "when magic happens". Frankly I don't think we should count on wizard showing up any time soon.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

What was called magic earlier has happened later. Many times.

There is nothing fundamentally infeasible about it either - flying of metal boxes was considered fundamentally infeasible yet it happened.

With that in mind, yes, when magic happens like earlier.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

What was called magic earlier has happened later. Many times.

Essentially your argument is that sometime in the future it will be cheaper to dig coal out of the ground, burn it for electricity and emit the Carbon Dioxide and simultaneously build a larger, non-emitting power station to suck the atmosphere through a filter, capture the CO2 and break the molecular bond to form C and O2. This, in your mind, will be cheaper than just using the electricity from the second plant directly for our needs.

There is nothing fundamentally infeasible about it either - flying of metal boxes was considered fundamentally infeasible yet it happened.

So is Santa Claus, and unicorns. Flying metal boxes don't actually defy the laws of physics. Santa Claus does. So does breaking the C->O2 bond without energy input. See the difference?

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

I never said about digging coal out of the ground. Try again.

Worrying about carbon will not be necessary, contrary to your statement. BTW the plant to make*C* from co2 that i mentioned, could generate the energy dense fuel currently petroleum products give us, but that is not necessary for your earlier statement to be wrong.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

I never said about digging coal out of the ground. Try again.

It has to be said that your plan lacks a certain level of detail. The detail that seperates this plan from childish fantasy.

Worrying about carbon will not be necessary, contrary to your statement. BTW the plant to make*C* from co2 that i mentioned, could generate the energy dense fuel currently petroleum products give us, but that is not necessary for your earlier statement to be wrong.

You would of course be aware that such a plant will require the same amount of energy to reconstruct those organic molecules as was released when we oxidised them (in an engine, or coal burning power plant)? That the production of fuel actually obeys the laws of thermodynamics?

Presumably, you mean to power your 'fuel regeneration' plant with something. Lets call that generation technology (for the sake of argument) 'S'. So, for x number of years we burn coal to release energy Y. Then, we create a plant which reconstructs the organic molecules through a process which MUST use an amount of energy Z where Z > Y. Laws of thermodynamics. So, we've expended Z. OR we could NOT burn the coal and generate Y directly using technology 'S'.

Tell us again why we would waste our time burning coal in the first place.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

Protip 1 - coal is not the only CO2 generating fuel.

Protip 2 - your argument has nothing to do with a future point where converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary.

Tell us again why we would waste our time burning coal in the first place.

How can I tell this to you "again", when I didn't tell this even once?

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

Protip 1 - coal is not the only CO2 generating fuel.

Protip 2 - your argument has nothing to do with a future point where converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary.

I'm not making an argument. I'm waiting to be convinced by yours. If your reasoning is so bad that you can only allude to it in passing and are afraid to provide any explicit detail, then this speaks volumes to me.

Tell us again why we would waste our time burning coal in the first place.

How can I tell this to you "again", when I didn't tell this even once?

Here is what you said: the RoI on warming prevention is horrible, compared with other things to spend money on. . As you would be aware (you are, after all "te pro" ), failure to mitigate climate change ("warming prevention") will wipe an estimated 20% off global GDP (Stern et al.). Mitigating climate change costs around 3-4% global GDP (Stern et al.). Conventional wisdom says: Hmm that mitigation makes sense, economically. You could hardly disagree - except you seem to.

Clearly then, when you refer to our ROI, you don't mean monetary investment. This means you must have some other reason to not invest monetarily in preventing climate change, some reason so important it's worth destroying the world economy for.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

Learn to read, idiot. I never said " the RoI on warming prevention is horrible, compared with other things to spend money". I haven't referred to any ROI.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

Ah. So you just spent several days engaged in a conversation about the ROI on climate change mitigation, a conversation in which you were asked, repeatedly, to detail how your comments related to the subject at hand, and you don't actually have a view on the ROI of climate change mitigation.

And you think I'm an idiot?

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

you just spent several days engaged in a conversation about the ROI on climate change mitigation

Link?

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

Oh, are you too dumb to figure out the difference between bill_mcgonigle - 4333 ; and bingoUV - 1066850 ?

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

Oh, are you too dumb to figure out the difference between bill_mcgonigle - 4333 ; and bingoUV - 1066850 ?

No evidence to suggest that that might be the case. You haven't distinguished your argument from bill's and in this context, that is all that matters. The topic at hand is ROI on mitigating climate change. Your remarks on the topic are cryptic to say the least - but that is your problem, not mine. If you can't describe your point of view in sufficient detail to allow it to be distinguished from the OP's how is that my concern?

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

No evidence to suggest that that might be the case

Nice attempt at a face saving lie.

You haven't distinguished your argument from bill

My argument was about pointing out your false statement "For one thing there is no point at which converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary". Nothing about ROI.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

It has nothing about me engaging in any conversation about the ROI on climate change mitigation. Try again.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

It seems to me that you joined the conversation (about the ROI of climate change mitigation) without realising what the conversation was about, or somehow you imagined you could take my remark out of context and I would simply accept that. If the first: not my problem. If the second: bad luck. Hard cheese. Post on topic or don't post at all.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

No evidence to suggest that that might be the case

Nice attempt at a face saving lie.

Your comment implies that I care one way or the other what you think. Wrong again. Produce some evidence for your assertions, or don't make them in the first place.

You haven't distinguished your argument from bill

My argument was about pointing out your false statement "For one thing there is no point at which converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary". Nothing about ROI.

A remark made in reply to assertions about the ROI on climate change. You, the interjecter, don't get to choose the topic of a conversation which is already underway. And you don't get to say it is false until you prove it is false. Which you haven't done. Your failure to make a coherent argument is not my problem.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

In that context in which you made it, the statement "For one thing there is no point at which converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary" is false.

Because, like I said earlier, reverse conversion is not impossible.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

The context in which I made the comment was in a discussion about the ROI. I take it then, that you believe that the ROI on negating cliamte change is actually negative? That we should therefore continue not mitigating against warming (thus continue to use our coal fired power plants).

Please provide a justification for you stated view that the ROI on climate change negation is actually negative (thus contradicting Stern et. al.).

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

Irrespective of the ROI being positive or negative, the statement is false.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

I take it then, that you believe that the ROI on negating cliamte change is actually negative? That we should therefore continue not mitigating against warming (thus continue to use our coal fired power plants).

You didn't answer the question. Answer the question.

Please provide a justification for you stated view that the ROI on climate change negation is actually negative (thus contradicting Stern et. al.).

Provide the required justification.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

Whether or not I believe anything about the ROI of mitigation is irrelevant. Your statement about there never coming a point when CO2 neutral technologies will be unnecessary is incorrect either way. Because either way reverse conversion is always a possibility.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

Whether or not I believe anything about the ROI of mitigation is irrelevant.

Incorrect. Apart from being moronic in general to have not considered how much it would cost to mitigate warming (versus the costs of living with it), you've deliberately engaged yourself in a conversation about that very subject. You are discussing it RIGHT NOW.

Your statement about there never coming a point when CO2 neutral technologies will be unnecessary is incorrect either way. Because either way reverse conversion is always a possibility.

Incorrect.

You need to demonstrate the ROI of your proposal ("reverse conversion") to mitigate climate change by direct extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere. Until you can demonstrate how this plan is economically feasible/better value WITHOUT moving away from fossil fuel based generation, then your assertion is unproven.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

You need to demonstrate the ROI of your proposal ("reverse conversion")

It's not a proposal, it's an acceptance of its possibility. Hence ROI doesn't matter.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

Incorrect. Apart from being moronic in general to have not considered how much it would cost to mitigate warming (versus the costs of living with it), you've deliberately engaged yourself in a conversation about that very subject. You are discussing it RIGHT NOW.

