a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
All of a sudden, projections are quite believable?
Global warming
- Thread starter oglommi
- Start date
-
- Tags
- global warming
All of a sudden, projections are quite believable?
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
So do you agree with Lomborg that AGW is real? That would save wasting time with a lot of these questions. He seems to think that increasing CO2 will warm the planet.
Schneibster
Unregistered
- Joined
- Oct 4, 2005
- Messages
- 3,966
Not to mention... shudder... MODELS.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
Have they been validated?
mhaze
Banned
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2007
- Messages
- 15,718
I'm just interested in understanding if Met incorporated Tsonis's concepts of synchronized chaos, if so, why did they reach different conclusions than he did.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, I'm quite happy to acknowledge my limited understanding of the topic, I'm just doing the best I can. I am also happy to refer people to the IPCC reports, but that doens't seem to satisfy a lot of people for some reason.
The weather patterns, not just isolated events, seem to be changing in Australia, and research is underway into establishing if that is permanent or not. What is happening is certainly in accord with predictions. El Nino = Drought for Australia. The prediction was for more frequent and more powerful El Nino, and that's what's been happening. This is for not just one year, but for about ten years now, since the massive El Nino of 1998. All capital cities are now investing in desalination plants. That's not just because of increased demand, but reduced inflows as well.
If the liberal dream of Kyoto isn't going to work, then what is?
I appreciate your sincerity to learn, but the IPCC should not be a primary reference. Its a consolidation work and clearly one where we should all suspect political motives abound. For the very same reason I would not suggest that papers by the fossil fuel industry should be the primary foundation for any "conclusion" on the topic. Read them both, read the papers by the iconoclasts dissenters and see where it leads. I strongly suspect that, like this forum-column, the trend will be an unclear muddle requiring further information and I think that's a fair assessment of the topic.
Someone here noted that weather isn't climate, but climate is really little more that weather over an extended period. Weather over a 5 or 10 year period and specific events like El Nino can't really be used very effectively as "proof" of climate change. One-in-a-thousand chance events really do happen once every thousand times, and viewed in detail every event is far more unique. Just because a river crests it's expected "century" peak three times in a decade is not proof that the estimate is in error.
Unless you have a theory that can predict these events over a considerable body of data you can't really say much about the causal relationships. Let me propose a crude analogy for those who don't tract statistical analysis. Let's say for the sake of argument that some specific and definable annual weather event like El Nino occurs in average 50% of years and that we have an eqn which attempts to predict it. After 10 years let's say that the eqn has predicted 8 of 10 correctly. 80% accuracy would be a great model for such a complex phenomena, but unfortunately there is a 10% chance that you would get 8 of 10 or better correct from 10 random coin tosses. The theory may be accuracy or it may just be reasonably lucky. To be verified it either has to be extraordinarily accurate or else you need a lot of data (meaning long time periods) to verify it.
I don't believe Kyoto can work for the same reason I don't believe you can herd cats. There is no way the Kyoto signators can prevent the 3rd world or even their own citizens from burning fossil fuels when it comes down to subsistence or even lifestyle mainenance. *Maybe* if you had a planet-wide Stalinist authoritarian dictatorship you could largely enforce it, but that's not a great solution (sadly it's generally the outcome when socialist schemes like Kyoto are followed to their conclusion; see Hayek).
No if you want to remove CO2 from the atmosphere we really need to devise active solutions that remove CO2 or avoid producing it. The marketplace should decide how.
The fundamental problem of pollution is a well known and well understood economic problem often called "the tragedy of the commons". When there is a public good which everyone is free to share, then the biggest piggy gains the most and no one is motivated to maintain the good, lest the benefits his efforts go to to another. A "commons" refers to a common grazing field. The guy who gets there first with the most sheep reaps the biggest benefit, but no one is motivated to fertilize or plant seed to maintain the public commons.
