Not only that, these "found no malfeasance" results are absurd on their face. They DID hide, throw away and improperly manipulate the data.
No, actually, they didn't.
That's the point of the review-- it turns out they didn't hide, throw away, or manipulate the data.
They did publish one figure (out of a total of many hundred figures in a large number of articles) that was misleading-- but (here's the interesting thing) they explained exactly what they did and why in the figure. If you read the figure, but not the text explaining it, it might have been misleading-- or might not; there is some real controversy about tree ring data, and it's pretty clear that they thought that they were presenting the data in the clearest form. In any case, if you read the text, you would have known exactly what the figure was graphing.
In fact, Nature (the journal in which the arguably-misleading figure was published) had their own review, which concluded that there was no need for a correction, because the article did explain exactly what the figure showed, and why it showed that particular data; it did not need a correction because it was not incorrect.
"Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"
Because that is how science works. Any decent scientist would rather say "here is my data, please help me find something wrong with it."
Well, except that it isn't how science actually works; it's an idealized view of how science "ought" to work, by non-scientists. Right from the very beginning, Galileo first published many of his results in the form of cryptograms, claiming the priority of the discovery, but holding back on the details until he could analyze and confirm his results. As a general thing, no, scientists don't make the details of their data available until they're done analyzing it and have published.
You apparently have a view of scientists that does not accept the fact that they are actually human beings. Let me suggest that if somebody who has already convincingly demonstrated to you (from blog postings) that they do not have a very good understanding of work that you have devoted twenty-five years of your life to comes to you and says "You're wrong, give me your data so I can prove it," your first instinct probably would not be to say "sure, here's all my unpublished work, go wild."
In general, scientists are happy to share their data (after they've finished analyzing it and have published) with other scientists who they believe might have some competence in understanding it.
I read the first lesson, and while it's interesting, so far I'm not impressed. It presents some of the problems with classical physics, but it seems to focus on the wrong problems. The first problem it mentions is that information can't travel faster than the speed of light-- but to address that problem you need more than just introductory quantum mechanics, you need relativistic quantum mechanics, and I just don't think you can get to Dirac's equation in a nine part series without math. Then they ask a question about nuclear physics ("what holds the nucleus together?"), for which, to even understand the question correctly, you need some information that the reader doesn't have yet (for example, what do they mean when they say that the only macroscopic force is electromagnetic? In fact, all the forces you do experience in everyday life actually are electromagnetic in nature... but you need quantum mechanics to really understand that! It sure isn't obvious that the force that keeps you from falling through the ground to the center of the Earth is electromagnetic). And this really isn't fundamental to quantum mechanics, either. Next, the nucleus mass question is, once again, a question of relativity and not quantum mechanics (although at least one that can be answered without resorting to the Dirac equation!). And the final question seems to require addressing the equation of state in ultradense matter at the beginning of the universe! Good luck with explaining that with grade school math.
Physics that uses no more math than this is not graduate-level physics.
Agree. When you leave the math out, it's not quantum mechanics; it's philosophy.
To be fair, I suppose that they could teach the math as part of the course. (If they take the Dirac abstract-algebra approach, it may be that you have to learn it all from zero anyway.)
The errors discussed here don't call into question the physical basis of the fact that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere increases the greenhouse effect; they have to do with the question of what the effects of the warming will.
You took a little leap there from "greenhouse effect" (mechanism involving CO2 and radiation) to "effects of the warming". So you assume your conclusion ("warming").
Uh, did you read what I actually wrote? What I said was, that part-- the physical basis-- was covered in a different report that is not the report under discussion in the post here. I'm not "assuming the conclusion;" I'm saying that the conclusion (and the argument and data supporting it) is the subject of a different report.
... Until you establish the effect of CO2 on each of these, you cannot speak to the increase or decrease of the greenhouse effect solely on the simplistic science. Has this been done? Don't know, don't care.
Yes, "don't know, don't care" summarizes the position of the deniers: They don't know the science, and don't care enough to bother learning about the science.
So: if you don't know: go out and learn. Read some of the reports. Dig up some review articles. Find a textbook. Heck, go find some atmospheric science journals and read some original papers, why not? There are literally hundreds of thousands of man-hours that have been spent working out those exact details. Take a little time; learn about them.
If the deniers would quit attacking the science, and focus on the actual effects-- I would have little quarrel with them. I might even join them.
The problem, for the most part, is that the people who are fixated on discrediting the science are shouting so loud that they have completely drowned out any chance of reasonable discussion or debate what the actual effects are.
The current debate over global warming is not unlike the debate over evolution, which is to say, there really isn't any rational debate.
Exactly what many of us have been saying, how is it rational to believe in a conclusion based on data they will not let you see?
