Linking Drought and Climate Change: Difficult To Do

Geoffrey.landis writes An article about the current California drought on 538 points out that even though global climate warming may exacerbate droughts, it's nearly impossible to attribute any particular drought to climate warming: "The complex, dynamic nature of our atmosphere and oceans makes it extremely difficult to link any particular weather event to climate change. That's because of the intermingling of natural variations with human-caused ones." They also cite a Nature editorial pointing out the same thing about extreme weather.

Comments

Duh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't this something everyone already knew, radical warmists and evil deniers alike?

Re:Duh.

[TapeCutter]

Isn't this something everyone already knew, radical warmists and evil deniers alike?

Maybe, but statistical thinking doesn't come naturally. People cheat at gambling by loading dice so that they come up snake eyes (say) 1 in 20 throws. They get away with it because even if you know the dice are loaded there is no way to link any particular snake eye event to the hidden weights. The victims simply subscribe it to luck, but the longer you play the more suspicious they will become of your "lucky streak". Same deal with storms, floods, and droughts.

Re:Duh.

[Capsaicin]

...there is no way to link any particular snake eye event to the hidden weights.

Therein lies the quandary. You know the dice are loaded to come up snakes-eyes; they come up snakes-eyes; but you cannot with any certainty state "those snakes came up because the dice were loaded."

Instead you have to say, "those snakes-eyes coming up again so soon is consistent with the fact that the dice are loaded," or "we could see more and more snakes-eyes with these loaded dice." That doesn't make for so compelling a narrative. And narrative thinking comes much more naturally than statistical thinking.

Re:Duh.

[Capsaicin]

Keep in mind that a few rolls also don't confirm that the dice are as loaded as you claim they are.

That the dice are loaded was a given in the above example. Even if we know the dice are loaded we cannot with any certainty say that any single occurrence of snakes-eyes is the result of loading. That's the point.

Re:Duh.

[LifesABeach]

85 percent of the water consumed is for agriculture. I don't know the amount that gets shipped out to China, but it's enough to affect the prices of feed nation wide. Maybe it's time for those that "use water" to start paying for desalination costs; or "let the field rest."

Re:Duh.

[gzuckier]

Keep in mind that a few rolls also don't confirm that the dice are as loaded as you claim they are.

That the dice are loaded was a given in the above example. Even if we know the dice are loaded we cannot with any certainty say that any single occurrence of snakes-eyes is the result of loading. That's the point.

Of course, it's physically impossible for a die to be 100% completely unbiased. Yet, we carry on as if it was.

Re:Duh.

[Capsaicin]

Of course, it's physically impossible for a die to be 100% completely unbiased. Yet, we carry on as if it was.

Of course it is. And I was tempted to reply to khallow's observation that "nobody knows what unbiased dice roll like" to that effect --with the addendum that we will presume two perfect platonic dice (even though, by definition, there could only be one :). But since he wasn't talking actually about dice that would have been disingenuous, wouldn't it?

Actually for present purposes we don't even need to assume perfect dice. Even with physical dice, adding placed weights is liable to alter the frequency at which certain numbers come up and calculating the influence those weights have on any individual roll is impractical.

It's difficult but

[Spy Handler]

they do it anyways.

Linking hurricanes to global warming is also difficult but that didn't prevent climate researchers from claiming Katrina-level events will drastically increase in frequency. (we're still waiting on this one)

Re:It's difficult but

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that's a no-brainer. Just predict an increase in hurricanes, wait until a season with a higher-than-average number of hurricanes, and yell "SEE, I WAS RIGHT!" You can't miss!

Re:It's difficult but

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, what if we make the world cleaner and safer, for NOTHING!

Re:It's difficult but

[neilo_1701D]

If anything, it's the opposite:

http://models.weatherbell.com/...

The graph shows the global annual counts for all hurricanes and major hurricanes. From '92 through '98, there was around 35 major hurricanes per year, falling this year to 29 major hurricanes. The peaks of the graph roughly correspond to el Nino years, with the stronger the el Nino the more hurricanes. If you consider a hurricane to be a heat transport mechanism to move heat from the oceans to space, this comes as no surprise.

Of course, the "more hurricanes" argument morphed into "less hurricanes but stronger" (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/22/global-warming-to-bring-s_n_471227.html), but once again the planet isn't co-operating with theory.

Re:It's difficult but

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a huge difference between "linking a particular hurricane to global warming" and "linking hurricanes to global warming".

If you roll a loaded die and it gives a 6, you can't link that particular 6 to the die being loaded. But if 90% of your rolls are a 6, you can certainly link that.

Re:It's difficult but

[phantomfive]

Yeah, what if we make the world cleaner and safer, for NOTHING!

Some people think reducing CO2 emissions will somehow make the world cleaner, but it won't. If not for AGW, there's no real urgency to reduce CO2 emissions, it's not a pollutant.

Furthermore, if we actually do what is necessary to stop CO2 from increasing further (350ppm is the danger point, we need to stop CO2 from increasing and reduce it down to there), we're going to drastically hurt the economy, and will definitely NOT make the world a safer place, and probably not cleaner either.

If we wait until we have the technology to reduce emissions without hurting the economy, or even by helping the economy (electric cars are cheaper to run than gasoline cars), THEN the world will be a better place.

Re:It's difficult but

[rtb61]

Not quite accurate. With climate change there is a definitive lead and lag, that of course being the difference between how quickly the atmosphere changes temperature and how quickly the oceans change temperature, that difference of course directly relates to hurricanes because they form over oceans. What we are really seeing now is not so much about climate change but more about the nature of our coastal cities and how bound they are to a stable climate and what current and future actions we will need to take in order to protect those locations from rising or even falling sea levels. No matter the cause of climate change, we are required to take actions to prevent any significant impact upon major areas of human habitation, END OF STORY.

Re:It's difficult but

[sr180]

Some people think reducing CO2 emissions will somehow make the world cleaner, but it won't. If not for AGW, there's no real urgency to reduce CO2 emissions, it's not a pollutant.

Except for Ocean Acidification. We are already starting to hit the turning point where hard shelled marine creatures are unable to form their shells because of acidification. Visible effects are starting to be seen in the Antarctic - pteropods are now starting to become unviable due to the cold water amplifying the effects of acidification. These little snails are a key food source in the ecosystem, if their population collapses, it will wreck untold damage on the marine ecosystem.

So yes, there still is an urgency to reduce CO2 emissions, and yes, it is a pollutant.

http://apps.seattletimes.com/reports/sea-change/2013/sep/11/pacific-ocean-perilous-turn-overview/?prmid=4939

Re:It's difficult but

[14erCleaner]

Dr. William Gray, noted hurricane predictor, has publicly downplayed the "warming causes more hurricanes" idea. I'm willing to trust him on this, since hurricane formation is complicated.

Re:It's difficult but

[riverat1]

The climate system is too chaotic for us to predict conditions in 1-5 years time accurately, you scientific illiterate. Yes, of course we know what it will look like in 100 years time, why wouldn't we? Don't you understand the science???

Predicting conditions in 1-5 years time is weather prediction. Predicting that the 30 year running mean temperature of the Earth will be 1 degree C warmer than it is now is a climate prediction. Chaos in weather and chaos in climate are two different things.

Re:It's difficult but

[Areyoukiddingme]

Hurricanes happen in the northern hemisphere, usually golf of Mexico and north of it.

Tropical cyclones form an average of 6.3 times per year in the northern Indian Ocean (crosses the equater), 14.3 times per year in the south-western Indian Ocean (southern hemisphere), 11.0 times per year in the Australian region, and 11.4 times per year in the southern Pacific. Of those storms, an average of 1.5, 5.0, 0, and 4, respectively, per year achieve hurricane strength. Only an average of 13.6% of hurricane strength tropical cyclones form in the North Atlantic.

If you want to talk about storms in the US and around you should focus on Tornados anyway.

The frequency of tornadoes in North America is the lowest it's been in recorded history for the three year period running up to the present day. Discussed on Slashdot yesterday.

So, why do I complain? Because you bring in El Nina and El Nino "years" or "phenomena" ... which are phenomena limited to the southern hemisphere like Peru, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and the south Atlantic ... they have absolutely no influence on hurricanes or the weather in the US.

Changes caused by El Niño-Southern Oscillation

So much to your +5 Informative

Everything you said was either useless or wrong. Which is why he's modded +5 and you're at 1.

Re:It's difficult but

[angel'o'sphere]

Unfortunately you did not read the links you posted otherwise you would have noticed that my comment about el nino/el nina.

Your links about tornados are irrelevant, as the destruction they made during the period where you claim their frequency was the lowest: was the highest ever recorded.

Ntw: we talked anout hurricanes. Bringing in Cyclones and Taifunes make sit only even more complicated for our parent :)

And it seems for you, too.

Re:It's difficult but

[LWATCDR]

" but that didn't prevent climate researchers from claiming Katrina-level events will drastically increase in frequency"
I think you are confusing advocates with researchers.
Fear sells after all.

What is so annoying is that most climate change advocates are as clueless about climate as those that deny climate change.
Every hot summer, warm winter, flood, drought or hurricane is proof... No it is weather.
So when you have a slow hurricane season, a drought ends, or an extremely cold winter you have proof that climate change is not happening. No it is just weather people...

The arrogant ignorance of the clueless climate change advocates do more harm than can imagined.

 

Re:It's difficult but

[dywolf]

and thus you prove you know nothing, about CO2, Jon Snow.
we've covered this at least a dozen times: you're wrong.

youre wrong about the economic costs.
youre wrong about CO2 not being a pollutant.
youre wrong about it not being better for life as we know.
youre wrong about the availability of technology.

Re: It's difficult but

[owenvsthegenius]

The oceans are definitely alkaline, the volume of c02 NEEDED to acidify the oceans looks like a million years of crazy volcanic activity. So yeah...nice try. In fact there is something called the carbon cycle read up on that. You'll have a better time claiming BP dispersants soften marine shells and stuff like that.

Re: It's difficult but

[owenvsthegenius]

He's actually right about everything, it's a consensus on this stream

Re:It's difficult but

[gzuckier]

The problem with your theory is that there never was any unanimity about the effect on major storms and hurricanes among those warning about AGW, from the beginning. So, even if being wrong about storm frequency implies they were wrong about AGW, that still leaves half the AGW folks standing.

Re:It's difficult but

[gzuckier]

" but that didn't prevent climate researchers from claiming Katrina-level events will drastically increase in frequency"

I think you are confusing advocates with researchers.

I think advocate does not mean what you think it does.

Re:It's difficult but

[gzuckier]

The climate system is too chaotic for us to predict conditions in 1-5 years time accurately, you scientific illiterate. Yes, of course we know what it will look like in 100 years time, why wouldn't we? Don't you understand the science???

Predicting conditions in 1-5 years time is weather prediction. Predicting that the 30 year running mean temperature of the Earth will be 1 degree C warmer than it is now is a climate prediction. Chaos in weather and chaos in climate are two different things.

