Global Warming is Not a Crisis

[IM Egdall]

I try to keep an open mind. I am not a climate expert, so I have to make judgements based on what others are saying. So far it seems to me human-caused climate change is real and doing something about it is urgent. This is based on reading Scientific American articles as well as those in Physics Today, this forum, and other places on the web, etc.

 

But I am still curious. How about John B's chart from NOAA on difference between raw and final USHCN data set? Does anyone have an answer for his statement that the raw data shows only a tiny increase in warming? How and why does NOAA "adjust" the data?

[iNow]

But I am still curious. How about John B's chart from NOAA on difference between raw and final USHCN data set? Does anyone have an answer for his statement that the raw data shows only a tiny increase in warming?

Tiny is relative. Would you mind if I put a "tiny" amount of toxic nerve gas into your bedroom? Would you mind if I put a "tiny" amount of streptococcus bacteria into your milkshake? That "tiny" increase has quite a lot of impact on the climate system.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming#Observed_temperature_changes

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming

[waitforufo]

So far it seems to me human-caused climate change is real and doing something about it is urgent.

Urgent why?

[JustinW]

iNow,

 

I think IM Egdall was asking the reason for adjustment between the two data scales. Why is it necessary to adjust such data? Why can't we use the raw data without adjustment? And, because I couldn't find this info, hasn't there been more extreme changes in a shorter time period in the past when examining the RAW data?

 

 

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Public_opinion_on_falsified_global_warming_research.png

 

just sayin'.

Edited February 10, 2012 by JustinW

[iNow]

I think IM Egdall was asking the reason for adjustment between the two data scales. Why is it necessary to adjust such data? Why can't we use the raw data without adjustment?

The source of the data explains this plainly. Instead of assuming malicious intent, go read the source.

 

Just because non-experts think that the term "adjusted" should be equated with the term "nefarious" or equivalent to "false, flawed, fudged, untrustworthy, etc.," does not mean the data is any of those things.

 

 

Here's the source. if you click this link there is a detailed explanation of all adjustment processes and why they are used. I've only summarized one final comment in my quote. The link is worth the look if you find yourself with questions about the adjustment process.

 

 

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html#QUAL

 

The cumulative effect of all adjustments is approximately a one-half degree Fahrenheit warming in the annual time series over a 50-year period from the 1940's until the last decade of the century.

 

---

 

Urgent why?

I don't suspect you actually want an answer, nor do I anticipate you will accept anyones answer regardless of how well they support it, but I will offer one all the same. The term urgent is used because if we wait too long to act the cost of doing so later will far exceed the cost of preventive measures we can take right now. There is a certain "point of no return" that we must be cognizant of when making our choices on how to proceed.

[IM Egdall]

The source of the data explains this plainly. Instead of assuming malicious intent, go read the source.

 

Just because non-experts think that the term "adjusted" should be equated with the term "nefarious" or equivalent to "false, flawed, fudged, untrustworthy, etc.," does not mean the data is any of those things.

 

 

Here's the source. if you click this link there is a detailed explanation of all adjustment processes and why they are used. I've only summarized one final comment in my quote. The link is worth the look if you find yourself with questions about the adjustment process.

 

 

http://www.ncdc.noaa...ushcn.html#QUAL

 

 

 

 

I do not assume malicious intent. Far from it.

Thanks for the link, iNow. It shows the science behind the adjustments, which seem to me to be both reasonable and necessary.

 

Urgent why?

 

Because the potential impact of global climate change on human life (and other life forms) is potentially devastating. And the longer we wait to do something significant on a global scale, the harder it is to stop the consequences. And the more likely thousand or even millions of people will die due to our lack of action. And there may be some point of no return - when climate change is no longer correctable by human action.

Edited February 11, 2012 by IM Egdall

[waitforufo]

I don't suspect you actually want an answer, nor do I anticipate you will accept anyones answer regardless of how well they support it, but I will offer one all the same. The term urgent is used because if we wait too long to act the cost of doing so later will far exceed the cost of preventive measures we can take right now. There is a certain "point of no return" that we must be cognizant of when making our choices on how to proceed.

 

I'm more interested in the opinion of IM Egdall but your reply will do for now.

