the planet was almost certainly warmer than this during the Medieval Warm Period, and before that during the Roman Climate Optimum
Yeah, try looking the actual study next time, rather than conservative rags or biased blogs. Nowhere does it claim to offer data for the whole planet; rather, it looked only at tree fossil remains in a specific area in Sweden. Claims that this somehow demonstrates anything about the planet as a whole are the worst kind of cherry-picking.
Speaking of, remember your dark implication that picking 1850 as the reference point "just happened" to coincide with the end of the Little Ice Age, and this was chosen deliberately for effect, rather than also being the time when we started pumping out CO2 wholesale? I don't suppose it occurred to you that the reason the Little Ice Age finished then (and didn't re-occur a fourth time) might possibly be due to all that CO2? It is kind of a coincidence, isn't it?
Also, 1850 isn't even the chosen reference point. From FTA:
There is not a reliable indicator of global temperatures back to 1750, which is the era widely assumed to represent pre-industrial conditions. Therefore 1850-1900 is chosen here as the most reliable reference period, which also corresponds to the period chosen by IPCC to represent a suitable earlier reference period.
OK, so you're now claiming that the general agreement among climate scientists is purely political, not an expert conclusion based on the science they've been doing, and therefore these thousands of practicing climatologists have been steadfastly ignoring the evidence that their observations of the last 40 years have been showing, and the tens of thousands of published and peer-reviewed studies showing increasing global land and sea temperatures, melting glaciers, rising sea levels & acidification etc etc etc are therefore deliberately fabricated, risking their reputations and careers in a massive conspiracy - all in the name of their supposed political beliefs?
Well heck, I'm convinced.
extremist
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
You're confusing science with some imagined bizarro political response to the situation science is telling you about. Try and understand the difference before you go off the deep end next time.
I did. I linked to a number of peer-reviewed studies & surveys containing actual data, performed by different people at different times with different approaches - and they all gave similar results. Multiple lines of peer-reviewed evidence is the highest standard of proof we have.
You claim that the consensus on AGW is "nothing more than bullshit cagw extremist nonsense" - but you have no peer-reviewed data to back this accusation. So this is just your personal opinion. Nothing is "proven" just because someone said so on a blog. Any belief that your layman's opinion is somehow more valid than the expert conclusions of practicing climatologists is pure Dunning-Kruger Effect, even more obviously when your opinion is based on no data whatsoever.
OK, so which one of the studies on that list has new survey data that attempts to refute the 97% consensus figure? Are you trying to imply that the dissenting authors in that list of papers represent significantly more than 3% of climatologists (though the list makes no claims that all the papers' authors are dissenting)? Or did you just bring them up to change the subject?
Did you read them? None of those are actually studies, they're just comments on a real study's methodology. They present no data of their own, contrary or otherwise.
The way you refute a peer-reviewed study is with better peer-reviewed studies. A spam list of unreviewed opinions all written by the same handful of dissenters refutes nothing. Provide better data, or take your unfounded opinions and baseless accusations elsewhere.
The way you confirm a peer-reviewed study is with more peer-reviewed studies, conducted independently and using different lines of evidence, to see if they arrive at similar results. Like this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one, to cite a few.
Despite regular assurances about the Wilson Doctrine for the last 60 years, British MPs were recently dismayed to find out that they are, in fact, being spied upon - just like any other citizen. The Wilson Doctrine was finally admitted (after a legal challenge) to be nothing more than a vague platitude with "no legal force".
Goes to show that politicians lie to each other as regularly as they do to the rest of us. The only notable part is that some of them appeared genuinely surprised by this.
Yeah, I heard you the first time. Repeating yourself doesn't amplify your point. Try actually citing some evidence against the solutions presented, rather than flatly declaring them to be unworkable, because clearly I disagree.
- "inefficient": 80% sounds fine to me. 20% extra capacity is hardly insurmountable, and less so as prices drop further. Consider that coal plants are only 33-40% efficient, yet somehow they're workable. - "environmentally messy": I doubt anything you could cite here comes slightly close to the disaster that is fossil fuels, from mining through refining and transport to burning them into pollution and CO2. - "do not scale": Pumped hydro is obviously grid-scale. Flow batteries can be arbitrary capacity. Flywheels, supercaps etc can be added in any quantity desired, needing only space (and can even be underground). Many of these options can also scale down to something a consumer could purchase and use, giving additional decentralisation and redundancy.