Weather is me saying the high temp in NYC tomorrow will be 27 degrees. Climate is me saying the average high in NYC in Dec is 43 degrees, and that that is lower than the average high in NYC in July.

Re:It's difficult but

[Plumpaquatsch]

If anything, it's the opposite:

http://models.weatherbell.com/...

The graph shows the global annual counts for all hurricanes and major hurricanes. From '92 through '98, there was around 35 major hurricanes per year, falling this year to 29 major hurricanes. The peaks of the graph roughly correspond to el Nino years, with the stronger the el Nino the more hurricanes.

Wait, what? How can you claim that this proves the claim was wrong, when all the time you insisted that there was a "Hiatus in Global Warming" in exactly that time period?

This thread will not result in a flame war

[rogoshen1]

bizarro slashdot
Nope, no sir. Headlines like this are in no way shape or form fodder for the 'deniers'; which then causes the 'believers' to come out in droves. This thread will absolutely be filled to the brim with insightful, informed conversation.

/bizarro slashdot

Never stopped my old roomate

[NotDrWho]

Hot outside: That's global warming, man!
Cold outside: That's global warming, man!
Storming outside: That's global warming, man!
Mild outside: That's global warming, man!
Forrest Fire: That's global warming, man!
Flood: That's global warming, man!
Raining frogs and locusts: That's global warming, man!

He was quite the stoner scientist, that one.

Re:Never stopped my old roomate

[Trailer Trash]

Raining frogs and locusts: That's global warming, man!

He was quite the stoner scientist, that one.

From what I can tell he has a stable of troll accounts on Slashdot and it's pretty likely that he's busy today. I'll scroll down and have a look.....

Re:Never stopped my old roomate

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Slightly warmer temps map to warmer seas, etc. But that is not the same as hyperventillation about storms and droughts rampaging across the planet.

The latter makes no sense. You are talking a fraction of a percent energy differences, which amounyts to almost nothing given the low and high emd of temps both rise a little.

Climate scientists, well many of them anyway, are apparently oblivious to this concept as well as regression to the mean. Expect maybe 1 extra hurricane per century, with an average storm strength increase of less than 1%.

This is a thermal sea expansion problem, not a weather severity problem.

Re:Never stopped my old roomate

[argStyopa]

Now he's writing policy for the White House, sadly.

Re:Why is this hard?

[sexconker]

DENIER! DENIER!
The science is settled!
That weather is not climate!
This weather is climate!
GET EDUCATED!!!!

We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[ErikLidström]

Whatever your convictions in general, this article gets things backwards. During ice ages, the rain forests in Africa almost disappear, during warmer periods the inhabitable areas grow. Warmer climate means more evaporation and more rain. There are remnants of stone age settlements in what is now the Sahara desert dating from the Holocene climate optimum 7000-3000 B.C.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
Also, storms are driven by the temperature differential between the poles and the equator. I.e. warmer climate -> fewer hurricanes.

Re:We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[Crashmarik]

Oh and don't forget how warm periods crushed medieval civilization and the Roman Empire.

Or is it now settled science that those warm periods didn't exist ?

Or that the Roman Empire and Pre Black Death Europe didn't exist ?

Re:We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[shadowrat]

i have long wondered if the result of global warming should really be less extreme weather. my (admittedly limited) understanding of storms is that they are the result of masses of air of different temperatures combining. if everything is warmer, it seems like the percentage differences between various parcels of air in the atmosphere would be going down. ie: if it's 90 at the equator and 20 at the poles. thats a 78% difference. now if the global temps raise by 10 degrees, that's only a 70% difference, and that's assuming that somehow everything goes up by 10 degrees. it's probably more likely that the colder parts would get warmer faster than the already warm parts.

obviously still bad for polar bears though.

Re:We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[angel'o'sphere]

Hurricanes are created alone by water temperature.

So more hot water (or the hotter the water) the more hurricanes.

No idea what you mean with "driven" ... you want to tell us they drive further north if the temperature difference between poles and equator is higher?

Interesting ... but not relevant. (And likely wrong anyway)

Re:We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[angel'o'sphere]

Those warm periods where not created by human made CO2, so what is your point?

Do you really wish to have such a "warm period" on top of our current "global warming"?

In german we have the saying: putting oil into the fire ...

Re:We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[angel'o'sphere]

A storm brewing somewhere does not know how warm or cold it is at the pole.

And the pole temperature is irrelevant. Relevant is the difference in temperature between lower atmosphere and upper atmosphere. The warmer the water/air the faster it is rising upward, the stronger the storm is yielded from that.

Actually a no brainer if people had the simplest of education. I don't get it, I learned that 40 years ago in school, 5th or 6th class or something.

The way how storms form has not changed the recent 100 or 200 years.

Re:We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[riverat1]

If you're going to do percentages with temperatures you have to use an absolute temperature scale like the Kelvin scale. So 90 degrees F = 305.37K and 20F = 266.48K, the difference being 38.89K. That's a 12.8% difference (39/305).

Regarding less extreme weather because of smaller temperature differences between different air masses that's possible but don't forget that warmer temperatures mean more total energy in the system overall so it's not clear exactly what will happen. The simple fact of a warming Earth means extreme heat waves are more likely. Also a warmer atmosphere means more water vapor in it which means more water available for extreme precipitation events.

The Arctic warming faster than the Equator is a predicted and observed effect of global warming from increased greenhouse gases.

Re:We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[Crashmarik]

The point is the warm periods were/are good things.

Re:We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[angel'o'sphere]

The point is: we don't know if they where or not.
The fact that the romans did cultivate wine in brittany, UK not france (like we do since a few years, or even a decade again) tells us nothing about floodings anywhere else on the globe.
It tells us nothing about dimishing glaciers (as those periods where rather short) nor tell they us anything about the amount of sea level rising, as at that time not enough arctic ice melted.
Also: quite a time ago someone linked reports from China at that time, IIRC they reported about droughts and famines.

Re:We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[david_thornley]

Do you have evidence that the Roman and Medieval warm periods were world-wide? They did help the areas they affected. Whether this is the same as global warming is another question, climate being as complex as it is.

Re:We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[Crashmarik]

Are we talking about climate or weather here ?
Or if warming is bad it's climate if it's good it's weather ?

The premise is that warming is bad for civilization and will destroy it. Well about the only instance I can think of warming maybe causing a problem for civilization is Anasazi and no one is really certain what happened there. Cooling has wrought hell for civilizations just look at middle east and Africa.

Re:We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[david_thornley]

The premise is that warming will cause disruption and be expensive to deal with. I've seen no serious speculation that global warming would destroy civilization. It could destroy a lot of cities through increased sea level, although we'd have to be patient to see that happen.

Re:We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[Crashmarik]

You have seen no serious speculation that global warming will destroy civilization ?

I have trouble giving credit to that statement.

Re:We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[david_thornley]

Show me some. I mean informed speculation. You can find plenty of idiots who are saying that it will wipe out humanity or civilization or even something as stupid as saying it'll make Earth less habitable than Mars, just as you can find plenty of idiots who say there is no global warming or that all its effects will be positive. If I listen to all the idiots, I won't have time to figure out what's really going on and my brain will be numb anyway.

Re:We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[Crashmarik]

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=http%3A%2...

Re:We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[Crashmarik]

seriously the only way someone can miss this is by not looking or wanting to see it.

Re:We should expect fewer droughts from warming

[david_thornley]

Thank you. I notice that there are two scenarios present here, one where the critical part is global warming and one with peak oil as the main trigger, and the first one doesn't actually say anything about the fall of civilization. Things can get awfully bad before civilization is destroyed. Of course, this might be the fault of the summary, and I'm thinking of getting Flanders' book to check. (The fact that I was unimpressed by the 1972 book is irrelevant here.)

Mean and fluctuations

[Framboise]

The climate has always been a highly fluctuating system where extreme temperatures oscillate over seasons and location by, say typically +/-20K (Kelvin), around a mean value around 287K, slowly growing. In some countries the fluctuations are larger, in some others smaller. All the discussion about the human-induced warming is about the effect of changing this mean value by a couple of K (now +0.5K, in the next century by +2-4K). So even in the most pessimistic scenarios the warming remains in amplitude a small fraction of the typical annual fluctuations. No wonder that it will be difficult to prove that any extreme fluctuations will result from the warming.

Re:Mean and fluctuations

[dywolf]

at its root its simply a basic probability concept, but many people have seemingly forgotten it.

if you have a perfect coin you expect 50/50 heads/tails over time.
if you then modify your perfect coin to be slightly heavier on the heads side, you may expect over time to see an increase in the number of heads over time. say 51/49.
but you cant state than any given toss that came up heads was due to your modification; that without the modification outcome would have been different.
thats a very difficult thing to prove, and its true about coin tosses, and its true about climate.

we can see the influence over time quite easily with the change in trend over a sufficient sample size, but the linking of specific events will always be difficult.

Re:Mean and fluctuations

[gzuckier]

The climate has always been a highly fluctuating system where extreme temperatures oscillate over seasons and location by, say typically +/-20K (Kelvin), around a mean value around 287K, slowly growing. In some countries the fluctuations are larger, in some others smaller. All the discussion about the human-induced warming is about the effect of changing this mean value by a couple of K (now +0.5K, in the next century by +2-4K). So even in the most pessimistic scenarios the warming remains in amplitude a small fraction of the typical annual fluctuations. No wonder that it will be difficult to prove that any extreme fluctuations will result from the warming.

Not necessarily. You put more energy into a system, the local and temporary variations from average become more pronounced. Think of a pot of water on the stove when you turn up the burner.

Re:Mean and fluctuations

[gzuckier]

at its root its simply a basic probability concept, but many people have seemingly forgotten it.

if you have a perfect coin you expect 50/50 heads/tails over time. if you then modify your perfect coin to be slightly heavier on the heads side, you may expect over time to see an increase in the number of heads over time. say 51/49. but you cant state than any given toss that came up heads was due to your modification; that without the modification outcome would have been different. thats a very difficult thing to prove, and its true about coin tosses, and its true about climate.

we can see the influence over time quite easily with the change in trend over a sufficient sample size, but the linking of specific events will always be difficult.

To a certain degree, however, you can "amortize" it; i.e. if your coin ends up being 51/49 heads, then you can say that the best estimate of the cause of an individual occurrence of heads was 2% due to the bias, since in the aggregate 2% of the total number of heads are due to bias and there is nothing to really distinguish one toss from any other.

Re:Why is this hard?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you people understand basic scientific method???

If the weather supports global warming then it is climate.
If the weather doesn't support global warming then it's not climate.

Silly

[koan]

A "particular drought" is a data point, a detail, climate change is a large scale event made up of millions of data points.

What they should be looking (and some are in fact looking for) is trends.

Nate Silver's name seems to be taken as the data gold standard now.

