Global warming

[mhaze]

Welcome to Texas.

 

[mhaze]

I read it here first; statistics is not a science. Interesting. Just as interesting is the custom in this forum when in doubt, attack. Always attack.

Edit: I missed your post Scheibster. Did you ever locate the experiments used to test the hypothesis of CO2 being the main driver of climate? What about the climate sensitivity, any word on that?

More on statistics.

Here is a guy down in Australia doing some statistical analysis of Australian weather. He's figured out something that Jones et. al. didn't get - that you can't use (tmax-tmin)/2 to get the average daily temperature.

Then there is the Wegman report . Wegman, a board member of the American Statistical Association, assembled a committee of statisticians to review the Mann et. al. "hockey stick" work...

"Mann et. al. misused certain statistical methods in their work which inappropriately produced hockey sticks"

"although the researchers use statistical methods, they do not seem to be interacting with the statistical community"
​

Here is Steve McIntyre's initial comments on Mann's latest paper

"I noticed that Mann has continued to use his PC methodology without changing a comma, notwithstanding the strong statement of Wegman that his PC methodology was simply “wrong” and the statement by the NAS panel that it should be avoided"

​

PC here does not mean politically correct but refers to a statistical method.

Valid objections to quality of work, all.

 

[oglommi]

Hmmmm... assuming you're serious, you are apparently not aware that the greenhouse effect was proposed in the nineteenth century. By Fourier. As in Fourier transform, which you might have heard of here and there. And investigated by Arrhenius. As in first winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry Arrhenius. They were ultimately proved correct, according to our current knowledge. The theory explains the average surface temperatures of Venus, Earth, and Mars fairly nicely, so there's some observational evidence.

As far as proving it in a laboratory, what precisely do you have in mind? Proving that CO2 is largely transparent to visible light, but has strong spectral lines in the IR? Yep. As far as showing that the radiation from a body at the temperature of Earth has a peak very close to those lines? Yep. As far as showing that those lines occur in a "window" in the absorption spectrum of water vapor, thus increasing the potency of CO2 as a greenhouse gas in our atmosphere? Yep.

So I guess my question is, given evidence that CO2 behaves a certain way in the lab, and given evidence that it works in the atmosphere the way they say it does, evidence from three planets, my question would be, do you believe that CO2 will act differently in the atmosphere from the way it acts in the lab, if so why, and how do you account for the surface temperatures of those three planets if it does?

I don't think CO2 is resposiblity for the possible changing of temperature. It all seems to me as complete hysteria. A sort of modern day "rain dance" were we humans have been bad and must change our ways our mother earth will punish us.
It's not like the first time experts have spread hysteria like the Y2K virus and I'm sure countless other example if i'd bother to look for it.
Don't bother flooding me with silly facts I can't answer. I put my faith that time will prove me right.

 

[Schneibster]

Don't bother flooding me with silly facts I can't answer. I put my faith that time will prove me right.

Absolutely classic. "Don't bother me with facts, my mind's made up." Right. I believe that's the end of that particular conversation.

 

[CapelDodger]

Strap me, I turn my back for five minutes and the tone simply plummets.

 

[CapelDodger]

I could even agree, if we didn't have a couple of decades of observations in accordance with the models. This is what separates a theory from fluff. Predictions were made, they were in general correct. The theory stands provisionally, being adjusted where it was incorrect.

Scientists must have been doing something right.

Well and calmly put .

varwoche first brought attention to the denialist fixation on the past, and did so some years ago. That was with reference to a re-hash of the 90's Hockey-Stick Fraud Shock; still fighting the same old battles because events have only borne out the consensus predictions. They have not done the contrarian cause any favours at all. And it's clearly losing in terms of public and political perception.

The reason it's losing, obviously, is what's revealed by the biggest, baddest, 100% never-wrong analogue climate model that works in real-time just outside everybody's front-door (if they have one).

The blade of the Hockey Stick has just grown longer. Luck? Coincidence? Conspiracy? Vindication?

The digital climate models that "it's all based on" have proved themselves in action. The modelling of ice-dynamics hasn't performed nearly as well, but as a problem it's of a much higher order. Climate is relatively simple.

 

[CapelDodger]

Absolutely classic. "Don't bother me with facts, my mind's made up." Right. I believe that's the end of that particular conversation.

Best all 'round, I reckon.

Yet another Global Warming thread launched by a recently illuminated one, regurgitator of the half-digested junk-science that has altered his consciousness. Blissed-out on their own epiphany they are consumed with the need to share the revelation ... yadda-yadda.

This one bears the mark of the Three Planets Warming, without reference to all the planets and moons that aren't warming - too confusing, perhaps, or more likely it simply didn't come to mind. To my mind, once you start looking off-planet for comfort (say, because the past is too foreign) you have to check out the whole solar-system. Otherwise, who knows what's lurking? There could be Marxists behind any rock.

