Global Warming is Opinion

[CharonY]

 

 

Tuesday, in an interview with E&E News, Bates himself downplayed any suggestion of misconduct. “The issue here is not an issue of tampering with data, but rather really of timing of a release of a paper that had not properly disclosed everything it was,” he told reporter Scott Waldman. And Bates told ScienceInsider that he is wary of his critique becoming a talking point for those skeptical of human-caused climate change. But it was important for this conversation about data integrity to happen, he says. “That’s where I came down after a lot of soul searching. I knew people would misuse this. But you can't control other people,” he says.

 

At a House science committee hearing yesterday, Rush Holt, CEO of AAAS (publisher of Science and ScienceInsider) stood by the 2015 paper. "This is not the making of a big scandal—this is an internal dispute between two factions within an agency," Holt said in response to a question from Representative Lamar Smith (R–TX), the panel’s chairman, and a longtime critic of NOAA’s role in the Karl paper. This past weekend, Smith issued a statement hailing Bates for talking about “NOAA’s senior officials playing fast and loose with the data in order to meet a politically predetermined conclusion.”

 

 

Some climate scientists are concerned that the hubbub is obscuring the more important message: that the NOAA research has generally proved accurate. “I’m a little confused as to why this is a big deal,” says Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist with Berkeley Earth, a California nonprofit climate research group that has examined surface temperatures. He’s the lead author of a paper published in January in Science Advances that found Karl’s estimates of sea surface temperature—a key part of the work—matched well with estimates drawn from other methods.

 

 

 

At its heart, Bates’s concerns amount to a desire for Karl and his team to have more clearly stated that one data set used for their study was not defined by NOAA to have been in a final, “operational” form.

One focus is the handling of a new approach to estimating temperatures on land around the globe. The agency’s monthly temperature estimates—which it uses to track climate trends—are drawn from 7000 stations scattered around the world. But a team of NOAA researchers sought to improve the accuracy of these global estimates by incorporating measurements from more than 15,000 sites with data collected by an international consortium, the International Surface Temperature Initiative (ISTI). They also incorporated measurements from farther north in the Arctic, where temperatures in recent decades have risen faster.

In the blog post, Bates says that when the Karl paper was published, this new merged data set hadn’t been put through a series of quality checks that NOAA required before data used for research are deemed ready for “operational” use such as routine monitoring of climate trends.

 

Bates says he first became concerned when the Karl paper came out, as the team shared their data only on a public NOAA file server, not NCEI's data archive, as the agency would for its operational data sets. Karl and his team have since uploaded the data to NCEI's archive, a process that finished last year. Bates claims that happened as a result of his concerns. “I shouldn't have to be the whistleblower. They should have had a process in place at NOAA to check this off. And they didn't do it,” he says

The Science paper would have been fine had it simply had a disclaimer at the bottom saying that it was citing research, not operational, data for its land-surface temperatures, Bates says.

But Mike Tanner, director of NOAA’s Center for Weather and Climate at NCEI, says there’s no NOAA policy that requires such a disclosure. “There's nothing. That doesn’t exist,” he says.

 

So yeah, what a scandal.

[swansont]

A quote I saw was something along the lines of: this is like as the result of someone in the Apollo mission bureaucracy not filling out a particular form, arguing that we never landed on the moon.

[Nature Geek]

A quote I saw was something along the lines of: this is like as the result of someone in the Apollo mission bureaucracy not filling out a particular form, arguing that we never landed on the moon.

I think Moon Landing Deniers may have used that argument. I've certainly heard sillier ones that that.

[Strange]

Climate change:more globalist spin, costing UK over 300billion by 2030. It seems @certain scientists love to fudge the figures,

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-4216180/How-trust-global-warming-scientists-asks-David-Rose.html

 

 

That tissue of lies from the Daily Fail has already been debunked in another thread.

[SFNQuestions]

 

Apparently not.

A regular volcano, no, but what about a SUPER volcano? Wasn't it SUPER volcanoes that contributed to the demise of the dinosaurs due to the increased ash in the atmosphere?