The solution is just as simple as the problem - remove the commons and charge a use fee related to the cost of atmospheric carbon sequestration with credits for recapture & sequestration. This is effectively a carbon tax/carbon credit scheme, but there should be provision for credits to net consumers at even a small scale and import pollution duties to those places that generate excess CO2.
One of the ridiculous aspects of Kyoto is the "free pass" given to developing nations. Sorry but excess CO2 is gram for gram equally bad regardless of source. If that equivalence is not recognized then the result is that those paying a lesser cost for use of the commons will be advantaged and those paying more are disadvantaged causing a shift of pollution sourcing from one to the other. That's ridiculous and not helpful.
Perhaps in Oz you don't have a clear-cut example of this problem. If you go to the SW US - say around El Paso/Jaurez it is clear as day that Mexico pays little or no attention to pollution. Already w/ the NA free trade zone you have US companies well known for environmental problems creating facilities in Mexico. So the pollution to our commons remain but the source is now beyond our immediate jurisdiction. It hasn't helped the pollution situation at all. Kyoto for example would ask the US to reduce emisisons by 7% while Mexico by 0% (free-pass). The upshot is that the cost of business in the US increases so the pollution migrates a few miles south and is not abated. How is this a solution ? It's rubbish, nonsense; and worse it is economy destroying nonsense. Carbon is carbon - measure it and tax it.
I don't disagree. "Right level" of atmospheric CO2 is ultimately an anthropomorphism, just as the right temperature to set your home air conditioner at. Clearly all fossil & plant carbon was once atmospheric, so we should be interested in what previous levels were like and what their impact was on climate and the biosphere.
Still it would be quite remarkable if human activity had not raised atmospheric CO2 levels considerably in the past century or two. Probably as you suggest not beyond prehistoric levels, but certainly beyond the recent levels. *IF* this causes some instability in climate or biosphere then it could be catastrophic, but if not it could be a waste of effort to control. I agree that your argument plays into to the "how much should we be willing to pay", but that it has an impact on the biosphere is pretty clear.
The question of climate aside, there is some reasonable evidence that the excess CO2 impacts ocean ph and plant growth rates and ... may (if the non-equilibrium hypothesis is doubted) be causing problems.
--
I think we agree. Kyoto, as I just posted is largely about the exportation of pollution from some countries to other countries, not it's elimination. Further the central treaty idea isn't nearly as extensive or equinanimous as the economic forces. If the EU, Canada and Japan decided to tax and add duties based on CO2 then it would soon become the planetary standard - even if the US dragged it's feet (I doubt it would when faced with a fair deal).
mhaze
Banned
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2007
- Messages
- 15,718
Leaving aside your discussion about Kyoto for now and focusing on the CO2 issue for the time being, I'd like to summarize what is sort of a moderate, skeptical point of view as best I can.
A doubling of CO2, including forcings and feedbacks, may result in 0.5 to 1.0 C temperature rise due to a predominance of negative, not positive feedbacks. The economic and social impacts of 0.5 - 1.0 C rise is negligible. CO2 has been vasted overrated as a real world driver of climate, aerosols, soot and pollution have been underrated. There are no "tipping points" supported by even the IPCC mainstream research, it is a sort of fringe element of Warmers who believe in "tipping points". Therefore, hysteria and alarmism and "urgent action required now" can be disregarded.
Taxation or regulation of CO2 is premature, because it is not fully based on a scientific understanding, could have consequences the reverse of what was intended by well meaning people who introduce programs to control CO2. Severe unintended consequences to third world countries may occur as and if developed nations attempt control and regulation schemes that impact imports from those underdeveloped countries. A wise win-win option given uncertainty on climate issues would be large scale building of nuclear power plants, which would have to be done over the objections of radical environmentalists and their lobbies.
mhaze
Banned
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2007
- Messages
- 15,718
Steve, that is a very good suggestion as to an approach to understand this admittedly complex area. Having said that, I'm going to post a link that has been troubling me. It's been bantered about for some time how Hansen, although perhaps well intentioned, has been seeming to get farther and farther on the fringe. Here is a summary of his current views -
James Hansen’s Presentation to policy makers October 3rd 2007: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/gustavus_3oct07.pdf
Short story seems to be that he advocates something of a return to primitivism, coupled with science fiction of non-existant carbon sequestration.