(no response)

Glad you agree.

You need to demonstrate the ROI of your proposal ("reverse conversion") to mitigate climate change by direct extraction of CO2 from the atmosphere. Until you can demonstrate how this plan is economically feasible/better value WITHOUT moving away from fossil fuel based generation, then your assertion is unproven.

It's not a proposal,

So you don't think we should do it?

it's an acceptance of its possibility.

You don't think we should do it, and can't describe a circumstance in which we would. You can't detail how this 'air vacuum' plan would work unless we had already converted to clean energy (which negates the point you are clumsily trying to make). And you can't describe how the ROI is positive. You think it might 'possibly' work (i.e. result in positive ROI). Care to put a number on that possibility? 5%? 7.5% ?

I'm going to go ahead and call it 0%. Mostly because of the 'laws of thermodynamics' thing.

Hence ROI doesn't matter.

ROI always matters when we are discussing ROI.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

When we are discussing a future point where CO2 neutral technologies aren't necessary, ROI doesn't matter.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

When we are discussing a future point where CO2 neutral technologies aren't necessary, ROI doesn't matter.

There is no such future point.

Unless you envision doing nothing and civilisation collapsing to the point that mass transportation/power generation are fruitless. The ROI on that scenario is not very good.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

There is no such future point.

I am still waiting for a proof , or even an argument supporting it, from you about the impossibility of such a future point.

I have already pointed out some of the circumstances which would make such a point materialize. There are more.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

I am still waiting for a proof , or even an argument supporting it, from you about the impossibility of such a future point.

Congratulations! Your logical fallacy is burden of proof. You claimed that such a machine could be built. You provided no proof. It's not my responsibility to disabuse you of your fantasies.

I have already pointed out some of the circumstances which would make such a point materialize. There are more.

You admitted that your proposed machine defies the laws of thermodynamics. So "the circumstances which would make such a point materialize" would be in a land only reachable by the magical faraway tree.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

Congratulations! Your logical fallacy is burden of proof. You claimed that such a machine could be built. You provided no proof. It's not my responsibility to disabuse you of your fantasies.

No. You claimed some particular event to be impossible. It is on you to prove it is impossible.

The null hypothesis is that everything is possible at some point in the future, unless proven impossible. You fail logic 101.

You admitted that your proposed machine defies the laws of thermodynamics.

No

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

Seems to you wrong - both first and second.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

Congratulations! Your logical fallacy is burden of proof. You claimed that such a machine could be built. You provided no proof. It's not my responsibility to disabuse you of your fantasies.

No. You claimed some particular event to be impossible. It is on you to prove it is impossible.

Answer the following questions:

1. Do leprechauns exist?

2. Will leprechauns exist in the future?

The null hypothesis is that everything is possible at some point in the future, unless proven impossible. You fail logic 101.

3. Will leprechauns exist in the future?

4. Will we, in the future, be able to create what is defined as a perpetual motion machine - a machine that defies either the first or second law of thermodynamics?

You admitted that your proposed machine defies the laws of thermodynamics.

No

You said that your machine creates fuel and doesn't require the equivalent energy be input to do so.. Your machine defies the laws of thermodynamics.

. I told you so and you didn't contradict me = you admitted it.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

What are you talking about? We are still talking about ROI, just one aspect of it. First you will prove your perpetual motion machine works, then you will prove that such a venture has positive ROI. Failure to do both = you fail.

You are just too stupid to see what is going on.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

First you hallucinated that I said "the RoI on warming prevention is horrible, compared with other things to spend money". Then you hallucinate I spoke about any perpetual motion machine.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

No, the "no energy be input " is your hallucination.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

Well, we'll return to the bit about Leprechauns later if we need to.

No, the "no energy be input " is your hallucination.

Uh huh. So: what power source supplies the energy needed by the machine to convert CO2 into fuel?

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

What energy source supplies energy to power the machine that converts CO2 into fuel?

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

Doesn't matter. Energy can exist in the future, so it can be used to convert CO2 into something else.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

What energy source supplies energy to power the machine that converts CO2 into fuel?

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

Some energy source that exists at that point in future.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

This energy source is fossil fuel based (y/n)

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

Most likely no, but it doesn't matter.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

Your machine requires massive energy input.

To convert CO2 to fuel (i.e de-oxidise it by breaking the C-O bonds) requires (in a perfect world), the same energy as was released when those bonds were created. there's nothing magical about it - the energy from burning (oxidising) fossil fuels comes from the point where that bond C->O is created. That's what burning means.

This means to power your machine you need a power source of at least the same size as the power sources that created the CO2 that goes in.

If you use clean technology you will require us to invest in clean energy on a scale equivalent to our fossil fuel energy generation capacity: In which case, your assertion There is a future point where converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary. is false.

If you power your machine with fossil fuel more CO2 will be emitted powering your machine than it can convert. The end result is CO2 positive, and you've really achieved nothing. In which case, your assertion There is a future point where converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary. is false.

Your assertion is false, even before we consider it's likely ROI.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

For your limited brain, then, consider it power source neutral. Power will need to mainly come from non-carbon-fossil-fuels, or non-fossil-fuels for it to be practical. But if a miniscule amount does come from carbon fossil fuels it would not make much of a difference.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

No, not a jot of difference - at least to the outcomes of this conversation.

To conclude then:

If you use clean technology you will require us to invest in clean energy on a scale equivalent to our fossil fuel energy generation capacity: In which case, your assertion There is a future point where converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary. is false.

consider it power source neutral. Power will need to mainly come from non-carbon-fossil-fuels, or non-fossil-fuels for it to be practical.

So your assertion There is a future point where converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary is false.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

No, once reverse conversion is cheap, scalable and easy; CO2 neutral technologies are not necessary. There are other factors also which can cause this.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

No, once reverse conversion is cheap, scalable and easy; CO2 neutral technologies are not necessary. There are other factors also which can cause this.

Assertion falsified - see discussion here

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

Idiot, it was in the context of "conversion to CO2 neutral technologies". The CO2 -> fuel conversion starts with somewhat CO2 neutral technologies. The other industries then don't have to convert.

All this even while ignoring the other factors that can cause a non-necessity of conversion to CO2 neutral technologies.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

The CO2 -> fuel conversion starts with somewhat CO2 neutral technologies.

Or to put that in plainer english: We need to convert our existing CO2 emitting power generation technology to CO2 neutral technology. Attempting to convert CO2 to other compounds using energy sourced from CO2 emitting technologies will be net CO2 positive.

Or to use the more common phrase: there is no point at which converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary. .

Agreed.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

No conversion of machines required. Existing machines keep working unchanged to generate power, manufacture goods, etc. New machines do reverse conversion.

Ignoring numerous other factors, of course.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

No conversion of machines required. Existing machines keep working unchanged to generate power, manufacture goods, etc.

Sure. Except for the ones you've already said will be replaced. I.e the ones that generate CO2. Because as you've already said: there is no point at which converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary.

New machines do reverse conversion.

Of course, as you've already said attempting to convert CO2 to other compounds using energy sourced from CO2 emitting technologies will be net CO2 positive. So you would not continue to employ CO2 emitting generation technologies and then try and convert that CO2 to some other compound. That would be unbelievably moronic.

