Humans are Causing Global Warming 1342
Big_Al_B writes "A Times Online article discusses a new study comparing 7 million real world datapoints with several computer models of global warming. Each model had a possible cause associated with it." From the article: "It found that natural variation in the Earth's climate, or changes in solar activity or volcanic eruptions, which have been suggested as alternative explanations for rising temperatures, could not explain the data collected in the real world. "
Indeed... (Score:1, Insightful)
It's a good thing they have millions of years' worth of climate data to work with. Otherwise their computer models might be irrelevant.
Oh wait...
Flame Away! (Score:3, Insightful)
What shall we do? (Score:1, Insightful)
Hmmm.. maybe what we need is more of those microbes from that last "industrial waste may be helping the planet" story..
Re:Indeed... (Score:2, Insightful)
What about farting Cattle (Score:2, Insightful)
And... (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't be silly (Score:2, Insightful)
Newsflash (Score:1, Insightful)
Film at 11.
(Yes, yes, humans have the potential to cause *more* change in some respects. From transportation, thousands of years of farming, damming rivers, factories, and so on and so on. As cliche as this sounds, we do have the RIGHT to do things that might make changes - changes which can neither with any certainty be defined as "positive" or "negative" in the broad sense - to our surroundings. Should we go out of our way to destroy life, land, or air? Of course not. But, at the same time, we can't, and frankly shouldn't, have no impact whatsoever. So, once again, it's about THRESHOLDS, and is NOT a black and white discussion. But I think that this continued "HUMANS ARE CAUSING GLOBAL WARMING" agenda has taken on a life of its own...)
Do people in the US... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, it isn't even a topic of debate outside the US, people accept it as fact.
Re:Flame Away! (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're talking about common people, well, it's mostly the fault of the media which covers the issue as if there would be two equal sides in the story.
Personally, i'm always willing to see facts, if they are facts for real, from both sides. It doesn't mean i'm going to accept those facts without challenging them.
Yeah Cool, (Score:1, Insightful)
(disclaimer: Yes, I know there is global warming, I'm just not sure it's all the humans' fault)
Global Warming and Economics (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Flame Away! (Score:3, Insightful)
Gentlemen, start your rhetoric (Score:5, Insightful)
Me? I look at it this way. There's a lot of good information out there and a lot of experienced people have made very sober arguments about the issues of global warming. So, I give them credit, and figure that the efforts to reduce global warming, even if they do nothing, are unlikely to have a significant negative impact.
I'd say global warming appears to be one of those things like evolution . . . but I'd be right in more ways than one.
I do find it amusing to see people argue that a large number of experienced, intelligent, educated people are somehow irrelevant because some pundit shoots off his mouth. I'd like to start a talk show, then begin discussing how only egghead crackpots believe seatbelts save lives and that eating fried lard is unhealthy. I wonder how many people I could decieve into terribly unhealthy habits just by shooting my mouth off long enough.
Accurate weather simulations?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Indeed... (Score:5, Insightful)
"OMG! Did you hear the Weather Channel guy? He said it's NEVER been this cold in February before! That's AMAZING!" -- like they're living a part of history.
Um, pretty sure it's been colder. And hotter. And wetter. And you name it. Just not that we're aware of.
Re:And... (Score:1, Insightful)
And this is coming from a Kerry-supporting liberal.
Re:Not millions, but here is 400,000 years worth (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do people in the US... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, frankly, people will throw money at a problem before dealing with the discoveries surrounding it. Thus many people don't take care of themselves, and end up paying higher medical bills, for instance.
Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Flame Away! (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, I used to be firmly in the "Global Warming is hapenning, and we've got to stop it!" crowd. Then I read a well reasoned critique... think about it:
The dataset on weather we have is pitifully small in geographic time, and the initial results led scientists to believe we were undergoing global cooling. Maybe in 20 more years, we'll be smart enough (Or have a large enough dataset) to believe that maybe the changes have nothing to do with us, and are just cyclical.
Two, all of these models tend to leave something important out: The sun. We can't model its output very well, and the records of its output are, ironically, shady (Yes, that was a pun).
Three, as humans we're very emotional. We see icebergs calving, and there are people promoting a theory of global warming. Clearly the two are related, and this must mean we're heading for disaster! My point? Iceberg calving is very dramatic footage. It looks cool. And, most importantly, it gets on the news when we get some, along with the tag line about how scientists believe there's global warming. What happens if an icesheet adds a couple inches? Nobody cares.
Am I saying that global warming isn't happening? No. It very clearly is, and a very short term scale. The question, however, shouldn't be is global warming happening, it should be "is global warming happening on a long-term scale", and the only answer any of us can give on that is "I don't know". One of those known unknowns as Rumsfeld would put it.
The problem is that people are taking small datasets, extrapolating them into much larger ones, and announcing there's a problem. Yesterday, it was 21C/70F outside. Today it's 14C/57F. I can extrapolate from this that the earth is cooling at an incredible rate, and the data would firmly support this. Problem is there's a flaw in the logic behind it, and that's the problem with Global Warming research: People are making predictions without a large enough dataset to ensure that it's not just a short-term outlyier throughing off the result.
Re:The science behind global warming (essay) (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Newsflash (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure where you get the idea that damming a river or strip mining or clear-cutting forest can't be defined as "negative" to our surroundings, but I'd like to know. Positive to man's economy, sure. But positive to the environment? Are you for real?
Re:And... (Score:5, Insightful)
Dude, being anti-Kyoto treaty doesn't necessarily make one anti-environment, although the media would have one believe so (It's in their best interests to dumb down complex issues into a 22-minute Captain Planet cartoon). Pull that Matrix-plug-thingie out of the base of your neck and do your own thinking on this one.
Are they measuring output from the Sun? (Score:3, Insightful)
Excuse me for being skeptical, but I know output from any star can and does fluctuate. If, prior to 2003, this data wasn't being collected, and if as far as I know, this data isn't being used in studies...I will remain skeptical.
I'm sorry. But little things like energy from the Sun are important variables I would like to have mapped against warming trends before I come to any conclusions.
Re:Old news (Score:5, Insightful)
You are right on. This is true on both sides of this issue, and many others. Much of the problem, I believe, has to do with the manner in which we discuss these issues. Looking over the previous posts on this page, you will see a number of posts that are knee-jerk reactions from both camps. THESE DO NOT HELP ANYBODY.
When a story like this comes a long, the first thing we should all be thinking is how the computer model works, what data it uses, how accurate/inaccurate the data is, etc... That is where the discussion should start. Then tell people WHY you think what you think WITHOUT INSULTING THEM if possible.
On an encouraging note, there are already quite a few posts that do argue ideas without hurling politically loaded accusations. To the authors of those posts: I salute you.
Re:Kyoto is only a start (Score:5, Insightful)
I work in downtown Washington DC, and live in Arlington, the corner cut off of DC in the 19th century, so it's not as if my commute is very long -- only about 2.5 miles ( I walk when the weather's really nice and I'm not in a rush ) -- but I tell you it's a blast. I can avoid traffic completely, and the view in the mornings on Key Bridge overlooking the Potomac is breathtaking.
Perhaps it's too cold right now for you to start biking to work, but start soon!
P.S. If you're in or near a city, wear a helmet. I've been hit by cars three times in four years. None actually hurt me, but... well... I can't count on luck forever.
P.P.S. Also, I agree 100% that if it's hard to cut emissions now, why would it be easier ten years from now? Criminy.
