Scientists Can Now Blame Individual Natural Disasters On Climate Change (scientificamerican.com) 318
In 2003, the predominant view in the scientific community was that there was no way to determine the exact influence of climate change on any individual event. "There are just too many other factors affecting the weather, including all sorts of natural climate variations," reports Scientific American. But Myles Allen, a climate expert at the University of Oxford, believes scientists can blame individual natural disasters on climate change. Scientific American reports of how extreme event attribution is one of the most rapidly expanding areas of climate science: Over the last few years, dozens of studies have investigated the influence of climate change on events ranging from the Russian heat wave of 2010 to the California drought, evaluating the extent to which global warming has made them more severe or more likely to occur. The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society now issues a special report each year assessing the impact of climate change on the previous year's extreme events. Interest in the field has grown so much that the National Academy of Sciences released an in-depth report last year evaluating the current state of the science and providing recommendations for its improvement. And as the science continues to mature, it may have ramifications for society. Legal experts suggest that attribution studies could play a major role in lawsuits brought by citizens against companies, industries or even governments. They could help reshape climate adaptation policies throughout a country or even the world. And perhaps more immediately, the young field of research could be capturing the public's attention in ways that long-term projections for the future cannot.
In 2004, Allen and Oxford colleague Daithi Stone and Peter Stott of the Met Office co-authored a report that is widely regarded as the world's first extreme event attribution study. The paper, which examined the contribution of climate change to a severe European heat wave in 2003 -- an event which may have caused tens of thousands of deaths across the continent -- concluded that "it is very likely that human influence has at least doubled the risk of a heat wave exceeding this threshold magnitude." Before this point, climate change attribution science had existed in other forms for several decades, according to Noah Diffenbaugh, a Stanford University climate scientist and attribution expert. Until 2004, much of the work had focused on investigating the relationship between human activity and long-term changes in climate elements like temperature and precipitation. More recently, scientists had been attempting to understand how these changes in long-term averages might affect weather patterns in general.
In 2004, Allen and Oxford colleague Daithi Stone and Peter Stott of the Met Office co-authored a report that is widely regarded as the world's first extreme event attribution study. The paper, which examined the contribution of climate change to a severe European heat wave in 2003 -- an event which may have caused tens of thousands of deaths across the continent -- concluded that "it is very likely that human influence has at least doubled the risk of a heat wave exceeding this threshold magnitude." Before this point, climate change attribution science had existed in other forms for several decades, according to Noah Diffenbaugh, a Stanford University climate scientist and attribution expert. Until 2004, much of the work had focused on investigating the relationship between human activity and long-term changes in climate elements like temperature and precipitation. More recently, scientists had been attempting to understand how these changes in long-term averages might affect weather patterns in general.
Blames Wizards. (Score:2, Offtopic)
The Elf theory of Global Warming is totally discredited.
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Legal experts suggest that attribution studies could play a major role in lawsuits brought by citizens against companies, industries or even governments.
Money Shot.
Always follow the money.
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And that is exactly what this study shows which hasn't been shown before: that a small number of extreme events were very likely due to human influence on climate change, and not due to natural extremes that would have occured without human involvement. At the very least read the summary even if you don't follow the links.
Dummies (Score:2, Funny)
When is the world gonna smarten up and start listening to Slashdot posters and not Oxford scientists when it comes to climate change?
Clearly, it's all gotta be a hoax because it's cold as fuck here right now. And, the smartest man in America told us it was a hoax, so there's that, too.
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Clearly, it's all gotta be a hoax because it's cold as fuck here right now
Or as I like to say, 'The boat can't be sinking, the stern is 30 feet above the surface!'
Re:Dummies (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet we shouldn't blindly trust authority, either. That's particularly true in academia where more substantial results certainly are beneficial in obtaining future funding.
This doesn't mean the research is a hoax, not at all. It means that all scientific claims should be examined with skepticism. This works both ways, too. Dr. William Gray was a longtime researcher at Colorado State University, and was responsible for pioneering seasonal forecasts of Atlantic hurricane activity. Because of the seasonal hurricane forecasts, he became a very well respected scientist. He was also extremely skeptical of human activity causing climate change, and was very outspoken in this manner.
