Global warming discussion III

[CapelDodger]

Or of course they could just get there views posted in a sceptic friendly Murdoch newspaper. Do Murdoch's papers ever allow articles from the vast majority of climate scientists who believe AGW is a problem?

That's not news. "Little guy stands up to corrupt establishment" is news.

The contribution Murdoch makes in kind to the AGW denial camaign is worth more than all the money of the Good Ol' Billionaire Boys Club members.

 

[Reality Check]

Like this Berkeley post on realclimate. They offer zero wevidence, much less any source for their claim. And it's a huge claim, it's the reason for actually changing the past, rather than showing what the actual real data shows. The source can be found on real climate http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/data-sources/

Sorry, r-j, but the claim that weather stations are moved is not huge (except for climate change deniers desperately clinging to ignorance of climate science!) - it happens . The fact that they are moved from environments that may be cooler or hotter than their destination is also not huge.

You do not seem to know what a citation is, r-j. A link to a list of sources is a lot better than a news article but is not the source of the data you claim to have read. Several of the possibly applicable sources are to FTP sites, some with large datasets and with files password protected.

 

[CoolSceptic]

This paper was discussed at real climate where they explain why the paper does not contradict the majority scientific view that the warming we are seeing is due to greenhouse gas emissions.

That article is very poor. RealClimate claimed that we should use GCM output as the null hypothesis. But GCMs don't replicate natural variability correctly (e.g. due to clouds etc. that DC referred to earlier, and a key point made by Koonin in his opinion piece, so still somewhat on topic). So the approach recommended by RealClimate is horribly flawed; it is no surprise to me they left it to a blog post and did not try to publish a rebuttal along those lines.

If you wish to explore deeper into this subject, I would recommend following Professor Koutsoyiannis' response to that article here:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/12/naturally-trendy/comment-page-2/#comment-7040

(Unfortunately I have some problems with this link; sometimes the mobile site appears on my browser which has no comments. If anyone knows how to fix this, please feel free to have a go!)

 

[CapelDodger]

I actually believe you. No matter how simple and plain I make it, it just doesn't seem to get through to you.

Make it simpler by answering, in simple manner, two questions:

Do you believe there is a Theory of Global Warming?
Do you believe there is a Theory of Global Cooling?

Regarding where you're going with all this, well, where are you going with it? What do you imagine the existence, or otherwise, of these theories implies?

 

[CoolSceptic]

we know for a fact that most of the warming we observed in the late 20th century was caused by the enhanced greenhosue effect, and we know for a fact that human activity is the main cause of the enhanced greenhosue effect.

In fact, the papers I have linked you to show we do not know this for fact. I understand you believe it to be, but the qualitative assessments in the IPCC reports are neither rigorous nor scientific.

we measured it, AGW is an observed fact. and the paper does not refute that conclusion at all.

GW is an observed fact. This should be uncontentious. AGW is not fact, but an interpretation of the data based on a false assumption that natural dynamics can be ignored. The paper I linked shows that.

who says Cohn failed to convince his colleagues? His colleagues. the overwhelming majority of them agrees that AGW is real, happening now and is a problem.

I understand your belief in AGW and your belief that you can read the minds of so many scientists. I do not share these beliefs of yours.

 

[CoolSceptic]

That's not news. "Little guy stands up to corrupt establishment" is news.

The contribution Murdoch makes in kind to the AGW denial camaign is worth more than all the money of the Good Ol' Billionaire Boys Club members.

I have to give you some credit CapelDodger, I may not agree with them but your posts are always good fun to read

 

[CapelDodger]

You claimed things that were obviously false, with no evidence.

That doesn't sound like me at all. As I recall (I don't keep such meticulous track of my JREF involvements as you) you baldly stated that "winters [were] cooling" which turned out to mean you'd experienced a couple of cold winters in the US and had forgotten the warm one. You then decided it was NH winters only and found some data on part of Kentucky to back it up. I've not paid much more note since, but last winter in the US (the Eastern part, anyway) was also cold and this seems to have inspired you anew.

Once you can grasp that there is a theory, and models are based on the theory ...

And there you've got a big problem, because climate models are not built on "a theory". They're built on a whole slew of physical theories related to evaporation and condensation, fluid mechanics, radiative physics, and (it should go without saying) thermodynamics. These are expressed mostly in the form of differential equations, for the very obvious reason that climate is essentially all to do with gradients.

