Actually, it's quite simple - ice extent and mass have more to do with ocean current flows, and the position of warm or cold water, rather than warm or cold air. This is a fairly simple refutation of the simplistic association with air temperature and ice mass. For more data, check:
Even if hundreds of millions have to relocate (as they do, every year through various migrations over the world), what's the overall harm if you've got more arable land, quicker navigable trade routes through the arctic, more plant growth due to CO2, and more food to feed the starving?
Simply shouting "the sky is falling" isn't science. Show me your falsifiable hypothesis, and clearly identify what observations (historical or future) would refute it. No matter what you may believe about whether or not there is a real AGW effect, or what it's magnitude may or may not be, you've got zero credibility when it comes to asserting that any temperature increase must, in total, be a detriment to humanity.
Put more bluntly, if you could have convinced the world to avoid the industrial revolution, and kept society at pre-industrial times, would the world be a better place today, a hundred years later? Would we be able to support as many people? Would we have the same kinds of technology, or knowledge that we've developed? What would the history of your own family have been, had there been no planes, trains or automobiles? Would you even be here?
Re:Climate is what you expect...
on
Bastardi's Wager
·
· Score: 1
30 years, deal. If the sea level rise and ice melt doesn't track with increased CO2 emissions over the next 30 years, we'll declare AGW dead, and have some bacon to celebrate.
For me to admit that AGW is a problem...now that's a good question. Because the chain of causality is so tenuous, and every last bit of disaster porn news is attributed to AGW, I think there's an issue with what the burden of proof would be. Off hand, if say, over the next 30 years, the seas rose 3 feet, temperatures rose 3C, and we had ever increasing numbers of hurricanes (global cyclone activity), in direct proportion to calculated human CO2 emissions, I'd probably get on board.
But there are of course two issues here - one, is human activity causing warming, and two, is that warming a bad thing. I'm going to argue that the Medieval warm period and holocene optimum were *good* things for humanity, and if AGW *is* true, we should be doing everything we can to promote it.
So honestly, even if I admitted AGW was a real, measurable effect, I don't see that as a problem.
Having a result that matches closely the observed warming does not prove causality in the slightest. I could wildly guess that your IQ will drop below 100 in the next 30 years, in correlation with an increase in CO2, *and be completely accurate* without having demonstrated causality.
What about when you observe the warming (2010 being the warmest year ever recorded), but a rebound in ice cover and mass from a 2007 low? We're now in a position where the global average temperature has hit an all time high, and the ice has *increased* from it's nadir.
You could also if the distribution of temperature around the globe, regardless of "global" level effects, such as solar input, was determined by local conditions (such as cloud cover and humidity).
To put it another way, we know that seasons and day/night can change average temperature from a range of -50C all the way to 30C, in a given locality, and the same average can be found in another locality with a much narrower temperature range. The whole concept of associating an average global temperature with anything other than a mathematical curiosity is odd, at best.
No, it's not a simple physics calculation, and simply asserting that again doesn't make it so. CO2 does not drive global average temperature, period. There are *so* many other variables in the equation, from solar output, to cosmic ray activity, to internal vulcanism, to ocean oscillations, not to mention the myriad negative feedbacks of plant growth, CO2 sequestration, and cloud cover, that you can't possibly drive it to a simple physics equation.
Put more bluntly, if it was a simple physics equation, you could tell me *exactly* what the temperature for any point in history was simply by looking at the CO2 in the atmosphere. Even the most ardent natural climate change denier won't go there.
Re:Climate is what you expect...
on
Bastardi's Wager
·
· Score: 1
I'm a complex human being, but if you put my feet in warm water, the heat won't transfer through my body like it would through a simple solid like a bar of aluminum - there are so many heat maintenance mechanisms throughout the body that even in dramatically differing temperature settings, the body is able to maintain a basal temperature close to exactly 98.6F.
If Arrhenius predicted 4C, and the estimate is between 1.5 and 4.5C, you're looking at some pretty wide error bars there. Further, what did he estimate the actual global average temp to be without a global thermometer network? Someone else could've predicted 3C based on the increase in english literacy around the world, and also have been right.
