New Research Forecasts Global 6C Increase By End of Century 746
jamie writes with this snippet from the UK's Independent:
"The world is now firmly on course for the worst-case scenario in terms of climate change, with average global temperatures rising by up to 6C by the end of the century, leading scientists said yesterday. ... [The study] found that there has been a 29 per cent increase in global CO2 emissions from fossil fuel between 2000 and 2008, the last year for which figures are available. On average, the researchers found, there was an annual increase in emissions of just over 3 per cent during the period, compared with an annual increase of 1 per cent between 1990 and 2000. Almost all of the increase this decade occurred after 2000 and resulted from the boom in the Chinese economy. The researchers predict a small decrease this year due to the recession, but further increases from 2010."
re Increase or decline? (Score:1, Insightful)
For many years to come one will wonder if the data presented to support claims such as this has been "tricked" to conform to someone's belief instead of representing reality.
The hack (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Falsibility. (Score:5, Insightful)
IF the forecast temperature rise is 6C per century, then it is .6C per decade
Nonsense. This is only true if it's a linear relationship. Given that the greenhouse effect involves a complex feedback cycle, that is not a valid assumption.
Re:Falsibility. (Score:2, Insightful)
They DO report a current trend of .15K per decade. This is far lower than the forecast.
Is there some reason you picked the Channel TLT data and not the, say, Channel TLS data which reports a negative 0.325 K/decade?
I'm no expert in any of this but the site you linked to seems to be satellite data for atmospheric temperatures. Not temperatures at the surface (which is really what we're concerned about, right? I have no doubt that the average temperature of the entire atmosphere of the earth has changed minimally -- if not been lowered erratically. The effects of what is happening on the ground are severely diluted when you include such a large volume.
Tell me, if you wanted to measure the temperature outside your house, would you consult a satellite measuring microwave transmissions or a thermometer adjacent to your house?
Re:Because we all know.... (Score:3, Insightful)
You're confusing weather forecasting and climatology. They aren't the same thing. An analogy (not using cars this time): imagine you have a pot of water on the stove, and the temperature turned to a certain point. The weather forecaster is the person who predicts where the eddies and bubbles will be in this pot of water. Obviously this gets incredibly difficult for predictions more than a few seconds in the future. The climatologist, however, says "after X time, the temperature will have changed to Y", or "Put the lid on the pot, and the temperature will increase to Z".
Two quite different disciplines.
Re:re Increase or decline? (Score:4, Insightful)
Try reading that again: "adding in the real temps [...] to hide the decline."
So, it is some kind of proxy for measuring the historical temperatures (in this case, tree rings), and this proxy data, for some completely different reason (pollution affecting the tree growth, for example??), shows a decline in the last couple of decades.
The real temperatures (ie, the ones that are actaully measured, like with a thermometer) show an increase, so use the real measurements for the final 20 years of the data.
There would be more of a problem if this wasn't disclosed somewhere. But even then, it is an argument about how the proxy data is presented. The real temperature data doesn't show a decline.
Re:re Increase or decline? (Score:5, Insightful)
Response from the RealClimate website, here (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/11/the-cru-hack/#more-1853):
This will indeed cause certain people to "wonder". Especially people who do not have the faculties to properly understand the idiomatic uses of the English language, and people who are willing to take words and phrases of out of context, as well as people who are willing to formulate their opinions without considering the actual analysis and instead relying on secondhand hysteria generated by others who are also not willing to consider the actual analysis.
So it goes.
-Laxitive
Re:The hack (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Falsibility. (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there some reason you picked the Channel TLT data and not the, say, Channel TLS data which reports a negative 0.325 K/decade?
The TLT channel is for lower troposphere and it is, indeed, the closest to ground level.
Satellite temperatures are better for climate purposes because ground stations temperatures also pick up heat radiated from the ground and other buildings. Indeed, one of the great points of criticism made about global climate is weather or not the current level state of ground measuring statements is both consistent and accurate. I'd assume that they are not.
The satellite, because it is the same instrument and same methodology, is consistent, and so in my lay opinion, is the more reliable source of information when considering global climate trends.
Re:How can they tell... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That's all different (Score:3, Insightful)
It's certainly a given that we're all going to die, sometime. Hopefully not all at the same general time, but who knows.
My impression from this whole "climate change" thing is that coastline dwellers are screwed, as is anyone who lives on a floodplain (but that's usually an annual given), weather patterns are going to change dramatically enough that our capacity for predicting it will suffer (as if to say weathermen now have a bona-fide excuse for being shameless liars), and perhaps most importantly, regional "climate change," again from the change in weather patterns. What doesn't get flooded over with the melting of the ice caps will likely not bear much resemblance to what we know now. Deserts may become lush grasslands, while lush grasslands now might become deserts, simply due to changing weather patterns.
I can't claim to understand the specifics, but if a consensus of scientists are saying "we are fucked," then we are fucked, either because they're right, or because they're wrong and we'll base future decisions on faulty data and proclamations of doom.
Re:How can they tell... (Score:5, Insightful)
Regardless, it's a pretty depressing article. And it doesn't mention the methane hydrates that are starting to thaw and bubble up in the northern latitudes. That has the potential to push warming even higher and what is being forecast is already going to be disastrous to every living thing on the planet.
