Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[DC]

I keep reminding myself that weather is not climate, but wow; the Chicago area has seemingly escaped having a real winter.

It's the last day of January and it's 54 and sunny, expected to reach 60.

And we have had above-average temperatures and below-average snowfall all season.

So, every time somebody looks at a blizzard and declared AGW dead, remember that weather cuts both ways.

here we have a real winter again, even in the city there is snow, wich didnt happen to often in recent years. and ski resorts use 10 times more dynamite this year than last year to prevent avalanges hiting tourists.

 

[Furcifer]

You say so, but you can hardly expect anybody to believe you.

There's always newbs that think they discovered global warming that won't believe, but the majority are already familiar with the failed predictions.

As to being misled in the 90's, the 2000's were warmer than the 90's, Arctic Ice and glacier extents and volumes have fallen dramatically, plants and animals are found in new ranges now due to warming, sea-level has continued to rise, and extreme weather events have become more frequent. There is no evidence in there that anybody was "misled" back in the 90's except the deniers, who are still at it.

There's plenty of evidence, it's just not easily accessible on the internet because it predates Google.

What alarming thing is it that you foresaw in the 90's which hasn't happened?

A 1m rise in sea level, that was a big one. Massive global scale crop failures, famine and resulting disease that would wipe out millions. The usual rhetoric.

Every year since 2008 has been warmer so it's extremely easy to see that the world has warmed.

Yes, it's warmer today than yesterday, about 2 degrees, so obviously by Summer it will be 400C. Right?

The reason 2008 saw an increase in "we've entered a long-term cooling phase" statements is that 2008 was the coolest year since 2000 and still-hopeful deniers thought that they were about to be vindicated as the unknown natural forcing behind global warming had switched phase. Which it could if it existed - since we don't know what it is, we certainly can't say that it wouldn't.

Are you alluding to the solar minimum which NASA now says is 92% likely to occur?

What changed your mind? And what might change it again?

Actually reading the climate science. It depends on what you mean; I haven't changed my mind about global warming I just don't listen to alarmists and instead keep an eye on the science.

Some people's are. Consider Singer, Lindzen, Soon, Spencer, de Freitas. They've denied any environmental threat throughout their public careers. When it comes to AGW they denied that warming would happen, then they denied that it is happening, then they denied that it was anthropgenic, and all the while have been saying that it's a good thing anyway and that all the mainstream scientists involved are commies and/or frauds.
Is it exposure to their kind of contribution that has changed your opinion?

No, it's about reading the science and seeing that the predictions are based in a woefully inadequate understanding of the entire climatic process.

Are you denying that the WSJ op-ed is complete and predictable garbage?

I'm saying there's denial everywhere because people want the science to fit their world view at any cost.

There is no politics on http://www.realclimate.org/. You know that because you must surely have looked for some, and anybody can read the site for themselves, so what on Earth do you expect to achieve by these "'Tis so!" responses?

Utter rubbish. I've cited several examples that are irrefutable.

Try reconsidering your opinion of http://www.realclimate.org/. You're open to that, aren't you? Ask yourself where you got that opinion from in the first place. Was it at WattsUpMyButt (which you once described as a good place to find real science : I realise your opinion on that has changed). Or was it from reading a http://www.realclimate.org/ political post? In either case, do you recall what the political issue was?

I don't read those sites because they have a political bias. They're using climate science to try and shape people's world view and it's pseudoscience. So no, I'll stay away from them and just keep to reading peer reviewed literature in the many journals on the web.

Just one example would be good.

Why do I highly doubt this claim?

 

[Furcifer]

Are you claiming that the evidence for AGW in that list is wrong, or that you can't believe 100 things could be blamed on global warming. Remember, this is a global phenomena, the globe is a big place, every biological system has one of it's key inputs the climate, and the biological components of the system it lives in that are also dependent on climate. The first story tells you why climate is affecting forests. Insects that are constrained by the cold to warmer areas can now feed on forests that have no defence to them as the temperatures warm. Whole areas of the US now sustain crops that they couldn't sustain before due to warming. Why wouldn't insects pests and other species also not be able to move?