When FiveThirtyEight was relaunched under ESPN's ownership on March 17, 2014,

Washington Post journalist Ezra Klein wrote: "There are good criticisms to make of Silver's model, not the least of which is that, while Silver is almost tediously detailed about what's going on in the model, he won’t give out the code, and without the code, we can't say with certainty how the model works."[179] Colby Cosh wrote that the model "is proprietary and irreproducible. That last feature makes it unwise to use Silver's model as a straw stand-in for "science", as if the model had been fully specified in a peer-reviewed journal".[180]

I'll let you do your own footwork on who owns and controls ESPN.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Silly

[koan]

As for the author:

The Finkbeiner test is a checklist proposed by journalist Christie Aschwanden to help journalists avoid gender bias in articles about women in science. To pass the test, an article about a female scientist must not mention:

        The fact that she’s a woman

While I agree it should be about the science, it's amusing to see that some people feel the mention of gender invalidates the science.

Re:Silly

[HornWumpus]

They _shouldn't_ say she is a woman. They should include her dimensions and cup size.

Warming may increase average world rainfall.

[wherrera]

See: http://www.engineeringtoolbox....

Since the water carrying ability of saturated air goes up with temperature, there should be a trend toward heavier rainfall with temperature increases. Of course, places that are in a "rain shadow" like most deserts would not be expected to benefit as much as places near large bodies of water.

It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

The california drought for example is a well known weather pattern. We get that drought every couple decades and always have.

Last time was in the 1970s. It is difficult to link because natural forces are actually the cause of that drought.

As to other droughts, I really couldn't speak to every single one on earth. Just the ones I am personally aware of... and without exception, they're all normal natural processes that have been recorded in those regions for as long as we've kept records.

Attributing any known and consistent weather pattern to global warming is dishonest or ignorant. Pick one.

It is like blaming summer on global warming or winter on global cooling. Neither one is valid unless we consider changes in the earth's orbit to be global warming/cooling.

We are probably going to go into an ice age in the next few thousand years. At least, that is what the climate records show... we're due an ice age. When that comes, I hope we have the foresight to pump something into our atmosphere to limit it. Ice ages are a thousand times worse then any of the silly predictions about Global Warming. A Global Ice Age would make much of the world uninhabitable.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[sexconker]

The california drought for example is a well known weather pattern. We get that drought every couple decades and always have.

Last time was in the 1970s. It is difficult to link because natural forces are actually the cause of that drought.

As to other droughts, I really couldn't speak to every single one on earth. Just the ones I am personally aware of... and without exception, they're all normal natural processes that have been recorded in those regions for as long as we've kept records.

Attributing any known and consistent weather pattern to global warming is dishonest or ignorant. Pick one.

It is like blaming summer on global warming or winter on global cooling. Neither one is valid unless we consider changes in the earth's orbit to be global warming/cooling.

We are probably going to go into an ice age in the next few thousand years. At least, that is what the climate records show... we're due an ice age. When that comes, I hope we have the foresight to pump something into our atmosphere to limit it. Ice ages are a thousand times worse then any of the silly predictions about Global Warming. A Global Ice Age would make much of the world uninhabitable.

I hope by the time we hit the next ice age we'd have working space mirrors.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

We are probably going to go into an ice age in the next few thousand years. At least, that is what the climate records show... we're due an ice age. When that comes, I hope we have the foresight to pump something into our atmosphere to limit it. Ice ages are a thousand times worse then any of the silly predictions about Global Warming. A Global Ice Age would make much of the world uninhabitable.

There is no chance of that happening for the foreseeable future. With the current conditions on Earth it is impossible for an ice age (glaciation) to occur as long as CO2 levels in the atmosphere are greater than around 250 ppm even if Milankovitch cycles would otherwise lead to one.

Technically speaking we're currently and still in an ice age and will be until the Antarctic ice sheet melts away. /pedant

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

Did NYC get submerged by the ocean or are there a lot of idiots on the pro AGW side making fucking stupid predictions?

Rhetorical question. Kindly keep in mind that supporting or criticizing AGW does not decide your intelligence. Rather, it decides your regard for political correctness more then anything.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

We've had ice ages with CO2 more then 4 times these levels. So... you're wrong.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

Yeah, back when the Sun was fainter and the configuration of the continents was completely different. CO2 isn't the only factor, just a major one. Notice I said "With the current conditions on Earth ...".

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

What conditions do you think would prevent another ice age? The CO2? Really? You think the CO2 is going to stop periodic ice ages? The impact of our current CO2 on our existing climate is so minor that the issue remains controversial. And you think it is going to stop something that overwhelms summers for thousands of years?

Things really haven't changed that much.

That said, I hope you're right. Ice ages suck.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[dave420]

The fact you're trying to reduce climatology and paleoclimatology into simple bite-size arguments kind of indicates people shouldn't listen to you, as you're either woefully ignorant of the topics, or are intentionally oversimplifying things to the point of absurdity. Using unqualified words such as "minor" and "much" really isn't helping your position. If you're trying to do an impression of someone arguing out of their depth, you're doing it really well!

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

The impact of CO2 on climate is not controversial in climate science circles. Even such notable contrarians as Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen admit that CO2 will cause warming. They just think there are other factors that will counter that effect.

When specifically was it you think we had an ice age with 4 times higher CO2? My interpretation of that was back when we had a snowball Earth more than 650 million years ago. Back then the Sun was at least 6% fainter than it is now and the land surface was all gathered into one giant continent, Rodina, located at the Equator, both conditions conducive to and ice age.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[david_thornley]

Of course droughts are natural phenomena. Global warming isn't going to cause anything unnatural to happen. Nor is any individual phenomenon attributable to global warming.

This is not to say that we can't show that global warming causes more droughts, just that it's going to have to be a statistical argument.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

Actually that is specifically what they are saying. They tried to show AGW as causing more droughts and found that all the droughts were explainable by natural weather patterns that were predicted and not unusual.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

Roughly 400 million years ago the CO2 levels were significantly above what they are now and the normal cycles of ice ages were undisturbed.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

You're just as guilty of that as me, Dave. Neither of us can explain the full complexity of our positions in a few sentences and neither of us try to do it.

Suggesting that I am uniquely at fault for this sort of thing is laughable. You know damn well that everyone on this topic is simplifying especially on internet forums.

*kicks dave off his high horse so he's standing in the shit with everyone else*

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

I just spent the past hour or so researching ice ages. Great fun and I learned a lot more details about the history of ice ages. Thanks for that.

There are 5 known ice ages in Earth's past. The Huronian (around 2.4 to 2.1 billion years ago), the Cryogenian (850 to 630 million years ago), the Andean-Saharan (460 to 420 million years ago), The Karoo (360-260 million years ago) and the current Quaternary (since 2.58 million years ago).

You must be talking about the Andean-Saharan ice age because during the Karoo CO2 levels were under 300 ppm. It's true that during the Ordovician and Silurian period CO2 levels were over 10 times as high as they are now. It's also true that the Sun was about 4% fainter than it is now and the land where the evidence for the A-S ice age was found was part of the Godwana super-continent and was located right at the South Pole at the time, both conditions conducive to ice forming. As I said, CO2 is a factor but not the only factor.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the normal cycles of ice ages" because it's not clear that there is one.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

There is an average time between ice ages and we're getting due for it.

As to CO2 concentrations, where are you getting your information? Because the ice core records are known to be unreliable indications of CO2 concentration.

Regardless, the levels of CO2 have gone up and down many times in earth's past without correlating temperature swings. The notion that CO2 is a relevant driver of global climate makes very little sense.

Mostly this is because it makes up a relatively small portion of our atmosphere. Here you'll say that it uniquely blocks certain spectrums of light but that isn't accurate. Water vapor blocks the same spectrums and quite a bit more of it. What is more, water vapor makes up a much more relevant portion of our atmosphere. And water also has the problem that it does funny things like turns into reflective clouds or solidifies into white reflective sheets. It dramatically complicates your models because you have to predict cloud cover, radiation into space from snow, etc.

Ultimately, I think you have grounds to be concerned but I think without reservation anyone that says they know what they're talking about on the issue is talking out of their asses. Not one of the models subjected to scrutiny has withstood it. Not one. Zero. Cite any falsifiable test and they've failed them all. Which just means they're wrong. Period. Now they might be getting closer to being right but they're still wrong. They are unable to do simple things like predict PAST and KNOWN weather conditions given PAST and KNOWN weather variables. A good way of judging any model is feeding in known data from that time and seeing if it can predict the next KNOWN data point. If it can't then the model is bad.

Take Newton's laws of motion. They were able to predict the all sorts of astronomical events with a high degree of accuracy. That is ultimately what validated them. If you cannot predict known events given known information then you do not have a functional model. End of story.

What you probably don't know is that the scientist that came up with the green house theory disavowed it before he died. He was praised for being a genius at one point but when he disavowed AGW they said he was a senile old man. What you get for bucking the political masters. I can provide links if you like. But this is a massively over hyped issue that is going to go down as an embarrassment.

This whole thing is a lesson in the ability of money to pervert science. You've thrown so much money at institutions that they feel they are literally living and dying on your interest in this issue. They can't kill it. It means massive funding cuts.

But I don't expect you to take my word for any of that. If you want to have an extended discussion about this with cited sources etc, then I'm game.

Do remain respectful though. I will do my best not to allow my passions to make me rude. Kindly show me the same courtesy as lacking that it is hard to have an extended and serious discussion.

Best regards.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[gzuckier]

The california drought for example is a well known weather pattern. We get that drought every couple decades and always have.

Last time was in the 1970s. It is difficult to link because natural forces are actually the cause of that drought.

As to other droughts, I really couldn't speak to every single one on earth. Just the ones I am personally aware of... and without exception, they're all normal natural processes that have been recorded in those regions for as long as we've kept records.

Attributing any known and consistent weather pattern to global warming is dishonest or ignorant. Pick one.

It is like blaming summer on global warming or winter on global cooling. Neither one is valid unless we consider changes in the earth's orbit to be global warming/cooling.

We are probably going to go into an ice age in the next few thousand years. At least, that is what the climate records show... we're due an ice age. When that comes, I hope we have the foresight to pump something into our atmosphere to limit it. Ice ages are a thousand times worse then any of the silly predictions about Global Warming. A Global Ice Age would make much of the world uninhabitable.

The Pacific Coast is (according to my non-exhaustive reading of the literature) one of the parts of the world which is least affected by AGW, in that el Nino and la Nina are such big determinants of the weather there. That would include California droughts of course. What the effect of AGW might be on the Ninnys is beyond my current understanding of the field.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[gzuckier]

Of course, it's pretty universally accepted that the baseline "greenhouse effect" of the preindustrial 280 ppm of CO2 raises the earth's average temp 30 degrees C above what it would be just from black body theory and its albedo at any time. So questions of how can there be an ice age with lots of CO2 in the atmosphere are sort of deliberately and stubbornly and wilfully dumb.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

There is an average time between ice ages and we're getting due for it.

Oh, you must be talking about the glaciation cycles of the current Quaternary ice age. For about the last 800,000 years there has been a cycle of about every 100,000 years but from 2.8 million years ago until 800,000 years ago the cycle was more like every 41,000 years. Before the Quaternary the last ice age was the Karoo that ended around 260 million years ago.

