Regarding station data errors, I have an interesting story. People used to judge the brightness of stars by eyeballing and comparing to other stars. A rating of 10 was given to the brightest stars and 1 to the dimmest. Thousands of stars were surveyed by thousands of people. The instruments used for measuring brightness (eyeballs) were very poor compared to what we use today. It was found however that the average of the eyeball results were correct to two decimal places for any given star. By oversampling you can get good results from imperfect instruments. It's also important to note that with temperatures we are only interested in the anomaly - how much did the temperature change vs the same day last year. Any station that has a systemic error of two degrees will keep the same error from one day to the next. It won't record +2 degrees one day and then -2 the next. Since we're only interested in the anomaly it doesn't really matter that it's not recording the correct temperature - only that it is consistent.
Watts has been able to find some rural stations that show no warming. This is not surprising. If you aggregate the results (as has been done in the scientific literature) you will find that well placed stations show more warming. I agree that this is not what he had hoped to find, and he has done his best to spin the results by focusing on key weather stations and ignoring the bigger picture.
The last decade was the warmest on record. It can hardly be considered a cooling phase. The decade was ended with the hottest year on record. I recommend visiting http://www.woodfortrees.org/. This site lets you plot the data from various sources and compare against various forcings. Add a trend line to the data and judge for yourself whether the last decade is in line with the trend or represents a cooling phase. Here is an example of the CRU data and trend line: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2011/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2011/trend
There are certain fingerprints we can look for to determine whether the current warming is caused by increased carbon. For instance in 1896 Svante Arrhenius predicted that nights should warm faster than days if there is an increase in greenhouse gasses. If the warming was due to increased solar activity we should expect days to warm faster than nights.
There are other indicators as well. With an increase in greenhouse gases we would expect the poles to warm faster than the equator, and winter to warm faster than summer. These are all fingerprints that we are able to detect. This gives us confidence that we are attributing the warming to the correct cause.
There really is no evidence of data 'fiddling'. NOAA makes the raw data available. They make the adjusted data available. The process they use to adjust the data (to account for relocation of weather stations/urban heat islands/etc) is also available and part of the peer reviewed literature.
A retired meteorologist named Anthony Watts did a great job of validating the robustness of the data. He (and a small army of volunteers) rated the weather stations based on how well they met requirements. Weather stations outside of urban areas and away from pavement were rated a 5. Poorly placed weather stations were rated a 1. He had hoped to find that poorly placed weather stations were responsible for the warming trend. In the end it was found that well placed weather stations actually record a greater warming trend. The reason for this may be that the warming trend of poorly placed weather stations is masked by the artificial heat in the area.
Most locations in the world are oversampled. We have high confidence in the results for those areas. Some locations such as Antarctica are under sampled. We have less confidence in the results for those areas.
Luckily we also have satellite data since 1979. The satellite data confirms the weather station data.
We have a very clear understanding of the global temperature. It's going up at a rate that is likely unprecedented over the last 1000 years.
There is a good 150 years of science and investigation behind global warming as well: (http://www.aip.org/history/climate/timeline.htm)
1824
Fourier calculates that the Earth would be far colder if it lacked an atmosphere.
1859
Tyndall discovers that some gases block infrared radiation. He suggests that changes in the concentration of the gases could bring climate change.
1896
Arrhenius publishes first calculation of global warming from human emissions of CO2
1897
Chamberlin produces a model for global carbon exchange including feedbacks.
1909
R.W. Wood proves that greenhouses are not primarily heated by the poorly named 'greenhouse effect'.
1938
Callendar argues that CO2 greenhouse global warming is underway, reviving interest in the question.
1956
Ewing and Donn offer a feedback model for quick ice age onset.
Phillips produces a somewhat realistic computer model of the global atmosphere.
1957
Revelle finds that CO2 produced by humans will not be readily absorbed by the oceans.
1963
Calculations suggest that feedback with water vapor could make the climate acutely sensitive to changes in CO2 level.
Etc
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One does not predict warming, it's just describes a theoretical climate model. The other predicts warming and cooling.
Umm, no. It evaluates various forcings. Some of those are negative, some are positive. It predicts a 2C warming for doubling of CO2. This is 1970, remember? When nobody was talking about global warming?
Basically we can measure incoming radiation and outgoing radiation.
All this does, at best, is measure the concentration of certain light absorbing gases.
Wow, not even close. Measuring whether an increase in incoming radiation tracks an increase in greenhouse gasses is not a useful way to determine what gasses are present. You need to know what gasses are present in order to determine whether the increase in radiation is tracking the gasses according to theory. What this tests is the greenhouse effect. It proves that the theory can correctly predict the increase in incoming radiation based on the increase in greenhouse gasses. You don't appear to understand what the theory is but you are certain it is wrong and cannot be proven. This is the theory. This is what it predicts. This can be measured. The measurements provide the proof.
That's not exactly it. "We cannot prove that the warming is not random noise" is closer
I thought you would argue that, that's why I gave you a link to the definition, but I guess you believe your definition is better.
If you are arguing against my definition then you are arguing that p(M|N)=p(N|M). This is not something I would have expected from a master of logical fallacies.