.. then we can finally discuss the problem the cooling winter trend presents.

Why not wait till next Spring to see what the winter trend is then? More data is always good, it's only six months, and unless something very strange happens in the central Pacific the 20 year trend you favour is going to be positive by then. Why knock yourself out explaining something that turns out to be an artefact?

 

[DC]

In fact, the papers I have linked you to show we do not know this for fact. I understand you believe it to be, but the qualitative assessments in the IPCC reports are neither rigorous nor scientific.


GW is an observed fact. This should be uncontentious. AGW is not fact, but an interpretation of the data based on a false assumption that natural dynamics can be ignored. The paper I linked shows that.


I understand your belief in AGW and your belief that you can read the minds of so many scientists. I do not share these beliefs of yours.

no, you have not linked to any such paper.

the IPCC Reports are rigorous and very scientific. they are a summary of the current science of AGW.

Measurements clearly show what caused the warming. We measured the temperatures of the atmosphere and the oceans, we measured the CO2 concentrations, we measured the CO2 Isotope ratios, we measured the enhanced greenhouse effect, we measured the backradiation etc etc.

i don't need to read minds. i can read studies and polls among experts that show the consensus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scient...rveys_of_scientists_and_scientific_literature

 

[CapelDodger]

I have to give you some credit CapelDodger, I may not agree with them but your posts are always good fun to read

Most gratifying .

 

[Reality Check]

Depends on what their null hypothesis is and what they are testing for.

You may have missed the main point of the Naturally trendy? article, CoolSceptic.
It is that it is quite wrong to assume that the statistics of random walks apply to a system with physical forcing. In order for the observed warming trend to be a statistical fluke, we have to wrong about some fundamental physics such as the greenhouse effect.

The Demetris Koutsoyiannis comment assumes no physical reasons for the time series he mentions. The response to the comment is "... But, I'm saying that there is physical reasons for such behavior, and that must be acknowledged in order to understand the phenomenon".

 

[CapelDodger]

Enjoyable article by respected computational physicist Steven Koonin in the Wall Street Journal a couple of days back.

"Old Man Shouts At Clouds". Do you not recognise the same old rant under another name?

 

[DC]

Even though the human influence on climate was much smaller in the past, the models do not account for the fact that the rate of global sea-level rise 70 years ago was as large as what we observe today—about one foot per century.

what does he mean with they don't account for it? what kind of argument is that?

the warming 70th years ago was comparable , so it is not suprising that the seal level rise is at roughly the same rates.

 

[DC]

A crucial measure of our knowledge of feedbacks is climate sensitivity—that is, the warming induced by a hypothetical doubling of carbon-dioxide concentration. Today's best estimate of the sensitivity (between 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit and 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) is no different, and no more certain, than it was 30 years ago. And this is despite an heroic research effort costing billions of dollars.

yet the deniers keep telling me that the IPCC revised the CS downwards. yet somehow it is still no different than 30 years ago? for the deniers it is already completely different than 2007....

 

[CapelDodger]

... in terms of politics, given the doomsday scenario that the current climate trends present according to backers, there's very little priority given to advancing the climate agenda.

It's a priority for lots of people, as demonstrated today in many cities.

Case in point, the healthcare bill trumped climate change legislation when democrats had the super majority in congress a few years ago.

If either was actually that easy why didn't they do both?

Or when the chief enforcement of changes are based on ineffective taxation of industries to push on sustainable resources faster.

Sustainables are surging ahead, so where's the evidence of ineffectiveness?

From a political standpoint, democrats need the support of conservatives regardless of what they may think of the party, because they certainly missed their opportunity to do it when they had a filibuster-proof majority in both houses.

You seem to be mistaking the US Democratic Party for a regimented body such as the US Republican Party. Many Democrats are, in fact, explicitly conservative and geographically in the US Coal and Oil belts.

Enough politics for me; I'm not going down that rabbit-hole. Nothing effective is going to be done about AGW and, as a result, many interesting things are going to happen. Hopefully not to me.

 

[r-j]

I honestly don't know how you put up with the activists on this site.

Well I will tell you straight up, I actually discover a lot while debunking the nonsense. It's enjoyable in and of itself, the discovery, the researching, the new information. For example, because of the claim of the Berkeley Yahoos on realclimate, I actually looked at the daily readings for all the years in question, and learned a lot more about the Chicago heatwaves than anybody has ever published before, well, that you can find online.

