Ultimately, it’s apparent the relationship between ozone depletion, climate warming from greenhouse gases, natural variability, and how Antarctic ice responds is all very complicated....It's so complicated, it's no wonder they can't understand it... and yet we are encouraged to think ourselves fools if we question the things that are presented with certainty.
“…the seeming paradox of Antarctic ice increasing while Arctic ice is decreasing is really no paradox at all,” explains Climate Central’s [Michael] Lemonick. “The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land, while the Antarctic is land surrounded by ocean. In the Arctic, moreover, you’ve got sea ice decreasing in the summer; at the opposite pole, you’ve got sea ice increasing in the winter. It’s not just an apples-and-oranges comparison: it’s more like comparing apple pie with orange juice.”
September 24, 2015
"Antarctic sea ice has grown to a record large extent for a second straight year, baffling scientists seeking to understand why this ice is expanding rather than shrinking in a warming world."
"The increasing ice is especially perplexing since the water beneath the ice has warmed, not cooled...."
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Assume a warming world and this is a hard question.
Review the satellite data for this planet, Mars and Venus and the question is revealed as flawed.
"In the Arctic, moreover, you’ve got sea ice decreasing in the summer; at the opposite pole, you’ve got sea ice increasing in the winter. "
Yah, so? Is there must be some profundity here I am missing?
This is not hard to understand, once you realize that ice is ice. Sea ice is not some separate phenomenon from land ice. Glaciers move, and ice that forms over land can move into the sea. The warmer it is, the faster the ice moves. If you want to understand what is happening, you have to ask not about Antarctic sea ice, but total Antarctic ice.
Evidence in conflict with conclusion...what to do?
The science is unsettled!
It's too complicated. They have no idea what the physics is. So they're not doing physics but something else.
What they're doing is imaginary.
The number of imaginary disasters is infinite. The proper response is to set the false alarm rate at zero.
That is, ignore them.
Seems the heading conflates two issues: sea ice increasing in winter, which is not a surprise; sea ice in winter increasing to a near-record extent, which seems to conflict with climate change.
I didn't read the context but the "sea ice decreasing in the North during the summer/expanding in the south in winter" probably has to do with the annual minimums and maximums. For example, the arctic summer ice cover had been getting lower and lower for awhile, to the extent that imbeciles thought it was going to completely disappear. Well.... 47% Increase In Arctic Sea Ice Since The 2012 Minimum
READ- "EARTH on the ROCKS" by A. Gore.
All the answers are there.
"The debate is over!"
If it cannot be easily understood by a law prof, when written about poorly in the mainstream press ... It must not be true.
I hope you don't make medical decisions that way.
"It's so complicated, it's no wonder we they can't understand it..."
Pretty accurate typo, I'd say. We, the general public, certainly don't understand it. "They", scientists, don't fully understand it, but they have a better grasp on it than "we" do.
The media puts out a narrative of certainty about scientific data far more than actual scientists do. It's turned skepticism of science reporting into skepticism of science itself. Eventually, someone will take this quote and say, "Look! This is proof that global warming is a hoax!" without taking any other evidence in context, and when all that's actually being said is "Look! Here's an interesting phenomena we don't fully understand!"
Empirical data are stubborn things. Why won't they just make it easy for the scientists?
Simple questions and simple answers:
Why does ice form? Because it's cold enough to allow it.
Why does more ice form than expected? Because it's cold enough longer than expected
Why are scientists predictions wrong? Because their theories are flawed or wrong.
I read once that over 97% of global temperature variations can be accounted by one variable: Variations in solar energy. The study looked at the record of sun spot observations from the time of Galileo and merged that data with more modern measurements of solar output. They then compared that data with the estimates of global temperatures from the same period. There's an almost perfect correlation. (Note: Our measurements are not precise enough for a perfect correlation. The range in variation accounted for by changes in solar radiation is between 97% and 103%. That is, changes in output from the sum might account for 100% of global temperature changes.)
If true, this would mean that of the 1 degree increase in global temperature observed last century, man is at most responsible for an increase of .03 degree.
Taranto might put this under "Why do bad things always happen to him".
Him being the scientists, male and female.
More ice; less ice. It doesn't really matter what is happening since the remedy is exactly the same. More centralized control over the economic freedom of people, coupled with ongoing transfers of wealth, both overseen by an enlightened vanguard of progressive government officials. The science is settled.
Ice freezes because water gets cold. Climate is complex and variable. Don't spend billions that could go to providing water and electricity to poor people based on climate change speculation.
Who are you going to believe...the climate scientists and other global warming profiteers and their models? Or your own lying eyes?
It's baffling scientists how it's so cold in a warming world...the arctic ice is stable. If anything, it's rebounding from an earlier melt (that was caused as much by winds as by temperatures).
DKWalser,
If one reviews the satellite data for Venus and Mars these last 40 years, it is relatively obvious SUVs are not to blame.
The Sun is unbelievably large, hot and uncooperative.
""It's so complicated, it's no wonder we they can't understand it..." Pretty accurate typo, I'd say. We, the general public, certainly don't understand it. "They", scientists, don't fully understand it, but they have a better grasp on it than "we" do."
Thanks for calling attention to that artifact of editing, which I've corrected.
I meant them, but when I wrote "we" it was in the voice of the scientists. I never meant we the people.
"It's so complicated, it's no wonder we they can't understand it... and yet we are encouraged to think ourselves fools if we question the things that are presented with certainty."
I couldn't have said it better. Was "encouraged" purposeful understatement?
Ice freezes at 0 degrees Celsius. After that, it's solid physics.
Ambrose has it right.
The common warning about gun control is to remember that it's not about guns, it's about control. The same holds true for climate change, but the name doesn't lend itself to as pithy an explanation.
The one certainty is that whatever happens, explanations will be made as to why whatever happened really, really is not an anomaly. And why is that?
Because, "In the choice between changing ones mind and proving there's no need to do so, most people get busy on the proof." -- John Kenneth Galbraith
I had to do some research to determine whether Climate Central's Lemonick is a bought and paid for lackey of the oil companies or a holy saint messenger for a crusading environmental group. Well of course, it makes perfect sense now!
Used to be global warming now we called it climate change. I get it!
It's only complicated for those scientists with a pre-ordained agenda, committed to supporting the "Cllimate Change" narrative.
To the rest of the normal world without the pre-ordained agenda it sounds reasonable.
Bob Ellison said...
Ice freezes at 0 degrees Celsius. After that, it's solid physics.
You mean water freezes at 0 degrees Celcius. ;)
Here's another hypothesis: amounts of ice and water are at a slowly changing global equilibrium. Melting ice in the arctic is offset by increasing ice in the antarctic for a time. This will continue until there is no more ice in the arctic and then the amount in the antarctic will begin to decrease as well. In a sense, the ice moves to the colder portion of the globe. The best way to measure this is by difference: does the amount lost in the arctic equal the amount gained in the antarctic? If not, there had better be a corresponding increase in sea level.
Yes, chickelit. I type faster than I think.
Common Handle wrote: The media puts out a narrative of certainty about scientific data far more than actual scientists do. It's turned skepticism of science reporting into skepticism of science itself. Eventually, someone will take this quote and say, "Look! This is proof that global warming is a hoax!" without taking any other evidence in context, and when all that's actually being said is "Look! Here's an interesting phenomena we don't fully understand!"
Astute comment. Unfortunately, there's an addendum:
"Look! Here's an interesting phenomena we don't fully understand!" always leads into "Look! Here's an interesting phenomena that forces us to make authoritative statements on public policy!"
Because public policy is so simple and predictable, you know.
It's almost as if climate is a complex system of systems with multiple dependant variables that we've only observed for a few decades.
"It's so complicated, it's no wonder they can't understand it."
