The purpose of peer review in general is not to determine if a paper is right or wrong but to make sure there are no obvious mistakes or elementary errors that would make it a waste of time for others in the field to read it in the first place.
And I think that climate science is not nearly as soft as you seem to think it is. Yes, it is very complex but the interactions are all physical and it's probably not necessary to know every single one. The top 10 or 20 probably cover well over 99% of the effects.
The problem we have with your thinking is that climate scientists are way ahead of you on thinking those thoughts about what comes into play in climate change and have already examined that possibility. You would know that if you seriously investigated climate science so when you suggest that they missed that it just shows your ignorance.
Regarding the "planetary wobbles" (collectively known as Milankovitch Cycles) the shortest of the different factors that goes into it is around a 26,000 year cycle so a matter of a few centuries is not long enough for them to cause changes of the magnitude that are currently occurring.
You should read some of those papers where they explain exactly what modifications to the data and the scientific justification for making the modifications. If you seriously want to challenge the modification of data then you need to scientifically challenge their justification for making them. It's not enough to say "They're fucking with the data." when data in nearly all scientific endeavors is similarly modified for similar reasons.
No, I'm saying that natural variability which is unpredictable means it's not a surprise to climate scientists that real world observations are running a bit below projections. But there are upper and lower bounds to how far natural variability can move conditions from the average and that can be quantified and included in determining the confidence levels of the projections. That's why the real world observations are still within the 95% confidence range.
You apparently believe that since we can't predict the solar cycle or the pattern of El Nino/La Nina periods ahead of time that the scientists work is useless. But if you factor in those things and the model output more closely mirrors reality then it means their work is probably on the right track.
Maximum Antarctic sea ice has increased somewhat (but not as much as Arctic sea ice has decreased) but measurements by the GRACE satellites show the Antarctic ice sheet is losing mass, particularly the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. An interesting factoid about Antarctic sea ice is that it melts 100% every summer and regrows every winter so there is no carry over from year to year like there is in the Arctic.
They don't arbitrarily pick 15% of the days. What they are saying is that approximately 15% of the days show the effects of local contamination of the measurement so they throw those out. If the Mauna Loa measurements were substantially different than other measurement taken around the world you might have a point but they aren't.
NOAA lists 6 sites where it is continuously monitoring atmospheric CO2, Barrow, AK, the Greenland Summit station, Trinidad Head, CA, Mauna Loa, HI, American Samoa and South Pole Station. Other nations have their own monitoring stations. The reason that Mauna Loa gets mentioned so much is that it was the first place they did that so it has the longest continuous records. If there were serious discrepancies between the measurements of different stations you would have heard about it by now.
Oh, and the measurements do vary by a few ppm at the different stations. In general the further north you are the higher the reading and the further south the lower the reading. The Barrow, AK station reported 400 ppm a year before Mauna Loa and it will be another year or three before the South Pole Station hits that mark but the rate of increase is essentially the same for all stations.
Do you really believe that scientists are so stupid they're not aware of those UHI effects and haven't accounted for them in their research? In fact they compensate for that so well that a study a few years ago found that the warming trend was slightly smaller in urban weather stations than it is in well placed rural stations.
Yeah, I knew that. But as you mention the effect is very small and I wanted to keep my response simple so it's good enough for a first order estimation.
In fact the break up of an Ice Shelf doesn't change sea level at all because an ice shelf is already floating in water. What it can do though is reduce the back pressure on the face of the ice sheet/glacier that is feeding the ice shelf causing it to speed up and put more ice in the sea which does raise sea level.
Oh good God! Is that all you've got? It's not like CO2 hasn't been measured at 1000's of other sites around the world including land sites, ships, balloons and aircraft and they all show the same thing as Mauna Loa, that CO2 is increasing. There may be some that still peak out below 400 this year but at the rate of increase in 2 or 3 years they will all be reading above 400 permanently.
Kind of like how carbon dioxide passed 400 parts per million for the first time in human history yet the effect was much less than predicted.
The effect has not been "much" less than predicted. It's still within the 95% confidence range of the predictions, albeit on the low side. If you factor in things like the lowest solar cycle in a century and the predominance of La Nina years since 2007 it's not surprising temperatures are running on the low side of predictions..
They're not reporting the fact that Larsen B broke up because it was well reported at the time. I saw pictures. This post is reporting the results of a just published study of why it broke up as it did.
There's more than you think. In the first place the Earth has a strong magnetosphere that Venus and Mars lack. It protects the atmosphere from erosion by the solar wind and reduces the effects of cosmic rays. That's what happened on Mars and Venus lost its water because of it. Going Venus is perhaps a little more likely but as others have pointed out we've had CO2 levels in the 4,000-5,000 ppm range before and it didn't happen. Of course the Sun was a bit cooler back then but only a fet percent. It just doesn't seem likely that we could reach the point the feedbacks take us on a path toward Venus-like conditions.
You look at the short downturn since 2000 but ignore the other short term downturns that happened over the previous century. That's scientific of you./sarc
So far the "data and trends" are not outside of model projections (at the 95% confidence level) so it's impossible to say they are wrong at this point. If the data and trends do depart from model projections that will be the time to go back to the drawing board.
Slashdot Mirror
And in 100 years their descendants will still be rich enough to live on the new coastlines... wherever they wind up.
That assumes there is enough civilization left that they're not just scrabbling to survive like everybody else.
The purpose of peer review in general is not to determine if a paper is right or wrong but to make sure there are no obvious mistakes or elementary errors that would make it a waste of time for others in the field to read it in the first place.
