thanks for the link.
to me this looks like he is a troll. would he really be concerned that there is a worldwider conspiracy in regards to AGW, he would take this stuff serious and avoid making such huge misstakes/lies.
thanks for the link.
to me this looks like he is a troll. would he really be concerned that there is a worldwider conspiracy in regards to AGW, he would take this stuff serious and avoid making such huge misstakes/lies.
The offending picture (#7092) has been removed -by Robert or a moderator? let's find out!-. He uploaded it again as #7166.
I suppose that the moment Robert is done making clear the truth about Obama's birth certificate and the right and need for everybody to carry guns, he'll come back and explain himself.
This question has been inspired by a debate I recently witnessed among some acquaintances.
It appears that the consensus among climatologists and among those in this thread is that global warming is a confirmed phenomenon and that its cause is also well understood and confirmed. Is that latter interpretation not reasonable? On the other hand, is the evidence for/against man made global warming ambiguous enough for there to be a genuine scientific debate?
The bottom line of my question is, would the mainstream regard global warming denial as crackpot science or would that be an unfair characterization?
This question has been inspired by a debate I recently witnessed among some acquaintances.
It appears that the consensus among climatologists and among those in this thread is that global warming is a confirmed phenomenon and that its cause is also well understood and confirmed. Is that latter interpretation not reasonable? On the other hand, is the evidence for/against man made global warming ambiguous enough for there to be a genuine scientific debate?
The bottom line of my question is, would the mainstream regard global warming denial as crackpot science or would that be an unfair characterization?
Global warming denial would most certainly be regarded as a crackpot nonsense, because it clearly contradicts the data. even AGW sceptics like Roy Spencer accept the fact that the world was geting warmer.
within science there are scientists that are doubting it is mainly human caused, i think everysongle one of them accept that humans have some influence, but are unsure about how much. others think there are still too much uncertainties to take meaningfull action.
i think it is good we still have scientists that are looking for alternative explenations, and honestly i still hope someone finds something and we can continue to pump out CO2. but the chance of that happening get smaller and smaller. also i am happy that virtually all of those real skeptics in science are actually accepting the basic facts, and are not the ones claiming strange stuff like, there is no global warming, or even more crazy, people that doubt the greenhouse effect itself.
This question has been inspired by a debate I recently witnessed among some acquaintances.
It appears that the consensus among climatologists and among those in this thread is that global warming is a confirmed phenomenon and that its cause is also well understood and confirmed. Is that latter interpretation not reasonable? On the other hand, is the evidence for/against man made global warming ambiguous enough for there to be a genuine scientific debate?
The bottom line of my question is, would the mainstream regard global warming denial as crackpot science or would that be an unfair characterization?
Let me criticize your term "genuine scientific debate". Every scientific debate is genuine and every debate about science that is not genuine is not scientific.
The short answer to your questions is: there's an ongoing process of global warming which has been decisively influenced by human action. Let me explain it this way: if the process were only caused by humans, we would have to move our planet away of the sun some 100 km a day just to keep it stable. If humans warm and the sum of other natural influences cool, we would need to move it away less kilometres. If human and the sum of natural influences concur, more than 100 km a day. Always away -no debate about it- but not crystal clear how much away -still on debate, only scientific method allowed, aggressive Sam-I-Ams forbidden-.
There are still uncertainties on that, mainly involving two aspects: the extent of the sum of all natural feedbacks boosting what humans start -where do we arrive if we persist in what we're doing- and the time frame for that to happen. Research and debate concentrate in those.
The same way nobody is researching about gravity not existing and other physical reality making things behave as if there's some gravity, nobody is researching if human emissions cause global warming. Rest assured of that.
If the question is straight forward for or against - there is no evidence against and the burden of proof to
a) show it is not happening at all
b) show that what is happening is not human derived
c) provide an alternative mechanism for the observed phenomena
Would be a monumental task akin to overturning evolution as a theory/phenomena
It does not mean there aren't many aspects to be determined - aerosols notably.
The bottom line of my question is, would the mainstream regard global warming denial as crackpot science or would that be an unfair characterization?
mainstream science community yes.
This my fav representative quote from a few years ago
Here is what Gammon had to say concerning links between humans and climate change.