As to CO2 concentrations, where are you getting your information? Because the ice core records are known to be unreliable indications of CO2 concentration.

Of course the CO2 levels I mentioned were not found from ice cores but from other proxy measurements because ice cores only go back about 800,000 years at best and the CO2 levels I mentioned were from ~300 and ~440 million years ago. The scientists who study ice cores consider their CO2 concentrations to be quite reliable so you're going to have to present some real evidence that they aren't rather than just making the assertion. Maybe you're thinking that they aren't precise because they show an average of maybe 100 years of atmospheric CO2 rather than a year by year account.

Regardless, the levels of CO2 have gone up and down many times in earth's past without correlating temperature swings. The notion that CO2 is a relevant driver of global climate makes very little sense.

Again, rather than just making the assertion you need to provide some real evidence. I've heard a number of scientists, notably Richard Alley say you can't understand temperature during any period of the Earth's history over the last billion years without taking CO2 into account.

Mostly this is because it makes up a relatively small portion of our atmosphere. ...

There is overlap between the absorption spectrums of water vapor and CO2 but it isn't 100% for either of them. In areas where the humidity is low CO2 has a larger effect. The latest studies I've seen on clouds effects on global warming show they have somewhere between a slightly negative and moderately positive effect on it. As far as the effects of snow, I think we have a pretty good handle on the albedo of the Earth after observing it from satellites for the past 50 years.

Ultimately, I think you have grounds to be concerned but I think without reservation anyone that says they know what they're talking about on the issue is talking out of their asses.

That would include you? (Sorry, I guess that isn't respectful but I couldn't help myself.)

Not one of the models subjected to scrutiny has withstood it. ...

As George Box famously said "All models are wrong, but some are useful". The rightness or wrongness of climate models is not a binary choice but rather a question of degrees. We don't have anything better than current climate models to help us understand the evolution of climate. They're not perfect but they're better than nothing.

I'd like you to give me some examples of a falsifiable test that climate models have utterly failed because I can't think of any.

What you probably don't know is that the scientist that came up with the green house theory disavowed it before he died.

The guy who came up with the greenhouse theory was Joseph Fourier in the 1820's but I doubt that's who you're talking about. Maybe you're talking about Svante Arrhenius who in 1896 quantified the effects of CO2 in the atmosphere. Never the less we've learned a lot since their time.

This whole thing is a lesson in the ability of money to pervert science.

Whenever someone brings up money it makes their argument seem more political in nature. Yes, scientists live and die by their grants but they're not getting rich on them. Money can at best only temporarily pervert

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

As to the rightness and wrongness of models, the current climate models are only valid if given non-falsifiable tests.

Non-falsifiable science is not science.

If your model cannot fail a test... then it is not being tested. How is this an alien concept?

This is the consistent issue with climate models. They are non-falsifiable. They are mostly tested against FUTURE predictions which is like saying your model of gravity says a given planet will be in a given place at a given time in the future. But by the time we know what really happened, never mind what my model said before.

I'm sorry but that isn't valid. You need to test your models under conditions where there is a failure state or they are not being tested and are inadmissible. Full stop.

In regards to who I was citing, the scientist that Al Gore cited and said inspired him to go on his environmental crusade.

As to politics, the issue is 95 percent political at this point. Price of bringing politicians into it. It is unavoidable. If you want to keep the politics out, then you're going to have to kick the politicians out. And they already own the issue so that is less likely then the scientists getting kicked out. How many of the UN climate reports were written by politicians? Every single one. It has caused some problems because scientists have said things in their reports to the UN that included qualifiers that were repeatedly deleted because the politicians wanted to make a clearer and more extreme statement. Some of the scientists pulled their reports from the UN on this basis... which proved to be difficult because the UN didn't want to shed any of the reports.

As to there being too much science being done around the world, I really doubt you're reading from anything but two labs. One in the US and one England. They're the ones mostly driving the whole thing. Have you for example looked at what the Japanese are saying about this issue?

The japanese built a super computer. The Earth Simulator... it was built specifically to run these climate models. It had the processing power to model the whole world's climate in extreme detail. They uploaded the climate models currently in vogue at the time, fed in historical data, and saw if the system accurately predicted known climate conditions at those times. Shockingly... it predicted nothing even remotely accurately. I believe in one simulation the oceans boiled. The Japanese called up the people that provided the models and said "what gives?"... the people that provided the models responded by introducing PLUG variables at given periods of time to force the system to give rough approximations of the correct answer at given times. Effectively, the model only worked when the computer was told the correct answer in advance.

The Japanese have had a somewhat different opinion on this issue ever since.

I'm sorry. The models are garbage and the people presuming to predict the future have no more credibility on the issue then some jackass like myself until such time as their models actually work.

Simple as that. You either have a working model or you don't know what is going on. That is obvious and self evident in every field except climate science where they don't know what they're doing but presume to still tell everyone what is going to happen. It is beyond absurd. It is pathetic.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[david_thornley]

You're missing the point.

Of course all droughts are explainable by natural weather patterns, and it's reasonable that they were predictable.

Assuming that global warming brought more droughts, how do you think they'd happen? They'd happen through natural weather patterns (slightly different from the natural weather patterns if there had been no global warming), and they might well be predictable. What would happen is more and presumably more severe droughts. That's where we should look for evidence.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

Actually, you're missing the point.

What the scientists are saying is that the droughts they're seeing do not appear to be unusual. They appear to be totally normal, predictable, and unmodified weather patterns.

If you want to blame these droughts on AGW then you might as well blame summer on AGW and winter on global cooling.

You cannot blame such weather patterns on AGW while retaining credibility. Choose.

Do you want to blame them on that or retain credibility?

Up to you.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

You know what, we're getting caught up in what models can or cannot do but in the end it doesn't matter. Climate models are just tools to investigate our understanding of the interaction of the different components of the climate system. As I said they will always be imperfect but they are useful. So I guess I'm changing the subject but so be it.

The diagnosis of anthropogenic global warming comes from the basic science of the radiative characteristics of greenhouse gases. That is fundamental falsifiable science that you can't get around. The effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can be measured by taking radiative energy reading starting from the surface to the top of the atmosphere and observing how that changes at different elevations. The effects of the different greenhouse gases are relatively easy to extract from that data.

The scientist who Gore cited whoever that is is late to the parade after Fourier, Tyndall in the 1850's, Arrhenius in the 1890's, Gilbert Plass in the 1950's and James Hanson in the 1970's & 1980's. His change of heart doesn't really change anything else.

Regarding UN reports, the IPCC Working Group I reports were all completely written by scientists involved in the research. Even the Summary for Policy Makers is written by scientists although it gets vetted by politicians. Still nothing gets through it without the approval of the authors of the WG1 full report. The Working Group II and especially the Working Group III reports do have some non-scientists helping to write them but the WG1 report is the critical one to our scientific understanding of climate change.

The politicization of the issue is almost entirely due to people who don't like the implications and proposed solutions. As Upton Sinclair said "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

Can you cite a reference for the Japanese studies? I'd be interested in see what it actually had to say rather than just taking your word for it.

So far as I can see the output of models has generally been pretty good and nothing that has happened has shown the models are just flat wrong. Of course they will be better in the future as we learn more and can apply more computing power to them but they're the best thing we have now so we might as well use them. It seems to me that your expectations for what models are capable of may be a little off. Here is some suggested reading to help you understand them better:

FAQ on Climate Models
FAQ on Climate Models: Part II
Why trust climate models, it's a matter of simple science

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

In regards to CO2 being opaque to given spectrums of electro magnetic radiation... I don't think anyone disputes that. Even the most hardcore denialist couldn't really do that I would expect.

Everything... literally everything is opaque to certain spectrums of electro magnetic radiation.

Pointing out that CO2 is just like everything else in the universe... isn't really blowing my socks off here.

As to the scientist that inspired Gore, we're talking about the scientist that actually started the modern obsession with AGW. The previous scientists obviously didn't spark the fire. He's more significant to this discussion then the previous people. Especially since the claims you're making from the previous scientists are not in contention.

As to the IPCC, a significant amount of their research was traced back to WWF power point presentations. I believe one of the funnier examples was a claim about the Himalayas that came from a climbing magazine. You're not fooling anyone with this nonsense.

As to the politicization, hmmm... Al Gore. Is he a right wing or left wing politician? Okay... so lets not play the "you did it first" game because you already lost that one.

As to the japanese, here is one of the links:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...

Again, if you step outside the echo chamber you'll find things change rather radically.

The Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese, and the Indians are skeptical or dismissive.

What you have left is a network of cross linked peer reviewed papers that all go through two choke points. One in the US and one in the UK. Everything is filtering through a very small selection of scientists.

We have gotten revolts throughout US meteorology programs mostly because climate scientists don't know how weather patterns work and they keep saying things that meteorologists know to be wrong.

And we've gotten revolts through the mathematics departments because the way data is handled is unsupportable.

Do you want me to throw lists of prominent meteorologists at you that have said the climate models are horseshit?

Would you like me to throw some mathematicians at you that say "this is not how you use statistics."

Because I can.

As to the output of models being good. There is no possible way they could be good since they've failed to predict anything with any accuracy under any falsifiable circumstances. It is literally impossible for them to be doing anything well scientifically until they are subjected to falsifiable tests. I thought you were done defending these models anyway? You said that in your first paragraph and then went on to try and defend the models using anything but science.

Look, think of any other field of science that has models and think about how easy it would be to prove to me that the models in that field are valid. Super easy. Why? Because they're valid and there is evidence of that.

In climate science you don't have any evidence of successful prediction or accurate modeling under falsifiable conditions. None.

That is death. That is your argument clutching its chest, its face racked in pain, and hitting the flour while people call the paramedics.

Will your argument survive? Will the paramedics get here in time? We shall see. Frankly, I think your case is a goner.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[david_thornley]

I can't blame individual weather patterns on AGW, unless we get a situation like melting Arctic ice pushing the Gulf Stream hundreds of miles south, and we aren't seeing anything like that currently. I can blame the frequency of perfectly normal weather patterns on AGW, as long as I've got the statistical evidence. If we're seeing perfectly normal droughts, except that there are 50% more than there were a century ago (wash hands after handling that number), that would be at least some evidence that AGW causes droughts.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

They're not 50 percent more then a century ago. At least not in the case of the droughts we're talking about in this thread. The california droughts are normal.

Case closed. Court dismissed. Next issue.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

In regards to CO2 being opaque to given spectrums of electro magnetic radiation... I don't think anyone disputes that. Even the most hardcore denialist couldn't really do that I would expect.

Ok, do you also understand that the Earth is considerably warmer than it would otherwise be because of the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? Without those greenhouse gases the average temperature on the surface of the Earth would be ~0 degrees F instead of the ~58 degrees F it currently is. Wouldn't you think a change in the concentration of those greenhouse gases cause a change in temperature?

