They certainly do make specific predictions. The IPCC report has graphs with considerable detail. Decades ago climatologists were making predictions about how fast glaciers wold melt, and they're melting faster than the predictions. Your claims that climatologists are not doing science by not making falsifiable predictions is absurd.
It looks like David Viner really did say that England would have no snow in a few years. No climate research supports this conclusion. I suggest we pay no attention to what Dr. Viner says about climate change. Now, as for the thousands of other climate scientists who nearly all are in agreement, I suggest we pay them a listen. One bad apple don't ruin the whole bunch!
Most predictions I've seen stop at the end of the 21st century. It's uncommon to see climate predictions past 2100. This is the case firstly because the predictions will be less accurate the farther out the are, and because we simply don't need to make predictions past 2100 to know that we should reduce carbon dioxide emissions significantly.
Re:Climate is what you expect...
on
Bastardi's Wager
·
· Score: 1
Yes, the system is complex, but predicting aggregate features of it can be simple. You are a complex human being, but it I push you off a 200 foot building I can calculate your moment of impact with the ground quite accurately.
Arrhenius predicted a 4 degree Celsius increase in temperature with a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The latest estimate is between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius. It's not a guess; it's based on testing hypothesis. It's a calculation using formulas that have been verified. Science isn't guessing. Please learn the difference if you're going to discuss it.
No, it's a simple physics calculation to show the warming due to an increase in carbon dioxide that will occur over the course of a hundred years or so. It isn't like rolling dice at all.
But when? Under what circumstances or assumptions? Could the journalist possibly taken that phrase out of context? I see journalists doing things like that all the time. Just look at how the popular media reports any scientific finding. Now, can you show me where a climatologist actually predicted that there would be no snow in England by 2010?
Yes, there is much more warming in the Arctic than in other locations. There's also lots of ice there. Some of it is in the ocean already so that ice melting will not increase sea level. Much of the ice is on land, and when it melts it flows into the sea. The Antarctic ice, most of which is on land, is also melting.
I don't think you're following the point. In the coin flip example, the distribution does not change. In climate, the point is the distribution is changing. We can do statistics to determine the likelihood of the change in measurements being due to chance. The result is that the warming we've measured is very unlikely to be due to chance. Add to that the fact that the warming was predicted decades before it was ever measured, and we've got good evidence that carbon dioxide form burning fossil fuels has caused most of the measured warming.
Re:Climate is what you expect...
on
Bastardi's Wager
·
· Score: 1
Whether the temperature will increase or decrease is not complex in the least. If you increase the amount of greenhouse gasses, simple chemistry and physics tell you how much the temperature will increase. And the measurements of that increase match closely with what was predicted over 100 years ago by Arrhenius. The hypothesis has been literally confirmed by observation. Are you saying it's just amazing luck that the observed temperature increase matches the prediction?
And we all know that journalists always get quotes right. You're showing that a journalist claims that a climatologist said that snow would become rare in England. Can you show where a climatologist actually said England would have no snow?
Re:Climate is what you expect...
on
Bastardi's Wager
·
· Score: 1
There's no need to assume. I can flip the coin and directly measure the distribution of heads and tails. I measure the ratio of heads to tails to any degree of accuracy (e.g. to 50.001% vs. 49.999%) and to any confidence level (e.g. to 99% confidence) you name, by making the required number of measurements, assuming the flips are independent and identically distributed. It's called statistics.
It hasn't been warming at 0.2 degrees per decade for the past 20000 years. That's the rate the earth has been warming for the past fifty years or so. This warming was predicted over 100 years ago by Arrhenius.
People will not be inundated by the sea. Areas where people live will be inundated by the sea. The people will move. Of course 10000 years ago people didn't build elaborate structures on beaches and we didn't have a worldwide economy, so it wasn't nearly that big of a deal. This century, the lost infrastructure could cost many billions of dollars.
The main effects correlated with mean temperature are melting of ice and thermal expansion of seawater, both of which raise sea level. If sea level rises by a few meters, hundreds of millions of people will be displaced. Another problem is that seasonal snow and ice will melt more quickly in areas that depend on that water over the summer.
The hundreds of millions of people who live in areas that will become inundated by the sea this century if temperatures rise a few degrees think it has an impact.