In fact, ALL methods of storing electrical power on an industrial scale are hugely inefficient and generally environmentally messy.
Sweeping declarations like that only show that you haven't taken the time to find out about this topic. We've already developed numerous different methods of energy storage beyond Li-Ion batteries, most quite efficient (> 80%), scalable, and far less environmentally damaging than fossil fuels. Pumped hydro, flow batteries, vacuum flywheels on magnetic bearings, supercapacitor arrays - I'll just point you at this list.
Fact is, practical storage is already here, and makes renewable energy entirely viable. Costs are dropping fast as production scale increases, and we'd have transitioned years ago if our politicians had the balls to confront the massive external costs of fossil fuels.
So I'm curious, how do you manage to get through your day without seeing any ads? Do you pay for Slashdot and every other web page you visit, for every TV show you watch or radio tune you might overhear, for every snippet of news? Or do you block every ad you can and demand the free services anyway?
the quid-pro-quo is that Google collects information about the users
True.
so they can sell that information to advertisers and anyone else who will pay for it.
Not true. Despite regular repetition, this evidence-free claim is contradicted by Google's statements & policy.
They use that information to match ads to their users' interests, thus making the ads more valuable to the advertisers (and conceivably to their users as well). They do not sell your information to anyone, nor is it necessary or in their long-term interests to do so.
You are not their product (which I thought was obvious, slavery being abolished some time ago). Your attention is the product they offer to their paying advertisers, if you choose to give it. In their dealings with you directly, they offer free services (or enable others to offer free services) in exchange for the possibility of your occasional attention.
One might think none of this needed explaining, but I guess people believe what they want to believe.
Your assumption is that non-carbon energy will be more expensive. That may be true in the short term, considering capital costs of replacing some of our infrastructure, but it is likely to be cheaper in the medium-longer term, as most renewable energy sources have zero ongoing fuel costs and often lower maintenance too. Consider that most cost comparisons of solar, wind, wave, geothermal etc vs existing coal, gas, nuclear etc compare amortised capital + ongoing costs of renewable energy plants vs ongoing costs only of the legacy plants (as capital costs are paid off already) - and they are still remarkably close. When you compare apples to apples (total lifetime costs for both, or ongoing costs only) then renewables already look much cheaper, in the majority of cases.
Consider also the projected (financial and human) costs of climate change, which will certainly impact poorer populations the most, as they can't afford to mitigate those costs. Drought, floods, famine, weather extremes, water shortages, rising sea levels, increased risk of tropical diseases - these are all discussed in the IPCC AR5 WGII Impacts section, and while the wealthier populations can move farmlands, irrigate, vaccinate, build levees, pay for disaster insurance etc, much of the world's poor will be SOL. Numerous studies (can cite if you like) have shown that the short-term costs of avoiding further climate change are far outweighed by the longer-term costs of adapting to the consequences instead.
Perhaps you could explain why the objective, full-coverage satellite data shows no warming for nearly 20 years while the CO2 level has continued to rise exponentially.
Why do you think there's been no warming? Are you still looking only at surface temperatures? Have you not seen the accelerating rates of rising ocean heat content, ice loss, and sea levels? Surface temperatures will climb faster when we move into an El Nino phase, if that's what you're looking for.
And why do you bring up the straw man of "energy poverty" (among many others)? We don't have to slash our energy usage (though efficiencies of course help), we just have to produce it without burning so much carbon fuel. There's many ways to do that, and much focus on improving them.
Perhaps you could explain why the objective, full-coverage satellite data shows no warming for nearly 20 years while the CO2 level has continued to rise exponentially.
Why do you think there's been no warming? Are you still looking only at surface temperatures? Have you not seen the accelerating rates of rising ocean heat content, ice loss, and sea levels? Surface temperatures will climb faster when we move into an El Nino phase, if that's what you're looking for.