Other things smart scientists do not yet understand that might be relevant to the whole Climate Change conundrum:
- How and why clouds form
- The effect of a near 20-year trend of lower sunspot activity
- How the satellite data show no warming despite higher CO2 volume in the atmosphere
Of course, *arctic* sea Ice fell dramatically this year by 800,000 square miles. Its at the the second lowest level except for the catastrophic drop in 2012. Yet I'm hearing an erie silence from those who talked about how arctic sea ice was growing and recovering massively.
Antarctic sea ice is growing for the same reason that antarctic land ice is shrinking.
If it cannot be easily understood by a law prof, when written about poorly in the mainstream press ... It must not be true.- Mark
Either explain it clearly, or explain why you have so much faith in something you can't explain.
The best argument for mitigation of CO2 emissions remains that it is an experiment on our planet with unknowable results.
Of course that argument is not good enough because clearly a warmer planet is better than a colder one, viz the last ice age, and we can't have people coming to that conclusion.
So much of the "science press" is about gaming what political conclusions the reader will draw, and this is obvious to so many that it is hurting the credibility of science with that segment of the public that actually has some modicum of understanding of it.
chickelit said...
The best way to measure this is by difference: does the amount lost in the arctic equal the amount gained in the antarctic? If not, there had better be a corresponding increase in sea level.
Increases or decreases in sea ice do not effect sea level, just as the water level in a glass of ice water stays the same as the ice melts.
On the other hand, melting of land ice, or land ice sliding into the sea, should effect sea level.
This story baffled me until I noticed that it's two years old. Antarctic sea ice this year is a bit below normal.
@Birkel -- I'm aware of the satellite data. Last week I was debating with someone about global warming. I told him I was sure that the planet had gotten warmer since the 1970s. The question was, what had caused this warming? I told him the answer could not be SUVs because the planet I was referring to was mars. He wanted to know what mars had to do with the earth. I pointed out that, since mars, venus, the earth, and other celestial bodies had all warmed during the same time frame, he was going to have a hard time explaining how one thing had caused the earth's warming and another had caused mars' warming. To which he replied, "So, now you're saying you're smarter than 90% of scientists?"
tim in vermont said...
Either explain it clearly, or explain why you have so much faith in something you can't explain.
See my comment at 7:46 AM.
You're welcome.
Of course, *arctic* sea Ice fell dramatically this year by 800,000 square miles. Its at the the second lowest level except for the catastrophic drop in 2012. Yet I'm hearing an erie silence from those who talked about how arctic sea ice was growing and recovering massively.
The record doesn't go back very far, and you make it sound like we have reached some new low in that short record, which we have not. It is just on the edge of one standard deviation on the low side.
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_stddev_timeseries.png
"Who are you going to believe...the climate scientists and other global warming profiteers and their models? Or your own lying eyes?"
I realize you're being snarky, using the familiar rhetorical quip, but the reality is that our "eyes" (our perceptions) do often lead us to erroneous assumptions and beliefs, (e.g., that one catches colds by moving rapidly from warm to cold temperatures and back, the sun circles the earth), and so our "eyes" can "lie" to us.
How many extra trees (also called carbon-dioxide eaters) did they say we have?
If none of them even can speculate out loud that maybe their warming theory is wrong, then they aren't doing science, are they?
You do see that that article is from 2013, correct?
In the Arctic, moreover, you’ve got sea ice decreasing in the summer; at the opposite pole, you’ve got sea ice increasing in the winter.
Well, duh. It gets warmer in the summer, so ice tends to melt. It gets colder in the winter, so water tends to freeze. What's the problem understanding that? Perhaps he just phrased it wrong. Perhaps he meant that the average amount of summertime sea ice in the Artic is decreasing and the amount of wintertime sea ice in the Antarctic is increasing.
When I last visited Alaska in 2002, one of the stops was at Glacier Bay National Park. It's an interesting and beautiful place. If you read up on the history of the place, you'll find this:
Glacier Bay was first surveyed in detail in 1794 by a team from the H.M.S. Discovery, captained by George Vancouver. At the time the survey produced showed a mere indentation in the shoreline. That massive glacier was more than 4,000 feet thick in places, up to 20 miles wide, and extended more than 100 miles to the St. Elias mountain range.
By 1879, however, naturalist John Muir discovered that the ice had retreated more than 30 miles forming an actual bay. By 1916, the Grand Pacific Glacier – the main glacier credited with carving the bay – had melted back 60 miles to the head of what is now Tarr Inlet.
So, between 1794 and 1879, the glacier had retreated over 30 miles. By 1916, it had retreated another 30 miles. Interesting how that coincides with the end of the Little Ice Age and predates SUVs by a significant margin. What caused the Little Ice Age to end around 1850? For that matter, what caused it to begin around 1300 AD? Could it be, is it possible, that those changes were caused by natural forces and not by human activity?
@Ignorance Is Bliss: Yes, but doesn't that assume an equal density for ice and water?: link
Ignorance is bliss, that's more of a rhetorical argument, but fair enough.
Do you have a simple explanation for why the stratosphere is not cooling when ocean warming and all of the other warming is supposed to be due to the entrapment of heat in the troposphere due to CO2?
The real question isn't is it warming or not, the real question is is the CO2 causing warming.
Frankly, I'm not a bit surprised the climate is all like weird and baffling and shit. I mean think about it. Our modern weather specialists are going around measuring and testing and whispering to one another or droning on, no fancy robes, no feathers, no head-dresses, no drums, no gourds. Chanting? Forget about it. They're wearing like regular clothes and parkas, fricking North Face for pete's sake. Ridiculous.
Historically, weather specialists were loud, physical, wild-eyed, totally outrageous guys who ripped the fashion envelope to shreds.
And when was the last time we threw a virgin into a volcano? Its been a while, right? But nobody had to scratch their heads about sea ice in those days, did they? Maybe we should get back to that. Its old school, but it worked.
The gods clearly don't give a rat's hind end about emissions and recycling and all that. Its drama and horror they want. We're lucky the weather has been as good as it has. I mean, we bitch a lot about the weather, but I can deal with baffling. Things could get a lot worse.
"They", scientists, don't fully understand it, but they have a better grasp on it than "we" do.
I agree!
http://www.noconsensus.org/scientists/freeman-dyson.php
For actual up-to-date information, click here for the Arctic Ocean (Just reached its minimum ice extent, 4th smallest on record).
Paul Zrimek posted a link for Antarctica.
Follow the money.....
MadisonMan, I am sure she did but doesn't care.
Nothing wrong with skepticism. What is annoying is when so many of your readers without any science background take it as a matter of faith hat there is no global warming, and hence believe with certainty that all scientists with a contrary view (the vast majority) have a political agenda. Most scientists are only interested in finding the truth.
"Its at the the second lowest level except for the catastrophic drop in 2012."
Not so. This year is the 4th lowest, 2012, 2011 and 2007 were lower.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Plus, had the models predicted the huge increase in southern sea ice, the high priests would be in a much better prediction now. Instead we get post hoc rationalizations for unexpected phenomena and yet we are supposed to believe that scientists have a firm grasp on this stuff.
I blame George W. Bush.
4th lowest since 1981, we have to add, so we need to look at these numbers in terms of statistics.
Most scientists are only interested in finding the truth. - Steve Uhr
Let me guess, you didn't read any of the Climategate emails because they were stolen, or taken out of context or whatever excuse you used to deny yourself new information that might make you think.
I don't think Michael Mann is interested in the truth, I think he is more interested in some Marxist Truth.
Why was there so much reference to "The Cause" in discourse purportedly about science?
To which he replied, "So, now you're saying you're smarter than 90% of scientists?"
Ah, a true believer in SCIENCE! I would have replied, "yep, or more honest."
For Global Climate, the South Pole isn't very interesting. It is, after all, always snow-covered and glaciated because it's so high. The glaciers can only extend out so far before the ocean consumes them. The Northern Hemisphere drives Ice Ages. Maybe a better statement would be that orbital geometry that favors cool summers over the Northern Hemisphere drives Ice Ages. Right now 1 of the 3 drivers put us there -- date of aphelion. The obliquity and ellipticity aren't extremely favorable at the moment.
