Well, you're right. We're both tied to our positions. Time will tell who is right. But I kind of enjoy conversations like this. It forces me to dig deeper and expands my knowledge of the subject.
Of course observations trump models. In a subject like climate science where we don't have the option of performing direct experiments (there isn't a 2nd Earth to run tests on) models are the way we bring together the different factors we discover into a coherent whole that can be tested against the real world. Considering the complexity of the subject I don't think GCM's are doing that bad and they'll get better as our understanding improves.
Yes, I'm fully aware of the plate tectonics example. Another good one is the Missoula Floods first brought to light by J. Harlen Bretz in the 1920's. It took 40 years of debate for Bretz's findings to be accepted.
Lesson one: Major funding agencies willingly back studies challenging scientific consensus.
Lesson two: Most everyone would be thrilled to overturn the consensus. Doing so successfully can be a career-making result. Journals such as Science and Nature are more than willing to publish results that overturn scientific consensus, even if data are preliminary – and funding agencies are willing to promote these results.
Lesson three: Scientists offer opinions based on their scientific knowledge and a critical interpretation of data. Scientists willingly critique what they think might be flawed or unsubstantiated science, because their credibility – not their funding – is on the line.
I don't see how anyone can really believe that so many climate scientists are pushing an agenda that doesn't conform to reality. Their credibility is on the line.
I still don't see that the NASA study has anything to do with record highs outnumbering record lows. I guess you're saying that increased urbanization has caused the change in the ratio over the years but I don't buy it.
Why limit yourself to one model? The IPCC AR4 results were presented as an meta-ensemble of a number of models. Each model has its strengths and weaknesses. Combining them suppresses weather noise in the models making the underlying forced change more visible. It turns out that the meta-ensemble outperforms any single model when compared to the real world. More on that subject here. I'm curious, what exactly is it you think climate models are projecting?
I would say as leading scientists in the field the people at Realclimate are perfectly capable of judging what is good science. Please point out evidence of their advocacy for anything other than good science. As I said, they censor unscientific BS. I guess what you are saying when you claim to be a strict Popperian is that you don't think global warming theory is falsifiable. I think it is completely falsifiable just maybe not on a time scale people like you can live with. Don't you think another 20 or 30 years of intense study of the subject will clarify the outcome?
My perception when you say "Changing the weighting of a model to fit the facts, after the fact, is not "new understanding"." is that you think they are just using numerical methods to fit the output to the real world observations. That is simply not the case. Changing the weighting because of a new understanding of the underlying physical process is a perfectly valid technique.
I wish you guys would get over your vilification of Mann. It's been 12 years since the "hockeystick" graph and there have been at least 10 other papers I'm aware of since then by different researchers using different sets of proxies that show substantially the same thing as Mann's original graph. I guess if you can't discredit the science you try to discredit the scientist. Why don't you move on to the more recent stuff?
I meant to ask you in my last post what are some of the reasons for stratospheric cooling other than increases in GHG's? I'll even volunteer one. Ozone depletion is a factor. With less ozone in the stratosphere less incoming ultraviolet radiation is captured allowing more radiative energy to get through to the surface rather than remaining in the stratosphere. I don't think it's reasonable to dismiss something out of hand without offering an alternative or at least a reason why it is wrong.
Again, the NASA study you link to makes no comment on the UHI effect in relation to temperature trends. It doesn't say anything about the effect being larger than anyone who had thought before. It just examines the variables that go into the effect and how different factors affect it.
The Menne paper compares well sited stations (presumably not affected by UHI effects) to poorly sited stations and finds a slightly higher warming signal in the well sited stations than in the poorly sited stations. So tell me again how UHI effects are distorting global temperatures upward?
I did look at the Tisdale link. It shows correlation but is pretty weak on causation. When he publishes it in a peer reviewed journal I'll take it more seriously. McLean (2009) who did get a similar argument published in the AGU journal has been pretty thoroughly debunked.