And why do you bring up the straw man of "energy poverty"? We don't have to slash our energy usage (though efficiencies of course help), we just have to produce it without burning carbon fuels. There's many ways to do that.
Perhaps you could explain why the objective, full-coverage satellite data shows no warming for nearly 20 years while the CO2 level has continued to rise exponentially.
Why do you still think there's been no warming? Are you still looking only at surface temperatures? Have you not seen the accelerating rates of rising ocean heat content, ice loss, and sea levels? Surface temperatures will climb faster when we move into an El Nino phase, if that's what you're looking for.
And why do you bring up the straw man of "energy poverty"? We don't have to slash our energy usage (though efficiencies of course help), we just have to produce it without burning carbon fuels. There's many ways to do that.
See themselves as an Energy company rather than an Oil company; investigate, develop, and diversify into alternative energy sources; don't bury their report or fund deniers; instead fund more research into when & how much of a problem it would become; use that data to steer the company's evolution away from long-term risks towards a safer and more socially responsible profit base; point publicly at those efforts in order to gain the moral high ground over their competitors and encourage more shareholder investment.
Yep, so all your objections boil down to "I don't trust the scientists because MY scant observations fit better with my own notions, regardless of that so-called Dunning-Kruger effect. Thus, evidence is only significant when I say so, and all sources of contrary data must therefore be politically tainted, no matter how expert or informed."
Enjoy your little world, while we try and minimise the harm to this one.
Yeah, you need a long-term trend too. 150 years ought to do it. It also helps to have a single causal hypothesis that follows established science, and whose calculated effect accounts nicely for the observed trend.
Evidence is all you need.
Right, 150 years of evidence, even. But apparently that's not all you need after all, for some.
Not peer review, citations, or other veneer of pseudoscience.
Ah, peer review is now pseudoscience, is it? OK, that conveys your position pretty clearly. Tell me, if peer review isn't sufficient for determining which evidence is accurate and relevant, and which is the product of poor methodology, bad analysis, shoddy observation, fudged numbers, or just plain made up - then what is your proposed alternative? Your own so-informed "common sense"?:-)
The error bars show it is as simple as I think. And I believe...
Yep, those opinions aren't gonna pass peer review I'm afraid.
They expected them to match short-term random variation when it happens in the past, let us note
Citation?
So we'll see...
Every metric we've been able to measure has been trending upwards for the last 150 years. Unless someone suddenly finds convincing evidence that what we've observed is all part of some heretofore-unknown natural cycle that's 300+ years long (and discovered some other factor that meant the calculated CO2 forcing values were all actually far closer to zero than anyone had thought), then there's no plausible reason to suppose this will change.
Meanwhile, people like yourself will keep dragging their feet, hoping that their preferred hypothesis will one day magically overturn the conclusions of the many scientists with experience and actual data, all because they fear and distrust their own idea of what this might mean politically. How about we all stop trying vainly to undermine the science, and get on with finding an acceptable solution that minimises overall harm?
the considerable error bar on long term temperature forcing
There's much more to the picture than a simple error bar; the probability distribution is not linear over that range, nor even simple Gaussian. There is far more information going into their predictions than you seem to realise. The CO2 forcing numbers given are conservative within that range and have high confidence, but even if it were as simple as you appear to think, that would still mean that long-term temperature rise is just as likely to be worse than predicted, rather than better.
the consistent exaggeration of global warming by past climate models
In your opinion.
Those who know more about the models don't expect them to match short-term random variation from cycles like ENSO. They also look beyond just surface temperatures to include weightier indicators like ocean heat content and sea level rise, both of which have exceeded the models' predictions (again, likely due to ENSO).
Some of that overconfidence may come from the researchers themselves, in which case I do
And do you have any actual evidence for this opinion? Or is it based only on the circular belief that their models are "not accurate enough" in your layman's judgement?
Slashdot Mirror
the planet was almost certainly warmer than this during the Medieval Warm Period, and before that during the Roman Climate Optimum
Yeah, try looking the actual study next time, rather than conservative rags or biased blogs. Nowhere does it claim to offer data for the whole planet; rather, it looked only at tree fossil remains in a specific area in Sweden. Claims that this somehow demonstrates anything about the planet as a whole are the worst kind of cherry-picking.