As to the scientist that inspired Gore, we're talking about the scientist that actually started the modern obsession with AGW.

So why don't you just tell me his name instead of making me guess? As far as the "modern obsession" goes I might start with Gilbert Plass who published a paper titled "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change" in 1958. Did you know that President Lyndon Johnson got a report on the warming potential of the increase in carbon dioxide? The Charney Report was published in 1979. Through the 1980's James Hansen was publishing on the subject. His testimony before Congress in 1988 was pretty alarming.

If your model cannot fail a test... then it is not being tested. How is this an alien concept?

Models are tested all the time against the real world both in the projections they make and in hindcasting. Did you read the links I cited? To quote from the first one:

How are models evaluated?
The amount of data that is available for model evaluation is vast, but falls into a few clear categories. First, there is the climatological average (maybe for each month or season) of key observed fields like temperature, rainfall, winds and clouds. This is the zeroth order comparison to see whether the model is getting the basics reasonably correct. Next comes the variability in these basic fields – does the model have a realistic North Atlantic Oscillation, or ENSO, or MJO. These are harder to match (and indeed many models do not yet have realistic El Niños). More subtle are comparisons of relationships in the model and in the real world. This is useful for short data records (such as those retrieves by satellite) where there is a lot of weather noise one wouldn’t expect the model to capture. In those cases, looking at the relationship between temperatures and humidity, or cloudiness and aerosols can give insight into whether the model processes are realistic or not.

Then there are the tests of climate changes themselves: how does a model respond to the addition of aerosols in the stratosphere such as was seen in the Mt Pinatubo ‘natural experiment’? How does it respond over the whole of the 20th Century, or at the Maunder Minimum, or the mid-Holocene or the Last Glacial Maximum? In each case, there is usually sufficient data available to evaluate how well the model is doing.

I trust that the scientists know how to test their models and that their judgement about how well they're doing is sound. I suspect that your judgement of how they should be tested is wrong.

As to the IPCC, a significant amount of their research was traced back to WWF power point presentations. I believe one of the funnier examples was a claim about the Himalayas that came from a climbing magazine. You're not fooling anyone with this nonsense.

None of the WG1 report can be traced to the WWF. It's all peer reviewed scientific papers. Worrying about the Himalaya's error in the WG2 report is getting silly. It's one small error in a 3,000 page report, the error has been admitted by the IPCC and steps have been taken to prevent it from happening again.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

As to whether the world is warmer because we have an atmosphere... sure.

As to guesses, I'd like you to do some research so you're at least a little big informed as to why the issue is controversial.

You keep saying things like "well know CO2 is a green house gas right" not grasping that that isn't really the issue. Then you bust out with some scientists that produced work no one finds controversial.

You are presuming to engage in an argument that you do not understand. And it makes it very hard to talk to you about it because you've already taken sides despite not knowing what the argument is about.

I can't help you unless you either demonstrate that you know ACTUALLY what the fight is about or unless you make a good faith effort to inform yourself. The scientist that inspired Al Gore is obtainable with a single search engine search. Shouldn't take you more then ten seconds. If you don't do that... then you're willfully indifferent and that's too bad because that means we can't have a discussion if you don't want to have one.

As to the models being tested... I said they had to be tested under falsifiable conditions. There's no evidence that they've done that. Your citation makes no reference to that.

As to the former vice president not being a political agent... do you really believe that or are you just saying these things?

What you're saying is untrue. There are two reasons for someone saying something untrue. Tell me if you actually think he isn't a political agent or if you are just saying that? Your answer tells me where the misstatement comes from.

As to the Japanese and others... Well... what this establishes is that you don't have the consensus that you've relied upon to shield yourself from ridicule.

You can't just say "lots of scientists think I'm right"... lots of scientists think you're wrong too. They're also ones speciously outside the political control of the first group.

The peer review system has been compromised. Everyone knows it. It is being used to pump out garbage in a few different fields. The method is very simply... a peer review circle jerk. You have a tight knot of people that all peer review each other's papers and peer review everything in their field.

Peer review especially under those circumstances doesn't mean something is valid. It just means certain people approved of it. That is all.

Lets get back to the science. You wanted to do that right? I've already shown you things you didn't know were there. And you're apparently unaware of how this issue became controversial.

I can show you.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

The science of global warming became controversial because some people didn't like the implications of it and what we need to do to address the problem. We could argue all night but time will tell which of us is more correct. I like my chances.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

Not at all. It became controversal when politicians took over the whole thing and made it political.

It has never recovered and never will until the politicians get out of the issue.

Very very simple.

You bring politics into it and you brought politics into it.

When Al Gore started his Inconvenient Truth campaign... the science became irrelevant. Instantly everything polarized on political lines and it isn't going to recover unless people are willing rip the politics out of it.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

Not at all. It became controversal when politicians took over the whole thing and made it political.

Yes, politicians who don't like the implications of global warming and what we need to do to address it. For some it conflicts with their world view and for others it has the potential to cost some of their supporters a lot of money.

I don't give a flying fuck for the goddamn politics. It's the science I care about and politics have little to do with that. In the end all the politics in the world can't change the objective reality that science helps us understand. If you think scientists are subverting their work for the sake of politics you must think they don't give a damn for their science and their reputations. As I said time will tell as the future unfolds and any scientists misrepresenting the science will be discovered. They're mostly too smart to think they can get away with the kind of deception you think they are practicing.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

Sure, Al Gore was a politician that didn't like the implications of global warming. You nailed it.

Oh wait... you are instead painting a sad one sided picture of the situation in a transparent attempt to score political points.

What you just did right there is exactly why we can't have a reasonable discussion about AGW. You're not being reasonable and you're doing everything you can to put your political faction in the best light indifferent to the facts.

Until you're prepared to be reasonable you can't be considered reasonable.

Your move...

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

I don't give a flying fuck for the goddamn politics. It's the science I care about and politics have little to do with that. In the end all the politics in the world can't change the objective reality that science helps us understand. If you think scientists are subverting their work for the sake of politics you must think they don't give a damn for their science and their reputations. As I said time will tell as the future unfolds and any scientists misrepresenting the science will be discovered. They're mostly too smart to think they can get away with the kind of deception you think they are practicing.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

Dubious claim given your previous posts.

But lets say for the sake of argument, I accept that statement.

If you've put down all the politics and won't touch them again.

Where to now? What do you want and what do you want to talk about? Is there anything left out of your position once the politics are stripped out of it? Tell me what is left. What do you think is worth discussing?

See, the science is in many cases a pretext for the politics. Once the end point is removed the means loses meaning. Unless your ends were not political?

If your ends are political, then the entire issue is just politics.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

Well, you're the one who brought politics into the discussion back in this comment. I was merely responding.

As I mentioned a few posts ago the Earth is warmer than it would otherwise be because of the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and changing the concentration of them will change the temperature. That's about as simply as it can be stated. Anything beyond that is details.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

Actually you made it political when you referenced a consensus which is not a scientific concept but rather a political one.

Science is not decided on a vote. You don't win a scientific argument by getting more people to agree with you then the opposition.

Truth is truth. The number of people you have on either side of the issue are irrelevant.

Is it more likely that the majority will be right? Yes... but that doesn't automatically mean the majority is right.

One person against a million can be right in science.

I wasn't the one that started with the political arguments. You did.

And as I pointed out, your political position is not as strong as you'd like to present it. Beyond the American and European sphere you have far less credibility.

And if you want to actually talk science for science's sake... then we can go back to those models you said you didn't want to talk about. Because I'm going to hammer you on the lack of falsifiable tests on them until you break or run.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

Models are not the primary evidence for global warming. My statement from the previous comment is:

As I mentioned a few posts ago the Earth is warmer than it would otherwise be because of the presence of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and changing the concentration of them will change the temperature. That's about as simply as it can be stated. Anything beyond that is details.

That's the primary evidence. Models are merely tools to explore the interrelation/interaction between the various factors in climate.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

You can't say the earth is warmer then it would be otherwise unless you can model the effect of CO2. Since you can't, you don't actually know why the earth is warmer.

The models are relevant. You either understand what you are dealing with... or you have an opinion.

And we all have opinions.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

Of course it's a truism that everything in science is a model at one level or another. The first order modeling for the effect of CO2 is to do what John Tyndall did in the 1850's. Shine various frequencies of light through it at varying concentrations and measure the effect. From that you can derive a formula for the effect of CO2 on the range of infrared light.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

Again, no one disputes that.

However, to show that the CO2 increase caused by man is leading to run away global warming you need a functional model that shows that.

You lack that.

Which means it is your OPINION that the increase in CO2 caused by man will lead to run away global warming.

That is great.

My opinion is that the color yellow is pretty.

Absent something substantive which will require real research done sometime during the period of this CO2 increase.... you really don't have anything.

The fact that you're struggling with this should be a big tip off to you that you're in trouble.

Imagine as a counter point if I were contradicting the theory of gravity. You'd have some functional models to use to show I was wrong. You could even show that the models accurately predict the motions of the planets under falsifiable conditions showing that they are in fact valid.

Now... there are no AGW climate models that exist that have passed falsifiable tests. And that is a problem. Because it means you've got nothing.

Here you'll say "but look at all the scientists that agree with me!"

And that is just resorting to politics in the face of logical contradiction. At which point, I'll just respond with the political argument that the public at large doesn't find your research very compelling. Which isn't a scientific argument. It is a political argument. But it is a political argument to counter your political argument.

Not only in the realm of science do you have a problem but in the realm of politics you have a problem. All the surveys from the US and UK are showing increasingly people don't think AGW is a big deal. You're losing the political fight.

And if you don't make scientific arguments which do not rely on how many numbers of certain people agree with you... then I see no reason why I shouldn't just stick with the political counter argument.

Listen and understand. I am not stupid. I am not uneducated.

Reassess your position with that understanding.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

Anthropogenic CO2 will not cause runaway global warming. The Earth isn't going to turn into Venus, at least not on any time scale that matters to us.

As far as research done during the period of CO2 increase, basically all of the research has been done during that period. CO2 started increasing in the early 1800's (maybe even the late 1700's) but it didn't really start to become significant until the 1900's.

Another level of the greenhouse gas story is you can measure the spectrum of infrared radiation at the surface and compare it to the spectrum at the top of the atmosphere. You can observe how it changes over time. From this you can determine the energy balance between surface emissions and TOA. If there is an imbalance temperatures on Earth will change until a new balance is achieved. Observations in the satellite era have found an imbalance.

I laughed at what you though my opinion was.

Models are not science. At the climate model level they are tools that science uses to understand the interactions of a complex system. You think that if you can prove models are useless then you can show global warming is a sham. You need to go at it at a much lower level.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

Without runaway global warming, you are going to have a hard time justifying the massive multi trillion dollar tax and regulatory framework that ultimately people are rebelling against.

But moving on. As to research in the 1700s... last time I tell you... no one disputes that. You're citing a red herring. Cite something in the last 20 to 30 years please that includes a model that has been tested under falsifiable conditions and succeeded.