I believe the question was clear: cite scientific studies that support the conclusion that anthropogenic climate change is responsible for any of those 100 claims.

 

[Furcifer]

And so it does. You did read past the headline, didn't you?
The post is prompted by Bill McKibben's statment, following on from something Hansen has said regarding Canadian tar-sands, that the pipeline is “the fuse to biggest carbon bomb on the planet.” It then rationally discusses whether the tar-sands are really that significant, concluding with
Fair and balanced, wouldn't you say?

No it clearly doesn't avoid the political and economic implications of climate science.

None of that is peer reviewed, it's a political puff piece. Did you look at the comments?

"The next thought on from “Leave it in the Ground” has to be what has to change in the way that governments currently support exploitation of fossil fuels"

Have whatever fantasies you like, but the plain fact of the matter is that full exploitation of the Athabasca Oil Sands is flatly incompatible with having a reasonable chance of holding warming to 2C. You could argue that attacking demand is a more effective way of preventing exploitation than blocking the pipeline (though I don't see any reason the two efforts are incompatible) but one way or another if you care about climate, you can't consider the oil sands a 'reasonable' energy source. --raypierre]

I can't honestly believe anyone could read this and conclude that it's climate science and not political and economic implications.

So there's the "one article" you begged for. Who are the deniers again?

 

[steenkh]

On my web browser there's only 3 articles on the front page. So look for the day with 2 politically motivated articles and that must have been the day.

Your continued evasion must mean that you cannot actually find political articles on their front page.

Interesting ...

 

[Halsu]

Most people don't understand the nature of climate science. They don't realize it's a relatively new and poorly understood science. They don't know or realize that it's a statical analysis with no right or wrong answer. Denialism as it pertains to climate science is the refusal to acknowledge these basic principles.

No, denialism as it pertains to climate science is the refusal to acknowledge the mainstream scientific results usually combined with an attempt to undermine the associated science. Your sentence above fits the description perfectly.

You're confusing "deny" and "refute".

No, i am not. Refuting would require showing plausible scientific evidence.

I doubt if you have any idea what the criteria was for winning any of those awards. Watts' site has a bunch as well, I don't know how they got them so they're meaningless to me. Awards do not speak to the pseudoscientific or denialist nature of the website and those that post their. (unless that's specifically what the awards are for)

Only one of those links was an award, the other two were links to Nature's and Science's lists of citations to RealClimate.

As far as that one award goes, i'm rather certain that Scientific American has not awarded WattsUpWithThat. And for the criteria, here's a quote for you:

Real Climate
A refreshing antidote to the political and economic slants that commonly color and distort news coverage of topics like the greenhouse effect, air quality, natural disasters and global warming, Real Climate is a focused, objective blog written by scientists for a brainy community that likes its climate commentary served hot. Always precise and timely, the site's resident meteorologists, geoscientists and oceanographers sound off on all news climatological, from tropical glacial retreat to "doubts about the advent of spring."

​

Or you can avoid the politics and pseudoscience altogether and pick up a journal.

That suggestion to head over to RealClimate was from Nature. In case you didn't know, Nature is arguably in the top three of most prestigious science journals in the world.

The evidence of the political garbage and pseudoscietific nonsense at RealCrapClimate.com has been cited. It's irrefutable; RealCrapClimate.com claims to avoid the political implications of the science but in fact they routinely engage in just such discussions. They claim not to because they know doing so is clearly pseudoscientific!

Nope, it has not been cited, only claimed.

But even if they did have political content, that would not make the site pseudoscience. Political commentary does not make for pseudoscience, unless the associated science is distorted.

And it is not.

Type RealCrapClimate.com and click on the link, the page that appears will be the front page.

