Don't get me started on emergency appropriations that don't show up on the budget! They may be ok when you're just getting started on something but once it is ongoing as you say they are the height of dishonesty.
Even in global warming there is no coherent competing scientific theory (in the scientific sense), just a bunch of disjointed nitpicks that are often contradictory of each other.
If you are a fiscal conservative the Republicans are not your party either. They like cutting taxes but are too chicken to cut spending in any serious way because they know if they do they'd get kicked out in the next election. The result is that the rate of change in the national debt goes up during Republican administrations and down during Democratic administrations. Here's a post on it by David Brin: So Do Outcomes Matter More Than Rhetoric?
WTF you talking about? Science advances as time goes on. We know more now than we did before. There is only a limited amount of stuff scientists can do at any one time. Usually they start with the big easy parts and add the details as science advances. There is no reason to suspect incompetence or fraud, just the normal progression of science. Just because you don't like the results doesn't mean they are wrong.
Not everything in climate models is physics based. Some things have to be parameterized because their scale doesn't fit the scale of the model. Different climate model runs start with slight variations in their starting points and run on 20 to 30 minute time steps to model chaotic weather within them so the output varies.
Hominids have exited on Earth for less than 10 million years so I don't consider anything before then, while interesting, to be particularly significant to our lives. Human civilization has existed for around 10,000 years. We know from history that civilizations have collapsed due to climate change. Although our present civilization is more resilient than they were it's not a sure thing that it will survive a drastic climate change.
I think I understand the graph just fine. It shows the 10th of January 2016 version of GISS global surface temperature minus the 2001 version. They were both adjusted versions of the data. You can claim it is fraud because the past was cooled and the present warmed rather than just dismissing it out of hand I'm interested in the difference between the adjustments in 2001 and 2016 and the reasons those changes were made.
The Top Weather Stories post went dead, no more replies allowed, so here is my reply to your last post:
Then there is nothing magical about 1979. Because of AGW we will never see a year like 1979 in the lifetime of anyone alive today and probably for many thousands of years.
I've looked at the stuff from Watts, Goddard and Salby before. For the most part it's bullshit. Watts' surfacestations.org was a bit of a service because it caused the scientists to look more closely at their adjustments for the UHI effect. Turns out they were doing a good job.
OBSERVATIONAL DATA shows that the Earth continues to warm, ice continues to melt, sea level continues to rise and the oceans continue to acidify, all things predicted by current climate theory and the rise of carbon in the carbon cycle. We could quibble about numbers but all of those things continue to happen and I expect they will for the foreseeable future.
BTW no one has been able to find any causal link between magnetism and climate. About 41,000 years ago during the Laschamp Event there was a reversal of the Earth's magnetic for about 440 years. There are no climate effects found in the paleoclimate record for this time. The Earth's magnetic field (at Earth's orbit) is over 100 times stronger than the Sun's magnetic field.
I would guess your political leanings are toward the Libertarian side preferring minimal government regulation of business. But I could be wrong. Based on the time of your replies and other statements by you I think you must be in Australia or New Zealand (or somewhere near there).
Well you can't browbeat me either. A lot of scientists have spent a lot of time studying climate. The climate models we currently use for Earth started out as models used by astrophysicists for the atmosphere of other planets including Venus and Mars. I'll give your atmospheric pressure hypothesis more credence when scientists who have spent their scientific life studying climate give it some credence. Maybe there is correlation between atmospheric pressure and temperature but it could be a coincidence without more evidence than I've seen.
As far as authors not being scientists, I challenge you to name one non-scientist author of the IPCC Working Group I report. There are non-scientist authors in the WG II and particularly the WG III reports but not the WG I which lays out the scientific basis of our understanding of climate.
You are right, there are people who are really skeptics. When I've used the term "climate contrarians" it's usually in reference to people like Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer who have the scientific training but as you say take a contrary position on the science.
I'm getting tired of the "Of course it's getting warmer, we're still coming out of an ice age." argument. It just shows how little you've really looked in to the situation. If you did you would know that temperatures during the current interglacial were highest 6,000-8,000 years ago during the Holocene climatic optimum and have been slowly cooling ever since as you would expect from the slow changes in Milankovitch cycles. It's only recently that temperatures took a sharp upward trajectory.
