You have to operate on the knowledge you have. In science there is no such thing as fully understanding the system in anything but the simplest of cases. Future discoveries may change your understanding but to just throw up your hands and say we don't know enough is not that useful.
I'd be perfectly happy to vote for R's (and I have in the past) if they would let the science drive their ideology rather than the reverse. I challenge you to come up with an actual quote from Al Gore that says anything like the words you tried to put in his mouth.
Well, if someone had thought to ask climate scientists about it three or four years ago I'm sure they would have given the same answer they did this year, that natural variability does not preclude such a result. At the same time that it was so cold in the US Southeast there were temperatures recorded that were 10 F above normal in Western Greenland and Northeast Canada and globally it was not that cold.
CO2 is outgassed by water as it warms and solar activity absolutely does have an effect on global temperatures but the observed changes in solar activity have not been large enough to account for all of the observed warming and ocean acidity has been increasing because of increased absorption of CO2.
If the 30 year temperature trend line becomes negative and it's not caused by something like a major volcanic eruption then I could accede that AGW is in error. But there has been no cooling even in the past 15 years, just a bit of a plateau. The cooling trend (1944-1965 by my reckoning) can be explained at least partially by the increase in industrial activity releasing aerosols, particularly SO2 that overrode the warming signal from increasing CO2.
What are you expecting climate models to predict? If you expect them to predict an extraordinarily cold 2009-2010 winter in the US Southwest then you have no idea of what they do.
No climate model can start from known conditions 20 years ago and predict what will happen today (as in April 24, 2010 or even the whole year 2010). That's not what they're designed to do. What they project instead is something like "Given this plausible input scenario (mainly changes in GHG levels) we would expect global 30-year-average temperatures to increase by 0.1 C in 20 years with the temperature trend line having a slope of +0.055 C per decade". That's the sort of predictions climate models make.
1) Ok, you want positives. Explain how CO2 levels have increased without taking into account human caused emissions. Come up with some mechanism to explain the long term temperature trend without taking into account the changes in greenhouse gas levels. It think your examples are too simple to be useful. Any falsification is going to have to be as complex as the the theory to be useful.
2) The definition of a CSP is somewhat arbitrary and depends on exactly what you're talking about but the one I've seen used most often by climate scientists in regards to temperature trends is 30 years. Non-scientists on both sides of the issue who do not understand it that well do make the error of asserting that short term events are some sort of proof but climate scientists just consider them more data for the long term trends.
Well, again I think you're listening to some AGW supporters, not the climate scientists. All the scientists say is that it's not inconsistent with the theory. Climate theory never tries to "predict" anything on such a short term as one year or even a decade. It's not in the nature of the science to be able to make such a prediction. There is too much short term noise in the climate system to make such an assertion. Human nature being what it is some people (generally not scientists) do make such assertions.
The recent cold winter in the United States Southeast and Western Europe didn't cause anyone to change the theory in the least because it was not inconsistent with it in the first place. Globally the time period in question was not that cold.
The choice of timescales is not totally arbitrary, just somewhat. Climatologists use 30 years a lot because it is long enough to incorporate several cycles of the quasi-decadal phenomenon we know about such as ENSO, the PDO and solar cycles reducing their influence. Longer term cycles don't have much influence on that short of a period. For example Milankovich Cycles do have influence on 10,000 year timescales but their effect can be largely ignored on a 30 year scale.
Well, I didn't think much of those claims when I saw them. I try to really hear what actual scientists have to say on the subject before I form an opinion. 20 years ago or so when I first started looking at GW I'd let my imagination run away with me a bit but I've learned over the years to listen closely to the scientists. I've never seen one make either of those claims.
10 years is way to short to see it. If you look at the historical temperature record there are a number of 10 year periods with a dip in temperature but that doesn't change the long term upward trend.
Exaggerate much? I don't think any climate scientist has ever claimed that "any and all" climate change is "man made", just that the current warming trend is mostly due to human actions.
The fact is their copy of the original data was thrown out, not the data at the original sources. You may not be able to recreate the original research exactly but if you went and got copies of the data on your own and used their methodologies to analyze it you would come out with something so similar to the original that it wouldn't make a difference.
Over 200 feet of sea level rise is what you would get if all of the ice on Greenland and Antarctica melted. But it would take CO2 levels over 600 or 800 ppm and thousands of years for all of it to melt and no sane scientist has said otherwise. What they are projecting is 3-6 feet of sea level rise by 2100 with BAU.