Freeman Dyson is smarter than 99.99999% of scientists.
I would be interested in a simple explanation of why the proxy data that we claim demonstrates what a normal climate looks like seems to diverge from measured temps.
It's almost as if we don't really know what the past looks like in any detailed way so we stick on a blade on the hockey stick and lie to people. But that is all in the interest of just finding the truth.
Steve, if you have a science background superior to my own, perhaps you can explain the divergence problem away. I can't find anything in the literature that solves it, and the "science press" pretends it doesn't exist. But I am sure you know.
"The real question isn't is it warming or not, the real question is is the CO2 causing warming."
That's the way I see it. I can accept when most scientists say that they have been measuring temperatures over time and note a trend line towards global warming--I can take their word for it because such things should be measurable. Where I have doubt is that they can prove it is definitely due to human activity without ruling out all other possibilities.
In any event, I still think it's a good thing to cut back on or use more efficiently our oil, coal and other carbon producing resources, if only to reduce air and water pollution and vulnerability to supply shocks. How to achieve that best is the real area for debate.
@Steve Uhr: Can't speak for everyone here, but I suspect many would say something like: 1. yes, there has been some global warming; 2. some of the warming is due to human-produced emissions; 3. the exact extent of human impact is still uncertain; 4. predictions about climate/temperature changes have proved to be inaccurate so far; 5 "it's all very complicated" and we can't model the complications adequately yet; 6. we don't believe "with certainty" that "all" scientists with a contrary view have an agenda, but we do believe with certainty that some do; 7.even if "most" scientists are "only" interested in finding the truth, that leaves plenty who are only interested in getting their next grant or in promoting public policies to fit their own preferences. Some of us interested in "finding the truth" are irritated at the common air of certitude in alarmist pronouncements. The very lack of skepticism inspires deeper skepticism.
In any event, I still think it's a good thing to cut back on or use more efficiently our oil, coal and other carbon producing resources, if only to reduce air and water pollution and vulnerability to supply shocks. How to achieve that best is the real area for debate
Me too, but the problem with treating the issue rationally is that it leaves too little room to scare people into Marxist solutions that have failed so miserably in the past.
It is just on the edge of one standard deviation on the low side.
The shading denote +/- 2 sigma, not 1.
MM, thanks. I still can't get too worked up about a data set that only goes back thirty years and starts in the cool part of the century.
Note the phrase "ozone depletion" when they say "the relationship between ozone depletion, climate warming...and how Antarctic ice responds". And again, they say "some point to ozone depletion." Of course the same article briefly mentions that the ozone layer isn't be depleted; it's being restored. How can you say both things in the same article?
Well that's pretty simple -- you can be functionally illiterate, like most reporters and Americans.
How much black carbon from China is ending up on Arctic ice, I wonder. I live on a lake that freezes and melts, and I know that dark spots caused by whatever burn and tunnel through ice in the spring.
I'm so old I can remember when climate change was called global warming. Back then they used to predict more frequent and more severe hurricanes. They made some early mistakes, but now they've got a firm grasp on the data......I can't comment on the science. It does seem reasonable that all this CO2 we produce would have some effect on something. If not the weather, then something. Maybe it's responsible for autism.....At any rate, one notes that the people who are most opposed to capitalism and industrialization are the most fervent in their belief in climate change. One also notes that they've been wrong about quite a lot of other things in the past.
Ultimately, it’s apparent the relationship between ozone depletion, climate warming from greenhouse gases, natural variability, and how Antarctic ice responds is all very complicated...
It's revealing that activists only note this complicated system when reality doesn't support their preferred political remedy. At all other times they claim the process is quite simple.
These "scientists" never seem to ask if their entire hypothesis is wrong, always "Why is the evidence wrong?"
Either explain it clearly, or explain why you have so much faith in something you can't explain.
Should he then explain, after that, how his science isn't a religion?
I cannot explain God, but I don't claim faith is science, either.
Nothing wrong with skepticism. What is annoying is when so many of your readers without any science background take it as a matter of faith hat there is no global warming, and hence believe with certainty that all scientists with a contrary view (the vast majority) have a political agenda. Most scientists are only interested in finding the truth.
Bullshit. Most scientists want jobs. And the funding is, overwhelmingly, from the pro-warming side. I love that scientists who are skeptics are "bought off by oil (who support warming, mind you)" but the pro-warming side are just truth-seekers. If some scientists can be bought off by "Big Oil", why is it so baffling to consider that others can be bought off, for more money, from the other side?
Nobody argues that there is no climate change (it's ALWAYS changed --- kinda the point of the criticism). We're saying HUMANITY has had virtually no impact and the pro-warming side has never presented actual evidence of this.
People like me will believe it's a crisis when people like you act like it is one. The pro-warming side doesn't act like it's a crisis in the slightest. And they have the identical proposals to resolve the issue if it's warming OR cooling.
That's the way I see it. I can accept when most scientists say that they have been measuring temperatures over time and note a trend line towards global warming--I can take their word for it because such things should be measurable. Where I have doubt is that they can prove it is definitely due to human activity without ruling out all other possibilities.
It should be noted that scientists "fiddle" with the data. NASA was caught "adjusting" temperatures for the last 15 years fairly recently.
Henry,
"Astute comment. Unfortunately, there's an addendum:"
I thought that was implicit in my statement. Yes, the way information is reported cuts both ways across the political spectrum. Point is that, all other things being equal, the motivated reasoning behind the interpretation of the data is coming more from journalists and politicians rather than the scientists themselves.
Ron Winkleheimer,
"They", scientists, don't fully understand it, but they have a better grasp on it than "we" do.
I agree!
http://www.noconsensus.org/scientists/freeman-dyson.php
Forgetting, for a moment, the irony of citing one scientist to demonstrate that other scientists don't fully understand something; I'll see your Freeman Dyson and raise you... Pretty much everyone?
http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024;jsessionid=EA2AE0B58EAD80AE31CD4277221BF4FB.c1
"We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming."
Of course the same article briefly mentions that the ozone layer isn't be depleted; it's being restored. How can you say both things in the same article?
Because that's what is happening.
Ozone depletion is still a commonplace event -- but the effects of CFCs/HFCs/etc on ozone is tapering down as those gases aren't so commonplace now. In that regard, ozone is being restored. The last estimate I heard was that in something like 100 years the chemical enhancement of the natural ozone depletion will be a thing of the past.
Do these scientists really know any more about the climate and than the Native American tribes that performed rain dances?
tim in vermont said...
If it cannot be easily understood by a law prof, when written about poorly in the mainstream press ... It must not be true.- Mark
This is an interesting point given that most of the climate alarmist apparatus is controlled by lawyers and political activists rather than scientists. But somehow their ability to understand the issues is never called into question despite their routinely making claims unsupported by science.
The key is watching how so called advocates act. In addition to their personal hypocrisy there are many other institutional giveaways, among them:
- Obama appointing Van Jones, a garden variety social activist with no background in climate science, as his"Green Czar".
- The IPCC is controlled by lawyers and activists who intentionally distort the science of the studies in the executive summaries provided to media allies as propaganda.
- The famed hockey stick and "hide the decline" efforts.
If the science supported the claims activists make they wouldn't have to hide the science.
MadisonMan,
You claim the ozone layer is simultaneously being depleted and being restored?
How can one subscribe to your newsletter?
"We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming."
Oddly, in your paper they take pains to define various "levels of endorsement" Table 2 of AGW, and yet do not report results based on those levels. Instead we get this:
To simplify the analysis, ratings were consolidated into three groups: endorsements (including implicit and explicit; categories 1–3 in table 2)
Seriously?!? This is the exact problem I have with this stuff. Why the weaseling? Is it too hard for the reader to understand?
This is one more "scientific" paper more about achieving a political result than advancing general knowledge.