This is like asking, ‘Is the moon round?’ or ‘Does smoking cause cancer?’ We’re at a point now where there is no responsible position stating that humans are not responsible for climate change. That is just not where the science is.…For a long time, for at least five years and probably 10 years, the international scientific community has been very clear.”
In case there is any doubt, Gammon went on: This is not the balance-of-evidence argument for a civil lawsuit; this is the criminal standard, beyond a reasonable doubt We’ve been there for a long time and I think the media has really not presented that to the public.”
Dr. Richard H. Gammon
Professor of Chemistry and Oceanography*
Adjunct Professor Atmospheric Sciences, University of Washington
Thanks for all the above responses. I believe it is wise for non-specialists to keep an open mind but be guided by those who have the expertise and have participated in in-depth studies of all available evidence. I have never seriously examined the data supporting human caused global warming, but have accepted what I have perceived to be a solid scientific consensus based on my exposure to sources like Scientific American. My question (inspired by an animated alcohol induced new year's eve discussion) involves just how solid that consensus is. Clearly, the above responses support the opinion that denial has become a crackpot enterprise.
Sadly, the media seems to have created the impression among lay people that there is still an ongoing genuine scientific debate.
This question has been inspired by a debate I recently witnessed among some acquaintances.
It appears that the consensus among climatologists and among those in this thread is that global warming is a confirmed phenomenon and that its cause is also well understood and confirmed. Is that latter interpretation not reasonable? On the other hand, is the evidence for/against man made global warming ambiguous enough for there to be a genuine scientific debate?
The bottom line of my question is, would the mainstream regard global warming denial as crackpot science or would that be an unfair characterization?
A lot of GW denial could be regarded as crackpot science such as the idea that the greenhouse effect contravenes the laws of thermodynamics, or the idea that the warming is due to some unexplained natural cycle. However much of it isn't science at all even the crackpot variety it's a CT usually expressed as THEY want you to believe in AGW so THEY can raise taxes/bring about One World Government.
That being said there is still a lot of room for uncertainty within the science, the IPCC projects that a doubling of CO2 will lead to a temp. rise of between 2 and 4.5 deg C. Some climatologists think is an overestimation, but the uncertainty goes both ways and there are climatologists who think this an underestimation.
It appears that the consensus among climatologists and among those in this thread is that global warming is a confirmed phenomenon and that its cause is also well understood and confirmed. Is that latter interpretation not reasonable? On the other hand, is the evidence for/against man made global warming ambiguous enough for there to be a genuine scientific debate?
The best summary of the science I know of is the one produced by The Royal Society a couple of years ago. It makes clear "where the science is well established, where there is still some debate, and where substantial uncertainties remain." You can download it here:
Thanks for all the above responses. I believe it is wise for non-specialists to keep an open mind but be guided by those who have the expertise and have participated in in-depth studies of all available evidence. I have never seriously examined the data supporting human caused global warming, but have accepted what I have perceived to be a solid scientific consensus based on my exposure to sources like Scientific American. My question (inspired by an animated alcohol induced new year's eve discussion) involves just how solid that consensus is. Clearly, the above responses support the opinion that denial has become a crackpot enterprise.
Sadly, the media seems to have created the impression among lay people that there is still an ongoing genuine scientific debate.
I started looking at this some time ago, approaching it to see how well a numerate layperson could do and whether I could develop an informed opinion on the debate.
Here is a post from earlier (2009) that sums up much of my approach:
I am a semiconductor engineer, and some time ago, I decided to investigate this, and see whether the simple statistical tools I would use to assess how a process is running could be applied to the data from weather. These tools are used in what is called "Statistical Process Control", and a very good introduction can be found on this NIST website:
I have had a similar discussion on the badscience.net website about this, and on this website too:
My analysis and reasoning that led me to conclude that the climate in the region with the longest history of measurements is warmer than in any other period for which measurements exist (which is back to 1690).
You say deniers, I say alarmist. I see no data that shows that we change the climate any more so than it changed before people were around. We haven't made an ice age, or warmed to that extent.
I like the environment just as much as then next guy and conserve as I can.
People who speak of imminent doom are religious zealots wherever you find them. Period.