Still, if there was uncontrollable cyclic warming you would need to assume that the warming would be more significant than the noise. It is not. Why won’t you address that?
WTF is 'uncontrollable cyclic warming'? Why would I need to assume that the warming over 15 years would be more significant that the noise? This is laughable. You can't disprove a theory by inventing a condition and asking people to assume something (that doesn't follow) based on the invented condition. None of this is in the literature. You still really don't know what 'it' is or what 'it' predicts.
You're acting as if it's a conspiracy theory still. It's well established fact. The emails were real. The shit code...
This stuff is real. You choose to ignore it because the people who commit these heinous acts are proponents of AGW.
Oh dear... Look. This is all a side show. They may be the devil. They may eat babies. It doesn't impact whether what they say is right or not. I'm not going to dismiss Mr X just because he is an oil industry shill. I will dismiss or accept him based on the quality of his work. Let's focus on the facts and the science and leave the personalities and conspiracies aside.
Let me take this argument down to its root:
You have just spend a great deal of time showing that you really don't understand the root of the argument, what the greenhouse effect is, or how one would go about proving it. Here are some questions for you:
If the current warming is driven primarily by the greenhouse effect, where should we expect the most warming? Poles or equator? Night or day? Winter or summer? Where are we seeing warming? Likewise, if the current warming is driven primarily by increased solar output, where should we expect the most warming? Poles or equator? Night or day? Winter or summer? Where are we seeing warming?
As a skeptic all I need to do is kick back and poke holes in it using my logic stick.
Skepticism implies more than just saying 'nuh uh!'. It implies a certain amount of curiosity. This curiosity should lead the skeptic to a basic understanding of what it is he is skeptical about. Otherwise he is not really being skeptica
Re:If you can predict the weather 100 years from n
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How about Ramanathan & Coakley (1978)? The 1970 SCEP report?
The first report says in the forward that it leaves out many of the variables I listed. The second report forecasts both cooling, maybe due to particulates and warming, maybe due to C02
The first is a paper that focuses on the effects of CO2. The second is a report that attempts to account for many factors and concludes that there will be a 2C temperature rise with doubling of CO2. Both are valid. You criticize one for not including confounding factors and the other for including them.
What are you talking about?
Basically we can measure incoming radiation and outgoing radiation. As you are aware the greenhouse theory predicts that with increased greenhouse gasses we should see greater incoming. The impact of this will be obvious to anyone who has used an infrared BBQ. This test has been performed. It confirms the theory. If it did not then the theory would have been falsified.
You mentioned this before. I pointed out that it doesn't mean what you think it means. You will need to study statistics for this one.
Let reword it so stupid old me can understand it better: There has been no detectable warming in the last 15 years.
That's not exactly it. "We cannot prove that the warming is not random noise" is closer, but not exactly correct either. In fact, even if the trend was statistically significant we still would not have proven this. Here is the subtlety: saying "there is a low probability of finding our specific measurement if our system would just produce noise" is not the same as saying that "there is a low probability that the system just produces noise."
Ok, for the next few paragraphs you descend into conspiracy theory territory
Ya, Science Daily, real lunatic fringe stuff:
It comes down to this: You can choose to ignore the people you disagree with by ascribing nefarious motivations. I can do the same (and I'm sure you have seen people on this side who have). We will end up with very different realities. The fact is there is only one reality. We need to focus on the facts and the science if we are to make sense of this world. Similarly, you can find people who disagree with you that have committed logical fallacies and use that to conclude that global warming isn't testable. It is. It has been tested. Let's focus on the facts.
It's just not in a format that I think you will be able to process.
Heh, Ad captandum, or is that Ad hominem? My poor brain! I’m too stupid to be able to understand things the way others can! Or did you mean I couldn’t open it in excel:)
It's not in a format that can be opened in Excel. To further confound things, it is not gridded (but does include coordinates). As you are aware, taking the average of the temperatures will not give you the average temperature of the globe, it will only give you the average of the temperatures. If you would like I can point you towards some code. Alternatively I can show you how to use the sources you provide to look at the decade over decade increase. Either way you will see that the last decade warmed much more than the one before it. It almost looks like the warming is accelerating, but it is too early to tell.
Iceland did not bail out its banks, they let them fail (and were branded as terrorists by the UK for doing so).... The economy of Iceland is actually growing again, which is more than can be said for "The Eurozone"
It was ugly though... Real ugly. I'm not sure if America would have tolerated that level of ugly.
Countries that did well through the downturn are those that had low debt and high regulation. The U.S. isn't addressing either of these. Be prepared for more interesting times ahead.
Re:If you can predict the weather 100 years from n
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Find me anyone in the 70's talking about AGW. Would be even better if you could produce a study predicting this as you claimed.
How about Ramanathan & Coakley (1978)? This is a cornerstone paper. If you are interested in the subject it is one that you really should read. Looking for something earlier? how about The 1970 SCEP report? This predicted a 2C warming with doubling of CO2.
My point in saying it only works in a greenhouse is to say: it does not work in the atmosphere.
The radiative properties of CO2 are different in the atmosphere than they are everywhere else? This is a bold theory indeed. By what process do you suppose this change comes about?
