Anthopogenic Global Warming Myth or Real ?

[BenBurch]

http://www.upi.com/Science_News/200..._melting_at_a_faster_rate/UPI-36631218854201/

Bering glacier melting at a faster rate

HOUGHTON, Mich., Aug. 15 (UPI) -- New measurements show the Bering Glacier in Alaska is melting at double the rate that scientists had thought, researchers said Friday.

Robert Shuchman, co-director of the Michigan Tech Research Institute, said the glacier, the largest in North America, is releasing about 30 cubic kilometers of water a year -- more than twice the amount of water in the entire Colorado River.

"This could potentially change the circulation of coastal currents in the Gulf of Alaska," Shuchman said.

<SNIP>

 

[varwoche]

WWF and/or Greenpolice certainly do fund researchers who in turn publish. You might want to make a fast retraction of that comment or be prepared to deal with a thousand membership funding requests.

Lucky for me I callenged tyr_13 and not the entire internets.

eta: Well, I admit I didn't know who the WWF was, so that was going out on a limb a little. As for Greenpeace, a new data point has arrived that bolsters my contention: your comment above given that you can so often be counted upon to be dead wrong.

 

[Bluefire]

Never said that, did I?

Maybe my rhetorical style flies over some heads.
The meaning of my comment was that I considered comments such as yours to be on the alarmist end of the scale.

Because I think its actually too late to repent.

Okay, Not a preacher for repentence but a doomsayer.

So, what we need to do is plan for the inevitable now, and attempt to put some harder numbers on the rate at which we will have to evacuate cities

Evacuate?! You know, it's not really going to go from a couple of mm a year to meters a year in sea level rise...

but you young folks had better expect to deal with it.

Sure, we will always have to adapt to changes. Doomsday speculations may be fun, but they are not convincing by themselves...

In other news, glacier melt rates worldwide are accelerating, the Northwest Passage is open for the second time in human history, and some rather alarming cracks have been observed in the glaciers in northern Greenland.

Glaciers were built up to unusually high levels during little ice age, since then they've been melting. Equilibrium may be some time in the future, so we may have to live with the 1-3 mm/yr rise of sea level for another century. Not a very daunting task I may add. If the northwestern passage opens regularly we may have a better transport route to choose from and maybe, just maybe, we will be able to do agriculture on Greenland in the future (though the last one may be dependent on the more far-out unrealistic doomsday scenarios...)

See, I'm already adapting...

 

[Bluefire]

Lucky for me I callenged tyr_13 and not the entire internets.

eta: Well, I admit I didn't know who the WWF was, so that was going out on a limb a little. As for Greenpeace, a new data point has arrived that bolsters my contention: your comment above given that you can so often be counted upon to be dead wrong.

Will any greenpeace funded peer reviewed paper do or just in climate science? I ask because it took me all of 45 seconds searching the web to find a greenpeace funded, peer reviewed (and statistically fallacious) paper attacking GMO-food safety...

 

[Piggy]

Bluefire, the projections are continually morphing as the reality on the ground changes and we get more and more data and refine our models.

At any given point in time, as you mention, there is of course a range of possible outcomes that fit the current models and data.

Move a little farther along and we see where reality has ended up within the predicted range, then that is used to improve the modeling and the current data are used in conjunction with the improved models... you know how it goes.

Anyway, compared to predictions from, say, a decade ago things have turned out to be rather alarming. We're not at the extreme of the potential outcomes, but we're somewhere in the high end of the "Oh ****!" scale.

It doesn't make sense to reject rather horrifying predictions just because they're horrifying. As always, we have to keep our eyes on the data, on what's being observed.

But more importantly, if the likelihood of, for instance, global coastal flooding and agricultural disruption is, say, 40%... you could say, well, that means is not as likely to happen as it is unlikely.

But when you're talking about a 2-in-5 chance of something like THAT happening... it makes absolutely no sense not to prepare for it.

In other words, in deciding what to do and how quickly, we have to take into account not just the probabilities but also the potential consequences.

And on top of that, fighting AGW stimulates innovation, increases efficiency and productivity, and creates jobs.

 

[mhaze]

Never said that, did I?
Because I think its actually too late to repent.