The NASA/GISS and NOAA data and models have been available for at least 5 or 10 years. That's more than enough for anyone to chew on for a long time. You've got to remember the WWW as we (sort of) know it only got going a little over 15 years ago.
They did not lose any data, they deliberately erased or threw out their copies of the data because they didn't need them anymore. You have to remember this was back in the 1980s when electronic storage was several orders of magnitude more expensive than it is now and the media was several orders of magnitude larger than now. The cost of keeping it is something you have to acknowledge.
If you took the original raw data and applied their methodologies to it you may not come out with exactly what they did but it would be so close that you could consider the two equivalent.
Large chunks of data are available. For instance all of the NASA/GISS data and NOAA data and source code are available. This concentration on possible flaws in the CRU data is a distraction because you could throw it all out and it wouldn't change a thing.
No, weather of any type != global warming. The statistical accumulation of weather data over a long enough period to filter out the effects of natural variability (things like El Nino and the PDO) and solar cycles is (descriptive of) climate. Climate science is the study of climate and the physics behind the observed climate (with some chemistry, geology, astronomy, biology, etc. thrown in).
Increasing temperatures over a climatologically significant period (CSP) == global warming.
You can falsify global warming by showing a decrease in temperatures over a CSP. You can falsify the anthropogenic part by showing that human activities are not responsible for nearly all of the increase in greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere or by showing that the increase in greenhouse gases is not responsible for the increase in global temperature.
Considering the likely consequences of not doing something about global warming I think denier is a perfectly apt term for those who try to obstruct action without regard to the scientific reality.
Lyndon Johnson was briefed about the potential for global warming from CO2 emissions due to fossil fuel burning in 1966. Al Gore was still a teenager then. This year (2010) January and March set new all time* records and the Jan-Mar period also set an all time record.
*All time in the instrument record that started in the mid 1800s for ground based measurements and in the 1980s for satellite records.
Slashdot Mirror
You have to operate on the knowledge you have. In science there is no such thing as fully understanding the system in anything but the simplest of cases. Future discoveries may change your understanding but to just throw up your hands and say we don't know enough is not that useful.
I'd be perfectly happy to vote for R's (and I have in the past) if they would let the science drive their ideology rather than the reverse. I challenge you to come up with an actual quote from Al Gore that says anything like the words you tried to put in his mouth.
Well, if someone had thought to ask climate scientists about it three or four years ago I'm sure they would have given the same answer they did this year, that natural variability does not preclude such a result. At the same time that it was so cold in the US Southeast there were temperatures recorded that were 10 F above normal in Western Greenland and Northeast Canada and globally it was not that cold.
CO2 is outgassed by water as it warms and solar activity absolutely does have an effect on global temperatures but the observed changes in solar activity have not been large enough to account for all of the observed warming and ocean acidity has been increasing because of increased absorption of CO2.
If the 30 year temperature trend line becomes negative and it's not caused by something like a major volcanic eruption then I could accede that AGW is in error. But there has been no cooling even in the past 15 years, just a bit of a plateau. The cooling trend (1944-1965 by my reckoning) can be explained at least partially by the increase in industrial activity releasing aerosols, particularly SO2 that overrode the warming signal from increasing CO2.
What are you expecting climate models to predict? If you expect them to predict an extraordinarily cold 2009-2010 winter in the US Southwest then you have no idea of what they do.
No climate model can start from known conditions 20 years ago and predict what will happen today (as in April 24, 2010 or even the whole year 2010). That's not what they're designed to do. What they project instead is something like "Given this plausible input scenario (mainly changes in GHG levels) we would expect global 30-year-average temperatures to increase by 0.1 C in 20 years with the temperature trend line having a slope of +0.055 C per decade". That's the sort of predictions climate models make.
1) Ok, you want positives. Explain how CO2 levels have increased without taking into account human caused emissions. Come up with some mechanism to explain the long term temperature trend without taking into account the changes in greenhouse gas levels. It think your examples are too simple to be useful. Any falsification is going to have to be as complex as the the theory to be useful.
2) The definition of a CSP is somewhat arbitrary and depends on exactly what you're talking about but the one I've seen used most often by climate scientists in regards to temperature trends is 30 years. Non-scientists on both sides of the issue who do not understand it that well do make the error of asserting that short term events are some sort of proof but climate scientists just consider them more data for the long term trends.