And I think that climate science is not nearly as soft as you seem to think it is. Yes, it is very complex but the interactions are all physical and it's probably not necessary to know every single one. The top 10 or 20 probably cover well over 99% of the effects.
The problem we have with your thinking is that climate scientists are way ahead of you on thinking those thoughts about what comes into play in climate change and have already examined that possibility. You would know that if you seriously investigated climate science so when you suggest that they missed that it just shows your ignorance.
Regarding the "planetary wobbles" (collectively known as Milankovitch Cycles) the shortest of the different factors that goes into it is around a 26,000 year cycle so a matter of a few centuries is not long enough for them to cause changes of the magnitude that are currently occurring.
You should read some of those papers where they explain exactly what modifications to the data and the scientific justification for making the modifications. If you seriously want to challenge the modification of data then you need to scientifically challenge their justification for making them. It's not enough to say "They're fucking with the data." when data in nearly all scientific endeavors is similarly modified for similar reasons.
No, I'm saying that natural variability which is unpredictable means it's not a surprise to climate scientists that real world observations are running a bit below projections. But there are upper and lower bounds to how far natural variability can move conditions from the average and that can be quantified and included in determining the confidence levels of the projections. That's why the real world observations are still within the 95% confidence range.
You apparently believe that since we can't predict the solar cycle or the pattern of El Nino/La Nina periods ahead of time that the scientists work is useless. But if you factor in those things and the model output more closely mirrors reality then it means their work is probably on the right track.
Maximum Antarctic sea ice has increased somewhat (but not as much as Arctic sea ice has decreased) but measurements by the GRACE satellites show the Antarctic ice sheet is losing mass, particularly the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. An interesting factoid about Antarctic sea ice is that it melts 100% every summer and regrows every winter so there is no carry over from year to year like there is in the Arctic.
They don't arbitrarily pick 15% of the days. What they are saying is that approximately 15% of the days show the effects of local contamination of the measurement so they throw those out. If the Mauna Loa measurements were substantially different than other measurement taken around the world you might have a point but they aren't.
NOAA lists 6 sites where it is continuously monitoring atmospheric CO2, Barrow, AK, the Greenland Summit station, Trinidad Head, CA, Mauna Loa, HI, American Samoa and South Pole Station. Other nations have their own monitoring stations. The reason that Mauna Loa gets mentioned so much is that it was the first place they did that so it has the longest continuous records. If there were serious discrepancies between the measurements of different stations you would have heard about it by now.
Oh, and the measurements do vary by a few ppm at the different stations. In general the further north you are the higher the reading and the further south the lower the reading. The Barrow, AK station reported 400 ppm a year before Mauna Loa and it will be another year or three before the South Pole Station hits that mark but the rate of increase is essentially the same for all stations.
Do you really believe that scientists are so stupid they're not aware of those UHI effects and haven't accounted for them in their research? In fact they compensate for that so well that a study a few years ago found that the warming trend was slightly smaller in urban weather stations than it is in well placed rural stations.
Yeah, I knew that. But as you mention the effect is very small and I wanted to keep my response simple so it's good enough for a first order estimation.
Closer to 8,000 years ago for the HCO. 13,000 years ago there were still substantial ice sheets on the continents.
there is no such thing as man made "climate change" (they had to change the name since the warming wasn't happening).
No, "climate change" has been around since at least 1970 as shown in an October 1970 paper by George Benton titled "Carbon Dioxide and its Role in Climate Change"
In fact the break up of an Ice Shelf doesn't change sea level at all because an ice shelf is already floating in water. What it can do though is reduce the back pressure on the face of the ice sheet/glacier that is feeding the ice shelf causing it to speed up and put more ice in the sea which does raise sea level.
Oh good God! Is that all you've got? It's not like CO2 hasn't been measured at 1000's of other sites around the world including land sites, ships, balloons and aircraft and they all show the same thing as Mauna Loa, that CO2 is increasing. There may be some that still peak out below 400 this year but at the rate of increase in 2 or 3 years they will all be reading above 400 permanently.
Kind of like how carbon dioxide passed 400 parts per million for the first time in human history yet the effect was much less than predicted.
The effect has not been "much" less than predicted. It's still within the 95% confidence range of the predictions, albeit on the low side. If you factor in things like the lowest solar cycle in a century and the predominance of La Nina years since 2007 it's not surprising temperatures are running on the low side of predictions..
They're not reporting the fact that Larsen B broke up because it was well reported at the time. I saw pictures. This post is reporting the results of a just published study of why it broke up as it did.
How are you going to collect it all when it's spread out over millions of square miles of ocean?
I'm Poe'd. I can't tell if you're serious or writing a parody. Good one.
There's more than you think. In the first place the Earth has a strong magnetosphere that Venus and Mars lack. It protects the atmosphere from erosion by the solar wind and reduces the effects of cosmic rays. That's what happened on Mars and Venus lost its water because of it. Going Venus is perhaps a little more likely but as others have pointed out we've had CO2 levels in the 4,000-5,000 ppm range before and it didn't happen. Of course the Sun was a bit cooler back then but only a fet percent. It just doesn't seem likely that we could reach the point the feedbacks take us on a path toward Venus-like conditions.
What about the Sharknado? :/
Not if the zero trend is within the 2 sigma confidence levels of the 0.16C/decade prediction.
You look at the short downturn since 2000 but ignore the other short term downturns that happened over the previous century. That's scientific of you. /sarc
Dream on.
Well actually the standard climatological period as defined by the World Meteorological Organization is 30 years. I think I'll go with the experts.
So far the "data and trends" are not outside of model projections (at the 95% confidence level) so it's impossible to say they are wrong at this point. If the data and trends do depart from model projections that will be the time to go back to the drawing board.