Appealing to authority is a logical fallacy. It's also not necessary to do that. We should be skeptical of claims by authority and investigate the evidence. The evidence stands on its own that human activity is very likely responsible for most of the climate change we're seeing right now.
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Appealing to authority is a logical fallacy. It's also not necessary to do that. We should be skeptical of claims by authority and investigate the evidence
It's hard to investigate the evidence when you're not an expert in the field.
Re: Dummies (Score:4, Insightful)
Then claim ignorance don't choose which dogma you will follow
Or ask other experts what they think. That's how we deal with everything else.
Re:Dummies (Score:5, Insightful)
You shouldn't blindly distrust authority, either. In today's America, seems like everyone has decided to pick one or the other of those, and fact is both are ridiculously stupid things to do.
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"Appealing to authority is a logical fallacy." You don't understand logic. It isn't a logical fallacy at all. At most, it is a recognition that since one doesn't have a degree in some science that deals with climate, that punting to experts who do is a rational choice. The irrational choice is claiming one isn't a scientist so one can ignore scientists. The "rationality" here has the force of "probability".
And yes, I am a practicing logician.
ambition with a higher thread count (Score:2)
And all the massed & collective & thoroughly reiterated human experience of boy scouts & girl scouts, experts & executives, naked gentry & landed gentry claiming slightly more than they can reasonably chew to make a name for themselves and get ahead in life ... dead fucking worthless.
Apparently.
Expertise is just ambition with a hig
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Appealing to authority is a logical fallacy.
Asking an expert about a certain thing, he is an expert about, is not "appealing to authority".
Appealing to authority means: the pope knows much about god (he is an authority about god), so he must know if my car is really broken or if the mechanic tries to rip me of (appealing to an authority that has no clue about cars and the work of an mechanics).
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Straw man much? The guy tries to use weather events as proof for climate change. Whatever camp you're in that does seem rather eager to score points. A more conservative statistical approach should be enough.
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When is the world gonna smarten up and start listening to Slashdot posters and not Oxford scientists when it comes to climate change?
Clearly, it's all gotta be a hoax because it's cold as fuck here right now. And, the smartest man in America told us it was a hoax, so there's that, too.
Yeah it's not like he gets paid to say these things or has any conflict of interest on the issue.
It's nice that they can "NOW" blame disasters on climate change but it isn't like they haven't been doing that for years and even blaming disasters that never happen on climate change.
Al Gore batting a 1000 here
https://wattsupwiththat.com/20... [wattsupwiththat.com]
Oh he isn't a scientist ? Well what about Dr. Hansen
https://wattsupwiththat.com/20... [wattsupwiththat.com]
I don't recall NYC sinking under the waves of a tropical climate New Years.
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I don't recall NYC sinking under the waves of a tropical climate New Years.
The headline is not "Scientists Can Now Predict Natural Disasters Due To Climate Change". Nice try at FUD, though.
Re:Dummies (Score:4, Interesting)
I recall they used to get round it by saying, "this hurricane can't be attributed to climate change but it is an example of the kinds of events which climate change is leading to more and more, and a reminder of why it is so urgent that we act..." -- which, if I am using the expression right, is begging the question.
Unfortunately the whole issue has been framed in the public mind as, "people who accept the science" vs. "nutcase idiot right wingers who ignore all common sense so they can selfishly keep their SUVs". Top marks to the PR firm which devised that strategy 30 years ago.
As naturally, most people want to be seen as belonging to the former group.
It is amazing because very few actually read any of the actual studies to try to figure out for themselves what they can really claim, rather, people feel they need to show they are not "bad". It has become a moralized identity issue.
Yet in other subjects, it makes sense to wonder, for example, is the doctor right to prescribe so many statins and are there really some nasty side effects being felt by users? But on climate change, if you stop to wonder, you are into the moral quagmire. I recall my mother questioning the doc's liberal use of antibiotics, some decades ago, and she was proven right years later, by her simple observation: if he takes this for a mild cold, what does he take for something serious? Now everyone is on about the over-prescripotion of antibiotics, yeah, even the experts are now saying this.