Re:Flame Away! (Score:1, Insightful)
It's funny this report comes out right after Kyoto came into effect, how's that for timing? It wasn't planned or anything though.
Re:An idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Flame Away! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:And... (Score:3, Insightful)
They would only buy such rights from us if they were concerned about violating the treaty, which they have not signed.
Great article.... NOT. (Score:3, Insightful)
Frankly, climate simulations should always be taken with a huge grain of salt. Such simulations when run into the future are virtually always wrong when checked with the facts later on. Second, any data points collected are from an insanely short periods of time and/or from an insanely small areas. The data is extremely two dimentional.
This is nothing more than people setting out to prove something they wanted to prove based on statistical models that they came up with and, surprise, they go the numbers they wanted, yet again.
The scarey thing is how they claim that their simulation should "lay to rest any argument". What utter rubbish! Such things are said all the time and decades later are virtually always refuted. Making such a claim in itself is all the evidence needed to completely discount the research as they were certainly "absolutely convinced" about their model and it's outcome.
Complete and utter BS.
The Unresolveable Debate (Score:2, Insightful)
I just hope that those who have children think long and hard about what kind of world we want to leave for them.
Re:Says nuffin' (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Accurate weather simulations?? (Score:3, Insightful)
Question 1: Do you know how did the grains of sand collide with each other, whirl and which position they took up while falling? (Do meterologists know the weather up to a year?).
Question 2: Do you know where will the sand end up on the floor with a few meters precision? (Can scientists predict global climate changes?).
Now answer these questions and you'll find it easier to believe the computer modells.
Re:And... (Score:1, Insightful)
Thank goodness, the treaty is TRASH! (Score:3, Insightful)
Worse two of the bigger economies, economies driven by industries that pollute heavyily, of China and India essentially immune to it?
Also, by 2012 when the treaty comes up for renewal what happens when no one meets their goals? Both Canada and Japan don't have real plans to meet the goals as neither do a few European countries. We all know the glacial pace of politics, are you really thinking they can do it?
This is nothing more than a song and dance treaty. It makes people feel good and gives them villains to put the blame on for increased pollution. It is not based on real science instead it is based on consensus.
The US will never sign the treaty because it does nothing to protect the environment worldwide. Worst case scenario is that it simply transfer pollution from one part of the world to another.
If you want to reduce pollution then come up with a system that applies fairly to ALL countries and get them ALL aboard. Hell, India and China have already expressed concern - as in they won't agree - with the proposed followup treaties in 2012.
Kyoto is politics at its worst. It was only written to score points in the internation cooties game.
Re:Indeed... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Indeed... (Score:1, Insightful)
Our own weather forecasters can't even get the weather correct 48 hours in advance most of the time (save for areas like the equator and extreme north/south, of course). Yet, we're supposed to believe that the climate can be accurately simulated for millions or billions of years by having a few hundred years of data and some simulations?
Yes but remember that many chaotic systems (economics, politics, social shifts, stellar dynamics, etc...) that are utterly unpredictable on smaller time scales, follow longer time scale trends that, while not completely predictable (it is a chaotic system after all), do follow trends that can be somewhat anticipated. Not sure that necessarily applies to global warming or the even the climate, but as we don't really understand how the weather system of our planet works, I think it's important to keep that in mind.
On your other point, yes, we do only have a hundred years or so of full data on the weather, but there many indicators we can find from far back into the past that point, fairly explicitly, to the large scale trends that were happening then (CaCO ratios in diatoms or whatever those microbes are in the ocean, ice cores). The point is, we really don't know what's going on with the climate, all we can do is continue to collect data, interpret it, and see what happens. Which is exactly what this story is about.
Re:An idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Flame Away! (Score:5, Insightful)
However, it seems those who think that burning fossil fuels and other activities of like nature should simply go on as it is are quite quick to latch on the minority view, declare the majority a bunch of scaremongers and go on their way.
How many other fields of inquiry are there where a small minority of experts are declared right, while a majority are called fear mongering and wrong? I mean, do we do this with physics or chemistry? How about archaeology or cosmology?
I can only think of one other field where a vocal minority (virtually all of which aren't even really scientists) seem to be trumpeted as having some valid perspective, and that's biology. Here Creationists are very popular due to religious and political leanings, even though virtually every reputable biologist states that evolution happens, and is responsible for the way life has developed over the last 4 billion years.
The similarity between climatology and evolutionary biology is that in both cases the opposition is largely not scientific at all, but political.
Funny (Score:3, Insightful)
This guy is from an oil company...let's believe him.
This guy is an objective scientist...he must be lying!!
Re:An idea (Score:3, Insightful)
-sigh- the question isn't what we know about climate, the question is what we DON'T know about climate, which exceeds by a wide margin what we do know.
The problem isn't what I know or don't know, it's the fact that climate scientists are arrogant and, frankly, foolish enough to try and claim that they understand climate enough to make predictions 100 years in the future.
Open but honestly suspicious (Score:2, Insightful)
global warming vs. cigarettes (Score:4, Insightful)
we're at the stage when the public knows about cigarettes and the conspiracy to cover up the data. but for global warming, we're still in the "don't listen to those commie environmentalists, everyone else drives SUVs, don't YOU want to be cool too?" stage.
the only problem is by the time global warming is a big problem we'll ALL be fucked.
Re:Kyoto is only a start (Score:3, Insightful)
Oil is primarily used for plastic production and cars in the USA. Therefore, the end of oil will have nothing to do with Coal. Especially as hardly any oil is used in electricity generation. If we want to really cut CO2 emmisions in the USA, we should switch to nuclear as opposed to coal and start re-enrichment of the nuclear fuel like france does. (which gets 70+% of their power from nuclear.)
Re:Math for crystal-gripping tree-hugging hippies: (Score:1, Insightful)
Workweek Causes Climate Fluctuations (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Do people in the US... (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm American, and most people I associate with (probably all) understand human activity will increase global warming. Similarly, they believe in evolution as well. In fact, of the hundreds of people I do know, I cannot think of anyone that's a creationist (although my girlfriend's sister's family is pretty religious so they MIGHT believe it, but we usually try to avoid such contentious discussions with them). Of course there's the auto industry, and SUV drivers/sellers too, that has lobbying power and really annoys me, but seriously, Americans are not all like the stereotype you make us out to be. Where are you from anyway?
But then again, I've lived on the East Coast my whole life, and I'm currently a physics graduate student, so science triumphs over religion anyway, among the peers in my field. But even amongst my non-science friends the same pattern is there. And I'd imagine most slashdotters, regardless of country, tend to be of the science-oriented type that would have similar experiences of not knowing any creationists.
Sorry, but it really bothers me that so many people on slashdot think all Americans don't care about global warming and that we're also mostly science-ignoring creationists. You'll find such people in ANY country, not just the USA. But slashdotters living in metropolitan Europe, for instance, might be more likely to think there are no creationist Europeans since they don't encounter them daily, and hence that it's only the Flag-Waving Americans they read about that have these views.
Re:Indeed... (Score:1, Insightful)
Not really. (Score:3, Insightful)
Not really.
I, for instance, have been a major skeptic on the "humans caused it all" claims. In part this has been because of claims that the global warming models don't match the data, while other explanations fit much better.