Predictions vs. projections may be a semantic argument. The fact is that climate models produce results that are far better than random guessing so they have value.
Realclimate is run by a number of the most prominent people in in the field. If you want to know what they are saying about the science it's the place to go. If you don't care what they say you can just dismiss it as an agenda driven site. What is your evidence that they are agenda driven? Is it that you don't like the science they publish? They censor unscientific BS.
What does weighting have to do with anything? The big climate models, the General Circulation Models (aka Global Climate Model or GCM) are based on the physical world. They are not an exercise in curve fitting. They use the actual physical relationships discerned by observation and analysis to model the climate. When changes are made to the models there is a basis in physical reality and new understanding for the changes.
Please give me examples where PUD's have been bailed out by local/global governments without eventual repayment by the PUD. Until you can do the my assumption is you're just making a claim based on your political viewpoint without any basis in reality. In 1983 the Washington Public Power Supply System defaulted on $2.25 billion in bonds but I'm not aware that any tax money was used to bail them out. The bondholders just got screwed.
The urban heat island effect is well compensated for. A recent study that used Anthony Watts surfacestations.org list of well and poorly sited weather stations found that poorly sited stations actually show slightly less warming compared to the well sited stations. (Menne 2010)
The NASA page you cited discussed the causes and effects of the UHI effect but says nothing about its effect on global temperature trends.
I'm trying to figure out what you mean by a "warm oceanic cycle". While changes in currents and atmospheric effects can change the distribution of heat in the oceans which will effect adjacent land temperatures it doesn't change the total heat energy stored in the oceans. Over 99% of the heat energy in the Earth system, including the oceans comes from greenhouse warming. Without the buffering effect of the oceans absorbing over 90% of the enhanced greenhouse warming we would already have surface temperatures much higher than they are now.
I probably shouldn't be making any 20 year bets since I'm old enough that it's at best 50-50 whether I'll still be among the living in 2030.
Regarding climate models, they don't make any predictions. In order to make a realistic prediction they would have to know the inputs of things subject to natural variability ahead of time. Inputs such as insolation, CO2 levels and the timing of events like ENSO among other things. Instead they make projections based on various input scenarios. They are tested and validated by hindcasting using the actual observations of those inputs.
In 1988 James Hansen made projections based on three scenarios (A, B & C). Scenario B came out closest to reality and the projections based on it are reasonably close to the reality we observe today. Here is a discussion of that.
As far as falsification of greenhouse gas (mostly CO2) driven climate change one of the most straightforward predictions made by the theory is that the stratosphere will cool some because of it. This has been observed. If it hadn't it would call into question the theory. If the warming were being driven by increased insolation the stratosphere would be expected to warm.
For me zero of my taxes went toward a public utility for anything other than to buy power from the PU for government facilities. Public utilities don't collect taxes and don't get money from other governments. They get all of their money from their customers paying for the power they use. Some municipal utility districts do have taxing authority which they use to pay for capital projects but I've never heard of any of them using tax money to subsidize the rates their customers pay. It appears to me that you're just making an assumption based on your political views.
In my state (Oregon) there is no sales tax so I don't have to worry about that.
Maybe you're right and I overstated my case a bit. I should know better than to argue over individual events regarding global warming.
But you never commented on the fact that new daily highs outnumber new daily lows for the past decade. That statistical analysis is an expected global warming effect.
What will you say in 20 years as the world continues to warm from the excess of CO2 that human activity has added to the atmosphere? Based on what I hear from climate scientists I'd be willing to make a substantial wager with you about that.
I pretty much agree with what you said. Everyone makes their own risk evaluation whether it's realistic or not.
Personally I'm ambivalent about nuclear power. I think it can be probably produced safely enough but I'm not sure it can be produced cheaply enough when you consider the full cost including decommissioning and dealing with the waste. Several recent projects around the world have run into trouble because of escalating costs. And it requires massive government subsidies in the form of loan guarantees and insurance against a big nuclear accident.