I would like to point out the the fundamental physics is not only open-source, it is over a hundred years old. The detailed calculation of the effects of carbon dioxide, Manabe and Wetherald (1967), is forty-three years old, and you can and should repeat it for yourself. There are many global circulation models (the detailed numerical models of the thermal balance of the atmosphere), and most of them are open source-- you can go to the MIT GCM page, for example, and download the code and run it yourself. The most detailed models, with millions of nodes, will require a supercomputer-- but they are nevertheless open source, and you can get them, if you like, and find a supercomputer to run them on. And there is literally terabytes of satellite data available-- at the moment there are seventeen Earth-orbital missions taking important climate data. The thermal balance of the Earth is getting to be something that's measured with exquisite precision.
Even the historical climate data that you're talking about-- I assume you mean the sources for the CRU historical meteorological graphs-- is available. You do remember (or did you actually know?) that the data under discussion was a collection of meteorological data from outside sources (the CRU didn't generate the data, they just collated it.) If you want to go dig it up from the same sources yourself-- you are free to do s
Or to present a "scientific" paper laden with non-scientific articles from advocacy groups...
That's nice, except this is a discussion of errors in the Working Group II report, it's not a "scientific" paper (your quotes, not mine) at all, it doesn't even pretend to be a scientific paper. The working group II report was a summary of what the predicted effects are. The science of global warming is in the Working Group I report.
Just as a quick reminder, this report is talking about errors in the Working Group II report (the effects of climate change), and not the Working Group I report (the physical basis of climate change). The errors discussed here don't call into question the physical basis of the fact that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere increases the greenhouse effect; they have to do with the question of what the effects of the warming will. (And even there, I'll point out that the WG-II errors in question are from misquoting the research, or in quoting sources that don't refer to actual research at all-- they don't seem to be errors in the original science sources.) It's easy enough to get this confused, since most of the media reports don't distinguish the reports-- don't even seem to know that there is not just one report being discussed.
If I recall correctly,/. had a similar thread some time back and someone posted to something official that was recommended to carry with you in your camera back about having the right to photograph public places.
This question is much harder to address. (Not to mention harder to phrase-- What time frame are you talking about? Ten years, fifty, a hundred, five hundred? What qualifies as "big"? )
But the question of consequences, and whether they are "catastrophic," can't be addressed at all if a significant minority of people, when the subject is brought up, keep shouting "it's all a hoax" until they drown out all other discussion, and aren't even willing to attempt to understand the basic physics.
Too many models to reasonably give you a single pointer, I'm afraid, and most of the textbooks are five years (or more) out of date, although I suppose actually that may not be so bad, since the IPCC reports themselves are four years old now. I'm mostly familiar with the models of the atmospheres of other planets-- the search term you want to use is "global circulation model" (or, "general circulation model"). The MIT general circulation model has a pretty good page, and the source code is available if you want to dig into the details: http://mitgcm.org/ For other models, I think that the Goddard Spaceflight "Center's Global Change Master Directory" has a list, although I'm not sure if it's exhaustive, it's probably a good place to start: http://gcmd.gsfc.nasa.gov/KeywordSearch/Keywords.do?Portal=GCMD_Services&KeywordPath=ServiceParameters%7CMODELS%7CATMOSPHERIC+GENERAL+CIRCULATION+MODELS&MetadataType=1&lbnode=mdlb1
I don't know if that makes me a denier or a believer, but I hate both those terms anyway so I don't care.
You are a denier if you disbelieve the science, but are not actually interested in learning anything about it (except criticisms) because you know it's all wrong anyway, so why bother actually understanding it?
You are a skeptic if you have questions about the science, but want to learn about the science in order to answer the questions. (This requires that one actually listen to the answers, and not have already-finalized conclusions that will remain unchanged regardless of facts.)
Clear enough?
My personal test to distinguish the two has recently been to ask if they've read the IPCC working group 1 report; this is the one summarizing the science that the deniers are denying, so it seems reasonable to me to use it as the test: have they bothered to read the material they are criticising? It is surprising to see how many have not. (to give credit to slashdot, by the way, the number of people here who actually have read it is heartening.)
One step further up, you are a policy skeptic if you don't agree with political policies proposed for dealing with global warming, but don't challenge the science.
I could be wrong, but from the last paragraph of your discussion above, I'd think it's very likely that you're basically a policy skeptic. (I have no objections to policy skeptics, except when they conduct their political debate by attacking the science instead of the policy.)
Granted, these are the same people who think an unloaded gun is just as dangerous as a loaded gun, so...
Believe it or not, I actually know somebody who shot himself in the head while demonstrating to somebody that they had nothing to fear from the fact that he brought his gun into a house with small children, because "look, it's not even loaded."
My gun instructor told me that every gun, loaded or not, is always to be treated as if it is "just as dangerous as a loaded gun."
My biggest concern with climate modeling right now is that climate scientists are not the equal of computer scientists, and this gives one pause [wikipedia]
My problem is with people who take Wikipedia as an authority, and not as a starting point.