I know that nobody knows exactly how the "greenhouse effect" works. For instance, consider radiative cooling, something not considered in the greenhouse effect, yet we know it exists. How can you leave radiative cooling out of any equations? Or solar cycles? Volcanic activity? The list goes on and on. To claim that because we understand how gases behave in the lab means that we know how gases behave in the atmosphere is naive.
The climate is not simple. Luckily neither are we. All of the things you mention are considered. I'm rather shocked that you think you have come up with a half dozen items that the scientists somehow missed.
Please tell me what would falsify 'greenhouse effect'. Or did you just conclude that it could not be falsified?
Here's an idea. What if we took an infrared camera and measured the observed opacity of the atmosphere? If it didn't line up with the theoretical value then we would know something was wrong with the theory. What if we measured incoming and outgoing long wave radiation? What if we measured it over time to see if the delta matched the predicted value? Darn! If only scientists had thought to do this! Then we wouldn't have to be arguing about radiative physics 101!
href="http://wizbangblog.com/content/2010/02/14/climate-scientist-phil-jones-no-global-warming-since-1995.php">for the past 15 years there has been no 'statistically significant' warming.
You mentioned this before. I pointed out that it doesn't mean what you think it means. You will need to study statistics for this one. Any first year textbook should do it.
Ok, for the next few paragraphs you descend into conspiracy theory territory. I'm not going to follow you there and you would do well not to stray there yourself. You may end up sounding a little nutty. Let's stick to the facts.
You ignore the raw data from NOAA, met office, calling them “Cherry picked”
I didn't say that the NOAA data was cherry picked. It's just not in a format that I think you will be able to process. It's available here: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2. I encourage you use it to investigate the decade over decade increases. Note that the rate of increase is accelerating. Also note that the change for each decade is greater than that found in the NASA data. This is because NASA adjusts for UHI. This adjustment decreases the rate of warming.
Re:If you can predict the weather 100 years from n
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No, I guess the consensus view then was that the globe was uncontrollably cooling due to man's pollution.
In the face of predictions of global cooling, scientists predicted that CO2 would become the driving factor in global temperatures. It looks like they were right.
Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere behave much like the glass panes in a greenhouse.
That was easy.
I don't think the EPA has done you any favours by dumbing it down like this. Greenhouses work by preventing convective heat transfer. The greenhouse effect works because the atmosphere is partly opaque to ultraviolet and infrared while it is transparent to visible light. It was shown in 1906 that the greenhouse effect is not primarily responsible for heating greenhouses. Based on your misunderstanding, I can see why you were skeptical.
Greenhouse effect is a unproven theory that lies at the heart of AGW. I'm telling you it's just a theory just like AGW is, and you should avoid calling it fact when it is not.
There are technologies based on the radiative properties of CO2. The theory has not been successfully challenged for 180 years. You will need to show that the theory is flawed and that giants like Fourier were wrong. Simply repeating "there is no such thing" is not sufficient given the mountains of evidence supporting it. You have shown that you don't understand what 'it' is by assuming that it is responsible for heating greenhouses. You are a long way from understanding it let alone proving it false.
You actually quoted me and then went on to not answer the question? You cannot falsify it, can you? Doesn't that make you question the theory? Why not answer that simple question?
If temperatures had gone down instead of up then the scientists in the 1970's who said that CO2 would become the driving factor in global climate would have been provably wrong. It turns out they were not.
The 70's were 0.03C wamer than the 60's. The 80's 0.18C warmer than the 70's. The 90's 0.12C warmer than the 80's. The 2000's 0.24C warmer than the 90's. This is exactly consistent with the theory.
Citation please.
Sure thing. I see by the link you provided that you are confused between US temperatures and global temperatures. For global temperatures you will need to go here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt. You will need to sum the monthly anomalies for each decade and divide by 120. Warming didn't stop in the last decade. The last decade was 0.24C warmer than the one before it.
But really, you need to provide links to the sources of your information, I'm not going to just take your word for it. If you can't do that than this is sort of pointless.
The data is available. I encourage you to leverage it. There are certain special interest groups on both sides that would cherry pick in order to present a picture that confirms their preconceptions. You seem to be vilifying the special interest groups on one side and accepting the other. My advise would be to ignore them both and go straight to the data. Don't listen to the WWF or the think tanks, listen to the science. The truth is in the middle.
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There were tons of outlandish claims made more than 20 years ago about how there would be no more coastal cities in the year 2000, no drinking water, no food. They all proved themselves to be absolutely wrong.
That was not the consensus view. I'm not convinced that there were any papers predicting this. You need to stop putting too much stock in the outlyers - pay attention to the the aggrigate of our understanding. The consensus view was that temperature would rise 3C with a doubling of C02. The temperatures have tracked this prediction.
It is basic physics.
The greenhouse effect works... in a greenhouse! That's it!
You are mistaken. The greenhouse effect has nothing to do with greenhouses. I understand the confusion - it probably could have been better named. The radiative properties of C02 are very well understood. If you are interested in this topic you really should crack open a physics text book and find the answer. I'm not going to try to write a textbook for you here on slashdot.