If you want to talk science, explain to me your falsifiable hypothesis. What observations, over the next say, 15 years, would refute your theory?
There's no reason to believe, even if we were right about CO2 emissions increasing the average global temperature by 6C, that we should reduce CO2 emissions at all. Even if you take, as a given, that temps are rising, and anthropogenic CO2 is causing it, there's not a shred of evidence that the particular distribution of increased average temperature will be detrimental to humanity.
In any case, every plan for CO2 mitigation, according to the very models which are hyped to encourage us to stop using petroleum, would be but a fraction of the temp increase over the next century. Cutting the global economy by 50% in order to save 1C out of 6C seems dubious at best.
That all being said, what is the "golden" moment of climate prediction? I keep hearing that we can make these long term predictions because we're looking at long term trends, but is there a point at which climate predictions become less accurate? That is to say, if we can't make a climate prediction out 10 years, but we can make one out 100 years, is it also true that we can't make one out 200 years? Is there a parabolic curve of accuracy here?
But it could be the complete opposite - we could have an increasing average global temperature without *any* additional ice melt. We'd just need to have all the liquid water far away from the ice raise in temperature by 5C. Heck, we could even have a *colder* arctic and *more* ice with a warmer average global temperature.
The point here is that the average does not drive the specific distribution, and it's the specific distribution that can be beneficial or harmful, *not* the average.
Re:Climate is what you expect...
on
Bastardi's Wager
·
· Score: 1
The earth is not a simple chemistry and physics experiment. The incredible complexity of the system is far beyond simply plugging in a start state, applying the rules of physics and chemistry, and rolling it forward.
As to Arrhenius, what was his estimate of the average global temperature back in the 1890s, and exactly how much did he predict it would raise in response to a doubling of CO2, for example? Simply guessing that the weather would be warmer in 100 years is hardly a prediction, especially when you're coming out of a little ice age:)
Which is exactly your problem. Climate acts on a time scale beyond decades, or even centuries. Associating human activity, much less a single trace gas in the atmosphere, as a primary driver for climate in any predictable way, is a fool's errand, and there is scant evidence that there is causality there.
Again, to my example, you're looking at the average roll of an unknown number of dice, with anywhere from 4-20 sides, and further, asserting that with a hundred rolls, you can predict the next 10,000. Actually, it's worse than that - you're asserting that with a hundred rolls, you've determined a change in distribution that you can attribute to the wind speed above the roller's hands increasing, and that you can extrapolate that change in distribution out to the next 10,000 rolls.
So how many "flips" do we need to be confident we can predict the global average temperature 100 years from now? 10 years of "flips"? 100 years of "flips"? 1000 years of "flips"? 100,000 years of "flips"?
The problem with the whole climatology gig is that that haven't done all that much flipping on the scales that matter for climate.
Re:Climate is what you expect...
on
Bastardi's Wager
·
· Score: 1
Actually, you are making assumption there - based on your observations of a very limited set of "flips", you're assuming that you've made enough observations to properly characterize the phenomena you're trying to predict.
More pointedly, the complexity of the climate system challenges the observer and scientist to discern more than just a HEADS/TAILS switch -> it's as if someone has an unknown number of dice, each which may have from 4 to 20 sides, and you're trying to determine what the average will be after 10,000 flips after observing only 100 flips.
"According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event"."
Yeah, but the average temperature increase doesn't necessarily mean the melting of ice if it's distributed in such a way that warm water gets warmer, but ice stays cold. What matters is *where* it gets hotter, and *where* it gets colder - no organism on the planet cares what the average temperature of the planet is.
Take it up a notch - what's the average temperature of the universe, and would it matter to you if it increased by 100K, or decreased by 100K?
Why wouldn't global average temperature be just as complex as an individual's body weight?
And even if you go from 175.0 to 176.05 (a.6% increase), is that really all that more dramatic of a weight change over a decade? Hell, I vary in weight that much *every day*.
Re:Climate is what you expect...
on
Bastardi's Wager
·
· Score: 1
You're assuming you can tell the difference between a fair coin and an unfair one.
