Last week the Astronomy Picture of the Day web site had this impressive video of the eruption of a solar prominence. If you haven't seen it you should check it out.
Sure you're afraid of change. You're afraid that transforming our energy systems will cost too much. But our economy is an artificial construct that can be changed and I'm not afraid of trying something different.
We are totally dependent on the natural systems of the Earth to sustain our lives. The economy is just an accounting system to distribute that natural wealth. If you mess up the the planets natural system that we've built the economy on it's going to be costly to adjust. I personally think much more costly than transforming our energy systems over the next 30 to 50 years would be. What is the cost of summers like this past one becoming the norm in 40 or 50 years to the American Midwest? What is the cost of 10 to 20 feet of sea level rise in 200 years? What is the cost of reducing ocean productivity by 20 or 30% because of acidification? I could go on. Like it our not humans and our economy are a wholly owned subsidiary of the Earth system and we alter it at our peril.
You obviously think the costs of adaption won't be that great but in my eyes you don't see the true value of the natural services that provide the air we breath, the water we drink, the food we eat, the shelter we need and all of the other things we have. What is the true cost of degrading those things?
BEST has plenty to do with science. The reason they're having issues with peer review is that their research is redundant. It's already been done. The main value of their work is as an independent confirmation of what the actual climate research groups have been publishing that deniers have argued is biased and manipulated. This shows it is not.
It's a pretty risky experiment we're running right now by increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. What makes you think economics trumps science?
Milankovitch cycles alone are not enough to explain the warming of the interglacials. Without the added warming of additional CO2 the interglacials would not have got so warm. What makes you think that artificially adding CO2 to the system won't make temperatures increase? Maybe you must think the current CO2 rise is due the the MWP about 800 years ago?
Woodfortrees.org is a great resource and I should spend more time there. But my BS meter was pegged the moment I read that. The current solar cycle is likely to be the lowest in at least a century.
Exactly, the BEST research is redundant. Its only value is because it was headed by a skeptic (in the true sense of the word) and is independent of the major climate research groups it pretty much lays to rest the denier arguments about bias and manipulation by those groups. Unfortunately it won't stop most of them from continuing their denial.
Climate models (for the most part) are not built on data but on underlying physical principles. Data is merely used for testing the models. Go read the climate model FAQs I've linked to elsewhere in this discussion.
That would make more sense if there were any evidence that they are manipulating models to incorporate yesterday's weather. As it is what you said is nonsense.
The modellers use empirical data to test their output. Any changes they make are based on the underlying physics of the model, not tweaking just to fit a curve.
The cooling started about 8,000 years ago after the Holocene Climatic Optimum but climate scientists say we've added enough GHGs to the atmosphere already to prevent the next glaciation which was expected to start some 7,000-25,000 years from now.
My fault. When I wrote it I should have made it more clear that volcanic eruptions were responsible for temporary dips in temperatures while human GHG emissions were responsible for the rise. The limitations on the length of titles makes it difficult to get it all in the title but I could have put it in the story.
Solar flux has increased about 5W/m^2 in the last 50 years.
Citation needed!
From what I've seen if anything solar flux has been steady or slightly declining since the 1960's. The most recent solar cycle has been the lowest in a century.
Climate models are built on the underlying physics of the climate, not curve fitting to the data. As such the real world data doesn't matter to the models except as something to compare the results of model runs to in order to see how well they did. There are some somewhat minor aspects of climate models where the physics are not as well understood as would be desirable or they work on too small a scale to be captured in the grid scale climate models are run on so they are parametrized but for the most part they encompass the underlying physics. Here a a couple of FAQs on them from one of they guys that works on climate models:
Yes, it's because water vapor is a condensing greenhouse gas that we can do essentially nothing to affect. A few years ago someone did a though experiment of what would happen if we removed water vapor from the atmosphere completely. They found that the level of water vapor in the atmosphere would return to normal in about 60 days. The surface of the Earth is over 70% covered by water and you're not going to stop evaporation from it.
Of course they are falsifiable, just not on the short time scale you would prefer that they be. So far the temperature predictions of climate models have been reasonably accurate. Every year there is an update of model-data comparisons that shows this. There should be a new one that includes 2012 data within a month.
That presumes that climate change won't be bad enough to cause a breakdown of the civilization that supports the lifestyles of the rich and powerful. That's not a sure thing at this point.
If the shift from "global warming" to "climate change" is such a big deal then how did the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) get that name in 1988? Global warming is a subset of climate change.
Slashdot Mirror
Last week the Astronomy Picture of the Day web site had this impressive video of the eruption of a solar prominence. If you haven't seen it you should check it out.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130115.html
So I guess you're saying that the NOAA, NASA/GISS and HADCRU methodologies are crap too since BEST's results pretty much match theirs. Whatever.