I'm not sure really what to say about this document. Perhaps it is best to just let it .... tell it's own story.
Yes - we agree that CO2 and have different absorption spectra which is exactly why the previous statement assessing absorption media based in concentration is not supportable without a numeric argument.
The wikipedia says ...
Sorry AUP - but you've presented a classical circular argument, (begging the question, petitio principii). Your reference ASSUMES the point in question. No the surface of the earth does not have an emissivity that matches the blackbody ideal.
Walrus32
Critical Thinker
- Joined
- Aug 26, 2007
- Messages
- 469
Lomborg has said he believes in AGW, but not in the cataclysmic consequences thereof that some have predicted.
Also, he has never claimed to be a scientist, just a political scientist, and a statistician. That doesn't preclude him from writing a thoughtful, provocative book about scientific issues. If only scientist could write books about science, then we would have to throw everything by Paul Ehrlich, Helen Caldicott, Rachel Carson, Jeremy Rifkin...
(Oh wait...maybe that isn't such a bad idea...
)mhaze
Banned
- Joined
- Jan 10, 2007
- Messages
- 15,718
Lomborg has said he believes in AGW, but not in the cataclysmic consequences thereof that some have predicted.
Also, he has never claimed to be a scientist, just a political scientist, and a statistician. That doesn't preclude him from writing a thoughtful, provocative book about scientific issues. If only scientist could write books about science, then we would have to throw everything by Paul Ehrlich, Helen Caldicott, Rachel Carson, Jeremy Rifkin...
(Oh wait...maybe that isn't such a bad idea...
And throw out a lot of the wild crazing about economics and economic side effects of supposed "global warming" by the scientists that do believe AGW, but who clearly are not on solid footing when they drift into these economics.
Although it is worth noting (as has McIntyre) that the parallels between economic modeling and that done in "climatology" are quite strong.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
Scientists are not qualified to make economic pronouncements, but McIntyre is qualified to tell the scientists how to run their own business.CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
It seems, then, that the science is not yet well-established. When a good track-record involves only two cycles that's hardly surprising.
Do Schatten and Dikpati differ in the mechanisms they rely on, or on different statistical analyses?
There has been some warming recently; 2005 was as warm as 1998, 2006 was cooler but warmer than 2004. The results on 2007 aren't in yet, obviously, but with less than two months to go it looks to be at least as warm as 2006.
The Met Office model predicts little change for the next two years and then an increase after 2009 - not just until 2014. The prediction by then is that one year in two will be warmer than 1998, with or without an El Nino.
It's a bold move to come out with such a specific short-term prediction - three-to-eight years - and demonstrates a good deal of confidence in their model. The model probably includes an insolation variation averaged from the last two cycles, but more significantly the projected La Nina/El Nada conditions for the next couple of years. That's still pretty speculative stuff as well, of course.
We're certainly not in a cooling phase. A fairly steady phase, but not cooling. More heat than usual is being shunted away into the oceans - particularly the Western Pacific - rather than the atmosphere, but that won't continue for long. When you consider the '98 anomaly compared to '97 and '99, a similar anomaly at the next strong El Nino and starting from '98 levels is is going to be damn' warm.
Temperatures now are close to the '98 El Nino influenced anomaly - without the El Nino effect. It's now about as warm, year after year, as what was an anomalous year a decade ago. That's warming. The next strong El Nino will blow '98 out of the water, and there'll be one in the next three-to-eight years. Mark my words. Just how tightly bound El Nino/La Nina is to solar cycles I don't know, but I'm thinking it's not very.