There are also hundreds of millions of people that would die of starvation if temperatures fell a few degrees this century, or if CO2 levels dropped significantly and decreased plant growth. But really, all of this "think of the children a hundred years from now" hand waving is just that - hand waving, on both sides.
The *real* issue here is that a global average temperature matters exactly *dick*. There are beneficial distributions of temperature, and harmful distributions of temperature, and the global average tells us *nothing* about what the distribution is going to be. Global average temperatures could stay *exactly the same*, and the distribution of those temperatures could change in ways that could destroy humanity, and in ways that could benefit humanity. Nobody has gotten even close to the point where they can accurately predict *any* of those regional variations in any useful way.
We're lucky we've got even a minimal understanding of the PDO and ENSO and sunspot cycles - that at least gets us some inkling of what might come when, but this is a complex system that simply defies *useful* prediction.
It's also interesting to note that climatology predictions are on a time scale that exceeds the average human lifespan by orders of magnitude. There's little consequence (or usefulness) in making a prediction in 5000BC that the world is going to end in 2012.
I agree, some of the one-offs (especially when driven by business monkeys masquerading as poor techs), are going to be problems worthy of getting rid of. But I've noticed a lot of "enterprise standards" are simply declared by fiat (often by more business monkeys masquerading as poor techs), rather than because anyone actually *tried* to deliver anything with the damn thing. Buying into glossy brochures and power point presentations spells trouble again and again.
On the other hand, if you've got some reasonable techs trying to solve big problems with reliable software (say, CVS back in the day, Subversion, or hell, even wordpress and mediawiki), often times they'll be able to do so with less money up front, more reliability, and less money in the long run.
As a leader in IT, it pays to actually look deeply into what is going on at the ground floor, and discovering internal best practices, rather than listening to a sales monkey and then mandating best practices based on zero real world experience. Even better, if you've done your due diligence to find out what the grassroots best practices are, you'll also probably have found some pretty good technical leaders to mentor up into the organization (anyone who manages to left-hand a working, reliable system under the radar in order to make up for deficiencies in an "enterprise standard" is probably *exactly* the kind of guy who has other ideas they can't try out without more backing).
Heaven help us from CFOs installing rogue systems under their desks:)
Just one minor gripe with the parent - a lot of times, what should be weeded out isn't the "one-offs" (which are often times built way under budget with way more capacity and way less maintenance cost), but the actual official enterprise standard that got put in because some CIO was buddies with some sales rep. "One-offs" are a signal that the current standards (either of technology, or product development), are having problems. While not all "one-offs" may be worthy of keeping, when going through the weeds, don't assume the enterprise standard is perfect, and don't assume the one-offs don't have something to teach you.
Examples of enterprise standards that should be weeded out where I work -> Lotus Notes, StarTeam, Windows XP.
Probably the greatest thing we've suffered from is the whole low-fat/low-calorie trope pushed by Ancel Keys back in the 50's. Once that became government recommendation in 1978, we subjected our entire country to the largest dietary experiment in the history of man, and have suffered more obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other chronic diseases. Based on "statistically significant" studies (and some not too significant, like Keys' own "Seven Countries Study" that ignored data from 16 other countries that refuted his hypothesis), and with an eye towards "the precautionary principle", well intentioned scientists like Keys have done more damage to human health in the US (and around the world), that you can possibly imagine.
As for my kids, I don't feed them carbs anymore, and that'll make things better for them, but I worry about their peers with their low-fat milk and high-carb school lunches.
For further reading, google "Gary Taubes Berkeley" for an incredibly informative hour and 45 minute lecture.
I think the article pretty much spelled that out -> scientists are incentivized to find "statistical significance", which leads to several big no-no's in the scientific method:
1) quashing/ignoring negative results (see: the dietary fat/cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease pushed by Ancel Keys, which has clearly been refuted by loads of negative results as chronicled by Gary Taubes in "Good Calories, Bad Calories")
2) poorly designed experiments created to demonstrate a possible significance, rather than to falsify a hypothesis.