There is a lot of science... this is not made up. (And it dates to way before Al Gore, who's not a scientist.) Have you actually read, for a start, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Working Group I Report on Physical Science Basis of Climate Science?
Yeah, I read it,
Excellent, I'm glad you've actually read it, that puts you in the.1% level of people who are discussing climate science and have actually made an attempt to learn something about it.
here's what it says: the increase in temperature based on anthropogenic CO2 radiative forcing is minimal. Without feedback systems, global warming would not be a problem.
That question can be very easily answered. The calculation was done in 1967 by Manabe and Wetherald-- it's summarized in any reasonable book about atmospheric science (such as the one on my desk at the moment, An Introduction to Atmospheric Radiation, by Liou (1980), p. 188). Calculating the greenhouse effect alone (that is, assuming no change in cloudiness, and constant relative humidity), Manabe and Wetherald (1967) showed "a ten percent increase in CO2 concentration (from 300 to 330 ppm) would lead to a warming of 0.3 K." It's a logarithmic response function (Arrhenius calculated that much back in 1895, although he didn't have the data to do the complete numerical integration), so it's easy to extrapolate this to the current carbon dioxide of about 385 ppm. It comes to about 0.78 K increase by their model.
So, actually, no. The 0.3 to 0.9 K increase shown by the current supercomputer models with all the feedbacks incorporated is within spitting range of the 0.78 K you get just from the CO2 greenhouse effect with no feedback.
...One thing we do know, if we want to stop it, it's going to be hard. Agreements like Kyoto or what was discussed in Copenhagen won't accomplish anything really. To make any kind of difference, we are going to need to reduce emissions by something like 80%. Think of that: are you willing to drive 80% less? It's not an easy thing to do: even if we got rid of all coal power plants, it wouldn't be enough. To really do it, we need new technology.
Ah, there's the heart of it. This has nothing to do with the scientific reality of global warming. Global warming is no less real whether it is easy to deal with, or hard to deal with.
The political question does not affect the science question... except that there are a large number of people who want to make the political argument, and they find it convenient to make that political argument by denying the science.
GL: Have you actually read, for a start, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Working Group I Report on Physical Science Basis of Climate Science?
SuperKendall: Yes. Have YOU looked into the problems with said report?
Gadget Guy: [...] And none of the problems have been with the actual science that underlies climate change (which is what the Working Group 1 Report is all about). The original poster is correct: the science still stands.
Wow, somebody who gets it. That's exactly right; I was citing the Working Group I Report-- The Physical Science Basis-- because that is the one summarizing the basic science, which is what the deniers are denying. (And, as someone pointed out, it's a summary of the science, not the actual science. It references review articles that summarize real science, so it's a place to start learning about the science, not the place to end.)
Moving on from this, there are very real questions such as, what are the effects? Is this bad? If so, how bad? What should we do about it, if anything? What are the effects of these possible actions we might take?
Those are good questions; some of them are very hard questions, and they are worth a serious debate. But that serious debate has been short circuited, because there is a very loud contingent of deniers who basically shout down the very existence of the effect.
The result is that, by denying the physics in the first place, the deniers have pretty much abandoned the actual debate to other extreme.
Also irrelevant [Re:This won't stop the denial...]
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Climategate's Final Days
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· Score: 2, Interesting
It's not a conspiracy theory. It's an orthogonality problem. If you have a Medieval Warming Period (MWP) -- then temperatures *aren't* unprecedented and become mathematically decoupled from CO2. Mann's "Hockeystick" graph erased the MWP -- problem is, the approach is worthless, and while Mann may believe it (again not conspiracy theory), it isn't true. Thus we still have the MWP (and the RWP, the Minoan, and the Holocene optimum) -- all of which were warmer than today and none of which had AGW contributions.
Also irrelevant, I'm afraid.
Apparently somebody once used the word "unprecedented," and the deniers used that as a lever to say "Well, if we can just attack that one word, which we will do by defining the word "unprecedented" the way we choose to and then show that the current curve isn't unprecedented, then we have debunked all of global warming! If one single word used by a popularizer can be attacked, the whole of the science is wrong!"
The anthropogenic global warming, basically, says that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse effect gas, and that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is exactly like any other greenhouse effect gas, and adding more of it to the atmosphere increases the greenhouse effect. The actual effect, by the way, is remarkably small-- all of the carbon dioxide humans have added to the atmosphere to date has increased the average temperature by 0.6 plus or minus 0.3 degrees K, which (since that average temperature of the Earth is around 300K) corresponds to a change of about two tenths of one percent. This is relatively simple physics, known for over a century, and which has been calculated in numerical detail since the mid 1970s. There really is no real scientific controversy here-- it has been addressed, in detail, by all that scientific work that the deniers want to ignore.
In short, saying that there has been periods of climate warming that weren't caused by anthropogenic effects doesn't really disprove anything. Sure. Anthropogenic warming is an added effect, not the only effect.