There is evidence that the climate is changing, and it is warming at an increasing rate. Your claims about global data isn't really valid for the longest running dataset: the Central England temperature series, that is based on measurements since 1690. It shows unequivocally that England is warmer now than it has been in the last three hundred years. It also says that it is getting still warmer.
I started looking at this data because I wanted to make my own mind up, and to see if the data was clear to me. I have used statistical process control techniques in my work, so I thought it would be interesting to analyse this data as if it were a device parameter running on a particular process. The signal is very strong, especially compared to the sort of data that I am used to in work.
Why does it matter if we are changing the climate or of it is natural variation?
Is the climate changing? The cusum says that England is getting warmer. It also says that the rate of change is increasing. The global data also supports this.
Is this bad? Well probably for crops, especially if repeated globally.
Is there a model that explains this? (well yes) but isn't this irrelevant?
Is CO2 a greenhouse gas? Well it absorbs IR, and atmospheric physicists say it is. They say that increasing CO2 woulld make the world warmer. Do we care if the warming is natural or artificial, if we can reduce it (or reduce our addition to it) and we accept that its effects would be bad?
If you want to know how to interpret the cusum, it is hidden in the spoiler below:
Cusums are used in certain types of statistical process control systems, and are very good at spotting when (noisy) processes are drifting from their target values. You decide on the target value (sometimes, but not always, the long term average) and then subtract this from each data point. This gives you the difference (or "Delta") above or below the target that each data point is. The cusum is the sum of all the deltas including the current data point. This is an integration and so removes noise from the signal.
To compare the process to the target, you then look at the gradients: horizontal will mean that it is running at target, upwards means above target, and downwards below target. An increase in steepness means that the process is moving further away from target, i.e. the process is still changing:
If the slope is such that there is an increase of 100 units in 100 readings, then the process is running at about 1 unit higher than the target, if it is 200 units lower in 100 readings then it is running at 2 units beow target etc.
Below I have annotated my cusum to show the different situations, and the increases in temperature:
Well, I'd like to understand why academic climatologists are so confident about 3. We plainly don't know the mechanisms so thoroughly that we can conclude it can't be anything else.
Does it matter where the CO2 is comming from, we are releasing several PPM per decade of CO2 so reducing that will reduce the rate iof increase of CO2, whatever the cause is.
EDIT:
According to wiki: the total emissions are 27,245,758 thousand metric tonnes per year, a quick sum is that this is about 27-Gigatonnes of CO2 per year.
The atmosphere is about 5-Petatonnes so each year the emissions are about 27e9/5e15 tonnes, or about 5.6 ppm per year. In 2006 the CO2 levels were 381ppm according to the BBC.
The annual emissions are about 1% of the total level, which I'd regard as significant.
You've got to watch your baseline though; using the graph's start time is artificial. If you say there's a permanent step change at 1600, or the period 1050-1600 is unusually high, then 1750 is a good takeff point and coincides with human emissions.
OK, I now found lake Vostok CO2 data (from here) and added that in, again on a log plot with the same scale. This might be dodgy, but they do tend to be similar at around -1k for the law dome data, and -2k for the vostok data. If this is the case,then this is outside the previous 400,000 years variation.
I am not an academic, like you I work as an engineer, and I tend to think like an engineer. I would like to have 95% confidence that a technical decision will be the right one before acting, but if the pros and cons are equal sometimes it is simply best to go with the course of action that is most probably correct.
If you then factor inrisks you might consider mitigation against unlikely events. I certainly consider what I can do to to mitigate the possible effects of something that has a 30% chance of occuring. (And far lower if the hazard is high enough)
Does it matter where the CO2 is comming from, we are releasing several PPM per decade of CO2 so reducing that will reduce the rate iof increase of CO2, whatever the cause is.
Ah well only possibly. If (for example) change in agriculture is changing vegetation types and so albido and water vapour levels, and CO2 is responding to the temperature rise, then we'll be spending money on the wrong thing and still have a disaster on our hands.
But martin, my fag-packet calculations confirm what I am told. I too can see lots of other potentially confounding factors, which are pretty complex and which is why there are departments of artmpospheric and climatological science.
In several situations the argument *seems* to me to be:
1) The simple model, based rough estimats and simple maths broadly agrees with the IPCC.
2) Ah, but that is only a simple model, what about more complex features which *might* change the story.