For instance: It's well known that we're on our way out of an ice age and haven't yet gotten to the between-ice-ages temperature. Solar variations have been measured that correlate with weather and (at an equilibrium temperature well over 400 kelvin degrees warmer than the sky background temperature) it doesn't take much solar variation to swing us half a degree. And so on.
According to the Times, this study compares measurable details of the WAY each of the proposed alternative mechanisms would heat the ocean, and found a very close match to the human-emitted greenhouse gas models and broad divergence from the models of the other explanations.
If that is accurate (and the study holds up to scrutiny and its approach continues to match well as more data is collected) it could easily convince me that human activity is a, or the dominant, or possibly even the only, cause of the observed global warming. One or two studies using other approaches that produce similar results could clinch the issue, too.
Science CONSISTS OF making alternaive models, comparing them with data, and abandoning those models that don't match in favor of those that do.
But that alone won't get me to make the leap from "We're heating the planet enough that, over the next century, the ideal regions to grow each crop will be about a quarter of a tier of states farther north than it is now." to "The world is about to end unless we gut all industry and drive the economy down to the hunter-gatherer level."
Especially since China, with several times the US population, is just leapfrogging from farming to full deployment of heavy industry on a level comparable to the US - while other parts of the world aren't far behind. The US could shut down everything and freeze in the dark and it wouldn't be a tenth of what was needed to reverse such trends - IF reversal is actually needed.
If action is actually needed, it seems to me that it will have to be in terms of improved technology and subtle changes, rather than luddite shutting down of all technology. Energy production that doesn't emit greenhouse gasses (such as improved solar, space-based solar, nuclear fission, or fusion) seem like good starts. (We WILL switch to one or more of those as soon as it's cheaper, too. We already are, in some applications where "alternative energy" IS cheaper. Look around you as you drive.) Albedo management and ocean-farming that results in large-scale carbon sequesteration are two more. Or just orbit a few sun shades. (That could freeze the whole planet if it were overdone. B-) )
Meanwhile there's a lot of dots to be connected to get from "humans really ARE the cause of global warming" through ".... and we've got to DO something about it" through "do THIS" to "do it NOW!".
Re:Indeed... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Indeed... (Score:3, Insightful)
Please tell me if I am wrong, it's just what makes the most sense to me
Re:An idea (Score:3, Insightful)
No, it just shows that you know how to use Google.
First poster did not claim that positively answering those questions makes one an expert... merely that not answering them makes one definitely not an expert. Get yer logic straight.
Re:Kyoto is only a start (Score:2, Insightful)
Many are missing the point... (Score:3, Insightful)
Take a step back for a moment. Being right on this one SIMPLY DOES NOT MATTER.
What does matter is this:
As we reduce greenhouse gases--even if they're not a threat and/or causing global warming: Conversely, if we wait too long because no one can agree on data points to study then on data validity then on data modeling, etc., etc., at least we'll make great pets.
Re:Flame Away! (Score:2, Insightful)
If we built machines that were purpose built to cause climate change and the result was a changed climate?
If that is the case then I see little difference in creating the change from direct side effects like your farting bovines.
We want meat and the gassy beef machines crank out climate change as well as jerky treats.
The end result is the same I guess, but once you become aware of it, it doesnt change to any extent, the directness of the cause. In both cases, humans, as the result is only one step removed from the cause.
Nevermind me though, my brain is abby normal
C.
Re:Flame Away! (Score:1, Insightful)
Now, I'm not saying that the scientists are being disengenuous. But for a lot time, there has been a theory that humans are causing global warming. Now, we must ask what this most recent "proof" is based on. It turns out that they had these seven computer models whose results they compared with recent data points. Apparently they found that the sun-caused-warming model didn't pan out, but the humans-caused-warming model did. Now, I'm not a scientist, but I have studied economic models, which are similar in a way: you have limited data and you cannot experiment, so you can only make models and then test data.
The funny thing is that if a model's results match the data's trends, this does not imply that the assumptions used when making the model were valid. Likewise, if a model's results are inaccurate, there is no reason to believe that the assumptions were necessarily mistaken; perhaps the assumptions need tweaking in order to improve the model.
This is particularly evident in economics, where there will sometimes be two or three different models that match the data pretty well, but the assumptions in each model is in opposition to the other two. Who knows which assumptions are the correct ones? Each model has its own supporters.
In the field of climatology, it could be that it is very natural to create human-caused-warming model. Or it could be that most of the climatologists have a vested interest in perfecting the human-caused-warming models. And it is difficult to know.
But one thing is clear: any time you have to rely on models, limited data, and a lack of experimentation, you are not really performing science; you are using statistics to suggest policy. This is why the "hard" sciences are never really embroiled in politics like climatology; facts are facts. In climatology, like economics, you always have to look into the vested interests.
Re:Indeed... (Score:3, Insightful)
I think that you need to upgrade your browser. The one that you're using is apparently not displaying text properly as it's putting in words that aren't there.
Re:Indeed... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Indeed... (Score:2, Insightful)
Rise and fall my ass!
Re:Indeed... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll be interested to see the fallout of this once the details are published. If it indeed shows it's humanities fault, so be it. Understand it's just as much the rest of the worlds fault as anyones.
There is no debate (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Indeed... (Score:3, Insightful)
The scientists are talking about climate, the overall weather on the planet. You're talking about weather, as in it's going to be 37 degrees and sunny today in my neighborhood.
To look at climate trends over a long period of history, scientists don't need to know that it was 83 degrees in what is now Los Angeles on July 23rd, 397,421 BCE. What they can do is look at the average temperature in one location on earth over that very long period. The averaging reduces the variations, and they can say things like, 50,000-75,000 years ago, it was colder here. They don't know if a normal day in June was 40 degrees or 30 degrees.
(Note: All temperatures in F)
Re:Indeed... (Score:4, Insightful)
Until you understand the difference between "fossil records" and "climate data", you will never understand the debate. The simple fact is that we don't have climate data for more than a very short period of the earth's history. The rest is guesswork.
And the other fact you need to face is that modelers spends hours and hours tweaking their models until they "look right", and if "humans are the cause of global warming" is what looks right to them (and they get paid to get that result) then that is what the models say. Models need real data to work right (which we don't have) and real understanding of the processes (guess wrong and you get the wrong answer.)
I remember one NOAA model that came out a few years ago showing a sudden upturn in temperatures just about to happen. CALAMITY! WOE! This was supposed to be the latest and most accurate model. Proof beyond all doubt that we were ruining the planet!
It didn't happen.
Insightful indeed.
Re:Indeed... (Score:5, Insightful)
People really are suffering from information overload. They live busy lives, and it's all they can do to keep up with their own lives, and that that of their families. It also does not help that 'The Academy' has become so heavily populated with folks with very left-wing social, and political agendas. Large sections of Americans do not trust institutions that they view as hot beds of neo-marxist pointy-headed, ivory tower bound granolas. Most of all they don't trust the chicken-little, 'doom is at hand' rhetoric that so many advocates (those who advance the theory of) of anhtropogenic warming. They have seen this pose before, and it's has become a pose that they very deeply distrust.
It's also not helpful that the whole dooms-day asteroid scenario has gotten so heavily played up by the Discovery Channel, etc.. In fact the dooms-day via natural event thing has completely out of control on several of the cable "science" channels, and in the general media as well. Many Americans see global warming as just another of the scenarios, and like the others interesting but not relevant to daily life. Indeed, it seems to me at least that the shows that draw big ratings on the cable 'science' channels are really nothing more that 'scientific' soap-operas. Drama! Drama! Drama! Will the world survive the crash of the asteroid?!?!!!!!! Tune in tomorrow, and find out!