People around now are going to have things bad enough after the next few decades. After that, well, I hope you like Mel Gibson Road Warrior movies...
Re:re Increase or decline? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not that suspicious in itself - I've often used the word "trick" to refer to a clever shortcut with no deception whatsoever. A quick search of my email shows several uses of it in this way.
I don't know enough about this to say whether there's anything dubious or not, but that quote by itself doesn't say much.
Reduced CO2 correlated with recessions (Score:2, Insightful)
The researchers predict a small decrease this year due to the recession, but further increases from 2010. "
Interesting that a historically rather serious recession can only cause a small decrease. It seems like cutting CO2 back to the levels needed to stop global warming would require or cause a much more serious recession.
In fact it's very noticable that now everyone is worried about a 30's style global depression pretty much everyone has stopped talking about cutting CO2 emissions in a follow up to Kyoto.
Not that Kyoto cut CO2 of course
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyoto_Protocol#Increase_in_greenhouse_gas_emission_since_1990 [wikipedia.org]
World CO2 emissions went up by 38% from 1992 to 2007. The US refused to sign, India and China were exempt and in the EU
As of year-end 2006, the United Kingdom and Sweden were the only EU countries on pace to meet their Kyoto emissions commitments by 2010. While UN statistics indicate that, as a group, the 36 Kyoto signatory countries can meet the 5% reduction target by 2012, most of the progress in greenhouse gas reduction has come from the stark decline in Eastern European countries' emissions after the fall of communism in the 1990s
Re:The hack (Score:4, Insightful)
climate-change knowingly and willingly changed the numbers, lied
Having read that story, I saw no evidence that they lied or changed number. They discussed how to spin their results so as their findings wouldn't be used by the opposition to score political points and they discussed politics (including how to marginalize an opponent). But nowhere did I see evidence that they lied or fabricated numbers. Do you have proof that they did?
After that, I might support this type of research again, but only after all the liars are banned from 'research'.
Did you even support it in the first place? Your tone makes me suspect not and that the above sentence is a rhetorical flourish to make your refusal sound more reasonable.
Wake me when a prediction comes true (Score:5, Insightful)
'1999 climate model validated by 10 years of actual data'. *That* would be news.
Re:re Increase or decline? (Score:5, Insightful)
The politicization of climate data will prove to be a disaster in the long run. Everyone has an axe to grind.
Here's a link to some NASA data about temperature:
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/ [nasa.gov]
Do we believe NASA when they say 2008 was the coolest since 2000? Is that just a tooth in the saw? Which trend to you believe? The one that shows temperatures generally increasing since 1880? Are the relatively flat temperatures between 1950 and 1980 an anomaly? Is it really correct to even assume the overall trend is anthropogenic? Or do we need to do some fancy footwork to make the data fit the hypothesis?
What we don't have is good, healthy debate.
Re:Falsibility. (Score:3, Insightful)
Great analogy, but you wanted to say:
That doesn't mean there's not more energy (heat) in the system.
Re:Falsibility. (Score:2, Insightful)
I've submitted the 'Climategate' story twice (1 [slashdot.org], 2 [slashdot.org], and it gets pushed down in the firehose. Why? It has "hackers", tech, science, controversy... All the ingredients of a good topic. So - why vote it *down*?
It's evident there is a 'leftwards' lean in a large part (if not the majority) of the subscribers of this site. So what does the unwillingness to discuss this story indicate - Denial? Suppression? A real 'inconvenient truth'? I don't know. Seems to me that it is a great Slashdot story, but here as elsewhere, certain partisans are doing what they can to make science more and more just an arm of politics and their particular belief system. That sickens me.
I think objectivity should be THE concern when it comes to an issue which is potentially as important as this one, where the stakes are so high. Not so, apparently, among a majority of other Slashdotters.
Re:re Increase or decline? (Score:5, Insightful)
What we don't have is good, healthy debate.
If anything, that's the real black eye that the recent data swipe reveals. The emails between AGW scientists specifically mention bullying publications into not accepting/publishing papers that don't support AGW, and subsequently use the lack of published, peer-reviewed articles against those scientists whose conclusions differ from their own.
!Science (Score:5, Insightful)
>>Nonsense. This is only true if it's a linear relationship. Given that the greenhouse effect involves a complex feedback cycle, that is not a valid assumption.
Yes, as we all know from Al Gore's memorable definition of what a "non-linear system" is: "It's a fancy way they have of saying that the changes are not all just gradual. Some of them come suddenly in big jumps."
I used to work doing modeling of both ocean seawater and other things (like heart cells or full cardiac cycles) which attempted to accurately simulate whatever ODE or whatever it was we were simulating. These models were incredibly sensitive to the various constants used, and what the starting assumptions were. They'd fly off into incoherent-land if these values were not very precise, or if the constants didn't match each other. The only way we could calibrate or test our simulation was by, say, pulling out a rabbit's heart, wiring it up, flooding it with some solution, and having the severed heart beat for us when driven by impulses at different frequencies and amplitude. Testing and experimentation is the only way to truly know something, as Feynman said. If we just relied on the models without doing followup experimentation with them, we'd have gotten wildly inaccurate results.