Thanks for admitting that you were wrong.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

Oh, I probably should have mentioned this before, but if you add a step to an existing process that converts the CO2 emitted to a different compound then you have (of course) converted that process to CO2 neutral. So your proposed process to convert CO2 to a different compound (sugars, organic compounds etc) is just another example of converting existing technologies to clean technology.

Should have mentioned that earlier - my bad :-)

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

Because as you've already said: there is no point at which converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary.

More hallucinations from you.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

There is no step added. Existing "technologies" remain unconverted. Independently, CO2 is converted into something else - intentionally or as a good side effect of something else.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

Because as you've already said: there is no point at which converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary.

More hallucinations from you.

When you said Power will need to mainly come from non-carbon-fossil-fuels, or non-fossil-fuels for it to be practical. you conceded the argument. I graciously accept your concession.

You may not have directly said: there is no point at which converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary. but you conceded it was true. So obviously, to avoid insulting you by pointing out remarks that seemingly contradict this central theme, I just interpret your remarks in light of it.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

You're now hallucinating that the two statements are the same.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

You've neutralised the CO2 emitted from process A using process B - the whole process is now converted to be carbon neutral. Would we continue pumping CO2 into the atmosphere (from process A) without mitigating it? Answer: no we wouldn't, so we've mitigated it with process B (on the proviso we power process B with carbon neutral technologies) - so taking into account all externalities,we have converted to carbon neutral technology.

In short, by introducing process B, you haven't avoided converting process A, you HAVE converted process A.

Your entire strategy relies on converting to carbon neutral processes.

Sorry, should have mentioned it earlier.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

Moron

When you said "Power will need to mainly come from non-carbon-fossil-fuels, or non-fossil-fuels for it to be practical". you conceded the argument. I graciously accept your concession.

You may not have directly said:" there is no point at which converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary" but you conceded it was true. So obviously, to avoid insulting you by pointing out remarks that seemingly contradict this central theme, I just interpret your remarks in light of it.

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

Same reply to essentially same statement - http://slashdot.org/comments.p...

Re:90% ?

[bingoUV]

That earlier "technology" is unconverted in the hypothetical scenario.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

At first.

And then sometime in the future converted by the addition of extra technology to convert CO2 to something else - thus making the technology CO2 neutral.

Re:90% ?

[KeensMustard]

Your earlier reply was insufficient - hence you are given the opportunity to do better.

When you said "Power will need to mainly come from non-carbon-fossil-fuels, or non-fossil-fuels for it to be practical". you conceded the argument. I graciously accept your concession.

You may not have directly said:" there is no point at which converting to CO2 neutral technologies stops being necessary" but you conceded it was true. So obviously, to avoid insulting you by pointing out remarks that seemingly contradict this central theme, I just interpret your remarks in light of it.

Past Measurements May Have Missed...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what else the climate change alarmists missed?

What a news !

[Anonymous Coward]

What a surprise: the 1.4×10^21 kg of the hydrosphere absorbs the heat of the 5×10^18 kg of the atmosphere, 3 orders of magnitude more water than air. Breaking news: the heat diffuses through the biggest mass.

Re:What a news !

[sjwt]

Next up: Breaking news; AC Fails to RTFA

Re:What a news !

[Anonymous Coward]

"The heat diffuses through the biggest mass" isn't a well-formed statement, and there is not even a direct mass term in the heat equations. There is a good point there struggling to get out, but unfortunately you don't know enough science to get at it.

El Nino missed measurements

[Anonymous Coward]

I vaguely remember reading an article about the major 1982-83 El Nino. I can't remember where I read it, or when. It could have been a newspaper, popular science magazine, or Science Magazine, or many others. This article had a little tidbit of info. The US National Weather Service (WNS) receives ocean temperature data, both surface and some meter's down, from ships. Prior to the 82-83 El Nino, the WNS computers were programmed to reject "outlying data," too hot or too cold. They were getting raw data of 100F degree water in the mid-Pacific, and I think (memory-alert) same temp 30 meters down, but the computers rejected that data. The result in this case was a slow down 'diagnosis.'

Writing this I'm thinking the article I read may have been not about weather per se, but about filtering raw data. In a non-El Nino period, filtering outlying temp reports probably makes sense. I'm guessing/hoping they improved their algorhtyms.

But, then, Nassim Taleb's books weren't written in 11982, so we should probably cut them some slack.

Models are right, measurements are wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

The article describes that running the current models in reverse shows a different result than actual measurements that were taken. The conclusion is that the measurements were wrong. I thought that science made conclusions based on observations, not that it made observations based on conclusions.

Re:Models are right, measurements are wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the second time they do this.

Historical temperature measurements were "corrected" by cherry-picking those that show rising temperatures.
Photographic evidence was ignored, and even denied, that exactly those measurements they deemed good were the ones that were NOT credible. There were some extreme cases: at least one where the environment around the thermometer hut was changed by replacing a sandy bottom with a nice layer of asphalt, in another an air conditioning unit was installed with the warm air exhaust aimed directly at the thermometer hut, at just a few yards away. But of course THOSE are the correct measurements, not those coming from weather stations in an environment that hasn't changed for 100 years, and that show no increase in temperature.

In the 1980's / 90's, we had to watch out for that new ice age that was sure to be on its way. It didn't show up, so they invented the opposite.

Re:Models are right, measurements are wrong?

[dave420]

You outed yourself with your last sentence. The only place global cooling was discussed was in the media, not in the scientific literature. It also wasn't the 1980s or 1990s, but the 1970s, which also means you either have a terrible memory, or are regurgitating something you heard someone else say. So, to sum up, you just demonstrated that you:

1. Get your scientific information from the mass media
2. Have a terrible memory of this topic, or simply regurgitate what others say without checking.

Just one of those is enough to make people not listen to you, but you got both. Brilliant.

Re:Models are right, measurements are wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

You outed yourself with your last sentence.

But everything was true up until the last sentence, yes?

Re:Models are right, measurements are wrong?

[dywolf]

Nothing you said is true.
Probably why you posted as AC.

Re:Models are right, measurements are wrong?

[dave420]

Nope, and the fact you asked that means you really don't know what's going on.

Re:Models are right, measurements are wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope. The last sentence just revealed *why* the sentences prior to it were so badly incorrect.

Re:Models are right, measurements are wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, that new ice age theory
1) WAS discussed in scientific circles
2) At least one of the people who invented it later turned his coat and became global warming prophet.

I may have been wrong about the decade, actually I was in doubt when I wrote it whether I wouldn't better say 70's and 80's. That's because I wrote from memory, which I admit isn't perfect about dates and names after a few years, let alone 30.

Which is why I'm not even trying to remember the name of "that NASA guy" who, when confronted with the seeming contradiction, (approximately) said he was fooled into putting his name underneath an ice age theory back then, but didn't really back it.
His being linked to two contradictory theories in his career hasn't stopped anyone from making him a NASA bigshot :)

And no, sorry, I have no links.

Re:Models are right, measurements are wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

Its because we have a situation where certain people are just ~sure~ that GCC is man made and that the proof is in there somewhere.

Much like a detective who is just ~sure~ that a particular perp is guilty and so bends all his time and energy on prosecuting that perp.

Re:Models are right, measurements are wrong?

[Andreas Mayer]

I thought that science made conclusions based on observations, not that it made observations based on conclusions

It is completely normal that conclusions lead us to doubt our observations and do new measurements. Observations can be misleading unless we have a proper theory with appropriate measurements.

As for the current problem: Computer models are not reality, but - apart from data from the past - they are the best we have.