Barring a major techo-fix for the problem, which is doable, but I don't see the political will to implement it, then we have an ice-free Greenland in about 150 years.

Maybe we could slow this down by reducing emissions, but its too late to stop it now. We would have had to begin serious reduction 8 or more years ago to stem this in time in my opinion.

So, what we need to do is plan for the inevitable now, and attempt to put some harder numbers on the rate at which we will have to evacuate cities and deal with the loss of agriculture. Its not going to be pretty.

Fortunately, I'll be feeding the worms by the time the worst of this hits, but you young folks had better expect to deal with it.

In other news, glacier melt rates worldwide are accelerating, the Northwest Passage is open for the second time in human history, and some rather alarming cracks have been observed in the glaciers in northern Greenland.

Sounds like a replay of Rachael Carlson "Silent Spring" or Paul Erlich "The Population Bomb". Or various other eco-disaster scenarios, none of which played out.

But this time it's different, right?

May I remind you of something?

The historical time frame when Greenland was last warm was not a time of major world wide famine, disease and population shifts. Such things occur in cold periods, not warm ones: Cold means drier air, less moisture for crops, shorter growing seasons, a 1 degree decrease in the average temperature of Europe, for examine, or Africa, is accompanied by war, famine, population shifts. Warmer air means more moisture, more rain, longer growing seasons.

COLDER:
What were the temperatures trend during the Dark Ages? The time of bubonic plagues?
During the collapse of the Mayan empires?
The collapse of the Viking Greenland settlements?

WARMER:
How about during the expansion of the Roman empires?
The settling of Greenland?

You turn it upside down and claim that a 1 degree increase in temperature, if it even were to happen, is going to cause Very Bad Things.

This seems quite illogical, doesn't it?

 

[Bluefire]

At any given point in time, as you mention, there is of course a range of possible outcomes that fit the current models and data.

Well, any happening can be retrofitted to all the models, if that's what you mean. Skillfull postdiction is nonimpressive. Wake me up when the models show skill in _pre_diction.

Move a little farther along and we see where reality has ended up within the predicted range, then that is used to improve the modeling and the current data are used in conjunction with the improved models... you know how it goes.

Well, if we go by the shotgun method of models it is entirely nonimpressive for any real-world usage that that some of them got a little bit less wrong than the rest. It's not time to start listening to the modellers until they are good enough to show predictive skill. UNTIL that happens the modeling should be considered a developing field that holds some potential for the future, but that for the time being is quite worthless for real world applications.

Anyway, compared to predictions from, say, a decade ago things have turned out to be rather alarming.

I take issue with this. In fact most models had more severe outcomes predicted. They have rather consistently overestimated temperature rise and such ...

We're not at the extreme of the potential outcomes, but we're somewhere in the high end of the "Oh ****!" scale.

Not how I have interpreted available data.

It doesn't make sense to reject rather horrifying predictions just because they're horrifying. As always, we have to keep our eyes on the data, on what's being observed.

Agreed.

But more importantly, if the likelihood of, for instance, global coastal flooding and agricultural disruption is, say, 40%... you could say, well, that means is not as likely to happen as it is unlikely.

But when you're talking about a 2-in-5 chance of something like THAT happening... it makes absolutely no sense not to prepare for it.

Of course, I would take issue with that 40% number.

In other words, in deciding what to do and how quickly, we have to take into account not just the probabilities but also the potential consequences.

Agreed, but I guess where we differ is not in the question "should we act if there is 40% chance of total disaster", but rather on the questions "is the risk high?" and "how severe will the consequences be of x" (where x is more CO2, or say 1.0C warming, or ...)

And on top of that, fighting AGW stimulates innovation, increases efficiency and productivity, and creates jobs.

No, a rather common economic fallacy.

 

[mhaze]

Lucky for me I callenged tyr_13 and not the entire internets.

eta: Well, I admit I didn't know who the WWF was, so that was going out on a limb a little. As for Greenpeace, a new data point has arrived that bolsters my contention: your comment above given that you can so often be counted upon to be dead wrong.

Ah, but there was a Safe Refuge: Claim you meant WWF = World Wrestling Foundation.