Computer models are not going to change the publics mind. Hey you can use a computer model to generate FX such as in the Matrix and other movies to produce whatever scenario you'd like.
Hard data, analyzed by trusted, and calm minds is the only thing that the public will take seriously. The chicken-little presentations must get flushed, and solutions, plans, etc. must be presented with a 'can do' attitude. i.e. 'we've got a problem, and here's our options.' 'The problem is serious, but not insurmountable.' Until such time as those who believe in the anhtropogenic global warming scenario come to this realization very many Americans will view this theory with deep skepticism.
Re:Accurate weather simulations?? (Score:3, Insightful)
I can't tell you whether it will rain tomorrow in Boston, either, but I'd be willing to place a very large bet that it will be warmer in Boston on August 19th than on February 19th.
Re:Indeed... (Score:3, Insightful)
Just because the book says it was 6 days doesn't mean literally 6 days, why not 6 ages? The average arab 3000 years ago wouldn't have understood the concept of 600 million years if it came up and slapped them in the face, let alone the idea that the world could be made from subatomic particles.
After all, your confidence in big bang, gravitational theory and evolution is based purely on theory when you get down to it. Observed theory yes (A quick google should come up with a fair few pro-religion observations on reality), but theory none the less. I very much doubt your personal radio telescope array has picked up the gamma radiation echos.
Re:Not millions, but here is 400,000 years worth (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Indeed... (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, because we all know what religious fanatics they were. People like Franklin and Washington. Good, god-fearin' men! Not. And, if god is so loving, why do you need to fear it anyway? Franklin, at least, wanted nothing religious to do with the founding of these United States. This is evidenced not only in his writing, but the manner in which he so violently scratched out "sacred" and wrote "self-evident" in the initial draft of the Declaration of Independance.
the infallible inspired word of God
In order for something to be infallible, it needs to a) not be self-contradictory on pretty much every page and b) not subject to millions of re-interpretation which would lead to dramatic fracturization of its followers. And, I'm not talking the millions of variations of christianity (such as the Branch Davidians in Waco or the KKK. Yes, they're a christian organization), nor even the dozens of differet translations of the book (King James, New Modern, Bob's Happy Bible, etc) but Judaism and Muslims and even THEIR multiple mis-re-interpretations.
Let's see how infallible it and the churches spawned by it are: what color was Jesus?
Re:Flame Away! (Score:5, Insightful)
When the definition of "reputable" includes "accepts human-generated global warming as fact", then of course one side of the argument is "reputable" and the other is not.
re: global cooling? (Score:3, Insightful)
Does that make them more reputable, that they were apparently all wrong only 30 years ago?
Re:Indeed... (Score:3, Insightful)
But not to worry. Despite the Bushie's insistence that "more research is needed", the new federal budget cuts back sharply on climate research. Funding for the Climate Reference Network was eliminated completely, and NOAA took a 44% reduction for climate research. More research may indeed be needed, but they're not going to risk letting it happen.
Oh, wait! Just 30 years ago we were supposed to be entering a new ice age because the scientists said so!
So you read George Will's column too; he quoted a single article from Science Magazine in the 70s speculating about the possibility of another Ice Age. Here's a news flash: Even if that represented consensus scientific opinion at the time (and it didn't), the fact that scientific thought changes over time is a strength, not a weakness. Maybe your understanding of the universe comes from Theology rather than Science, but even the Roman Catholic Church ultimately apologized to Galileo (like, 10 years ago!). George Will knows better, or at least should. Reading that column convinced me that the "culture war" being waged by conservatives is no less than a War on Reason itself.
Re:Flame Away! (Score:1, Insightful)
There are only two possibilities with respect to global warming; either human activity is causing it and we need to change enough to fix it, or it's natural (increased sun activity, natural cycles, etc), and there isn't anything we can do about it.
In either case Kyoto fails miserably.
If we are the cause then Kyoto essentially does nothing. Increased CO2 output from developing countries (China, Brazil) will overwhelm the small reduction from developed countries. Which may not even be a reduction -- the plans I've seen for CO2 reduction from the signatory countries is, quite honestly, laughable.
If we are NOT the cause, then by definition we have no way to deal with it because all the models will be wrong and therefore useless. If the massive CO2 increase we've inflicted on the atmosphere in the last century is not enough to change the climate, then what would be? How big does a change have to be to change the climate? The task may simply be beyond our capacity.
All Kyoto is ever going to do is give some countries warm fuzzies that they're "doing something". Too bad that "something" is almost completely meaningless.
Re:Indeed... (Score:2, Insightful)
Not that I think that we (humanity) don't affect our environments in many ways.
Man.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Either way, they lose...
As for me, whether global warming is man-made or not, I'm still going to work to make the earth cleaner and more hospitable, by trying to use less energy or use it more efficiently, find cleaner fuels, not dump junk into the air and water and basically try to be a good steward. Have conservatives just completely lost the desire to be good like that? Is the quest for money so overwhelming that it blocks out all those other desires? What's going on, and when did it become wrong to try to do good for Mother Earth?
Re:An idea (Score:3, Insightful)
1. Scientists never come to "unanimous concensus" on anything, that's not how science works. That's how Dogma works. Science is the search of truth through experimentation and observation, you can't find truth if you're judgements are clouded by preconception. There is always someone somewhere trying to disprove even the most basic theores. That said, it's almost impossible to find a respected member of the community who denys Global Warming anymore, although there are no shortage of crackpots (guys who do no actual science, just make up their own stuff and spout it off in front of national commitees. People who have maybe one peer reviewed article published ever and suddenly become experts in everything, etc...).
2. We've actually got a LOT of data. Ice cores from the artic for instance provide a good indication of the percentage of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. There was a great article in Scientific American [sciamdigital.com] charting the progress of greenhouse gasses over the past 8,000 years via this method.
3. The Sun's Cycles are actually fairly well understood at this point.
4. Who is running trends against a 10 year forecast? Local variation is hard to filter out as is pure chaos at that level. That's why it most everybody has gone to longer term data sources to analyize the trends. There has been some talk about rapid climate change, but as far as I know those claims are still treated with scepticism among the community at large. They'll need stronger evidence to convince the majority of scientists.
5. Global climate change isn't like predicting the amount of rain you are going to get next Tuesday. Whereas local effects are chaotic and difficult to pin down, long term trends tend to be very predictable although hard to observe (especially if they are subtle). However, this is not a new field, and the general proponderance of evidence has shifted most scientists into the "yep, global warming is real" camp. One gets the feeling that the ones who are left in the "not enough evidence" camp at this point have some other agenda and will never have enough evidence, even if it's 80C in Toranto.
6. Remember what I said about subtle effects? They require subtle solutions.
By "recycling someone else's data" do you really mean "doing your homework?" Are you not allowed to talk about this unless you've personally dug ice cores out of the artic or examined ancient peat moss? I know the "global warming is a myth" guys hate to drag actual scientific discoveries and observations into the disussion (they always attack the evidence, looking for the smallest hint of uncertanty, which all observed data has because nobody is omniscient).