A challenge to the geeks at slashdot -- read "HARRY_README.txt". If you believe a single thing that comes out of CRU after that, I've got a bridge to sell.
Well, first I do need to note that the climate scientists at CRU are not the only scientists who study climate, and not even the most important ones-- they just happen to be the ones who were unlucky enough to have computer accounts that were broken into by cybercriminals.
If you are giving a challenge to "geeks at slashdot," then let me give a challenge to deniers: read the Working Group Report on the Physical Science Basis of Climate Science. Reading this will not actually stop you from being a denier-- denialisim is political in nature, and has nothing to do with scientific results. However, it will at least mean that you might start being a denialist that uses arguments which actually deal with the science, instead of the ignorance about science that I usually hear from deniers.
The earth has been both hotter and cooler than it is now.
That is correct... but irrelevant to the question.
Anthropogenic global warming is not instead of natural variations-- it is in addition to natural variations. Natural variations don't suddenly vanish now that we add carbon dioxide to the air.
...I'm all for taking better care of the planet, but the global warming nuts haven't really provided much evidence and they're the ones making the allegations.
The way I see things, if you make a bunch of claims, the burden of proof is ON YOU... not the people you're speaking to.
By "global warming nuts," you apparently mean "the scientists who actually study the problem."
By "the burden of proof is on you" you apparently mean "...to prove the correctness of scientific results to people who aren't willing to take any effort to look at the actual science, but will believe any criticism with no skepticism whatsoever."
There is a lot of science... this is not made up. (And it dates to way before Al Gore, who's not a scientist.) Have you actually read, for a start, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Working Group I Report on Physical Science Basis of Climate Science? What? No? Because you already read in a blog somewhere that it's a hoax, so you don't need to read it?
So, uh, if you won't actually read the evidence, how can any possible amount of evidence convince you?
You are again attempting to underplay the the relationship between the Saturn 1 and previous rockets. The early Saturn rockets were basically comglomerations of components from older, less sucessful rocket designs.
And apparently you don't happen to actually know which rockets those were, since they weren't any of the ones you listed.
The original comment was a mention of NASA's "track record of performance," and the question of what that track record was. OK, I think the question has been addressed. If you now want to go on and ask which technologies developed by which entities were used in what boosters, that's interesting I'm sure, but it's getting a little away from the question.
Bad comparison. The shuttles were not the first set of rockets NASA had launched. You are comparing one generation of rockets (a generation pretty late in the game for that matter) with the entirety of SpaceX's run.
OK.
The first rocket that NASA developed was Saturn 1. Perfect record; ten launches, no failures. The second rocket that NASA developed was Saturn 1B. Perfect record, nine launches, no failures. The third rocket that NASA developed was Saturn V. Prefect record, 13 launches, no failures.
Doesn't change my basic point.
NASA had quite as few failures back when it was still learning the ropes, as SpaceX did their first launches.
The space shuttle had 25 launches before its first launch failure. That's a record that has never been equalled by any other venture.
The Shuttle got off to a solid start, but given the billions dumped into its development and construction that was hardly some great achievement.
Precisely.
Phrasing it slightly differently, the U.S. taxpayers demanded reliability and safety from the very first flight. If you demand reliability starting from the very first fllght, this is going to be expensive. But that is what the taxpayers demanded out of NASA, and the historical record shows that NASA has been pretty much best record ever in achieving it.
So, if Space-X can be allowed to operate in a mode where they're allowed to fail, and learn from their failures, and fly again-- they are likely to indeed be cheaper. Some people say this is "learning the hard way"-- but, in fact, learning from failure is a very good way to learn.
That's a rather single-sided interpretation of that article (though I'm not saying it's wrong).
I'll accept "not wrong."
The contract was for three flights. He's now proposing to do two flights, and says "but of course we will be paid the full contract."
That's fifty percent more expensive.
If he had said "we can demonstrate what we need to demonstrate in two flights, and we propose saving the government money by flying one less flight"---I would have been cheering. But when he says "we will take the money but won't do the flights that we signed a contract to do"-- that's not unacceptable. He's saying "We'll do less than we contracted, which will save us money, and we pocket the difference."
I have to bow to his awesome ability to spin the facts. He's saying "how about we won't do what we signed the contract to do, but still get the money..." and three different people post to say "sure, that sounds reasonable."
Slashdot Mirror
Not only that, these "found no malfeasance" results are absurd on their face. They DID hide, throw away and improperly manipulate the data.
No, actually, they didn't.
That's the point of the review-- it turns out they didn't hide, throw away, or manipulate the data.
They did publish one figure (out of a total of many hundred figures in a large number of articles) that was misleading-- but (here's the interesting thing) they explained exactly what they did and why in the figure. If you read the figure, but not the text explaining it, it might have been misleading-- or might not; there is some real controversy about tree ring data, and it's pretty clear that they thought that they were presenting the data in the clearest form. In any case, if you read the text, you would have known exactly what the figure was graphing.