Science works like this:
First you observe something.
Then you try to come up with an explanation. That explanation needs to make some predictions (or it would be useless).
Then you test those predictions. Usually by making experiments.

Now, here we have a problem. We don't have a second earth to experiment with. And even if we had, the timescales involved are too large to make experiments in real-time.

So instead we use climate models. But these models are not reality. These are models we come up with on our own. How do we do that? Well, people that are generally learned about the subject try to think about anything that could possibly affect the climate. They then create a mathematical model and see if it's predictions fit the known data (i.e. data from the past must predict the present). The better it does, the better the model.

Now it turns out that we have some wrong data. Obviously that wrong data will have lead to climate models that do not predict reality.

This means we have to alter our current climate models to fit the new data. Someone will have to come up with an idea what exactly is wrong with the models and how to fix them, of course. But that is no different from how the models were created in the first place.

It also does not mean the models are not useful. They are. As long as they accurately predict current climate from past data, we can assume that they will also predict *future* climate from *present* data.

But, yes, our predictions can at best be as accurate as our observations. And if we measure wrong, that is a problem.

Disclaimer: IANACS - I am not a climate scientist

Re:Models are right, measurements are wrong?

[Anonymous Coward]

I do understand that. However, this article describes running the climate models backwards. When they go backwards, the model data does not match historically measured data. The conclusion should be that the model needs to be adjusted. The conclusion in the article is that the historical measurements were wrong precisely because they do not match the model. You stated that the models need to be altered to fit data. That is not what this article states they are doing.

Known idiom

[Anonymous Coward]

A watched pot never boils.

Guess that check out.

Previously on slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

Previously

"152% too low"?

[oneiros27]

they estimate past heat tallies were 48% to 152% too low

I still don't understand if this discovery is a good or a bad thing ... but can someone please explain to me how you can estimate that a value is more than 100% "too low"?

I would assume that you would measure heat absorbtion in BTU or Watts, or something that can't go negative (ie, not in degrees Farenheight, which is a temperature, not a measure of stored heat)

Re:"152% too low"?

[Anonymous Coward]

... but can someone please explain to me how you can estimate that a value is more than 100% "too low"?

I would assume that you would measure heat absorbtion in BTU or Watts, or something that can't go negative (ie, not in degrees Farenheight, which is a temperature, not a measure of stored heat)

Estimate that the oceans absorbed 1 BTU, but it turns out to be really 2.5. The estimate was 150% too low.
I don't know if that's a reason to panic, though. It's not how many watts were absorbed, but what effect that had on measured temperature, and that remains the same.

Re:"152% too low"?

[serviscope_minor]

but can someone please explain to me how you can estimate that a value is more than 100% "too low"?

48-150% too low means you have to multiply the old answer by between 1.48 and 2.50 in order to get the correct answer.

IOW you have to increase the old answer by 48% to 150%. Or, colloquially, the old answer was too small. By 48% to 150%.

Re:"152% too low"?

[mdsolar]

"The results suggest that previous estimates of the heat stored in the upper 700 meters of the ocean since 1970 have been too low. In the Southern Ocean in particular, they estimate past heat tallies were 48% to 152% too low." Let's start with the 48% number. What do we need to get the new estimate from the old estimate? Multiply the old estimate by 0.48 and add that to the old estimate. Simplified, just multiply the old estimate by (0.48 +1). For the 152% number, it would be a factor of 2.52.

Thermal energy can be added to or released from a system so there is no problem using a negative sign when describing it. But that is not what is going on here.

both poles are at record level high...

[ladams14640]

im so sick of the lying. both poles have jncreased 40% or more accordibg to daily mail and washington post. you can stop lying about ocean heat -if caps growing then pcean is cooler. start using your brain people.

Re:both poles are at record level high...

[serviscope_minor]

im so sick of the lying. both poles have jncreased 40% or more accordibg to daily mail

You win todays internet prize for most ironic forum post.

start using your brain people.

If you used your brain rather than blathering mindlessly about popular media reporting of a science topic, you wouldn't have made this post.

Re:both poles are at record level high...

[drinkypoo]

im so sick of the lying

So why are you doing it? We just covered how wrong you are.

Re:both poles are at record level high...

[Thanshin]

My more humane side hopes you are being sarcastic.

My cynic side suspects you aren't, and isn't disappointed.

Re:both poles are at record level high...

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Larry: If carbon monoxide is so harmless why don't you just wrap your lips around a car's exhaust pipe? Please? For us?

Re:both poles are at record level high...

[quantaman]

im so sick of the lying. both poles have jncreased 40% or more accordibg to daily mail

Clearly it's absolutely true because you read it in the Daily Mail.

Re:both poles are at record level high...

[Anonymous Coward]

JHC. You've not even scaled your (completely ignorant) assertion - "increased 40% or more" ... relative to what?? Are you referring to density? Surface area?

Perhaps try another source? A scientific source?

Here - http://nsidc.org/data/sipn/data-sets.html

Knock yourself out. If you're tired of lying, stop it.

Re:both poles are at record level high...

[RoLi]

start using your brain people.

Why do you need a brain when you have a "scientific consensus"?

Global warming is joke

[Anonymous Coward]

pfff. Call it whatever you want. It's happening. All the political jackassery around it sucks balls. Scientists don't fucking care if they want to deny it, bury their heads in sand and sing LAALALALALALAL as loud as they can, or if they want to take it, ride it like a horse to beef up their own "green tech" companies like knights in a shiny armor. Earth is warming up. It might have big impact on how things go climatewise. It won't wipe out humanity as we know it. We might already be too late to prevent it. (because of political pressure to just keep going as we have we'll never know, because we can't just try to do something differently. This goes with everything, not just this.)

If global warming is a joke it's not a very funny one.

Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[fygment]

Enough already.
The Earth is warmer, probably.
We don't know for how much longer.
We don't know how much warmer.
We don't know how it's happening, mostly.
We don't know why it's happening.

That's climate in a nutshell. Do you want a _government_ ringing in new policies based on that? A government can't even get well understood problems under control ... like say, traffic, or urban development. And if you dare say, "Hey, traffic is hard to model!", well guess what, climate is harder.

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[wbr1]

Enough already. The Earth is warmer, probably. We don't know for how much longer. We don't know how much warmer. We don't know how it's happening, mostly. We don't know why it's happening.

That's climate in a nutshell. Do you want a _government_ ringing in new policies based on that? A government can't even get well understood problems under control ... like say, traffic, or urban development. And if you dare say, "Hey, traffic is hard to model!", well guess what, climate is harder.

We know car accidents happen, probably.
We don't know when you will be in one
We don't know what type of accident you will be in.
We don't know the severity of the accident you will be in.

This is car travel in a nutshell. Aren't you glad that the government mandates safety belts, airbags and car seats for children?

Just because something is not 100% does not mean we should not protect against it. I feel like using some ad hominem against you but I will refrain today.

Re: Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[mSparks43]

Good analogy.

Except. Imho
  global cooling is the car accident
And global warming is a trip to Barbados.

Why do so many of you think an ice age would be a good thing?

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[jdagius]

> Just because something is not 100% does not mean we should not protect against it.

True. But you're overlooking the cost-benefit analysis.

"Buckling up" has little or no adverse cost associated with it. Yes, it slightly increases the chance you'll be trapped in a flaming wreck. But that is probably less likely than your skull crashing through the windshield in a head-on collision. So the benefits outweigh the costs.

So, if we could just wear some simple appliance like a seat belt that would mitigate, without penalty, even the most farfetched climate catastrophes (e.g. sharknado), then, yeah, why not do it? Same as 'affordable insurance', right?