Here's a hint, if your argument boils down to: "You can't say anything because there is a chance, no matter how slight, that you are wrong." Then you have missed the point. There is ALWAYS the chance that you are wrong. Any theory can be disproven. The best you can do is say "This is the most likely conclusion based on all of the known data." Even though there is a massive body of evidence supporting your claim and nothing opposing it, there is always a chance that someone somewhere will disprove your claim. Yes, Global Warming COULD be a myth perpetuated by mountains of bad testing procedures or flawed premesis, but the chances of that happening are extremely slim at this point. In much the same way, the Sun might be made out of Cream Cheese and all of our data might be in error.
Re:Flame Away! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: global cooling? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a word for this argument. It's on the tip of my tongue
Oh yeah! It's called a "lie."
Re:Indeed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow. Every single sentence in your post is wrong. How you even manage to breathe is beyond me:
Why is it that anyone who goes against the common, left-leaning attitude here on /. regarding politics or science is automatically branded with either "troll" or "overrated"?
They aren't. I see plenty of posts which go against the common, left-leaning attitude on /. which have been modded insightful or interesting.
The parent is 100% correct!
He is not.
We have practically no climate data of any real value beyond a few hundred years or so, yet we're expected to just ooh and aah every time some simulation from some scientist comes across that purports exactly how climates change over eons.
There is plenty of climate data beyond a few hundred years or so, such as ice cores, the fossil record, geological evidence, etc.
Our own weather forecasters can't even get the weather correct 48 hours in advance most of the time (save for areas like the equator and extreme north/south, of course). Yet, we're supposed to believe that the climate can be accurately simulated for millions or billions of years by having a few hundred years of data and some simulations?
The one has nothing to do with the other. Weather is small scale (in space and in time) and chaotic, climate is large scale. It is much easier to predict large scale behaviour due to the law of averages. Don't make the mistake of thinking that climate must be chaotic because weather is; climate causes weather, not the other way around.
We're going to have global warming because the scientists so!
No, where going to have global warming because of polution of the atmosphere.
Oh, wait! Just 30 years ago we were supposed to be entering a new ice age because the scientists said so!
First of all: no scientist ever said that we definitely were going to enter a new ice age. Scientists don't talk like that. They speak in theories and likelihoods. If a scientist says an event is likely, and it doesn't occur, that doesn't mean he was wrong. You clearly don't understand the first thing about science or scientists.
Secondly: we still might get an ice age. The global warming might trigger one because it may increase the cloud cover of the Earth, causing more sunlight to be reflected back into space.
Sailors from hundreds of years ago reported the unusually warm, Pacific waters hundreds of hears before the Industrial Revolution! Oh, wait! El Nino is actually being caused by global warming because the scientists said so!
Nobody says that El Nino is caused by global warming. Nobody actually knows what causes El Nino, since it is caused by an incredibly complex and diverse set of circumstances. All scientists ever said is that the likelihood of El Nino occurring seems to be increasing as the Earth warms up. That doesn't mean that El Nino couldn't be occurring already hundreds of years ago.
An asteroid is going to slam into us in 30 years because scientists said so!
No scientist ever said that. They said as far as they could tell with the available data, it was possible that it would hit the Earth.
Oh, wait! It's actually going to miss us by about 1 million miles because other scientists said so.
Wrong again. They were the same scientists, and the reason they were now saying it was probably going to miss the Earth is that they now had better data (since the asteroid was closer) so they could determine more accurately what the probably trajector of the asteroid was going to be.
And now ... humans are the cause of global warming because some scientist said so, and the parent is a troll because some moderator said so. Oh, wait! ...
Not some scientist said so, the majority of scientsts say so. Just not the ones in Bush's cozy little world...
Dumbass...
No scientist should EVER make statements like this (Score:3, Insightful)
How much peer review have these models been subjected to? What assumptions are built into these models? How exactly do we control solely for sea temperature changes?
There's definitely way too much "we're right so shut up" attitude in this one.
Re:Indeed... (Score:2, Insightful)
You don't get to first assume that Earth is 5000 years old, and therefore fossils are invalid, then to claim that because of that we can only study the Earth's climate as recorded by mankind, and then say that because Earth is 4.5 billion years old we can know only tiny, irrelevant fraction of climate's history.
By the way, although I'm a Christian as well, we must believe in two different Gods. Mine for example wouldn't create Earth, and then just put some fake fossils in there just to mock and have a laugh at His best creation (I mean us). Is it really so difficult to accept that Bible should be read in a similar way to poem, not as if it was a scientific paper?
Re:Flame Away! (Score:5, Insightful)
Fair enough, but we have a little more.
1) We have a plausible mechanism of action. CO2 traps infrared light (simple spectral tests easly back this up), and therefore we have reason to believe that all else being equal, increased CO2 might cause the earth to warm up.
2) We have 400,000 years of CO2 records, CO2 has recently reached higher concentrations than at any point in the last 400,000 years, and it's climbing at an incredible rate.
3) We have know that people produce a lot of CO2, primarily from burning of fossil fuels.
4) Seems plausible that humans (in the industrial age) are causing (through the increased CO2 emissions) the increased atmospheric CO2. Especially reasonable considering that the levels started to shoot up when the industrial revolution came, and have more or less tracked human emissions since.
5) Seems plausible that due to higher CO2 concentrations, the earth should warm up somewhat.
6) The earth is slowly warming, and has been for decades. Simple historical temperature data confirms this easily enough.
7) Is it crazy to assume that the earth is warming because the CO2 levels are higher, just as a naieve model would predict?
8) We don't know what the long term effects of this warming will be. Maybe things will stabilize, maybe not, we don't really know.
9) Given that we don't know what will happen as CO2 levels continue to rise, and we are pretty sure that we're responsible for rising CO2 levels, doesn't it make sense to at least start to take precautions until we know for sure what we're dealing with?
You are right to have doubts, but don't just reject things out of hand. It seems likely that we are causing the equilibrium of the earth to shift. How much it will shift, we don't really know, but maybe we shouldn't just plow ahead blindly. Maybe this should be the time to take a look around and see if we can perhaps be a little more careful, specifically because we don't know.
The skeptics should still side with the global-warming-is-happening crowd, as reducing CO2 is the natural position to take if you DON"T KNOW. Only the dogmatic conservatives (most of them religious) are anti CO2 control, and that's just because they flat out reject the notion that they could be causing anything bad for business.
Doubt all you want, but don't be one of them.
Re:Indeed... (Score:5, Insightful)
"I remember one NOAA model that came out a few years ago showing a sudden upturn in temperatures just about to happen"
There was an uptrun in tempratures. Species are suffering, the ice caps are melting, the glaciers have all but gone away. I guess none of that qualifies as a calamity in your book though.
Re:Indeed... (Score:3, Insightful)
Accurate weather statistics in a single locale have only been kept for the last one hundred years or less. That's a pretty short time relatively speaking. Imagine the 1910's when everybody was in heart-stopping panic because nearly every day was a new record high or low in temperature. But we're a hundred years out now, so the frequency of records breakers is much much less. But that frequency still isn't zero.
Go play with the numbers yourself. Generate 36,500 random degrees from 0F to 100F (or 50F to 70F, depending on your climate). Put all those on a one hundred year calendar, and then look at the number of record breakers in the hundreth year. Okay, that's a bad model, temperatures aren't random. So put a function in your random degree generator that only allows a small fluctuation (only two degrees from day to day). Now plot them again. You're STILL going to have record breakers in the last year!
