Global warming

[Pixel42]

I've just finished working though the Open University's free course on the science behind climate change:

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=2805

Highly recommended to anyone who wants the facts.

 

[rsaavedra]

The Kyoto pact is old news now - all eyes are turned to 2012 and the next pact. Which may be a treaty - that's yet to be negotiated, but upgrading a pact to a treaty does demonstrate that the matter's being taken seriously .

Yes I'm realizing it's old news now, though for me it is new Will look into that upcoming 2012 pack/treaty. Thanks CapelDodger!

 

[mhaze]

I've just finished working though the Open University's free course on the science behind climate change:

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=2805

Highly recommended to anyone who wants the facts.

Here is the final question.

Judge for yourself the extent to which this "lesson set " is fair and unbiased science.
2.8 End of unit question

Question 12

The writer and campaigner George Monbiot wrote the following (in The Guardian Weekly, 10 February 2000): ‘Every time someone in the West switches on a kettle, he or she is helpting to flood Bangladesh’. What is the link between switching on a kettle and sea level rise? Write down the various steps in the chain of cause and effects as a set of bullet points. Do you feel confident that you could cover all the links, if asked by a friend or colleague, say?
Now read the answer
Answer

‘Switching on a kettle’ is linked to sea-level rise by the following chain of 𠆇cause-and-effect’ relationships:

• burning fossil fuels (e.g. in a power station) causes the release of CO2 to the atmosphere;
• and has resulted in a build up of the gas since pre-industrial times;
• the effect is a temporary reduction in the longwave emission to space, disturbing the radiation balance at the top of the atmosphere and producing a positive radiative forcing of climate;
• which has a warming effect, causing an increase in GMST;
• higher temperatures, in turn, cause the thermal expansion of seawater and the melting of land ice;
• increasing the volume of water in the ocean, and leading to sea-level rise.

 

[a_unique_person]

Looks fine to me. The science is all correct.

 

[mhaze]

Looks fine to me. The science is all correct.

Certainly.

By Gore Science standards.

 

[Pixel42]

Certainly.

By Gore Science standards.

Have you worked through the entire course? I have, and I can assure you that the scientific evidence for every one of those steps is given. The complexity of that evidence is not underestimated, and the sceptics' arguments are fairly presented. The Mann hockeystick dispute is thoroughly discussed, for example, with the arguments of both sides explained.

 

[rockoon]

"Might" was being generous. You have no evidence other than anecdotal hearsay.

Evidence of what?

Please try to form complete paragraphs which have a topic sentence and supporting ideas.

 

[rockoon]

These are common errors of the benighted programmers that resort to a bug-report to HP. Not of professional programmers as a whole. Ask yourself : how large and representative is that sample?

It was a single example of a company fielding reports from programmers that indicate a lack of knowledge about the limits of floating point.

mhaze mentions Excel.

Do you agree that Excel is a program written by professional programmers?

You are making a broad assumption about the state of professional programming that doesnt fit the evidence. You offer no evidence at all to support your assertation that programmers are doing things properly.

You didnt even notice that the O(N^2) algorithm I gave can be trivialy reduced to O(N log N) with proper leveraging of a binary tree structure, so I am quite certain that YOU have no idea what you are talking about and have over-stepped your bounds.

If you want the scoop on numerical accuracy with floating point, I suggest that you read the two bibles: The Art of Computer Programming, and Numerical Recipes in ...

Buffer overflow exploits?

newb?

 

[a_unique_person]

It was a single example of a company fielding reports from programmers that indicate a lack of knowledge about the limits of floating point.

Once again, so what?

 

[mhaze]

It was a single example of a company fielding reports from programmers that indicate a lack of knowledge about the limits of floating point.

mhaze mentions Excel.

Do you agree that Excel is a program written by professional programmers?

You are making a broad assumption about the state of professional programming that doesnt fit the evidence. You offer no evidence at all to support your assertation that programmers are doing things properly.

You didnt even notice that the O(N^2) algorithm I gave can be trivialy reduced to O(N log N) with proper leveraging of a binary tree structure, so I am quite certain that YOU have no idea what you are talking about and have over-stepped your bounds.

If you want the scoop on numerical accuracy with floating point, I suggest that you read the two bibles: The Art of Computer Programming, and Numerical Recipes in ...

Knuth. The Master.

A while back, just for kicks and grins, I tried to put a GPS algorithm into Excel. Essentially 3D sine function with very small angle since it is figured from the center of the earth.

THAT bombed right away. Which I had expected.

Which leads to the very good question: "The program (or model) gives us a result. How do we KNOW it is right?"

 

[rockoon]

Once again, so what?

You didnt want to reply to my post to you, so instead you replied to my post to someone else..

...and you are wonder what its all about?

Perhaps if you followed through with your own message strings you would understand how to follow someone elses.

 

[mhaze]

Have you worked through the entire course? I have, and I can assure you that the scientific evidence for every one of those steps is given. The complexity of that evidence is not underestimated, and the sceptics' arguments are fairly presented. The Mann hockeystick dispute is thoroughly discussed, for example, with the arguments of both sides explained.

No, I have gone through about half of it, including the Mann discussion, but I will go through the remainder. Assuming that is more or less the same, then I can tell you my opinion of this document.

It teaches propaganda, not science.

I'm not trying to be derisive here, but technically accurate. The document actually reads more like something from a religious teaching orientation than a discussion about science. It's been argued that this type of approach is suitable for certain age groups. I happen to disagree with that.

It's propaganda. The first hint is the use of emotionally laden arguments, like the one I quoted about us in the Western world being guilty of flooding Bangladesh.

