The problem is that every single event that refutes global warming is an "isolated event taken out of context," whereas every single event that points to global warming is "part of an undeniable pattern."
Unfortunately that's just part of human nature. We tend to take note of singular events more than long term trends. The reality is that all weather events happen on a background of a changing climate from global warming. The evidence of climate change is in the statistics of how those individual events are changing over time.
The scientific community as a whole once believed the world was flat.
I don't think a scientific community existed when people believed the world was flat. The Greeks had shown empirically that the Earth was spherical by the 3rd century BC.
A huge part of the basis of science is attempting to disprove theories with new research. When you fail to question conventional wisdom, it's not science. It's religion.
Do you think climate scientists are a special breed of scientists who don't question conventional wisdom? Do you believe that thousands of climate scientists around the world are all in on some conspiracy to subvert the truth about climate? It just doesn't make sense. They know the sooner or later the underlying empirical reality would make their science defunct. Any scientist knows they can make a name for themselves by overturning conventional wisdom. I can't believe that in the 25 years since the first IPCC report someone wouldn't have done that if it were possible.
The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 probably had something to do with it but I doubt it's the whole story.
The Medieval Maximum appears to be primarily a Northern Hemisphere phenomenon centered around the North Atlantic. It's not likely that globally temperatures were as warm then as they are now.
Yes, the snow at pass levels in Oregon (around 5,000 feet) is nonexistent this year. In a normal year there would be at least 4 or 5 feet of packed snow by now. The one glacier that is still growing in the Northwest is the one in the crater of Mt. Saint Helens but of course the crater and glacier didn't even exist until after the 1980 eruption.
I don't think that paper says what you're implying it does. To quote from another part of the abstract:
However, a number of individual ensemble members from that set of models successfully simulate the early-2000s hiatus when naturally-occurring climate variability involving the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) coincided, by chance, with the observed negative phase of the IPO that contributed to the early-2000s hiatus.
So when you cherry pick the individual model runs that happen by chance to coincide with what actually happened with the IPO in the real world they did quite well. Since the IPO is not something that can be predicted with any accuracy more than a few years in advance you can't really expect climate models to do that well on short (decadal) time scales. Nevertheless when you look at the CMIP5 data that were used used in the recent IPCC AR5 report and the ensemble mean with the 95% confidence interval the temperature may be below the mean lately but it's still within the 95% confidence intervals. That's what I mean by "they're doing ok".
People get excited about the hottest year but it makes more sense from a climate perspective to look at it in terms of decadal temperature trends. This graph does that. From it you can see that the 2000s were about 0.15 degrees C above the 1990s and so far the 2010s are about 0.05 above the 2000s.
The "snow is gone" remark was never published in the peer reviewed literature. It was an off the cuff remark. It was only one scientist. It may have made the headlines but it was never part of the mainstream science.
Remember the whole "polar vortex" thing in North America last year?
Not really. I live on the west coast of North America and it never affected us. The "polar vortexes" you are referring to only affected less than 5% of the surface of the Earth. February 2015 was in the top 5 warmest globally.
The difference between weather models and climate models it that weather models solve initial value problems, given the current conditions how do we expect weather to evolve over time. They're good for maybe 10 or so days usually. Climate models solve boundary value problems, given the forcings involved in climate and their interactions and feedbacks what are the boundaries we expect future weather to vary within. So far globally the weather has remained mostly within the boundaries projected by climate models so they're doing ok.
One definition of climate is the statistics of weather, IOW the average and standard deviation of weather over some time period. The World Meteorological Organization defines the standard classical period for climate as 30 years.
One scientists misstatement about snow doesn't make climate science collapse.
The next glaciation (ice age) has already been postponed indefinitely. It won't happen until atmospheric CO2 levels drop below 250 ppm again which is a long time in the future unless we start actively removing it.
I'm sorry but if you cited some oyster study I can't find your citation.
Any study is reproducible but not all data is, for instance you can't go back and recollect weather information. But reproducing studies is often a waste of a scientists resources when they could be advancing the field. If there is a problem with a study it will show up soon enough in studies that try to build on it.
As an example of reproduction there are several major temperature records around the world, NOAA, NASA/GISS, HADCRUT, JMA. Then the independent Berkeley Earth project came along and came up with the same results as the others. So has that been reproduced enough for you to believe it yet?