If we want attorneys to debate the science of glowball warmening, we only have to wait until the lawsuit between Micheal Mann and Mark Steyn is decided.
Both sides should anticipate that judgment.
NOTE: I have never seen a person deny warming between ~1950 and 1998. I have seen many people dispute cooling, as measured by satellites, from 1998 until now. Query: Which side is arguing in good faith?
What is annoying is when so many of your readers without any science background take it as a matter of faith hat there is no global warming, and hence believe with certainty that all scientists with a contrary view (the vast majority) have a political agenda. Most scientists are only interested in finding the truth.
Well, two thoughts.
First, one doesn't need a science background to notice that so very many hysterical climate predictions were quite wrong.
Second, most of the politicians advocating all sorts of things in response to (largely inaccurate) climate science are only interested in obtaining the power.
The point being that in order to get that high number, they have to include a lot of scientists who think that the seriousness and certainty is being overstated while believing that the conjecture of AGW has merit.
In any event, I still think it's a good thing to cut back on or use more efficiently our oil, coal and other carbon producing resources,
Efficiency is always good.
if only to reduce air and water pollution
Our air and water are actually pretty clean, especially compared to developing nations.
and vulnerability to supply shocks.
We have hundreds of years of coal and natural gas deposits, and there is increasing and significant evidence that oil is abiotic and that depleted oil fields are refilling.
I don't have a PhD in climate scientist, so I shouldn't worry my pretty little head that nobody predicted the increase in sea ice, or that the stratosphere wouldn't cool, or the pause.
Most scientists are only interested in finding the truth.
Not sure who said this, but if "most" scientists want their positions to be given a fair evaluation they first need to expel the extremist opportunists who are using them to further a completely different agenda.
http://www.iges.org/letter/LetterPresidentAG.pdf
I'll see your Freeman Dyson and raise you... Pretty much everyone?
I'm pretty much going to go with the wickedly brilliant genius who points out that the climate models are not predictive of future events and that we have a very limited understanding of the climate and what factors influence it and that we have a very limited and for the most part unreliable data set to work with versus "everyone" whose arguments can pretty much be summed up as carbon dioxide is a green house gas and we are putting a lot of it into the atmosphere and it must be causing climate change.
Math is hard....
or the pause.
What pause? :)
tim in vermont said...
...or the pause.
It's important to emphasize that "pause" is an alarmist term. It is not a pause until after the warming has started up again. Unless and until that happens, we are not in a pause. The warming has simply stopped.
tim in vermont,
"This is one more "scientific" paper more about achieving a political result than advancing general knowledge."
The NASA link is more the meat of my argument. I posted the second link, which I should note is a "citizen scientist" meta analysis of the "consensus" (you may take "citizen scientist" to mean whatever you will, but I would count it as being as being approximately equivalent as a bunch of assholes on a comment board), as a matter of charity to the previous comment. Even if there's no 97% consensus among scientists as to whether or not anthropogenic global warming is actually "a thing", a 32% acceptance rate versus a 0.7% rejected rate is no small difference.
I do find this somewhat interesting. Gore made his hundreds of millions partly by scaring a lot of children with the prospect of a massive rise in the sea level (which was always bogus anyway, since humans can and would move faster than the sea could rise). They found some glaciers retreating in the Northern Hemisphere, and then generalized glacier melt offs around the world. I remember one paper I read awhile back which essentially said that - that if the trend towards melting glaciers was uniform and continued, the seas would rise, just not as quickly as Gore (with his C- and D+ in the two science classes he took in college) predicted. Of course, a huge amount of the world's ice is in/over Anctartica, and if it is increasing, instead of melting, shouldn't we maybe be worried about the seas retreating, instead of increasing?
Like so much of the data supporting global warming (including much of the original tree ring proxy data), the supporters of AGW/AGCC have done a lot of cherry picking. Ice was one of the more egregious examples, ignoring Anctartic ice while concentrating on the less plentiful Arctic ice, looking at retreating glaciers, while ignoring nearby advancing glaciers, etc. Which is one big reason there are more skeptics every year.
Oh, and it isn't always clear that melting glaciers will result in a rise in the sea level, or the opposite, if it were indeed happening. Ice has weight, and a lot of ice has a lot of weight. So, it shouldn't surprise anyone that melting a lot of ice over land might cause the land to rebound, when the weight pushing it down decreases enough. Or the opposite in Antarctica. Making things more complicated here is that the amount of water in the ocean is global, while the amount of ice anywhere is local, so it is easy to envision situations where the sea might appear to be rising in one place, and dropping in another at the same time. But that would confuse people.
Ultimately, it’s apparent the relationship between ozone depletion, climate warming from greenhouse gases, natural variability, and how Antarctic ice responds is all very complicated
Huh.
Poor dears, wait till someone comes up with the bright idea of adding the variable of that big burning ball in the sky into the models regarding how temperature works on earth.
In the meantime - especially as the elites are still enjoying private airplanes and Olympic-sized swimming pools - I'll continue to disregard any pleas that I lower my own standard of living and start supporting legislation restricting my personal freedom until we can do a bit better than "it's complicated".
Dear global warming scientific community:
1) Get a consensus what has to happen and by when before it's "too late."
2) Promise when we fail to do it on the drop dead date, and we will, that you will just shut the fuck up and go away.
William said...
I'm so old I can remember when climate change was called global warming. Back then they used to predict more frequent and more severe hurricanes.
Hell, William. I'm old enough (58) to remember when some of the same people were saying that the Earth was entering another ice age. That was back in the 1970s. It's interesting how their prescriptions of averting this climate disaster were almost exactly the same as what they said was necessary to avert global warming a few years later. They were advocating massive expansion of government control of the economy and wealth transfers from wealthy nations to poor nations to deal with the impacts. Strange how they offered the same prescriptions when the "disease" was exactly the opposite.
If you study any geology, you'll find that the Earth's climate has been changing for billions of years. At some points, it was far warmer than today. At other points, it was far colder to the point of being called "Snowball Earth" (you can look it up. We've had ice ages come and go for eons, many of them predating the existence of human beings. The question then become what caused these periods of warming and cooling? I don't think the answer is fully understood.
Is the Earth's climate changing? Yes, of course it is, just as it has always done. Then we need to know to what extent human activities are influencing the change, if any. Are the changes harmful? An ice age is much more damaging and harder to survive than a warmer climate, so perhaps the changes are beneficial to most people. Nothing is beneficial to everyone, though, so we might need to look at how we handle those negatively impacted. Humans survived the end of the last major ice age some 10,000 years ago. Are we to believe that with all of our technology and economic wealth, we can't survive the Earth getting a bit warmer?
Ron Winkleheimer,
"I'm pretty much going to go with the wickedly brilliant genius who points out that the climate models are not predictive of future events and that we have a very limited understanding of the climate and what factors influence it and that we have a very limited and for the most part unreliable data set to work with versus "everyone" whose arguments can pretty much be summed up as carbon dioxide is a green house gas and we are putting a lot of it into the atmosphere and it must be causing climate change."
I see. Well, I'll just quote Mr. Dyson himself, then...
http://edge.org/conversation/heretical-thoughts-about-science-and-society
"One of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas."
From a statistics standpoint, a pause is difficult to describe if it's at the end of the time series. Because then the time series gets longer and you see the pause for what it is.
There have been several papers this month debunking the pause. One cast the data as Grain Output or something like that, showed the data to Economists and asked if there was a pause in output growth, and the answer was no. I thought it an interesting way to get an opinion.
Most scientists are only interested in finding the truth.
I respectfully disagree. Sure, truth has a part, by necessity, their primary interest is in getting funding. And no one can be surprised that the big money in climate related research is going to prove AGW/AGCC. The Dems in particular, and the Obama Administration in particular have found that they can advance all sorts of their anti growth measures as part of their statist agenda by funding pro AGW/AGCC research, and denying funding to the anti side. And promoting govt employees facilitating the pro side, and not promoting the anti forces (which is probably why the NOAA data appears to be more and more fudged every year). To the victor go the spoils, and in this case, the 2008 and 2012 election results have allowed Obama and the climate zealots to control much/most of the money going into the issue.
