Global warming discussion III

[Red Baron Farms]

So still anecdotal, Red Baron Farms - just with addition of the logical fallacy of argument from authority.

There is no fallacious appeal to authority. A fallacious appeal to authority involves accepting an authority's claim without evidence or contrary to evidence. I merely showed that Jay Fuhrer is qualified to collect quality evidence, despite your fallacious attempt to discredit the evidence.

Which points out an issue with using soil to sequester carbon - there will be diminishing returns!
Unless you are advocating turning grasslands into essentially peat (100% SOM) !

The ignorance displayed in this comment is astonishing. I honestly don't even know where to start in addressing such a ridiculous claim. So instead I will ask you to support your claim that the grasslands of the world could possibly sequester enough carbon to become essentially peat. Start by proving there is even enough carbon in the atmosphere to accomplish this ridiculous claim and still leave enough to support plant growth on the planet.

Global warming is primarily caused by increasing levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. If levels of CO2 were to stop increasing tomorrow then global warming will stop in in a couple of decades as the atmosphere and oceans come to equilibrium with the new level. So reducing emissions enough will stop global warming.

See the above posts by Mac and Traker including the evidence you are dead wrong. Your comment is however a very typical denialist argument, debunked many times and many places by much evidence. I suppose you will now try to discredit that evidence as well?

 

[Reality Check]

There is no fallacious appeal to authority.

The appeal to authority fallacy is accepting a claim because it is backed up by an authority.
Your version is a lesser fallacy - just because there are authorities (plural) involved does not mean that a study will be correct.

The ignorance displayed in this comment is astonishing.

You are the person who pointed out that Brown's ranch sequester an addition 5% without any sign of diminishing returns.
I pointed out that there will obviously be diminishing returns since grasslands are not peat (which has close to 100% SOM).
Where is the ignorance, Red Baron Farms?

See the above posts by Mac and Traker including the evidence you are dead wrong.

See the posts above by Mac and Traker who point out that I got just the time scale for global temperatures to come to equilibrium if we keep the current emission level.
Traker cites The Climate Change Commitment (PDF) which addresses the effect of ocean thermal inertia if we kept emissions at 2005 levels (2 to 6 C by the year 2400).

What is quoted in the literature is usually the equilibrium climate sensitivity, e.g. the AR5 has about 3 °C for doubling of CO2. If we do not double the CO2 then we do not get that 3 °C from CO2 forcing. If we cut our CO2 emissions so that CO2 halves then we get about 3 °C cooling. But it is more complex than that which is why we have climate models!

The sceince is that reducing the rate of our CO2 emissions will reduce the rising trend in global temperatures and even stop global warming. That is why climate scientists advocate reduction of CO2 emissions !

 

[macdoc]

You likely want to rewrite this

What is quoted in the literature is usually the equilibrium climate sensitivity, e.g. the AR5 has about 3 °C for doubling of CO2.

Actually it is stated as a range from 1.5 to 4.5 C - it's an important range and we do not know where in the range it will fall....you cannot say 3C ..we don't know ....the trend has been to eliminate the lower end of the range as a new equilibrium point.....truth is could be 1.8C ( whew ) or 4.2 C - (bad news)
So being conservative ....targetting 2C even with this uncertainty of sensitivity leaves a bit of cushion in case the sensitivity is higher

If we do not double the CO2 then we do not get that 3 °C from CO2 forcing.

Umm we are already about 45% of the way to doubling from the 280 baseline - so nearly half is a done deal....and the global temp is already up .8 - but we are not at a new equilibrium....we know the rise, we know the current temp - we do not know where it will settle as we have not determined sensitivity.

If we cut our CO2 emissions so that CO2 halves then we get about 3 °C cooling.