If anything, I would focus on #2. We should have more scientists trying as hard as they can to *falsify* themselves, not find more evidence of statistical significance. Like the apocryphal "white-swan hypothesis", you don't make it stronger by finding another white swan, you make it stronger by looking *really hard* for a black swan, and not finding it.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it's quite simple - ice extent and mass have more to do with ocean current flows, and the position of warm or cold water, rather than warm or cold air. This is a fairly simple refutation of the simplistic association with air temperature and ice mass. For more data, check:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
Even if hundreds of millions have to relocate (as they do, every year through various migrations over the world), what's the overall harm if you've got more arable land, quicker navigable trade routes through the arctic, more plant growth due to CO2, and more food to feed the starving?
Simply shouting "the sky is falling" isn't science. Show me your falsifiable hypothesis, and clearly identify what observations (historical or future) would refute it. No matter what you may believe about whether or not there is a real AGW effect, or what it's magnitude may or may not be, you've got zero credibility when it comes to asserting that any temperature increase must, in total, be a detriment to humanity.
Put more bluntly, if you could have convinced the world to avoid the industrial revolution, and kept society at pre-industrial times, would the world be a better place today, a hundred years later? Would we be able to support as many people? Would we have the same kinds of technology, or knowledge that we've developed? What would the history of your own family have been, had there been no planes, trains or automobiles? Would you even be here?
30 years, deal. If the sea level rise and ice melt doesn't track with increased CO2 emissions over the next 30 years, we'll declare AGW dead, and have some bacon to celebrate.
For me to admit that AGW is a problem...now that's a good question. Because the chain of causality is so tenuous, and every last bit of disaster porn news is attributed to AGW, I think there's an issue with what the burden of proof would be. Off hand, if say, over the next 30 years, the seas rose 3 feet, temperatures rose 3C, and we had ever increasing numbers of hurricanes (global cyclone activity), in direct proportion to calculated human CO2 emissions, I'd probably get on board.
But there are of course two issues here - one, is human activity causing warming, and two, is that warming a bad thing. I'm going to argue that the Medieval warm period and holocene optimum were *good* things for humanity, and if AGW *is* true, we should be doing everything we can to promote it.
So honestly, even if I admitted AGW was a real, measurable effect, I don't see that as a problem.
Having a result that matches closely the observed warming does not prove causality in the slightest. I could wildly guess that your IQ will drop below 100 in the next 30 years, in correlation with an increase in CO2, *and be completely accurate* without having demonstrated causality.
What about when you observe the warming (2010 being the warmest year ever recorded), but a rebound in ice cover and mass from a 2007 low? We're now in a position where the global average temperature has hit an all time high, and the ice has *increased* from it's nadir.
How now, brown cow?
You could also if the distribution of temperature around the globe, regardless of "global" level effects, such as solar input, was determined by local conditions (such as cloud cover and humidity).
To put it another way, we know that seasons and day/night can change average temperature from a range of -50C all the way to 30C, in a given locality, and the same average can be found in another locality with a much narrower temperature range. The whole concept of associating an average global temperature with anything other than a mathematical curiosity is odd, at best.
No, it's not a simple physics calculation, and simply asserting that again doesn't make it so. CO2 does not drive global average temperature, period. There are *so* many other variables in the equation, from solar output, to cosmic ray activity, to internal vulcanism, to ocean oscillations, not to mention the myriad negative feedbacks of plant growth, CO2 sequestration, and cloud cover, that you can't possibly drive it to a simple physics equation.
Put more bluntly, if it was a simple physics equation, you could tell me *exactly* what the temperature for any point in history was simply by looking at the CO2 in the atmosphere. Even the most ardent natural climate change denier won't go there.
I'm a complex human being, but if you put my feet in warm water, the heat won't transfer through my body like it would through a simple solid like a bar of aluminum - there are so many heat maintenance mechanisms throughout the body that even in dramatically differing temperature settings, the body is able to maintain a basal temperature close to exactly 98.6F.
If Arrhenius predicted 4C, and the estimate is between 1.5 and 4.5C, you're looking at some pretty wide error bars there. Further, what did he estimate the actual global average temp to be without a global thermometer network? Someone else could've predicted 3C based on the increase in english literacy around the world, and also have been right.
