I know physics (not so much chemistry), but I also know there are plenty of biogeochemical feedbacks involved, so I'd want to find some actual model predictions. As I said, I seem to recall some results to the contrary... I will try to do some digging later.
No one is "handwaving away uncertainty". Just look at the size of the error bars in the IPCC projections! But the existence of uncertainty doesn't mean that "it's nearly impossible to predict future changes". Climate predictions do take nonlinear effects into account, and have shown predictive skill in hindcasting and cross validation studies. The skill gets worse over longer periods of time, which is why the error bars widen, but one can reasonably exclude certain possibilities such as "future warming in the absence of mitigation efforts will be less than one degree".
NOT all scientists agree, MANY of those doing the agreeing are doing it with noticeably fudged data and incredibly non-scientific hyperbole loaded with pre-drawn conclusions and political commentary,
Wow, that's some pretty strong libel there. Care to back up those accusations with facts?
Point of fact is that we know very damn well that the Earth has been slingshotting back and forth warm to cold long before we existed and will keep doing it and that this warming IS NOT out of keeping with the long term ice and geological records.
On the contrary, this warming is out of keeping with the paleoclimate records. Or rather: the current rate of warming is unprecedented, and the forecast future amount of warming may well be comparable to or exceed the hottest temperatures in hundreds of thousands of years. The rate of warming is particularly worrisome, as it makes it difficult for economies and ecosystems to adapt.
To buy that we are doing this is to buy that all the previous warm and cold phases either never happened or what caused them is miraculously taking this one off on the bench while we control the weather.
It has been naturally warmer and cooler in the past. This does not alter the evidence that the current warming is not natural.
I'm just saying that speaking in terms of sampling size, you need something a bit more substantial than a.015% sampling size to make a valid conclusion.
You need a higher sampling size if you want to make a conclusion about all of the climate over the past 1 million years. You don't if you want to make a conclusion about the current climate. In fact, as I noted, you can make a conclusion about the anthropogenic origin of the current warming without any paleoloclimate data at all, just based on historical measurements. The paleo reconstructions help strengthen the case, as the current rate of warming is larger than anything we have evidence for in the past, but do not make or break it. Indeed, even it were conclusively demonstrated that there have been past natural warming events as rapid as the current warming, that still wouldn't change the evidence that current natural forcings are not sufficient to explain the observed warming; it would merely demonstrate that such forcings were sufficient in the past.
Back to my original statement, gather more information, and then when you get enough information, make your conclusion. Isn't that what the scientific method is all about anyways--making conclusions from substantiated observations, and not assumptions?
Please, tell me what conclusions regarding global warming are not based on substantiated observations? (And, by the way, all scientific conclusions are based on assumptions, data notwithstanding.)
Hmm, I would like to read more about this, if you have references. I recall reading something by Cox which claimed that the ocean would continue losing its ability to sink CO2 for some time to come, but I can't find the reference so I don't know what "some time to come" was.
There still aren't any models which "take into account imprecise knowledge of how ice rivers act", so my statement is accurate. Exploring parametric uncertainty is one thing, but arguably none of the models include an adequate representation of the physics to begin with.
"In Europe, Henk Tennekes was dismissed as research director of the Royal Dutch Meteorological Society after questioning the scientific underpinnings of global warming. Aksel Winn-Nielsen, former director of the U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization, was tarred by Bert Bolin, first head of the IPCC, as a tool of the coal industry for questioning climate alarmism. Respected Italian professors Alfonso Sutera and Antonio Speranza disappeared from the debate in 1991, apparently losing climate-research funding for raising questions."
Ah, spin. Was Tennekes dismissed for asking uncomfortable questions? There is no evidence of this; as far as I can tell, he simply retired, and most of his public skepticism was after he left. (And even if he was dismissed, what were the circumstances? Was he speaking in an official capacity, or his own? He arguably doesn't have free reign to use his job title to trump up support for a position at odds with his employer.) Was Winn-Nielsen a tool of the coal industry? Did Sutera and Speranza lose funding for raising uncomfortable questions? Or because they were out-competed by other proposals? It's not as if they were blackballed: they're both still publishing, as is Lindzen!
The notion that if you're ignorant of something and somebody comes up with a wrong answer, and you have to accept that because you don't have another wrong answer to offer is like faith healing
A straw man. The IPCC does not push such a notion.
When IPCC numbers are at the edge of the error bars, What IPCC numbers are at the edge of the error bars?
and situations so laughably implausable as the A1FI scenario are treated as genuine risks, you've stepped far from the realm of science. The SRES emissions scenarios have their flaws, but are not "laughably implausible"; see, e.g., the conclusions of Tol, O'Neill, and van Vuuren (2005). In any case, the A1 scenarios are not believed to be the most likely.
It is not okay to say that we're going to put a large number of cities underwater
The IPCC does not say this.
and that we are certain that is all on the back of CO2.
"The changes, including removal of scientist conclusions and muddying of displayed data, were made to ensure that the exhibit would not offend the Congress or the White House."
Yes, and? It did not say there had been any pressure from Congress or the White House.
In particular there was no mention of preempting anything.
The very first sentence: "the Smithsonian pre-emptively toned down the scientific content of a climate change exhibit put into place last year".
