climate change intensified the amount of rainfall in recent hurricanes

[CharonY]

6 minutes ago, StringJunky said:

In the same way, you can know if a lottery system is fixed by looking at the output over a long period against a similar one that isn't. The unadulterated model can be done mathematically.

Yes and the point in these case is of course that while neither of these models predict the next set of numbers, they do tell us something about the state of the system (e.g. if it is loaded or not). Likewise, deviations from expected model behaviour in climate patterns tells us about missing elements and/or relevance of the components incorporated into the model.

[StringJunky]

2 minutes ago, CharonY said:

Yes and the point in these case is of course that while neither of these models predict the next set of numbers, they do tell us something about the state of the system (e.g. if it is loaded or not). Likewise, deviations from expected model behaviour in climate patterns tells us about missing elements and/or relevance of the components incorporated into the model.

Yes, true. I hope MM has taken it on board.

[mistermack]

7 minutes ago, iNow said:

To reinforce Charons excellent point, think of waves coming on shore at the beach and splashing against a wall.

We cannot with perfect accuracy predict where on a wall each individual wave will land, but we can very accurately predict the average landing point over 10 years.

Weather versus climate is the obvious comparison.

That's not an apt analogy at all. The amount of water in the environment is constant. Heat energy on the other hand floods in and out all the time. While the UK is heating up during the day, New Zealand is radiating heat out into space. At the moment, close to winter, the UK temperature is bouncing up and down about six or seven degrees from day to night. In the summer, it's more. And yet people on forums talk about the atmosphere like it's a closed container. It's not. Huge amounts of heat flood in and out daily at most locations.

Energy in depends on the Sun and the various orbits and wobbles. Energy out depends on things like clouds, atmosphere composition, atmospheric circulation, albedo of the surface, storms, pollution, and events like  El Niño and La Niña . 

Up to 1997 the models were saying rapid increases in temps. None of the models forecast a standstill of about 18 years. If you can't forecast that, then you simply aren't ready. By all means keep trying, but it's clear that there's plenty that they can't forecast yet. 

I'm not against climate science, I'm against activism IN science. There should be no place in science for bias and activism. People should make a choice, be a cold sceptical scientist, or be a climate warrior. It's not science, when people pretend to be both.

[iNow]

Sometimes when science is intentionally made political by one specific side... in a transparent attempt to sow confusion and continue reaping profits... activism and passion is not just appropriate, but required. 

People are lying. Have been for decades. The delay harms us all. We’ve understood the basics for decades and still haven’t acted. It’s almost 2019 and we’re STILL battling back denials from idiots (not you, but in general).

Go figure that we’re human first, scientists second. Lots of us have got kids and care about what’s happening. 

Anyway, your point about the models is understandable, but uniformed.

https://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models-intermediate.htm

Quote

While there are uncertainties with climate models, they successfully reproduce the past and have made predictions that have been subsequently confirmed by observations.

 

 

Edited November 21, 2018 by iNow

[mistermack]

Quoting skeptical science is exactly what I'm talking about. It's a climate warrior's blog, but people treat it as some kind of reference source. 

It's a totally worthless site, a bit like what creationist sites are to religion.

[Strange]

5 minutes ago, mistermack said:

Quoting skeptical science is exactly what I'm talking about. It's a climate warrior's blog, but people treat it as some kind of reference source. 

It's a totally worthless site, a bit like what creationist sites are to religion.

Al the information comes from published science so I'm not sure why you think it is worthless. 

The team behind it include a range of expertise including some who work in climate science. 

Just because it disagrees with your prejudices.....

[mistermack]

1 minute ago, Strange said:

Al the information comes from published science so I'm not sure why you think it is worthless. 

The team behind it include a range of expertise including some who work in climate science. 

Just because it disagrees with your prejudices.....

There's no balance. A bit like discussing the existence of Jesus with Catholic priests. 

[Strange]

9 minutes ago, mistermack said:

There's no balance.

I'm not sure what you mean. It presents the science. The science may not support your beliefs but that doesn't mean it is not balanced. 

[iNow]

25 minutes ago, mistermack said:

Quoting skeptical science is exactly what I'm talking about. It's a climate warrior's blog, but people treat it as some kind of reference source. 

It's a totally worthless site, a bit like what creationist sites are to religion.

Much like wiki, I encourage you to review the references then. 

Don’t shoot the messenger...

[Strange]

12 minutes ago, mistermack said:

A bit like discussing the existence of Jesus with Catholic priests. 

Which isn't science. If you really think that climate science is like religion then you are seriously deluded 

[mistermack]

2 minutes ago, Strange said:

I'm not sure what you mean. It presents the science. The science may not support your beliefs but that doesn't mean it is not balanced. 

All I can say is that it absolutely screams bias to me. And has for years. If you want to read one side of the argument, exaggerated to the eyeballs, then you can't go wrong. 