 

[Pipirr]

I've just finished working though the Open University's free course on the science behind climate change:

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=2805

Highly recommended to anyone who wants the facts.

Thank you! I think I'll be spending some time with this.

The science looks correct, looks like a good overview of the topic.

 

[Pixel42]

No, I have gone through about half of it, including the Mann discussion, but I will go through the remainder. Assuming that is more or less the same, then I can tell you my opinion of this document.

It teaches propaganda, not science

Please explain why the academics at the Open University would choose to teach propaganda instead of science.

Please give a single example of any statement made in the course which is not supported by the scientific evidence presented.

The final question is obviously an intentionally striking example of a cause-and-effect chain, but I see nothing emotional about the way the course is presented. If anything, the authors have gone out of their way to be dispassionate.

ETA: Useful summary of the sceptics' arguments and their counterarguments from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/629/629/7074601.stm

 

[Locri]

ETA: Useful summary of the sceptics' arguments and their counterarguments from the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/629/629/7074601.stm

A lot of those point/counterpoints are pretty much the exact same thing you'll see at RealClimate. I don't have time to get into details at the moment, but there are counters to their counterpoints as well which obviously aren't listed.

Anyway, I am more interested on your thoughts as to the critiques mentioned here: The Skeptics Guide to AGW

I've posted this link several times, but have yet to see any rebuttals of the contents on this thread.

 

[Locri]

More fodder for the Mann Hockey-Stick dead vs. alive discussion can be found here:

Bias and Concealment in the IPCC Process: The "Hockey-Stick" Affair and It's Implications

The most disturbing quote so far in it is:

Important statements of uncertainty concerning the modelling
predictions in its Chapter 8, which had been agreed upon by the scientists, had been
removed from the published version. The coordinating lead author for Chapter 8,
Benjamin Santer, responded11 justifying this change on the basis that it made the
assessment clearer, thus ignoring clause 10 of the IPCC’s governing principles which requires the inclusion of such uncertainties. Edwards and Schneider12 said that the
removal of expressions of doubt were demanded by the politics of the day and were
thereby justified. If true, the IPCC process had not delivered the policy neutral report
that the governing principles required.

[snip]

David Deming has told a US Senate hearing14 that, some time after the
publication of his 1995 Science paper on Borehole temperatures, he was approached
by the media and other climate scientists interested in any anthropogenic warming
implications. He claims to have been contacted by one climate scientist who expressed
the view that “we must get rid of the Medieval Warm Period. ”

If this is in fact right, I would think it would shake any sane person's belief that the IPCC is an unbiased organization whose reports we should trust. There is even more stuff in the paper itself.

 

[CapelDodger]

It's not at all relevant to the AGW debate. It is relevant, however, in the narrow context I addressed.

I think this thread can encompass some politics - "Global Warming" is a wide term, there's another thread specifically for the science, and the Politics forum is something of a bear-pit .

Not through conspiracy, but through rumor in our 5,000 population, isolated community, many of my readers have come to believe that a plan to build two coal-fueled power plants in our valley would poison them with CO2.

I guess with that small an audience you can really tap into their beliefs and opinions. Heck, you could phone half of them in a morning.

The thing is, and I'm sure you've noticed this, you're dealing with a bunch of rubes. (I can easily picture the rubes of Ely, Cardiff - it's a small world, isn't it? - falling for the same thing.) Therefore the need for an "It's Not Poisonous" piece. Not intended for a wider audience, but thrust onto the stage anyway.

 

[CapelDodger]

More fodder for the Mann Hockey-Stick dead vs. alive discussion can be found here:

Bias and Concealment in the IPCC Process: The "Hockey-Stick" Affair and It's Implications

The most disturbing quote so far in it is:

Something about models, and a claim about an unnamed scientist.

Nothing about the Mann et al reconstruction.

If this is in fact right, I would think it would shake any sane person's belief that the IPCC is an unbiased organization whose reports we should trust. There is even more stuff in the paper itself.

If indeed. I don't know the provenenace of Energy and Environment so it's hard to judge from that. I'm not about to plough through it, but there is this towrads the top :

"

It is concluded that the IPCC has neither the
structure nor the necessary independence and supervision of its processes to be
acceptable as the monopoly authority on climate science."​

Since you've ploughed through it already, what is the IPCC not independent from? By the presented argument.

(You do realise, of course, that none of this is going to make the warming go away? Dissing the IPCC, gnawing on Mann and Hansen and the et al's back in the '80's, conjuring up dark conspiracies and a culture of fear in the scientific world ... It's not going to help. mhaze's cycles aren't going to help. David Rodale's Solar Cycling isn't going to help - quite the opposite on the upswing. The warming is going to go on, and contrarian influence will continue to wane as they recede further into the past.)

 

[mhaze]

I think this thread can encompass some politics - "Global Warming" is a wide term, there's another thread specifically for the science, and the Politics forum is something of a bear-pit .

I agree, that's the reason I started the science/gw thread. Also, really didn't want to bore people with some types of things, like ploughing through scientific papers and the like.

Inescapably, the weak arguments of AGW are wrapped up with politics.

 

[CapelDodger]

It was a single example of a company fielding reports from programmers that indicate a lack of knowledge about the limits of floating point.

A lack of knowledge in the programmers that posted bug reports. Programmers that were no doubt new to the field, and possibly not long for it. Not a representative sample of programmers in general, especially not those who deal in the intricacies of floating-point arithmetic. It's not esoteric mathematics, after all. Any more than programming is an esoteric pursuit.

Time was we could sell it that way, and we did; back in the 70's we were like priests in the corporate world. Knowers of The Mysteries, and paid as such. Good times. They won't come again. I knew the party was drawing to a close when I first heard the term "user-friendly".