But the economic and political consequences of rushing in to replace our fossil-fuel-based infrastructure with wind and solar are substantial, with threats to our political and military stability. And the benefits are negligible in the sense that the proposed replacement systems will not come close to fixing the problem as it is being described. So, not an effective 'insurance policy' at all.

[Unless you think the rabble-rousers who will benefit from our self-destruction are the "good guys".]

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[wbr1]

Vehicle safety does have many associated costs. Manufacturing costs for cars have risen due to safety stndars.. crumple zones, airbags.. all these things require advanced engineering and manufacturing.

Then there is the bureaucratic cost, in inspections, tests, etc.

I would argue that there has been a significant cost in pursuing vehicle safety in this country. There is a reason Indian and Chinese cars are not sold here (yet).

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[L. J. Beauregard]

The "threats to our political and military stability" come mainly from our needing to buy fossil fuels and thereby fund our enemies. Funny how people who don't believe in global warming do believe in the global jihad, and yet the two have many of the same remedies.

Re: Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[GameboyRMH]

We don't have to choose between more heat and an ice age, and while you might think a warmer climate might be nice in your particular area, there is literally a world of negative side effects that would come with it which you would likely find to be the less desirable option. There's nothing nice about global warming. Crop yields down, nasty weather up...lots of info is available if you wish to seek it out (protip: avoid the conspiracy blog echo chamber).

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[berbmit]

Cartoon to educate you: http://static.skepticalscience...

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[abies]

This is car travel in a nutshell. Aren't you glad that the government mandates safety belts, airbags and car seats for children?

Just because something is not 100% does not mean we should not protect against it. I feel like using some ad hominem against you but I will refrain today.

Except people are not advocating putting seatbelts. They are advocating:
- switching to bikes
- breeding more horses for the carriages
- avoid investment and research into trains, because there used to be train accident once as well
- in meantime, reducing car traffic as much as possible by adding huge car and fuel tax, profits from which will be used for plugging in random budget holes and possibly putting marble floor in House of Traffic Victims Association

Re: Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, many of the low/no-cost seatbelts are already available. Better construction techniques which reduce the cost of operating our buildings, better industrial design which reduce process energy use, in many cases by a factor of 5-10x, better city planning to make public transit a better option than driving. This stuff isn't hard and is cheaper than business-than-usual. And it is getting done, but it had been a hell of a fight to get started.

Re: Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[JWW]

Crop yields down? Seriously.

https://www.google.com/search?...

This search returns pages of charts shooing increased crop yields (for states, the whole US, other countries) over time. In fact the big worry in farming in the US this year is the price of corn dropping precipitously because of a bumper crop.

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[Archangel Michael]

Vehicle safety is a great analogy. The Global Warming activists want us to go from 1950's cars (1954 Bel Air) with no safety features to modern Safety and efficient (Tesla) overnight. they don't realize the progression from 1950s cars "beautiful stylish", to modern "they all look the same" cars over night.

Re: Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[GameboyRMH]

Crop yields down. Yes, seriously.

All you've shown is that we're growing more corn - which should be no surprise to anyone given how it's used in all our first-world processed junk food, and now we're even using it to fuel our cars. And the US has been subsidizing the hell out of it.

Suggesting that global warming could be a net positive for global crop yields flies in the face of all research to date:

http://www.skepticalscience.co...

http://www.epa.gov/climatechan...

http://www.theguardian.com/env...

This is one of the biggest problems global warming is bringing with it, I don't know how you'd missed it.

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[Anonymous Coward]

The Global Warming activists want us to go from 1950's cars (1954 Bel Air) with no safety features to modern Safety and efficient (Tesla) overnight. they don't realize the progression from 1950s cars "beautiful stylish", to modern "they all look the same" cars over night.

Except this is just your shit opinion, not backed by any science.

Re: Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[Anonymous Coward]

More anecdotal than scientific, but here in Ireland my wheat, corn (not maize) and vegetable yields this summer were better than last. In fact, they've been the best in a long long time. I won't be going hungry this winter, that's for sure.
My problem is that the government is more than happy to apply extra taxes in the name of global warming but as someone stated above, these monies are used for other purposes.

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[Ogive17]

Climate change or not, do you feel that we should aim to minimize our impact on earth... our home?

Personally, I feel it's irresponsible to pretend we have no impact. I don't care if it's a large or small impact, it still exists. It's embarassing that we reject change that could make the lives of many people better, because we've got to protect a few profits.

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Nuclear?

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[wbr1]

But then we would not need to put as much pork into the defense sector!

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[bledri]

Enough already. The Earth is warmer, probably. We don't know for how much longer. We don't know how much warmer. We don't know how it's happening, mostly. We don't know why it's happening.

That's climate in a nutshell. Do you want a _government_ ringing in new policies based on that? A government can't even get well understood problems under control ... like say, traffic, or urban development. And if you dare say, "Hey, traffic is hard to model!", well guess what, climate is harder.

You think traffic would flow better without "government regulation"? Wow. You realize that all traffic laws are "regulation" right? And have you been places where there is no urban planing at all? Where there aren't building codes? Even before we could model earthquakes at all, it made sense to improve building standards based on what we did know.

And while we are still getting a handle on climate models, we know enough about physics to know that carbon dioxide, methane and other gasses we are pumping into the atmosphere will raise global temperatures. The oceans won't be able to absorb heat forever. The atmosphere is the ultimate tragedy of the commons, so yes, I'm all for governments trying to regulate pollution and green house gasses.

People get so hung up on the government is bad meme, they forget what the world was like before the EPA and companies dumped all sorts of crap directly into rivers. Also, everyone complains about climate alarmists but they seem to give the economic alarmists a pass. But I'll take a climate prediction over an economic prediction any day.

Re: Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Crop yields down. Yes, seriously.

This is funny, because it's the exact opposite of all observed archaeological, biological, geographical, and agricultural evidence.

Plants grow much better in more temperate climates with higher CO2 density. There are few rainforests in Canada. There are few jungles there, as well. What there is, of agriculture, scrapes as close to its warmer,southern border as possible. There is tundra, but the vegetation "density" (which is the "yield" part of a crop yield) is poor for an enormous percentage of land mass on this planet. Of course, the climate doomsday cult will shriek bullshit like "OMG BUT THERE ARE NEW BEETLES CREATED FROM DISTILLED CO2 THAT EAT ALL THE CRAWPS!" but it's 100% bullshit, like everything else they peddle. You can't win with them. It's impossible, because they simply thrive on making up spooky stories to make their point. I'm an adult, so I know made-up bullshit when I hear it, even when the bullshitter fails to realize that they're making shit up while they go along. At this point, global warming could cure cancer, and all the news would say is "Global warming gives rise to heart disease deaths!!!" because that's what everyone dies of when they're old and cancer free.

Re: Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[GameboyRMH]

I managed to read your post although I speedily skipped through the latter half.

So you're saying that because crops grow well in rainforests, and rainforests are warmer than Canadian tundra, that global warming should be good for crops right?

Well did you balance the amount of tundra-to-rainforest conversion against the rainforest-to-desert conversion? YOU DIDN'T!? 8-O

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[Anonymous Coward]

But the science is settled ...

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[khallow]

Well, at least you can distinguish between opinion and fact. That's more than a lot of people can do.

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[Anonymous Coward]

Horrible analogy.

We know for a fact that seat belts, airbags, car seats for children help in an accident because we can model accidents pretty well. There is a qualitative difference between the unknowns that were given for climate warning vs those you gave for automobile accidents.