There is no evidence that C02 causes warming in the earth’s atmosphere. If it did, increasing levels would bring increasing temperatures, they have not. As the C02 levels have risen over the last decade we have seen a leveling off of the temperature, not a positive feedback loop AS WAS THE PREDICTION.
The 70's were 0.03C wamer than the 60's. The 80's 0.18C warmer than the 70's. The 90's 0.12C warmer than the 80's. The 2000's 0.24C warmer than the 90's. This is exactly consistent with the theory.
I asked that you explain your theory and make it falsifiable.
The problem is that the radiative properties of C02 are just very very well understood. If radiative physics was wrong then things like guided missles wouldn't work. (They do.) Temperatures wouldn't rise with increased C02 (They have). Every decade since the 70's skeptics have predicted global cooling. Every decade since the 70's they have been wrong. Now we have another vocal skeptic making the same bet that has been made every decade for the last 4. I'd take him up on it in a heartbeat. I'd also be willing to bet against anyone who thinks the Generals are due to win against the Globe Trotters;)
Re:If you can predict the weather 100 years from n
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It has been proven that C02 follows temperature increases not the other way around. Even though the AGW theory flies in the face of this fact the AGW faithful are not dissuaded
You are absolutely right! (Except for the last part which doesn't quite follow) Higher temperatures means more CO2 will be released into the atmosphere from the oceans. This is one of the (many) positive feedbacks that have scientists worried.
You need to show how your theory works and make it falsifiable.
It is basic physics. Crack open a university textbook and this will be explained. This has been well understood since 1824. Fourier was the pioneer in this field.
They have been right every decade since.
They have been wrong every decade since. They have predicted uncontrollable warming. This has not come to pass.
Warming has been consistent with a forcing of 3C/doubling of CO2. This is the expected warming.
I'm sure you understand that statistical significance in a noisy signal cannot be obtained over a short period. This does not mean that the last decade was not warmer than the previous one - it was. The trend is clear.
Ehrlich, an AGW proponent, said in the 70's that "England would not exist in the year 2000". You can't really believe that "they" have been right every decade since. I'm going to need a citation of a AGW proponent in the 70's that predicted the climate we have today. And while you're at it explain how you, or anyone, knows with any certainty how the climate works. I'm anxiously awaiting your reply.
If you really want to understand a scientific field you would do well to ignore what any one person says and focus on the literature. You would also do well to ignore any one paper and focus on the picture that emerges from the sum of the findings.
The only thing I've not really been able to figure out from the entire climate discussion is what is meant by "average temperature" in the first place.
The idea of taking some temperature measurements at various geographic locations and then averaging those values doesn't seem to make much physical sense to me, because there is no meaningful method by which to perform an average....
I am much more willing to look at other parameters which do have a better "average" information content. Sea level, snow cover (both max and min amounts, as well as time spent at those amounts) because those are inherently continuous phenomena that are not subject to interpolation errors.
You make a good point. It's never going to be perfect. Scientists try to show the margin of error in the various reconstructions. With enough data points and over a long enough period of time you can get a pretty clear picture of what is happening.
Sea level and snow cover also have problems. Sea level raises and lowers in various regions based on a number of factors including geological and climatological. This is possibly harder to measure than the global average temperature because with temperature we are able to leverage thousands of existing weather stations. I suspect that there are fewer existing data points for sea level.
Snow coverage has problems too. The atmosphere has 4% more moisture than it did 70 years ago due to warmer temperature. This leads to increased precipitation. As long as the temperature is below 0C this will fall as snow. You are not necessarily going to see a linear decline of snow coverage as the earth warms. The trick is to tease out the truth from all of the available data. Take all of these together and the picture becomes clearer.
Actually, a question and it may actually convince me to accept the concept of "average temperature": do thermal satellites have the capability to do a true area-continuous temperature measurement?
Unfortunately satellite measurement is not perfect either. See the section "Determination" in the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/satellite_temperature_measurements. To sum up: The satellite series is not fully homogeneous. The sensors deteriorate over time, as do the orbits. These need to be corrected for. The good news is that they are in pretty good agreement with the surface station reconstructions.
I have other questions as well, for instance, is average temperature really the critical parameter or is it median temperature? Actual max vs actual min? Is it something more related to the square of the deviation from the mean ("signal power")?
Good questions. Mean is available here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp. You would need to go the source data available form NOAA to calculate the median. It would be interesting to see the results.
Re:If you can predict the weather 100 years from n
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If you can predict the weather 100 years from now you had better be able to predict the weather 100 days from now. If your prediction of weather 100 days from now is not 100% accurate you can bet 100 years from now it will be totally wrong.
People were rightfully skeptical in the 70's when some scientists predicted (despite then declining temperatures) that CO2 would become the driving factor for climate and force the globe to heat. They have been right every decade since. At some point even the most skeptical person must concede that those guys in the 70's were probably on to something.
The next decade will very likely be warmer than the last. Every decade for the last 4 has been hotter than the last. The 90's ended with a super El Nino (in 1998). That year broke the record for hottest year by a large margin. It was the hottest decade on record. At the time it seemed unfathomable that the 2000's would be warmer than the last.