(Link, with lots of links within).
I also read last week, I think, an article that tracked down the origin of the 'Pause'. I'll link to it when I find it. Really interesting.
If the global warming acolytes were at all accurate in their predictions they should see this coming. Instead, they're baffled. Maybe they don't have a lock on the science the way they think they do. Which is understandable. The climate is an extremely complex system. However, those arguing for global warming are suggesting that their conclusions are backed by certainty. And they really don't know. They can't predict the climate twenty years out, not ten years out nor a hundred years out.
Let me clarify - researchers have to concentrate on getting funding, because without funding, they ultimately don't have jobs.
a 32% acceptance rate versus a 0.7% rejected rate is no small difference
But it is undefined. I doubt you could find anybody who doesn't believe that CO2 has some effect, but your paper deliberately mixes in those who believe that it is the primary driver with those who believe that it has not been quantified, even though they apparently have the data to separate them to "simplify" analysis.
I think they are lying. I don't think they did it to simplify analysis, I think they did it to hide an uncomfortable fact, which is that the vast majority of climate scientists do not believe that the magnitude of any kind of warming is a settled issue.
"The point of this calculation is the very favorable rate of exchange between carbon in the atmosphere and carbon in the soil. To stop the carbon in the atmosphere from increasing, we only need to grow the biomass in the soil by a hundredth of an inch per year. Good topsoil contains about ten percent biomass, [Schlesinger, 1977], so a hundredth of an inch of biomass growth means about a tenth of an inch of topsoil. Changes in farming practices such as no-till farming, avoiding the use of the plow, cause biomass to grow at least as fast as this. If we plant crops without plowing the soil, more of the biomass goes into roots which stay in the soil, and less returns to the atmosphere. If we use genetic engineering to put more biomass into roots, we can probably achieve much more rapid growth of topsoil. I conclude from this calculation that the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management, not a problem of meteorology. No computer model of atmosphere and ocean can hope to predict the way we shall manage our land."
Also from http://edge.org/conversation/heretical-thoughts-about-science-and-society
The "pause" comes from looking at the satellite data that had been rubbed in our noses for so many years prior to it as "proof" of global warming.
The real pause is in stratospheric cooling, which is on two decades now. It is no surprise that lack of cooling of the stratosphere and lack of warming of the troposphere (after all, under AGW, the troposphere is hogging the heat) should go hand in hand.
The only way that both the stratosphere is staying the same temp and the troposphere is warming is if more heat is being introduced into the system. Which could happen, I guess if cloudiness decreased. But that's not classic enhanced greenhouse theory.
a 32% acceptance rate versus a 0.7% rejected rate is no small difference
Yes, almost a suspiciously large range. one could be forgiven for thinking, considering that certain emails seem to indicate that some climate scientists were actively working to prevent scientific journals from publishing articles critical of the AGW hypothesis.
The Man Made Global Warming advocates lost the debate when they switched to Global Warming and then to Climate Change. The lack of science is settled.
Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts. ~ Richard Feynman, Nobel Prize winner in Physics.
It's settled. Warming causes freezing. Next problem.
"I'm so old I can remember when climate change was called global warming. Back then they used to predict more frequent and more severe hurricanes. They made some early mistakes, but now they've got a firm grasp on the data..."
Yeah, they've got a "firm grasp", all right. It's been an unprecedented ten years since a major hurricane (Cat 3 -5) has hit the US.
http://www.talkweather.com/forums/index.php?/topic/60362-why-the-lack-of-major-us-landfalling-hurricanes/
Ditto with declining rates of tornados, cyclones and other severe weather events worldwide:
http://www.c3headlines.com/hysteria-hurricanescyclonestyphoonstornados/
For the most complete and up-to-date info on polar ice (both poles) go here:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
It is so simple. It is all settled science. Just a demonstration of our scientific complete misunderstanding of how things really work, despite our best imaginations.
US physics professor: Global warming is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life.
There is an old saw about politicians taxing the air you breathe if they could figure out how to do it.
In any event, if anthropomorphic climate change is a real problem, then perhaps some realistic and workable solutions should be proposed.
Just saying, carbon offsets and reducing consumer consumption in the West isn't going to do much while China, India, and other developing countries are ready, willing, and able to increase their industrial output.
Perhaps building nuclear power plants which could deliver abundant energy without the necessity of burning fuels that produce carbon? Reliable, plentiful power that is.
There is no trend in land falling US hurricanes since records have been kept. That is a number that is measured the same way, that doesn't depend on satellite technology or advanced statistical methods to calculate.
Yet they predicted...
So many predictions failed, so many post hoc rationalizations, yet we are supposed to think that this is as settled as Newtonian Mechanics.
O.T. - but science related -
http://www.stellarium.org/
with the OpenSource (free) Stellarium program you can preview the lunar eclipse coming Sunday.
Plus notice how quickly CommonHandle goes from statistical analysis to rhetoric when questioned. Another common condition suffered by warmies, in my experience.
A simple acknowledgement that the paper clearly states that it is leaving out important information and possibly a defense for that omission, if one were possible, would have been a stronger response.
Global Warming
1) Must believe that we are warming based on data gathered.
2) Must believe in the cause and effect of greenhouse gases.
3) Must believe that we can significantly impact greenhouse gases through human intervention.
4) Must believe that predictive models are accurate with regard to forecasted increase in temperature.
5) Must believe that the forecasted increase in temperatures will cause catastrophic worldwide results.
6) Must believe that current technology can reduce greenhouse gases without the corresponding reduction in the standard of living be greater than the positive impact of reducing the risk of catastrophic climate events.
I concede #1.
#2 isn't as statistically believable as it once was.
#3 is only theoretical
#4 is unsupportable as the models have been shown not to work well in predicting temperature. They keep tweaking the models with the future temperature predictions continually being reduced.
#5 disaster is great for movies and getting money, but the actual what happens when the temp rises 2 degrees is a big guess at incredibly overhyped. People on the coast will have to move. People in temperate climates will be happy. Our ability to produce food will increase tremendously.
#6 Believers don't care. We must do something now. It's almost too late. Who gives a damn if people will be poorer. We will just get rich people to pay for it.
A retired NASA scientist explain global warming to me in technical terms. He said, "It's all bullshit."
"What is annoying is when so many of your readers without any science background take it as a matter of faith hat there is no global warming"
Ignorant assumption. We have researched the issue thoroughly.
For example, there are now 53 peer-reviewed papers from the alarmist side all giving 53 different reasons for where the "missing" predicted heat has gone. All have them have been debunked. Does that sound like Settled Science to you?
And I've read each one, and I doubt you were even aware of them till now.
So please don't lecture us about "faith". Your belief in Global Warming comes from interpretations of the Delphi computer models by prophets in white lab coats.
tim in vermont,
"But it is undefined. I doubt you could find anybody who doesn't believe that CO2 has some effect, but your paper deliberately mixes in those who believe that it is the primary driver with those who believe that it has not been quantified, even though they apparently have the data to separate them to "simplify" analysis."
Again, I posted that link as a bit of a jab. I agree that we do not understand all efficient causes, and as a result that the models may be unreliable, and that because of that we shouldn't be making policy decisions based on the "worst case scenario" of potentially unreliable predictions. That said, just because we can't explain every mechanism that effects climate doesn't mean we can ignore the mechanisms for which there is reasonably good evidence (e.g. carbon dioxide) that do effect climate.
Ron Winklehimer,
If this means that you acknowledge that climate change is actually "a thing" and may be a problem, then I'll count that as progress of a kind. I, for one, am in large agreement with Dyson. Climate change really is "a thing", and the threat of that "thing", while exaggerated, is not imaginary. Whether or not it's a "land management" issue is not something I can judge on its merits, but I do think that the solution will be technological rather than merely social, economic, and political, as are often the solutions offered by our moralizing, Greeny Overlords.