Climate change is not a moral issue. It is a science study.
If people want to talk about morals and ethics of say, consumerism, then they can join the 5000 year old philosophical debates on asceticism and human nature, which are rich sources of human wisdom on life.
The irony is that by making it a moral issue, we actually dumb down the real moral and ethical issues involved.
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Re:Dummies (Score:4, Interesting)
There was "a link" between saturated fat and heart disease for decades. It was a lie and made society quite overweight. Forgive us if we say "wait, let's not rush to judgment on the basis of supposed scientific consensus, especially when dissent exists and has sound reasons to do so."
I remember when there was general agreement that Dr Robert Atkins was a quack. Nowadays they would brand him a "fat denialist, in the pocket of the meat industry".
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07... [nytimes.com]
"If the members of the American medical establishment were to have a collective find-yourself-standing-naked-in-Times-Square-type nightmare, this might be it. They spend 30 years ridiculing Robert Atkins, author of the phenomenally-best-selling ''Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution'' and ''Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution,'' accusing the Manhattan doctor of quackery and fraud, only to discover that the unrepentant Atkins was right all along. Or maybe it's this: they find that their very own dietary recommendations -- eat less fat and more carbohydrates -- are the cause of the rampaging epidemic of obesity in America. Or, just possibly this: they find out both of the above are true."
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I guess one part of the problem is that americans usually completely ignore science from other parts of the world.
"Eat more carbs", sorry never heard about that advice. And I'm not aware of publications with that message in Europe, nor did I get taught that in school.
Bottom line people should have some common sense. Carbs can be converted into fat. Eat to much, you become fat. It is as simple as that. Eat it in bad combinations with fat, you even get fatter.
There actually never was a big dispute about how n
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"Eat more carbs", sorry never heard about that advice.
1980 US dietary guidelines:
to avoid too much fat, saturated fat and cholesterol:
- choose lean meat, fish, poultry, dry beans and peas as your protein sources
- moderate your use of eggs and organ meats
- limit your intake of butter, cream, hydrogenated margarines, shortenings and coconut oil.
- trim excess fat off meats
- broil, bake or boil rather than fry
- read labels carefully to determine both amount and types of fat [...]
Also: "if you limit your fat intake, you should increase your calories from carbohydra
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I guess one part of the problem is that americans usually completely ignore science from other parts of the world.
"Eat more carbs", sorry never heard about that advice. And I'm not aware of publications with that message in Europe
https://www.theguardian.com/so... [theguardian.com]
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The hurricanes moved north without hitting the US.
So what is your problem with that?
You should be happy instead of playing the idiot.
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Canada ? You mean the Atlantic Ocean.
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Maybe where you are; in this particular West Coast Microclimate, this has been the warmest and driest Winter on record so far. I have sufficient anecdotal evidence on this, I've been in this same neighborhood for 52 years. When I was a kid, unless it rained, the ground frosted over overnight and puddles would freeze by now. Now, no frost, no freeze... no puddles. It usually snowed once or twice a Winter; it hasn't snowed here in two decades.
Yeah and I have sufficient anecdotal evidence that the weather in Southern Ontario is about on par with previous years, both boom and busts. Generally the same amount of snowfall, sometimes colder, sometimes super cold, sometimes not, sometimes warm. Despite the claims of "warmest winter EVAR"(really this year guys I'm totally serious) the 1940's and 1950's still hold the king for being the warmest winters ever. Along with the most snowfall spanning over a decade. While the late 1970's and early 1980's s
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the 1940's and 1950's still hold the king for being the warmest winters ever.
That is extremely unlikely. I guess you are mixing something up. Those years where amoung the coldest on record in the northern hemisphere. In Europe the coldest ever. Just barely reached around 1975 again.
Do we have to take them seriously? (Score:2, Insightful)
If everything is attributable to "climate change", then their theory is no longer falsifiable. Which means it is no longer science; instead, it's just buzzwords that trigger government bureaucrats into opening the subsidy faucet.