I started thinking about this topic back when I realized that one "hottest day on record" was actually cooler than the non-record-breaking day before. After a hundred years (less in my case) of temperature keeping, a "hottest day ever" is pretty damned significant. But the "hottest June 13th in Jackson Hole, Wyoming" isn't anything to get excited about.
It's easy to be sceptical when you're clueless (Score:2, Insightful)
Maybe the HIV virus is made up too, right? You don't know anything about it, and you don't like how it sounds, so I'm sure you can come up with some vapid criticism about how it just doesn't add up.
Re:Thank goodness, the treaty is TRASH! (Score:3, Insightful)
Your failure to understand the implication of this system makes your post trash. A country who pollutes more, can buy units of pollution from countries that are under there requirment. This is designed to offset the US concerns that the economy will be destroyed if we comply. In fact if we comply we offset losses from infustructure costs by getting money from the countries that continue to pollute without attempting to curb there efforts.
The real reason we say it will hurt the economy is that Bush doesn't want to have to pay complying nations for our excess. It has nothing to do with complying destroying our economy. In fact I'm sure the money obtained from this would be returned to the affected companies through subsidies and would not in fact hurt the energy business. In fact the way Kyoto is designed complying is rewarded and guess what not complying is punished.
Re:people in the US (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And... (Score:2, Insightful)
Kyoto isn't the right plan, and signing up for a plan that is politically motivated is a bad idea.
The US can come up with a plan on it's own, the question is will it?
Just because the US doesn't sign on to Kyoto doesn't mean they won't do something.
"I'd be very, very, very willing to give Kyoto-bashers like yourself a break if they were willing to come up with some soltion to cut emissions"
I can come up with plenty of solutions. Offer huge tax breaks to corporations for reducing their CO2 output.
Ironically the Clinton administration did more to stop this sort of thing than Bush has. Clinton signed legislation that basically said, if you modify one plant to reduce C02 to X level, you have to modify all plants to meet X level. While this seems good, no corporation is going to do this, if there is no financial insentive to do so.
Solution 2: Let gas prices rise to levels like Europe or Asia. That would incent people to drive less or buy more fuel efficient vehicles. Even at $2.00/gallon people start complaining, think if that went to $5/gallon!
Solution 3: Give larger tax breaks (already have some in place) for buying hybrid vehicles.
Those are just a few easy solutions to the problem, and none of them cause the US to sign on to a bad treaty.
I can just as easily flip your statement to read: I might be able to give you Kyoto supporters a break if you were able to think outside the box!
Re:Not millions, but here is 400,000 years worth (Score:4, Insightful)
Without having everyone convinced that there's a real, tangible problem here, it's going to be impossible to get everyone to agree that something has to be done. Why? Because the steps we'd need to take involve some serious expense which will be incurred on the part of people really, really opposed to spending money, especially ( just on principle ) being told they have to do so.
I'm talking about having to put scrubbers on smokestakes. I'm talking about seriously looking into replacing reliance on fossil fuel. I'm talking about having to re-tool a vast amount of our current industrial machinery. I'm talking about finding ways to eliminate unneccessary burning of plant matter, from forests in Brazil to agricultural burns in the US. The things we have to do to slow global warming are huge, and it'll be hard enough to do them if we all agree there's a real, serious problem. As long folks like you are sitting around going "well, I don't know if it's real until it's a whole lot warmer. Oh, wait, it's warmer? Well, I don't know if it's carbon emissions that are doing it...", as long as that's going on, it's easy for our 'leaders' to sit around and do nothing, which is exactly what will cause your grandchildren some serious, life-threatening problems.
And no, I'm not talking about major changes in your personal lifestyle. I'm talking about changes in corporate practices, along with major investment in research and infrastructure which will allow you and I to basically go about our lives with little change, since we're not driving SUVs hundreds of miles every week. People who _do_drive SUVs hundreds of miles a week ( lots of 'em here in the California bay area ), they might have to adjust a bit, though...
Most of the data I have seen is not conclusive in my mind.
I have to say it's interesting that you say "most" of the data isn't conclusive. What about the data that is conclusive ? I'm sorry, it really does sound like you're saying you can't be convinced. Isn't the kind of 'solid' evidence you're waiting for only possible _after_ devastating climate change has already come to pass ?
How are the vast majority of scientists politically motivated to make findings against the interest of big business ? I'm afraid I don't understand that line of reasoning.
Re:Do people in the US... (Score:3, Insightful)
It probably stems from our unfashionable failure to support monarchy in the eighteenth century, imperialism in the 1910s, fascism in the 1930s, communism in the 1940s-1980s, or socialism in the present day. Poor clueless America - always on the wrong side of world opinion. If only we'd listened to Lord North, Talleyrand, Jefferson Davis, Otto von Bismarck, Charles Lindbergh, Alger Hiss, Nikita Kruschev, Jimmy Carter, Jacques Chirac, or Saddam Hussein. Sigh.
Re:Indeed... (Score:3, Insightful)
Method 2: Match a marker in the ice (such as a layer of volcanic ash) with the corresponding marker in an ice core that has already been dated. Sure, any error in the original dating will appear as an uncertainty in the new ice core too. Your point is?
Method 3: Without more concrete data, I can't comment much on what you say. But as a scientist myself I can say that if the method is really as unreliable as you claim, then it simply wouldn't be used. In fact, your comment sounds suspicously like the typical creationist argument "radiocarbon dating sometimes gives incorrect answers due to contaminated samples; therefore all radiocarbon dating is wrong; therefore the Earth is 6,000 years old."
Method 4: given rainfall (err, snowfall;) data, self-consistently determine the age of the ice core from the rate of accumulation of ice. Your refutation of the method is...?
You say: About the only thing you can conclusively say is that an ice section below another ice section is probably the older one. And an ice section a lot lower is probably a lot older.
In geology, it is usually true that lower layers of earth are older than upper layers. Factors that can alter this are earthquakes, folding, volcanoes etc etc. In almost all cases its pretty obvious by looking around the area that something has caused the inversion. This occurs is on timescales of millions to hundreds of millions of years.
The time scales relevant for ice cores are much shorter than this, so such geological formations in ice should be rather rare. But even so, wouldn't this be obvious from an examination of the area?
Finally, error analysis is a rather basic part of any scientific method. What makes you think that ice core climatologists wouldn't do error analysis?
Re:The Earth Is Flat and We are Sailing Off the Ed (Score:3, Insightful)
What the uninformed masses used to believe is hardly evidence of flaws in current scientific observations and study.
There are records that show thru out geo-history great freezings and greater warmings.
Yep. And analysis of these records yields evidence that humans have impacted the rate of recent warming significantly beyond former warming rates.
Yes, I know we have millions of cows releasing flatulants...but didn't we have millions of buffalo before we killed all of them? So that kinda balances out.
Uh, I'm going to ignore the whole cow-fart angle. It gives me gas.
Have we released green house gases. Yes. Have they had an affect. Probably....but when you read how black the skies were in London 200 yrs ago from all the wood burning and carbon emissions.
Yes, but don't you think the borders of London may have been quite a bit smaller back then? The population was magnitudes smaller, so the amount of black in the skies was probably not too significant compared to the collective output of greenhouse gases we currently have. I might be wrong, but I'm not.
And so although I believe there could be a global warming I am very skeptical about whether that is due just because of mankind or natural occurrences.
I'm skeptical that your skepticism is based on sound evidence.