As to models not being science, the conclusions of science are models. All the theories and hypotheses are models. You're saying "this is how I think the universe works".

As to the lower level you seem to want... the climate is a great deal more complex then you are allowing for in your argument. It is not so simple as "CO2 opaques certain spectrums of light ergo if you increase CO2 the earth warms up."

Regardless, if you're not arguing for runaway global warming, then what are you doomsaying?

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

I think even 4 degrees C of global temperature rise will be disastrous. That's not runaway warming. It's not so much the warming but the rate it's happening. If the warming that has happened and will happen over the next 100 years were spread out over 2 or 3,000 years it wouldn't be that much of a problem. Everything would have time to adjust.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

Also I cited measurements of the Earth's energy imbalance by observing the difference between surface and TOA infrared radiation. That's from the last 20 or 30 years.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

That doesn't mean you know why there is an imbalance. Minor shifts in cloud cover or ice albedo could explain that. I believe they found that one of the major glaciers was melting because dust was getting deposited on it... that was making it darker and the increased darkness was causing it to absorb more sunlight which was what was causing the glacier to melt.

As I remember, the dust was the result of deforestation around the glacier. I think this one is in africa.

Anyway, lots of reasons for things to happen.

You're saying one thing "the earth is warming" and then trying to connect that to "because the CO2"...

You can't do that without a working model.

Note... WORKING. Not just any model some climate scientist pulled out of his ass. It has to actually survive testing.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

I don't see why it is especially a problem over such a short time?

Wasn't the world warmer during the Medieval warming period and during the Roman warming period?

From what the histories say, that was generally a good thing.

What is more, human beings are a tropical species. We like heat.

I've never understood why people think a warmer world would be so disastrous for us. We like the heat. Where do our old go to spend their final days? Warm places. What are considered the most pleasant environments for us? Places like Hawaii. We like the tropics.

Think about it... where else can you walk around naked and be comfortable?

Could we be looking at some sea level rises of about a foot or so? Sure. That shouldn't threaten most coastal communities. A few marginal sand bar islands in the Caribbean and south pacific are screwed but they were doomed eventually anyway.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

In measuring those imbalances they're measuring the filtering that greenhouse gases do to the infrared spectrum. The fact that some of the absorption spectrums overlap means there is some uncertainty in what gas causes what effect but those uncertainties are quantifiable. Cloud cover and ice albedo are also subject of research and they haven't found evidence for them being major factors.

To me it just looks like you're desperately searching for anything but CO2.

Here Richard Alley explains that carbon dioxide is the biggest control knob for Earth's climate going back as far as we can tell.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

I'm skeptical that it was any warmer during the medieval or roman warm periods than it is now. I haven't seen any good evidence for that. Even if it were as the warming continues that won't be true for much longer.

Our civilization is built around the climate as it has existed for the past 8,000 years or so. Climate change will have an effect on that. I'm particularly worried about our agricultural systems that are feeding 7+ billion people. Any major disruption of those will have profound effects.

As far as sea level I think we already have at least 20 feet of rise built in. There is a lot of lag in the response of the great ice sheets to warming but respond they will and there isn't anything we can do about it. The last time CO2 levels were at 400 ppm sea levels were 70-80 feet higher than they are now. Maybe it's just a matter of how many centuries it takes to get there.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

To the contrary, you're searching for any way to blame CO2 for it.

You have two correlating values and you're refusing to show causation which would be the model.

You are aware that we have lots of climate record data showing CO2 and the global temperature going in opposite directions right?

As to reference material, I'd prefer text because I read a great deal faster then these people speak.

CO2 makes up a relatively tiny portion of the earth's atmosphere. Most of the climate models used to justify CO2 as a forcing variable were modified from models developed for Venus. Never mind that Venus has a completely different atmosphere. CO2 is I believe the most common gas on the planet where as on earth, it is nitrogen, followed by oxygen.

CO2 is literally a trace gas. And while you're going to say that it is disproportionally relevant, the fact remains that your climate models were developed for a world where CO2 was the dominant component.

And worse, even the relevance of CO2 on Venus's atmosphere is controversial because the biggest difference between Venus and the earth is actually the density of that atmosphere. Temperature increases with pressure. If the earth had the same density of atmosphere as Venus... irrelevant to the actual gas used... it would be a great deal hotter.

Not only is the use of an adapted climate model designed for Venus dubious but the validity of that model for Venus itself is dubious.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

You're assuming the warming will continue which means you assume you have a predictive model of the climate... which you do not. You are over stating your knowledge.

As to whether it was warmer then... they were growing wine and oranges in England. So.

As to agriculture, most plants both prefer more warmth and more CO2. So rejoice, if you're right then we'll be able to feed more people.

As to 20 feet, that is absurd. But even if it did raise 20 feet, and there's no evidence of that, then that still leaves a great deal of the earth. We have vast tracts of land that we do nothing with at all. Ever been to the American south west? Nothing for mile upon mile. Why? Because it is dry. OH NOES you say. But we're living in the 21st century and you're complaining about a problem the Romans 2000 years ago could have solved. Build an aqueduct that can carry whatever water you need from point "A" to point "B". Some infrastructure there but not really a big deal. Greening the whole south west would cost less then our last war.

As to that ancient climate record... You can't cite that unless you also accept that we had high levels of CO2 during an ice age. You completely rejected that data point so I see no reason to permit you to cite the record at all back then given that you're cherry picking data.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

The causative factor is obviously the infrared absorption characteristics of carbon dioxide and how that changes with concentration.

You say CO2 is a trace gas but if I put you in a room with a concentration of 250 ppm of hydrogen cyanide you'd be dead in a matter of minutes. Trace concentrations can matter, it's all a matter of context.

All told greenhouse gases make up less than 5000 ppm of the atmosphere and yet they're responsible for about 59 degrees F of temperature on the surface.

I don't say that CO2 is disproportionally relevant, just as relevant as it is. The most common gases in the atmosphere are in order are nitrogen, oxygen argon, water vapor and carbon dioxide. The first three are not greenhouse gases and have little effect on temperature. Water vapor concentrations are strictly limited by temperatures and therefore it can not drive temperature changes but is a feedback to temperature changes. There is nothing we can do to directly affect the concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere (except locally irrigation may raise the concentration over small areas). That makes CO2 the most important greenhouse gas that we have any control over.

The fact that the same basic atmospheric model works for both Venus and Earth but also Mars and Titan is an indication that it's getting things mostly right.

My assumption that warming will continue is based on the absorption characteristics of CO2 and the fact that CO2 concentrations continue to rise. Nothing more than that.

Grapes have been grown in England basically as long has humans have practiced agriculture there. I never heard of oranges growing there but I suppose it's possible.

Warmth and CO2 levels are only two of many factors in agricultural productivity. More important is water and nutrition (fertilizer). Temperatures that get too high can reduce productivity significantly. Here is a study of corn and soy bean yields as related to temperature and precipitation. It found for corn that 1 degree warmer temperature in July caused a 2.28 bushel per acre drop in yields while 1 degree cooler caused an increase of 2.28 bushel per acre (see the section on "Corn Yield Response to July Temperatures".)

I live in Oregon and am quite familiar with the Great Basin desert. The only southwest state I haven't visited so far is New Mexico. As far as transporting water to the southwest, where is it going to come from? Most of the Colorado river water is currently used for agriculture in Arizona and California already and the Colorado basin has been in drought for most years since around 2000. Look at the water levels in Lake Powell and Lake Mead. You can take water from the Snake/Columbia system over my dead body.

I expect between 2 and 6 feet of SLR by 2100 and it will probably be between 200 and 300 years before it's risen by 20 feet. The 70-80 foot rise probably takes 600-1000 years at least.

I explained to you way back in this thread why high CO2 concentrations and ice ages were not incompatible 600+ million years ago. That has practically noting to do with what's going on now.

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

The causative factor requires a functioning model. There are too many variables to claim causation without a model.

My biochemistry is a completely different subject which gases build up heat when hit with the sun.

Again, it has been shown that even on Venus where the CO2 dramatically higher... the issue is not the CO2 at all but rather the density of the atmosphere itself. You could put that much oxygen on Venus and it be about the same temperature it is now.

The entire concept of greenhouse gases as relevant to global atmospheres is likely vastly over stated.

Venus is the extreme case. All the failed though still supported climate models for the earth were adapted from models of Venus. And they're wrong because they assume the chemistry of the atmosphere matters.

Do this... find the air pressure of Venus at the "surface". Note that temperature. Now compare that to Jupiter at the same air pressure. You'll go about a third into Jupiter's atmosphere I think. The temperature is somewhat similar. Its not exact but it is in the ball park.

Do the same thing with the earth only in reverse. Get the air pressure of earth... 1 atmosphere obviously. And then go to Venus and see what the temperature of that atmosphere is at 1 atmosphere. You'll find it to be within the range of earth's atmosphere.

Which means pressure is far more relevant then gas composition. After all, Jupiter, Venus, and Earth have completely different atmospheric chemistries.

That I've done these calculations and you have not should give you pause. I have actually looked at this issue. I know about the Japanese earth simulator and you didn't know. Consider just for the sake of argument that I could be in command of more facts.

As to nitrogen and oxygen not having a big impact on the global atmosphere, that is impossible. If I removed those gases from the atmosphere, the atmosphere would be a great deal thinner. And it would therefore be a great deal colder. Forget what impact this would have on life. If we just concern ourselves with the temperature consequences, removing that nitrogen and oxygen from the atmosphere would radically reduce the temperature of earth. We'd be looking at a Martian climate.

As to heat reducing crop yields, you're not controlling for water in those statistics so it could all be water.

Look, I have a green house. I have thousands of plants.

Do you know which plants don't like being 95 degrees? Basically none of them. What kills them all is getting too much water and some of them have problems if it goes over 100. But up to 95 degrees they're all really happy. What is more that is very species specific. Certain species like it colder and some like it even hotter. You can take some species up to 120 and they're perfectly happy with it. I don't go that hot because I don't grow that many species like that and I find the temperature personally unpleasant so I don't let the green house get that hot.

Point is, if you want to have a scientific discussion then you're going to have to use good data. Using statistics from the USDA are not relevant to this discussion because they're not properly controlled for any one variable. They're really just yield statistics. It is like trying to use US Census statistics to judge the psychology of the nation. You can't do that. The data isn't taken in such a matter that it is clean enough to do that. Mostly what the census and yield stats give you is how many people we have and how much corn we have respectively. They can't really tell you what a long term climate change would have on global agriculture.

For one thing, they grow wheat in Canada. Think about that. They do that NOW. Now global warming will have the biggest impact on polar and sub polar climate zones and the least impact on the equatorial climate zones. The temperature rise under global warming is a global NORMALIZATION of climate. That means, that as the planet goes through AGW northern climates will become less harsh. That is the primary effect off

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[riverat1]

As to heat reducing crop yields, you're not controlling for water in those statistics so it could all be water.