No - CO2 cannot halve short of physically removing it...in theory ramping up some biome - usually plankton - to sequester might lower it but the reality is it's the oceans that cool ( Milankovich and/or massive volcano activity) and then pull CO2 from the atmosphere in a downward feedback spiral leading to glaciation.
That and long scale weathering lead to lower atmospheric CO2....
we can add to the load by mining fossil carbon, puny humans gonna have a tough time doing the opposite and pulling it out

But it is more complex than that which is why we have climate models!

da

The sceince is that reducing the rate of our CO2 emissions will reduce the rising trend in global temperatures and even stop global warming.

only maybe at this point will it stop - we would have to reduce to zero and wait a good long while to get to equilibrium and positive feedback may already have eliminated that,

Direct evidence for a positive feedback in climate change: Global warming itself will likely accelerate warming
Date:March 30, 2015 Source: University of Exeter
Summary:
A new study has confirmed the existence of a positive feedback operating in climate change whereby warming itself may amplify a rise in greenhouse gases resulting in additional warming.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/03/150330122439.htm
ouch

The target is 2C to be the eventual new equilibrium - personally I don't see us staying within that target

That is why climate scientists advocate reduction of CO2 emissions

To hold at a "safe" level.....controversial what that safe level is.

 

[Reality Check]

Actually it is stated as a range from 1.5 to 4.5 C

You are right, macdoc - it is AR4 (not AR5) that has the likely value as about 3 °C.

 

[macdoc]

It's a critical point as the consequences of WHERE it is in that range represents enormous costs and consequences and timing issues for consequences of AGW.

Low end...buys us some time....high end....we are likely cooked already. ( my view that the positive feedbacks are going to take over the story line )

but we simply do not know.

 

[Trakar]

The target is 2C to be the eventual new equilibrium - personally I don't see us staying within that target


To hold at a "safe" level.....controversial what that safe level is.

Most recent sources I've seen say that bird has already flown the coop without fairly substantial negative carbon output fairly rapidly. If we're lucky and were willing to invest a lot of money that isn't apparent currently, we might get to carbon neutral in 3 decades but it could nearly as easily take 5+ and we're on target to hit +2^oC above pre-industrial temps, by mid-century (3.5 decades from now). And at the current pace will double that or more by the turn of the century (possibly significantly more than double it).

http://www.nature.com/articles/ncli...tracking_referrer=news.nationalgeographic.com

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14693062.2013.835705

http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/fe...finds-temperature-rise-locked-in-risks-rising

 

[macdoc]

I share your gloom and that recent positive feedback article did not help the outlook....plus the insane numbers in the Arctic are almost beyond imagining.

 

[Trakar]

I share your gloom and that recent positive feedback article did not help the outlook....plus the insane numbers in the Arctic are almost beyond imagining.

I'm past most of the gloom and busily focused on doing what I can to minimize the changes that are already happening, and making sure that my family is prepared to survive and thrive for many generations in a greatly changed world. Keeps me busy, helps me to sleep.

 

[macdoc]

Gloom need not be debilitating....you crest a hill and see you have more to climb.
It can be enervating as hopeless or invigorating to do more to achieve it.

There is an unavoidable gloom as many species may not make the climb to a new climate regime...or cope with our general predations.
In the cases of adaptation of species, we can only watch and hope some of our Holocene treasures make it.

The rebound of the corals was good news after 1998s heat stress.

I hold little hope for most mountain top island biomes. There is no more "up" available to many.

For some...jelly fish....it's the dawning of a wider playground....and clearly tuna and others are moving their ranges .....the stuff in the Arctic as the ocean changes there is fascinating if a bit scary.

Those last series of "above norm" temperatures in April in he 80N areas defies understanding.

I'm certainly glad the ocean is as big and deep as it is and the cryosphere as big as it is to slow this heat wave down a bit.

You booked your Venician Scuba exploration tour yet??

 

[Trakar]

Gloom need not be debilitating....you crest a hill and see you have more to climb.
It can be enervating as hopeless or invigorating to do more to achieve it.