I never said studies cannot be verified or reproducible. Any study can be reproduced but most of the time it's a waste of a scientist's resources to do that when they could be advancing the field. If there is a problem with a study it will show up soon enough when someone tries to build on it and discovers a problem. But as an example of reproducibility take the original Mann et. al. hockey stick graph study. Since then there have been over a dozen similar studies by different groups using different proxies that show the same thing as the original within the margin of error. Yet some people still think the original is junk despite it having be reproduced multiple times. That's ideological not scientific thinking.
I'm not offended by you or mad at you. Mostly I feel sorry for you because as time goes on and the findings of climate scientists continue to be borne out you'll probably continue to butt your head against the wall.
As to climate change, where did that study happen even once much less twice?
What an inane question. Climate theory is composed of thousands of studies done by thousands of researchers over the past nearly 200 years. It started in the 1820's when Joseph Fourier discovered that the Earth was warmer than it should be through simple black-body radiative rules. In the late 1850's John Tyndall quantified the radiative properties of many gases including greenhouse gases such as water vapor, CO2 and methane. In the 1890's Svante Arrhenius quantified the relationship between CO2 and temperatures. In the 1950's the US Air Force did intense studies of CO2's radiative effects while developing heat seeking missiles. Also in the 1950's Gilbert Plass published several papers on the subject including one titled "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change". Since then it's just continued building. That anthropogenic global warming is occurring is just an emergent property of looking the implications of all of those studies.
I'm still waiting for the anti-AGW'ers to produce anything like that scientific body of work.
That's a pretty generic accusation. I think you need to get more specific. Over the history of the EPA the regulations it has imposed have had a far more positive effect on the nations economy than negative.
Most of what the EPA is citing is stuff from AGW studies... why would you have a problem with sources being disclosed and data being reproducible?
Can you cite an instance where that isn't the case already? As far as I can see it's all based on openly published peer reviewed science although you may have to go through an additional layer like the IPCC WG1 report to get to the original source.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is that every single event that refutes global warming is an "isolated event taken out of context," whereas every single event that points to global warming is "part of an undeniable pattern."
Unfortunately that's just part of human nature. We tend to take note of singular events more than long term trends. The reality is that all weather events happen on a background of a changing climate from global warming. The evidence of climate change is in the statistics of how those individual events are changing over time.
The scientific community as a whole once believed the world was flat.
I don't think a scientific community existed when people believed the world was flat. The Greeks had shown empirically that the Earth was spherical by the 3rd century BC.
A huge part of the basis of science is attempting to disprove theories with new research. When you fail to question conventional wisdom, it's not science. It's religion.
Do you think climate scientists are a special breed of scientists who don't question conventional wisdom? Do you believe that thousands of climate scientists around the world are all in on some conspiracy to subvert the truth about climate? It just doesn't make sense. They know the sooner or later the underlying empirical reality would make their science defunct. Any scientist knows they can make a name for themselves by overturning conventional wisdom. I can't believe that in the 25 years since the first IPCC report someone wouldn't have done that if it were possible.
The eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 probably had something to do with it but I doubt it's the whole story.
The Medieval Maximum appears to be primarily a Northern Hemisphere phenomenon centered around the North Atlantic. It's not likely that globally temperatures were as warm then as they are now.
Yes, the snow at pass levels in Oregon (around 5,000 feet) is nonexistent this year. In a normal year there would be at least 4 or 5 feet of packed snow by now. The one glacier that is still growing in the Northwest is the one in the crater of Mt. Saint Helens but of course the crater and glacier didn't even exist until after the 1980 eruption.
I don't think that paper says what you're implying it does. To quote from another part of the abstract:
However, a number of individual ensemble members from that set of models successfully simulate the early-2000s hiatus when naturally-occurring climate variability involving the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) coincided, by chance, with the observed negative phase of the IPO that contributed to the early-2000s hiatus.
So when you cherry pick the individual model runs that happen by chance to coincide with what actually happened with the IPO in the real world they did quite well. Since the IPO is not something that can be predicted with any accuracy more than a few years in advance you can't really expect climate models to do that well on short (decadal) time scales. Nevertheless when you look at the CMIP5 data that were used used in the recent IPCC AR5 report and the ensemble mean with the 95% confidence interval the temperature may be below the mean lately but it's still within the 95% confidence intervals. That's what I mean by "they're doing ok".
Teh stupid hurts mah brain!.
People get excited about the hottest year but it makes more sense from a climate perspective to look at it in terms of decadal temperature trends. This graph does that. From it you can see that the 2000s were about 0.15 degrees C above the 1990s and so far the 2010s are about 0.05 above the 2000s.