Obviously the claim that the University rooftop station was recording 113 days is actually insane, but by looking at the data, I discovered several things about the changes that actually happen when they switched the official readings from the Uni to Midway, then to O'Hare. There are actual changes due to the switch, but they are nothing like the ones the NCDC uses to modify the data in their presentations.

And a big plus was I solved a mystery that stumped me for years in regards to the "official" records reported for the hottest (ever) and lowest (ever) temperatures for each day. The official temperature for Chicago now is the O'Hare station. But since Midway still records and publishes daily records, the record days for the Midway records are different from the "official" official records, which come from O'Hare.

Which sounds confusing.

You can see for yourself (anyone can) by looking at the daily data, and looking at the records. Certainly that is educational. But looking at the current (as in recent, like the 2012 heat wave) data for both airports is very educational. And not just the heat, the night time cool temps are also informative. Comparing the airports with the stations still near the lake is where it really gets scientific.

Moving a weather station from a cool park-like area, the University which is next to a huge lake, to a huge busy modern airfield, changed not only the highs, but the lows. And you can see the changes.

The official all time hottest day for Chicago is 105, from July 24 1934 From the University station.

But as I pointed out above, the Midway station (which in 1934 was still called the Air Park) shows a record of 107 for that day.

It's because the O'Hare station uses the "official record", but Midway uses the Midway record, there are two different sets of records.

Midway has an unbroken set of daily records starting in 1928, when the station began at the Air Park.

The current O'Hare record is the entire record of Chicago, which moved many times, including being at Midway from 1943 to 1979, so it can be confusing. But the actual real data remains untouched.

If I hadn't actually looked at every single annual and monthly report from the NWS, I would have missed out on many new things. Interesting things, educational things, even exciting things.

And I wouldn't have gone to that trouble with out seeing the idiot claim about the University station having "a slew of 113 days" recorded.

So the seemingly annoying woo woo claims actually lead me to discover new things, so it's all good. It's even fun.

 

[DC]

Well I will tell you straight up, I actually discover a lot while debunking the nonsense. It's enjoyable in and of itself, the discovery, the researching, the new information. For example, because of the claim of the Berkeley Yahoos on realclimate, I actually looked at the daily readings for all the years in question, and learned a lot more about the Chicago heatwaves than anybody has ever published before, well, that you can find online.

Obviously the claim that the University rooftop station was recording 113 days is actually insane, but by looking at the data, I discovered several things about the changes that actually happen when they switched the official readings from the Uni to Midway, then to O'Hare. There are actual changes due to the switch, but they are nothing like the ones the NCDC uses to modify the data in their presentations.

And a big plus was I solved a mystery that stumped me for years in regards to the "official" records reported for the hottest (ever) and lowest (ever) temperatures for each day. The official temperature for Chicago now is the O'Hare station. But since Midway still records and publishes daily records, the record days for the Midway records are different from the "official" official records, which come from O'Hare.

Which sounds confusing.

You can see for yourself (anyone can) by looking at the daily data, and looking at the records. Certainly that is educational. But looking at the current (as in recent, like the 2012 heat wave) data for both airports is very educational. And not just the heat, the night time cool temps are also informative. Comparing the airports with the stations still near the lake is where it really gets scientific.

Moving a weather station from a cool park-like area, the University which is next to a huge lake, to a huge busy modern airfield, changed not only the highs, but the lows. And you can see the changes.

The official all time hottest day for Chicago is 105, from July 24 1934 From the University station.

But as I pointed out above, the Midway station (which in 1934 was still called the Air Park) shows a record of 107 for that day.

It's because the O'Hare station uses the "official record", but Midway uses the Midway record, there are two different sets of records.

Midway has an unbroken set of daily records starting in 1928, when the station began at the Air Park.

The current O'Hare record is the entire record of Chicago, which moved many times, including being at Midway from 1943 to 1979, so it can be confusing. But the actual real data remains untouched.

If I hadn't actually looked at every single annual and monthly report from the NWS, I would have missed out on many new things. Interesting things, educational things, even exciting things.

And I wouldn't have gone to that trouble with out seeing the idiot claim about the University station having "a slew of 113 days" recorded.

So the seemingly annoying woo woo claims actually lead me to discover new things, so it's all good. It's even fun.

how long will you run away from your errors before you can admit your error?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=10065538#post10065538

its very telling that you complain about others not being able to admit an error. you are running from this a very long time. man up, admit your error.
you woo woo claim got debunked.