Yes. And the list of articles you were shown were all the articles that have been in that front page in the last few months - NONE of which was political.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2011/11/keystone-xl-game-over/

Yeah, that's all about climate science and totally avoids the political and economic implications

Actually, it is. It seems you didn't read the article: first they describe a political debate (but do not take part in it), then they explain the science behind the debate. Their conclusion doesn't sound "alarmist" at all to me:

So the pipeline itself is really just a skirmish in the battle to protect climate, and if the pipeline gets built despite Bill McKibben’s dedicated army of protesters, that does not mean in and of itself that it’s “game over” for holding warming to 2C. Further, if we do hit a trillion tonnes, it may be “game-over” for holding warming to 2C (apart from praying for low climate sensitivity), but it’s not “game-over” for avoiding the second trillion tonnes, which would bring the likely warming up to 4C.

​

 

[Reality Check]

As has been shown quite conclusively, they purport to comment on climate science but they're actually a pseudoscientific website pushing political garbage.

You are mistaken - no one has shown this at all.
All we have is your continuous repeating this claim without presenting the "conclusive" evidence" and displaying your ignorance of the meaning of pseudoscience.

Yes, and clearly "the front page" does not mean "the entire website" as you continue to erroneously claim.

Yes, and clearly "the front page" does not mean "the entire website" as I do not claim.
I did miss out the words "on the first page" at least once.

So look for the day with 2 politically motivated articles and that must have been the day.

It is your claim so you look for them.

Furcifer, Can you pick out the political articles that you saw on the front page from this list of articles published in the last 2 months?
First asked 31st January 2012 (2 days and counting)
My browser lists 5 articles on the front page. You state that your browser shows 3. So list the 3 articles of which 2 are political.

I can and I have.

You did not in this post and you have not since you made the claim on the 29th Jan 2012.

So according to this unsupported assertion the answer to

Can you link to the"irrefutable evidence" that has been cited? Can you list the more than 7 articles that clearly violate their "memorandum"?
First asked 30 January 2012 (3 days and counting)
​

should be a simple link to where you list those more than 7 articles !

 

[Reality Check]

Most people don't understand the nature of climate science. They don't realize it's a relatively new and poorly understood science. They don't know or realize that it's a statical analysis with no right or wrong answer. Denialism as it pertains to climate science is the refusal to acknowledge these basic principles.

Whoops - you have just made yourself one of those "most people" !

Climate science (climatology) has been around for centuries.

Early climate researchers include Edmund Halley, who published a map of the trade winds in 1686 after a voyage to the southern hemisphere. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) first mapped the course of the Gulf Stream for use in sending mail from the United States to Europe. Francis Galton (1822-1911) invented the term anticyclone.[2] Helmut Landsberg (1906-1985) fostered the use of statistical analysis in climatology, which led to its evolution into a physical science.

It is an extensively researched and well understood science.
It includes statistical analysis whose answers are are right within their statistical significance. For example the global temperature trend for data starting from 1995 was not statistically significant in 2009. A couple of years later, the trend is statistically significant and agrees with the longer term analysis, i.e. the trend is that the temperature is increasing.

Denialism as it pertains to climate science is the refusal to acknowledge the results of climate science.

 

[Megalodon]

What does the source of the data have to do with my typing "is" when I meant "isn't"?

You corrected your statement, and I replied to the corrected version.

I can produce them or I can Google them.

Please do either.

Magic, 5 data sets all from one data set 1966-2011. It makes perfect sense if you're familiar with how the data is being "massaged".

Is this your idea of a joke? Five sections of a data set are not "5 data sets" anywhere, specially if such a large fraction of it overlaps. What you are suggesting is not massaging the data, it's fraud. And if you are going to suggest that such a thing is used in climate science, you better attach some citations...

 

[Trakar]

Indeed, this is in reference to an amended data set that purports to show a 0.12C per decade increase.

Please explain and support this assertion

Unfortunately the empirical evidence deviates "significantly" from the model mean average over the same period.