You know what another thing I am sick of from warmies is? When they present a paper as support for their argument, you point out an obvious and risible flaw in it that in fact undermines their point, and then they disown the paper while not adapting their position.
OK, I will admit that CommonHandle seems to have a more reasonable position than the authors of that paper.
It is a frustration though. Like the paper that purports to "prove" that there was no consensus on global cooling among climate scientist which acknowledges that consensus in the first paragraph.
tim in vermont,
"Plus notice how quickly CommonHandle goes from statistical analysis to rhetoric when questioned. Another common condition suffered by warmies, in my experience.
A simple acknowledgement that the paper clearly states that it is leaving out important information and possibly a defense for that omission, if one were possible, would have been a stronger response."
Actually, I responded to a rhetorical claim with rhetoric of my own. Ron picked a cherry from Freeman Dyson's tree. The links from NASA and the "citizen scientists" are there to demonstrate the difference in the number of trees I have to pick cherries from.
Please don't kid yourself into thinking that anything anyone on this comment board is doing has even an approximate resemblance to statistics.
lunar eclipse coming Sunday.
Yes! An early evening one that you don't have to stay up 'til 0-dark-thirty to hope to see. Weather looks promising for viewing here in Madison.
Bring it!!!
Please don't kid yourself into thinking that anything anyone on this comment board is doing has even an approximate resemblance to statistics.
Sorry, but I think my analysis of that intentionally misleading paper counts. Statistics begins with a valid definition of what is being counted. That paper failed the first test.
Fen -- doesn't the fact that 53 papers gave 53 different explanations tend to suggest that the scientists are now all working together to promote a hidden agenda?
We could save 100s of billions of dollars if we invited Climate Mystics (scientists!) to the National Mall in Wash, DC once a year, and paid each one a million dollars to perform a climate dance. We should hold it on the Solstice, because that's all mystical and stuff. The Enviro-weenies would love that. Then..Michael Mann and other charlatans would get what they want, money via deception, and the rest of us could throw pumpkins and cabbage at them. That would make the climate dance interactive, and a good time would be had by all.
meant "not" working together ...
"Fen -- doesn't the fact that 53 papers gave 53 different explanations tend to suggest that the scientists are not all working together to promote a hidden agenda?"
Ducks don't conspire to fly south for the winter, yet there they go.
What it indicates is that they don't have any idea what has happened to the "missing" predicted heat and are grasping at straws.
But their goal is the same - debunk the Pause that is killing their religion by throwing shit on the wall to see if anything sticks.
"What is annoying is when so many of your readers without any science background take it as a matter of faith hat there is no global warming"
No, what most of us take as a matter of faith is that the climate is constantly changing; both warming and cooling are entirely natural, and explained by natural phenomena; and that man has very little effect on climate.
The fact is that there are also papers that state the obvious, that there is a pause. They should be added to all of the explanations why the temperature record doesn't mean what it seems to mean, what it seemed to mean when it was being used as a cudgel before temps stopped their brief rise in the satellite era.
Actually, I responded to a rhetorical claim with rhetoric of my own. Ron picked a cherry from Freeman Dyson's tree. The links from NASA and the "citizen scientists" are there to demonstrate the difference in the number of trees I have to pick cherries from.
Yeah, but all cherry trees aren't equal. You are correct that bringing in Dyson is rhetorical, as is your rhetorical claim.
"They", scientists, don't fully understand it, but they have a better grasp on it than "we" do.
Science is not settled using consensus. If it was doctors would still be spreading sepsis due to their refusal to wash their hands. Oops, bad example, some of them still are.
Me?
I'm blaming trees.
Trees are assholes.
The first question is how does warming affect the world. The second question is if warming has anthropogenic causes. The third question is if the change will be catastrophic. The fourth question is if science should offer prophecies outside of a limited frame of reference, especially when systems and process are incompletely and insufficiently characterized.
The exploitation and abuse of limited, circumstantial evidence, correlation (e.g. coincidence), estimates (i.e. models), and inference (i.e. created knowledge) has corrupted scientific enterprise and reduced both its utility and value. Climate change, not anthropogenic, and certainly not catastrophic, is not a science problem but rather a risk management issue. It has been granted an air of legitimacy that denies the nature of the system and the constraints of the scientific domain.
Ozone depletion is still a commonplace event -- but the effects of CFCs/HFCs/etc on ozone is tapering down as those gases aren't so commonplace now. In that regard, ozone is being restored.
So, with regard to the level of ice this year vs 15 years ago, or 10 years ago, or 5 years ago, the Antarctic is not experiencing ozone depletion, but the opposite.
So, talking about "ozone depletion" in this article is either illiterate or dishonest. I think it's more the former.
Tim,
I fully acknowledge that what I'm doing is cherry picking. This isn't some tu quoque I'm accusing anyone of rather, as I said, I'm responding to rhetoric with rhetoric. I'm not equipped to judge much of any scientific claim on the merits. I'm not sitting back here doing a meta analysis of my own. If, however, it appears that the preponderance of scientific research indicates climate is effected by carbon, and significant proportions of carbon output is caused by human activity, then I'm going to believe that as probably being true. Similarly, if a minority of similar scientific research is indicating TEOTWAWKI, then I'm going to believe that imminent global catastrophe is probably false.
My point, as it has been, is that to take the results of this single study and say, "Well, this whole global warming thing is obviously bullshit", is as irresponsible as claiming an unusually strong, equally anomalous, hurricane must mean catastrophic global warming must be true. That's how our media and politicians generally approach these sorts of things, not necessarily scientists, and the two shouldn't be conflated.
Fen. Your analogy proves my point. If the geese had conspired with one another to be in lockstep, one would expect them to all head in the same direction. If they all go in different directions , it is reasonable to assume no conspiracy.
Yes, almost a suspiciously large range. one could be forgiven for thinking, considering that certain emails seem to indicate that some climate scientists were actively working to prevent scientific journals from publishing articles critical of the AGW hypothesis.
One also wonders who read the studies (or if they only read the abstracts), what their qualifications were, how many they did in a day, etc.
In the Arctic, moreover, you’ve got sea ice decreasing in the summer; at the opposite pole, you’ve got sea ice increasing in the winter.
Obviously, the people of Antarctica are stealing our (Northern hemisphere) ice during the summer. (The steal our light during the fall.)
We need a CrowdFunding project to airlift polar bears to the Antarctic. Carbon footprint of the airlift be damned!. Plenty of penguins there for feed. Save the bears!
So, with regard to the level of ice this year vs 15 years ago, or 10 years ago, or 5 years ago, the Antarctic is not experiencing ozone depletion, but the opposite.
I'm not sure why you're mixing ozone and ice.
Ozone depletion is still occurring. The big spikes in ozone depletion are rarer than they were in the 1980s/1990s, and they will continue to become rarer in the next 100 years.
CommonHandle said...
"That said, just because we can't explain every mechanism that effects climate doesn't mean we can ignore the mechanisms for which there is reasonably good evidence (e.g. carbon dioxide) that do effect climate."
CO2 hasn't been shown to affect temperatures all that much. Methane has a larger effect on temperature by a factor of 5, and is produced in larger quantities. Nobody cares about Methane though. Maybe because regulating methane wouldn't give bureaucrats control over fossil fuels and most of the energy economy which is far larger than the food economy? You also get larger bags of money putting up windmills than you do raising cows.
"it is reasonable to assume no conspiracy."
Where did I say conspiracy?
"CO2 hasn't been shown to affect temperatures all that much"
And we've also discovered that the climate computer models the theory is based on have overestimated climate sensitivity to CO2 by a factor of 3.
Garbage in, garbage out.
My point, as it has been, is that to take the results of this single study and say, "Well, this whole global warming thing is obviously bullshit", is as irresponsible as claiming an unusually strong, equally anomalous, hurricane must mean catastrophic global warming must be true.