You can go ahead and make that claim with insufficient evidence, or you can wait and gather more data and validate it or find out there's actually a pattern of continually shifting climate changes. Last time I checked, it wasn't always sunny in one area, or nature wasn't a static beast, so why would you expect the same exact temperature year after year?
The temperature isn't the same year after year. As I said, you don't need million-year-old temperatures to tell that the Earth is now warming. You're changing the subject to whether the current warming is natural. (You're also confusing interannual variability with long-term climate trends.)
As for the natural vs. anthropogenic debate, the past climate is only half of the rationale behind anthropogenic global warming. Million-year data is not so relevant (yes, we know it was warmer in the Cretaceous), but for the recent warming, temperature trends over the last few centuries to millennia tell us that the current climate change is both large and rapid compared with natural climate trends. But they're not the only thing that tell us that the current warming is unusual: we can also apply our knowledge of climate physics, and conclude that natural sources of warming are currently not as large as manmade sources. Both paleoclimate and climate physics give independent reasons to attribute the current warming trend to humans.
But if your ultimate goal is to prove that humans have contributed to global warming, then to present it as fact, you would need sufficient data. Again, since global data would be needed to infer that global warming is occurring, and that data is very spotty over that time period, it's at best an assumption or hypothesis that global warming is occuring and not fact.
Frankly, global data is not as spotty as you claim, nor is it impossible to reconstruct global temperatures from regional measurements.
I'll grant you that the US public is largely scientifically illiterate. All the more reason then to be careful not just about graphs and tables of numbers, but also about out-of-context pictures of polar bears on tiny ice floes.
Fine, but the article wasn't about them taking away the heartstring-tugging pictures, it was about doctoring the scientific presentation.
It's easy to stampeded an uninformed mob. For myself, I see too much faith and too little science in the current "debate,"
Well, you're welcome to read the scientific studies themselves, not the media or political spin on them. That's what I do.
On this particulat/. entry, my bullshit meter pegged when the summary claimed pressure on the "Global Warming" exhibit from the Congress and Whitehouse, with no support for that statement in the actual article.
The summary claimed no such thing. It said that the Smithsonian preemptively made changes, i.e., when no pressure had been applied. They merely feared that they would receive pressure in the future (which may be valid or not).
Now, just *who* is doing the accusing is left out, as is *who* at the White House has the muzzle, as are specific scientists and projects.
It may not be great journalism, but that doesn't make it baseless fearmongering either; such stories have made the news in the past (e.g. here). With respect to a few months ago, I think they're referring to a GAO probe. (And, incidentally, it's not uncommon for news articles to refer to past news articles without repeating all the details or even citing them.)
"...the script...was rewritten to minimize and inject more uncertainty into the relationship between global warming and humans..." Imagine that! Uncertainty in science. If you want certainty, get a shaman/priest/rabbi.
Yes, science has uncertainty. The problem is in injecting more uncertainty than the scientific studies originally concluded.
"...officials omitted scientists' interpretation of some research and let visitors draw their own conclusions from the data..." Why would they do that? Don't they know the great unwashed can't be trusted to draw trhe "proper" inferences?!?!!?!!
Hell, even other scientists have trouble looking at a graph and drawing conclusions from it, unless they're experts in that specific field. That's why scientific papers and scientific talks have words to go along with all those pretty graphs.
Look at all of the abuses of science that go on in Slashdot global warming threads when you take away the interpretation.
Raw data: graph showing CO2 increases following temperature increases, instead of leading them Implied conclusion: CO2 doesn't cause temperature increases Missing scientific interpretation: temperatures cause CO2 increases, which in turn amplify and prolong the original temperature increase Actual scientific conclusion: CO2 does cause temperature increases (and vice versa!)
Raw data: graph showing CO2 increasing smoothly in the 20th century, but temperatures falling mid-century Implied conclusion: CO2 doesn't cause temperature increases Missing scientific interpretation: there were non-CO2 cooling effects in the mid-20th century, including heavy air pollution and a brief spike in volcanism Actual scientific conclusion: CO2 does cause temperature increases (and other manmade and natural factors also influence the climate)
Raw data: graph showing temperatures and solar intensity increasing Implied conclusion: solar brightening causes global warming Missing scientific interpretation: the increase in solar intensity is real but too small to produce the observed warming, and did not increase at a rate similar to the increased rate of late 20th century warming Actual scientific conclusion: solar brightening can only account for a small minority of the global warming
Raw data: graph showing Earth and Pluto temperatures increasing Implied conclusion: solar brightening causes global warming everywhere in the solar system Missing scientific interpretation: see above, and the fact that Pluto has recently been unusually close to the Sun Actual scientific conclusion: solar brightening isn't responsible for global warming on Earth or Pluto
There is nothing wrong with explaining how scientists interpret data. The data themselves only give part of the picture, especially to non-scientists who don't know as much about the issues.
Somewhat off topic but has it been decided yet which is the cause and which is the effect.
It's both: there is a mutual feedback. CO2 increases cause temperature increases. But temperature increases can also cause CO2 increases (reducing the ocean's capacity to sink CO2), although this takes place on century-to-millennium timescales. In 500-1000 years we should see more natural CO2 in the atmosphere due to the current warming (which in turn is currently due mostly to manmade CO2).
So let me guess - they put in the Hockey Stick and then someone pointed out that its a scientific crock of shit.