There is no reason that 2010 should have been hotter than 1998. For half of last year there was a moderate to strong El Nino, but for the other half there was a moderate to strong La Nina. Low solar activity has had skeptics predicting global cooling. Once again they were wrong.
In 10 years there will still be people betting that the following decade will be the cooler than the last - how could it not?
Slashdot Mirror
Regarding station data errors, I have an interesting story. People used to judge the brightness of stars by eyeballing and comparing to other stars. A rating of 10 was given to the brightest stars and 1 to the dimmest. Thousands of stars were surveyed by thousands of people. The instruments used for measuring brightness (eyeballs) were very poor compared to what we use today. It was found however that the average of the eyeball results were correct to two decimal places for any given star. By oversampling you can get good results from imperfect instruments. It's also important to note that with temperatures we are only interested in the anomaly - how much did the temperature change vs the same day last year. Any station that has a systemic error of two degrees will keep the same error from one day to the next. It won't record +2 degrees one day and then -2 the next. Since we're only interested in the anomaly it doesn't really matter that it's not recording the correct temperature - only that it is consistent.
Watts has been able to find some rural stations that show no warming. This is not surprising. If you aggregate the results (as has been done in the scientific literature) you will find that well placed stations show more warming. I agree that this is not what he had hoped to find, and he has done his best to spin the results by focusing on key weather stations and ignoring the bigger picture.
The last decade was the warmest on record. It can hardly be considered a cooling phase. The decade was ended with the hottest year on record. I recommend visiting http://www.woodfortrees.org/. This site lets you plot the data from various sources and compare against various forcings. Add a trend line to the data and judge for yourself whether the last decade is in line with the trend or represents a cooling phase. Here is an example of the CRU data and trend line: http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2011/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1970/to:2011/trend
There are certain fingerprints we can look for to determine whether the current warming is caused by increased carbon. For instance in 1896 Svante Arrhenius predicted that nights should warm faster than days if there is an increase in greenhouse gasses. If the warming was due to increased solar activity we should expect days to warm faster than nights.
There are other indicators as well. With an increase in greenhouse gases we would expect the poles to warm faster than the equator, and winter to warm faster than summer. These are all fingerprints that we are able to detect. This gives us confidence that we are attributing the warming to the correct cause.
There really is no evidence of data 'fiddling'. NOAA makes the raw data available. They make the adjusted data available. The process they use to adjust the data (to account for relocation of weather stations/urban heat islands/etc) is also available and part of the peer reviewed literature.
A retired meteorologist named Anthony Watts did a great job of validating the robustness of the data. He (and a small army of volunteers) rated the weather stations based on how well they met requirements. Weather stations outside of urban areas and away from pavement were rated a 5. Poorly placed weather stations were rated a 1. He had hoped to find that poorly placed weather stations were responsible for the warming trend. In the end it was found that well placed weather stations actually record a greater warming trend. The reason for this may be that the warming trend of poorly placed weather stations is masked by the artificial heat in the area.
Most locations in the world are oversampled. We have high confidence in the results for those areas. Some locations such as Antarctica are under sampled. We have less confidence in the results for those areas.
Luckily we also have satellite data since 1979. The satellite data confirms the weather station data.
We have a very clear understanding of the global temperature. It's going up at a rate that is likely unprecedented over the last 1000 years.
There is a good 150 years of science and investigation behind global warming as well: (http://www.aip.org/history/climate/timeline.htm)
1824
Fourier calculates that the Earth would be far colder if it lacked an atmosphere.
1859
Tyndall discovers that some gases block infrared radiation. He suggests that changes in the concentration of the gases could bring climate change.
1896
Arrhenius publishes first calculation of global warming from human emissions of CO2
1897
Chamberlin produces a model for global carbon exchange including feedbacks.
1909
R.W. Wood proves that greenhouses are not primarily heated by the poorly named 'greenhouse effect'.
1938
Callendar argues that CO2 greenhouse global warming is underway, reviving interest in the question.
1956
Ewing and Donn offer a feedback model for quick ice age onset.
Phillips produces a somewhat realistic computer model of the global atmosphere.
1957
Revelle finds that CO2 produced by humans will not be readily absorbed by the oceans.
1963
Calculations suggest that feedback with water vapor could make the climate acutely sensitive to changes in CO2 level.
Etc
One does not predict warming, it's just describes a theoretical climate model. The other predicts warming and cooling.
Umm, no. It evaluates various forcings. Some of those are negative, some are positive. It predicts a 2C warming for doubling of CO2. This is 1970, remember? When nobody was talking about global warming?
Basically we can measure incoming radiation and outgoing radiation.
All this does, at best, is measure the concentration of certain light absorbing gases.
Wow, not even close. Measuring whether an increase in incoming radiation tracks an increase in greenhouse gasses is not a useful way to determine what gasses are present. You need to know what gasses are present in order to determine whether the increase in radiation is tracking the gasses according to theory. What this tests is the greenhouse effect. It proves that the theory can correctly predict the increase in incoming radiation based on the increase in greenhouse gasses. You don't appear to understand what the theory is but you are certain it is wrong and cannot be proven. This is the theory. This is what it predicts. This can be measured. The measurements provide the proof.