 

The costs of these preventative measures you mention are not trivial. In fact many billions have already been spent and to what result? Are we adding less C02 to the atmosphere? I think not. Has "green energy" eliminated any fossil fuel power generating stations? No. Government regulation has caused some shifting from one form of fossil fuel to another, but the primary impact of these changes has only been to increase energy cost thereby hobbling the economy. Europe at the moment is abandoning subsidies for wind and solar power generation because these "preventive measures" are as predicted unworkable in providing power when power is needed and require traditional power generation means to provide power when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. You know, like when a large high pressure system covers a large land area and the sun goes down during winter. What Europe is finding out right now, the hard way, is that renewable energy in the form of wind and solar simply cost you twice; once for the solar panels and wind mills, and again for the fossil fuel plants that back them up on cold winter nights. These cost are only increased by the fact that traditional power generation pollutes more and runs less efficiently when it is constantly being turned on and off at the whims of the sun, clouds, and wind.

 

I'm sure you think these costs are worth it based on the "cost of doing so later", but where is your proof of this urgency? On a different science forums topic you posted the following image.

 

 

Now look at that sad little asterisk at the end of the steep predicted line. Did that prediction come true? That little asterisk has a date on it of 2004. This plot was generated at the height of warmther hysteria. It implies that the trend line shown will continue if "we wait too long." Well today its 2012, eight years after the call to urgent action that this plot represents. Did we ever travel down the predicted trend line? Have we even reached the level predicted for 2004? This plot represents the epic failure of warmther hysteria.

 

So I ask again. Urgent why?

[iNow]

The costs of these preventative measures you mention are not trivial.

Depends on your comparison point. As I already stated above, the cost of prevention is much less than the cost of repair later. That's the issue you seem too blind to see.

 

Add to that the fact that investment in these areas would actually stimulate the economy and put people back to work and we see rather quickly that you're arguing from a castle made of sand.

 

Now look at that sad little asterisk at the end of the steep predicted line. Did that prediction come true? That little asterisk has a date on it of 2004. This plot was generated at the height of warmther hysteria. It implies that the trend line shown will continue if "we wait too long." Well today its 2012, eight years after the call to urgent action that this plot represents. Did we ever travel down the predicted trend line?

The magnitude of stupid in your posts is second to none. You should be proud.

 

[JohnB]

iNow

 

I don't have to. The entire climate science community has done this for me for the past several decades.

 

That's fine, just so long as people can quote you next time you ask for verifying evidence. The point of the exercise was actually to get you to look at the "assload" piece by piece and once you separate out the things that show warming from the things that show attribution of cause, there isn't as much of an "assload" as you imagine there is.

 

swansont

 

Burt Rutan is incompetent at extracting information from data if he signed off on a statement that there has been no warming for the last 10+ years.

 

But that is indeed what the MSU data shows. Note that at the heart of Dr Trenberths "travesty" comment was that "We can't explain the lack of warming......". The fact is that it's not warming and a number of papers have been published in attempts to explain that fact.

 

This is also supplying an increasing problem for the modellers. Theory and therfore models show that there should be an increase in heat. The first prediction was that it would occur in the tropical troposhere, the "Big Red Spot" in AR4, but it's not there. (Unless you want to agree with Sherwood that windspeed as a temp proxy is more accurate than the in situ thermometer.) Then the land temps were supposed to go up, accounting for the "missing heat", but they haven't. Then it was supposed to be going into the oceans, but the ARGO bouys aren't showing it. The latest idea is that the "missing heat" has travelled from the surface to the 3,000m level without causing any warming in the intermediate layers. I don't believe in magic, how about you?

 

Maybe this will get the thread pushed to "Speculations" but how about this as a concept? If the theory says there there should be a heat buildup somewhere and we can't find it anywhere the theory says to look, maybe the theory is wrong.

 

Permit me to tell a story too. Back in 1998 a rather new PhD named Micheal Mann published a paper showing Northern Hemisphere temperature trends for the last 1,000 years. The reconstructed temps had a rather iconic shape and was very popular with some people. In 2004 two people decided to have a look at the mathematics behind the reconstruction and they found it flawed. This led to the hockeystick wars. In 2008 in an attempt to back up Dr Manns use of decentred PCA in his reconstruction a blogger using the pseudonym "Tamino" brought in his trump card, that Ian Jolliffe, who sort of wrote the book on PCA endorsed the use of decentred PCA. Here is Dr Jolliffes response;

 

Apologies if this is not the correct place to make these comments. I am a complete newcomer to this largely anonymous mode of communication. I’d be grateful if my comments could be displayed wherever it is appropriate for them to appear.