If you want to talk science, explain to me your falsifiable hypothesis. What observations, over the next say, 15 years, would refute your theory?
You won't know until we get there :)
There's no reason to believe, even if we were right about CO2 emissions increasing the average global temperature by 6C, that we should reduce CO2 emissions at all. Even if you take, as a given, that temps are rising, and anthropogenic CO2 is causing it, there's not a shred of evidence that the particular distribution of increased average temperature will be detrimental to humanity.
In any case, every plan for CO2 mitigation, according to the very models which are hyped to encourage us to stop using petroleum, would be but a fraction of the temp increase over the next century. Cutting the global economy by 50% in order to save 1C out of 6C seems dubious at best.
That all being said, what is the "golden" moment of climate prediction? I keep hearing that we can make these long term predictions because we're looking at long term trends, but is there a point at which climate predictions become less accurate? That is to say, if we can't make a climate prediction out 10 years, but we can make one out 100 years, is it also true that we can't make one out 200 years? Is there a parabolic curve of accuracy here?
But it could be the complete opposite - we could have an increasing average global temperature without *any* additional ice melt. We'd just need to have all the liquid water far away from the ice raise in temperature by 5C. Heck, we could even have a *colder* arctic and *more* ice with a warmer average global temperature.
The point here is that the average does not drive the specific distribution, and it's the specific distribution that can be beneficial or harmful, *not* the average.
The earth is not a simple chemistry and physics experiment. The incredible complexity of the system is far beyond simply plugging in a start state, applying the rules of physics and chemistry, and rolling it forward.
As to Arrhenius, what was his estimate of the average global temperature back in the 1890s, and exactly how much did he predict it would raise in response to a doubling of CO2, for example? Simply guessing that the weather would be warmer in 100 years is hardly a prediction, especially when you're coming out of a little ice age :)
"the warming was predicted decades before"
Which is exactly your problem. Climate acts on a time scale beyond decades, or even centuries. Associating human activity, much less a single trace gas in the atmosphere, as a primary driver for climate in any predictable way, is a fool's errand, and there is scant evidence that there is causality there.
Again, to my example, you're looking at the average roll of an unknown number of dice, with anywhere from 4-20 sides, and further, asserting that with a hundred rolls, you can predict the next 10,000. Actually, it's worse than that - you're asserting that with a hundred rolls, you've determined a change in distribution that you can attribute to the wind speed above the roller's hands increasing, and that you can extrapolate that change in distribution out to the next 10,000 rolls.
So how many "flips" do we need to be confident we can predict the global average temperature 100 years from now? 10 years of "flips"? 100 years of "flips"? 1000 years of "flips"? 100,000 years of "flips"?
The problem with the whole climatology gig is that that haven't done all that much flipping on the scales that matter for climate.
Actually, you are making assumption there - based on your observations of a very limited set of "flips", you're assuming that you've made enough observations to properly characterize the phenomena you're trying to predict.
More pointedly, the complexity of the climate system challenges the observer and scientist to discern more than just a HEADS/TAILS switch -> it's as if someone has an unknown number of dice, each which may have from 4 to 20 sides, and you're trying to determine what the average will be after 10,000 flips after observing only 100 flips.
Good luck with all those assumptions :)
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
"According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event"."
Yeah, but the average temperature increase doesn't necessarily mean the melting of ice if it's distributed in such a way that warm water gets warmer, but ice stays cold. What matters is *where* it gets hotter, and *where* it gets colder - no organism on the planet cares what the average temperature of the planet is.
Take it up a notch - what's the average temperature of the universe, and would it matter to you if it increased by 100K, or decreased by 100K?
Why wouldn't global average temperature be just as complex as an individual's body weight?
And even if you go from 175.0 to 176.05 (a .6% increase), is that really all that more dramatic of a weight change over a decade? Hell, I vary in weight that much *every day*.
You're assuming you can tell the difference between a fair coin and an unfair one.
There are also hundreds of millions of people that would die of starvation if temperatures fell a few degrees this century, or if CO2 levels dropped significantly and decreased plant growth. But really, all of this "think of the children a hundred years from now" hand waving is just that - hand waving, on both sides.