In fact, Nature (the journal in which the arguably-misleading figure was published) had their own review, which concluded that there was no need for a correction, because the article did explain exactly what the figure showed, and why it showed that particular data; it did not need a correction because it was not incorrect.
"Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?"
Because that is how science works. Any decent scientist would rather say "here is my data, please help me find something wrong with it."
Well, except that it isn't how science actually works; it's an idealized view of how science "ought" to work, by non-scientists. Right from the very beginning, Galileo first published many of his results in the form of cryptograms, claiming the priority of the discovery, but holding back on the details until he could analyze and confirm his results. As a general thing, no, scientists don't make the details of their data available until they're done analyzing it and have published.
You apparently have a view of scientists that does not accept the fact that they are actually human beings. Let me suggest that if somebody who has already convincingly demonstrated to you (from blog postings) that they do not have a very good understanding of work that you have devoted twenty-five years of your life to comes to you and says "You're wrong, give me your data so I can prove it," your first instinct probably would not be to say "sure, here's all my unpublished work, go wild."
In general, scientists are happy to share their data (after they've finished analyzing it and have published) with other scientists who they believe might have some competence in understanding it.
...That's why we have the world series of baseball with only 2 countries playing!
You know, I've always been surprised by how often a woman from Earth wins the Miss Universe contest. You think it's rigged?
I read the first lesson, and while it's interesting, so far I'm not impressed.
It presents some of the problems with classical physics, but it seems to focus on the wrong problems. The first problem it mentions is that information can't travel faster than the speed of light-- but to address that problem you need more than just introductory quantum mechanics, you need relativistic quantum mechanics, and I just don't think you can get to Dirac's equation in a nine part series without math. Then they ask a question about nuclear physics ("what holds the nucleus together?"), for which, to even understand the question correctly, you need some information that the reader doesn't have yet (for example, what do they mean when they say that the only macroscopic force is electromagnetic? In fact, all the forces you do experience in everyday life actually are electromagnetic in nature... but you need quantum mechanics to really understand that! It sure isn't obvious that the force that keeps you from falling through the ground to the center of the Earth is electromagnetic). And this really isn't fundamental to quantum mechanics, either. Next, the nucleus mass question is, once again, a question of relativity and not quantum mechanics (although at least one that can be answered without resorting to the Dirac equation!). And the final question seems to require addressing the equation of state in ultradense matter at the beginning of the universe! Good luck with explaining that with grade school math.
Physics that uses no more math than this is not graduate-level physics.
Agree. When you leave the math out, it's not quantum mechanics; it's philosophy.
To be fair, I suppose that they could teach the math as part of the course. (If they take the Dirac abstract-algebra approach, it may be that you have to learn it all from zero anyway.)
The errors discussed here don't call into question the physical basis of the fact that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere increases the greenhouse effect; they have to do with the question of what the effects of the warming will.
You took a little leap there from "greenhouse effect" (mechanism involving CO2 and radiation) to "effects of the warming". So you assume your conclusion ("warming").
Uh, did you read what I actually wrote? What I said was, that part-- the physical basis-- was covered in a different report that is not the report under discussion in the post here. I'm not "assuming the conclusion;" I'm saying that the conclusion (and the argument and data supporting it) is the subject of a different report.
... Until you establish the effect of CO2 on each of these, you cannot speak to the increase or decrease of the greenhouse effect solely on the simplistic science. Has this been done? Don't know, don't care.
Yes, "don't know, don't care" summarizes the position of the deniers: They don't know the science, and don't care enough to bother learning about the science.
So: if you don't know: go out and learn. Read some of the reports. Dig up some review articles. Find a textbook. Heck, go find some atmospheric science journals and read some original papers, why not? There are literally hundreds of thousands of man-hours that have been spent working out those exact details. Take a little time; learn about them.
If the deniers would quit attacking the science, and focus on the actual effects-- I would have little quarrel with them. I might even join them.
The problem, for the most part, is that the people who are fixated on discrediting the science are shouting so loud that they have completely drowned out any chance of reasonable discussion or debate what the actual effects are.
The current debate over global warming is not unlike the debate over evolution, which is to say, there really isn't any rational debate.
Exactly what many of us have been saying, how is it rational to believe in a conclusion based on data they will not let you see?
I would like to point out the the fundamental physics is not only open-source, it is over a hundred years old. The detailed calculation of the effects of carbon dioxide, Manabe and Wetherald (1967), is forty-three years old, and you can and should repeat it for yourself. There are many global circulation models (the detailed numerical models of the thermal balance of the atmosphere), and most of them are open source-- you can go to the MIT GCM page, for example, and download the code and run it yourself. The most detailed models, with millions of nodes, will require a supercomputer-- but they are nevertheless open source, and you can get them, if you like, and find a supercomputer to run them on. And there is literally terabytes of satellite data available-- at the moment there are seventeen Earth-orbital missions taking important climate data. The thermal balance of the Earth is getting to be something that's measured with exquisite precision.