[iNow]

Jesus. Fine. It’s nit like it’s the only source saying this. Christ almighty. 

https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/05/18/climate-models-accuracy/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/03/15/the-first-climate-model-turns-50-and-predicted-global-warming-almost-perfectly/#51d4272c6614

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=climate+model+reliability&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart

[mistermack]

Jaysus. You're hopping from blog to blog. From skeptical (ha ha) science (he he) to a blog, by "Guest Blogger" on a site called blogs.ie......etc etc. 

Blogs are worth about the same as posts on this site. By all means put your faith in them, if that's what you like, but don't expect me to take them seriously.

[iNow]

Hence my final link. I anticipated your objection, addressed it proactively, and yet you still posted it. 

At some point, it’d be helpful for you to acknowledge that you’re not approaching this discussion in good faith. 

Also, the blogs have references. I’ll be shocked if you drilled down into even a single one. 

[mistermack]

Nope, life's too short. If you start with a blogger called guest blogger on a site called blog, I'm stopping right there. 

[iNow]

Once more, this time with feeling... hence my last link

[CharonY]

14 hours ago, mistermack said:

And yet people on forums talk about the atmosphere like it's a closed container. It's not. Huge amounts of heat flood in and out daily at most locations.

Not sure why you think that folks treat it as a closed system. 

 

14 hours ago, mistermack said:

Up to 1997 the models were saying rapid increases in temps. None of the models forecast a standstill of about 18 years. If you can't forecast that, then you simply aren't ready. By all means keep trying, but it's clear that there's plenty that they can't forecast yet. 

These are again two things. In that period the climate was dominated by La Niña conditions.  However, based on my understanding ,  long-term predictions of these conditions are not possible. For similar reason as long-term prediction of a the movement of a ball or weather is not. Thus, long-term climate models are not predictive of these events, which require measurements close to the initiation of these events. However, if one integrates it into existing climate models, they are able to accurately calculate the measured values. That. in turn means that the models accurately reflect climate events outside of the El Nino oscillations (which includes the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere). 

[Strange]

14 hours ago, mistermack said:

Jaysus. You're hopping from blog to blog. From skeptical (ha ha) science (he he) to a blog, by "Guest Blogger" on a site called blogs.ie......etc etc. 

Blogs are worth about the same as posts on this site. By all means put your faith in them, if that's what you like, but don't expect me to take them seriously.

Forget the facts they are blogs, they reference scientific papers on the subject. You might find one or two papers arguing that there is no increase in CO2 or that it has no effect or that it doesn't come from human activity, or whatever. But for each of those (assuming they are peer-reviewed and published) you will find multiple responses pointing out the errors.

Again, just because the science disagrees with you doesn't mean it is biased. It just means you are mistaken in your beliefs. Get over it.

You know those threads where religious people argue against evolution? Well, you have found yourself in their position on this one. You are making an entirely faith-based argument against over 100 years of science.

15 hours ago, mistermack said:

And yet people on forums talk about the atmosphere like it's a closed container.

So you object to people referring to blogs written by scientists using results from scientific papers, but you are using the opinions of random people on forums as an argument?

What was that about bias?

[Ken Fabian]

21 hours ago, mistermack said:

Up to 1997 the models were saying rapid increases in temps. None of the models forecast a standstill of about 18 years.

I suggest you have been taking the counter-messaging about climate change science far more seriously than it deserves and you are getting things very wrong as a result.

Year to year variability since that particular 18 year slice of time (why 18 years? Why those particular 18 years?) has already caught up on all that "missed" warming - which indicates that warming did not pause or stop and that it always was, as the actual experts (not the counter-messagers) said, within the range of variability overlaying a consistent warming trend.

I could try and explain why 18 years is too short to judge if warming is continuing or not.

I could try and explain why starting at 1998 - a record breaking year with high grade el-Nino conditions - creates the illusion that what came after looks like cooling,  even years with temperatures above the predicted warming trend.

I could suggest that other measures of global warming - Ocean Heat Content for example - don't show any "pause" during that period; for it to be a real pause, OHC would show it.

------------------

I think this is an issue we really can't afford to get wrong. Will you read and pay attention and give real consideration to what I write?

I would note that a common theme of anti-climate action counter-messaging is to encourage distrust and resist arguments based on what climate science experts say. If you have internalised that message (from here it looks like you have) it may not be possible to use real world measurements and scientific reason to persuade you of anything about this.

Edited November 21, 2018 by Ken Fabian

[mistermack]

15 hours ago, Strange said:

Again, just because the science disagrees with you doesn't mean it is biased. It just means you are mistaken in your beliefs. Get over it.

Again, you are confusing blogs with science. And blogs like skeptical science are just about the worst examples. If working climate scientists are writing on rabid climate warrior blog sites, that just illustrates what I said about climate science being composed of biased activists, not dispassionate scientists. 

And you talk about 100 years of science but that's rubbish. If we had had 100 years of accurate climate forecasts, you might have a point. But we've had 100 years of NEVER forecasting the climate. And when they finally started, they kept getting it wrong.

Fair enough, climate is hugely difficult to forecast. But don't pretend that you can do it, when you clearly can't. If climate modelling was so good, there would only be ONE official climate forecast. Not the million billion that we are swamped with. How can they NOT get it right, at some point, when there is a new climate forecast every week? So they can always point to someone who got it right and claim a triumph.