If Yellowstone erupted, it would certainly be a problem for crops in the Midwest.

[GeniusIsDisruptive]

On 12/17/2016 at 1:42 PM, swansont said:

Opinions are not science, and science is not opinion. If you actually are a scientist, or have a passable understanding of science, you should know this.

 

If you had any idea of the history of science and its countless failures, you would not have made such a statement.

Science is the search for truth, and the truth is often elusive.  Everyone forms his own opinion based on observations and inferences.  It is absurd to pretend that humans can do so perfectly, always.  

 

"Heavier-than-air flight is impossible." - Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1895

"If we all worked on the assumption that what is thought to be true really is true, there would be little hope of advance." - Orville Wright

 

 

[swansont]

1 minute ago, GeniusIsDisruptive said:

 

If you had any idea of the history of science and its countless failures, you would not have made such a statement.

Science is the search for truth, and the truth is often elusive.  Everyone forms his own opinion based on observations and inferences.  It is absurd to pretend that humans can do so perfectly, always.  

I don't see where I pretended anything of the sort.

[Ken Fabian]

Mostly the common examples given of science being badly wrong are ancient history - and long since corrected. The example of "don't know" tend to have competing schools of thought and acknowledge the ongoing uncertainty. Climate change science doesn't even genuinely figure as one of the examples of either; Arrhennius had the fundamentals of the climate role of CO2 worked out not long after the IR absorption and re-radiation properties were documented. Even the 1970's global cooling hype was unrepresentative of the state of climate science at the time, something that a National Academy of Sciences report "Understanding Climatic Change" in 1975 made very clear. 

[beecee]

1 hour ago, GeniusIsDisruptive said:

 

If you had any idea of the history of science and its countless failures, you would not have made such a statement.

Science is the search for truth, and the truth is often elusive.  Everyone forms his own opinion based on observations and inferences.  It is absurd to pretend that humans can do so perfectly, always.  

 

"Heavier-than-air flight is impossible." - Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1895

"If we all worked on the assumption that what is thought to be true really is true, there would be little hope of advance." - Orville Wright

 

 

 

 

Like I have said before, science is a discipline in eternal progress, and changes according to new observations, allowed by improved visuals and technology: Your problems imo are twofold....delusions of grandeur and a religious agenda.....that blinds you to the beauty of science and what it has achieved, what will be achieved in the future, and is the impetus for your obviously continued evangelistic mission against anything scientific. 

 

[druS]

Hi guys. Hope you can cope with a genuine query, I am not arguing anti AGW at all, genuinely interested. Has anyone "back modeled" successfully yet. The term is wrong, but has anyone used the known data from say 1750 to today (or even 1900 to today), and produced a model result that accurately reflects what has happened?

 

Thanks in advance.

[CharonY]

You may be thinking of backtesting or hindcasting. Which is a way to look into the accuracy of temporal models. I.e. taking a certain time frame to build the model, build in assumptions in terms of forcings and then run the model and compare it with the full historic data set to see whether the assumptions are correct.

More impressively, since many models were created a while ago, it is not possible to also look at the predictions people made a decade ago and see whether they hold and for a number of the most important ones, it seems to be the case.

[Area54]

On 17/12/2016 at 11:14 PM, Strange said:

I think gravity is just an opinion. Anyone agree?

I'm not going to fall for that one, no matter how attractive it seems!

[druS]

8 hours ago, CharonY said:

You may be thinking of backtesting or hindcasting. Which is a way to look into the accuracy of temporal models. I.e. taking a certain time frame to build the model, build in assumptions in terms of forcings and then run the model and compare it with the full historic data set to see whether the assumptions are correct.

More impressively, since many models were created a while ago, it is not possible to also look at the predictions people made a decade ago and see whether they hold and for a number of the most important ones, it seems to be the case.

Thanks CharonY. Yes that's what I was after. Hindcasting, Like it.