Climatology, on the other hand, is "science-y", but not really science. It wants to be science, it really does - and goes through the window dressings of having peer reviewed journals and conferences and all of that - but ultimately it is not science. There is no experimentation involved (or if you will, there is one large experiment running all the time), and there is no control for the experiment. Forgive me if I do not allow your models to substitute for actual experimentation, for the reasons listed above.
As one of my professors once said, never listen to anyone who claims to be really accurate over the sample data set. It's real easy to be accurate on a sample data set. Hell, you can always just spit back out the original numbers if you want - for my neural net spam filter, we could have just returned the classifications of each email and claimed 100% accuracy, for example. If you don't think that climate researchers actually make bullshit claims like this, check out the wikipedia page on global climate modeling, and look at, say, this graph: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:GCM_temp_anomalies_3_2000.jpg [wikipedia.org] There's charts like that everywhere on wikipedia, showing how accurate the climate models are, even back in 1930, decades before the models were created.
What is important is the accuracy going forward into new data, and as they do, they've found numerous glaring problems with the predictive ability of climate models (such as rainfall changes being 25% of what is expected). (For some fun laughs, read predictions of what life would be like in 2010 written 10, 20 or 30 years ago.)
The simple fact of the matter is, I don't believe any (self-described) scientist who claims he knows how much temperature will move in the next 100 years, unless he says it will range somewhere between absolute zero and the temperature of the sun.
And if it sounds like I'm picking on climate "scientists", well, I am, but I had a number of friends who worked in the field at SIO, and they're generally smart and nice guys, and think there's a serious problem. Their problem lies in claiming more knowledge than they actually know. (Again, this is not how actual science works.) And it's not like other fields have looked enviously at the tremendous success of real scientific fields, like physics, over the last hundred years. Psychology, sociology, hell even scientology and philosophy have tried to co-opt the patina of science for themselves. (Nearly every modern philosopher since Wittgenstein calls themselves an analytic philosopher, which was a movement to directly make philosophy more "scientific" and less heads-in-the-cloudsy.)
Re:The hack (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>when Al Gore and Goldman Sachs agree on something you know it's very very bad.
Not really. Both Gore and Sachs will get rich off the carbon-credit trading market. It's no surprise they're on the same side. Now if you said Al Gore and Ron Paul agree, then you'd scare me.
Re:re Increase or decline? (Score:5, Insightful)
In experimental science, this is not uncommon. Using different methods of analyzing the same subject is, in other words, using (relatively) independent methods to analyze that subject. Using multiple independent methods and combining their results is a good thing, because it avoids experimental error and potential systemic biases that exist in every observational setup.
That said, I don't want to get into an actual discussion about the actual paper in question because I have not read the relevant hacked personal e-mails with their full context and interpreted their significance (and I likely won't have time in the near future given the pressures of day to day life). I am not particularly inclined to start implying conclusions and accusations based off of an incomplete and shoddy reading of a few out-of-context paragraphs. I am neither willing to vouch for or defend, or attack a particular piece of research until I am reasonably well informed about how that research was conducted.
There seem to be many people, however, who are willing to do exactly that.
-Laxitive
Re:The hack (Score:4, Insightful)
A partial review of the emails shows that in many cases, climate scientists revealed that their own research wasn't always conclusive. In others, they discussed ways to paper over differences among themselves in order to present a "unified" view on climate change.
On at least one occasion, climate scientists were asked to "beef up" conclusions about climate change and extreme weather events because environmental officials in one country were planning a "big public splash."
Wow. The scientists are acting like politicians.
Re:re Increase or decline? (Score:2, Insightful)
Not that suspicious in itself - I've often used the word "trick" to refer to a clever shortcut with no deception whatsoever.
Yeah, I think the "hide" part is the suspicious bit.
It's hard to think of cases where hiding what your results are saying is still doing science.
Re:re Increase or decline? (Score:4, Insightful)
Though a bit uglier than usual, that type of behavior is fairly prevalent in the scientific community. Articles in "unpopular" topics have always tended to get sidelined (reviewers can reject papers simply on the premise that they're not on a topic a journal would wish to publish, for example), and it's easy to see how this can progress to choosing a side in a scientific debate.
Though a model more in-line with arXiv might mitigate this, I think it represents a fundamental flaw in the currently-used system of peer review: it's essentially a binary threshold. Either your paper is accepted and you have a voice in the scientific community, or it's rejected and you have none. Something along the lines of a Slashdot or Digg-style moderation may work much better: other researchers can mod you down all they wish and send it to the last page of a query, but they can't actually make your work disappear. And since the ranking is relative to other relevant papers, unpopular topics and positions would not be penalized relative to each other using such a system.
You could even generate confidence intervals for the rankings based on the number of reviews. Right now a decision on a paper is based on 2 or 3 reviews at most, and it would be difficult for a more open system not to exceed this.
Re:Seriously??? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The hack (Score:5, Insightful)
More recent exchanges centered on requests by independent climate researchers for access to data used by British scientists for some of their papers. The hacked folder is labeled "FOIA," a reference to the Freedom of Information Act requests made by other scientists for access to raw data used to reach conclusions about global temperatures.
Many of the email exchanges discussed ways to decline such requests for information, on the grounds that the data was confidential or was intellectual property.