In point of fact, the independent NAS review panel found that when you correct Mann's hockey stick you get... a hockey stick: they concluded that the recent warming is a robust feature of the data, although they said the error bars on the earlier reconstructions should be widened. And that doesn't even begin to address all of the other paleoclimate reconstructions by other researchers, using different and independent methods, which also found hockey sticks.
Skeptics like to hold up Mann (or Hansen, or Gore) as some kind of archetype, who if knocked down would bring down the whole scientific theory of global warming with them, but that is far from true. The scientific case for global warming does not rest on any one individual.
With as long as the Earth has been around (either if you believe millions or thousands of years), the amount of reliable statistical data we have about the Earth's climate is rather wanting and nowhere near enough to form solid conclusions about global warming existing or not.
You don't need data from millions of years ago to know that the Earth is warming now. All that will tell you is how the Earth has warmed (or cooled) in the past.
Seriously though, 100-150 years of meteorological data (and the fact that all that data doesn't even represent all the major climate regions of the Earth, especially the arctic regions) is like a grain of sand on the beach and doesn't amount to much at all.
It doesn't amount to much at all if your goal is to infer the climate at all times over the past billion years. If your goal is to infer the global temperature over the last 100-150 years, yes, it is enough.
17 inches by the end of the century. And the IPCC report specifically excludes any additional sea level rise due to nonlinear ice dynamics — which has troubled many scientists, since the observed rate of ice melting is greater than any models predict. Melting of Greenland is a slower process that could take centuries, but it could happen we end up stabilizing temperatures at too high of a value.
That being said, Gore did give the impression that Greenland could melt soon, which is not correct.
What do you think they do? Look who authored the report. I don't see any scientific credentials there.
You obviously haven't looked at the report. Check out the SPM drafting authors. Just off the top of my head, I recognize Alley, Hegerl, Joos, Stocker, Stouffer, and Stott... all well known scientists.
Hell, read the report, or even the summary for lawmakers. See how often the words "could" and "if" are used.
Wow, scientists aren't 100% sure what will happen. The United Nations must be corrupt.
As others have pointed out, "water resonance" doesn't have much to do with it, and you don't want to match resonance and maximize adsorption: you get a lot of surface heating and nothing reaches the interior. A back of the envelope calculation (or just physics intuition) suggests that to maximize heating all the way through, you want to choose a wavelength that is roughly comparable to the size of the food you're trying to heat (see, e.g., here). 2.45 GHz corresponds to about 12 centimeters.
I hate voice acting. It seems to break immersion for me, rather than keeping me in the game. Plus, it takes too long in dialogue-heavy games; much faster to scroll through text. I guess games seem to me like interactive storybooks, not movies. Plus, Zelda's quasi-speech is endearing.
The footnote says 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius. That to me means wild ass guess.
There is a huge difference between "a scientific prediction with large uncertainty" and "a wild ass guess". A wild-assed guess is something that pulled out of thin air, with little study, no data or theory behind it. It's something that you wouldn't be surprised if the true outcome was far different from the "guess".
The IPCC prediction of [1.5, 4.5] degrees is quite different, since it is based on extensive study of many sources of data and of the detailed climate physics involved. It is unlikely that the true temperature will fall outside that range, and some of that uncertainty is not in what the climate will do, but in what we will do regarding our emissions.
Models and data please!!
Geeze, read the damn report. To start, read the actual Working Group I scientific report, not the summary for policymakers. And try reading the most recent one, not the summary from six years ago. In other words, go here.
What do you expect me to take this on faith?
No, I expect you to go read some science. Sheesh.
I wish someone would give me mathematical models backed up by historical data instead of "fairly well established".
I already cited the IPCC report, which has links into pretty much all of the literature. If you want to go look up individual studies, knock yourself out. Just don't whine that everybody is hiding things from you. And tone down the paranoia. Do you actually think that the statements made by the IPCC are not based on mathematical models backed up by historical data?
Well let's see looked through it and it basically says that the temperature and the CO2 are rising over the last 300 years. Might as well be the decline in Pirates.
Ok, first, you're looking at a supplement to the IPCC report from 12 years ago, not the current report. And second, that's crap. It says far more than "temperature and CO2 are rising". If you read the full IPCC report, you will see numerous lines of evidence, which include but are not limited to:
1. Temperatures are rising. 2. CO2 levels are rising, within timing, rate, and magnitude comparable to what is needed to explain the temperature rise. 3. Other natural sources are NOT rising, or are rising by rates that disagree in timing, rate, or magnitude with the temperature rise. 4. Points 2 and 3 are backed up by detailed studies of climate physics and data sources which (a) determine the trends in the different possible causes of climate change and (b) determine the magnitude of temperature change which can be produced by each cause.
There is far more than a mere correlational link between temperature and CO2; there is a causal link by known physics, as well as a lack of causal link for other sources of warming (and in most cases, a lack of correlation as well).
Well why not use the Vostok data?
Because you can't run global circulation models for hundreds of thousands of years (the length of ice age cycles); it takes a supercomputer to run them for hundreds of years. And even if you tried to run them for just during a glaciation, the main problem is that we don't know enough about the inputs to do that: we can put in CO2 levels, and a fair guess at solar levels as extrapolated from orbital dynamics, but there are many other contributors to climate. So you can't use the ice age cycle to constrain very well unknown parameters like the climate sensitivity to CO2 increases. Modern data tells you much more.