The "snow is gone" remark was never published in the peer reviewed literature. It was an off the cuff remark. It was only one scientist. It may have made the headlines but it was never part of the mainstream science.
Remember the whole "polar vortex" thing in North America last year?
Not really. I live on the west coast of North America and it never affected us. The "polar vortexes" you are referring to only affected less than 5% of the surface of the Earth. February 2015 was in the top 5 warmest globally.
The difference between weather models and climate models it that weather models solve initial value problems, given the current conditions how do we expect weather to evolve over time. They're good for maybe 10 or so days usually. Climate models solve boundary value problems, given the forcings involved in climate and their interactions and feedbacks what are the boundaries we expect future weather to vary within. So far globally the weather has remained mostly within the boundaries projected by climate models so they're doing ok.
One definition of climate is the statistics of weather, IOW the average and standard deviation of weather over some time period. The World Meteorological Organization defines the standard classical period for climate as 30 years.
One scientists misstatement about snow doesn't make climate science collapse.
And yet temperatures continue to rise, ice continues to melt, sea level continues to rise and the oceans continue to acidify.
I guess that means that humans have ridden on dinosaurs then. Wild ride on a big ostrich.
The next glaciation (ice age) has already been postponed indefinitely. It won't happen until atmospheric CO2 levels drop below 250 ppm again which is a long time in the future unless we start actively removing it.
I'm sorry but if you cited some oyster study I can't find your citation.
Any study is reproducible but not all data is, for instance you can't go back and recollect weather information. But reproducing studies is often a waste of a scientists resources when they could be advancing the field. If there is a problem with a study it will show up soon enough in studies that try to build on it.
As an example of reproduction there are several major temperature records around the world, NOAA, NASA/GISS, HADCRUT, JMA. Then the independent Berkeley Earth project came along and came up with the same results as the others. So has that been reproduced enough for you to believe it yet?
I never said studies cannot be verified or reproducible. Any study can be reproduced but most of the time it's a waste of a scientist's resources to do that when they could be advancing the field. If there is a problem with a study it will show up soon enough when someone tries to build on it and discovers a problem. But as an example of reproducibility take the original Mann et. al. hockey stick graph study. Since then there have been over a dozen similar studies by different groups using different proxies that show the same thing as the original within the margin of error. Yet some people still think the original is junk despite it having be reproduced multiple times. That's ideological not scientific thinking.
I'm not offended by you or mad at you. Mostly I feel sorry for you because as time goes on and the findings of climate scientists continue to be borne out you'll probably continue to butt your head against the wall.
Give me specific examples of your accusations. Otherwise you're just pulling it out of your ass.
Given all the coverups lately who can say...
What coverups?
As to climate change, where did that study happen even once much less twice?
What an inane question. Climate theory is composed of thousands of studies done by thousands of researchers over the past nearly 200 years. It started in the 1820's when Joseph Fourier discovered that the Earth was warmer than it should be through simple black-body radiative rules. In the late 1850's John Tyndall quantified the radiative properties of many gases including greenhouse gases such as water vapor, CO2 and methane. In the 1890's Svante Arrhenius quantified the relationship between CO2 and temperatures. In the 1950's the US Air Force did intense studies of CO2's radiative effects while developing heat seeking missiles. Also in the 1950's Gilbert Plass published several papers on the subject including one titled "The Carbon Dioxide Theory of Climate Change". Since then it's just continued building. That anthropogenic global warming is occurring is just an emergent property of looking the implications of all of those studies.
I'm still waiting for the anti-AGW'ers to produce anything like that scientific body of work.
That's a pretty generic accusation. I think you need to get more specific. Over the history of the EPA the regulations it has imposed have had a far more positive effect on the nations economy than negative.
I specifically called out your statement:
Most of what the EPA is citing is stuff from AGW studies... why would you have a problem with sources being disclosed and data being reproducible?
I specifically asked you for examples where the EPA didn't disclose their sources or where the data from those studies wasn't available.
The subject was AGW studies.
That was just plain hilarious.
Most of what the EPA is citing is stuff from AGW studies... why would you have a problem with sources being disclosed and data being reproducible?
Can you cite an instance where that isn't the case already? As far as I can see it's all based on openly published peer reviewed science although you may have to go through an additional layer like the IPCC WG1 report to get to the original source.
The problem isn't the level so much as the rate it's changing. If CO2 rose to 800 ppm over 5,000-10,000 years it wouldn't be as much of a problem.