And people claim copyright/IP laws cause no harm. Science is worthless if you can't have review of the data and verifiability
Re:Falsibility. (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds like you are suggesting that global warming is a matter of opinion. Why would people on the left want there to be global warming? If there were any compelling arguments against global warming I would celebrate (you would probably call me a leftie -- I am European).
It is also interesting that in almost all of the world, this issue doesn't have the political dimension it seems to have in the USA. Parties are discussing how to deal with global warming. The right wing generally wants do to slightly less, the left and greens more. But they all agree that this is a reality we need to do something about.
Re:How can they tell... (Score:2, Insightful)
"Cherry-picking various number over short term periods is more a sales job that a serious data point (Wall St excels at doing this.)"
Short term? Like trying to base our entire climatological forecasts on our little blip here on the timeline? Even the climatologists see this as troublesome.
here, negative feedback = bad (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, and while that's good in the short term, that's not a good thing in the long run. Why? Because the negative feedback pushes us back towards a lower temperature stable state for now. That means we see only limited changes for now. People think nothing is happening and don't change their behavior.
But at some point, we will be in the attractor for a different stable state, and then positive feedback will rapidly move us to a stable state at a higher temperature. That's mathematically and physically inevitable; the only unknown is the point at which that happens.
There's also likely to be hysteresis, meaning that we won't be able to get back to our current state easily.
Re:How can they tell... (Score:5, Insightful)
How come the world temprature has dropped half a degree since 2000?
Could be lots of reasons. For instance, we've witnessed accelerating melting of the Antarctic ice sheet. Melting ice absorbs a lot of heat. More heat being used to melt large ice sheets means the temperature increase may stall until the ice sheets are fully melted. Also, 10 years worth of stalled heating isn't necessarily indicative of anything. It could just be natural climate fluctuations superimposed on a large slow rise in temperature. The five-year average shows little to buck the warming trend.
Even the Climate Change Congress now acknowledges this (quote: "temperature has plateaud"). Why?
Because its main motivation is to understand exactly what's going on with the climate. It doesn't have a political agenda. The best data right now suggests that the climate is getting warmer and that a probable reason for that is anthropogenic CO2. If new data comes in that suggests this is not the case, the IPCC and other climate change panels will have to acknowledge it.
And how are world leaders likely to respond if the temperature drops during the 2010s?
You say that as if they've responded thus far. As far as I can tell, the developing world is completely exempt from any decision on climate change, and various other efforts to get world leaders to acknowledge and act on climate change have garnered meager changes in policy at best. Face it: if the world is in danger and we're looking to our leaders to save the day, we're screwed. The best bet on climate change is to alter the individual consumer's behavior.
world leaders (Score:2, Insightful)
"World leaders" are puppets of their various central banksters and traders. I think this is beyond obvious now, not even debatable. Now those guys *want* carbon credits trading, it is a way for them to make huge sums gambling without doing any actual work themselves, and being bankrolled by everyone else who *are* working, (about the same as now, just a new direction and game to play).. They tell the "world leaders" the tradeoff for getting them this new lucrative game is they get a slew more laws to pass to use over the heads of their serfs and subjects.
So, to answer your question "And how are world leaders likely to respond if the temperature drops during the 2010s?"..they will ignore it if this happens, say it is just a temporary condition, etc. Because they want and are getting those credits for the new market, plus they want even more centralized power.
note: the above has nothing to do with any scientific reality of ratio from naturally occurring co2 or "man made", etc, or the climate, I'm not making this a stance one way or the other on the subject, just saying what will happen with the world leaders. Climate change is irrelevant to the two top new things they-"they" being the puppets and their puppet masters- *always* want, more money and more power.
Re:Falsibility. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, it's easy to put stupid ideas into your opponents mouth and attack them.
You can drive whatever car you like for all I care. But you better compensate the rest of us if you damage our mutual environment. That has nothing to do with control and all to do with common sense. Unfortunate as it may be, this world isn't big enough for everyone to do as they please. Had we been 10 million humans we probably could, but now we are 6.8 billion.
As for Al Gore, he hasn't been relevant over here. Except indirectly in being "the guy that opened the eyes of many Americans". If he makes money out of it, good for him. I can only hope he puts them to good use.
Re:Wake me when a prediction comes true (Score:5, Insightful)
The story you were looking for was "1999 climate model wrong: Global temperatures increasing faster then predicted".
You speak of religion. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nonsense. This is only true if it's a linear relationship. Given that the greenhouse effect involves a complex feedback cycle, that is not a valid assumption.
So it can be an exponential function, whatever, but you can either give me intermediate steps of some kind between now and 6C, perhaps by year, or certainly by decade, or you cannot. If you cannot, then quit trying to pretend that 6C actually means something because it means your number is crap. If you want me to believe in it, then that's fine, but you are making a religious argument, not a scientific one. Science is for things that you can test, and the moment you told me you cannot test 6C, you told me that it wasn't science.
Nonsense (Score:3, Insightful)
Virtually everyone admits that temperatures have increased substantially over the last ~100 years. The entire point of these reconstructions is to demonstrate that this rise is unprecedented over the past ~2K years and follows a certain pattern. If the same methods on the same species of tree in the same area in the same study not only fail to accurately replicate the thermometer record over the last several decades but also actually diverge substantially, this calls into question the entire pursuit.