Oh I forgot it shows sharp and dramatic falls and increases in both CO2 and temperature (with CO2 slightly trailing temperature) which happen for no apparent reason.
Yeah dude, scientists don't know anything about the ice age cycle, but they know that it disproves global warming, so they'
The footnote says 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius. That to me means wild ass guess.
There is a huge difference between "a scientific prediction with large uncertainty" and "a wild ass guess". A wild-assed guess is something that pulled out of thin air, with little study, no data or theory behind it. It's something that you wouldn't be surprised if the true outcome was far different from the "guess".
The IPCC prediction of [1.5, 4.5] degrees is quite different, since it is based on extensive study of many sources of data and of the detailed climate physics involved. It is unlikely that the true temperature will fall outside that range, and some of that uncertainty is not in what the climate will do, but in what we will do regarding our emissions.
Models and data please!!
Geeze, read the damn report. To start, read the actual Working Group I scientific report, not the summary for policymakers. And try reading the most recent one, not the summary from six years ago. In other words, go here.
What do you expect me to take this on faith?
No, I expect you to go read some science. Sheesh.
I wish someone would give me mathematical models backed up by historical data instead of "fairly well established".
I already cited the IPCC report, which has links into pretty much all of the literature. If you want to go look up individual studies, knock yourself out. Just don't whine that everybody is hiding things from you. And tone down the paranoia. Do you actually think that the statements made by the IPCC are not based on mathematical models backed up by historical data?
Well let's see looked through it and it basically says that the temperature and the CO2 are rising over the last 300 years. Might as well be the decline in Pirates.
Ok, first, you're looking at a supplement to the IPCC report from 12 years ago, not the current report. And second, that's crap. It says far more than "temperature and CO2 are rising". If you read the full IPCC report, you will see numerous lines of evidence, which include but are not limited to:
1. Temperatures are rising. 2. CO2 levels are rising, within timing, rate, and magnitude comparable to what is needed to explain the temperature rise. 3. Other natural sources are NOT rising, or are rising by rates that disagree in timing, rate, or magnitude with the temperature rise. 4. Points 2 and 3 are backed up by detailed studies of climate physics and data sources which (a) determine the trends in the different possible causes of climate change and (b) determine the magnitude of temperature change which can be produced by each cause.
There is far more than a mere correlational link between temperature and CO2; there is a causal link by known physics, as well as a lack of causal link for other sources of warming (and in most cases, a lack of correlation as well).
Well why not use the Vostok data?
Because you can't run global circulation models for hundreds of thousands of years (the length of ice age cycles); it takes a supercomputer to run them for hundreds of years. And even if you tried to run them for just during a glaciation, the main problem is that we don't know enough about the inputs to do that: we can put in CO2 levels, and a fair guess at solar levels as extrapolated from orbital dynamics, but there are many other contributors to climate. So you can't use the ice age cycle to constrain very well unknown parameters like the climate sensitivity to CO2 increases. Modern data tells you much more.
Oh I forgot it shows sharp and dramatic falls and increases in both CO2 and temperature (with CO2 slightly trailing temperature) which happen for no apparent reason.
Yeah dude, scientists don't know anything about the ice age cycle, but they know that it disproves global warming, so they're keeping it all hush-hush.
First off it's warmer than 150 years ago. Good for you to believing what you hear. However accurate weather records weren't around 150 years ago, sure we might have a few locations, but a few locations with inefficent tools? Yeah that's scientific. Yeah, it is scientific. You can handwave about "a few" locations (whatever that means) and "inefficient tools" (whatever that means), but that doesn't amount to sitting down and crunching numbers. You know, like a real scientist. Yes, the global average temperature data 150 years ago is less accurate, but it's not so inaccurate that it could've been a full degree higher or anything like that. Perhaps you should read papers on the actual reconstruction (e.g. here).
We also don't rely on temperature measurements alone; we can also look crop growth records, harvest records, how treelines advance and recede, records of when ice was present, isotopic measurements various materials, etc. None of those are individually great, but they do improve things when combined, especially when added to the direct instrumental temperature record.
Right... because laws of physics data and everything proves exactly what's happening? They don't prove anything "exactly". They do, however, establish fbeyond a reasonable doubt that it has gotten warmer, and that CO2's effect is larger than other natural variations combined.
Yet you want me to blindly believe when there still is issues with most major reports and when others use those reports blindly. Really? What are the "issues" with "most major reports" which invalidate their conclusions?
Hell the article points out the problems of the Hockey stick graph, The hockey stick graph and Mann's work has been proven to be skewed his data is erroneous at best and falsified at worse, and yet people blindly believe it's still ok? No, they don't. However, the NAS review found that even when you fix Mann's analysis, the 20th century hockey stick is still there, and there are plenty of other "hockey stick" reconstructions other than Mann's, using different and independent methods, that nobody has managed to find fault with.
I don't want the impossible but reasonable doubt is still there, we can agree that it's warmer, we can't agree on how warmer, why it's warmer, or even what would have happened if there was 0 emissions, so how can we say there's no reasonable doubt? "We" can't? Scientists can, and do. Just because you don't believe them doesn't mean that your doubt is reasonable.
Just in case you're interested, it's about 0.8 degrees warmer than it was at the turn of the century, plus or minus 0.1 degrees or so. About 50-75% of the current forcing is manmade, the rest natural. If there were zero emissions, it would be about the same temperature it was at the turn of the century, within about 0.2 degrees. You can find this stuff in the 2007 IPCC report.