 

[Piggy]

Well, any happening can be retrofitted to all the models, if that's what you mean. Skillfull postdiction is nonimpressive. Wake me up when the models show skill in _pre_diction.

Ok, I thought you understood more than you obviously do. My mistake.

When we're dealing with climate, it's kind of like dealing with quantum physics.

It's impossible (and I mean that literally) to make specific predictions along the lines of "In 5 years, the mean global temperature will be... and the arctic ice coverage will be... and the sea level rise will be....". You can only determine a range of probabilities.

Then you wait and see what really happens.

The difference, though, between QM and climate is that QM is very precise in its probabilities, and you're able to run test after test to determine exactly what they are.

With climate, there are an overwhelming number of factors, not all of which are known, and we're continually improving our models.

But that's the key right there. The more data we get, and the more observations we make, we're able to discard techniques that have not provided accurate projections (e.g., assigning high probabilities to scenarios that don't occur) and to fine-tune the techniques that do give us accurate projections.

No one is retrofitting data. That is not happening. No one in the field has any interest in doing that, and if they did, they'd be sussed out immediately, and they'd stop getting funding.

At the moment, the techniques that are being used currently have, in fact, shown a high degree of predictive accuracy. If they didn't, no one would be using them.

However, because climate is a chaotic system, we will never (never!) have any set of techniques which will be able to provide us with spot-on predictions of what the climate will look like in detail with 100% accuracy.

We're stuck with probabilistic projections.

That's what we have to work with.

If you want to be waked up when we're able to predict the climate with pin-point accuracy... well, I'm afraid you're going to end up sleeping your life away in blissful ignorance. But maybe that's what you were after all along?

Me? I prefer to engage with the science that we have.

ETA: Btw, did you go to Science Daily's climate page and read through the current articles?

 

[Piggy]

No, a rather common economic fallacy.

No, it's not a fallacy at all. Every time our nation has been confronted with an urgent need to innovate and produce, the overall economic effects have been beneficial. Countering AGW should be no exception.

In fact, the business sector is way out ahead of government on this issue, currently.

They're already ramping up. The major players have concluded that AGW is a significant business risk, and they're taking concrete measures to counter it, and they're doing so in a way that's sparking innovation and increasing productivity and efficiency.

Then there's all the greenwashing and marketing, but that's a different story.

 

[Piggy]

I take issue with this. In fact most models had more severe outcomes predicted. They have rather consistently overestimated temperature rise and such ...

I don't think you understand the history or nature of climate modeling.

Again, I invite you to browse thru the SD climate page. What we're seeing are levels of atmospheric temperature increase, ocean temperature increase, sea level rise, ice loss, etc. that fall above the median of the predicted range for the models that were most widely accepted.

 

[Piggy]

Of course, I would take issue with that 40% number.

That was just a hypothetical off the top of my head. I thought that would be obvious, but looking back, I didn't explain it. My apologies.

 

[Bluefire]

No, it's not a fallacy at all. Every time our nation has been confronted with an urgent need to innovate and produce, the overall economic effects have been beneficial. Countering AGW should be no exception.

In fact, the business sector is way out ahead of government on this issue, currently.

They're already ramping up. The major players have concluded that AGW is a significant business risk, and they're taking concrete measures to counter it, and they're doing so in a way that's sparking innovation and increasing productivity and efficiency.

Then there's all the greenwashing and marketing, but that's a different story.

I guess I should go into more details in this. Focusing on a "urgent" issue does not create jobs, innovation, productivity etc. It _redirects_ it. Inventors and investors that could have focused on other things are now focusing on AGW. Working hours that could have raised productivity in any industry are now being spent to lower CO2 emmissions instead.

Not to mention the kind of inefficiencies and lower productivity that would be the result of Kyoto:s ...

Now of course, _IF_ AGW is a disaster in the coming these investments and innovator-hours is an efficient and good use of resources. But if the threat is overplayed we would have been better off focusing on something else.

Businessmen jump on the bandwagon because it is the new working marketing gimmick, not because they see it as a great threat to their personal business in any real sense. And this is not a "different" story. It is a large part of the same story.

 

[Bluefire]

It's impossible (and I mean that literally) to make specific predictions along the lines of "In 5 years, the mean global temperature will be... and the arctic ice coverage will be... and the sea level rise will be....". You can only determine a range of probabilities.