Please explain and support this assertion

 

[Trakar]

Unfortunately it was, in the late 90's I was an alarmist. I was mislead just as many are now being mislead. It takes one to know one as they say.

Please explain and support this claim

Actually it hasn't. It's impossible to tell if it's gotten warmer since 2008. That's a well known limitation of climate science.

Why do you think it is impossible to say whether or not it has gotten warmer?
2 years is too short to say anything about climate, but its not too short to say anything about average annual temperatures.

Nonsense. As I mentioned I was a mislead alarmist 10years ago.

please explain and support this claim.

Obviously I've changed.

I see no obvious change, please explain and support your claim.

I have no doubt that in 10years time many of the alarmists here will change their tune as well.

I see no alarmists here, exactly who are you referring to with that term and what leads you to believe that their current positions and understandings will change?

 

[Mikemcc]

Obviously Furcifer imagines these exist, as if everybody and his dog is recording temperature data all across the world and calculating their own global temperature time-series. While I'm sure there are more series than the Big Four it doesn't run into dozens, let alone hundreds, and they'll use much the same data. If any of them showed anything markedly different from the usual ones, and in a cooler sense, we'd all have heard a great deal about it. We've heard plenty about UAH, after all (I hear UAH is back in the shop yet again for tuning after performance dropping off recently : it's no wonder they can never get the method and code used ready for release).



Furcifer would like to go back 5 years, I'm sure, <snip> The 2000's were sooooooooo much more denier-friendly than the 2010's are shaping up to be. They couldn't have asked for better - a serious warm outlier in 1998 to set a "no warming since" mark and a decade ending with La Nina conditions and a very quiet Sun. It's not surpising they'd like to stay there.

2011 seems to have tempted them out, what with yet more La Nina conditions, but that isn't going to last for ever and (for what it's worth) solar activity is ramping up for the next few years. I'm looking forward to the graphs .

Especially since the main surface temperature record holders don't actually own the stations, they rely on the various national met organisations! So each of them only has the same sources of data.

 

[Trakar]

...I'm very familiar with pseudoscience.

I believe you

You'll find most people engaging in pseudoscience vigorously deny it,...

indeed you do.

I suspect nothing less when it comes to climate science.

so you think that mainstream climate science is pseudoscience?

RealCrapScience.com has been shown to be a pseudoscientific website.

I can't find that site, but given your personal expertise in pseudoscience, I'll take your word for it. As you say "it takes one to know one."

 

[Trakar]

I believe the question was clear: cite scientific studies that support the conclusion that anthropogenic climate change is responsible for any of those 100 claims.

Cite scientific studies that made the claim that any of these issues are the result of AGW, these all appear to be newspaper articles, and while all of them mention climate changes as a contributing factor none (that I have seen) in the linked pseudoscience blog located on a hyperpartisan political think-tank's site seem to be making the claim stated by you or the author of the piece.

 

[Trakar]

No it clearly doesn't avoid the political and economic implications of climate science.

None of that is peer reviewed, it's a political puff piece. Did you look at the comments?

The comments are not part of the article. While the articles are written by climate scientists who for the most part explain and discuss the science and while some of the climate scientists do respond to questions and replies in the comments section, anyone can respond in the comments section.

There is nothing wrong with the people who know the most about the science discussing and sharing their ideas about appropriate public policy to address the issues indicated by the science. When it comes to issues of public policy regarding vaccinations, the medical and biological sciences rightfully have an interest and public obligation to discuss and weigh in on their concerns and understandings of the topic. Why would you think that climate scientists should not have input into the public policy discussion of addressing climate change issues?

 

[Halsu]

There's plenty of evidence, it's just not easily accessible on the internet because it predates Google.

Try scholar.google.com - it has a load of scientific articles starting from at least 1800's, maybe earlier.

A 1m rise in sea level, that was a big one. Massive global scale crop failures, famine and resulting disease that would wipe out millions. The usual rhetoric.