Even the historical climate data that you're talking about-- I assume you mean the sources for the CRU historical meteorological graphs-- is available. You do remember (or did you actually know?) that the data under discussion was a collection of meteorological data from outside sources (the CRU didn't generate the data, they just collated it.) If you want to go dig it up from the same sources yourself-- you are free to do s
Or to present a "scientific" paper laden with non-scientific articles from advocacy groups...
That's nice, except this is a discussion of errors in the Working Group II report, it's not a "scientific" paper (your quotes, not mine) at all, it doesn't even pretend to be a scientific paper. The working group II report was a summary of what the predicted effects are. The science of global warming is in the Working Group I report.
Just as a quick reminder, this report is talking about errors in the Working Group II report (the effects of climate change), and not the Working Group I report (the physical basis of climate change).
The errors discussed here don't call into question the physical basis of the fact that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere increases the greenhouse effect; they have to do with the question of what the effects of the warming will. (And even there, I'll point out that the WG-II errors in question are from misquoting the research, or in quoting sources that don't refer to actual research at all-- they don't seem to be errors in the original science sources.)
It's easy enough to get this confused, since most of the media reports don't distinguish the reports-- don't even seem to know that there is not just one report being discussed.
If I recall correctly, /. had a similar thread some time back and someone posted to something official that was recommended to carry with you in your camera back about having the right to photograph public places.
I've googled and can't seem to find it. Anyone?
Try googling "photographer's rights card":
http://www.billadler.net/Photographer's_Legal_Rights_Card.pdf
or
http://www.krages.com/phoright.htm
This question is much harder to address. (Not to mention harder to phrase-- What time frame are you talking about? Ten years, fifty, a hundred, five hundred? What qualifies as "big"? )
But the question of consequences, and whether they are "catastrophic," can't be addressed at all if a significant minority of people, when the subject is brought up, keep shouting "it's all a hoax" until they drown out all other discussion, and aren't even willing to attempt to understand the basic physics.
Too many models to reasonably give you a single pointer, I'm afraid, and most of the textbooks are five years (or more) out of date, although I suppose actually that may not be so bad, since the IPCC reports themselves are four years old now. I'm mostly familiar with the models of the atmospheres of other planets-- the search term you want to use is "global circulation model" (or, "general circulation model").
The MIT general circulation model has a pretty good page, and the source code is available if you want to dig into the details: http://mitgcm.org/
For other models, I think that the Goddard Spaceflight "Center's Global Change Master Directory" has a list, although I'm not sure if it's exhaustive, it's probably a good place to start:
http://gcmd.gsfc.nasa.gov/KeywordSearch/Keywords.do?Portal=GCMD_Services&KeywordPath=ServiceParameters%7CMODELS%7CATMOSPHERIC+GENERAL+CIRCULATION+MODELS&MetadataType=1&lbnode=mdlb1
I don't know if that makes me a denier or a believer, but I hate both those terms anyway so I don't care.
You are a denier if you disbelieve the science, but are not actually interested in learning anything about it (except criticisms) because you know it's all wrong anyway, so why bother actually understanding it?
You are a skeptic if you have questions about the science, but want to learn about the science in order to answer the questions. (This requires that one actually listen to the answers, and not have already-finalized conclusions that will remain unchanged regardless of facts.)
Clear enough?
My personal test to distinguish the two has recently been to ask if they've read the IPCC working group 1 report; this is the one summarizing the science that the deniers are denying, so it seems reasonable to me to use it as the test: have they bothered to read the material they are criticising? It is surprising to see how many have not. (to give credit to slashdot, by the way, the number of people here who actually have read it is heartening.)
One step further up, you are a policy skeptic if you don't agree with political policies proposed for dealing with global warming, but don't challenge the science.
I could be wrong, but from the last paragraph of your discussion above, I'd think it's very likely that you're basically a policy skeptic. (I have no objections to policy skeptics, except when they conduct their political debate by attacking the science instead of the policy.)
Thanks.
Granted, these are the same people who think an unloaded gun is just as dangerous as a loaded gun, so...
Believe it or not, I actually know somebody who shot himself in the head while demonstrating to somebody that they had nothing to fear from the fact that he brought his gun into a house with small children, because "look, it's not even loaded."
My gun instructor told me that every gun, loaded or not, is always to be treated as if it is "just as dangerous as a loaded gun."
My biggest concern with climate modeling right now is that climate scientists are not the equal of computer scientists, and this gives one pause [wikipedia]
My problem is with people who take Wikipedia as an authority, and not as a starting point.