 

[CoolSceptic]

You may have missed the main point of the Naturally trendy? article, CoolSceptic.
It is that it is quite wrong to assume that the statistics of random walks apply to a system with physical forcing.

Nowhere in Naturally Trendy are random walks used, invoked, referenced, anywhere.

LTP is not a random walk. If you don't understand something so basic about stochastics, you have no hope whatsoever of understanding the work of Cohn or Koutsoyiannis.

 

[r-j]

It is obvious that there are efforts being made to change the past, to "adjust" the data, to change the record of what was recorded. And it is obvious for climate purposes this is a scientific view.

But the methodology in doing so is very important, and it must follow the scientific method, rather than somebody just guessing or assuming something, and it must be open and published, so that anyone can replicate the changes and investigate the method. Otherwise it isn't science.

One of the things that got my dander up was how insulting the Yahoos are, making it sound like the scientific and hard nosed scientists in Chicago were incompetent, that they set up and ran bad stations, that they didn't know what they were doing.

That is slanderous even. It insults both the NWS, but it also is insulting to science.

In 1942 the "official" records switched to what would become Midway. You can see in the official report the two stations.

Note both the low and high temperatures, and the differences.

Why anyone would lie about temperatures, station moves, or what the NWS shows in it's records, is beyond me.

Something like this is easy to check.

 

[DC]

It is obvious that there are efforts being made to change the past, to "adjust" the data, to change the record of what was recorded. And it is obvious for climate purposes this is a scientific view.

But the methodology in doing so is very important, and it must follow the scientific method, rather than somebody just guessing or assuming something, and it must be open and published, so that anyone can replicate the changes and investigate the method. Otherwise it isn't science.

One of the things that got my dander up was how insulting the Yahoos are, making it sound like the scientific and hard nosed scientists in Chicago were incompetent, that they set up and ran bad stations, that they didn't know what they were doing.

That is slanderous even. It insults both the NWS, but it also is insulting to science.

In 1942 the "official" records switched to what would become Midway. You can see in the official report the two stations.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=31755&stc=1&d=1411339944[/qimg]

Note both the low and high temperatures, and the differences.

[qimg]http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=31755&stc=1&d=1411339944[/qimg]

Why anyone would lie about temperatures, station moves, or what the NWS shows in it's records, is beyond me.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=10065538#post10065538
you made claims about data manipulation in the past, and turned out the claim was wrong.
it is beyond me why anyone would lie and then fail to adress the posts that point out the lie.

 

[CoolSceptic]

no, you have not linked to any such paper.

the IPCC Reports are rigorous and very scientific. they are a summary of the current science of AGW.

Measurements clearly show what caused the warming. We measured the temperatures of the atmosphere and the oceans, we measured the CO2 concentrations, we measured the CO2 Isotope ratios, we measured the enhanced greenhouse effect, we measured the backradiation etc etc.

We measure the temperature, or the heat (of the oceans), or the atmospheric concentrations. We do not measure the cause. We infer the cause, but we do so making assumptions about natural variability that many scientists have shown may not be correct. These scientists have published in the peer-reviewed literature, and you are unable to show fault in them. That's quite a serious problem for your claim; furthermore, the pause does rather strongly support the claim of long term persistence in natural variability.

And once again, no specific testable claims, no proper cites or quotes, just "the IPCC says so". Yet the IPCC contains no original research, and provides no answers at all to the problems raised by Cohn and Lins (amongst others).

i don't need to read minds. i can read studies and polls among experts that show the consensus.

Please tell me which survey that explicitly asked if there was "a problem", which is a claim both you and greybeard have made. I am aware of a number of surveys, but none of them asked if there was "a problem". But I may have missed one. So please tell me which survey this was and how you determined this opinion.

For example, I am aware of the Doran and Zimmerman survey, that included the question: "How convinced are you that climate change, whether natural or anthropogenic, is occurring now?". There was strong agreement with this, but it does not tell us there is "a problem". The Harris interactive poll of AMS asked about consequences, which could be argued to indicate "a problem", but 44% said they expected only moderate effects, and 13% saw relatively little danger - so hardly a resounding consensus on the question of whether there is "a problem".

So specifically - which survey exactly tells us there is a "consensus" that there is *a problem*, which is what you originally claimed.