That's not exactly it. "We cannot prove that the warming is not random noise" is closer
I thought you would argue that, that's why I gave you a link to the definition, but I guess you believe your definition is better.
If you are arguing against my definition then you are arguing that p(M|N)=p(N|M). This is not something I would have expected from a master of logical fallacies.
Still, if there was uncontrollable cyclic warming you would need to assume that the warming would be more significant than the noise. It is not. Why won’t you address that?
WTF is 'uncontrollable cyclic warming'? Why would I need to assume that the warming over 15 years would be more significant that the noise? This is laughable. You can't disprove a theory by inventing a condition and asking people to assume something (that doesn't follow) based on the invented condition. None of this is in the literature. You still really don't know what 'it' is or what 'it' predicts.
You're acting as if it's a conspiracy theory still. It's well established fact. The emails were real. The shit code... This stuff is real. You choose to ignore it because the people who commit these heinous acts are proponents of AGW.
Oh dear... Look. This is all a side show. They may be the devil. They may eat babies. It doesn't impact whether what they say is right or not. I'm not going to dismiss Mr X just because he is an oil industry shill. I will dismiss or accept him based on the quality of his work. Let's focus on the facts and the science and leave the personalities and conspiracies aside.
Let me take this argument down to its root:
You have just spend a great deal of time showing that you really don't understand the root of the argument, what the greenhouse effect is, or how one would go about proving it. Here are some questions for you: If the current warming is driven primarily by the greenhouse effect, where should we expect the most warming? Poles or equator? Night or day? Winter or summer? Where are we seeing warming? Likewise, if the current warming is driven primarily by increased solar output, where should we expect the most warming? Poles or equator? Night or day? Winter or summer? Where are we seeing warming?
As a skeptic all I need to do is kick back and poke holes in it using my logic stick.
Skepticism implies more than just saying 'nuh uh!'. It implies a certain amount of curiosity. This curiosity should lead the skeptic to a basic understanding of what it is he is skeptical about. Otherwise he is not really being skeptica
The first report says in the forward that it leaves out many of the variables I listed. The second report forecasts both cooling, maybe due to particulates and warming, maybe due to C02
The first is a paper that focuses on the effects of CO2. The second is a report that attempts to account for many factors and concludes that there will be a 2C temperature rise with doubling of CO2. Both are valid. You criticize one for not including confounding factors and the other for including them.
What are you talking about?
Basically we can measure incoming radiation and outgoing radiation. As you are aware the greenhouse theory predicts that with increased greenhouse gasses we should see greater incoming. The impact of this will be obvious to anyone who has used an infrared BBQ. This test has been performed. It confirms the theory. If it did not then the theory would have been falsified.
You mentioned this before. I pointed out that it doesn't mean what you think it means. You will need to study statistics for this one.
Let reword it so stupid old me can understand it better: There has been no detectable warming in the last 15 years.
That's not exactly it. "We cannot prove that the warming is not random noise" is closer, but not exactly correct either. In fact, even if the trend was statistically significant we still would not have proven this. Here is the subtlety: saying "there is a low probability of finding our specific measurement if our system would just produce noise" is not the same as saying that "there is a low probability that the system just produces noise."
Ya, Science Daily, real lunatic fringe stuff:
It comes down to this: You can choose to ignore the people you disagree with by ascribing nefarious motivations. I can do the same (and I'm sure you have seen people on this side who have). We will end up with very different realities. The fact is there is only one reality. We need to focus on the facts and the science if we are to make sense of this world. Similarly, you can find people who disagree with you that have committed logical fallacies and use that to conclude that global warming isn't testable. It is. It has been tested. Let's focus on the facts.
It's just not in a format that I think you will be able to process.
Heh, Ad captandum, or is that Ad hominem? My poor brain! I’m too stupid to be able to understand things the way others can! Or did you mean I couldn’t open it in excel :)
It's not in a format that can be opened in Excel. To further confound things, it is not gridded (but does include coordinates). As you are aware, taking the average of the temperatures will not give you the average temperature of the globe, it will only give you the average of the temperatures. If you would like I can point you towards some code. Alternatively I can show you how to use the sources you provide to look at the decade over decade increase. Either way you will see that the last decade warmed much more than the one before it. It almost looks like the warming is accelerating, but it is too early to tell.
Iceland did not bail out its banks, they let them fail (and were branded as terrorists by the UK for doing so). ... The economy of Iceland is actually growing again, which is more than can be said for "The Eurozone"
It was ugly though... Real ugly. I'm not sure if America would have tolerated that level of ugly.
Countries that did well through the downturn are those that had low debt and high regulation. The U.S. isn't addressing either of these. Be prepared for more interesting times ahead.
Find me anyone in the 70's talking about AGW. Would be even better if you could produce a study predicting this as you claimed.
How about Ramanathan & Coakley (1978)? This is a cornerstone paper. If you are interested in the subject it is one that you really should read. Looking for something earlier? how about The 1970 SCEP report? This predicted a 2C warming with doubling of CO2.
My point in saying it only works in a greenhouse is to say: it does not work in the atmosphere.
The radiative properties of CO2 are different in the atmosphere than they are everywhere else? This is a bold theory indeed. By what process do you suppose this change comes about?