Speaking of, remember your dark implication that picking 1850 as the reference point "just happened" to coincide with the end of the Little Ice Age, and this was chosen deliberately for effect, rather than also being the time when we started pumping out CO2 wholesale? I don't suppose it occurred to you that the reason the Little Ice Age finished then (and didn't re-occur a fourth time) might possibly be due to all that CO2? It is kind of a coincidence, isn't it?
Also, 1850 isn't even the chosen reference point. From FTA:
There is not a reliable indicator of global temperatures back to 1750, which is the era widely assumed to represent pre-industrial conditions. Therefore 1850-1900 is chosen here as the most reliable reference period, which also corresponds to the period chosen by IPCC to represent a suitable earlier reference period.
(emphasis mine)
OK, so you're now claiming that the general agreement among climate scientists is purely political, not an expert conclusion based on the science they've been doing, and therefore these thousands of practicing climatologists have been steadfastly ignoring the evidence that their observations of the last 40 years have been showing, and the tens of thousands of published and peer-reviewed studies showing increasing global land and sea temperatures, melting glaciers, rising sea levels & acidification etc etc etc are therefore deliberately fabricated, risking their reputations and careers in a massive conspiracy - all in the name of their supposed political beliefs?
Well heck, I'm convinced.
extremist
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
You're confusing science with some imagined bizarro political response to the situation science is telling you about. Try and understand the difference before you go off the deep end next time.
I did. I linked to a number of peer-reviewed studies & surveys containing actual data, performed by different people at different times with different approaches - and they all gave similar results. Multiple lines of peer-reviewed evidence is the highest standard of proof we have.
You claim that the consensus on AGW is "nothing more than bullshit cagw extremist nonsense" - but you have no peer-reviewed data to back this accusation. So this is just your personal opinion. Nothing is "proven" just because someone said so on a blog. Any belief that your layman's opinion is somehow more valid than the expert conclusions of practicing climatologists is pure Dunning-Kruger Effect, even more obviously when your opinion is based on no data whatsoever.
OK, so which one of the studies on that list has new survey data that attempts to refute the 97% consensus figure? Are you trying to imply that the dissenting authors in that list of papers represent significantly more than 3% of climatologists (though the list makes no claims that all the papers' authors are dissenting)? Or did you just bring them up to change the subject?
Did you read them? None of those are actually studies, they're just comments on a real study's methodology. They present no data of their own, contrary or otherwise.
The way you refute a peer-reviewed study is with better peer-reviewed studies. A spam list of unreviewed opinions all written by the same handful of dissenters refutes nothing. Provide better data, or take your unfounded opinions and baseless accusations elsewhere.
The way you confirm a peer-reviewed study is with more peer-reviewed studies, conducted independently and using different lines of evidence, to see if they arrive at similar results. Like this one, this one, this one, this one, and this one, to cite a few.
The Bruces sketch.
Is your name not Bruce, then?
Despite regular assurances about the Wilson Doctrine for the last 60 years, British MPs were recently dismayed to find out that they are, in fact, being spied upon - just like any other citizen. The Wilson Doctrine was finally admitted (after a legal challenge) to be nothing more than a vague platitude with "no legal force".
Goes to show that politicians lie to each other as regularly as they do to the rest of us. The only notable part is that some of them appeared genuinely surprised by this.
Listen to what I'm saying here
Yeah, I heard you the first time. Repeating yourself doesn't amplify your point. Try actually citing some evidence against the solutions presented, rather than flatly declaring them to be unworkable, because clearly I disagree.
- "inefficient": 80% sounds fine to me. 20% extra capacity is hardly insurmountable, and less so as prices drop further. Consider that coal plants are only 33-40% efficient, yet somehow they're workable.
- "environmentally messy": I doubt anything you could cite here comes slightly close to the disaster that is fossil fuels, from mining through refining and transport to burning them into pollution and CO2.