Huh? Didn't you notice that the yield response to temperature graph had precipitation on the x axis?

Re:It is only difficult when fallacious

[Karmashock]

That doesn't control for water. Have you ever had house plants? If the temps go up, you tend to need to water your plants more because they dry out faster.

Point being, you're assuming the plants are getting the water they need under all conditions. Some farmers are going to adapt and water their plants more when it gets hotter. Other farmers either will not or cannot water their plants more and as a result they'll dry out and will reduce the yields.

What you're claiming is that generally clemant weather for crops kills crops. What temperatures specifically are you citing are killing or reducing yields in which crops?

I assure you, if I take that temperature and query agricultural experts, they're going to say that temperature is either good or better then what they were getting before for that plant.

The problem is keeping the soil moist. And it is only a problem because farmers in given regions are used to certain weather patterns. If you give them unusual weather some of them are going to ignore the change and just do everything the same. And that is going to damage the crops under some circomstances. Which is all your stats are likely showing.

If you want to make a compelling argument about this, you'd have to go to the agricultural department of any agricultural university and either ask for their data on the issue or have them do experiments that controlled for the variables.

If you seriously think your statistics can be used in this way then you do NOT know how to read statistics. This is actually one of the bigger problems in the modern world. We have a lot of data and people think that "bad" data if you have enough of it is as good as "good" data. It isn't the case.

Garbage in = Garbage out. You can't improve the data with quantity. You're making the same mistake that magazines and newspapers make when they say things like "red wine increases longevity". That is confusing causation with correlation.

What you did was look for some statistic that showed correlation for variables you were talking about and agreed with you.

Congrats. That is however meaningless. You need causation. You do not have that because the variable of water IN THE SOIL is not controlled.

What are these horrible high temperatures you're talking about? 95 degrees? 110? Corn is quite happy in high temperatures so long as it gets water. Rice is utterly indifferent to high temperatures so long as the paddies have water. Potatoes don't care though they're so happy with lower temps that they're often grown in colder climates. Same thing with wheat. You can grow it in hot areas but why? It is happy in colder areas where lots of other crops are not so you might as well grow it there instead.

When it comes to crops that need heat... which is the only thing you're going to grow in a hot area... no minor uptick in heat is going to matter to them so long as they get water.

Re:Linking ANYTHING and Climate Change: Difficult

[__aaclcg7560]

Or that the Republican Party in California has more in common with the spotted owl than the country's most populous state? Yeah, baby, global warming.

There is no spoon!

[mschaffer]

To paraphrase the "spoon boy" from The Matrix:

Do not try and bend the correlation, that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth...there is no correlation. Then you will see it is not the correlation that bends, it is only yourself.

Preponderance of the Evidence

[ScottChi]

During the 1980s, the tobacco companies frequently cited the fact that no case of cancer had ever been demonstrably proven to be caused by cigarette smoking. I had a close relative with a severe addiction who repeated this whenever nonsmokers (like me) complained. This highlights the dichotomy of statistical evidence versus absolute proof. In order to prove that a cancer victim inhaling burning tobacco caused their cancer, you would have to track the specific molecules of the smoke's chemicals that damaged the initial cancer cell's DNA. You'd need to observe the cell dividing out of control, and verify that that particular tumor was the one that lead to the diagnosis. Apparently, the fact that something is incredibly hard to prove can be used as evidence that it can't possibly be happening. Fortunately, most open minded people are willing to accept a vast amount of statistical evidence as proof.

Re:Preponderance of the Evidence

[phantomfive]

Fortunately, most open minded people are willing to accept a vast amount of statistical evidence as proof.

The links in the article are to fivethirtyeight.com and Nature. If you disagree with them, then you're probably disagreeing with the vast amount of statistical evidence.

Re:Preponderance of the Evidence

[LWATCDR]

"Fortunately, most open minded people are willing to accept a vast amount of statistical evidence as proof."
Then get back to me when your sample size is much larger...
Talk about your dumb analogies. BTW you are totally wrong. By the 1980s tobacco smoke had been studied and found to be full of known cancerogenic compounds. They did have mass spectrometers in the 1980s after all.

You like most people are confusing weather with climate. A single drought can not be attributed to climate change it would take a lot more data aka many decades of data.

Climate != single event

[Himmy32]

A seasonal drought is a weather event. The frequency of droughts is climate. Not sure how you can make any claims about climate with one event. This isn't say that climate isn't changing or what is causing it. But that one event is not relevant to the discussion.

No event or small chains of events can ever be proof or unproof of what the climate is or whether it's changing. The whole point of climate is that it's over a long time. So evidence of what happened requires long time scales. But that doesn't mean you can't have predictive models. Evaluating models with data sets is key. But if you think that you can prove or disprove a model with only one data point, you are going to have a bad time. If you want clean proofs, stick with pure math. Inconclusive data and blurred lines are the trademark of applied sciences. Especially ones with many variables.

This is not news. It shouldn't even be a talking point. This is only in the headlines because of how unfortunately politicized this topic has become.

Re:Climate != single event

[radtea]

This is only in the headlines because of how unfortunately politicized this topic has become.

It's news because Every. Single. Story. on weather ends up talking about climate change. Dunno if that's politicalization or just flavour-of-the-week reporting, but it needs to be pointed out as the nonsense it is.

Climate is a distribution.

Weather is an event.

Distributions are made of events, but they are not events and they have properties (their mean and higher moments) that are emergent properties of the distribution, not properties of the events that make them up.

So long as idiots talk about climate change every time there is a warm spell or a cold snap, there will be a need to point out the difference between events and distributions, and the very small amount you can say about discerning between different distributions that largely overlap based on a single event, or even a small handful of events.

Re:Linking ANYTHING and Climate Change: Difficult

[xevioso]

Who?

Re:Let's get to the root of the problem, NOW :

[Anonymous Coward]

1. What's the right number?
3. How would that be better for earth? How is Earth's welfare affected by our presence? The planet was here long before us, and will be here long after us.

10 years ago on Slashdot

[mi]

They also cite a Nature editorial pointing out the same thing about extreme weather.

Extreme weather, huh? 10 years ago we were discussing right here, how continuing global warming will make hurricanes more frequent.

The usual suspects were writing "insightful" posts lamenting "deniers" and the sorry state of the uneducated populace preventing the sophisticated elite from saving the planet.

Today, 10 years since that discussion, we are living through a 30 year low hurricane-frequency — something, none of the "Global Warming" models predicted...

Re:10 years ago on Slashdot

[towermac]

Mmm, no, you look stupid.

First, he posted under his username, and you as AC.

Second, he's right; that's not what you were saying 10 years ago.

Re:10 years ago on Slashdot

[khallow]

Hurricane INTENSITY is projected to increase BY THE END OF THE CENTURY. That has nothing to do with hurricane FREQUENCY which is primarily driven by short term WEATHER patterns.

Right. Hurricane INTENSITY, let us note, is also primarily driven by short term WEATHER patterns. Which makes your observation completely pointless.

Re:10 years ago on Slashdot

[mi]

Hurricane INTENSITY is projected to increase

Touche!

That has nothing to do with hurricane FREQUENCY

Oh, it has quite a bit to do with frequency — if there are no hurricanes to begin with, for example, you can claim they have any intensity — such is one of the funkier properties of the empty set.

More seriously, here is a scientific write-up, which has the following to say about the 2004 study:

Furthermore, the idealized study of Knutson and Tuleya (2004) assumed the existence of hurricanes [emphasis mine] and then simulated how intense they would become. Thus, that study could not address the important question of the frequency of intense hurricanes.

If I assume the existence of unicorns, I too may be able to predict global warming's impact on the length of their horns...

Re:10 years ago on Slashdot

[NoMaster]

Today, 10 years since that discussion, we are living through a 30 year low hurricane-frequency.

Well, that's certainly a reliable source. I'm surprised they didn't try to blame it on Obama...

But OK, so hurricane frequency is at a 30 year low in America. World-wide, hurricanes, cyclones, & similar category 3+ storms are at a 40+ year high.

Re:10 years ago on Slashdot

[mi]

But OK, so hurricane frequency is at a 30 year low in America.

If you don't dispute the message, why did you have to attack the messenger? Sigh...

World-wide, hurricanes, cyclones, & similar category 3+ storms are at a 40+ year high

The chart you linked to a) ends in 2005 (9 years ago!); b) does not suggest anything of the kind. The number of "named systems" peaked in the early 1930-ies, according to it, with spikes in 1968 and 1994 being below that of 80 years ago. Given the state of most of the world back then — and the quality of communications in particular — I am not at all surprised, we aren't even aware of some of the major storms hitting remote places in 1920-1950ies...

Re:10 years ago on Slashdot

[Areyoukiddingme]

If I assume the existence of unicorns, I too may be able to predict global warming's impact on the length of their horns...

No, no, no. If you assume the existence of unicorns, you can predict how much global warming they cause.

Re:10 years ago on Slashdot

[NoMaster]

You seem to have a low threshold for disagreement, if you consider pointing out that a site with multiple anti-Obama, anti-government, and anti-Democrat pop-ups, advertisements, and articles might be a little bit biased to be "attack[ing] the messenger". Adding a little melodramatic sigh afterwards doesn't bolster your argument.

Apart from that, you still seem a little confused between 'local' vs 'global', and 'weather' vs 'climate' - not to mention how to interpret both graphs and what I wrote. And you vastly underestimate the amount, quality, and coverage of storm data available since at least the 1950's (if not much earlier).

But, y'know, if you want to come back with an understanding of global climate rather than a pre-packaged anecdote-based opinion of one aspect of local weather, I'm sure you'll find someone to discuss it with you.

Re:10 years ago on Slashdot

[mi]

might be a little bit biased

Whether it is biased against Obama is irrelevant to the point of whether or not we've had a record-low number of hurricanes. If you disputed that point, it could've made some sense for you to attack the site's credibility. But you conceded it instead. That you could not resist to attack the site anyway caused me to wonder...

not to mention how to interpret both graphs and what I wrote.

You claimed, we are now living through 40-year high of hurricanes world-wide. As evidence — sole evidence — you pointed at a chart, which ends not in 2014 or even 2013, but in 2005. Need I say more?

pre-packaged anecdote-based opinion

That there still people resorting to this sort of argument, nearly 200 years after a brilliant man made such fun of it, continues to amaze me...

Re:10 years ago on Slashdot

[david_thornley]

Are unicorn farts methane or rainbows?

Re:10 years ago on Slashdot

[Areyoukiddingme]

Are unicorn farts methane or rainbows?

I'm so glad you asked! This is a common misconception. Indeed, unicorn farts are methane! They come from the intestinal bacteria of unicorns, of course. A microbe's gotta eat, ya know. Unicorns only shit rainbows. They don't fart them.

Re:Linking ANYTHING and Climate Change: Difficult

[hey!]

"Polar Vortex" appears in the scientific literature decades before it became news.

Re:Linking ANYTHING and Climate Change: Difficult

[hey!]