Re:Climate is what you expect...
on
Bastardi's Wager
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
It's more like: climate is a probability distribution and weather is the specific outcome measured. If I have a fair coin, I can say that 50% of the time it will come up heads and 50% it will come up tails. I cannot say what the result of any particular flip can be, however. This is why it doesn't make sense to claim, "We can't even predict the weather 10 days from now, so how can we predict the climate 10 years from now?" One thing is a specific measurement (hard to predict) and the other thing is a probability distribution (easy to predict).
Because stating that 2000's was the hottest decade is comparing that decade to the 1980's, and 1970's, and 1960's, and 1950's, etc. Those periods of time are more than 10 years long. The global average temperature has been warming for 40-50 years.
If you have a beef with an editor, you can resort to mediation or contacting an admin. If someone is engaging in a edit war to remove someone else's edits, their disruptive behavior should be reported so it will stop.
In any case, established experts should not use their own expertise as the basis for making edits -- they need to cite reliable sources. After all, why simply take someone's word that information is correct? The so-called expert may be wrong!
This is why articles have discussion pages, so editors who disagree can argue their points and reach a consensus. It's also why Wikipedia articles should cite reliable sources, so everyone can verify the information. If you go in to fix an article without any discussion and without citing a source, you shouldn't be surprised if your edit is reverted. The other editor is simply doing what you did -- putting information they think is correct into the article without discussion or citation.
Errors in sources is why it's a good idea to use multiple independent sources when doing important research. This applies whether using Wikipedia or traditional written material. If everyone used one source of information, errors would simply be copied and copied again.
This is why it's important to cite reliable sources, so any reader can verify the information. The real problem with Wikipedia is not the incorrect information (although there certainly are some errors), but all the useless crud that keeps gathering in articles. Many editors love to add useless trivia or irrelevant information that distracts from the important points. People tend to forget that it's an encyclopedia, not a place to deposit the sum total of all human knowledge on every subject. Encyclopedia articles should cover only the most important aspects of a subject. Readers who want every little detail should go to the sources or other material referred to in the article.
All browsers are non-compliant, in the sense that no browser supports all published web standards 100% accurately. The fail score in IE9 certainly is meaningful -- IE9 does not support SVG fonts or SMIL animation. Again, if you know what the Acid test is testing, you can interpret the results of the test accurately. IE9 scoring 95/100 is great news for web developers -- they can use the JavaScript and DOM features that will become more important as browsers support complicated user interfaces in HTML. Or, that is, they can when IE9 becomes popular. The next step is for browsers to support HTML5 well.
Slashdot Mirror
They certainly do make specific predictions. The IPCC report has graphs with considerable detail. Decades ago climatologists were making predictions about how fast glaciers wold melt, and they're melting faster than the predictions. Your claims that climatologists are not doing science by not making falsifiable predictions is absurd.
It looks like David Viner really did say that England would have no snow in a few years. No climate research supports this conclusion. I suggest we pay no attention to what Dr. Viner says about climate change. Now, as for the thousands of other climate scientists who nearly all are in agreement, I suggest we pay them a listen. One bad apple don't ruin the whole bunch!
Most predictions I've seen stop at the end of the 21st century. It's uncommon to see climate predictions past 2100. This is the case firstly because the predictions will be less accurate the farther out the are, and because we simply don't need to make predictions past 2100 to know that we should reduce carbon dioxide emissions significantly.
Yes, it could possibly be. But it isn't.
Yes, the system is complex, but predicting aggregate features of it can be simple. You are a complex human being, but it I push you off a 200 foot building I can calculate your moment of impact with the ground quite accurately.
Arrhenius predicted a 4 degree Celsius increase in temperature with a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The latest estimate is between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius. It's not a guess; it's based on testing hypothesis. It's a calculation using formulas that have been verified. Science isn't guessing. Please learn the difference if you're going to discuss it.
No, it's a simple physics calculation to show the warming due to an increase in carbon dioxide that will occur over the course of a hundred years or so. It isn't like rolling dice at all.
But when? Under what circumstances or assumptions? Could the journalist possibly taken that phrase out of context? I see journalists doing things like that all the time. Just look at how the popular media reports any scientific finding. Now, can you show me where a climatologist actually predicted that there would be no snow in England by 2010?
Yes, there is much more warming in the Arctic than in other locations. There's also lots of ice there. Some of it is in the ocean already so that ice melting will not increase sea level. Much of the ice is on land, and when it melts it flows into the sea. The Antarctic ice, most of which is on land, is also melting.
I don't think you're following the point. In the coin flip example, the distribution does not change. In climate, the point is the distribution is changing. We can do statistics to determine the likelihood of the change in measurements being due to chance. The result is that the warming we've measured is very unlikely to be due to chance. Add to that the fact that the warming was predicted decades before it was ever measured, and we've got good evidence that carbon dioxide form burning fossil fuels has caused most of the measured warming.