You can create a predictive model by retro-fitting current observations to past data, looking at trends and making certain assumptions, but it's still only a model.
It's a good thing that the big climate models don't work that way. Instead they use the physics to create a physical model. The only use observations and temperature data have to that kind of model is as something to compare the output to.
One thing that's very different about the current situation is that the CO2 level is over 400 ppm. In the past million years it's never risen above 300 ppm naturally.
The Satellite records are better quality, as they cover the entire Earth evenly with a single instrument, all measurements taken at the same time of day using the same method, and so on.
Over time the measurements have been made from multiple satellites, not a single instrument. From the Wikipedia entry on satellite temperature measurements:
Satellites do not measure temperature. They measure radiances in various wavelength bands, which must then be mathematically inverted to obtain indirect inferences of temperature. The resulting temperature profiles depend on details of the methods that are used to obtain temperatures from radiances. As a result, different groups that have analyzed the satellite data have produced differing temperature datasets. Among these are the UAH dataset prepared at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the RSS dataset prepared by Remote Sensing Systems.
The satellite time series is not homogeneous. It is constructed from a series of satellites with similar but not identical sensors.The sensors also deteriorate over time, and corrections are necessary for orbital drift and decay. Particularly large differences between reconstructed temperature series occur at the few times when there is little temporal overlap between successive satellites, making intercalibration difficult.
I guess trying to associate those who don't accept the concept (or claimed extent) of man made global warming with the holocaust with the term 'deniers' wasn't working... a new term has been coined.
I've been occasionally using the term "climate contrarian" off and on for 5 years or so. But the term "climate science denier" is still perfectly apt for them.
Granted, this is from the same group who has had a hard time naming the issue, going from global cooling, to global warming, anthropomorphic global warming, to climate change, to climate weirding and seemingly back to climate change.
The history of the term "climate change" in relation to warming induced by added CO2 goes back at least to the 1950s. "Global cooling" was never a mainstream idea even when it had some publicity in the 1970s.
Like I said we basically agree. The El Nino/ENSO cycle just affect where heat is expressed and don't affect the total amount of warming.
It does have local effects on sea level which increases off the west coast of South America and drops some in the Western Pacific around the Phillipines during an El Nino but you're right it doesn't affect overall sea level rise.
Ocean acidification has caused oyster farms on the Oregon and Washington coast to have problems growing their spat, so much so that they've moved that operation to Hawaii until they get large enough to move back to the coast.
I think we're basically in agreement. You're right that there was no actual statistically significant pause in warming. I think you go a little too far in saying where El Nino/ENSO doesn't have effects. There are definitely some effects on the east coast of the USA and in Australia.
What's "magical" about 1979 is that's the year the satellite that allowed us to continuously monitor and get detailed records of sea ice were launched. Here's a report on a study of Arctic sea ice extents back to 1935 using at least in part ships logs. As one of the authors of the report says it's not the last word on the subject but it does advance the science.
As for the rest of it I've been holding back but I have to say that most of the cites you make (WUWT, Steven Goddard, Murry Salby, etc) have no credibility with me. You might as well resign yourself to continued frustration because unless your side can put together a coherent narrative and make climate models that explain the current situation better than existing models you will continue to be ignored by most scientists.
Your "wiping the floor" comment made me laugh out loud. What I see in you is someone whose political leanings color your understanding of climate science. You don't like the obvious solutions so you seek out evidence that is counter to the mainstream, ignoring the stuff that doesn't fit your view. But physics doesn't care. It is what it is. As the future unfolds we'll see who is right but I'm pretty confident that the scientists in the mainstream are honestly reporting what they find.
Tamino said the RATPAC data extended through July 2015. Looking at the WoodForTrees plot of RSS data for 2015 only the spike in temperature didn't show up until after July. I'm not sure what your mean by "balloon surface altitude" so I won't comment on that.
Slashdot Mirror
And bring back the draft so everyone has a real stake in it.
Don't get me started on emergency appropriations that don't show up on the budget! They may be ok when you're just getting started on something but once it is ongoing as you say they are the height of dishonesty.