For global climate change, we don't know which policies to follow because our models suck. We don't know what will cause major differences, unlike a car. Yet we seem to want to do *something* even if it's not the right thing to do.. "Proactive" is sometimes not the best approach.

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[khallow]

You know, what's needed here is a serious cost/benefits analysis. Not cartoons that don't get the costs and payoffs of climate change mitigation. Personally, I think climate change mitigation is more like Pascal's wager with higher costs and worse potential payoffs.

Re:Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[Xyrus]

Enough already.

Agreed.

The Earth is warmer, probably.

No probably about it. By every known measure the planet has warmed over the past 150+ years.

We don't know for how much longer.

Yes we do. As long as we keep pumping more GHG's into the atmosphere the planet will continue to warm. And after we stop or at least get back to some sort of equilibrium the planet will keep warming for another 30-40 years due to climatological lag. Then it will stay warm until the system (or we) start taking some of the excess GHG's and getting them back out of the atmosphere.

We don't know how much warmer.

Yes we do. Climate sensitivity studies indicate that at our current rate of emissions we will warm the planet by about 4C by 2100.

We don't know how it's happening, mostly.

Yes we do. The basic chemistry and thermodynamics of how it's happening have been around for more than 100 years. It's not rocket science. A high school physics text gives enough background to create a basic model to demonstrate warming in relation to increased GHGs.

We don't know why it's happening.

Yes we do. Human emissions of GHGs. The level of GHG's in the atmosphere have increased greatly since human industrialization (isotopic analysis of carbon shows the source is fossil fuels). After that, physics does the rest.

That's climate in a nutshell.

Only if you're a complete idiot.

Do you want a _government_ ringing in new policies based on that?

Non-sequitur. What the science says and what the government does are unrelated.

A government can't even get well understood problems under control ... like say, traffic, or urban development. And if you dare say, "Hey, traffic is hard to model!", well guess what, climate is harder.

Non-sequitur. What the science says and what the government does are unrelated. Traffic models and climate models have nothing to do with each other.

The only thing you've managed to demonstrate here is your total ignorance on the topic.

Re: Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[mSparks43]

I think it's a fairly basic point.
Crops get most of their carbon matter from CO2.
more CO2=> more carbon matter => more crops.

less CO2 => less carbon matter => less crops => ice age.

Re: Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[GameboyRMH]

Unfortunately reality nearly isn't as simple as a kids' RPG, there are many more variables that affect crop growth, and that's before you get into crop placement.

Re: Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[mSparks43]

Yeah, they also need heat and humidity.

melted polar ice caps and generally warmer climate should do them just fine then.

But on a more serious note. Yes. Quite
Some areas will benefit greatly from global warming (hey, we may get a whole new continent to exploit once the ice is gone)
Some will be hit quite hard.

But we have legs, and cars and planes. so it's not like moving from one to the is really gonna be that much of a big deal.

For all the flawed science banded around in the climate change debate, the biggest flaw is none of it is actually revalent to anyones actual lives. People are more likely to get excited about quantum pictures of cats than they are about the shoreline hundreds of miles from them getting a little deeper - for example, something most shorelines do daily..

Most climate "debate" can be summed up by a tabloid headline "scientists shocked that ice melts in summer, but now they all agree it does".

Re: Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[GameboyRMH]

We're not nomads or sparse frontiersmen, this is a heavily populated planet with huge, expensive, established population centers. It's not just a matter of outrunning floods and forest fires. Drought leads to famine leads to conflict, displacement leads to conflict, disasters are generally considered to be bad. We've seen it all before and we'll soon see lots more.

Re: Say "No more!" to Climate Posts

[mSparks43]

I guess that means you don't get out of the city much.
The planet most definitely is not "heavily populated".

Makes perfect sense, sort of, ...

[jdagius]

... manmade CO2 warms the atmosphere. But atmosphere has not warmed as much as climate models have predicted over the past 18 years.

So there must be some 'missing' heat lurking about somewhere. If we believe the models.

Oh look at all the heat in the ocean that we have been observing for many years without really 'noticing'. (But now we really 'need' this heat, because it confirms our favorite theory of catastrophic manmade global destruction)

Hmm. Problem is that the models make the assumption that the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics is true. How does flow from a cooler body to a warmer place?

It's best to remain skeptical of reports like this until reliable mechanisms and models are presented to explain and predict it (in the past and in the future).

Re:Makes perfect sense, sort of, ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, another right wing sheep spouting off about the 18-year thing your masters keep telling you about.

http://www.wunderground.com/news/what-global-warming-looks-20130814

The trend is still warmer. Ocean currents do change and that is the reason scientists underestimated. But, once they slow down again and switch back, it will get even hotter than in the past.

Re:Makes perfect sense, sort of, ...

[Anonymous Coward]

... except the parent said that air temps have warmed but not as much as the models predicted. The article you linked is consistent with that statement:

"While the rate of global warming has slowed in the past several years, possibly due to natural climate variability, the long-term temperature trend clearly shows that we’re living on a warming planet."

The point is that none of the popular IPCC models predicted this slowdown. So there is some 'egg-on-the-face' to explain.

Re:Makes perfect sense, sort of, ...

[jdagius]

> Wow, another right wing sheep spouting off about the 18-year > thing your masters keep telling you about.
FYI, most climatologists accept the "18-year thing" you speak of. They call it the "Pause", which is definitely not a term coined by skeptics.

The rest of your comment is irrelevant to the point I was trying to make. Typical of the warmist AC's who blindly follow what their leaders tell them. It is also customary, BTW, for warmists to accuse skeptics of the very things they themselves do wrong.

Skeptics have a tradition of _not_ swallowing whatever is fed to them (even though it seems to cost us mod points. Free speech?)

Re:Makes perfect sense, sort of, ...

[lazy genes]

The heat comes from the carbon that falls into the ocean. The carbon stays near the surface and is warmed by photons. Usually a photon will penetrate the surface and release its energy 3 meters below the surface. The warm surface moves to the poles and drags the warm upper atmosphere with it. The warm atmosphere moves to the arctic and disrupts the polar vortex and jetstream. Last winter was a prime example of warm air from the pacific moving into the arctic.

Un, popular question??

[Anonymous Coward]

I am wondering if they've made this massive mistake in how hot the southern ocean was, how they now can have any confidence in how much it's warming?

I special worry because the media attention of this claim makes it very tempting to not double check your results, consult peers, etc.

Oh god, here we go again.

[Pino Grigio]

Well this is a standard tactic used in surface temperature measurement. Make the past look colder to make the warming look greater. It's been done with numerous surface stations, where inexplicable "adjustments" have been made to past data.

Re:Oh god, here we go again.

[dywolf]

And here goes the lying liar linking to another lying liar, again.
The only reason they're inexplicable, is because he's not a scientist.
The blog post refers only to land based sensors in the US, and the difference it causes is less than 0.02%, and it onyl affects a single data set for the US.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/G...

"Denialists jumped on the bandwagon in regards to this shift making many grandiose claims that it invalidates all of the data that proves this has been the hottest decade in recorded history. This is not the case; it only makes a tiny difference that does not change the decade averages or the global averages."

So.. once again: nothing you have stated is valid.

Re:Oh god, here we go again.

[Pino Grigio]

I'm watching the pea under the thimble here. You start with an ad hominem (accusations of lying). Then you move on to the much sounder argument from authority (he's not a scientist, though presumably you know you don't have to be a scientist to take a data set and plot graphs with it). You then go on to argue that it doesn't matter anyway because it's a land based sensor in the US (who knew?) and that the difference is less than 0.02%. Well that's not the point is it. The point is to make the trend look "better". Nobody cares about the actual temperature do they.