You do know that these are not what's supposed to have happened so far, but rather what is possible to happen in the next 100 years or so, right?

 

[Halsu]

None of that is peer reviewed, it's a political puff piece.

First of all, thanks for finally providing us with an example of what you assumably see as pseudoscience at RealClimate. It was a long wait, but now we have something we can discuss.

Anyway, as far as the science being non-reviewed, you're wrong, the sources of information in the article are peer reviewed when applicable, and cited as usual:
http://www.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12877
http://www.eia.gov/emeu/international/reserves.html
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/convert.html
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1532/3067.abstract
http://aapgbull.geoscienceworld.org/cgi/content/abstract/93/2/203
http://www.realclimate.org/index.ph...c.org/Study_Topic_Papers/22-TTG-Heavy-Oil.pdf (a broken link)
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/4/1/014005
http://pubs.usgs.gov/of/2008/1202/
http://rstb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/364/1532/3067.abstract
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/convert.html

if you care about climate, you can't consider the oil sands a 'reasonable' energy source. --raypierre]

I can't honestly believe anyone could read this and conclude that it's climate science and not political and economic implications.

So there's the "one article" you begged for. Who are the deniers again?

I didn't read the comments, so thanks for pointing this out. That is indeed something that can be seen as an opinion about how the results of science should affect policy. As such this example is in contradiction to the site's "about" text.

However, that does NOT in any way make the text pseudoscience. As said many times earlier, political commentary does not equate it. It only means that in this case, the writer didn't comply with their own rules in this one commentary reply (he did in the article itself though).

Now, can you show that there's something wrong with the science that this comment is based on? Can you show that the conclusion is wrong? Can you show that what's in the text contradicts the cited sources?

Also: After the 10th try without a response, i'm no longer waiting for your answers to my questions, and conclude that you admit the previous article you linked to was NOT pseudoscience. But as far as your challenge goes, is this article in your opinion "political drivel", and as such something that would apply to the challenge? Would you like me to find something similar from a reputable science journal for you?

 

[Halsu]

I believe the question was clear: cite scientific studies that support the conclusion that anthropogenic climate change is responsible for any of those 100 claims.

I'll just do first three from the list - at least all of them are indeed based on a scientific study:
1. The deaths of Aspen trees in the West
2. Incredible shrinking sheep
3. Caribbean coral deaths

 

[Reality Check]

I believe the question was clear: cite scientific studies that support the conclusion that anthropogenic climate change is responsible for any of those 100 claims.

I should point out that this blog article of "100 Things Blamed on Global Warming" is from a climate change denier since the author continues after the list with the number 1 denier fallacy (Climate's changed before). The author follows this with the idiocy of the myth that an ice age was predicted in the 1970's (What were climate scientists predicting in the 1970s? - "The vast majority of climate papers in the 1970s predicted warming.").

I will also point out your hypocrisy, Furcifer. You state that you want to cite the science of climate change. You have asserted without any evidence that you do not look at http://www.realclimate.org/ because it is "rife" with politics. But here you are linking to a political blog !

 

[CapelDodger]

Especially since the main surface temperature record holders don't actually own the stations, they rely on the various national met organisations! So each of them only has the same sources of data.

Indeed. It's obviously impracticable for any institution to set up and operate their own global system.

It would be possible for, say, the oil-industry to do it - they already have a global presence and a lot of ships on the ocean - but I haven't heard of it being done. No bottom-line in it, I suppose, unless they charged for the data, and that would be a PR disaster. "Oil-industry conceals climate data!", McIntyre would be all over that. And if they made the data freely available they'd be looking at another BEST (and somebody lost their job over that fiasco, mark my words. "Great idea, kid. You'll never work in this industry again."). All in all, best not go there .

I suppose the global temperature series that Furcifer imagines to exist are ones in which the data hasn't been massaged by US government agencies and the CRU. If they do exist and differ markedly from GISS and HadCRU they're being kept very quiet for some reason.