 

It has recently come to my notice that on the following website, http://tamino.wordpress.com/2008/03/06/pca-part-4-non-centered-hockey-sticks/ .. , my views have been misrepresented, and I would therefore like to correct any wrong impression that has been given.

 

An apology from the person who wrote the page would be nice.

 

In reacting to Wegman’s criticism of ‘decentred’ PCA, the author says that Wegman is ‘just plain wrong’ and goes on to say ‘You shouldn’t just take my word for it, but you *should* take the word of Ian Jolliffe, one of the world’s foremost experts on PCA, author of a seminal book on the subject. He takes an interesting look at the centering issue in this presentation.’ It is flattering to be recognised as a world expert, and I’d like to think that the final sentence is true, though only ‘toy’ examples were given. However there is a strong implication that I have endorsed ‘decentred PCA’. This is ‘just plain wrong’.

 

The link to the presentation fails, as I changed my affiliation 18 months ago, and the website where the talk lived was closed down. The talk, although no longer very recent – it was given at 9IMSC in 2004 – is still accessible as talk 6 at http://www.secamlocal.ex.ac.uk/people/staff/itj201/RecentTalks.html

It certainly does not endorse decentred PCA. Indeed I had not understood what MBH had done until a few months ago. Furthermore, the talk is distinctly cool about anything other than the usual column-centred version of PCA. It gives situations where uncentred or doubly-centred versions might conceivably be of use, but especially for uncentred analyses, these are fairly restricted special cases. It is said that for all these different centrings ‘it’s less clear what we are optimising and how to interpret the results’.

 

I can’t claim to have read more than a tiny fraction of the vast amount written on the controversy surrounding decentred PCA (life is too short), but from what I’ve seen, this quote is entirely appropriate for that technique. There are an awful lot of red herrings, and a fair amount of bluster, out there in the discussion I’ve seen, but my main concern is that I don’t know how to interpret the results when such a strange centring is used? Does anyone? What are you optimising? A peculiar mixture of means and variances? An argument I’ve seen is that the standard PCA and decentred PCA are simply different ways of describing/decomposing the data, so decentring is OK. But equally, if both are OK, why be perverse and choose the technique whose results are hard to interpret? Of course, given that the data appear to be non-stationary, it’s arguable whether you should be using any type of PCA.

 

I am by no means a climate change denier. My strong impressive is that the evidence rests on much much more than the hockey stick. It therefore seems crazy that the MBH hockey stick has been given such prominence and that a group of influential climate scientists have doggedly defended a piece of dubious statistics. Misrepresenting the views of an independent scientist does little for their case either. It gives ammunition to those who wish to discredit climate change research more generally. It is possible that there are good reasons for decentred PCA to be the technique of choice for some types of analyses and that it has some virtues that I have so far failed to grasp, but I remain sceptical.

 

Ian Jolliffe

 

The question isn't about the results, but the methodology used to get them. Mathematics works the same way for everybody and so do statistics. An r² of .08 is a fleas dick away from random chance and is not "significant", except in climate science. Would you be confident of the correctness of your idea on an r² of .16? I've watched climate scientists argue that case. These are the points that those from outside the field are commenting on. If the methodology is wrong then how can there be confidence in the answer? The answer might be right, but it can't be proven by some methodologies. As Dr Wegman said Wrpong Method + Right Answer = Bad Science.

 

Statisticians can comment on the statistical methods used, those experienced in data mining and manipulation can comment on the methods used. Essentially the argument from the engineers and others is that if they used the same methods to extract meaning from raw data as is used in climate science then in all probability bridges and buildings would fall down and aircraft would crash. Just like models, all methods of analysis are useful but only some of them are right.

 

*Aside* iNow, thanks for posting the link to the adjustments page. I meant to but forgot.

 

IM Egdall.

 

The adjustments as stated are reasonable and neccessary, up to a point. TOB is the real killer here and simply came about due to most of the US sensors being read by volunteers who were loathe to go out at midnight in midwinter to read the temps. (Who can blame them?) Ideally the readings would be taken at midnight but in practice were generally done at either 0700 or about 1700. Normally one wouldn't think this a major problem but it effects daily and monthly averages. The minimum temp for a day is usually around the 0500-0600 period, this means that a reading taken at 0700 is giving todays minimum and yesterdays maximum (usually around 1400). So TOBs adjustment is vital to getting a complete picture.