I understand that this is the state you consider it to be in. However, from my reading this simply reinforces my point about them not being very usable in their current state.

At the moment, the techniques that are being used currently have, in fact, shown a high degree of predictive accuracy. If they didn't, no one would be using them.

I'd like some backing for that claim. Do you have a few papers that I should read on the predictive skill of (some specific I assume?) GCM:s ?

However, because climate is a chaotic system, we will never (never!) have any set of techniques which will be able to provide us with spot-on predictions of what the climate will look like in detail with 100% accuracy.

100% accuracy to the fifth decimal is not what is being requested. A "good enough" prediction power with "good enough" uncertainty range is what is being requested.

If you want to be waked up when we're able to predict the climate with pin-point accuracy... well, I'm afraid you're going to end up sleeping your life away in blissful ignorance.

IF you want me to base my actions on the outcome of CM:s they had better be strongly validated. If they are not I will not believe their output, despite the lame excuse of "but we have nothing else".

But maybe that's what you were after all along?

ETA: Btw, did you go to Science Daily's climate page and read through the current articles?

Not yet, but I will do that inbetween postings.

 

[mhaze]

...No one is retrofitting data. That is not happening. No one in the field has any interest in doing that, and if they did, they'd be sussed out immediately, and they'd stop getting funding.

At the moment, the techniques that are being used currently have, in fact, shown a high degree of predictive accuracy. If they didn't, no one would be using them.

However, because climate is a chaotic system, we will never (never!) have any set of techniques which will be able to provide us with spot-on predictions of what the climate will look like in detail with 100% accuracy.
...

Saying that "no one is retrofitting data" yada-yada-yada is wrong, of course they do. How many examples you want? Many IPCC charts are shown directly with say 10-15 years of hindcasting and several decades forward.

You, see, when the data is presented from 1990 forward (in the year 2007) to 2030 then you have a pretty good fit from 1990-2005 or so, and you have a projection forward from that. So the chart really does look very nice. And no, guys doing this don't get sussed out, and don't lose their funding.

But then, we can go back and look at the forecasts from 1990 IPCC, from 1995 IPCC, from 2001 IPCC, and see how they did, can't we? After all the backpedalling, double talk, and circuituous grammer, you have to answer a very, very simple question:

Do climate models have skill?

A yes or no will do.

This conversation is telling:

Originally posted by Piggy:
if the likelihood of, for instance, global coastal flooding and agricultural disruption is, say, 40%... you could say, well, that means is not as likely to happen as it is unlikely.
​

Originally posted by Tyr_13:
... Of course, I would take issue with that 40% number.


So what is happening isreally that "The models are right" are used to assert made up scare scenarios, like your 40% number. Sorry, that doesn't fly. Fact is, if the models had skill, you'd have your statistical probability for that scary scenario. You don't, thus when called on it you admitted to guessing at it, making it up, whatever you want to call it.

Originally posted by Piggy:
That was just a hypothetical off the top of my head. I thought that would be obvious, but looking back, I didn't explain it. My apologies.

I'm not complaining about this, just pointing out that you (other Warmers, Alarmists, etc) make these things up in the absence of actual skillful predictions. The computer models do not help your case, Piggy.

 

[Bluefire]

Just look at the science.

Screw everything else, forget all the rhetoric and politics, look at the science.

For instance, look here:

Science Daily's climate page

Now, what you're looking at there is a continually updated overview of peer-reviewed climate science being published right now worldwide.

No blogs, no politics, no bull****. Just the peer-reviewed science.

Now you tell me... what does the current science tell us?

From a quick glance and read of a few of them I found articles there that could be supportive of a wide range of views. Just like any other general collection of climate news , views and papers. Was there any particular answer you wanted us to arrive at by that page?

 

[Bluefire]

[/I]So what is happening isreally that "The models are right" are used to assert made up scare scenarios, like your 40% number. Sorry, that doesn't fly. Fact is, if the models had skill, you'd have your statistical probability for that scary scenario.

Well said.

I'd like us to get specific here, otherwise this debate will go nowhere , and noone of us will learn much of it.