That particular link which I took the time to read was hiding something. So many times when I take the time to read a paper, there is a gigantic assumption, usually, that GCM output = experimental data, so your paper was just one more straw on the camel's back that the "science" we are being fed is withholding parts of what is known, or at least known to be unknown, because they are propaganda.
There are known unknowns and unknown unknowns
You need do no more than carefully read the IPCC's own reports to see a pretty good listing of the known unknowns.
They pretty much blow a hole in the climate models as anything other than guesses, and passing time has shown them to no be very good guesses. For instance they completely missed the growth in Antarctic sea ice.
Ron,
"Science is not settled using consensus. If it was doctors would still be spreading sepsis due to their refusal to wash their hands. Oops, bad example, some of them still are."
My statement regards the importance of expertise itself, not merely the consensus of experts. And you're correct. The consensus could still rest on Galen's miasma theory and a single experiment could turn it on its head. Climate science doesn't have such a smoking gun, if you will forgive the intentional metaphor, that singularly explains all the data. This does not mean, however, that all the data has no explanation.
CommmonHandle wrote, "If, however, it appears that the preponderance of scientific research indicates climate is effected by carbon."
The preponderance of research standard is new to me but I'll play along. If, as it appears, you use "carbon" as shorthand for CO2 then no. This statement assumes facts not in evidence. Although we have reduced USA CO2 emissions the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has continued to INCREASE (thanks to China, India and the EU) over the same period when the satellite data show NO INCREASE in global temperatures. This also calls into question all theories that rely on the mystical "forcing" power of CO2.
Therefore I reject the preponderance of research rhetorical standard as insufficiently scientific. It is too much like the huge preponderance of articles that referred to Hillary as "inevitable" when now the facts emerging on the ground make her appear very much evitable after all.
You know if I was a warmist I'd be really unhappy with the loose-with-the-facts reportage on the subject, the way all the worst-case-scenario numbers from the IPCC are chained together to forecast doom and gloom from what are, to be fair, are rather anodyne and tentative conclusions within the IPCC reports. That and demagoguery-addicted politicians who also ratchet the rhetoric up to eleventy when discussing Climate Change and do so with the certainty of true believers. Believer. Not scientist. Preacher of faiths. Not admirer of science. Those are the idiots I would find extremely unhelpful if I was a warmist.
Hanging every politician from the nearest lamppost would do wonders for reducing the world's oversupply of hot air. The perponderance of research says so.
Although we have reduced USA CO2 emissions the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has continued to INCREASE (thanks to China, India and the EU) over the same period when the satellite data show NO INCREASE in global temperatures. This also calls into question all theories that rely on the mystical "forcing" power of CO2.
The assumption is that the satellite cannot detect all warmth -- subthermocline, for example. You might argue that sub-thermocline is not where the heat is going. (Or that there's no heat at all). Data will tell.
The difficulty with sub-thermocline data, of course, is that it takes years to gather. The study ongoing right now on sound travel-time between South Africa and Argentina, for example, gathers data but IIRC, the Echo Sounders are deployed on the ocean bottom for 2-3 years, and you hope they work the whole time, and you hope they bounce up where you expect (that part, at least, usually happens).
I am not against the idea that heat could be going to the deep ocean, if for example the stratosphere was indicating that heat was being trapped by cooling. Sea water does increase in density as it is warmed in a certain range. If that is where the heat is going? Party! We have a few centuries to deal with this problem, and the planets population is expected to begin falling in just 30 years! Problem solved!
What is the true indicator of propaganda is that they never talk about the increase in heat content of the ocean in the hundredths of a degree that it is, the first couple feet of the ocean store as much heat energy as the entire atmosphere above it. Instead they talk about giga or tera joules. The numbers having to do with the ocean are staggering and .001 degree increase in ocean heat produces staggering numbers.
Alexander said...
Hanging every politician from the nearest lamppost would do wonders for reducing the world's oversupply of hot air. The perponderance of research says so.
There are few problems in DC that couldn't be solved with the proper utilization of lampposts and rope. We have a tragic underutilization of lampposts in DC.
tim in vermont said...
There is no trend in land falling US hurricanes since records have been kept. That is a number that is measured the same way, that doesn't depend on satellite technology or advanced statistical methods to calculate.
Yet they predicted...
So many predictions failed, so many post hoc rationalizations, yet we are supposed to think that this is as settled as Newtonian Mechanics.
9/24/15, 10:22 AM "
The great Isaac Newton was also an alchemist which was a 'settled' science in his day.
Mike,
Correct. I'm relying on the expertise of the best sources available to me in order to form my beliefs. That is most assuredly not a scientific approach. I have not claimed that it is. A "scientific" approach would be to evaluate the data and results of others with my own experimentation, but I'm not a scientist. I don't have a lab. At the risk of repeating myself, I'm not equipped to judge a scientific claim on its own merit.
So, given that we've hopefully and finally established that I'm not a scientist, what is your problem with my reasoning? If not my reasoning, then what is wrong with my sources? If the IPCC is unacceptable to you, fine, then explain why I should also reject the US National Academy of Sciences, NASA, NOAA, etc.
You're acting as if this is somehow outside the bounds of common sense. I mean, if you've got abdominal pain, and you go see 5 doctors, and 4 of them say "It's your appendix and it needs to be removed by surgery", but the fifth one says "It's a subluxation of your 3rd vertebrae", which conclusion are you going to go with?
The problem with the doctor analogy is that before he gets to hang out a shingle, a doctor has seen thousands and thousands of cases, all involving relatively similar human bodies, and almost always involving well understood pathologies that have been witnessed countless times beginning to end.
Climate scientists have no such foundation of knowledge. They don't even do something as simple as double blind research, to de-politicize their findings.
I swear CommonHandle, you have no idea how to talk to a skeptic. You just keep using the same old hoary arguments that paid propagandists like "SkepticalScience" and English majors like Chris Mooney have been pushing.
The fact that you would compare a climate scientist, whose science is in its infancy, and still inchoate in its foundations with the thousands of years old practice of medicine says you haven't thought very deeply about it.
Even if despite all rational evidence to the contrary that climate change is bunk we were to accept it and the hysterical predictions as true, so what? Do these green-communists really believe that the rest of the non-Western World is going to keep itself poor intentionally? That the population of the West won't eventually tire out of hearing the doom and gloom and the need for more reductions in the standard of living so perhaps some Bangladeshi's and Pacific Islanders won't be affected? There will come a time and probably sooner than later when there will be a rollback since what ever good might come of it isn't worth the price. The VW scandal is indicative. The greens want less carbon output and less pollution, diesel is innately more fuel efficient, running the combustion at higher temperatures increases fuel efficiency at the cost of higher pollution. Pick one of the two. But they can't since those who live in fantasy land expect fantastical solutions.
I swear CommonHandle, you have no idea how to talk to a skeptic.
He's not supposed to have to talk to you, filthy peasant. He tells you, and this time by magic of repetition you get it and you repent your ways.
The EPA official busted today for flying home every weekend on taxpayer dime? That's not important, or relevant.
And remember: just as we should always trust biologists because physicists provide testable data, we should trust climate scientists because of the long and noble tradition of medicine.
CommonHandle said...
Mike,
Correct. I'm relying on the expertise of the best sources available to me in order to form my beliefs. That is most assuredly not a scientific approach. I have not claimed that it is. A "scientific" approach would be to evaluate the data and results of others with my own experimentation, but I'm not a scientist. I don't have a lab. At the risk of repeating myself, I'm not equipped to judge a scientific claim on its own merit.
So, given that we've hopefully and finally established that I'm not a scientist, what is your problem with my reasoning? If not my reasoning, then what is wrong with my sources? If the IPCC is unacceptable to you, fine, then explain why I should also reject the US National Academy of Sciences, NASA, NOAA, etc.