Mars is Red, you know .

 

[CapelDodger]

[Armstrong is o]bviously the latest "expert" paid for and sent out by people with agendas.

I don't think this is "obvious". Attention is a great motivator in itself, and without Armstrong's venture into AGW territory he'd just be another schmuck who can't do Marketing so he teaches it. (You'll know the old saying : those who can, do; those who can't, teach; those who can't teach, teach teachers.)

He may well have attracted funding and promotion subsequently, but I suspect his initial motivation for conjuring up anti-AGW arguments was ideological. Poster-boy status was thrust upon him.

 

[CapelDodger]

I don't think CO2 is resposiblity for the possible changing of temperature. It all seems to me as complete hysteria. A sort of modern day "rain dance" were we humans have been bad and must change our ways our mother earth will punish us.

Science doesn't make value judgements. The science of AGW simply explains what has happened to the climate (and predicts what will happen in general terms) as a result of past and present human activity. Specifically, the burning of fossil-fuels. That activity - unprecedented in Earth's history - has released enough sequestered carbon to add about a third to the pre-industrial atmospheric CO2-load. This has had, and will have, climatic consequences. Significant climatic consequences in human terms.

(At the same time the oceanic CO2 concentration has also been increased; the consequences of that are not well-understood. They may be significant, but maybe not.)

It's not like the first time experts have spread hysteria like the Y2K virus and I'm sure countless other example if i'd bother to look for it.

You seem easily assured. Are you perhaps too young to recall any previous examples?

To characterise the IPCC reports as hysterical is to invite ridicule.

Don't bother flooding me with silly facts I can't answer.

Oh dear ...

Questions need answering. Facts are facts.

I put my faith that time will prove me right.

You'll be disappointed. There's no cooling-phase waiting just up the line, despite Lindzen's Sliding Ten Year Prediction. (It's always "Jam within the next decade" with Lindzen, never "Jam Today!") The world will get warmer throughout your lifetime. I've staked my reputation on it - no small thing for a chap of my age and background.

 

[a_unique_person]

More on statistics.

Here is a guy down in Australia doing some statistical analysis of Australian weather. He's figured out something that Jones et. al. didn't get - that you can't use (tmax-tmin)/2 to get the average daily temperature.

It's an historical way of giving an indication of the average temperature for a day, that was settled on over a hundred years ago as a way of getting a simple metric for temperature. It doesn't claim to be any more than it is, but it is a useful for what it does. Jones et all didn't create the idea, they were just using what is historically accepted, despite the technical issues people can raise. It measures something meaningful, and it has been used for a long time.

 

[oglommi]

Science doesn't make value judgements. The science of AGW simply explains what has happened to the climate (and predicts what will happen in general terms) as a result of past and present human activity. Specifically, the burning of fossil-fuels. That activity - unprecedented in Earth's history - has released enough sequestered carbon to add about a third to the pre-industrial atmospheric CO2-load. This has had, and will have, climatic consequences. Significant climatic consequences in human terms.

(At the same time the oceanic CO2 concentration has also been increased; the consequences of that are not well-understood. They may be significant, but maybe not.)



You seem easily assured. Are you perhaps too young to recall any previous examples?

To characterise the IPCC reports as hysterical is to invite ridicule.




Oh dear ...

Questions need answering. Facts are facts.



You'll be disappointed. There's no cooling-phase waiting just up the line, despite Lindzen's Sliding Ten Year Prediction. (It's always "Jam within the next decade" with Lindzen, never "Jam Today!") The world will get warmer throughout your lifetime. I've staked my reputation on it - no small thing for a chap of my age and background.

I'm not a scientist and so have to choose who to trust based on my bulls hit detector and who is make more sense. GW seems to be hysterical doomsday preachers (Al Gore) and snotty arrogant articulate besser wissers (this thread). While what I have seen of AGW seems to be far more rational folks.

The "don't bother me with facts I can't answer" English is not my primal language and I can't possible win a discussion here.

 

[oglommi]

I need a friggin list to keep up here. Will everybody that is 100% sure that Global warming because of CO2 produced by people please raise their hand? Then post the proof that convinced you, then link to the source, and then pat yourself on the back.

Thank you in advance.

Excellent idea.

Oglommi=AGW seeing a documentary about some danish scientist debunking global warming with graphs of sun activity and stuff like that convinced me. And Al Gore who seems like a slippery used cars salesman.

 

[Pipirr]

I'm not a scientist and so have to choose who to trust based on my bulls hit detector and who is make more sense. GW seems to be hysterical doomsday preachers (Al Gore) and snotty arrogant articulate besser wissers (this thread). While what I have seen of AGW seems to be far more rational folks.

The "don't bother me with facts I can't answer" English is not my primal language and I can't possible win a discussion here.