Solar cycle 24 is written off already, let's face it, but that doesn't matter because there are two wildly different schools of thought one of which can be jettisoned post hoc while the other can claim validation. Solar cycle 25 is where the showdown occurs.
(All this solar cycle prediction stuff : do they use models, or is it purely statistical methods they differ in?)
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
Lomborg has said he believes in AGW, but not in the cataclysmic consequences thereof that some have predicted.
Also, he has never claimed to be a scientist, just a political scientist, and a statistician. That doesn't preclude him from writing a thoughtful, provocative book about scientific issues. If only scientist could write books about science, then we would have to throw everything by Paul Ehrlich, Helen Caldicott, Rachel Carson, Jeremy Rifkin...
(Oh wait...maybe that isn't such a bad idea...
Rachel Carson was mostly right.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
The earth isn't, I was just putting up a link to the concept. As a simple model, it works quite well, (the shows how you can even work out the global temperature with a reasonable degree of accuracy.)
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
Utter rubbish. Economic models are statistical models, climate models are physical models. They're as alike as they are to glamour models.
Ecomomic models screw up because they don't incorporate their own influence on the system they're modelling statistically. Climate models do not influence the system they're modelling physically, so they can do a much better job. As, of course, they have done over the last few decades.
JEROME DA GNOME
Banned
- Joined
- Oct 7, 2007
- Messages
- 8,837
Really, do you have evidence of climate models accurately predicting future climate?
Here is an article that throws you a bone and disputes the accuracy of climate models.
a_unique_person
Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning
One thing I notice. Economists are adamant, we can't afford to prevent AGW. However, the free market system is eminiently capable of coping with AGW.
CapelDodger
Penultimate Amazing
The IPCC reports are a good source of references to the actual published science that they collate and present to the governments that commissioned them. When it comes to the published science there are no political motives.
If the IPCC has any political motives, one would presumably be its own perpetuation. Given that its patrons are governments it will tend toward telling them what they want to hear. That is, it will be conservative. All the important governments have their own teams of scientists looking at this subject, so nothing radical will be ventured lest it get pounced on as reason to do away with them.
That's one reason why the IPCC reports have a markedly conservative take on climate change. Another, of course, is the natural conservatism of science.
Climate defines the bounds within which the weather can vary. Climate is to weather as a prison yard is to prisoners.
Obviously. When it comes to AGW the relevant period is the last three decades or so of a consistent and accelerating warming trend. Very much as the science predicted. It's not proof, but it's been strong enough evidence to see the establishment of the IPCC and just about every politician making noises about their concern. Even the White House has gone hands-up to the reality of AGW. Even the Australian government has signed up to it.
It's good evidence that something's changed. Land-use, climate, whatever, the actuaries will be on it and the odds will drop rapidly. As one who's spent many happy hours socialising with actuaries (they're more fun than one might expect) I can assure you of that. The "century" rating is based on statistics, and when three occur in a decade the statistics have changed.
We've got three full decades of warming to confirm AGW, taking into account eruptions and El Nino's. There's plenty there to establish the trend. Which, as I'm sure you'll appreciate, is what really matters.
Personally, I don't give a toss about Kyoto. That's more suited to the Politics forum, don't you think?
The IPCC is the interface between the scientific and political worlds so I take an interest in it. Kyoto is purely of the political world.
The major governments of the world take climate change seriously, and it's not as if they want to. Governments have enough to contend with without throwing climate change into the mix. But there it is, they can't ignore it. They have to do something. So they convene a committee to look into it (the IPCC). When asked what action they've taken they can say "We've convened a committee". Hopefully the problem will have gone away before the committee reports - and it often does. In this case, sadly not. So further action must be taken, and what better than setting targets? Targets are, by definition, some way off. And so Kyoto. And so what? It was ever thus.
Meanwhile AGW is with us and has been for a while. The only really serious matter for consideration is how we personally ride it out. Nobody's coming galloping to the rescue. AGW isn't going to be controlled, it's going to be reacted to as it makes its presence felt.