The unprecedented part of the Russian heat wave is not that there was a heat wave and not even the mechanism that caused it. Moscow reached a new all time high temperature of 102.2 F. The old record was 99 F in 1920. That's the global warming part. That's the part the Russian Scientist says hadn't happened for at least 1000 years.
I'll consider it record cold in Britain when the Thames River freezes over as it did in the 1600's.
Science says that Hudson Bay has not completely frozen over yet allowing the relatively warmer water in the bay to influence the atmosphere above it. Because of that influence the pattern of Rossby waves shifts causing the jet stream to pass over Spain instead of Northern England where it normally does. This draws Arctic air into Central Europe. Hudson Bay not being iced over yet is a result of global warming.
What are you talking about? Public utility districts have open books. If you're going to make a statement like "...you will never know how much of your taxes are going towards supporting that utility." you need to provide some evidence that such a thing happens.
Some of the least expensive and most reliable electric power is provided by various kinds of public utility districts. During the California electricity crisis the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power had far fewer problems than the private utilities.
Everything that we now see happens on top of a base climate. The fact that we are seeing new daily record highs outpacing new daily record lows by over 2 to 1 is a pretty good indication the base climate is changing. [citation].
The heat wave in Russia this past summer was unprecedented. A Russian scientists stated it had been at least 1000 years since such a heat wave has occurred there.
As far as the cold over Europe and the US it is not record setting. Warmer temperatures lead to more snow (until it gets too warm to snow) because the colder air is the drier it is.
Where do you get It's not anywhere close to being one of the warmest years if you remove the adjustments..."? The data is not that useful without normalization and correction for known errors. If you prefer check out the satellite data for 2010. It's showing higher temperatures this year than the ground station based measurements.
Of course satellite temperature measurements are not measured directly but inferred from the radiation spectrum coming off the Earth.
No, I was born in 1952. I know the current situation is largely due to the negative arctic oscillation. My main point is that when you're examining global warming you have to look beyond your local weather which is only a single piece of data in a much larger global picture.
Well, sea level rise is a slow motion disaster. It's not that hard to get out of the way, just expensive. The biggest danger is that sea level creeps up then along comes a hurricane and the storm surge goes far inland like what happened with Katrina along the Mississippi coast.
I don't expect the human race to go extinct any time soon from climate change. Our intelligence and adaptability will keep us going as long as some of us can find food and shelter. But population levels could be drastically lower than they are today. We may not be able to support the level of infrastructure we do today.
And yet despite the current solar minimum the 2010 calendar year is guaranteed to be in the top 3 warmest years in the instrument record period. The 2010 meteorological year (Dec-Nov) is already the hottest year on record.
The planet was just fine back then when it was at 8-10X the current levels, even.
The Sun was considerably cooler back when CO2 levels were orders of magnitude greater than they are today. The Sun gets hotter as it ages.
All it will likely do is trigger the next ice age to start in 30-50 years instead of the normal 200 or 300.
According to scientists who study Milankovitch cycles the next glaciation of the current ice age we are in probably won't begin for at least 20,000 years.
It takes insanely high levels to actually cause problems in terms of damaging the ecosystem.
How much "damage" occurs is also a function of the rate of change. The current rate of change in CO2 levels is an order of magnitude or more greater than natural change rates.
Ocean acidification is the other half of the damage we are inflicting on the planet.
Global warming is happening. And so what? The planet will be fine and life will go on.
Yes, the planet will go on and life will still exist. But it will be a planet that is largely unrecognizable to the current population of humans.
Slashdot Mirror
Couldn't this be posted every 11 years as the solar cycle ramps up towards its peak?
Well, you're right. We're both tied to our positions. Time will tell who is right. But I kind of enjoy conversations like this. It forces me to dig deeper and expands my knowledge of the subject.