In other words, if your methodology suggests that it couldn't have been warmer from 0 BC to 1900 because tree rings were not statistically larger, but the rings actually fail to increase as predicted in recent history when we know it has warmed, then this strongly indicates that we also cannot rely on warmer past temperatures to be accurately reflected in increased tree ring size either. Of course you can speculate that pollution may be playing a role, but it is still just speculation and there are better documented conclusions one could draw from this, e.g., that tree rings do not correlate linearly with temperature, that changes in moisture content, sunshine, CO2, etc play an equally large role, etc.
Good non-politicized science should: pick a methodology; show how it correlates with the actual thermometer record; then document it clearly for better or worse over the entire course, i.e., actually show the divergence (and make the data and methods available for all for review). These so-called "scientists" actually went to the other extreme by trying to hide the divergence and present a view that was not supported by their actual research. Many of these same scientists have gone further still by refusing reasonable requests for the raw data and further information on their methods.
This is politicized "science" at its very worst.
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
That is BS. If you bothered to read the refutations, the divergences are themselves a subject of many publications, and this has been out in the open forever.
I do agree that access to the raw data could be better, and even that some of the statistical methods etc have been applied poorly (or even incorrectly). You might even find, somewhere in the stack of tens of thousands of climate science publications, some that misrepresent the data, perhaps even deliberately. Not all scientists are as expert as they should be in statistics, and scientists are human and have human frailties (although that doesn't excuse anything). But this does not appear to be one of those cases. You are reading far too much into one email, and you clearly are not aware of the context.
If all of the science of global climate change depended on a single set of proxy data, then you would have a point. But it doesn't, and you don't.
Re:The hack (Score:5, Insightful)
It says that one scientist was asked to beef up his conclusions to aid in making a bigger public splash. There's nothing wrong with that. A paper is like an essay. You make different points with different amounts of stress depending on what message you're trying to convey and what you can back up by reference or evidence.
What the article does NOT say is that there is any proof of people tampering with results. The article also doesn't say that anyone over-stated or exaggerated anything. Though, it sounds like Santax might have read another article that does have stronger proof? (Can you post that? I haven't read it)
I believe the climate change scientists know what they are doing. Group-think does exist, and entire groups of scientists have been shown to be wrong. But this is the exception, not the rule. I want to present another anecdote.
The surgeon general first announced that smoking had negative effects on health in 1964. It's the surgeon general's job to announce some semblance of a consensus of the opinions of all the medical researchers in the United States. How long did it take before the majority of people believed in this message? How many decades were there doctors actively trying to 'disprove' the link between smoking and lung cancer? And, we're talking about something that's easy to prove. The effects of one object on an individual organism. There's almost no wiggle-room to throw in a wrench of doubt into that picture.
It doesn't take very many people to throw mud at a consensus of ten thousand scientists.
Yeah right (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:don't you read the newspapers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Mod parent up (Score:4, Insightful)
And almost everyone who says "but it's been hotter before" miss this crucial point. Thank you.
Re:How can they tell... (Score:2, Insightful)
The CO2 dissolved in the ocean reacts with water and lowers pH. Also with consequence. Yes a sink, but we are not doing this sink any favors.
Re:How can they tell... (Score:3, Insightful)
I have no idea what impact +100 ppm CO2 will have on the planet, and neither do most people.
I still remember sitting in school and being lectured about Global Cooling, and how we needed to stop driving cars to reduce the amount of "dust" in the air.
Re:How can they tell... (Score:3, Insightful)
+1 informative. Next question:
How come the world temprature has dropped half a degree since 2000? Even the Climate Change Congress now acknowledges this (quote: "temperature has plateaud"). Why?
And how are world leaders likely to respond if the temperature drops during the 2010s?
Re:How can they tell... (Score:3, Insightful)
If you go back far enough, there aren't any people to survive.
To be moderately serious, people are tropical apes. People can survive much warmer weather. It's not at all clear that the same is true of civilization. If sea levels rise, coastal cities will have problems, but not as much as the folk living in low-lying internal areas. Like the San Joaquin Valley, the Mississippi Valley, central South America, central Siberia (is that the Volga? I can't keep my Asiatic rivers straight), Around the Caspian Sea, and on islands. That's just a top of my head list of places where people live that have in past times been under water. Probably Greenland melting wouldn't be enough to submerge all of them. Most of Antarctica would. And I probably missed a lot.
OTOH, it would solve the problems in Israel. Being underwater would do that. (Well, it wouldn't ALL be under water. Probably places with names like "The Golan Heights" would be out of water. And as I recall, Jerusalem itself is also on high ground. But it would be an island. (Probably a rather largish island, but an island. Could be that 1/3 of Israel would remain above sea level.) And the Suez would stop being a Canal. Most of the Sinai desert would be under water. So would the Nile Valley. the Yangtze Valley, the Ganges Valley, etc.
Actually, large sections of India heading under water might threaten civilization all by itself. They've got nuclear weapons, and they'd be rather desperate. (China would be a lot less desperate. They've got lots of unseated land. Not currently arable, but I'm sure that the increased water surface would increase rainfall everywhere. [No, I didn't model this assumption.])
Re:re Increase or decline? (Score:5, Insightful)
The one I find convincing is the melting of the ice. It's a crude kind of measure, lacking in detail, but any explanation that doesn't account for that is obviously unacceptable.