There is an unavoidable gloom as many species may not make the climb to a new climate regime...or cope with our general predations.
In the cases of adaptation of species, we can only watch and hope some of our Holocene treasures make it.

The rebound of the corals was good news after 1998s heat stress.

I hold little hope for most mountain top island biomes. There is no more "up" available to many.

For some...jelly fish....it's the dawning of a wider playground....and clearly tuna and others are moving their ranges .....the stuff in the Arctic as the ocean changes there is fascinating if a bit scary.

Those last series of "above norm" temperatures in April in he 80N areas defies understanding.

I'm certainly glad the ocean is as big and deep as it is and the cryosphere as big as it is to slow this heat wave down a bit.

You booked your Venician Scuba exploration tour yet??

Nah, but I've been thinking about setting up some future Manhattan and Miami scuba tours!

 

[lomiller]

What is quoted in the literature is usually the equilibrium climate sensitivity, e.g. the AR5 has about 3 °C for doubling of CO2.

Not quite. There are feedbacks that are not included in the sensitivity numbers normally found in the literature. Realclimate did an article on this a number of years ago.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/04/target-co2/

Traditionally, the decision to include or exclude a feedback from consideration has been based on the relevant timescales and complexity. The faster a feedback is, the more usual it is to include. Thus, changes in clouds (~hours) or in water vapour (~10 days) are undoubtedly fast and get included as feedbacks in all definitions of the sensitivity. But changes in vegetation (decades to centuries) or in ice sheets (decades(?) to centuries to millennia) are slower and are usually left out. But there are other fast feedbacks that don’t get included in the standard definition for complexity reasons – such as the change in ozone or aerosols (dust and sulphates for instance) which are also affected by patterns of rainfall, water vapour, temperature, soli moisture, transport and clouds (etc.).

 

[macdoc]

Seems the Arctic dipole...an occasional weather pattern in the Arctic has taken up pretty permanent residence.
Not good for California.

Abstract

The 2013–2014 California drought was initiated by an anomalous high-amplitude ridge system. The anomalous ridge was investigated using reanalysis data and the Community Earth System Model (CESM). It was found that the ridge emerged from continual sources of Rossby wave energy in the western North Pacific starting in late summer and subsequently intensified into winter. The ridge generated a surge of wave energy downwind and deepened further the trough over the northeast U.S., forming a dipole. The dipole and associated circulation pattern is not linked directly with either El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) or Pacific Decadal Oscillation; instead, it is correlated with a type of ENSO precursor. The connection between the dipole and ENSO precursor has become stronger since the 1970s, and this is attributed to increased greenhouse gas loading as simulated by the CESM. Therefore, there is a traceable anthropogenic warming footprint in the enormous intensity of the anomalous ridge during winter 2013–2014 and the associated drought.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2014GL059748/abstract

anomalous may be moving toward the norm given the length of time the RRR has stayed in play.

Laymans version
https://robertscribbler.wordpress.c...-in-california-and-collapse-the-polar-vortex/

And last month

Ridiculously Resilient Ridge returns, redirects rain around region
by Jed Kim March 06 2015

ROBYN BECK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Cold temperatures and snow are pummeling the eastern and southern parts of the country, while California continues to have an abnormally warm and dry winter. The conditions, while strange, feel hauntingly familiar, as a similar weather pattern gripped the country last year.

http://www.scpr.org/news/2015/03/05/50212/ridiculously-resilient-ridge-returns-redirects-rai/

How long before an anomaly becomes the norm???

The heat records in California are astonishing this year....

The dubious records keep piling up for California, a state wracked by four years of drought brought on by a pernicious weather pattern that has kept rains at bay and exacerbated by human-induced warming. Just one week after the state measured its lowest-ever snowpack, US scientists have announced that the year so far has been the warmest on record, setting expectations for a long, hot, dry year ahead.
“2015 to date has been truly astonishingly warm in California, and we’re breaking almost all the temperature records there are to break,” Daniel Swain, an atmospheric science PhD student at Stanford University, said in an email.

http://qz.com/380287/california-has-a-long-hot-dry-year-ahead/

 

[macdoc]

Consequences ...now

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121558/what-climate-change-doing-texas-cattle-ranch

Pretty dire....