Whether the temperature will increase or decrease is not complex in the least. If you increase the amount of greenhouse gasses, simple chemistry and physics tell you how much the temperature will increase. And the measurements of that increase match closely with what was predicted over 100 years ago by Arrhenius. The hypothesis has been literally confirmed by observation. Are you saying it's just amazing luck that the observed temperature increase matches the prediction?
And we all know that journalists always get quotes right. You're showing that a journalist claims that a climatologist said that snow would become rare in England. Can you show where a climatologist actually said England would have no snow?
There's no need to assume. I can flip the coin and directly measure the distribution of heads and tails. I measure the ratio of heads to tails to any degree of accuracy (e.g. to 50.001% vs. 49.999%) and to any confidence level (e.g. to 99% confidence) you name, by making the required number of measurements, assuming the flips are independent and identically distributed. It's called statistics.
It hasn't been warming at 0.2 degrees per decade for the past 20000 years. That's the rate the earth has been warming for the past fifty years or so. This warming was predicted over 100 years ago by Arrhenius.
People will not be inundated by the sea. Areas where people live will be inundated by the sea. The people will move. Of course 10000 years ago people didn't build elaborate structures on beaches and we didn't have a worldwide economy, so it wasn't nearly that big of a deal. This century, the lost infrastructure could cost many billions of dollars.
Please show me where a climatologist predicted "England would not have snow in winter any more". I haven't seen it.
The main effects correlated with mean temperature are melting of ice and thermal expansion of seawater, both of which raise sea level. If sea level rises by a few meters, hundreds of millions of people will be displaced. Another problem is that seasonal snow and ice will melt more quickly in areas that depend on that water over the summer.
The hundreds of millions of people who live in areas that will become inundated by the sea this century if temperatures rise a few degrees think it has an impact.
It's more like: climate is a probability distribution and weather is the specific outcome measured. If I have a fair coin, I can say that 50% of the time it will come up heads and 50% it will come up tails. I cannot say what the result of any particular flip can be, however. This is why it doesn't make sense to claim, "We can't even predict the weather 10 days from now, so how can we predict the climate 10 years from now?" One thing is a specific measurement (hard to predict) and the other thing is a probability distribution (easy to predict).
Because stating that 2000's was the hottest decade is comparing that decade to the 1980's, and 1970's, and 1960's, and 1950's, etc. Those periods of time are more than 10 years long. The global average temperature has been warming for 40-50 years.
If you have a beef with an editor, you can resort to mediation or contacting an admin. If someone is engaging in a edit war to remove someone else's edits, their disruptive behavior should be reported so it will stop.
In any case, established experts should not use their own expertise as the basis for making edits -- they need to cite reliable sources. After all, why simply take someone's word that information is correct? The so-called expert may be wrong!
This is why articles have discussion pages, so editors who disagree can argue their points and reach a consensus. It's also why Wikipedia articles should cite reliable sources, so everyone can verify the information. If you go in to fix an article without any discussion and without citing a source, you shouldn't be surprised if your edit is reverted. The other editor is simply doing what you did -- putting information they think is correct into the article without discussion or citation.
Did you cite a reliable source when you made your edits?
Errors in sources is why it's a good idea to use multiple independent sources when doing important research. This applies whether using Wikipedia or traditional written material. If everyone used one source of information, errors would simply be copied and copied again.
This is why it's important to cite reliable sources, so any reader can verify the information. The real problem with Wikipedia is not the incorrect information (although there certainly are some errors), but all the useless crud that keeps gathering in articles. Many editors love to add useless trivia or irrelevant information that distracts from the important points. People tend to forget that it's an encyclopedia, not a place to deposit the sum total of all human knowledge on every subject. Encyclopedia articles should cover only the most important aspects of a subject. Readers who want every little detail should go to the sources or other material referred to in the article.
All browsers are non-compliant, in the sense that no browser supports all published web standards 100% accurately. The fail score in IE9 certainly is meaningful -- IE9 does not support SVG fonts or SMIL animation. Again, if you know what the Acid test is testing, you can interpret the results of the test accurately. IE9 scoring 95/100 is great news for web developers -- they can use the JavaScript and DOM features that will become more important as browsers support complicated user interfaces in HTML. Or, that is, they can when IE9 becomes popular. The next step is for browsers to support HTML5 well.