The North-West passage is currently open to ice-breakers, and it is projected to be open to normal passenger liners soon. This doesn't give me many data points, but the ones it give are irrefutable.
Re:re Increase or decline? (Score:3, Insightful)
I was making an ad hominem, and questioning whether certain scientists are credible. It was not directly about whether their conclusions happen to be accurate, but about whether we can trust them on face-value.
This was, I believe, also the OP's point: Can we trust this report or is it spun to fit an agenda.
The fact is that global warming has unfortunately become a highly politicized issue (not NPOV) [opinionjournal.com]. There is a tremendous amount of government money to be had in the field, and the people writing the checks expect certain results.
Some of the stolen emails are quite frank in speaking about systematically discrediting and silencing [google.com] scientists who doubt some or all of the accepted account. That isn't the method of cold objective science (where people are silenced by being refuted, and discredit themselves when they write bad papers), that is the method of politics or ideology.
Once a topic becomes politicized I think it is perfectly reasonable to question the authority of the authorities, and give a fair hearing to dissenters. In fact, I think it would be irresponsible not to.
Re:How can they tell... (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you basing your statements on? Can you cite some research which isn't based on CRU's Hockey Stick graph which has been debunked and which clearly indicates that global warming is happening and it is not due to any natural geological cycle?
I am asking for research which indicates clearly that global warming is occurring due to humans and this research must not be based on CRU's data.
No, I am not quoting some idiot paid by oil companies to distort science, I think it is perfectly reasonable to cite researchers who have:
a) Placed their data online
b) Placed the source of the programs they have written to arrive at the results
c) Placed their detailed findings online
http://forkbomb.org/~ml/cmail/mail/1254751382.txt [forkbomb.org]
If you would rather believe a bunch of "scientists" who claim to have lost their raw data but who seem to have retained all the results data, then please go ahead.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/13/cru_missing/ [theregister.co.uk]
Just a few questions for you:
1. Do you think that it is even remotely possible that all of CRU's data was stored on a single storage medium and that ALL scientists who ever worked on the data, worked on this single storage - that too on the only master storage of data without ever taking any copies of this data?
2. Do you think that it is even remotely possible that all of CRU's data was lost despite the fact that the email log released yesterday includes emails even from the mid 1990s. Why is that email was backed up while the rest of the data was lost?
3. Why is that even reputed magazines such as Nature and Science who have policies on data retention for all articles published in them didn't either a) Get the data from CRU or b) Retain this data - despite it being their own policy?
4. Why isn't CRU releasing the raw data even now - despite all the controversy and wide-spread feeling that the research is flawed?
Also, I would be interested in hearing a response from CRU on the email sent to CRU by Fred Pearce from New Scientist as early as 1996.
http://forkbomb.org/~ml/cmail/mail/0845217169.txt [forkbomb.org]
Re:This is being cause by politicians (Score:3, Insightful)
So Africa doesn't get to industrialize, because the Western world polluted too much before they got their chance? Right.
Re:Wake me when a prediction comes true (Score:4, Insightful)
Except the real story is '1999 climate model wrong: Global temperatures unchanged over past decade.'
Re:Wake me when a prediction comes true (Score:1, Insightful)
In the 1990s it was Global warming. Since this did not happen it is now Climate Change.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How can they tell... (Score:3, Insightful)
What are you fucking talking about? "Can you cite some research which isn't based on CRU's Hockey Stick graph"?!? Are you saying that climate scientists aren't researching climate, but the tens of thousands of them around the world are just looking at a graph one person did a decade ago and nodding their heads? This is beyond ridiculous. Who mods this shit up?
Re:This is being cause by politicians (Score:5, Insightful)
If an African nation is permitted emission levels of ~zero (because they aren't emitting anything right now) while a Western nation is permitted to emit say 20% less than what they emitted in 1990, which one will win in the global economy? If the rich Western countries can't afford to use green technology, how can a poor African nation afford them?
Africa doesn't get to industrialize while polluting like mad bastards would be much better. Ditto for China.
China isn't polluting, compared to Europe or USA. Its per capita emissions are 1/4 of those of the US. When the US has cut its emissions in half it can start talks with the rest of the world.
Re:How can they tell... (Score:1, Insightful)
Look at your sources. Folkbomb and theregister vs bbc news and bloomberg. You're a joke.
Care to cite some sources for gravity that AREN'T based on it being a force?
Yes. That's how fucktarded you are.
Re:Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain. (Score:3, Insightful)
Heres a tip. Stop paying attention to sites that moderate content by deleting dissenting opinions, run by people who delete data in order to hide problems with their work, and even plots to ruin the credibility of peer reviewed journals that publish articles with dissenting views.
When was the last time any of these guys actually performed the scientific method? Instead of doing science, they fuck around in another discipline (statistics) which they arent properly schooled in.. and who do they hide their methods from? People with math degrees.
Re:How can they tell... (Score:2, Insightful)
So if we have no idea what will happen, is it really such a great idea to run an experiment on a planetary scale with no safeties, backups or fallbacks?
Re:How can they tell... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How can they tell... (Score:1, Insightful)
I would think someone with such a low UID would have better critical thinking skills.
CRU did not produce a hockey stick graph. That was Mann et. al. and has been verified by many researchers. If people like youw ould spend your time actually reading the science journals instead of torching them as "conspiracy" you may learn something.