Re:Flame Away! (Score:2, Insightful)
I am anti-Kyoto, because it does nothing. Germany gets a free pass because it gets to include the dirty East German emissions in it's baseline. Russia gets a free pass because it's economy is in the dumper and it's 1990 baseline is much higher than it's current emissions. Russia also gets to count forest growth as carbon sinks.
All Kyoto is doing is creating a complex carbon emissions trading system. It creates carbon tax on productive nations. And with most of Western Europe in an economic slump, additional limitations on growth aren't going to help.
Now, I'm anti-carbon emissions. I drive a Prius. I want that damn wind farm off of Cape Cod built. I want to see Pebble Bed nuclear reactors succeed. I want the US electricity infrastructure improved. I want to see superconductors used for high power transmission lines. If I owned a home, I'd slap solar cells on the roof in a second.
In fact, I may try to buy some carbon emission units. They're expected to be $30 to $40 per ton of emissions. I'll by them and hold on to them. That way I can keep tons of carbon emissions out of the air all by myself.
Re:Indeed... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not quite. We don't have weather data for more than a very short period of the Earth's history. We've got millions of years of climate data.
To say the Earth was warmer when the dinosaurs roamed, we don't need to know that the high was 97 degrees in what will become Los Angeles on January 19th, 2,619,847 BCE, and it rained 2 inches. Instead, we can look at the fosilized tropical plants and thus know it was warmer and wetter.
I remember one NOAA model that came out a few years ago showing a sudden upturn in temperatures just about to happen.
Yes, one model was wrong, therefore all future models should be completely ignored. The geocentric model of the solar system was wrong, therefore this new-fangled heliocentric model must be wrong too.
In all seriousness, predictive models about the climate are really in their infancy...but this story is not about predictive models. These models are being compared to historical trends in the earth's climate, in order to figure out which one matches what we can already tell about the climate.
The fact the closest match was a model where human activity did cause global warming does lend some support to the idea that we do cause global warming...but it's also possible that it was a combination of the natural factors instead of individual factors that caused it.
Or even more likely, a combination of natural and human factors.
Critique of RealClimate.org's critique (Score:4, Insightful)
You labeled RealClimate.org's critique as a "detailed examination." But was it really that detailed? I read it, and it seems to me that they are only able to raise three objections, which I will detail here (easy, since there are only three):
1. Chricton claims, "No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world-increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality."
- RealClimate.org responds with, "Crichton should know that this assertion is false. He cites in the 'bibliography' at the end of his book, the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). But he appears unaware, for example..." and then gives examples of models which, in their opinion, do, in fact, model data from the real world.
* Even if what they write is true, it's not enough to disprove Chrichton's claim. Read what he wrote: "increasingly, models provide the data." In order for them to show falsehood, they would have to show that the phenomenon he bemoans is actually decreasing in frequency or, at best, happening at the same rate. Merely providing examples in the way they did is not sufficient to make Chrichton's claim false. Strike one.
2. Chricton claims, "Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future?"
- RealClimate.org droops to mockery and replies, "Crichton then goes on to make the classic error of confusing 'weather' and 'climate'
* RealClimate.org's analysis is as stupid as it is condescending. Again, read what Chrichton wrote! "Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead." If "climate," by RealClimate.org's own admission is "what you expect," then that definition is functionally equivalent to a weather prediction. If there be any confusion here, it appears to be coming from RealClimate.org. Strike two.
3. Chrichton claims, "Certainly the increased use of computer models, such as GCMs, cries out for the separation of those who make the models from those who verify them."
- RealClimate.org looks down their nose again and claims, "Again, if Crichton has read the IPCC report, he should be aware of the fact that largely (though admittedly, not completely) independent communities of scientists are involved with..."
* hold on just a minute! If, by RealClimate.org's admission, the communities of science are not completely independent, then how is RealClimate.org so sure that such a phenomenon is not precisely the complaint that Chrichton has? The counterexamples RealClimate.org provides fall outside of that complaint and are, by nature, irrelevent. Strike three.
Is this the best that the "scientists" at RealClimate.org can come up with? Should I expect their writings on the Truth(TM) of Global Warming to be of the same caliber? Anyone who fails to communicate their thoughts without resorting to snotty invective loses huge amounts of credibility with me.
Re:Are they measuring output from the Sun? (Score:3, Insightful)
Excuse me for being skeptical, but I know output from any star can and does fluctuate. If, prior to 2003, this data wasn't being collected, and if as far as I know, this data isn't being used in studies...I will remain skeptical.
We've certainly got data going back further than that, though perhaps not all collected in the same way. Anyone doing climatological studies in the peer reviewed literature obviously would have to account for solar influx, and I think you can rest assured that they do. Certainly the layman's popular press on this stuff (Scientific American, etc.) does speak to influx.
The entire CO2 warming theory is intimately involved with the planet's reaction to solar radiation, of course.
In any event, if you had read the linked article, you'd see that the reason this is news is that the kind of data they observed from the oceans match predictions made by computer models of CO2-based warming, and do not match models of increased solar influx.
That isn't determinative, by any means, as if there were 1000 climatological models and they only found 2 that matched, the predictive power might be due to the selective effect of looking for the models that matched the new data, but on the other hand it might be solid confirmation of those models.
The scientific jury will be out for awhile, I'm sure, but in some years we should have some better idea of how strongly to believe this correlation.
We can be pretty sure that the acceptance of this work won't be bound by the consensus of PhD climatologists forgetting to think about the Sun, however.
Re:The Lemming Effect (Score:4, Insightful)
It's hard enough to get a group of five scientists to agree to be in the same damn room at the same time much less this "lemmings" nonsense.
Re:Indeed... (Score:1, Insightful)
That's called Intelligent Design, and it is one hell of a fallacy. Read:
www.darwinsbu.org/pers/whats_wrong_with_ID.pdf
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR27.5/exchange.htm
www.mines.edu/fs_home/users/mmyoung/public_html
Enjoy. Look it up for yourself. Just don't count on me to waste my time with you.
Re:Indeed... (Score:2, Insightful)
Hardly. Tweaked models are still tweaked models. They are still designed to show certain effects, no matter what data they get fed.
Temperature is temperature. One calorie from the sun is no different than any other calorie from the sun. Don't forget that this "greenhouse warming" is based on solar radiation just as much as the solar radiation variance warming is. And don't forget that this "greenhouse warming" causes cloud formation -- and the albedo of clouds is significantly less than that of the ground. Why does that matter (and why is it forgotten so easily)? Because white clouds reflect energy back out where the dark ground would absorb it.
And, of course, the capper to any "humans are causing the devastation of the planet" argument is that the same things happened (according to "reputable scientists") before humans got here. If we weren't here, we couldn't have caused it, and if it happened before when we didn't cause it, there is no reason to believe we are causing it now.
Re:Kyoto is only a start (Score:3, Insightful)
I've been hit by cars three times in four years.
I was seriously considering giving it a try, as I live only about 5 miles from my work. But suddenly I don't like the odds...
Unambiguous proof will arrive when it's too late (Score:4, Insightful)
CO2 lives in the atmosphere for a very long time. This is well-known. The more CO2, the longer the lifetime. Currently the lifetime of atmospheric CO2 is about 100 years.
Oceans warm up very slowly (on a timescale of 1000 years, which is determined by deepwater recycling times that can be measured very well.
Putting these two terms together implies that if global warming leads to unacceptable consequences, then by the time we have a clear and unambiguous observation of those consequences (remember that we're rejecting computer models that extrapolate from present trends) we will have set the earth on a course where those consequences will persist for another few centuries.