I know that nobody knows exactly how the "greenhouse effect" works. For instance, consider radiative cooling, something not considered in the greenhouse effect, yet we know it exists. How can you leave radiative cooling out of any equations? Or solar cycles? Volcanic activity? The list goes on and on. To claim that because we understand how gases behave in the lab means that we know how gases behave in the atmosphere is naive.
The climate is not simple. Luckily neither are we. All of the things you mention are considered. I'm rather shocked that you think you have come up with a half dozen items that the scientists somehow missed.
Please tell me what would falsify 'greenhouse effect'. Or did you just conclude that it could not be falsified?
Here's an idea. What if we took an infrared camera and measured the observed opacity of the atmosphere? If it didn't line up with the theoretical value then we would know something was wrong with the theory. What if we measured incoming and outgoing long wave radiation? What if we measured it over time to see if the delta matched the predicted value? Darn! If only scientists had thought to do this! Then we wouldn't have to be arguing about radiative physics 101!
href="http://wizbangblog.com/content/2010/02/14/climate-scientist-phil-jones-no-global-warming-since-1995.php">for the past 15 years there has been no 'statistically significant' warming.
You mentioned this before. I pointed out that it doesn't mean what you think it means. You will need to study statistics for this one. Any first year textbook should do it. Ok, for the next few paragraphs you descend into conspiracy theory territory. I'm not going to follow you there and you would do well not to stray there yourself. You may end up sounding a little nutty. Let's stick to the facts.
You ignore the raw data from NOAA, met office, calling them “Cherry picked”
I didn't say that the NOAA data was cherry picked. It's just not in a format that I think you will be able to process. It's available here: ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/ghcn/v2. I encourage you use it to investigate the decade over decade increases. Note that the rate of increase is accelerating. Also note that the change for each decade is greater than that found in the NASA data. This is because NASA adjusts for UHI. This adjustment decreases the rate of warming.
No, I guess the consensus view then was that the globe was uncontrollably cooling due to man's pollution.
In the face of predictions of global cooling, scientists predicted that CO2 would become the driving factor in global temperatures. It looks like they were right.
Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere behave much like the glass panes in a greenhouse. That was easy.
I don't think the EPA has done you any favours by dumbing it down like this. Greenhouses work by preventing convective heat transfer. The greenhouse effect works because the atmosphere is partly opaque to ultraviolet and infrared while it is transparent to visible light. It was shown in 1906 that the greenhouse effect is not primarily responsible for heating greenhouses. Based on your misunderstanding, I can see why you were skeptical.
Greenhouse effect is a unproven theory that lies at the heart of AGW. I'm telling you it's just a theory just like AGW is, and you should avoid calling it fact when it is not.
There are technologies based on the radiative properties of CO2. The theory has not been successfully challenged for 180 years. You will need to show that the theory is flawed and that giants like Fourier were wrong. Simply repeating "there is no such thing" is not sufficient given the mountains of evidence supporting it. You have shown that you don't understand what 'it' is by assuming that it is responsible for heating greenhouses. You are a long way from understanding it let alone proving it false.
You actually quoted me and then went on to not answer the question? You cannot falsify it, can you? Doesn't that make you question the theory? Why not answer that simple question?
If temperatures had gone down instead of up then the scientists in the 1970's who said that CO2 would become the driving factor in global climate would have been provably wrong. It turns out they were not.
Citation please.
Sure thing. I see by the link you provided that you are confused between US temperatures and global temperatures. For global temperatures you will need to go here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts+dSST.txt. You will need to sum the monthly anomalies for each decade and divide by 120. Warming didn't stop in the last decade. The last decade was 0.24C warmer than the one before it.
But really, you need to provide links to the sources of your information, I'm not going to just take your word for it. If you can't do that than this is sort of pointless.
The data is available. I encourage you to leverage it. There are certain special interest groups on both sides that would cherry pick in order to present a picture that confirms their preconceptions. You seem to be vilifying the special interest groups on one side and accepting the other. My advise would be to ignore them both and go straight to the data. Don't listen to the WWF or the think tanks, listen to the science. The truth is in the middle.
There were tons of outlandish claims made more than 20 years ago about how there would be no more coastal cities in the year 2000, no drinking water, no food. They all proved themselves to be absolutely wrong.
That was not the consensus view. I'm not convinced that there were any papers predicting this. You need to stop putting too much stock in the outlyers - pay attention to the the aggrigate of our understanding. The consensus view was that temperature would rise 3C with a doubling of C02. The temperatures have tracked this prediction.
The greenhouse effect works... in a greenhouse! That's it!
You are mistaken. The greenhouse effect has nothing to do with greenhouses. I understand the confusion - it probably could have been better named. The radiative properties of C02 are very well understood. If you are interested in this topic you really should crack open a physics text book and find the answer. I'm not going to try to write a textbook for you here on slashdot.
There is no evidence that C02 causes warming in the earth’s atmosphere. If it did, increasing levels would bring increasing temperatures, they have not. As the C02 levels have risen over the last decade we have seen a leveling off of the temperature, not a positive feedback loop AS WAS THE PREDICTION .