 

[Fudbucker]

The appeal to authority fallacy is accepting a claim because it is backed up by an authority.
Your version is a lesser fallacy - just because there are authorities (plural) involved does not mean that a study will be correct.


You are the person who pointed out that Brown's ranch sequester an addition 5% without any sign of diminishing returns[/B].
I pointed out that there will obviously be diminishing returns since grasslands are not peat (which has close to 100% SOM).
Where is the ignorance, Red Baron Farms?


See the posts above by Mac and Traker who point out that I got just the time scale for global temperatures to come to equilibrium if we keep the current emission level.
Traker cites The Climate Change Commitment (PDF) which addresses the effect of ocean thermal inertia if we kept emissions at 2005 levels (2 to 6 C by the year 2400).

What is quoted in the literature is usually the equilibrium climate sensitivity, e.g. the AR5 has about 3 °C for doubling of CO2. If we do not double the CO2 then we do not get that 3 °C from CO2 forcing. If we cut our CO2 emissions so that CO2 halves then we get about 3 °C cooling. But it is more complex than that which is why we have climate models!

The sceince is that reducing the rate of our CO2 emissions will reduce the rising trend in global temperatures and even stop global warming. That is why climate scientists advocate reduction of CO2 emissions !

You're confusing formal logic with informal logic. In informal logic, if a person is a recognized authority in a relevant field, it is perfectly acceptable to appeal to their judgement.

So, if Nobel prize winner climatologist Prof. Smith claims humans are causing global warming, Smith's claims are evidence that humans are causing global warming.

 

[Reality Check]

You're confusing formal logic with informal logic. In informal logic, if a person is a recognized authority in a relevant field, it is perfectly acceptable to appeal to their judgement.

That is correct, Fudbucker - the significant part of the fallacy is depending only on that (often just 1) persons authority.

To use your example: if Nobel prize winner climatologist Prof. Smith claims humans are causing global warming, Smith's claims are evidence Prof. Smith thinks that humans are causing global warming. Taking that opinion alone as evidence for AGW is argument from authority.

A weaker version of the fallacy is stating that there are authorities involved in an experiment and implying the experiment is more likely to be correct (or worse give a specific result) because of their involvement before any results are known.
An example: if Nobel prize winner climatologist Prof. Smith is one of the scientists involved in the running of a climate model then assuming that the model will produce correct results because Prof. Smith is involved is a fallacy of argument from authority.

 

[Fudbucker]

That is correct, Fudbucker - the significant part of the fallacy is depending only on that (often just 1) persons authority.

To use your example: if Nobel prize winner climatologist Prof. Smith claims humans are causing global warming, Smith's claims are evidence Prof. Smith thinks that humans are causing global warming. Taking that opinion alone as evidence for AGW is argument from authority.

A weaker version of the fallacy is stating that there are authorities involved in an experiment and implying the experiment is more likely to be correct (or worse give a specific result) because of their involvement before any results are known.
An example: if Nobel prize winner climatologist Prof. Smith is one of the scientists involved in the running of a climate model then assuming that the model will produce correct results because Prof. Smith is involved is a fallacy of argument from authority.

No, think about it. If you go to ten transmission experts and they all tell you you need a new clutch, the testimony of the mechanics is not just evidence the ten mechanics think you need a new clutch. That is trivially true. Since they are experts, what they all say is evidence that your clutch is bad.

The reason this works is that the probability of all ten experts being wrong is much smaller than the probability that your clutch is fine. Ergo, without even looking at your clutch, you can conclude it needs to be replaced, just based on what experts say. It's the reason we act on the advice of doctors, lawyers, detectives, fingerprint experts, accountants, climatologists, etc- since they're experts (and we're usually not), what they say often alters our beliefs about reality, as it should.