Of course observations trump models. In a subject like climate science where we don't have the option of performing direct experiments (there isn't a 2nd Earth to run tests on) models are the way we bring together the different factors we discover into a coherent whole that can be tested against the real world. Considering the complexity of the subject I don't think GCM's are doing that bad and they'll get better as our understanding improves.
Yes, I'm fully aware of the plate tectonics example. Another good one is the Missoula Floods first brought to light by J. Harlen Bretz in the 1920's. It took 40 years of debate for Bretz's findings to be accepted.
You might want to check out the most recent post over on RealClimate. The subject is "Science is self-correcting: Lessons from the arsenic controversy". They outline three lessons from the recent kerfuffle.
Lesson one: Major funding agencies willingly back studies challenging scientific consensus.
Lesson two: Most everyone would be thrilled to overturn the consensus. Doing so successfully can be a career-making result. Journals such as Science and Nature are more than willing to publish results that overturn scientific consensus, even if data are preliminary – and funding agencies are willing to promote these results.
Lesson three: Scientists offer opinions based on their scientific knowledge and a critical interpretation of data. Scientists willingly critique what they think might be flawed or unsubstantiated science, because their credibility – not their funding – is on the line.
I don't see how anyone can really believe that so many climate scientists are pushing an agenda that doesn't conform to reality. Their credibility is on the line.
I still don't see that the NASA study has anything to do with record highs outnumbering record lows. I guess you're saying that increased urbanization has caused the change in the ratio over the years but I don't buy it.
Why limit yourself to one model? The IPCC AR4 results were presented as an meta-ensemble of a number of models. Each model has its strengths and weaknesses. Combining them suppresses weather noise in the models making the underlying forced change more visible. It turns out that the meta-ensemble outperforms any single model when compared to the real world. More on that subject here. I'm curious, what exactly is it you think climate models are projecting?
I would say as leading scientists in the field the people at Realclimate are perfectly capable of judging what is good science. Please point out evidence of their advocacy for anything other than good science. As I said, they censor unscientific BS. I guess what you are saying when you claim to be a strict Popperian is that you don't think global warming theory is falsifiable. I think it is completely falsifiable just maybe not on a time scale people like you can live with. Don't you think another 20 or 30 years of intense study of the subject will clarify the outcome?
My perception when you say "Changing the weighting of a model to fit the facts, after the fact, is not "new understanding"." is that you think they are just using numerical methods to fit the output to the real world observations. That is simply not the case. Changing the weighting because of a new understanding of the underlying physical process is a perfectly valid technique.
I wish you guys would get over your vilification of Mann. It's been 12 years since the "hockeystick" graph and there have been at least 10 other papers I'm aware of since then by different researchers using different sets of proxies that show substantially the same thing as Mann's original graph. I guess if you can't discredit the science you try to discredit the scientist. Why don't you move on to the more recent stuff?
I meant to ask you in my last post what are some of the reasons for stratospheric cooling other than increases in GHG's? I'll even volunteer one. Ozone depletion is a factor. With less ozone in the stratosphere less incoming ultraviolet radiation is captured allowing more radiative energy to get through to the surface rather than remaining in the stratosphere. I don't think it's reasonable to dismiss something out of hand without offering an alternative or at least a reason why it is wrong.
Again, the NASA study you link to makes no comment on the UHI effect in relation to temperature trends. It doesn't say anything about the effect being larger than anyone who had thought before. It just examines the variables that go into the effect and how different factors affect it.
The Menne paper compares well sited stations (presumably not affected by UHI effects) to poorly sited stations and finds a slightly higher warming signal in the well sited stations than in the poorly sited stations. So tell me again how UHI effects are distorting global temperatures upward?
I did look at the Tisdale link. It shows correlation but is pretty weak on causation. When he publishes it in a peer reviewed journal I'll take it more seriously. McLean (2009) who did get a similar argument published in the AGU journal has been pretty thoroughly debunked.
Predictions vs. projections may be a semantic argument. The fact is that climate models produce results that are far better than random guessing so they have value.