 

Where I and others have a problem is with the "generic" answer to this problem. A station read at 0700 in 1950 has a 7 hour TOB, a station read at 0700 in 2011 has a 7 hout TOB. IOW the offset is the same. Under the NOAA rules it is not. A station that is read at 0700 every morning from 1950-2012 has an increasing TOB adjustment. The argument isn't that TOB adjustments are unjustified, but that the generic increasing adjustment is. 0700 is not getting further from midnight as the years pass.

 

The upshot of this adjustment is that a sensor read at 0700 each morning and which reads exactly the same temperature for the 1st March every year from 1950-2012 is now going to show a .1 degree/decade warming trend. Under normal conditions a TOB adjustment is a single entity, pulling figures from the air let's say the reading at 0700 is 50 degrees and the TOBs is .5 degrees. So we take the 50 degree reading and add the .5 degree adjustment for an answer of 50.5 degrees, and that would be the recorded temp every 1st March from 1950-2012. The raw data has no trend and neither does the TOBs adjusted data.

 

The thing to understand is that TOBs is time zone based and these don't change. (Except for daylight saving and that is figured into TOBs adjustments) If the actual "Time of Observation" changes then the TOBs adjustment must change, but otherwise it shouldn't. Put another way. I live at GMT +10 so to adjust to GMT I deduct 10 hours. I do this now, I did this in 1980 and I will do the same in 2050. 20 years from now I won't be living at GMT +11.

 

I add that I think there is nothing wrong with asking very detailed questions when adjustments introduce an artificial trend into trendless raw data. It is also reasonable to accept that mistakes and flaws creep into raw data and that adjustments are needed, but one would reasonably expect those flaws to be random in nature and the adjustments to be roughly equal in increasing or decreasing the trend lines. This is not the case in climate science where virtually all adjustments in crease the trend only. There is definitely a "warming bias" when it comes to adjustments.

 

when climate change is no longer correctable by human action

 

Interesting viewpoint. Exactly when in the history of mankind has climate change been "correctable" by human actions?

 

iNow

The magnitude of stupid in your posts is second to none. You should be proud.

 

It's a fair question. Have the temps been matching the predictions? I mean, that is the point of science isn't it? To make predictions from theory and then compare those predictions to reality? So has reality confirmed the predictions?

 

 

Nope.

 

The funny (ha ha type of funny) thing is that I think Dr Scafetta is a bit "out there" with his ideas, but his "Planetary Alignment" model is seriously outperforming the IPCC GCMs.

Edited February 12, 2012 by JohnB

[iNow]

It's a fair question.

No, it's not. He's not here arguing in good faith. He dismisses basic facts, and acts as if "urgency" is some objective threshold.

 

The predictions were actually too conservative, so no... reality hasn't matched them, it's been worse than anticipated.

[Xittenn]

I can't dig through this thread and I haven't followed it at all but I just read the following and I liked it and so I'm posting the link as I found it insightful about the matter.

[swansont]

But that is indeed what the MSU data shows. Note that at the heart of Dr Trenberths "travesty" comment was that "We can't explain the lack of warming......". The fact is that it's not warming and a number of papers have been published in attempts to explain that fact.

 

No, the MSU data does not show that. If you plot the data, you can fit a line to it, within the error bars, that shows warming. You cannot claim there is no warming if you can do that. It is a lie. You can also fit a line to it that is flat, which means you cannot claim that there was warming, either. Over such a short time scale, the data are too noisy to make either claim. But if you look at a longer data set, which averages down the noise, the warming is clear. One makes the "no warming" claim either by being incompetent or deceitful.

 

As for Trenberth's claim, IIRC the context is that we can't track where all the incoming energy goes, which is the travesty — a lack of instrumentation. It's not (all) going into surface warming, because of it was, the temperatures would have gone up more.

 

The costs of these preventative measures you mention are not trivial.

 

No, they are not. But to say that mitigation is expensive is quite different from saying it is unnecessary. If you were of scant means and you have car problems, you can't simply say that since you can't afford repairs, your car is not damaged. That's ludicrous.