But obviously not everyone is looking for truth as it seems some of the scientists have their agenda to sell. Yeah, we can't trust anything scientists have to say, because of their "agenda". Let's use that as an excuse to dimiss arbitrarily large amounts of evidence and arbitrarily many conclusions of scientific studies.
Slashdot Mirror
I know physics (not so much chemistry), but I also know there are plenty of biogeochemical feedbacks involved, so I'd want to find some actual model predictions. As I said, I seem to recall some results to the contrary ... I will try to do some digging later.
Nonlinear != chaotic != unpredictable.
No one is "handwaving away uncertainty". Just look at the size of the error bars in the IPCC projections! But the existence of uncertainty doesn't mean that "it's nearly impossible to predict future changes". Climate predictions do take nonlinear effects into account, and have shown predictive skill in hindcasting and cross validation studies. The skill gets worse over longer periods of time, which is why the error bars widen, but one can reasonably exclude certain possibilities such as "future warming in the absence of mitigation efforts will be less than one degree".
NOT all scientists agree, MANY of those doing the agreeing are doing it with noticeably fudged data and incredibly non-scientific hyperbole loaded with pre-drawn conclusions and political commentary,
Wow, that's some pretty strong libel there. Care to back up those accusations with facts?
Point of fact is that we know very damn well that the Earth has been slingshotting back and forth warm to cold long before we existed and will keep doing it and that this warming IS NOT out of keeping with the long term ice and geological records.
On the contrary, this warming is out of keeping with the paleoclimate records. Or rather: the current rate of warming is unprecedented, and the forecast future amount of warming may well be comparable to or exceed the hottest temperatures in hundreds of thousands of years. The rate of warming is particularly worrisome, as it makes it difficult for economies and ecosystems to adapt.
To buy that we are doing this is to buy that all the previous warm and cold phases either never happened or what caused them is miraculously taking this one off on the bench while we control the weather.
It has been naturally warmer and cooler in the past. This does not alter the evidence that the current warming is not natural.
I'm just saying that speaking in terms of sampling size, you need something a bit more substantial than a .015% sampling size to make a valid conclusion.
You need a higher sampling size if you want to make a conclusion about all of the climate over the past 1 million years. You don't if you want to make a conclusion about the current climate. In fact, as I noted, you can make a conclusion about the anthropogenic origin of the current warming without any paleoloclimate data at all, just based on historical measurements. The paleo reconstructions help strengthen the case, as the current rate of warming is larger than anything we have evidence for in the past, but do not make or break it. Indeed, even it were conclusively demonstrated that there have been past natural warming events as rapid as the current warming, that still wouldn't change the evidence that current natural forcings are not sufficient to explain the observed warming; it would merely demonstrate that such forcings were sufficient in the past.
Back to my original statement, gather more information, and then when you get enough information, make your conclusion. Isn't that what the scientific method is all about anyways--making conclusions from substantiated observations, and not assumptions?
Please, tell me what conclusions regarding global warming are not based on substantiated observations? (And, by the way, all scientific conclusions are based on assumptions, data notwithstanding.)
Hmm, I would like to read more about this, if you have references. I recall reading something by Cox which claimed that the ocean would continue losing its ability to sink CO2 for some time to come, but I can't find the reference so I don't know what "some time to come" was.
There still aren't any models which "take into account imprecise knowledge of how ice rivers act", so my statement is accurate. Exploring parametric uncertainty is one thing, but arguably none of the models include an adequate representation of the physics to begin with.
Ah, spin. Was Tennekes dismissed for asking uncomfortable questions? There is no evidence of this; as far as I can tell, he simply retired, and most of his public skepticism was after he left. (And even if he was dismissed, what were the circumstances? Was he speaking in an official capacity, or his own? He arguably doesn't have free reign to use his job title to trump up support for a position at odds with his employer.) Was Winn-Nielsen a tool of the coal industry? Did Sutera and Speranza lose funding for raising uncomfortable questions? Or because they were out-competed by other proposals? It's not as if they were blackballed: they're both still publishing, as is Lindzen!
The notion that if you're ignorant of something and somebody comes up with a wrong answer, and you have to accept that because you don't have another wrong answer to offer is like faith healing
A straw man. The IPCC does not push such a notion. When IPCC numbers are at the edge of the error bars, What IPCC numbers are at the edge of the error bars? and situations so laughably implausable as the A1FI scenario are treated as genuine risks, you've stepped far from the realm of science. The SRES emissions scenarios have their flaws, but are not "laughably implausible"; see, e.g., the conclusions of Tol, O'Neill, and van Vuuren (2005). In any case, the A1 scenarios are not believed to be the most likely.
It is not okay to say that we're going to put a large number of cities underwater
The IPCC does not say this.
and that we are certain that is all on the back of CO2.
Nor this.
The summary said:
"The changes, including removal of scientist conclusions and muddying of displayed data, were made to ensure that the exhibit would not offend the Congress or the White House."
Yes, and? It did not say there had been any pressure from Congress or the White House.
In particular there was no mention of preempting anything.
The very first sentence: "the Smithsonian pre-emptively toned down the scientific content of a climate change exhibit put into place last year".