"I am asking for research which indicates clearly that global warming is occurring due to humans and this research must not be based on CRU's data."
How about GISS for starters.
Oh I see. You're one of those idiots who have selectively read the hacked emails instead of all of them. You've already jumped to your conclusions, in spite of the fact that there's really nothing in those emails nor are they even remotely complete. You've already thrown out the decades of research because you've already developed your pre-conceived notions abou what the CRU hack actually reveals. Which is actually nothing. Read all the emails.
It's completely pointless to respond to people like you, because you won't listen. But why not:
1. Do you think that it is even remotely possible that all of CRU's data was stored on a single storage medium and that ALL scientists who ever worked on the data, worked on this single storage - that too on the only master storage of data without ever taking any copies of this data?
No, and only a complete asshat would interpret the emails that way.
2. Do you think that it is even remotely possible that all of CRU's data was lost despite the fact that the email log released yesterday includes emails even from the mid 1990s. Why is that email was backed up while the rest of the data was lost?
No, and now you're expanding your asshattery by mixing up issues.
3. Why is that even reputed magazines such as Nature and Science who have policies on data retention for all articles published in them didn't either a) Get the data from CRU or b) Retain this data - despite it being their own policy?
The data distributed and retained by any institution is subject to any IP and contractual obligations that are in place on that data. CRU (along with many other institutes) often get data from several sources, a chunk of which is proprietary and have strict rules about distribution. Unless you have a justifiable reason for getting that data (like being a peer reviewer) then chances are you won't get it. You are free, however, as an individual to go to the data provider and buy the data yourself.
You, and other ignoramuses like you seem to gloss over the fact that THIS IS ALL DOCUMENTED IN THE FUCKING PEER REVIEWS.
4. Why isn't CRU releasing the raw data even now - despite all the controversy and wide-spread feeling that the research is flawed?
Are you illiterate? Can you not read the emails? Can you not read the peer-review arcticles? They are not allowed to distribute some of their data by law and/or contractual obligations.
And the only controversy is caused by the armchair climate Ph.Ds like yourself. Your personal feelings mean jack shit to climate science. What matters is the research and the results of that research, which is very much indicating the current warming trend is our own doing.
~X~
Re:The hack (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think Global Warming (as it was sold to us, no bait and switch Climate Change) is poor science at best.
You would, you know, being an expert in the field and such. There was no "bait and switch". Global warming implied rising temperatures everywhere which, of course, is not what would happen. Climate change was a better term to use as it implies a changing climate which more precisely encompasses what's going on.
Climate science is very well established and has tons of published peer reviewed articles. If you have some amazing research that discredits all of this, then by all means produce it as it would easily get you a Nobel Prize.
Too much money and politics are involved...
Certainly you can't be referring to the climate scientists with this remark?
The average climate researcher (Ph. D) earns about $75K. Hardly big money. Most grants for the research come from government institutions, which must be accounted for (i.e, no dumping a million bucks in your own personal piggy bank). The climate science budget in the US is a little over $2 billion, which is pocket changed compared to everything else. Now take that $2 billion and remove almost all of it. Why? Because almost all of it is going to building, launching, and maintaining new satellites. Actual climate researchers receive a small fraction that budget.
You're not going to get rich from being a climate researcher unless you head off into the private sector (and then you'll need some clout).
Politics? What politics? Climate researchers do not factor into the power structure in any meaningful way. They have to beg congress for the money they get. They have nowhere near the clout of the energy lobbies (big oil and the like). ...Al Gore and Goldman Sachs agree on something you know it's very very bad.
Ad hominem and has nothing to do with climate research. Al Gore is not a climate scientist, and GS is desperate to show some good will to get the lynch mobs off their backs. Neither one contributes to the annals of climate research, though they may support it.
GOOD SCIENCE is all I ask for, which mean never hear the words ''the debate is over''.
Does that include your own side, which has been saying it for years now?
No respectable climate scientist says the debate is over. However, a debate is requires logical points backed up by facts and research. The skeptics are seriously lacking in this regard, and hence the only real debates on the topics are between the scientists themselves.
Here is a link to an article from the WSJ on hacked emails showing scientists deliberately manipulating data to get results they want. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125883405294859215.html?mod=googlenews_wsj [wsj.com] [wsj.com]
No, the WSJ is deliberately showing you cherry picked quotes taken even more out of context than the incomplete email threads. If you want to make your case, don't rely on questionable reporting. Download the archive and read the emails yourself. There is nothing nefarious going on.
~X~
Re:re Increase or decline? (Score:2, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the science paradigm doesn't conform well to your notion of "a fundamental flaw" in the system that makes a "Slashdot or Digg-style" moderation appealing. Science is about establishing how we know something. It is emphatically NOT a system whereby 9 million wrong, but highly popular interpretations are more valuable than one correct one. Its a bit like finding a counter example in mathematics. All it takes is one example to disprove a hyothesis. Obviously, few "tests" in experimental or comparative science are so cut and dried that they will be easily established on the basis of a single "counterexample" or "test", but the principle is the same.