 

 

In fact many billions have already been spent and to what result? Are we adding less C02 to the atmosphere? I think not. Has "green energy" eliminated any fossil fuel power generating stations? No.

 

Depends on what you mean by eliminated. Have any shut down? Perhaps not — worldwide power demand trends up, not down. But adding tens of GW of solar and wind power is tens of GW of power that is not having to be supplied by fossil fuels. So in that regard, we have eliminated some fossil fuel plants. The problem is not as bad as it would be if nothing had been done.

 

 

Government regulation has caused some shifting from one form of fossil fuel to another, but the primary impact of these changes has only been to increase energy cost thereby hobbling the economy.

 

 

Really? The poor economy is due to this, and not the banking crisis? There is no money to be made in innovating new energy production methods and building that infrastructure? No benefit to money that stays in the local economy instead of being shipped to foreign countries?

 

 

Europe at the moment is abandoning subsidies for wind and solar power generation because these "preventive measures" are as predicted unworkable in providing power when power is needed and require traditional power generation means to provide power when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow. You know, like when a large high pressure system covers a large land area and the sun goes down during winter.

 

Reducing feed-in tariffs is not resulting in abandoning the methods — if they were truly unworkable then installation would stop. Or would have stopped some time ago. Nobody has championed the complete transformation to renewable power sources. If only we could tap the hot air being generated here along with the vacuum of actual facts.

 

What Europe is finding out right now, the hard way, is that renewable energy in the form of wind and solar simply cost you twice; once for the solar panels and wind mills, and again for the fossil fuel plants that back them up on cold winter nights. These cost are only increased by the fact that traditional power generation pollutes more and runs less efficiently when it is constantly being turned on and off at the whims of the sun, clouds, and wind.

 

I guess it's too much to ask for you to back these claims up with actual citations. Because what I find is that e.g. pollution in Germany is generally trending down.

http://www.urumqi-drylandmegacity.uni-hd.de/pdf/Franke_english.pdf

http://www.cisherzog.de/cis_en/download/air-bmu.pdf

[Edtharan]

Edtharan, my reply was in reply to your reference to the precautionary principle in the above quote. Your analogy above implies that with just a little adjustment in human behavior we can change the climate back to something you consider safer or better. My reply was to point out that warmists like you want to drastically change to our economy, government, and liberty in response to climate variation. All changed dramatically for the worse. For your analogy above to be properly aligned with the goals of warmists moving vehicles would have to be banned for safety sake. Or are you suggesting that climate variation can be modified by simply insulating the power sockets in my home?

I am NOT suggesting that just insulating wall sockets would be a solution. That is a Strawman argument from you. Do not use logical fallacies if you want to be taken seriously.

 

What I am saying is that mathematically, if we add greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere so that they reduce the amount of energy leaving the Earth, then we will have to inevitably have some kind of reaction to that. It might be warming (and most probably would be, or at least include warming).

 

This ia a mathematical fact. And I think you realise this yourself. If you were to give me your bank account details and I changed the amount of money leaving it (ie: taking it), I am certain you would expect the amount of money in your account to change as well.

 

This you know. This is a fact that can be demonstrated, and is demonstrated, and which you encounter on a daily basis. I don't think you will deny this fact: That if you change the rate that something leave a system, then you will change the amount of stuff in that system.

 

Now, if you can accept that, then you must also accept global warming as this is just another demonstration of that exact phenomena.

 

I am sure you will not object to any of these either.

• The amount of sunlight (and thus energy) entering Earth is relatively constant.
  
• The more energy in stored on the Earth, the more enenergy is radiated away (black body radiation)
  
• If we don't change the amount of energy leaving the Earth, then it will naturally form an equilibrium where the amount that gets radiated equals the amount entering Earth
  

 

Now, once an equilibrium is established (as explained above), then changing the amount of energy entering or leaving the system will cause a destabilisation of the current equilibrium and force it towards a new one.

 

With your bank account, this is how you increase how much you save, you reduce the amount of money leaving your bank account and thus increase the amount of money being stored in there.

 

Greenhouse gasses are called greenhouse gasses because they have the ability to reduce the amount of energy leaving the Earth.

 

If we put greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, then this will (because of mathematics and very well established physics) cause the amount of energy trapped on the Earth to increase.

 

As most of this energy will be in the form of infra-red radiation (as that is what the greenhouse gasses mainly block), and infra-red light is how heat is generally radiated, then this means the Earth is going to warm.