Even back in 2004, the models were using adaptive grids (e.g., http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.60.5091 ) where it makes sense to do so. And I don't think anybody uses constant latitude-longitude grids any more-- this one http://www.ncl.ucar.edu/Document/Graphics/contour_grids.shtml shows some of the more common grids.
There is a lot of science... this is not made up. (And it dates to way before Al Gore, who's not a scientist.) Have you actually read, for a start, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Working Group I Report on Physical Science Basis of Climate Science?
Yeah, I read it,
Excellent, I'm glad you've actually read it, that puts you in the .1% level of people who are discussing climate science and have actually made an attempt to learn something about it.
here's what it says: the increase in temperature based on anthropogenic CO2 radiative forcing is minimal. Without feedback systems, global warming would not be a problem.
That question can be very easily answered. The calculation was done in 1967 by Manabe and Wetherald-- it's summarized in any reasonable book about atmospheric science (such as the one on my desk at the moment, An Introduction to Atmospheric Radiation, by Liou (1980), p. 188). Calculating the greenhouse effect alone (that is, assuming no change in cloudiness, and constant relative humidity), Manabe and Wetherald (1967) showed "a ten percent increase in CO2 concentration (from 300 to 330 ppm) would lead to a warming of 0.3 K." It's a logarithmic response function (Arrhenius calculated that much back in 1895, although he didn't have the data to do the complete numerical integration), so it's easy to extrapolate this to the current carbon dioxide of about 385 ppm. It comes to about 0.78 K increase by their model.
So, actually, no. The 0.3 to 0.9 K increase shown by the current supercomputer models with all the feedbacks incorporated is within spitting range of the 0.78 K you get just from the CO2 greenhouse effect with no feedback.
...One thing we do know, if we want to stop it, it's going to be hard. Agreements like Kyoto or what was discussed in Copenhagen won't accomplish anything really. To make any kind of difference, we are going to need to reduce emissions by something like 80%. Think of that: are you willing to drive 80% less? It's not an easy thing to do: even if we got rid of all coal power plants, it wouldn't be enough. To really do it, we need new technology.
Ah, there's the heart of it. This has nothing to do with the scientific reality of global warming. Global warming is no less real whether it is easy to deal with, or hard to deal with.
The political question does not affect the science question... except that there are a large number of people who want to make the political argument, and they find it convenient to make that political argument by denying the science.
GL: Have you actually read, for a start, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Working Group I Report on Physical Science Basis of Climate Science?
SuperKendall: Yes. Have YOU looked into the problems with said report?
Gadget Guy: [...] And none of the problems have been with the actual science that underlies climate change (which is what the Working Group 1 Report is all about). The original poster is correct: the science still stands.
Wow, somebody who gets it. That's exactly right; I was citing the Working Group I Report-- The Physical Science Basis-- because that is the one summarizing the basic science, which is what the deniers are denying. (And, as someone pointed out, it's a summary of the science, not the actual science. It references review articles that summarize real science, so it's a place to start learning about the science, not the place to end.)
Moving on from this, there are very real questions such as, what are the effects? Is this bad? If so, how bad? What should we do about it, if anything? What are the effects of these possible actions we might take?
Those are good questions; some of them are very hard questions, and they are worth a serious debate. But that serious debate has been short circuited, because there is a very loud contingent of deniers who basically shout down the very existence of the effect.
The result is that, by denying the physics in the first place, the deniers have pretty much abandoned the actual debate to other extreme.
It's not a conspiracy theory. It's an orthogonality problem. If you have a Medieval Warming Period (MWP) -- then temperatures *aren't* unprecedented and become mathematically decoupled from CO2. Mann's "Hockeystick" graph erased the MWP -- problem is, the approach is worthless, and while Mann may believe it (again not conspiracy theory), it isn't true. Thus we still have the MWP (and the RWP, the Minoan, and the Holocene optimum) -- all of which were warmer than today and none of which had AGW contributions.
Also irrelevant, I'm afraid.
Apparently somebody once used the word "unprecedented," and the deniers used that as a lever to say "Well, if we can just attack that one word, which we will do by defining the word "unprecedented" the way we choose to and then show that the current curve isn't unprecedented, then we have debunked all of global warming! If one single word used by a popularizer can be attacked, the whole of the science is wrong!"
The anthropogenic global warming, basically, says that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse effect gas, and that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is exactly like any other greenhouse effect gas, and adding more of it to the atmosphere increases the greenhouse effect. The actual effect, by the way, is remarkably small-- all of the carbon dioxide humans have added to the atmosphere to date has increased the average temperature by 0.6 plus or minus 0.3 degrees K, which (since that average temperature of the Earth is around 300K) corresponds to a change of about two tenths of one percent. This is relatively simple physics, known for over a century, and which has been calculated in numerical detail since the mid 1970s. There really is no real scientific controversy here-- it has been addressed, in detail, by all that scientific work that the deniers want to ignore.