You can go ahead and make that claim with insufficient evidence, or you can wait and gather more data and validate it or find out there's actually a pattern of continually shifting climate changes. Last time I checked, it wasn't always sunny in one area, or nature wasn't a static beast, so why would you expect the same exact temperature year after year?
The temperature isn't the same year after year. As I said, you don't need million-year-old temperatures to tell that the Earth is now warming. You're changing the subject to whether the current warming is natural. (You're also confusing interannual variability with long-term climate trends.)
As for the natural vs. anthropogenic debate, the past climate is only half of the rationale behind anthropogenic global warming. Million-year data is not so relevant (yes, we know it was warmer in the Cretaceous), but for the recent warming, temperature trends over the last few centuries to millennia tell us that the current climate change is both large and rapid compared with natural climate trends. But they're not the only thing that tell us that the current warming is unusual: we can also apply our knowledge of climate physics, and conclude that natural sources of warming are currently not as large as manmade sources. Both paleoclimate and climate physics give independent reasons to attribute the current warming trend to humans.
But if your ultimate goal is to prove that humans have contributed to global warming, then to present it as fact, you would need sufficient data. Again, since global data would be needed to infer that global warming is occurring, and that data is very spotty over that time period, it's at best an assumption or hypothesis that global warming is occuring and not fact.
Frankly, global data is not as spotty as you claim, nor is it impossible to reconstruct global temperatures from regional measurements.
I'll grant you that the US public is largely scientifically illiterate. All the more reason then to be careful not just about graphs and tables of numbers, but also about out-of-context pictures of polar bears on tiny ice floes.
/. entry, my bullshit meter pegged when the summary claimed pressure on the "Global Warming" exhibit from the Congress and Whitehouse, with no support for that statement in the actual article.
Fine, but the article wasn't about them taking away the heartstring-tugging pictures, it was about doctoring the scientific presentation.
It's easy to stampeded an uninformed mob. For myself, I see too much faith and too little science in the current "debate,"
Well, you're welcome to read the scientific studies themselves, not the media or political spin on them. That's what I do.
On this particulat
The summary claimed no such thing. It said that the Smithsonian preemptively made changes, i.e., when no pressure had been applied. They merely feared that they would receive pressure in the future (which may be valid or not).
Now, just *who* is doing the accusing is left out, as is *who* at the White House has the muzzle, as are specific scientists and projects.
It may not be great journalism, but that doesn't make it baseless fearmongering either; such stories have made the news in the past (e.g. here). With respect to a few months ago, I think they're referring to a GAO probe. (And, incidentally, it's not uncommon for news articles to refer to past news articles without repeating all the details or even citing them.)
"...the script...was rewritten to minimize and inject more uncertainty into the relationship between global warming and humans..." Imagine that! Uncertainty in science. If you want certainty, get a shaman/priest/rabbi.
Yes, science has uncertainty. The problem is in injecting more uncertainty than the scientific studies originally concluded.
"...officials omitted scientists' interpretation of some research and let visitors draw their own conclusions from the data..." Why would they do that? Don't they know the great unwashed can't be trusted to draw trhe "proper" inferences?!?!!?!!
Hell, even other scientists have trouble looking at a graph and drawing conclusions from it, unless they're experts in that specific field. That's why scientific papers and scientific talks have words to go along with all those pretty graphs.
Look at all of the abuses of science that go on in Slashdot global warming threads when you take away the interpretation.
Raw data: graph showing CO2 increases following temperature increases, instead of leading them
Implied conclusion: CO2 doesn't cause temperature increases
Missing scientific interpretation: temperatures cause CO2 increases, which in turn amplify and prolong the original temperature increase
Actual scientific conclusion: CO2 does cause temperature increases (and vice versa!)
Raw data: graph showing CO2 increasing smoothly in the 20th century, but temperatures falling mid-century
Implied conclusion: CO2 doesn't cause temperature increases
Missing scientific interpretation: there were non-CO2 cooling effects in the mid-20th century, including heavy air pollution and a brief spike in volcanism
Actual scientific conclusion: CO2 does cause temperature increases (and other manmade and natural factors also influence the climate)
Raw data: graph showing temperatures and solar intensity increasing
Implied conclusion: solar brightening causes global warming
Missing scientific interpretation: the increase in solar intensity is real but too small to produce the observed warming, and did not increase at a rate similar to the increased rate of late 20th century warming
Actual scientific conclusion: solar brightening can only account for a small minority of the global warming
Raw data: graph showing Earth and Pluto temperatures increasing
Implied conclusion: solar brightening causes global warming everywhere in the solar system
Missing scientific interpretation: see above, and the fact that Pluto has recently been unusually close to the Sun
Actual scientific conclusion: solar brightening isn't responsible for global warming on Earth or Pluto
There is nothing wrong with explaining how scientists interpret data. The data themselves only give part of the picture, especially to non-scientists who don't know as much about the issues.
Somewhat off topic but has it been decided yet which is the cause and which is the effect.
It's both: there is a mutual feedback. CO2 increases cause temperature increases. But temperature increases can also cause CO2 increases (reducing the ocean's capacity to sink CO2), although this takes place on century-to-millennium timescales. In 500-1000 years we should see more natural CO2 in the atmosphere due to the current warming (which in turn is currently due mostly to manmade CO2).
So let me guess - they put in the Hockey Stick and then someone pointed out that its a scientific crock of shit.