Just a word about the terminology:

GW= Global Warming
AGW= Anthropogenic Global Warming (that is, resulting from human activities)

Both are often used in these parts, with these meanings. Your meaning, I suspect, might be different.


Carry on

 

[oglommi]

Sorry sorry. I thought AGW was Anti-Global Warming. I do not belive GW is human made.

 

[David Rodale]

Science doesn't make value judgements. The science of AGW simply explains what has happened to the climate (and predicts what will happen in general terms) as a result of past and present human activity. Specifically, the burning of fossil-fuels. That activity - unprecedented in Earth's history - has released enough sequestered carbon to add about a third to the pre-industrial atmospheric CO2-load. This has had, and will have, climatic consequences. Significant climatic consequences in human terms.

(At the same time the oceanic CO2 concentration has also been increased; the consequences of that are not well-understood. They may be significant, but maybe not.)



You seem easily assured. Are you perhaps too young to recall any previous examples?

To characterise the IPCC reports as hysterical is to invite ridicule.




Oh dear ...

Questions need answering. Facts are facts.



You'll be disappointed. There's no cooling-phase waiting just up the line, despite Lindzen's Sliding Ten Year Prediction. (It's always "Jam within the next decade" with Lindzen, never "Jam Today!") The world will get warmer throughout your lifetime. I've staked my reputation on it - no small thing for a chap of my age and background.

With all due respect, each IPCC report has downgraded it's projections (IPCC authors claim they don't make predictions despite numerous use of the word throughout their reports) from the previous. Given this and that climate models are the basis for AGW predictions, how can it be said climate models have any confident degree of certainty? To say current observations match climate model predictions is difficult to follow since each IPCC report is downgraded.

Would it be fair to say the first IPCC in 1990 was hysterical or simply "mistaken"?

I am interested in your evaluation of climate models since the myriad of data suggests they have serious problems with forecasting accuracy. Links to peer reviewed studies (statistical or otherwise) would be helpful and please refrain from long protracted speeches with links to opinions and news headline sensationalism.

There is nothing scientifically based at all in your last five posts. Save the fact of increased use of coal, oil, natural gas and their derivatives to improve our way of life, your entire post is rife with subjective rhetoric and opinion, which seems acceptable from one side of the isle but not the other.

Repeated requests for empirical evidence demonstrating CO2 as the main driver of climate and what the true value for climate sensitivity of the earth is have gone on deaf ears.

Nonetheless, since both of the above are critical in the calculations, shall we have a go at climate models then? After all, they are as has been said the 'Holy Writ' of AGW, therefore we must invoke the infallibility axiom as is done with AGW opposition, or will the new tried and true scientific method of AGW of fake-but-accurate, wrong-but-plausible and inaccurate-but-good 'nuff be the rule?

Let us skip Hansen's 1988 prophecy utterances unless you'd like to re-hash it. No, despite your best efforts to show otherwise by linking to your favorite blogs attempting to spin the numbers, from purely a statistician's evaluation it doesn't cut the mustard; it is statistical garbage.

Your warning to oglommi of ridicule for daring to question the notion of AGW in a "skeptic" forum (an oxymoron) would be equally applied if you quoted yourself verbatim at an actual climate science blog, with the exception of possibly RealClimate, the repository for AGW dogma which has no shortage of groupies ready to welcome you into the fold, but even Gavin has his upper tolerance limit for ludicrous statements.

There is no more validity in your assumption that it will continue to warm etc. etc. etc. than to say it will be colder etc. etc. etc. for the next 50 to 100 years. On the other hand, the last 9 years haven't been a stellar period for AGW.

BTW, I'm not exactly a young greenhorn buck either.

 

[a_unique_person]

Repeated requests for empirical evidence demonstrating CO2 as the main driver of climate and what the true value for climate sensitivity of the earth is have gone on deaf ears.

Deaf ears just not reading the IPCC correctly? The IPCC has never claimed CO2 is the main driver of climate. The Milankovich cycles and sun appear to do that. However when these are stable, as they are at the moment, then CO2 is doing the job.

 

[Pipirr]

Sorry sorry. I thought AGW was Anti-Global Warming. I do not belive GW is human made.

No problem.

 

[varwoche]

On the other hand, the last 9 years haven't been a stellar period for AGW.

What do you base this on?

 

[CapelDodger]

With all due respect, each IPCC report has downgraded it's projections (IPCC authors claim they don't make predictions despite numerous use of the word throughout their reports) from the previous. Given this and that climate models are the basis for AGW predictions, how can it be said climate models have any confident degree of certainty? To say current observations match climate model predictions is difficult to follow since each IPCC report is downgraded.

The range of the predictions has narrowed in each IPCC report as the science and observations have advanced. The upper bound (for each emission scenario) has reduced while the lower bound has increased.