In short, saying that there has been periods of climate warming that weren't caused by anthropogenic effects doesn't really disprove anything. Sure. Anthropogenic warming is an added effect, not the only effect.
A challenge to the geeks at slashdot -- read "HARRY_README.txt". If you believe a single thing that comes out of CRU after that, I've got a bridge to sell.
Well, first I do need to note that the climate scientists at CRU are not the only scientists who study climate, and not even the most important ones-- they just happen to be the ones who were unlucky enough to have computer accounts that were broken into by cybercriminals.
If you are giving a challenge to "geeks at slashdot," then let me give a challenge to deniers: read the Working Group Report on the Physical Science Basis of Climate Science. Reading this will not actually stop you from being a denier-- denialisim is political in nature, and has nothing to do with scientific results. However, it will at least mean that you might start being a denialist that uses arguments which actually deal with the science, instead of the ignorance about science that I usually hear from deniers.
The earth has been both hotter and cooler than it is now.
That is correct... but irrelevant to the question.
Anthropogenic global warming is not instead of natural variations-- it is in addition to natural variations. Natural variations don't suddenly vanish now that we add carbon dioxide to the air.
...I'm all for taking better care of the planet, but the global warming nuts haven't really provided much evidence and they're the ones making the allegations.
The way I see things, if you make a bunch of claims, the burden of proof is ON YOU... not the people you're speaking to.
By "global warming nuts," you apparently mean "the scientists who actually study the problem."
By "the burden of proof is on you" you apparently mean "...to prove the correctness of scientific results to people who aren't willing to take any effort to look at the actual science, but will believe any criticism with no skepticism whatsoever."
There is a lot of science... this is not made up. (And it dates to way before Al Gore, who's not a scientist.) Have you actually read, for a start, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Working Group I Report on Physical Science Basis of Climate Science? What? No? Because you already read in a blog somewhere that it's a hoax, so you don't need to read it?
So, uh, if you won't actually read the evidence, how can any possible amount of evidence convince you?
You are again attempting to underplay the the relationship between the Saturn 1 and previous rockets. The early Saturn rockets were basically comglomerations of components from older, less sucessful rocket designs.
And apparently you don't happen to actually know which rockets those were, since they weren't any of the ones you listed.
The original comment was a mention of NASA's "track record of performance," and the question of what that track record was. OK, I think the question has been addressed. If you now want to go on and ask which technologies developed by which entities were used in what boosters, that's interesting I'm sure, but it's getting a little away from the question.
The Saturn 1's maiden flight was in October 27, 1961. And it wasn't developed in a vacuum either, it was build after experience with Vanguard,
Navy
Atlas
Convair (General Dynamics), under contract to the Air Force.
, and Titan rockets.
Martin, also under contract to the Air Force.
If your point is, NASA was not the first organization to ever launch an orbital rocket, well, sure. Absolutely. Of course. Nor Space-X.
Bad comparison. The shuttles were not the first set of rockets NASA had launched. You are comparing one generation of rockets (a generation pretty late in the game for that matter) with the entirety of SpaceX's run.
OK.
The first rocket that NASA developed was Saturn 1. Perfect record; ten launches, no failures. The second rocket that NASA developed was Saturn 1B. Perfect record, nine launches, no failures. The third rocket that NASA developed was Saturn V. Prefect record, 13 launches, no failures.
Doesn't change my basic point.
NASA had quite as few failures back when it was still learning the ropes, as SpaceX did their first launches.
Actually, no. Contractor-developed rockets failed.
The space shuttle had 25 launches before its first launch failure. That's a record that has never been equalled by any other venture.
The Shuttle got off to a solid start, but given the billions dumped into its development and construction that was hardly some great achievement.
Precisely.
Phrasing it slightly differently, the U.S. taxpayers demanded reliability and safety from the very first flight. If you demand reliability starting from the very first fllght, this is going to be expensive. But that is what the taxpayers demanded out of NASA, and the historical record shows that NASA has been pretty much best record ever in achieving it.
So, if Space-X can be allowed to operate in a mode where they're allowed to fail, and learn from their failures, and fly again-- they are likely to indeed be cheaper. Some people say this is "learning the hard way"-- but, in fact, learning from failure is a very good way to learn.
That's a rather single-sided interpretation of that article (though I'm not saying it's wrong).
I'll accept "not wrong."
The contract was for three flights. He's now proposing to do two flights, and says "but of course we will be paid the full contract."
That's fifty percent more expensive.
If he had said "we can demonstrate what we need to demonstrate in two flights, and we propose saving the government money by flying one less flight"---I would have been cheering. But when he says "we will take the money but won't do the flights that we signed a contract to do"-- that's not unacceptable. He's saying "We'll do less than we contracted, which will save us money, and we pocket the difference."
I have to bow to his awesome ability to spin the facts. He's saying "how about we won't do what we signed the contract to do, but still get the money..." and three different people post to say "sure, that sounds reasonable."