- "do not scale": Pumped hydro is obviously grid-scale. Flow batteries can be arbitrary capacity. Flywheels, supercaps etc can be added in any quantity desired, needing only space (and can even be underground). Many of these options can also scale down to something a consumer could purchase and use, giving additional decentralisation and redundancy.
In fact, ALL methods of storing electrical power on an industrial scale are hugely inefficient and generally environmentally messy.
Sweeping declarations like that only show that you haven't taken the time to find out about this topic. We've already developed numerous different methods of energy storage beyond Li-Ion batteries, most quite efficient (> 80%), scalable, and far less environmentally damaging than fossil fuels. Pumped hydro, flow batteries, vacuum flywheels on magnetic bearings, supercapacitor arrays - I'll just point you at this list.
Fact is, practical storage is already here, and makes renewable energy entirely viable. Costs are dropping fast as production scale increases, and we'd have transitioned years ago if our politicians had the balls to confront the massive external costs of fossil fuels.
So I'm curious, how do you manage to get through your day without seeing any ads? Do you pay for Slashdot and every other web page you visit, for every TV show you watch or radio tune you might overhear, for every snippet of news? Or do you block every ad you can and demand the free services anyway?
Nor is a trope a "hard fact" as much as you wish it to be. Try offering actual evidence, if you want to claim the status of a fact.
the quid-pro-quo is that Google collects information about the users
True.
so they can sell that information to advertisers and anyone else who will pay for it.
Not true. Despite regular repetition, this evidence-free claim is contradicted by Google's statements & policy.
They use that information to match ads to their users' interests, thus making the ads more valuable to the advertisers (and conceivably to their users as well). They do not sell your information to anyone, nor is it necessary or in their long-term interests to do so.
You are not their product (which I thought was obvious, slavery being abolished some time ago). Your attention is the product they offer to their paying advertisers, if you choose to give it. In their dealings with you directly, they offer free services (or enable others to offer free services) in exchange for the possibility of your occasional attention.
One might think none of this needed explaining, but I guess people believe what they want to believe.
Your assumption is that non-carbon energy will be more expensive. That may be true in the short term, considering capital costs of replacing some of our infrastructure, but it is likely to be cheaper in the medium-longer term, as most renewable energy sources have zero ongoing fuel costs and often lower maintenance too. Consider that most cost comparisons of solar, wind, wave, geothermal etc vs existing coal, gas, nuclear etc compare amortised capital + ongoing costs of renewable energy plants vs ongoing costs only of the legacy plants (as capital costs are paid off already) - and they are still remarkably close. When you compare apples to apples (total lifetime costs for both, or ongoing costs only) then renewables already look much cheaper, in the majority of cases.
Consider also the projected (financial and human) costs of climate change, which will certainly impact poorer populations the most, as they can't afford to mitigate those costs. Drought, floods, famine, weather extremes, water shortages, rising sea levels, increased risk of tropical diseases - these are all discussed in the IPCC AR5 WGII Impacts section, and while the wealthier populations can move farmlands, irrigate, vaccinate, build levees, pay for disaster insurance etc, much of the world's poor will be SOL. Numerous studies (can cite if you like) have shown that the short-term costs of avoiding further climate change are far outweighed by the longer-term costs of adapting to the consequences instead.
Perhaps you could explain why the objective, full-coverage satellite data shows no warming for nearly 20 years while the CO2 level has continued to rise exponentially.
Why do you think there's been no warming? Are you still looking only at surface temperatures? Have you not seen the accelerating rates of rising ocean heat content, ice loss, and sea levels? Surface temperatures will climb faster when we move into an El Nino phase, if that's what you're looking for.
And why do you bring up the straw man of "energy poverty" (among many others)? We don't have to slash our energy usage (though efficiencies of course help), we just have to produce it without burning so much carbon fuel. There's many ways to do that, and much focus on improving them.
Perhaps you could explain why the objective, full-coverage satellite data shows no warming for nearly 20 years while the CO2 level has continued to rise exponentially.
Why do you think there's been no warming? Are you still looking only at surface temperatures? Have you not seen the accelerating rates of rising ocean heat content, ice loss, and sea levels? Surface temperatures will climb faster when we move into an El Nino phase, if that's what you're looking for.