Mate, your link to the Guardian, it's not something that I can take as persuasive in science, so I just sort of switched off. Is there anything say in Journals confirming modelling that replicates history. Let's start with the last 100 years before we look to short term 10 year "proofs".

 

[Sensei]

On 7/24/2017 at 0:22 AM, GeniusIsDisruptive said:

"Heavier-than-air flight is impossible." - Lord Kelvin, President of the Royal Society, 1895

Somebody should say to him at that moment that birds and insects are heavier than air, and still fly..

 

Edited August 4, 2017 by Sensei

[CharonY]

3 hours ago, druS said:

TMate, your link to the Guardian, it's not something that I can take as persuasive in science, so I just sort of switched off.

That is a pity as in the article they referenced the paper (as well as some others) that the article was based on. Since the one writing the article is not a journalist but actually one of the co-authors, it is also more accurate than many articles you may find. Anyhow, look at those:

Cheng et al. Ocean Sci., 12, 925-935, 2016. Also of interest:

Cheng et al Science Advances 2017 Vol. 3, no. 3, e1601545

Trenberth et al. JCLI 2016

[Klaynos]

2 minutes ago, CharonY said:

That is a pity as in the article they referenced the paper (as well as some others) that the article was based on. Since the one writing the article is not a journalist but actually one of the co-authors, it is also more accurate than many articles you may find. Anyhow, look at those:

Cheng et al. Ocean Sci., 12, 925-935, 2016. Also of interest:

Cheng et al Science Advances 2017 Vol. 3, no. 3, e1601545

Trenberth et al. JCLI 2016

A quick Google yields this http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50236/full

Which is slightly older but indicates that hindcasts are constantly being done as more is learnt.  

[druS]

On 05/08/2017 at 2:09 AM, CharonY said:

That is a pity as in the article they referenced the paper (as well as some others) that the article was based on. Since the one writing the article is not a journalist but actually one of the co-authors, it is also more accurate than many articles you may find. Anyhow, look at those:

Cheng et al. Ocean Sci., 12, 925-935, 2016. Also of interest:

Cheng et al Science Advances 2017 Vol. 3, no. 3, e1601545

Trenberth et al. JCLI 2016

ChY

I'm not embarrassed about ignoring the popular press on a science forum, TBH I'm sick and tired of the nature of science reporting in the public press (especially on sites like the Guardian), the but yes I found the link. Very interesting paper and excellent correlation on those results. It struck me just how much missing data there is and it's curious that the largest area of high temp is within the area of least data. See Table 1 figure A through to G where the bulk of heat in the diagramme is in the central and western Pacific where the least data is reported. Using the available data requires this work and they are to be commended for pulling together such an extraordinary correlation. I like the concept that the climate modeling should be tested against these results.

BTW Figure 2 showing observations of elNino and volcanic activity - am I right that in the text they presumed certain adjustments to the modelling in those periods? Necessary perhaps, but a qualifier all the same.

Other presumptions include a linear interpretation through the data in the south which is considered appropriate where it wouldn't be in the north - a truism but in some ways also surely a generalisation. Presumption that the heat increase below 2000m matches the upper layers. We can be happy that this interpretation works very correctly on a mathematical and statistical basis, if for no other reason that the correlation is excellent, the Journal should be peer reviewed, and they have either replicated or expanded on previous science research. Just from my perspective this excellent correlation may lock in to certainty. Or it may not.

But no, this is not what I was looking for. It a very good subset on the overall picture. IPCC and the science world is frequently reported as stating predicted temperature warming based on the current CO2 trends through modelling.  What I was asking is have any of those models proven themselves when tested on the historical data? Correlation along the lines of your referenced Cheng et al 2016 would be fantastic.

I'm presuming that it has been done, but lost in the public media through the "noise" on this topic.

 

Thanks in advance.

[druS]

I might add, while some might be concerned on my questions, this journal report on it's own puts to bed the silly title of this thread. No it's not opinion, it's science.