Realclimate is run by a number of the most prominent people in in the field. If you want to know what they are saying about the science it's the place to go. If you don't care what they say you can just dismiss it as an agenda driven site. What is your evidence that they are agenda driven? Is it that you don't like the science they publish? They censor unscientific BS.
What does weighting have to do with anything? The big climate models, the General Circulation Models (aka Global Climate Model or GCM) are based on the physical world. They are not an exercise in curve fitting. They use the actual physical relationships discerned by observation and analysis to model the climate. When changes are made to the models there is a basis in physical reality and new understanding for the changes.
Next! A methane fuel cell built into your underwear.
Please give me examples where PUD's have been bailed out by local/global governments without eventual repayment by the PUD. Until you can do the my assumption is you're just making a claim based on your political viewpoint without any basis in reality. In 1983 the Washington Public Power Supply System defaulted on $2.25 billion in bonds but I'm not aware that any tax money was used to bail them out. The bondholders just got screwed.
The urban heat island effect is well compensated for. A recent study that used Anthony Watts surfacestations.org list of well and poorly sited weather stations found that poorly sited stations actually show slightly less warming compared to the well sited stations. (Menne 2010)
Other studies showing the urban heat island effect is not a significant factor affecting temperature trends:
Peterson 2003
Parker 2006
Jones et al 2008
The NASA page you cited discussed the causes and effects of the UHI effect but says nothing about its effect on global temperature trends.
I'm trying to figure out what you mean by a "warm oceanic cycle". While changes in currents and atmospheric effects can change the distribution of heat in the oceans which will effect adjacent land temperatures it doesn't change the total heat energy stored in the oceans. Over 99% of the heat energy in the Earth system, including the oceans comes from greenhouse warming. Without the buffering effect of the oceans absorbing over 90% of the enhanced greenhouse warming we would already have surface temperatures much higher than they are now.
I probably shouldn't be making any 20 year bets since I'm old enough that it's at best 50-50 whether I'll still be among the living in 2030.
Regarding climate models, they don't make any predictions. In order to make a realistic prediction they would have to know the inputs of things subject to natural variability ahead of time. Inputs such as insolation, CO2 levels and the timing of events like ENSO among other things. Instead they make projections based on various input scenarios. They are tested and validated by hindcasting using the actual observations of those inputs.
In 1988 James Hansen made projections based on three scenarios (A, B & C). Scenario B came out closest to reality and the projections based on it are reasonably close to the reality we observe today. Here is a discussion of that.
As far as falsification of greenhouse gas (mostly CO2) driven climate change one of the most straightforward predictions made by the theory is that the stratosphere will cool some because of it. This has been observed. If it hadn't it would call into question the theory. If the warming were being driven by increased insolation the stratosphere would be expected to warm.
You want science on cold winters in a warming world, here it is.
For me zero of my taxes went toward a public utility for anything other than to buy power from the PU for government facilities. Public utilities don't collect taxes and don't get money from other governments. They get all of their money from their customers paying for the power they use. Some municipal utility districts do have taxing authority which they use to pay for capital projects but I've never heard of any of them using tax money to subsidize the rates their customers pay. It appears to me that you're just making an assumption based on your political views.
In my state (Oregon) there is no sales tax so I don't have to worry about that.
Maybe you're right and I overstated my case a bit. I should know better than to argue over individual events regarding global warming.
But you never commented on the fact that new daily highs outnumber new daily lows for the past decade. That statistical analysis is an expected global warming effect.
What will you say in 20 years as the world continues to warm from the excess of CO2 that human activity has added to the atmosphere? Based on what I hear from climate scientists I'd be willing to make a substantial wager with you about that.
Considering the number of underground nuclear test explosions that have occurred I'm not all that concerned about it.
I pretty much agree with what you said. Everyone makes their own risk evaluation whether it's realistic or not.