Well, again I think you're listening to some AGW supporters, not the climate scientists. All the scientists say is that it's not inconsistent with the theory. Climate theory never tries to "predict" anything on such a short term as one year or even a decade. It's not in the nature of the science to be able to make such a prediction. There is too much short term noise in the climate system to make such an assertion. Human nature being what it is some people (generally not scientists) do make such assertions.
The recent cold winter in the United States Southeast and Western Europe didn't cause anyone to change the theory in the least because it was not inconsistent with it in the first place. Globally the time period in question was not that cold.
The choice of timescales is not totally arbitrary, just somewhat. Climatologists use 30 years a lot because it is long enough to incorporate several cycles of the quasi-decadal phenomenon we know about such as ENSO, the PDO and solar cycles reducing their influence. Longer term cycles don't have much influence on that short of a period. For example Milankovich Cycles do have influence on 10,000 year timescales but their effect can be largely ignored on a 30 year scale.
Well, I didn't think much of those claims when I saw them. I try to really hear what actual scientists have to say on the subject before I form an opinion. 20 years ago or so when I first started looking at GW I'd let my imagination run away with me a bit but I've learned over the years to listen closely to the scientists. I've never seen one make either of those claims.
Unfortunately many people are gullible like that.
10 years is way to short to see it. If you look at the historical temperature record there are a number of 10 year periods with a dip in temperature but that doesn't change the long term upward trend.
Exaggerate much? I don't think any climate scientist has ever claimed that "any and all" climate change is "man made", just that the current warming trend is mostly due to human actions.
The fact is their copy of the original data was thrown out, not the data at the original sources. You may not be able to recreate the original research exactly but if you went and got copies of the data on your own and used their methodologies to analyze it you would come out with something so similar to the original that it wouldn't make a difference.
I doubt you'd be hauled into court over that but most people would consider you an idiot.
Over 200 feet of sea level rise is what you would get if all of the ice on Greenland and Antarctica melted. But it would take CO2 levels over 600 or 800 ppm and thousands of years for all of it to melt and no sane scientist has said otherwise. What they are projecting is 3-6 feet of sea level rise by 2100 with BAU.
The NASA/GISS and NOAA data and models have been available for at least 5 or 10 years. That's more than enough for anyone to chew on for a long time. You've got to remember the WWW as we (sort of) know it only got going a little over 15 years ago.
... and you didn't get caught, you sue.
I'm not so sure about that. Do you really want the scrutiny of your behavior a lawsuit would invite? Best to lay low I think.
They did not lose any data, they deliberately erased or threw out their copies of the data because they didn't need them anymore. You have to remember this was back in the 1980s when electronic storage was several orders of magnitude more expensive than it is now and the media was several orders of magnitude larger than now. The cost of keeping it is something you have to acknowledge.
If you took the original raw data and applied their methodologies to it you may not come out with exactly what they did but it would be so close that you could consider the two equivalent.
Large chunks of data are available. For instance all of the NASA/GISS data and NOAA data and source code are available. This concentration on possible flaws in the CRU data is a distraction because you could throw it all out and it wouldn't change a thing.
Just because someone considers something a fact doesn't make it so.
No, weather of any type != global warming. The statistical accumulation of weather data over a long enough period to filter out the effects of natural variability (things like El Nino and the PDO) and solar cycles is (descriptive of) climate. Climate science is the study of climate and the physics behind the observed climate (with some chemistry, geology, astronomy, biology, etc. thrown in).
Increasing temperatures over a climatologically significant period (CSP) == global warming.
You can falsify global warming by showing a decrease in temperatures over a CSP. You can falsify the anthropogenic part by showing that human activities are not responsible for nearly all of the increase in greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere or by showing that the increase in greenhouse gases is not responsible for the increase in global temperature.
Considering the likely consequences of not doing something about global warming I think denier is a perfectly apt term for those who try to obstruct action without regard to the scientific reality.
Lyndon Johnson was briefed about the potential for global warming from CO2 emissions due to fossil fuel burning in 1966. Al Gore was still a teenager then. This year (2010) January and March set new all time* records and the Jan-Mar period also set an all time record.
*All time in the instrument record that started in the mid 1800s for ground based measurements and in the 1980s for satellite records.