Even in global warming there is no coherent competing scientific theory (in the scientific sense), just a bunch of disjointed nitpicks that are often contradictory of each other.
If you are a fiscal conservative the Republicans are not your party either. They like cutting taxes but are too chicken to cut spending in any serious way because they know if they do they'd get kicked out in the next election. The result is that the rate of change in the national debt goes up during Republican administrations and down during Democratic administrations. Here's a post on it by David Brin: So Do Outcomes Matter More Than Rhetoric?
Time will tell.
WTF you talking about? Science advances as time goes on. We know more now than we did before. There is only a limited amount of stuff scientists can do at any one time. Usually they start with the big easy parts and add the details as science advances. There is no reason to suspect incompetence or fraud, just the normal progression of science. Just because you don't like the results doesn't mean they are wrong.
Not going to respond any more. I had that reply ready before I discovered the other post was closed.
I suggest you read these FAQs on climate models before you continue.
FAQ on Climate Models
FAQ on Climate Models -- Part II
Not everything in climate models is physics based. Some things have to be parameterized because their scale doesn't fit the scale of the model. Different climate model runs start with slight variations in their starting points and run on 20 to 30 minute time steps to model chaotic weather within them so the output varies.
Hominids have exited on Earth for less than 10 million years so I don't consider anything before then, while interesting, to be particularly significant to our lives. Human civilization has existed for around 10,000 years. We know from history that civilizations have collapsed due to climate change. Although our present civilization is more resilient than they were it's not a sure thing that it will survive a drastic climate change.
Global temperatures for the last 11,800 years. Notice the sharp spike in the present.
I think I understand the graph just fine. It shows the 10th of January 2016 version of GISS global surface temperature minus the 2001 version. They were both adjusted versions of the data. You can claim it is fraud because the past was cooled and the present warmed rather than just dismissing it out of hand I'm interested in the difference between the adjustments in 2001 and 2016 and the reasons those changes were made.
The Top Weather Stories post went dead, no more replies allowed, so here is my reply to your last post:
Then there is nothing magical about 1979. Because of AGW we will never see a year like 1979 in the lifetime of anyone alive today and probably for many thousands of years.
I've looked at the stuff from Watts, Goddard and Salby before. For the most part it's bullshit. Watts' surfacestations.org was a bit of a service because it caused the scientists to look more closely at their adjustments for the UHI effect. Turns out they were doing a good job.
OBSERVATIONAL DATA shows that the Earth continues to warm, ice continues to melt, sea level continues to rise and the oceans continue to acidify, all things predicted by current climate theory and the rise of carbon in the carbon cycle. We could quibble about numbers but all of those things continue to happen and I expect they will for the foreseeable future.
BTW no one has been able to find any causal link between magnetism and climate. About 41,000 years ago during the Laschamp Event there was a reversal of the Earth's magnetic for about 440 years. There are no climate effects found in the paleoclimate record for this time. The Earth's magnetic field (at Earth's orbit) is over 100 times stronger than the Sun's magnetic field.
I would guess your political leanings are toward the Libertarian side preferring minimal government regulation of business. But I could be wrong. Based on the time of your replies and other statements by you I think you must be in Australia or New Zealand (or somewhere near there).
Well you can't browbeat me either. A lot of scientists have spent a lot of time studying climate. The climate models we currently use for Earth started out as models used by astrophysicists for the atmosphere of other planets including Venus and Mars. I'll give your atmospheric pressure hypothesis more credence when scientists who have spent their scientific life studying climate give it some credence. Maybe there is correlation between atmospheric pressure and temperature but it could be a coincidence without more evidence than I've seen.
As far as authors not being scientists, I challenge you to name one non-scientist author of the IPCC Working Group I report. There are non-scientist authors in the WG II and particularly the WG III reports but not the WG I which lays out the scientific basis of our understanding of climate.
You are right, there are people who are really skeptics. When I've used the term "climate contrarians" it's usually in reference to people like Richard Lindzen and Roy Spencer who have the scientific training but as you say take a contrary position on the science.