We don't have unambiguous proof today that human emissions of greenhouse gases will cause unacceptable damage to the environment. We can't predict future climates well enough to know with any certainty whether global warming is benign, catastrophic, or somewhere in between. We will not know this until we observe what the climate actually does.
Once we observe how the climate does change, it will be too late to alter its trajectory for a century or so, so deciding to wait until there is unambiguous proof is actually another way of deciding to do nothing. We should recognize that choosing to do nothing, choosing to take extreme action, or choosing some intermediate course of action will be done in a state of ignorance and uncertainty.
It may be that choosing to do nothing is the best course of action, but we should be honest that what we're doing is choosing to accept whatever climate change occurs in the next two centuries and not to sell it as though we would have the option of doing something about catastrophic climate change should we observe it 50 years from now.
As to nuclear power, I completely support you on this. Nuclear power is the only technology that has a hope of reducing CO2 emissions significantly in the next 30 years, so we should expand nuclear power as quickly as we can reasonably do.
But I don't see how Kyoto holds back the US at the expense of everyone else. Europe and Japan are committed under Kyoto to cut CO2 emissions more quickly than the US would be if we ratified the treaty.
Telling China that it would have to keep CO2 levels near its 1990 levels sounds good on paper, but even today, China emits only one sixth the amount of CO2 per person as the US does. Do you really think it would be a fair allocation of resources to freeze per-capita CO2 emissions with the US at about 6.5 tons per person per year, Europe at around 2.9 tons per person per year, and China at 1.2 tons per person per year?
Re:Indeed... (Score:3, Insightful)
No, that's not what he said. He said they were susceptible to the same logical fallacies as everybody else. Read the article. They took a number of models of climate and compared to real data. The greenhouse models matched pretty close and the other models didn't. As a result, the report and/or scientists claim:
This is similar reasoning as some religious arguments. "Science can't explain X but our model of God can, therefore we got it right." Has it not occured to anyone that perhaps their models aren't accurate. For instance, it could all be due to solar activity and their model of how solar activity affects climate is wrong. That could be true of any of their models. They could even have the greenhouse model completely wrong and it gives the right answers because building the models in the first place was based off of calibrating it against real data.
This is partially from my own experience. I've developed calibrations for complicated systems and I know that the calibration algorithms do their best to fit the model to the data, even if the model is wrong.
That being said, our best guess is that humans are affecting the climate. I tend to agree with that, but there is hardly indisputable evidence of that. None of the above claims are reasonable for the given conditions of the testing and model validation.
Re:No scientist should EVER make statements like t (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually there isn't much to retort in this article, as it is nothing but a bunch of claims and name calling, without any suporting data.
The AC asked the parent poster for a detailed analysis of the study, not the Times article. And there is reference to a reasonable amount of data in the study. Prior to its peer review and journal publication, neither of us can assess the methodology, so it's nonsensical to dismiss it (or OTOH to canonize it.) The press on the study was interesting to me, and in general terms it sounds like a solid effort.
Well that statement is certainly true. But that is because it only goes back 40 years to the low point in a global cooling trend. If you go back 65 years you see no net warming, so who cares.
The observed temperatures may indeed be within normal cyclic ranges, but that's doesn't mean the observed rate of change is "normal" too. And it isn't.
Can we see the data?
I'm sure eventually it'll be published somewhere, as that's academia's bread & butter.
Becuase, if true, it would cettainly be a revelation, as this has not been true ever before.
All you can say, based on evidence, is that these observations have never been made, or that this type of analysis was never done. You can NOT scientifically argue that the conclusions were not true prior to this study.
Which is why this article was released, it is basically just a retort from this article http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-02/sr
This is a dismissable ad hominem argument. The motives of the scientists involved in the study have no bearing whatsoever on the validity of their conclusions. If the study followed solid scientific methods, they could be the leftiest lefty leftist tree-huggin' enviro-whacko business-hatin' agenda-pushin' hippies ever, but their conclusions would be right. If their science is flawed, they could be the same leftiest lefty leftist tree-huggin' enviro-whacko business-hatin' agenda-pushin' hippies ever, but their conclusions would very likely be wrong.
Appeal to motive is a logical fallacy that holds no weight with me.
Re:Indeed... (Score:4, Insightful)
But the point is that despite their tweaking they correctly predicted current weather phenomenon, while the other models didn't.
That is the fundamental test of a scientific theory: Does the theory predict the measured data?
Maybe you're missing what they did: They took the models, and used them to predict climate changes. They compared these predictions to measured data. The model using greenhouse gasses as a driver of climate changed matched the data closely, the other models did not. There is only one conclusion you can make, political machinations of the model designers being irrelevent: the greenhouse gas model was accurate, the other models were not.
So yes, it does blow away your criticism of politically motivated "tweaking" invalidating the models. They can tweak the model, they can't tweak the real-world data that their model was used to predict. Maybe Newton "tweaked" his theory because he wasn't sure of it. It still perfectly predicts planetary motion.
It's clear you want to dismiss these results. If you want to, a better way to do it would be to say that the paper has not yet been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal. That's my main criticism -- they've ran to the press before their results were analyzed, and even if the paper stands up this can still be damaging.
And don't forget that this "greenhouse warming" causes cloud formation -- and the albedo of clouds is significantly less than that of the ground.
You're assuming the delta in light reflected would be greater than the delta in heat retained. I won't say with assurance that it's either, but I'll note that the coldest days of January in Michigan are the few without clouds.
If we weren't here, we couldn't have caused it, and if it happened before when we didn't cause it, there is no reason to believe we are causing it now.
That's fallacious reasoning. Fires existed before man, therefore man has started no fires?
The reason to suspect man is not because climate change is unique, because it isn't. The reason to suspect man is because the massive release of greenhouse gasses caused by industrialization is unique.
Plenty of fires have been caused by lightning. When you see a field with a charred box of fireworks in the middle, suspecting human interaction instead of assuming lightning is prudent.
there are no "two sides" (Score:3, Insightful)
Furthermore, even if there were debate on that point still possible, just the fact that human activity may contribute to global warming is enough to make significant policy changes: when you are facing the possibility of widespread death, you can't afford to act only when you are completely certain about the causes, you eliminate all reasonably likely causes and factors that you can control.
Americans are like a chain smoking, obese man who has been diagnosed with heart disease and told to exercise and go on a diet, and who keeps saying "but there is still a possibility my heart disease is all caused some obscure disease and completely unrelated to smoking and diet".
Re:Flame Away! (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, that's not really the point. Russia has only decreased emissions because their economy went to hell. Germany only decreased emissions because they've shut down the old, second-hand, 1950s era, Russian equipment in East Germany. Both countries get to keep on pumping out carbon emissions at their current rate and they'll have extra emissions to sell.
What will end up happening is that other countries won't be reducing their carbon emissions, because Russia and several smaller nations that signed on to the treaty will have plenty of emission credits to sell. This market for emission credits the profits of which will simply enrich the current Russian thugocracy and the rulers of those other small countries. It's small tax on the rich for questionable beneficiaries.
Re:Indeed... (Score:2, Insightful)
So is pretending that that the Titanic is unsinkable.
Really? (Score:1, Insightful)
> the only thing that the public will take seriously.
Please explain the influence and success of Fox News, then. You can't possibly be saying that O'Reilly has a "calm mind".