You know, just because you're ignorant doesn't mean there's a conspiracy every time you're forced to learn something new.

Re:Restored some faith

[Crashmarik]

I'll go out on a limb and say the college hipsters are either on vacation or busy getting ready for finals so slashdot is deprived of their input.

Re:Linking ANYTHING and Climate Change: Difficult

[TapeCutter]

Take your meds, the paranoia will subside.

Fuel

[gmuslera]

In the other hand, what can't be denied is that global warming provides more energy to the climate system. And in a system so complex that is the root of the butterfly effect concept adding more fuel will affect it, maybe even in ways that we didn't realized yet. And with a civilization that is rooted in stable and predictable climates (agriculture depends on that) it will hit us pretty hard in all those ways.

doy

[hamburger lady]

you can't definitively link any particular roids-era barry bonds home run to the drugs. people know this. people also know that that doesn't mean that the roids didn't have a huge effect on his numbers.

Duh.

[P1h3r1e3d13]

Nobody tries to pick which of Barry Bonds' home runs was the result of steroid use. Everyone seems to understand implicitly how juicing just raised his overall chances, but they seem to think each weather event either is or isn't caused by climate change.

Two separate models

[paiute]

If only the heat flow in the earth-ocean-atmosphere system was as easy to follow as the cash flow in the Koch-denialists-politicians system.

Re:Two separate models

[paiute]

Ah, we found the middleman.

Re:Two separate models

[dave420]

Those examples which don't exist, you mean. Cool. And if they did exist, you are claiming they're the reason anti-AGW researchers can't prove anything? You do realise you are insane, right?

Re:The drought is bullshit

[budgenator]

You guys are all fucking zero-sumers, you want more water in an area that is desert, build a couple nuclear power plants and run some desalination plants. News flash, Southern California is in the horse latitudes, that means desert, just like almost every desert on the planet is in the horse latitudes.

That was the last straw...I've had it..

[Irate Engineer]

I'm going to lose my shit if you damned CS majors don't stop trying to correlate local weather to the frigging climate! It's a fucking non-linear system. Small scale does not equate to large scale behavior, in space or time.

Will you *please* go read up on chaos theory? At least smoke some weed and read 'Chaos' by James Gleik, try to see some pictures. Read A First Course in Turbulence by Tennekes and Lumley. I mean, shit, chaos theory has been around for longer than most of you have been alive. Read a goddamned book once in a while. The dead tree kind of book.

Maybe I need some weed.

The universe is filled with non-linear chaotic systems. Earth's climate is part of one. Deal with it!

Yep...I do need some weed.

Re:Restored some faith

[towermac]

Kids.

They overran Ars, and sort of ran me back here. I, also, am glad.

It's not difficult to erect a Strawman

[Capsaicin]

that didn't prevent climate researchers from claiming Katrina-level events will drastically increase in frequency

No, that's the exact opposite from what climate researchers have been claiming. To repeat myself, "[w]ithin the science of climate change that regarding hurricane (and other tropical storm) formation is famously unsettled." The models at least, seem to suggest a probable decrease in the frequency of formation (along with a possible increase in intensity) (Knutson et. al.).

Re:It's not difficult to erect a Strawman

[Capsaicin]

If you're only tallying hurricanes of Katrina level events or worse and exclude anything less, then models can very well show an *increase* (as stated by the OP)

Sure, but I don't agree that is what OP had in mind. After all moving from a once a century event to a twice in a century event might constitute OP's "drastic[] increase in frequency," but that hardly sits well with the observation that "we're still waiting on this one."

Re:It's not difficult to erect a Strawman

[Capsaicin]

OP is also saying that they're waiting on this one, meaning show me the drastic increase in Katrina level events

But OP would be somewhere between oh ... 50 to 500 years too early to make that statement, had they genuinely been talking about in increase exclusively of events of which the frequency is measured in centuries. If OP is honestly "waiting," (after less than a decade), they could not have had the point you raise in mind.

You're using models to say that overall hurricane frequency should decrease. But OP is saying the frequency of Katrina-level will increase.

I've already granted you, that ignoring the connotation and context of what was being said, the strict denotation of "Katrina-level events will ... increase in frequency," is not inconsistent with predictions of lowered frequency of tropical storm formation. Obviously.

However I disagree that OP intended to restrict their observation to that extent, or if they did, it is a strikingly disingenuous way to pose it. I put it to you that the statement "climate researchers [are] claiming Katrina-level events will drastically increase in frequency. (we're still waiting on this one)" is not the clearest way to convey the current expectation that global warming should lower the frequency of hurricane formation. In fact it is liable to convey the opposite meaning.

The two of you don't agree, but your point doesn't rebut their position

If my point doesn't rebut their position then how do we disagree? ;)

Re:Why don't they ever try to "link" good stuff?

[ggpauly]

yep. That's the 0-level model.

On the other hand, we're heading to a mode of Earth's climate that we've never experienced. Not us living folks, not our species, not our genus or even taxonomic family. It last occurred during the "great Dying", 250 million years ago. Mammals had only recently evolved, and were lucky to survive. Only to cause a repeat of the catastrophe?

Humans, we humans, are causing a rapid change to the conditions of the end-Permian extinction event. "Some 57% of all families and 83% of all genera became extinct. Because so much biodiversity was lost, the recovery of life on Earth took significantly longer than after any other extinction event,[5] possibly up to 10 million years." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Read this, try to remember to breathe afterwards:

http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...
http://www.sciencemag.org/cont... (paywalled)

Almost no vertebrates in the low latitude ocean, which would have been hot to touch.

On the bright side, yes, it did end the Permian, which was a drought-world.

Re:They'll make something up eventually

[riverat1]

Too hard for your simple mind to understand the subtleties of science? It's all a hoax to take power over us and take our money!

Re:The drought is bullshit

[LynnwoodRooster]

We in California have all the water we could ever want. We just do not have the political willpower to access it. It's called the Pacific Ocean, and the process is desalination. Which, if it cost us as much as it does Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other desert nations to run, would result in LOWER water costs that what we pay in Southern California (I live in Ventura). Plenty of water - just no willingness to create the necessary desalination plants - and accompanying power plants - to make the water desired.

Linking Drought and Los Angeles: Easy To Do

[tlambert]

Linking Drought and Los Angeles: Easy To Do

Northern California sends most of their water south to Los Angeles so that they can grow water intensive crops like walnuts, rice, avocados, etc., when other crops would take hugely less water (but not be as profitable). Sadly, agribusiness pays a deeply discounted price than the rest of us, so we're effectively subsidizing their shrinking water bills with our ballooning ones.

If Los Angeles would just *catch* their run-off, instead of dumping it into the ocean using their huge drainage system you tend to see in Terminator movie car chases, and walked down at the end of Buckaroo Banzai, they wouldn't need to take all the water from Northern California, or most of the water from the Colorado river.

How much of the recent torrential rains in California that happened to land in the Los Angeles area do you think ended up in storage systems, vs. the ocean? I'll give you a hint: not a lot.

Re:Why don't they ever try to "link" good stuff?

[jcupitt65]

The temperature graph in that article is not very useful. It ends in 1850, before most of the modern warming, and in any case it's only the temperature for Greenland, it's not global temperature.

The Wikipedia page on Paleoclimatology is probably better:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology

They have this graph for the global temperature for the last 10,000 years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleoclimatology#mediaviewer/File:Holocene_Temperature_Variations.png

predicted 10 years ago

[bigtreeman]

According to this modelling done 10 years ago

http://thinkprogress.org/clima...

it's not as simple as global warming
I stopped using the term global warming ages ago
and instead use the term extreme climate

quote
" ... we cannot say that climate change caused a particular drought, but only that it is expected to increase the frequency, intensity, and duration of drought in some regions and that such changes are being observed ... "

More cyclones = more cyclone swells = more surf = great

surfs up dudes

and yes I blame man because of the rapid changes in extreme climate

Re:Linking ANYTHING and Climate Change: Difficult

[LifesABeach]

Has anyone noticed that the only region that has not been grossly affected by this current economic nightmare is from Texas to Montana? Isn't that the path of the XL Pipeline? Amazing coincidence, isn't it?

Re:Linking ANYTHING and Climate Change: Difficult

[LifesABeach]

Sounds like your neighbores are in Ag? Good luck.

Re:Linking ANYTHING and Climate Change: Difficult

[LifesABeach]

And how will I swallow a pill stuck in in the back of my throat? XD

Re:California Drought

[matfud]

That is about 0.5% of California's water usage over the last two years and often at times when the water would not have been stored.

Re:Restored some faith

[dave420]

Believing in the scientific method has nothing to do with being "tech savoy [sic]". It's quite easy for people to mash their fists on their keyboards in rage at the results of the scientific method, if they feel the results are criticising their lifestyles or people they respect, or are making them feel guilty for living their lifestyles. The science is in, regardless of what you want to believe. If you have the slightest respect for the scientific method you'd understand that people who deny climate change are denying the scientific method itself. The number of ill-thought-out posts parroting oft-debunked nonsense from WUWT doesn't challenge the underlying science, or re-shape reality, even if you agree with them whole-heatedly. If, indeed, their exclamations of fraud or trickery or illogical behaviour are in any way true, they can claim their Nobel prize next year, and be absolute heroes. The fact no-one has even come close to doing that for debunking climate change should be some indicator to you, but if you've come this far, it's not too much of a stretch for you to assume the Swedish are in on the conspiracy too, right?

Re:Linking ANYTHING and Climate Change: Difficult

[dywolf]

no one exploited it, but that hasnt stopped you idiots from claiming they have.
in fact scientists went out of their way to do the opposite.

Re:Why is this hard?

[dywolf]

yes, all that data, all those observations, they're all based on faith, rather than measurements taken by devices around the world measuring well understand physical phenomena, and showing a clear trendline of increasing energy on a planetary scale.

Global warming is NOT a single incident.

[darkonc]

Global warming is like suspecting that you have a pair of 'loaded' dice.-- loaded for 6es and against 1's. You can't just roll once and accurately say "I rolled 2. They must not be loaded. or "I rolled 12 they ARE loaded". both 2 and 12 will still occur, but you'll have MORE 12s and LESS 2's. and your rolls will be generally higher. You can only say something by examining dozens, or even hundreds of rolls and examining the the trends .

Asking if this single event is attributable to global warming is the wrong question. The best answer to (misguided) journalists who insist on asking this question (usually because they've been forced to talk to too many global warming deniers) is:

• "Global warming is a trend , not an incident, and this incident is something that we'll see {more/less} of as time goes on.".

Re:Linking ANYTHING and Climate Change: Difficult

[david_thornley]

It's easy to link any meteorological phenomenon with climate change. Since weather is chaotic, that particular weather event would not have been the same if the planet had been slightly cooler.

Climate is statistical, and we can reasonably talk about climate changes in reference to global warming, including whether it causes more droughts.

Similarly

[gzuckier]

It's hard to determine whether the grizzly bear mauled you just from spite, or because you kicked it.