Science is not simply a bunch of "experts" making "assertions", from which a consensus then emerges about the truth, even though it may appear that way to the poorly initiated. Although this does happen and science has a strong probabilistic element, the reasons stem from the fundamental conceptual relationships between theory and subsequent "prediction" or "observation" that inform as to the correctness (or incorrectness) of ideas and not what individual scientists (or laypersons) may think (or not think) about such ideas.
Re:How can they tell... (Score:3, Insightful)
(1) internally they disregarding the hockey graph as inaccurate as early as 2004 (almost 6 years ago!)
(2) the small group had a list of "known quantities" that peer reviewed each other's papers (i.e., groupthink with no outside influences).
(3) they actively worked to sabotage skeptic papers and journals that published skeptic papers because of "backlash that could hurt the community".
(4) the emails very clearly say that they will not release their data to skeptics under any circumstances regardless of FOI requests that they are legally mandated to respond to. One goes so far as to ask his colleagues to delete emails that deal with the subject being discussed. (that is real scholarly and scientific of him)
(5) One also says that he would "delete the data before handing it over" to a skeptic.
If that is how you view science and the scientific method than I weep for science.
I just want good science. I don't care what the results say to confirm or deny AGW, but the "scientific" methods revealed in the emails boggles the mind and is very disheartening, to say the least. The only loser in this whole episode is science.
Re:How can they tell... (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, it's ridiculous to believe that scientists have done their due diligence. Science is not a belief system. The scientific method requires rigorous scrutiny, not your kind of blind faith. Being told that thousands of scientists have reached consensus is not science.
GP asked some very good questions. Answering them would give credibility, ad hominem will only get you mod points.
Re:re Increase or decline? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:How can they tell... (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't be distracted by absolute quantities. A non-car analogy. Imagine you have a funnel - 1 litre per second of water can pass through this funnel. Indeed, 1 litre per second is passing through it. Call that "nature". The level in the funnel remains the same, since it's draining at the rate that it's being filled. Then comes a human, and adds just 1ml per second (i.e. 0.1%). As surely as night follows day, the funnel begins to fill up until it eventually overflows.
Except in this analogy, not only do humans add 1ml extra input, they also reduce the exit of the funnel by 1ml/sec (reducing the "sink", in the real world, deforestation etc.)
Re:How can they tell... (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with your analogy is that "nature's funnel" is known to have operated at anywhere from, say, 0.1 liters to 4.0 liters in the past without any influence from mankind at all. Not only that, but logic dictates that it will continue to fluctuate with or without mankind digging his carbon stained fingers into it.
Consider that the world is nowhere near the coldest or warmest it has been. Another way to look at that factual statement is this: one day mankind will have to face not only global warming, but also global cooling. Therefore, if we want to maintain our present level of civilization, we should pursue a policy of adaptation to extreme (compared to today's rather mild climate) temperatures. Consider the irony of spending the next 50 years reducing mankind's carbon emissions to zero and then blammo, the climate changes 10 degrees because of natural cycles that have been happening since the earth cooled. Without preparation our survival as a species is in question.
So, the writing is on the wall, and the script is so large it fills the entirety of Earth's history. We can be sure beyond any doubt that the climate is going to change...ALOT. And, as the most technologically advanced species ever observed by humankind, we are our own best hope of saving ourselves from a return to the brutal, short, pointless lives of our ancestors (or worse!) In light of this our leaders have decided to...hmmm what is it they are doing again? Ahh yes, they are, as a whole, trying to pass the largest global tax increases in history, signing treaties could inhibit technologically advanced nations from continuing their development, rewriting laws to circumvent our rights, and crowing at the top of their lungs about how bad it is going to get if we don't "do something about it." None of that will save even one of our asses when the earth gets its next fever.
Trying to change the global temperature by reducing emissions is wasted effort. Its going to change anyway. Punishing the most advanced societies on Earth for industry (CO2) is counterproductive. "Going green" is tantamount to moving from the straw house to the one made of sticks. Asking our governments to "save us" is, apparently, a solution worse than the problem. Figuring out how to cope with and preparing for long-term, immutable, and extreme climate change is the proper, and the only intelligent, course of action at this point. Letting our politicians use the inevitable and inescapable fact of climate change as a means to restructure our lives, economies, and liberties as they see fit shows how incredibly fearful, stupid, weak, and shortsighted mankind can be. Also evident on the part of our governments is an avarice for power that is so consuming it would rather sacrifice our species' future than miss an opportunity to cash in.
The climate models, scientist's "consensus," green energy movement, tainted intentions of climate researchers and energy companies alike, and everything else being discussed now regarding the climate controversy is just bullshit. It really doesn't matter. What we do about climate change matters, and I don't mean reducing emissions. How we think about it matters, and I don't mean feeling good about recycling or guilty about driving an SUV. The only reason people are arguing about climate change is the proposed "solutions" are meaningless. Deep down, where truth and fear sleep, we know just how incredibly fucked we are when the change finally comes. The really tragic and horrible part is everyone is so preoccupied with human power struggles that no one is doing anything worthwhile about it.
Here's MY analogy: Mankind is standing on some train tracks. There is a giant train coming towards us from the north at 250 mph. Unfortunately, we lost the schedule so we don't know when it will arrive but we know its coming because we can feel it through the rails. You motherfuckers are arguing whether the best survival strategy is to run south down the tracks away from the train or pretend the train doesn't exist!