 

These are facts. They have been long since confirmed (and if you don't think they are facts, how about those bank account details ). They are mathematically proven.

 

However, there is something about global warming that is not proven: And that is precisely what the consequences of trapping energy in the Earth's climate system will be.

 

It is not "IF" there will be consequences, it is "WHAT" those consequences will be.

 

To your "Argument of Authority is a logical fallacy" comment above I was trying to point out that it is the warmists that constantly are guilty of making this logical fallacy. Warmists are constantly pointing out that they have a consensus. As if this consensus proves them right. The WSJ op-ed shows the lengths to which warmists will go to preserve their precious consensus; corruption of the peer review process, blacklisting, and Lysenkoism.

But (and here is the really important thing), they are not saying they are right because they have a consensus, they are saying that they have a consensus because the data supports their position.

 

See the difference. It is the deniers that claim that just because many people think that it is not happening (or at least doesn't want it to happen) then it is not real.

 

As I have posted above, there is absolute, mathematical, conclusive proof that global warming is real and is happening. However, there is still room for debate and investigation into what the consequences will be.

 

Perhaps those in the climate science community should study the business concept of sunk costs. No matter how aggressively they polish there "assload of evidence", in the end it will still just be an assload.

Talking about sunk cost; sunk cost is about when you have invested a lot of resources into a particular investment and because of that cost sunk into that investment you won't change out of the investment.

 

To me, this sounds more like the deniers than the climate scientists. they have sunk a lot of cost into the infrastructure that they use (wells, pipelines, distribution channels, storage depots, petrol stations, vehicles, etc, etc, etc). The evidence is absolute that global warming is occurring (as I posted above, the proof is based on the mathematical fact that if you stop stuff leaving a system, then the amount of stuff will build up in the system), and yet, these people whio have these investments are denying something that is as absolute as 1+1=2, just sdo they don't have to loose their investment.

 

To me, that is the most textbook case of a sunk cost if there ever was one.

[Temporocitor]

Yellowstone is much warmer. It is part of the planet (Globe). Europe is in a deep freeze. Simply because one area, even 2 areas are warming or cooling does not prover change of the whole. Those 2 area may change, even changing the outer layers, but the inner layers may compensate and cannot be measured.

[IM Egdall]

No, the MSU data does not show that. If you plot the data, you can fit a line to it, within the error bars, that shows warming. You cannot claim there is no warming if you can do that. It is a lie. You can also fit a line to it that is flat, which means you cannot claim that there was warming, either. Over such a short time scale, the data are too noisy to make either claim. But if you look at a longer data set, which averages down the noise, the warming is clear. One makes the "no warming" claim either by being incompetent or deceitful.

 

John B shows the data from 2000 to 2011 in post #209. Where may we find the longer data set chart you refer to. I apologize if you have already posted this chart.

Edited February 12, 2012 by IM Egdall

[iNow]

John B shows the data from 2000 to 2011 in post #209. Where may we find the longer data set chart you refer to.

Several different views were offered in this other thread linked below. You might find what you're after there. If not, just let me know and I'll try to help you find what you're looking for to help eliminate the uncertainty in your understanding.

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/59869-30-year-trends/

 

In the meantime, this graphic gets to the heart of swansont's point:

 

[IM Egdall]

Several different views were offered in this other thread linked below. You might find what you're after there. If not, just let me know and I'll try to help you find what you're looking for to help eliminate the uncertainty in your understanding.

 

http://www.sciencefo...30-year-trends/

 

In the meantime, this graphic gets to the heart of swansont's point:

 

 

Thank you iNow. The evidence in the graphic is clear and compelling. As I said, the more I learn about this issue, the more I am convinced on human-induced global warming and the urgent need for action now.

Edited February 13, 2012 by IM Egdall

[JustinW]

Several different views were offered in this other thread linked below. You might find what you're after there. If not, just let me know and I'll try to help you find what you're looking for to help eliminate the uncertainty in your understanding.

 

http://www.sciencefo...30-year-trends/

 

In the meantime, this graphic gets to the heart of swansont's point:

 

What was it before 1973? Just at the beginning of the time line it looks to have dropped dramatically. What did it drop from and what was the trend before that for this particular subject of land temp? I have been following you and John's threads on this subject for a while and was hoping you were going to take him up on his offer. It would have been an interesting conversation for those who have been reading more than commenting.