To which the answer is that they might indeed, which is why there are scientific papers discussing the features of the models or the data.
If the simplistic treatment disagreed with the acknowledged experts, then I might profitably try looking to see if I could understand why, and be a little more sceptical of their claims.
My simplistic analyses do broadly agree with the acknowledged experts, whilst the possible confounding factors are precisely the sort of confounding factors that I have seen acknowledged in discussing these models. This leads me to the conclusion that the experts aren't missing a trick, and they are probably correct, because they are already attempting to assess the magnitude and direction of these effects.
Remember I do not consider myself to have the ability to second guess the atmospheric physics departments of multiple universities (I have a day job already, and can only spend a few hours on this).
Because of this I can only do simple analyses, which I did, because I had heard there was a controversy.
When I did these simple sanity checks, they supported the IPCC statements and not the people who claimed that there was no problem.
This is not an argument from authority: Any moderately numerate person should be able to follow my reasoning, and I would like to know how this could come up with any other answer.
Of course it is possible to say that there might be confounding factors in such a complex system, but this is why you need proper models. We would have to be very lucky for all the confounding factors to be acting agaist there being anthropogenic global warming
And I am not acctually that interested if global warming is anthropogenic or natural.
CO2 emissions would add to the warming effect, and global warming will have many bad consequences, just due to changes in weather patterns and movement of fertile zones (especially across country boundries with the additional dnagers of war).
In such a situation, acting to militate against these effects is sound practice whether global warming is natural of artifical.
Clearly, the above responses support the opinion that denial has become a crackpot enterprise.
Sadly, the media seems to have created the impression among lay people that there is still an ongoing genuine scientific debate.
The British Royal Society for the first time in it's illustrious history went public over it and wrote an open letter to Exxon decrying it's role in funding disinformation and there was an Exxon shareholders revolt over the company's policy.
Yet despite that AGW was almost off the agenda on the election and many of us here figure it's just a matter of coping with the change that is on it's way - and it will not be pretty.
This last years wild weather was only a small presage of what's coming as the climate moves into a different state.
Where the science focus is now is what that state will be like for various regions of the planet as the planet warms.
Certainly the Arctic is already the throes of major change.
C02 has not been this high for millions of years and it WILL get warmer. Interesting times.
I suspect no one will be able to prove it to you, to people who look at the data more objectively however, it's already been proved that man is changing the worlds climate by burning fossil CO2.
This demonstrates why you remain unconvinced despite the clear evidence in the science. You don't know what science is or where you can find out what it says.
What you have linked to isn't science but an article in the popular press. At the time that article was written there was already a strong consensus among scientists that CO2 emissions would warm the earth.
I knew it had to be a fake, because some years ago the news reports on the "ice age" were searched, and it amounted to a hill of beans. Also the design of the cover is definitely not 70s.
And since RP has previously tried to pass this fake - unsuccessfully - I also got the answer to my question.
- Since sea level is not rising, the chief ground of concern at the potential effects of anthropogenic “global warming” – that millions of shore-dwellers the world over may be displaced as the oceans expand – is baseless. - We are facing a very grave, unethical “sea-level-gate”.
1. The graphs are drawn wrong. The measured temperatures and scenario A are more or less correct, but scenarios B and C are simply faulty, drawn to show about 0.2 degrees more warming than in the real Hansen paper (probably they have a wrong offset).
2. Using the Hansen 1988 study is in itself sleight of hand. It's 25 years old, and while it was a good effort at a the time, the predictions were soon found to be a bit too high. For example, the IPCC 1990 report already had lower estimates, pretty much spot on correct compared to the measurements.
3. Ending the graph to 2008, which was a strong La Nina year and as such about the coolest of the 2000's. Also, starting it from around 1980. Both are probably done to give an appearance of no warming.
4. Using the UAH and RSS was probably also deliberate attempt to downplay measured warming. They have a slightly lower trend than the ground station measurements, as well as bigger variation, which also obscures the trend somewhat.
As for evidence of the above, i photoshopped that faulty graph, Hansen's 1988 original and UAH / RSS temperatures from woodfortrees plot together (the X / Y scales should be roughly correct, i eyeballed the reference offset (all three have a different reference zero point):
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