... a hockey stick: they concluded that the recent warming is a robust feature of the data, although they said the error bars on the earlier reconstructions should be widened. And that doesn't even begin to address all of the other paleoclimate reconstructions by other researchers, using different and independent methods, which also found hockey sticks.
In point of fact, the independent NAS review panel found that when you correct Mann's hockey stick you get
Skeptics like to hold up Mann (or Hansen, or Gore) as some kind of archetype, who if knocked down would bring down the whole scientific theory of global warming with them, but that is far from true. The scientific case for global warming does not rest on any one individual.
With as long as the Earth has been around (either if you believe millions or thousands of years), the amount of reliable statistical data we have about the Earth's climate is rather wanting and nowhere near enough to form solid conclusions about global warming existing or not.
You don't need data from millions of years ago to know that the Earth is warming now. All that will tell you is how the Earth has warmed (or cooled) in the past.
Seriously though, 100-150 years of meteorological data (and the fact that all that data doesn't even represent all the major climate regions of the Earth, especially the arctic regions) is like a grain of sand on the beach and doesn't amount to much at all.
It doesn't amount to much at all if your goal is to infer the climate at all times over the past billion years. If your goal is to infer the global temperature over the last 100-150 years, yes, it is enough.
17 inches by the end of the century. And the IPCC report specifically excludes any additional sea level rise due to nonlinear ice dynamics — which has troubled many scientists, since the observed rate of ice melting is greater than any models predict. Melting of Greenland is a slower process that could take centuries, but it could happen we end up stabilizing temperatures at too high of a value.
That being said, Gore did give the impression that Greenland could melt soon, which is not correct.
What do you think they do? Look who authored the report. I don't see any scientific credentials there.
... all well known scientists.
You obviously haven't looked at the report. Check out the SPM drafting authors. Just off the top of my head, I recognize Alley, Hegerl, Joos, Stocker, Stouffer, and Stott
Hell, read the report, or even the summary for lawmakers. See how often the words "could" and "if" are used.
Wow, scientists aren't 100% sure what will happen. The United Nations must be corrupt.
As others have pointed out, "water resonance" doesn't have much to do with it, and you don't want to match resonance and maximize adsorption: you get a lot of surface heating and nothing reaches the interior. A back of the envelope calculation (or just physics intuition) suggests that to maximize heating all the way through, you want to choose a wavelength that is roughly comparable to the size of the food you're trying to heat (see, e.g., here). 2.45 GHz corresponds to about 12 centimeters.
Rodents of Homicidal Size?
I hate voice acting. It seems to break immersion for me, rather than keeping me in the game. Plus, it takes too long in dialogue-heavy games; much faster to scroll through text. I guess games seem to me like interactive storybooks, not movies. Plus, Zelda's quasi-speech is endearing.
By the way, you appear to be repeating Myths #19 and #20 from TFA.
The footnote says 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius. That to me means wild ass guess.
There is a huge difference between "a scientific prediction with large uncertainty" and "a wild ass guess". A wild-assed guess is something that pulled out of thin air, with little study, no data or theory behind it. It's something that you wouldn't be surprised if the true outcome was far different from the "guess".
The IPCC prediction of [1.5, 4.5] degrees is quite different, since it is based on extensive study of many sources of data and of the detailed climate physics involved. It is unlikely that the true temperature will fall outside that range, and some of that uncertainty is not in what the climate will do, but in what we will do regarding our emissions.
Models and data please!!
Geeze, read the damn report. To start, read the actual Working Group I scientific report, not the summary for policymakers. And try reading the most recent one, not the summary from six years ago. In other words, go here.
What do you expect me to take this on faith?
No, I expect you to go read some science. Sheesh.
I wish someone would give me mathematical models backed up by historical data instead of "fairly well established".
I already cited the IPCC report, which has links into pretty much all of the literature. If you want to go look up individual studies, knock yourself out. Just don't whine that everybody is hiding things from you. And tone down the paranoia. Do you actually think that the statements made by the IPCC are not based on mathematical models backed up by historical data?
Well let's see looked through it and it basically says that the temperature and the CO2 are rising over the last 300 years. Might as well be the decline in Pirates.
Ok, first, you're looking at a supplement to the IPCC report from 12 years ago, not the current report. And second, that's crap. It says far more than "temperature and CO2 are rising". If you read the full IPCC report, you will see numerous lines of evidence, which include but are not limited to:
1. Temperatures are rising.
2. CO2 levels are rising, within timing, rate, and magnitude comparable to what is needed to explain the temperature rise.
3. Other natural sources are NOT rising, or are rising by rates that disagree in timing, rate, or magnitude with the temperature rise.
4. Points 2 and 3 are backed up by detailed studies of climate physics and data sources which (a) determine the trends in the different possible causes of climate change and (b) determine the magnitude of temperature change which can be produced by each cause.
There is far more than a mere correlational link between temperature and CO2; there is a causal link by known physics, as well as a lack of causal link for other sources of warming (and in most cases, a lack of correlation as well).
Well why not use the Vostok data?
Because you can't run global circulation models for hundreds of thousands of years (the length of ice age cycles); it takes a supercomputer to run them for hundreds of years. And even if you tried to run them for just during a glaciation, the main problem is that we don't know enough about the inputs to do that: we can put in CO2 levels, and a fair guess at solar levels as extrapolated from orbital dynamics, but there are many other contributors to climate. So you can't use the ice age cycle to constrain very well unknown parameters like the climate sensitivity to CO2 increases. Modern data tells you much more.