You're acting as if this is somehow outside the bounds of common sense. I mean, if you've got abdominal pain, and you go see 5 doctors, and 4 of them say "It's your appendix and it needs to be removed by surgery", but the fifth one says "It's a subluxation of your 3rd vertebrae", which conclusion are you going to go with?
9/24/15, 2:19 PM
The problem you are having is squaring what the experts are telling with what your eyes and common sense are telling you. To cut to the chase the expert's conclusions always get back to models that can't predict current conditions from their starting point. If starting from yesterday they can't predict today accurately why would you take it on faith they are going to get tomorrow right? The experts so far have failed to prove their claim on their own merits. Yet tellingly the solutions are always relying on require some Marxist style solution. And more tellingly they for the most part don't live their lives as if they believed in their own conclusions and solutions.
Look, skepticism isn't merely withholding belief for insufficient warrant, but a method for accepting or rejecting a claim based on evidence.
This is like talking with some advocate from the anti-GMO or anti-vaccination movement. They're all, "OHMAGHERD! We're killin' the planet! Science says so!" while in the same breath they'll say everyone who claims GMOs are safe or that vaccines don't cause autism are just paid shills of BIG (whatever) or, in the case of GMOs, that the science is "too new". See, I'm not comparing medicine to climatology. I'm comparing you to, say, Jenny McCarthy. McCarthy is, by her own lights, also a skeptic.
What you're doing here isn't merely questioning a single scientist, or publication, or university; you're basically saying an entire field of research, comprised of thousands of scientists, and hundreds of universities and various other academic, governmental, and scientific institutions is bunk because... What? You don't think their data is consistent enough? Because a minority within the field are claiming wildly apocalyptic consequences? Because politicians or other personal are attempting to use science for their own gain?
If you're not dismissing the entirety of the field, then on what basis are you accepting or rejecting specific claims? What, if anything, meets your evidential burden before you'd consider it to be probably true (or false)? This really isn't an all or nothing proposition. One isn't a "warmist" or a "climate denier" - or whatever the lingo the kids are using is - just for accepting or rejecting any specific claim that comes from that field.
Cubanbob,
Even if I accepted all the worst dooms-day scenarios that came out of the IPCC - or anyone else, for that matter (hint: I don't) - it doesn't then follow that I must proscribe some neo-Marxist claptrap to solve it.
If you're not dismissing the entirety of the field, then on what basis are you accepting or rejecting specific claims? What, if anything, meets your evidential burden before you'd consider it to be probably true (or false)?
I am dismissing any claims based on GCMs because they have been so wrong.
I am downgrading my assessment of the field of climate science
-On account of the fact that they are being constantly surprised. Nobody predicted a growth in Antarctic sea ice, for example.
- They expected to find heat in the oceans, didn't find it by direct measurement, so they whipped up some ocean warming using models again. Unproven models.
-In the IPCC's own assessment report, they list a large number of known unknowns.
-Nobody can accurately model clouds, for example, and a 1% difference in cloudiness has the same warming or cooling effect as a doubling or halving of CO2
-I have noted that the mechanism was predicted to cause stratospheric cooling. A phenomenon that is missing for twenty years, and before that, the cooling is very difficult to disambiguate from the effects of the volcanism that just preceded the satellite era.
But you have no answers to any of these questions, so you resort to insults. Whatever. If you think that that kind of argument is going to carry the day, why didn't you bring in the authority of the Pope on this issue? Save some time.
For a person who claims to be skeptical of the certainty of the science, you sure are touchy when reasons for that uncertainty are pointed out.
CommonHandle said...
Cubanbob,
Even if I accepted all the worst dooms-day scenarios that came out of the IPCC - or anyone else, for that matter (hint: I don't) - it doesn't then follow that I must proscribe some neo-Marxist claptrap to solve it.
9/24/15, 3:30 PM "
Assuming you did accept the doomsday scenarios then either you accept the solutions offered by the experts which all require Marxist claptrap- no others have been offered- or you don't in which case what difference does it make in accepting and why bother?
Plus, your replies do not seem carefully reasoned.
And the funny thing is that my position falls comfortably in the 97% consensus.
Ozone depletion is still occurring.
You mean there's less ozone in winter? Yes, that's how the chemistry works.
Every year, winter ozone levels are higher than they were the year before. Thus, with regard to the level of sea ice, the ozone is being restored, not depleted.
I'm not sure why you're mixing ozone and ice.
At the top of this page is a hyperlink "Show original post" that will help.
it’s apparent the relationship between ozone depletion, climate warming from greenhouse gases*, natural variability, and how Antarctic ice responds is all very complicated....
IOW, our climate models are for sh#t.
*See how they slipped that inference into otherwise apparent statements of fact?
I have a friend who is a very good science reporter for a California newspaper. He was convinced global warming was man made. Then he saw the East Anglia e-mails and the comments in the programming for data processing there. He changed his mind in a day and now is as skeptical as I am. This is what honest people do when confronted with lies and cheating.
Cubanbob,
Still doesn't follow. So I say there's global warming, and that warming is caused by C02, so reducing C02 emissions would reduce the warming trend. Then I say building nuclear plants and researching nuclear technology is likely the best solution. That 1) typically causes the "Marxist" green movement to run screaming into the hills, and 2) is a solution often proposed by climate scientists. Worst case predictions or no.
Tim,
I'm sure your position really does fall somewhere in that broad consensus. The only way you'd be out of it is if you genuinely believe it's all just a hoax perpetrated by... I don't know... Lizard men, or the Illuminati, or whatever.
Also, I'm deeply sorry I compared you to Jenny McCarthy. Whatever our disagreements that was unjust. I wish you a speedy recovery.
So CommonHandle is confused by the satellite data and is lashing out that what was so simple to understand is now all confused.
HINT: What has happened is no observed warming since 1998.
If you cannot acknowledge that, you make yourself a liar.
-----Most scientists are only interested in finding the truth.
..and qualifying for the next government research grant...which is strongly tilted toward finding global warming...which can only be addressed by BIG government programs.
---The shading denote +/- 2 sigma, not 1.
Two sigma is a still pretty low standard of confidence.
CommonHandle said...
Cubanbob,
Still doesn't follow. So I say there's global warming, and that warming is caused by C02, so reducing C02 emissions would reduce the warming trend. Then I say building nuclear plants and researching nuclear technology is likely the best solution. That 1) typically causes the "Marxist" green movement to run screaming into the hills, and 2) is a solution often proposed by climate scientists. Worst case predictions or no."
You keep circling the drain. If you buy into the warming argument and want to reduce C02 levels to the point needed as per the warmist you are going to have to do more than simply replace all electrical power generation from fossil fuels to nuclear power.
And green fantasy aside, even if you replaced all the power plants with nukes besides having to super-size the grid system if all automobiles in the US were replaced by battery powered cars it still wouldn't have the global impact the warmist want to achieve. Since the entire world isn't going to commit economic suicide by going all out warmist, especially the developing world just to placate the green-communists first worlders so even if there is global warming that can be attributed to human agency where are you going with this AGW nonsense? Unless you sort of subscribe to the position of the more extreme warmist that the solution is not just less carbon intensive power generation but to also reduce the amount of carbon emissions in total by reducing the amount of people in total.
What, if anything, meets your evidential burden before you'd consider it to be probably true (or false)?
I'd settle for:
(A) A model that works, backwards and forwards, without adjustments.
or
(B) A Theory that explains the MWP, the Little Ice Age, and the warming of the Solar System (hint: Think big ball of burning gas)
or
(C) A definition of the "correct" climate, and an explanation of why that is the "correct" climate.
"Hanging every politician from the nearest lamppost would do wonders for reducing the world's oversupply of hot air. "
Alas, I live in the street-light-free suburbs, so this remedy is not available to me.
I see that commonhandle decided to improve the level of reason in his posts. By his lights, I guess.
CommonHandle, something for your consideration...
https://alfinnextlevel.wordpress.com/2015/09/19/climate-models-are-estranged-from-reality/
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