Give the world an OFFICIAL climate forecast, and stick to it, and you might get taken seriously. Till the figures come in.

[Essay]

On 11/20/2018 at 5:05 PM, mistermack said:

That's not an apt analogy at all.

===

Up to 1997 the models were saying rapid increases in temps. None of the models forecast a standstill of about 18 years. If you can't forecast that, then you simply aren't ready. By all means keep trying, but it's clear that there's plenty that they can't forecast yet. 

I'm not against climate science, I'm against activism IN science. ....

It's one of the best analogies I've heard in a long time, (+1) and I'll be using it myself!

===

But to your point about how none of the models predict a standstill or pause in the warming trend, here is some old and dry 'climate science' from back in the day before so much activism.  It's from an academic book, published mainly for other researchers and professors in the field, and the sort of book that was used as a text book back in the 1990s.

Paleoclimatologists have been aware of the variability in climate for a long time.  Of course there are "cooling phases" and "warming phases" in the various elements that contribute to the overall climate.  And after a "cooling" phase, those cycles switch back to the “warming” phase of their pattern, and after more decades or centuries, the average remains remarkably steady; especially for the solar influences.

But the key point here is that greenhouse gases are unidirectional; they don’t have a cooling phase.  So while we’ve probably just been through a "pause" (or what should have been a natural cooling phase), it was counteracted by the new “forcer” in the summation of the climate factors.  Look at the recent "cooling" phases on the classic hockey stick curve, and you can see how each successive "cooling" segment falls less steeply (less cooling) than the previous one.

Paleoclimatologists have a fairly good grasp of the natural forcers affecting climate, and they understood decades ago that the natural variability (which they call “Historical Climate Fluctuations”) in climate would probably be superimposed onto any unidirectional forcing of the climate.  Hence this 1991 summary of the state of the art: 

Oxford Monographs on Geology and Geophysics no.16; Paleoclimatology; Crowley & North; 1991.

Quote

14.1.2 Implications of Historical Climate Fluctuations for Detection and Modulation of a Greenhouse Warming
The amount of potential variance due to these natural fluctuations appears to be enough to modulate the course of any unidirectional warming due to CO2 forcing (at least in the early stages of a warming). -p.257   ~my emphases

From 1991!  So, here's a prediction that seems to be gaining some validation.

Being a unidirectional forcer, we should expect fewer, or certainly weaker, “cooling phases” as the decades and centuries progress, which would appear as a noticeable slowing, occasionally or periodically, in the overall warming trend, as long as we keep adding extra greenhouse forcing to the global system.  Of course, we could always hope for a super-volcano to counteract the unidirectionality of our extra greenhouse warming.

~

[Strange]

4 hours ago, mistermack said:

Again, you are confusing blogs with science.

Nope. 

4 hours ago, mistermack said:

And you talk about 100 years of science but that's rubbish. If we had had 100 years of accurate climate forecasts,

I didn’t say that we did. But the effects of CO2 were first noted over 100 years ago. 

4 hours ago, mistermack said:

But we've had 100 years of NEVER forecasting the climate. And when they finally started, they kept getting it wrong.

Nope. The models have been tested and confirmed. That is why rational people accept the results of the science. 

[mistermack]

51 minutes ago, Strange said:

Nope. The models have been tested and confirmed. That is why rational people accept the results of the science. 

"science" gets things wrong, on a regular basis. Ask any victim of thalidomide. Climate science is especially prone, because of the huge human input. Each model can be jiggled and massaged before it's announced to the world. You never see the ones that don't produce the politically correct result. Climate measurements can be massaged too, just by ignoring this or stressing that. If you're not getting the answer you want, move your equipment. If it's telling the required story, leave it be. Just little tweaks can completely change the picture. 

I used to trust the figures for climate. I don't any longer. Because you can't trust the people involved to be honest and unbiased. As I said, they are now all activists. 

[Ken Fabian]

On 22/11/2018 at 8:43 AM, Ken Fabian said:

Will you read and pay attention and give real consideration to what I write?

Mistermack, I take it the answer is NO?

10 hours ago, mistermack said:

Each model can be jiggled and massaged before it's announced to the world. You never see the ones that don't produce the politically correct result. Climate measurements can be massaged too, just by ignoring this or stressing that. If you're not getting the answer you want, move your equipment. If it's telling the required story, leave it be. Just little tweaks can completely change the picture. 

I used to trust the figures for climate. I don't any longer. Because you can't trust the people involved to be honest and unbiased. As I said, they are now all activists. 

Do you realise you are making a serious accusation of widespread serious professional misconduct to deliberately give false and misleading results? Do you have any evidence of this? Sounds to me like you are repeating unsubstantiated slander - the sort that probably originated from people engaged in climate counter-messaging, to undermine public confidence in all those consistent expert studies and reports. And it looks like it worked.

If you are going to make such serious allegations - Citations are definitely required!

 

Edited November 22, 2018 by Ken Fabian

[mistermack]

19 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

If you are going to make such serious allegations - Citations are definitely required!

Hockey sticks to you, and your citations.