Oh I forgot it shows sharp and dramatic falls and increases in both CO2 and temperature (with CO2 slightly trailing temperature) which happen for no apparent reason.
Yeah dude, scientists don't know anything about the ice age cycle, but they know that it disproves global warming, so they'
The footnote says 1.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius. That to me means wild ass guess.
There is a huge difference between "a scientific prediction with large uncertainty" and "a wild ass guess". A wild-assed guess is something that pulled out of thin air, with little study, no data or theory behind it. It's something that you wouldn't be surprised if the true outcome was far different from the "guess".
The IPCC prediction of [1.5, 4.5] degrees is quite different, since it is based on extensive study of many sources of data and of the detailed climate physics involved. It is unlikely that the true temperature will fall outside that range, and some of that uncertainty is not in what the climate will do, but in what we will do regarding our emissions.
Models and data please!!
Geeze, read the damn report. To start, read the actual Working Group I scientific report, not the summary for policymakers. And try reading the most recent one, not the summary from six years ago. In other words, go here.
What do you expect me to take this on faith?
No, I expect you to go read some science. Sheesh.
I wish someone would give me mathematical models backed up by historical data instead of "fairly well established".
I already cited the IPCC report, which has links into pretty much all of the literature. If you want to go look up individual studies, knock yourself out. Just don't whine that everybody is hiding things from you. And tone down the paranoia. Do you actually think that the statements made by the IPCC are not based on mathematical models backed up by historical data?
Well let's see looked through it and it basically says that the temperature and the CO2 are rising over the last 300 years. Might as well be the decline in Pirates.
Ok, first, you're looking at a supplement to the IPCC report from 12 years ago, not the current report. And second, that's crap. It says far more than "temperature and CO2 are rising". If you read the full IPCC report, you will see numerous lines of evidence, which include but are not limited to:
1. Temperatures are rising.
2. CO2 levels are rising, within timing, rate, and magnitude comparable to what is needed to explain the temperature rise.
3. Other natural sources are NOT rising, or are rising by rates that disagree in timing, rate, or magnitude with the temperature rise.
4. Points 2 and 3 are backed up by detailed studies of climate physics and data sources which (a) determine the trends in the different possible causes of climate change and (b) determine the magnitude of temperature change which can be produced by each cause.
There is far more than a mere correlational link between temperature and CO2; there is a causal link by known physics, as well as a lack of causal link for other sources of warming (and in most cases, a lack of correlation as well).
Well why not use the Vostok data?
Because you can't run global circulation models for hundreds of thousands of years (the length of ice age cycles); it takes a supercomputer to run them for hundreds of years. And even if you tried to run them for just during a glaciation, the main problem is that we don't know enough about the inputs to do that: we can put in CO2 levels, and a fair guess at solar levels as extrapolated from orbital dynamics, but there are many other contributors to climate. So you can't use the ice age cycle to constrain very well unknown parameters like the climate sensitivity to CO2 increases. Modern data tells you much more.
Oh I forgot it shows sharp and dramatic falls and increases in both CO2 and temperature (with CO2 slightly trailing temperature) which happen for no apparent reason.
Yeah dude, scientists don't know anything about the ice age cycle, but they know that it disproves global warming, so they're keeping it all hush-hush.
See also this interactive Java climate model. Far simpler than a GCM, but you can play around with it in realtime.
We also don't rely on temperature measurements alone; we can also look crop growth records, harvest records, how treelines advance and recede, records of when ice was present, isotopic measurements various materials, etc. None of those are individually great, but they do improve things when combined, especially when added to the direct instrumental temperature record. Right... because laws of physics data and everything proves exactly what's happening? They don't prove anything "exactly". They do, however, establish fbeyond a reasonable doubt that it has gotten warmer, and that CO2's effect is larger than other natural variations combined. Yet you want me to blindly believe when there still is issues with most major reports and when others use those reports blindly. Really? What are the "issues" with "most major reports" which invalidate their conclusions? Hell the article points out the problems of the Hockey stick graph, The hockey stick graph and Mann's work has been proven to be skewed his data is erroneous at best and falsified at worse, and yet people blindly believe it's still ok? No, they don't. However, the NAS review found that even when you fix Mann's analysis, the 20th century hockey stick is still there, and there are plenty of other "hockey stick" reconstructions other than Mann's, using different and independent methods, that nobody has managed to find fault with. I don't want the impossible but reasonable doubt is still there, we can agree that it's warmer, we can't agree on how warmer, why it's warmer, or even what would have happened if there was 0 emissions, so how can we say there's no reasonable doubt? "We" can't? Scientists can, and do. Just because you don't believe them doesn't mean that your doubt is reasonable.
Just in case you're interested, it's about 0.8 degrees warmer than it was at the turn of the century, plus or minus 0.1 degrees or so. About 50-75% of the current forcing is manmade, the rest natural. If there were zero emissions, it would be about the same temperature it was at the turn of the century, within about 0.2 degrees. You can find this stuff in the 2007 IPCC report. But obviously not everyone is looking for truth as it seems some of the scientists have their agenda to sell. Yeah, we can't trust anything scientists have to say, because of their "agenda". Let's use that as an excuse to dimiss arbitrarily large amounts of evidence and arbitrarily many conclusions of scientific studies.