So.. once again: nothing you have stated is valid.

Everything I stated is valid. The goal here is to make everything look much worse than it actually is. Land, sea, air, space, your mum's knickers. It doesn't matter what it is as long as it looks worse. And no stone will be left unturned in the effort to make it look worse, including waving magic wands over the past, as Michael Mann did with his paleoclimate proxy reconstructions.

More stupidity on Slashdot?

[American Patent Guy]

“global warming is ocean warming," oceanographer Gregory Johnson writes in a commentary on the new study, appearing today in Nature Climate Change.

Imagine that ... a guy whose job is dependent upon finding a need for oceanographic studies finds that there is a need for a new oceanographic study. How shocking...

Re:More stupidity on Slashdot?

[dywolf]

Uh...no. You do know that's not how it works right?
Apparently not, or you wouldnt have said somehting so stupid.

So let me educate you: THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS.

What, you think scientists are out of work and have to go learn a new trade if they can't find anything to research, so they make stuff up?
JFC...how dumb are you?

http://arstechnica.com/science...

Re:More stupidity on Slashdot?

[dywolf]

As if we already know everything there is to know about the oceans, and he would be out of work if he didnt just make something up....

Re:More stupidity on Slashdot?

[WARM3CH]

Yep, let's stop all these science bullshit!

... a guy whose job is dependent upon finding a need for "mathematics" finds that there is a need for a new "mathematics study". How shocking...
... a guy whose job is dependent upon finding a need for "astrophysics" finds that there is a need for a new "astrophysics study". How shocking...
... a guy whose job is dependent upon finding a need for "healthcare" finds that there is a need for a new "medical study". How shocking...

Imagine that! Oh, btw:

... a guy whose job is dependent upon finding a need for "software" finds that there is a need for "writing a new software". How shocking...

Re:More stupidity on Slashdot?

[GameboyRMH]

Good article, all climate denialists should read this.

Re:More stupidity on Slashdot?

[soconnor99]

Yes, I think that's the point. People want to find ways make money in their field.

However, none of those other studies are proposing to cost consumers billions of dollars in higher energy prices.

Re:More stupidity on Slashdot?

[American Patent Guy]

Good article, all climate denialists should read this.

Oh, yes. I must be denying that climate exists. Brilliant.

Re:More stupidity on Slashdot?

[American Patent Guy]

The stupidity (as apparently you missed the point) is in thinking that this is valuable news.

We've already seen this theory before posted here ... all this new posting does is show the self-interest of one person. There's no evidence here (for or against) global warming. It's just here to churn up the blatherings of the ignorant...

Re:More stupidity on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Scientists falsify data all the time to justify their funding. How many times this year alone have seen stories of falsified data. I'm not saying climate scientists are doing this, but don't stick your head in the sand and pretend it never happens, it happens more than any of us will ever know.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14886-stemcell-researcher-guilty-o
g-data.html#.VDLxqFfDOus
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.list/tagNo/2644/tags/false-data/
http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.list/tagNo/2644/tags/false-data/
http://www.biotechniques.com/news/Neuroscientist-Apologizes-for-Falsifying-Data/biotechniques-338952.html#.VDLyElfDOus

this is just the top few of a quick google search

Re:More stupidity on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Climate Alarmism went from a 0-dollar industry to a 8-billion dollar industry in 25 years, but, like, none of that went to scientists, so we can confidently say that nobody is scamming the system

What a stupid fucking article.

Re:More stupidity on Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

'In short, you generally don't make an impression on science by auditing past data; you do it by coming up with better data.'

Really?

"May have"... "suggests"..

[Karmashock]

This is very confusing. Did they find evidence that this is happening? Or did they find something that "MIGHT" "SUGGEST" that something has happened?

Because if the former... great. I love it when science figures something out.

If not... then while that is still good that they're looking into these things... it does literally nothing for the public debate about AGW. A "might" "suggest" gets us no where until that is refined into something more definite.

Re:"May have"... "suggests"..

[EmagGeek]

They are using weasel words in a transparent attempt to mislead readers into believing the conclusion is true.

Re:"May have"... "suggests"..

[multimediavt]

A "might" "suggest" gets us no where until that is refined into something more definite.

Correct, which means nay saying is also dubious based on the results of one study. Most rational people, however, tend to err on the side of caution and not the side of apathy. More studies will follow as graduate students build on the previous research and add to the findings. This is how research works. Once a concensus is reached then scietific facts change to incorporate this new data. At that time, anyone is welcome to their dissent of the facts. They are also welcome to a unicorn, a lifetime subscription to Fox News and a flying pig.

Re:"May have"... "suggests"..

[Karmashock]

that's just politics and advocacy... nothing more. When they have something definite we can move forward with it scientifically. As to your political cause... that never needed or cared about science.

Re:"May have"... "suggests"..

[Anonymous Coward]

So, until you're killed by a terrorist, there is no terrorist threat that needs to be dealt with, merely someone's political position, hmm?

Re:"May have"... "suggests"..

[Karmashock]

reductio ad absurdum...

Is there anyone on this board that isn't a shameless sophist?

If you find your above argument compelling... allow me to serve you your own medicine.

Can I execute you unless you can prove you are innocent?

Find that argument absurd and counter productive? It is... it is as obviously fallacious and stupid as your own.

If you want to have a real discussion, then we can do that. If you want to play rhetorical games that men in togas 3000 years ago laughed at for being moronic... then carry on.

Re:"May have"... "suggests"..

[Karmashock]

Turns out "may have"... and "suggests" turns out to be "is not" ... "there"...

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/n...

JPL just compared deep ocean temps with what they were in 2005 and found there is no warming. So the deep oceans are not warming.

This means the "missing heat" issue remains a problem for the people working on these climate models. And this "may have" ... "suggests" that maybe the reason the heat is missing is because there isn't actually any warming. Think I'm wrong? Where it is the heat?

weather records

[jjhues7676]

Meanwhile the Antarctic just produced the most ice during a winter EVER!

Shorter Slashdot wingnuts:

[L. J. Beauregard]

Ocean warming is not global warming, because the ocean is not part of the globe. Furthermore, ocean warming will have no effect whatsoever on ocean currents and cannot possibly melt either the ice caps or the methane clathrates.

Re:Shorter Slashdot wingnuts:

[jovius]

It should be noted also that the so called skeptics only come about when there's a news release of the climate change science, but they never come up with original science by themselves. There's a reason for that however: the big climate conspiracy and censorship. No way it's about the quality of the counter-arguing papers. Cognitive dissonance at its finest.

Funniest Comment of All Time

[Anonymous Coward]

The Slashdot page comment at the bottom said "Garbage In -- Gospel Out. That describes Global Warming Alarmists to a tee. God Damn that is funny!

Re:Funniest Comment of All Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course, you will now cite all the scientific, peer-reviewed papers and research supporting your implied assertion that human beings do not affect climate.

Oh... I didn't think so.

Sins of the Father?

[fuzznutz]

I hope that we come up with a list of deniers so that future generations can blame the grandkids for the crimes of their families. It is only right that if their grandparents polluted more to get ahead or stopped progress on switching to clean technology/recycling/efficient transportation, that their descendants should be the first ones to face the costs associated with the problems that will be caused and the lack of resources caused by climate problems.

Are you paying for the wrongs of your ancestors on the whim of others?