Sure you're afraid of change. You're afraid that transforming our energy systems will cost too much. But our economy is an artificial construct that can be changed and I'm not afraid of trying something different.
We are totally dependent on the natural systems of the Earth to sustain our lives. The economy is just an accounting system to distribute that natural wealth. If you mess up the the planets natural system that we've built the economy on it's going to be costly to adjust. I personally think much more costly than transforming our energy systems over the next 30 to 50 years would be. What is the cost of summers like this past one becoming the norm in 40 or 50 years to the American Midwest? What is the cost of 10 to 20 feet of sea level rise in 200 years? What is the cost of reducing ocean productivity by 20 or 30% because of acidification? I could go on. Like it our not humans and our economy are a wholly owned subsidiary of the Earth system and we alter it at our peril.
You obviously think the costs of adaption won't be that great but in my eyes you don't see the true value of the natural services that provide the air we breath, the water we drink, the food we eat, the shelter we need and all of the other things we have. What is the true cost of degrading those things?
BEST has plenty to do with science. The reason they're having issues with peer review is that their research is redundant. It's already been done. The main value of their work is as an independent confirmation of what the actual climate research groups have been publishing that deniers have argued is biased and manipulated. This shows it is not.
It's a pretty risky experiment we're running right now by increasing the level of CO2 in the atmosphere. What makes you think economics trumps science?
But it's not just numerical curve fitting. The revisions are based on a better understanding of the underlying physics.
Milankovitch cycles alone are not enough to explain the warming of the interglacials. Without the added warming of additional CO2 the interglacials would not have got so warm. What makes you think that artificially adding CO2 to the system won't make temperatures increase? Maybe you must think the current CO2 rise is due the the MWP about 800 years ago?
Woodfortrees.org is a great resource and I should spend more time there. But my BS meter was pegged the moment I read that. The current solar cycle is likely to be the lowest in at least a century.
Exactly, the BEST research is redundant. Its only value is because it was headed by a skeptic (in the true sense of the word) and is independent of the major climate research groups it pretty much lays to rest the denier arguments about bias and manipulation by those groups. Unfortunately it won't stop most of them from continuing their denial.
Climate models (for the most part) are not built on data but on underlying physical principles. Data is merely used for testing the models. Go read the climate model FAQs I've linked to elsewhere in this discussion.
That would make more sense if there were any evidence that they are manipulating models to incorporate yesterday's weather. As it is what you said is nonsense.
You need to read these FAQs so you understand better what goes in to making a climate model. They don't do curve fitting.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-models/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/faq-on-climate-models-part-ii/
The modellers use empirical data to test their output. Any changes they make are based on the underlying physics of the model, not tweaking just to fit a curve.
Ah, getting technical on me, eh? ;)
The cooling started about 8,000 years ago after the Holocene Climatic Optimum but climate scientists say we've added enough GHGs to the atmosphere already to prevent the next glaciation which was expected to start some 7,000-25,000 years from now.
Yes but where there is causation there is always correlation.
Milankovitch cycles, learn about them.
My fault. When I wrote it I should have made it more clear that volcanic eruptions were responsible for temporary dips in temperatures while human GHG emissions were responsible for the rise. The limitations on the length of titles makes it difficult to get it all in the title but I could have put it in the story.
Solar flux has increased about 5W/m^2 in the last 50 years.
Citation needed!
From what I've seen if anything solar flux has been steady or slightly declining since the 1960's. The most recent solar cycle has been the lowest in a century.
Climate models are built on the underlying physics of the climate, not curve fitting to the data. As such the real world data doesn't matter to the models except as something to compare the results of model runs to in order to see how well they did. There are some somewhat minor aspects of climate models where the physics are not as well understood as would be desirable or they work on too small a scale to be captured in the grid scale climate models are run on so they are parametrized but for the most part they encompass the underlying physics. Here a a couple of FAQs on them from one of they guys that works on climate models:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/faq-on-climate-models/
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/01/faq-on-climate-models-part-ii/
Yes, it's because water vapor is a condensing greenhouse gas that we can do essentially nothing to affect. A few years ago someone did a though experiment of what would happen if we removed water vapor from the atmosphere completely. They found that the level of water vapor in the atmosphere would return to normal in about 60 days. The surface of the Earth is over 70% covered by water and you're not going to stop evaporation from it.
Of course they are falsifiable, just not on the short time scale you would prefer that they be. So far the temperature predictions of climate models have been reasonably accurate. Every year there is an update of model-data comparisons that shows this. There should be a new one that includes 2012 data within a month.
That presumes that climate change won't be bad enough to cause a breakdown of the civilization that supports the lifestyles of the rich and powerful. That's not a sure thing at this point.
If the shift from "global warming" to "climate change" is such a big deal then how did the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) get that name in 1988? Global warming is a subset of climate change.
BEST doesn't do a climate model or try to predict the future, they're just reporting on historical data.