Personally I'm ambivalent about nuclear power. I think it can be probably produced safely enough but I'm not sure it can be produced cheaply enough when you consider the full cost including decommissioning and dealing with the waste. Several recent projects around the world have run into trouble because of escalating costs. And it requires massive government subsidies in the form of loan guarantees and insurance against a big nuclear accident.
AC is informative.
Safety regulations can't insure perfection. Shit still happens.
The unprecedented part of the Russian heat wave is not that there was a heat wave and not even the mechanism that caused it. Moscow reached a new all time high temperature of 102.2 F. The old record was 99 F in 1920. That's the global warming part. That's the part the Russian Scientist says hadn't happened for at least 1000 years.
I'll consider it record cold in Britain when the Thames River freezes over as it did in the 1600's.
Science says that Hudson Bay has not completely frozen over yet allowing the relatively warmer water in the bay to influence the atmosphere above it. Because of that influence the pattern of Rossby waves shifts causing the jet stream to pass over Spain instead of Northern England where it normally does. This draws Arctic air into Central Europe. Hudson Bay not being iced over yet is a result of global warming.
Chicago? So what?
What are you talking about? Public utility districts have open books. If you're going to make a statement like "...you will never know how much of your taxes are going towards supporting that utility." you need to provide some evidence that such a thing happens.
Most public utility districts don't have taxation authority. They are run as a non-profit business.
Some of the least expensive and most reliable electric power is provided by various kinds of public utility districts. During the California electricity crisis the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power had far fewer problems than the private utilities.
Everything that we now see happens on top of a base climate. The fact that we are seeing new daily record highs outpacing new daily record lows by over 2 to 1 is a pretty good indication the base climate is changing. [citation].
The heat wave in Russia this past summer was unprecedented. A Russian scientists stated it had been at least 1000 years since such a heat wave has occurred there.
As far as the cold over Europe and the US it is not record setting. Warmer temperatures lead to more snow (until it gets too warm to snow) because the colder air is the drier it is.
Where do you get It's not anywhere close to being one of the warmest years if you remove the adjustments..."? The data is not that useful without normalization and correction for known errors. If you prefer check out the satellite data for 2010. It's showing higher temperatures this year than the ground station based measurements.
Of course satellite temperature measurements are not measured directly but inferred from the radiation spectrum coming off the Earth.
No, I was born in 1952. I know the current situation is largely due to the negative arctic oscillation. My main point is that when you're examining global warming you have to look beyond your local weather which is only a single piece of data in a much larger global picture.
Well, sea level rise is a slow motion disaster. It's not that hard to get out of the way, just expensive. The biggest danger is that sea level creeps up then along comes a hurricane and the storm surge goes far inland like what happened with Katrina along the Mississippi coast.
I don't expect the human race to go extinct any time soon from climate change. Our intelligence and adaptability will keep us going as long as some of us can find food and shelter. But population levels could be drastically lower than they are today. We may not be able to support the level of infrastructure we do today.
And yet despite the current solar minimum the 2010 calendar year is guaranteed to be in the top 3 warmest years in the instrument record period. The 2010 meteorological year (Dec-Nov) is already the hottest year on record.
AC is spot on.
The planet was just fine back then when it was at 8-10X the current levels, even.
The Sun was considerably cooler back when CO2 levels were orders of magnitude greater than they are today. The Sun gets hotter as it ages.
All it will likely do is trigger the next ice age to start in 30-50 years instead of the normal 200 or 300.
According to scientists who study Milankovitch cycles the next glaciation of the current ice age we are in probably won't begin for at least 20,000 years.
It takes insanely high levels to actually cause problems in terms of damaging the ecosystem.
How much "damage" occurs is also a function of the rate of change. The current rate of change in CO2 levels is an order of magnitude or more greater than natural change rates.
Ocean acidification is the other half of the damage we are inflicting on the planet.
Global warming is happening. And so what? The planet will be fine and life will go on.
Yes, the planet will go on and life will still exist. But it will be a planet that is largely unrecognizable to the current population of humans.