Thermal Mass

[vongillern]

FWIW, the world's oceans have ~274 times the mass of the atmosphere (1.4e21 / 5.1e18). Meaning if 1 degree C of atmospheric warming all went into the ocean, the ocean would warm up .003 degree C. Sorry. I just don't buy that we can say that the oceans as a whole have warmed up by that amount with any degree of certainty. Assuming we could, this seems like good news as I don't think that the oceans warming by .003 is going to effect jack shit.

Reading Comprehension Fail

[Anonymous Coward]

the article you link to is thoroughly debunked directly below it in the commentary.

Re:Reading Comprehension Fail

[dywolf]

You mean the article talking about the so-called pause?
The one caused by the heat going into the oceans?
The thing this entire /. news item is even about ("Past Measurements Understated Ocean Warming" etc) ?
The ocean absorbing heat that is now part of the models?

That article?
Try again buddy.

Right...

[Grey Geezer]

and there is no conclusive proof that cigarette smoking causes lung disease. No, really, there has never been an observation of a cell mutating after exposure to a puff of smoke. The evidence is only statistical. And yet... reasonable people can accept that the odds are that smoking is unhealthy, in spite of the lack of "hard" scientific proof. Proof of the kind that Climate Change Deniers seem to be demanding. Arctic ice that is 60% thinner than it was when our first nuclear sub crossed under it in the 60s, Old photos of curling (that obscure shuffle board type sport) on fjords that haven't frozen over in decades, the no longer needed fleet of ice breakers on our Great Lakes, fauna found further and further north every year, tree rings, ice cores, historical records...all prove...nothing...but still, reasonable people can conclude that there is a link between our draining of the carbon sinks, and greenhouse warming. It's really not a stretch is it?

Re:Right...

[mtudee]

No need for ice breakers on the great lakes? Apparently you didn't get the memo that the great lakes almost completely froze over last year. http://www.accuweather.com/en/...

Re:Right...

[LWATCDR]

"and there is no conclusive proof that cigarette smoking causes lung disease."
Actually yes there is. The actual compounds and how the mechanism of how they do the damage is documented,

Re:Right...

[Grey Geezer]

No...my point was that there has never been a cell observed mutating into cancer after exposure to smoke. The same level of "proof" that climate change deniers seem to be demanding. Reasonable people accept the link in spite of the lack of such proof.

Re:Right...

[Grey Geezer]

No, I saw that memo. Last winter's polar vortex caused lake ice to return to levels not seen in decades.

Some science for the denialists.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/10/06/arctic_sea_ice_melt_truth_and_inevitable_denial.html

Where's the global warming?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/518497/Exclusive-interview-with-Dr-Benny-Peiser

And...

[PortHaven]

Likely means they miscalculated all the past prediction models as well. It works BOTH ways. It's called an "equation".

Re:And...

[multimediavt]

Likely means they miscalculated all the past prediction models as well. It works BOTH ways. It's called an "equation".

It's also called science, which some people want to nay say as it self corrects its assumptions based on new data. The whole point of scientific theories and models is that they change over time as new information is added. Why people go off on this as if it were proof that science is "wrong" is mind boggling. Even if it is "wrong" as of today, it wasn't wrong based on the information we had before today! New data changes the model and we get a more accurate answer.

Means falling warmth

[Kim0]

If the heat sink really is bigger than they thought, then Global Warming must have decreased more,
because of remaining heat from the sink.

The global temperature stopped increasing over 18 years ago. A big heatsink will dampen the temperature changes slowly. So an even global temperature which is being warmed by the heat sink, means that the warming has to have decreased.

In other words: A big heat sink is a sign of global cooling, not warming. And the lack of people pointing out this rather obvious physical connection, is a sign that they are charlatans, or quite stupid. And yes, I am a real physicist, not a political appointee pretending to be one.

Re:Means falling warmth

[david_thornley]

If the heat sink is bigger than they thought, then there must have been more global warming than was previously thought, since a heat sink of a greater size requires more heat energy for a given temperature change. We know the temperatures.

Consider raising the temperature of a system by one kelvin. You believe that there's a cubic meter of water in it, so you calculate how much energy is needed to raise the temperature of a ton of water by one kelvin. Then you find out there's an extra cubic meter of water, so your calculation for the same temperature requires double the energy.

I find it frightening that you don't understand that and yet claim to be a physicist.

History and Counter Arguements to AGW

[huffybadger]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

Myth vs. Fact

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the fact that the models failed to account for "where the heat was going" proves they are incorrect. Even if you now accept that "we know where the heat is going", it still proves that the models were inaccurate.
The simple proof is why didn't the models predict the "pause". The fact they didn't shows they are inaccurate and always have been.

Tell you what. Given that the models are making predictions as to what the temperature rise will be 100 years from now, I'll believe your models if you can make a prediction using current models for 2 years from now.

Re:Myth vs. Fact

[I'm New Around Here]

Tell you what. Given that the models are making predictions as to what the temperature rise will be 100 years from now, I'll believe your models if you can make a prediction using current models for 2 years from now.

Don't make that promise.

They just produce 50 models that start with today's temperature, and have the first keep steady for one month then increase, the second keep steady for two months, the third for three months, etc. All of them will have a multiple-degree increase by the year 2100.

So whichever one is 'accurate' in two years, they'll still swear it is the perfect model to rebuke you with.

Re:What Happened Before...

[Anonymous Coward]

Heaven forbid that prior estimates were wrong, but just move them up and make everyone happy.

There was a rant in Seattle about how the Min Temps were above normal for the whole month of September, save one day. (http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2014/09/minimum-temperature-heat-wave.html)

The writer was asked about the statement that he had made about when SEATAC put in the third runway (http://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2011/07/did-sea-tacs-third-runway-change-our.html), that question was never answered.

What is it that I deny? Just don't beleive the Science Channel's tag line: Question everything.

Wait, what?

[Anonymous Coward]

No heating in deep oceans since 2005

Deep ocean has not warmed since 2005

[Anonymous Coward]

I think this article, which just showed up on WUWT, will shed further light on the TFA:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/06/the-heat-went-to-the-oceans-excuse-and-trenberths-missing-heat-is-awol-deep-ocean-has-not-warmed-since-2005/

Previous estimates of global ocean warming have be

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, gee. You mean maybe we don't really understand everything about "climate change"? Like, maybe, a few more bucks worth of research might suggest that the multi-trillion dollar effort the greenies want might need to be....modified?. Or perhaps even replaced entirely with a different strategy that we won't be able to afford after blowing trillions on the greenies agenda already? I'm shocked...shocked I tell you.

It can't be!

[buybuydandavis]

"Previous estimates of global ocean warming have been significantly underestimated..."

Lies! Denier!

The Science is, was, and shall ever be Settled! Forever and Ever! Amen!

Trying to make reality fit the models?

[Anonymous Coward]

All these gyrations trying to explain the "missing heat". First there is no heat missing. There is a huge discrepancy between the global climate models and reality. The GCMs run way too hot. Of course the obvious answer is that the models are broken because "we know" certain facts. Well in reality we don't know those "facts" at all.

A great explanation of why the GCMs are in epic fail mode can be read here.

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/10/06/real-science-debates-are-not-rare/

That is a long but very excellent post by Dr. Robert G. Brown (Lecturer in Physics at Duke University).

Now if we were doing science then the choices when your model/theory and reality don't agree is to abandon or modify your model/theory. The fact that there are now dozens of explanations for the "missing heat" shows just how far from science the subject of climate has gone. Unless you care to correct Dr Brown about the validity of the models the obvious answer is also the correct one: The Models/Theory of CO2 controlling the climate are WRONG.