The 70's were 0.03C wamer than the 60's. The 80's 0.18C warmer than the 70's. The 90's 0.12C warmer than the 80's. The 2000's 0.24C warmer than the 90's. This is exactly consistent with the theory.
I asked that you explain your theory and make it falsifiable.
The problem is that the radiative properties of C02 are just very very well understood. If radiative physics was wrong then things like guided missles wouldn't work. (They do.) Temperatures wouldn't rise with increased C02 (They have). Every decade since the 70's skeptics have predicted global cooling. Every decade since the 70's they have been wrong. Now we have another vocal skeptic making the same bet that has been made every decade for the last 4. I'd take him up on it in a heartbeat. I'd also be willing to bet against anyone who thinks the Generals are due to win against the Globe Trotters ;)
It has been proven that C02 follows temperature increases not the other way around. Even though the AGW theory flies in the face of this fact the AGW faithful are not dissuaded
You are absolutely right! (Except for the last part which doesn't quite follow) Higher temperatures means more CO2 will be released into the atmosphere from the oceans. This is one of the (many) positive feedbacks that have scientists worried.
You need to show how your theory works and make it falsifiable.
It is basic physics. Crack open a university textbook and this will be explained. This has been well understood since 1824. Fourier was the pioneer in this field.
They have been wrong every decade since. They have predicted uncontrollable warming. This has not come to pass.
Warming has been consistent with a forcing of 3C/doubling of CO2. This is the expected warming.
Even Phil Jones conceded there has been no warming in the last 15 years.
I'm sure you understand that statistical significance in a noisy signal cannot be obtained over a short period. This does not mean that the last decade was not warmer than the previous one - it was. The trend is clear.
Ehrlich, an AGW proponent, said in the 70's that "England would not exist in the year 2000". You can't really believe that "they" have been right every decade since. I'm going to need a citation of a AGW proponent in the 70's that predicted the climate we have today. And while you're at it explain how you, or anyone, knows with any certainty how the climate works. I'm anxiously awaiting your reply.
If you really want to understand a scientific field you would do well to ignore what any one person says and focus on the literature. You would also do well to ignore any one paper and focus on the picture that emerges from the sum of the findings.
The only thing I've not really been able to figure out from the entire climate discussion is what is meant by "average temperature" in the first place.
The idea of taking some temperature measurements at various geographic locations and then averaging those values doesn't seem to make much physical sense to me, because there is no meaningful method by which to perform an average. ...
I am much more willing to look at other parameters which do have a better "average" information content. Sea level, snow cover (both max and min amounts, as well as time spent at those amounts) because those are inherently continuous phenomena that are not subject to interpolation errors.
You make a good point. It's never going to be perfect. Scientists try to show the margin of error in the various reconstructions. With enough data points and over a long enough period of time you can get a pretty clear picture of what is happening.
Sea level and snow cover also have problems. Sea level raises and lowers in various regions based on a number of factors including geological and climatological. This is possibly harder to measure than the global average temperature because with temperature we are able to leverage thousands of existing weather stations. I suspect that there are fewer existing data points for sea level.
Snow coverage has problems too. The atmosphere has 4% more moisture than it did 70 years ago due to warmer temperature. This leads to increased precipitation. As long as the temperature is below 0C this will fall as snow. You are not necessarily going to see a linear decline of snow coverage as the earth warms. The trick is to tease out the truth from all of the available data. Take all of these together and the picture becomes clearer.
Actually, a question and it may actually convince me to accept the concept of "average temperature": do thermal satellites have the capability to do a true area-continuous temperature measurement?
Unfortunately satellite measurement is not perfect either. See the section "Determination" in the following link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/satellite_temperature_measurements. To sum up: The satellite series is not fully homogeneous. The sensors deteriorate over time, as do the orbits. These need to be corrected for. The good news is that they are in pretty good agreement with the surface station reconstructions.
I have other questions as well, for instance, is average temperature really the critical parameter or is it median temperature? Actual max vs actual min? Is it something more related to the square of the deviation from the mean ("signal power")?
Good questions. Mean is available here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp. You would need to go the source data available form NOAA to calculate the median. It would be interesting to see the results.
If you can predict the weather 100 years from now you had better be able to predict the weather 100 days from now. If your prediction of weather 100 days from now is not 100% accurate you can bet 100 years from now it will be totally wrong.
People were rightfully skeptical in the 70's when some scientists predicted (despite then declining temperatures) that CO2 would become the driving factor for climate and force the globe to heat. They have been right every decade since. At some point even the most skeptical person must concede that those guys in the 70's were probably on to something.
The next decade will very likely be warmer than the last. Every decade for the last 4 has been hotter than the last. The 90's ended with a super El Nino (in 1998). That year broke the record for hottest year by a large margin. It was the hottest decade on record. At the time it seemed unfathomable that the 2000's would be warmer than the last.
There is no reason that 2010 should have been hotter than 1998. For half of last year there was a moderate to strong El Nino, but for the other half there was a moderate to strong La Nina. Low solar activity has had skeptics predicting global cooling. Once again they were wrong.
In 10 years there will still be people betting that the following decade will be the cooler than the last - how could it not?