The *real* issue here is that a global average temperature matters exactly *dick*. There are beneficial distributions of temperature, and harmful distributions of temperature, and the global average tells us *nothing* about what the distribution is going to be. Global average temperatures could stay *exactly the same*, and the distribution of those temperatures could change in ways that could destroy humanity, and in ways that could benefit humanity. Nobody has gotten even close to the point where they can accurately predict *any* of those regional variations in any useful way.
We're lucky we've got even a minimal understanding of the PDO and ENSO and sunspot cycles - that at least gets us some inkling of what might come when, but this is a complex system that simply defies *useful* prediction.
It's also interesting to note that climatology predictions are on a time scale that exceeds the average human lifespan by orders of magnitude. There's little consequence (or usefulness) in making a prediction in 5000BC that the world is going to end in 2012.
I agree, some of the one-offs (especially when driven by business monkeys masquerading as poor techs), are going to be problems worthy of getting rid of. But I've noticed a lot of "enterprise standards" are simply declared by fiat (often by more business monkeys masquerading as poor techs), rather than because anyone actually *tried* to deliver anything with the damn thing. Buying into glossy brochures and power point presentations spells trouble again and again.
On the other hand, if you've got some reasonable techs trying to solve big problems with reliable software (say, CVS back in the day, Subversion, or hell, even wordpress and mediawiki), often times they'll be able to do so with less money up front, more reliability, and less money in the long run.
As a leader in IT, it pays to actually look deeply into what is going on at the ground floor, and discovering internal best practices, rather than listening to a sales monkey and then mandating best practices based on zero real world experience. Even better, if you've done your due diligence to find out what the grassroots best practices are, you'll also probably have found some pretty good technical leaders to mentor up into the organization (anyone who manages to left-hand a working, reliable system under the radar in order to make up for deficiencies in an "enterprise standard" is probably *exactly* the kind of guy who has other ideas they can't try out without more backing).
Heaven help us from CFOs installing rogue systems under their desks :)
Just one minor gripe with the parent - a lot of times, what should be weeded out isn't the "one-offs" (which are often times built way under budget with way more capacity and way less maintenance cost), but the actual official enterprise standard that got put in because some CIO was buddies with some sales rep. "One-offs" are a signal that the current standards (either of technology, or product development), are having problems. While not all "one-offs" may be worthy of keeping, when going through the weeds, don't assume the enterprise standard is perfect, and don't assume the one-offs don't have something to teach you.
Examples of enterprise standards that should be weeded out where I work -> Lotus Notes, StarTeam, Windows XP.
Probably the greatest thing we've suffered from is the whole low-fat/low-calorie trope pushed by Ancel Keys back in the 50's. Once that became government recommendation in 1978, we subjected our entire country to the largest dietary experiment in the history of man, and have suffered more obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other chronic diseases. Based on "statistically significant" studies (and some not too significant, like Keys' own "Seven Countries Study" that ignored data from 16 other countries that refuted his hypothesis), and with an eye towards "the precautionary principle", well intentioned scientists like Keys have done more damage to human health in the US (and around the world), that you can possibly imagine.
As for my kids, I don't feed them carbs anymore, and that'll make things better for them, but I worry about their peers with their low-fat milk and high-carb school lunches.
For further reading, google "Gary Taubes Berkeley" for an incredibly informative hour and 45 minute lecture.
I think the article pretty much spelled that out -> scientists are incentivized to find "statistical significance", which leads to several big no-no's in the scientific method:
1) quashing/ignoring negative results (see: the dietary fat/cholesterol hypothesis of heart disease pushed by Ancel Keys, which has clearly been refuted by loads of negative results as chronicled by Gary Taubes in "Good Calories, Bad Calories")
2) poorly designed experiments created to demonstrate a possible significance, rather than to falsify a hypothesis.
If anything, I would focus on #2. We should have more scientists trying as hard as they can to *falsify* themselves, not find more evidence of statistical significance. Like the apocryphal "white-swan hypothesis", you don't make it stronger by finding another white swan, you make it stronger by looking *really hard* for a black swan, and not finding it.