So the challenge to Piggy is :

- Choose yourself your favorite doom-scenario (the one you think you can most easily support, or the one you think is most likely, or whatever). This may be for example 5.0C degree rise in 50 yrs, or 5 meter sea level rise in 50 years, or whatever. These are just examples. Give us the one you would choose. However, this should be something readily assessable as catastrophic.
(Eg. Northwestern passage open every year is not a disaster, it's a blessing for transportation)
- Give us the percentage for said scenario. I will agree that a risk substantially lower than 40% is acceptable. (So you may say for example 10% risk of 8m sea level rise in the next 50 years if we run business as usual)
- Show us the model(s) you want to give as evidence for us to believe said doom-scenario.
(If it is one in a series of "gunshot" approach modeling it will be less convincing, so try to avoid that)
- Give us the way said model(s) have been validated and had their skill proven. Complete with peer reviewed references. Preferably with their physical mechanism underpinnings (peer reviewed references). The skill should be directly attributable to the doomscenario. (Eg. a model good at predicting moisture in one particular region, but that has not proven itself for your doom-parameter will not be convincing). Bonus points if it has predicted correctly things (in relation to your doom-parameter) that would have been unlikely to predict absent the model.
- Also, if there are other models showing different percentages, and different outcomes for your doom-scenario, motivate why your chosen one should be believed over the others.

After this we can have a real productive discussion on how to weigh available model evidence.

 

[Neally]

It often helps to separate two issues:

1) are global temperatures increasing (and/or is the climate changing in some other unusually rapid way), and, if the answer is yes,

2) is the change caused by human activity.

Further,
3) What can if anything can humans do about it? What would the results be and how long would it take to have a significant impact?

4)What would those costs be?

5)What are the opportunity costs? What other things could be done that would have a greater benefit to humans with those funds?

 

[tyr_13]

Personally, I didn't really want to debate like this about what "science says." I am enjoying the some of the points brought up. Oh, mhaze, you credited me with a quote from Bluefire. No big deal.

Bluefire, I found the same thing going through the site Piggy linked to. Also, you're bringing up a lot of the same things I believe, so no need to repeat.

And while I did call it when I said someone will issue some challenge, and thus really didn't want to respond to it, I couldn't pass this one up.

From Greenpeace's website. "We commission many scientific research reports and investigations to support our campaigns." http://www.greenpeace.org/international/about/greenpeace-science-unit-2

Oh, and by WWF I meant World Wildlife Fund, who sued what is now World Wrestling Entertainment for the WWF symbol (even though the now WWE had been using it for much longer, they forgot to copyright it. Oppsie!)

I love technological invation, and many of the things that 'alarmist' AGW proponents take credit for (like hybrids, I toured the Toyoda city plant in Ichi for Toyota a few years back and fell in love with the Prius), but that doesn't mean that I support catastrophic visions of the future.

If you believed that this was a natural temperature change, would you still want rapid changes like taking CO2 out of the atmosphere? Would we want to increase cloud cover, put mirrors into space to deflect sunlight, put blankets on icecaps, or any other such thing? Or would it be ok to adapt if it were natural?

 

[Piggy]

I guess I should go into more details in this. Focusing on a "urgent" issue does not create jobs, innovation, productivity etc. It _redirects_ it. Inventors and investors that could have focused on other things are now focusing on AGW. Working hours that could have raised productivity in any industry are now being spent to lower CO2 emmissions instead.

Not to mention the kind of inefficiencies and lower productivity that would be the result of Kyoto:s ...

Now of course, _IF_ AGW is a disaster in the coming these investments and innovator-hours is an efficient and good use of resources. But if the threat is overplayed we would have been better off focusing on something else.

Businessmen jump on the bandwagon because it is the new working marketing gimmick, not because they see it as a great threat to their personal business in any real sense. And this is not a "different" story. It is a large part of the same story.

Not quite.

There is some cheap greenwashing going on, but there are also multi-billion dollar investements going on. That's not chump change.

Business is moving because there's a genuine business risk, plain and simple.

And yes, we will get new efficiencies and economic advantages over status-quo investments because the kinds of innovations necessary for anti-AGW strategies are exactly the kind that result in more energy-efficient production, the reduction of waste, leading the world in post-petroleum energy, etc.