Would it be fair to say the first IPCC in 1990 was hysterical or simply "mistaken"?

It would be inaccurate to describe it as either. It did what it purported to, presented a review of the contemporary science. It didn't claim to do anything else, or even to be definitive.

Is there anything in the first IPCC report that you consider to be hysterical or mistaken?

I am interested in your evaluation of climate models since the myriad of data suggests they have serious problems with forecasting accuracy. Links to peer reviewed studies (statistical or otherwise) would be helpful and please refrain from long protracted speeches with links to opinions and news headline sensationalism.

I don't do links much, and know the newspaper industry far too well to associate myself with it on my own time. I do perhaps tend towards the verbose; us old guys do ramble on, don't we.

Global cllimate models have come a long way since we sketched castles in the air over beers back in the 70's. (Of course, there's more computing power in my PC than there was on the whole UEA campus back then, probably more than in the whole of East Anglia come to that.) In principle they're not that difficult a problem - weather-forecasting is of a much higher order. Climate is just about the bounds within which weather happens. GCM's perform very well against historical outcomes - which includes the last two decades, of course. There's no reason to think they'll suddenly deteriorate, so I take their predictions very seriously.

The big push now is into regional weather models, such as hurricane or Indian Ocean monsoon models. Only those can predict the practical impact of any given global climate.

There's some work going into ice-dynamics models, but that's mostly wasted effort, in my opinion. They'll still be playing catch-up when the complicated stuff has left the stadium.

There is nothing scientifically based at all in your last five posts.

Probably not, since they were about this thread and the AGW "scene" generally. Schneibster et al have dealt with the science already.

Save the fact of increased use of coal, oil, natural gas and their derivatives to improve our way of life, your entire post is rife with subjective rhetoric and opinion, which seems acceptable from one side of the isle but not the other.

I've reviewed the post, and I don't see "rhetoric". As to "opinion", well, it's not opinion that science doesn't do value-judgments. It's not opinion that the burning of fossil-fuels has led to 380ppmCO2 - an increase of about a third of pre-industrial levels - and acidification of the oceans. It's not opinion that this will have an effect on the climate, nor is it opinion that it will be significant in human terms. Heck, in human terms two bad summers in a row has a significant effect on a lot of people.

It's my opinion, no question, that the climate will continue to warm. When I stake my reputation on it, I'm not doing it rhetorically. If I turn out to be wrong, I'll hands-up assume the status of prole, and deservedly so. I'm happy to place that stake because I'm betting on physics, not wishful-thinking. And I'm not even betting against a stake. Like evolution, I either lose or survive for yet another round.

Repeated requests for empirical evidence demonstrating CO2 as the main driver of climate and what the true value for climate sensitivity of the earth is have gone on deaf ears.

What you'll find, if you look, is that people have tried to extract specific questions from this general ragout, and have addressed them.

You say, in this particular stew, "CO2 as the main driver of climate". What is one to make of this? Do you mean "the main driver [forcing] of current climate change"? That's very much the consensus scientific view.

If you mean "the main driver [forcing] of historical climate", nobody claims that. Historically, CO2 has been a positive feedback to climate change by other means. There are a few incidents that have been theoretically attributed to sudden CO2-bursts generated by massive methane-clathrate disruption, but it's a controversial subject.

Nonetheless, since both of the above are critical in the calculations, shall we have a go at climate models then? After all, they are as has been said the 'Holy Writ' of AGW, therefore we must invoke the infallibility axiom as is done with AGW opposition, or will the new tried and true scientific method of AGW of fake-but-accurate, wrong-but-plausible and inaccurate-but-good 'nuff be the rule?

Rhetorical.

Let us skip Hansen's 1988 prophecy utterances ...

You mean the state-of-the-80's-art Hansen et al model that, for Scenario B (which turned out to be the best approximation of the actual scenario) turned out to be right there towards the centre of the ballpark?

There were prophecies back then. Clouds will stop it happening, for instance. No, they didn't.

... unless you'd like to re-hash it.

Well, why not? I'm not yet bored by your reasons why being right blows your game.

No, despite your best efforts to show otherwise by linking to your favorite blogs attempting to spin the numbers, from purely a statistician's evaluation it doesn't cut the mustard; it is statistical garbage.

Do you get out much? I mean really out, where you can get rained on? Do you have a garden?

The reason why climate change has crawled its way up a well-greased public-opinion pole over the last couple of decades is nothing to do with statistics. It's down to ordinary people's experiences.

 

[rockoon]

The range of the predictions has narrowed in each IPCC report as the science and observations have advanced. The upper bound (for each emission scenario) has reduced while the lower bound has increased.

So we could take the "average", right?

(prediction.max + prediction.min) / 2

Now, there are some technical problems with this methodology, but lets not forget that we are measuring something meaningful