 

[Reality Check]

No, think about it. ....

That is scientific consensus, Fudbucker.
Argument from authority is not going to ten transmission experts. It is looking at the ads for ten transmission experts and selecting the one you think has the most authority, going to that one transmission expert and accepting what they say is correct. You may get someone who has good ads or you may get someone who knows what they are talking about or you may get both.

 

[Fudbucker]

That is scientific consensus, Fudbucker.
Argument from authority is not going to ten transmission experts. It is looking at the ads for ten transmission experts and selecting the one you think has the most authority, going to that one transmission expert and accepting what they say is correct. You may get someone who has good ads or you may get someone who knows what they are talking about or you may get both.

That is exactly an example of an argument from authority: an expert's testimony in a relevant field carries evidentiary value. It could be one mechanic or ten, one physicist telling you the Higgs Boson was discovered or a team of them. If one DNA expert tells you the suspect's DNA matched DNA found at the scene, you're going to assume the suspect was at the scene, not just that the DNA expert thinks the suspect was at the scene. There's a crucial difference.

To tie this all back, suppose I'm talking to a climate denier, and he claims the amount of CO2 isn't enough to account for the warming we're experiencing. I point out that Dr. so-and-so, from prestigious university X, says the CO2 in the air is causing much of the warming. Are you saying I've committed a fallacy by bringing in an expert to support my side? Aren't I ahead in the argument? Isn't the burden now on the denialist to either respond to what the expert said or refute it with his own expert?

 

[Trakar]

That is exactly an example of an argument from authority: an expert's testimony in a relevant field carries evidentiary value. It could be one mechanic or ten, one physicist telling you the Higgs Boson was discovered or a team of them. If one DNA expert tells you the suspect's DNA matched DNA found at the scene, you're going to assume the suspect was at the scene, not just that the DNA expert thinks the suspect was at the scene. There's a crucial difference.

To tie this all back, suppose I'm talking to a climate denier, and he claims the amount of CO2 isn't enough to account for the warming we're experiencing. I point out that Dr. so-and-so, from prestigious university X, says the CO2 in the air is causing much of the warming. Are you saying I've committed a fallacy by bringing in an expert to support my side? Aren't I ahead in the argument? Isn't the burden now on the denialist to either respond to what the expert said or refute it with his own expert?

Expert against expert is largely irrelevant. What is the predominant mainstream understanding amongst all of the experts and the preponderance of the available evidence? That is when we get well beyond argumentum ad verecundiam which is more properly when an authority in one field argues about a subject that is outside his field of expertise while relying on his authority in that other field to dismiss any refutation by others.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

No, think about it. If you go to ten transmission experts and they all tell you you need a new clutch, the testimony of the mechanics is not just evidence the ten mechanics think you need a new clutch. That is trivially true. Since they are experts, what they all say is evidence that your clutch is bad.

The reason this works is that the probability of all ten experts being wrong is much smaller than the probability that your clutch is fine. Ergo, without even looking at your clutch, you can conclude it needs to be replaced, just based on what experts say. It's the reason we act on the advice of doctors, lawyers, detectives, fingerprint experts, accountants, climatologists, etc- since they're experts (and we're usually not), what they say often alters our beliefs about reality, as it should.

True, but for it to not be a fallacy, those mechanics needed to look at the clutch and use the evidence they found while troubleshooting to form their expert opinion.

A non expert might try to troubleshoot the same car and who knows what conclusion he might come up with. You couldn't rely on that evidence.

So the level of expertise of the people collecting the evidence is important and changes the quality (or level of reliance) of the evidence.

That's why I was ranting at Reality Check for his improper attack at Gabe Brown's case study farm. It is evidence that was collected by an expert as part of a scientific case study that lends credibility. It is not an argument from authority fallacy but instead a proper use of that information.