Of course, it's always been this way - they're just getting honest about it. After all the money thrown at climate modelling, we still have never seen a clean scientific test consisting of specific predictions that could be verified or falsified. Instead, we get hundreds of climate
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causes more clouds, reflects more sunlight.
Clouds are complicated things. They reflect sunlight, but they also reflect earthlight, keeping the earth warm. How much of each depends on the time and location. On a global scale, most of the effects cancel each other out.
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Yep, in fact after 9/11 when most air travel in the U.S. was grounded, the air temperature high up decreased by about 5 degrees, if memory serves correct. The entrails from planes are clouds, removing them allowed more heat to escape. Also, water vapor is a green house gas.
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I believe that you meant to say "contrails" of planes.
The entrails of planes are machinery and electronics. And passengers.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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"Myles Allen, a climate expert at the University of Oxford, believes scientists can blame individual natural disasters on climate change."
So now "believes" is a scientific term?
Apparently, for many the answer is yes if the person speaking has been elevated to Climate Sainthood or, as in this case, is an official Climate Apostle, with all the proper degrees from 'proper' schools, and the correct political views.
Strat
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There's a significant problem with the negative feedback you're arguing for. Warming induced by additional carbon dioxide should increase the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. Water vapor is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, though with a much lower residence time in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Adding water vapor doesn't necessarily mean there are more clouds. If the temperature of the atmosphere increases, more water vapor is needed to reach saturation. Relative humi
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While we're looking into feedback effects, warming causes the polar ice caps to melt revealing more water and land which reflects less sunlight which causes more warming. Also, permafrost becoming unperma creates another feedback effect.
Clickbait headline (Score:5, Informative)
This is a clickbait headline. Shame on Scientific American for posting that headline, and shame on Slashdot for following along.
Let's quote from farther down in the article:
Today, scientists still generally agree that it's impossible to attribute any individual weather phenomenon solely to climate change. Storms, fires, droughts and other events are influenced by a variety of complex factors. And they're all acting at once, including both natural components of the climate system and sometimes unrelated human activities. For instance, a wildfire may be made more likely by hot, dry weather conditions, and by human land-use practices.
This contradicts the headline. Scientists aren't blaming individual disasters on climate change.
Climate is the statistical distribution of weather, including the normals and extremes. In many cases, it follows the normal distribution. However, other distributions may be appropriate especially for certain variables like precipitation. The scientists are saying that climate change is causing the distributions to change, and they are quantifying how the distributions change. They can then say that a particular event is more or less likely to occur as a result of climate change, and that's what they're actually doing.
The article references three events that they say are "impossible" without climate change, one of which is http://www.ametsoc.net/eee/2016/ch3.pdf [ametsoc.net]. This is a modeling study, basically integrating climate models forward with various forcings to test whether they could reproduce a given event. Because the model failed to reproduce the result over a period of 5,200 events absent anthropogenic forcing, they concluded that the event was impossible without anthropogenic forcing. While climate change may have made the event much more likely, the claims are probably misleading.
If you trust the model, you might be able to argue that the probability is less than 1/5200 of the event occurring in a given year (or something similar) given that the model failed to reproduce the result. It's probably much less than 1/5200, based on this statement:
However, simulated internal variability would need to be more than twice as large as the most extreme case found in the CMIP5 models, for even the most extreme simulated natural warming event to match the 2016 observed record.
That doesn't mean that the probability is zero. The other issue is the model, and whether it's accurately reproducing the statistical distribution of weather. It's easy to determine if the model is reproducing the mean, because we should know that part of the distribution with a high degree of accuracy. Extreme events, by definition, are rare, and therefore we can't quantify that part of the distribution with as much certainty, and can't know as well whether the model is reproducing those parts of the distribution very well. The actual climate model software is fundamentally no different than weather models, which certainly have biases and other known issues.