[Baron d'Holbach]

How is this post acceptable? 

Global warming AKA climate change is a fact. Sadly if you ask the person who did this, "are you religious" he will say yes most likely. I notice most religious people I know if not all don't understand global warming at at. Hence it is just an opinion .

Smh

[Manticore]

3 hours ago, Baron d'Holbach said:

How is this post acceptable? 

Global warming AKA climate change is a fact. Sadly if you ask the person who did this, "are you religious" he will say yes most likely. I notice most religious people I know if not all don't understand global warming at at. Hence it is just an opinion .

Smh

Not just religious - specifically Christian. I was having my morning coffee a few weeks ago and noticed the TV was set to a Muslim show. Instead of preaching, the Imam put down the Quran and gave his audience a (very good) lecture on global warming.

[Baron d'Holbach]

11 hours ago, Manticore said:

Not just religious - specifically Christian. I was having my morning coffee a few weeks ago and noticed the TV was set to a Muslim show. Instead of preaching, the Imam put down the Quran and gave his audience a (very good) lecture on global warming.

Yes... 

The argument I always get constantly is,

"Why are we wasting tax payer money on a hoax.

"This is only earth the real paradise is in heaven". 

"Well about 3% of scientist disagree with global warming so it is 110% false! 

"Please stop you are hurting my feelings, I only care of heaven and Jesus. Not this baloney conspiracy.

"It is a propangada that the left wing government made up" only Jesus is truth.

"Global warming is a lie but because the earth is flat.

"How can there be global warming, if the earth is only 6000 years old?..............

 

I am Not exaggerating these are what religious people say to me all the time. 

 

SMGDH

[swansont]

Since were discussing hindcasting a few posts back, I will post this, which I just ran across 

 

Also ties in with any claims of the models not matching reality.

[Country Boy]

  Do you remember the famous picture of "Washington Crossing the Delaware"?  George Washington was probably not standing up in the boat but the ice floes were there.  Earth, in the late 1700s was in the middle of the "little ice age" and has been warming ever since.  How much pollution or human activity has influenced that, and how much we can do about it can be subject to debate but the fact of warming is not.

[Juno]

10 minutes ago, HallsofIvy said:

  Do you remember the famous picture of "Washington Crossing the Delaware"?  George Washington was probably not standing up in the boat but the ice floes were there.  Earth, in the late 1700s was in the middle of the "little ice age" and has been warming ever since.  How much pollution or human activity has influenced that, and how much we can do about it can be subject to debate but the fact of warming is not.

Regardless of the conclusion, one picture doesn't show anything except a one-off occurrence.  Look at what happened in the UK over the winter of 1962/63 where the sea froze for a mile out from the shore:-

Minnis Bay on the south coast of England in 1963 - https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiag72Wg9fWAhXGIMAKHWl_CTMQjBwIBA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.birchingtonheritage.org.uk%2FMinnis%20from%201940%2Fice63.jpg&psig=AOvVaw3HFvMpmIBxhTK33t-JlmOR&ust=1507208453530588

Minnis Bay today - https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiqsfSng9fWAhUBAcAKHVGwDKIQjBwIBA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thebeachguide.co.uk%2Fpublic%2Fgeophotos%2F1471487.jpg&psig=AOvVaw2hpiHbfe_oxhPgbkmqpOyj&ust=1507208476399119

[scherado]

On 12/17/2016 at 4:31 PM, Patti_the_Scientist said:

I think that global warming is just an opinion. Who here in the science comunity agrees?!?

If you mean anthropogenic global warming, then there are myriad tons of opinion in support of it and near to no persuasive evidence in support of it.

What is certain is that Earth has been through catastrophic cooling repeatedly and the consistent, significant warming which followed the most recent glacial period has been so beneficial that human progress has unprecedented, though there have been well-document iterations prior to the most recent.

Given that, which do you prefer, the warming I've just described or a return to huge glaciers on top of your heads?--some oscillation around some pleasant medium being an option akin to fantasy?