And why do you bring up the straw man of "energy poverty"? We don't have to slash our energy usage (though efficiencies of course help), we just have to produce it without burning carbon fuels. There's many ways to do that.
Perhaps you could explain why the objective, full-coverage satellite data shows no warming for nearly 20 years while the CO2 level has continued to rise exponentially.
Why do you still think there's been no warming? Are you still looking only at surface temperatures? Have you not seen the accelerating rates of rising ocean heat content, ice loss, and sea levels? Surface temperatures will climb faster when we move into an El Nino phase, if that's what you're looking for.
And why do you bring up the straw man of "energy poverty"? We don't have to slash our energy usage (though efficiencies of course help), we just have to produce it without burning carbon fuels. There's many ways to do that.
See themselves as an Energy company rather than an Oil company; investigate, develop, and diversify into alternative energy sources; don't bury their report or fund deniers; instead fund more research into when & how much of a problem it would become; use that data to steer the company's evolution away from long-term risks towards a safer and more socially responsible profit base; point publicly at those efforts in order to gain the moral high ground over their competitors and encourage more shareholder investment.
Yep, so all your objections boil down to "I don't trust the scientists because MY scant observations fit better with my own notions, regardless of that so-called Dunning-Kruger effect. Thus, evidence is only significant when I say so, and all sources of contrary data must therefore be politically tainted, no matter how expert or informed."
Enjoy your little world, while we try and minimise the harm to this one.
hasn't been trending up very fast.
In your opinion.
You need more than to have the right sign
Yeah, you need a long-term trend too. 150 years ought to do it. It also helps to have a single causal hypothesis that follows established science, and whose calculated effect accounts nicely for the observed trend.
Evidence is all you need.
Right, 150 years of evidence, even. But apparently that's not all you need after all, for some.
Not peer review, citations, or other veneer of pseudoscience.
Ah, peer review is now pseudoscience, is it? OK, that conveys your position pretty clearly. Tell me, if peer review isn't sufficient for determining which evidence is accurate and relevant, and which is the product of poor methodology, bad analysis, shoddy observation, fudged numbers, or just plain made up - then what is your proposed alternative? Your own so-informed "common sense"? :-)
The error bars show it is as simple as I think. And I believe...
Yep, those opinions aren't gonna pass peer review I'm afraid.
They expected them to match short-term random variation when it happens in the past, let us note
Citation?
So we'll see...
Every metric we've been able to measure has been trending upwards for the last 150 years. Unless someone suddenly finds convincing evidence that what we've observed is all part of some heretofore-unknown natural cycle that's 300+ years long (and discovered some other factor that meant the calculated CO2 forcing values were all actually far closer to zero than anyone had thought), then there's no plausible reason to suppose this will change.
Meanwhile, people like yourself will keep dragging their feet, hoping that their preferred hypothesis will one day magically overturn the conclusions of the many scientists with experience and actual data, all because they fear and distrust their own idea of what this might mean politically. How about we all stop trying vainly to undermine the science, and get on with finding an acceptable solution that minimises overall harm?
the considerable error bar on long term temperature forcing
There's much more to the picture than a simple error bar; the probability distribution is not linear over that range, nor even simple Gaussian. There is far more information going into their predictions than you seem to realise. The CO2 forcing numbers given are conservative within that range and have high confidence, but even if it were as simple as you appear to think, that would still mean that long-term temperature rise is just as likely to be worse than predicted, rather than better.
the consistent exaggeration of global warming by past climate models
In your opinion.
Those who know more about the models don't expect them to match short-term random variation from cycles like ENSO. They also look beyond just surface temperatures to include weightier indicators like ocean heat content and sea level rise, both of which have exceeded the models' predictions (again, likely due to ENSO).
You know you're on Slashdot when the troll posts are indistinguishable from normal behaviour.
Some of that overconfidence may come from the researchers themselves, in which case I do
And do you have any actual evidence for this opinion? Or is it based only on the circular belief that their models are "not accurate enough" in your layman's judgement?