[swansont]

What was it before 1973? Just at the beginning of the time line it looks to have dropped dramatically. What did it drop from and what was the trend before that for this particular subject of land temp? I have been following you and John's threads on this subject for a while and was hoping you were going to take him up on his offer. It would have been an interesting conversation for those who have been reading more than commenting.

 

It was more or less flat from the 30's through the mid 70's. Pollution tends to have a negative forcing effect. See fig. 1

http://www.seekingtruth.co.uk/climate_change.htm

[JustinW]

More or less I agree, but it all depends on where you look on this sort of graph. On the same graph as above at the GISS site, if you picked the date 1942 to that dip I mentioned after 1973, the red line would be more extreme towards the decline than the trend up from 1975 on. So for someone to just look at this graph and say " AhHa I got it now" seems to be a little over the top. The graph even shows from 2008 the temps to be steadier for longer, without as big of fluctuation, than in any other period before. I mean it depends when you look at this graph. I think about 1960 or so if someone looked at this graph they would have to freak out about another impending ice age. Just sayin'.

 

 

Ilooked it up and did come across something to that effect on Wiki. Some were yelling ice age. Even this graph doesn't indicate an ice age to me. Just as the current models really don't spark the imagination for me as it does for some others.

Edited February 14, 2012 by JustinW

[swansont]

One likes to build models to predict behavior rather then relying on a simple extrapolation of recent data (or worse, a shrug of the shoulders accompanied by "Idunno"). That's where the science come into play.

 

As far as "Some were yelling ice age" goes, it's informative to look at the details. There were a few papers. At least one was a model that looked at the amount of pollution and how it outweighed the warming effect of CO2, and how we would cool the planet of nothing were done about pollution, but further study showed that the author had underestimated the effect of CO2 and, of course, we did do something about pollution. The popular press picked up on the prediction and there were a few popular articles about it. Sensationalism sells. Mostly, though, the crude predictions of 35-40 years ago were a call to come up with models to do better predictions.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11643-climate-myths-they-predicted-global-cooling-in-the-1970s.html

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2005/01/the-global-cooling-myth/

 

Some claim that HIV does not cause aids, some claim that vaccines cause autism and some have claimed that smoking does not cause cancer. There's a danger in listening to only some of the voices in a discussion.

[JustinW]

Aye, but does that also go for the flip side of this issue? There is a general consensus on this data and the current model, but I still can't get over the fact of how little we are going on when compared to the time that there wasn't any record. The warming trend of the past 40 years could just as easily start to decrease just as the one before that time started to increase. Cause and projection make sense to point, but I still have hold my reservations on this impending doom scenario. One day it may overcome my stubbornness.

 

Oh I better add a comment about the " wasn't any record" tidbit. I know we can take core samples and what not to come to a simiconclusive record. I was reffering to an instrumental record.

Edited February 14, 2012 by JustinW

[swansont]

Aye, but does that also go for the flip side of this issue? There is a general consensus on this data and the current model, but I still can't get over the fact of how little we are going on when compared to the time that there wasn't any record. The warming trend of the past 40 years could just as easily start to decrease just as the one before that time started to increase. Cause and projection make sense to point, but I still have hold my reservations on this impending doom scenario. One day it may overcome my stubbornness.

 

Oh I better add a comment about the " wasn't any record" tidbit. I know we can take core samples and what not to come to a simiconclusive record. I was reffering to an instrumental record.

 

We aren't just going by looking at a trend, though. The models are not ad-hoc, they are based on actual science. You identify and quantify the effects that would heat or cool the planet. These effects aren't "just as easily" going to reverse their impact.

[JustinW]

To be fair the last graph provided was a trend of when the acclimation started. It didn't show the full scale graph and my point for commenting was that if you are trying to show evidence instead of persuade, then it is only right to show all of the info and not just that which can influence your point. This has been the case with most charts I've seen, although I'm definitely not an expert on these matters and am still wrapping my mind around the plethra of information to consider. Slowly but surely.

[iNow]

Yay... More lies found on the denialist side. Good grief, why do people still listen to these asshats?

 

 

Breaking news: A look behind the curtain of the Heartland Institute’s climate change spin

 

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/02/15/breaking-news-a-look-behind-the-curtain-of-the-heartland-institutes-climate-change-spin