I'm getting tired of the "Of course it's getting warmer, we're still coming out of an ice age." argument. It just shows how little you've really looked in to the situation. If you did you would know that temperatures during the current interglacial were highest 6,000-8,000 years ago during the Holocene climatic optimum and have been slowly cooling ever since as you would expect from the slow changes in Milankovitch cycles. It's only recently that temperatures took a sharp upward trajectory.
You can create a predictive model by retro-fitting current observations to past data, looking at trends and making certain assumptions, but it's still only a model.
It's a good thing that the big climate models don't work that way. Instead they use the physics to create a physical model. The only use observations and temperature data have to that kind of model is as something to compare the output to.
One thing that's very different about the current situation is that the CO2 level is over 400 ppm. In the past million years it's never risen above 300 ppm naturally.
The Satellite records are better quality, as they cover the entire Earth evenly with a single instrument, all measurements taken at the same time of day using the same method, and so on.
Over time the measurements have been made from multiple satellites, not a single instrument. From the Wikipedia entry on satellite temperature measurements:
Satellites do not measure temperature. They measure radiances in various wavelength bands, which must then be mathematically inverted to obtain indirect inferences of temperature. The resulting temperature profiles depend on details of the methods that are used to obtain temperatures from radiances. As a result, different groups that have analyzed the satellite data have produced differing temperature datasets. Among these are the UAH dataset prepared at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the RSS dataset prepared by Remote Sensing Systems.
The satellite time series is not homogeneous. It is constructed from a series of satellites with similar but not identical sensors. The sensors also deteriorate over time, and corrections are necessary for orbital drift and decay. Particularly large differences between reconstructed temperature series occur at the few times when there is little temporal overlap between successive satellites, making intercalibration difficult.
Levees are fine but they won't work in much of Florida.
I guess trying to associate those who don't accept the concept (or claimed extent) of man made global warming with the holocaust with the term 'deniers' wasn't working... a new term has been coined.
I've been occasionally using the term "climate contrarian" off and on for 5 years or so. But the term "climate science denier" is still perfectly apt for them.
Granted, this is from the same group who has had a hard time naming the issue, going from global cooling, to global warming, anthropomorphic global warming, to climate change, to climate weirding and seemingly back to climate change.
The history of the term "climate change" in relation to warming induced by added CO2 goes back at least to the 1950s. "Global cooling" was never a mainstream idea even when it had some publicity in the 1970s.
Like I said we basically agree. The El Nino/ENSO cycle just affect where heat is expressed and don't affect the total amount of warming.
It does have local effects on sea level which increases off the west coast of South America and drops some in the Western Pacific around the Phillipines during an El Nino but you're right it doesn't affect overall sea level rise.
Adjustments to the temperature always start with the unadjusted data sets.
Ocean acidification has caused oyster farms on the Oregon and Washington coast to have problems growing their spat, so much so that they've moved that operation to Hawaii until they get large enough to move back to the coast.
I think we're basically in agreement. You're right that there was no actual statistically significant pause in warming. I think you go a little too far in saying where El Nino/ENSO doesn't have effects. There are definitely some effects on the east coast of the USA and in Australia.
What's "magical" about 1979 is that's the year the satellite that allowed us to continuously monitor and get detailed records of sea ice were launched. Here's a report on a study of Arctic sea ice extents back to 1935 using at least in part ships logs. As one of the authors of the report says it's not the last word on the subject but it does advance the science.
As for the rest of it I've been holding back but I have to say that most of the cites you make (WUWT, Steven Goddard, Murry Salby, etc) have no credibility with me. You might as well resign yourself to continued frustration because unless your side can put together a coherent narrative and make climate models that explain the current situation better than existing models you will continue to be ignored by most scientists.
Your "wiping the floor" comment made me laugh out loud. What I see in you is someone whose political leanings color your understanding of climate science. You don't like the obvious solutions so you seek out evidence that is counter to the mainstream, ignoring the stuff that doesn't fit your view. But physics doesn't care. It is what it is. As the future unfolds we'll see who is right but I'm pretty confident that the scientists in the mainstream are honestly reporting what they find.
Tamino said the RATPAC data extended through July 2015. Looking at the WoodForTrees plot of RSS data for 2015 only the spike in temperature didn't show up until after July. I'm not sure what your mean by "balloon surface altitude" so I won't comment on that.