I believe the results are still pretty damning, that the events would be extremely unlikely to occur in the absence of anthropogenic forcing. It's still exaggerating to say that the extreme event would be impossible without anthropogenic forcing, and there's no need to make that claim. If the event didn't occur over 5,200 years of a model simulation, and the model didn't even come close to reproducing the event, there are two possibilities that aren't mutually exclusive:
1) The model has issues reproducing extreme events like the one being studied
2) The event would have a much less than 1/5200 probability of occurring in a given year
I suspect the second possibility is probably accurate. It's a damning statement to make without saying the event would have been impossible without anthropogenic forcing. It also forces the deniers to debate the validity of the model (actual science) rather than attacking the credibility of the scientists for not being precise in their statements.
Sue governments? (Score:2)
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In this country there is something called sovereign immunity - you can't sue the government except in very limited cases.
It's also stupid because you're basically suing yourself because think...how is the government funded?
Legal Help (Score:2)
Legal experts suggest that attribution studies could play a major role in lawsuits brought by citizens against companies, industries or even governments.
I predict that soon, due to this, Puerto Rico and Philippines will be richer than India, China and the USA combined. Therefore, I suggest we send all our tort lawyers to these islands and tell them to wait for a typhoon. I anticipate it being 'a good start'.
Dude may be from Oxford (Score:2)
But I doubt he’s getting any points towards tenure from getting an article into Scientific American.
Scientists need to get the fuck out of politics (Score:2, Insightful)
This line of argument is dangerous to even attempt regardless of actual merit.
We can't have a situation where every time some political hack carries snowballs into congress to make a point it is rightfully dismissed as crackpot antics. Yet when there is a specific incident on the other side of the ledger be a storm or heat wave it becomes acceptable to try and publically link instances of weather to "climate change".
Perusing this will severely undermine any and all attempts to communicate the difference be
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Much of the current problems with climate reality in my view can be traced back to scientists going that extra mile to sound alarms and suggest or imply political remedies.
That's bullshit. Even if the activism causes reasons for doubt, that doubt should be resolved by studying the science, not outright dismissed.
Re:Scientists need to get the fuck out of politics (Score:5, Insightful)
We can't have a situation where every time some political hack carries snowballs into congress to make a point it is rightfully dismissed as crackpot antics. Yet when there is a specific incident on the other side of the ledger be a storm or heat wave it becomes acceptable to try and publically link instances of weather to "climate change".
That means we have to bar scientists from speaking on a subject if their fact based statements contradict or offend someones political views. So the President of the US is allowed to celebrate his ignorance and reach an audience of millions with his factually incorrect take on climate, but someone with a scientific discovery and the evidence to prove it can't speak to it, because political opinion is sacrosanct.
That is very troubling.
Here's an alternative approach: the arguments made by politicians on science should be judged on their scientific merit. The arguments made by scientists on science should be judged on their scientific merit. If a scientist makes a political statement, judge it on it's political merit - unless they claim it is science, in which case, judge it on it's scientific merit. It's possible, even essential, to tell good science from bad. A political argument framed as a scientific view does not pass a simple sniff test, and is readily exposed.
People who adopt a position on science based on treating political opinions as inviolate are self selecting themselves out of the gene pool. Seriously.
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Everything is Politics (Score:2)
Everything that involves more than one person is potentially political. What you are asking for is for scientists to kill themselves, because there's no other way to escape politics.
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We can't have a situation where every time some political hack carries snowballs into congress to make a point it is rightfully dismissed as crackpot antics. Yet when there is a specific incident on the other side of the ledger be a storm or heat wave it becomes acceptable to try and publically link instances of weather to "climate change".
Exactly so. I made this point on (one of?) yesterday's /. climate stories.
If you are going to be over the top in selling your agenda, don't be surprised when we don't buy.
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We can't have a situation where every time some political hack carries snowballs into congress to make a point it is rightfully dismissed as crackpot antics. Yet when there is a specific incident on the other side of the ledger be a storm or heat wave it becomes acceptable to try and publically link instances of weather to "climate change".
Let's abstract that away from a politically charged topic and see if it holds up, shall we?
We can't have a situation where a single data point is used to try to refute a trend across a large data set.
That part seems fine.
When a specific data point can be shown to be influenced by trends in the larger data set, it is acceptable to state that.
That seems fine, too. Are you suggesting that when individual events are shown with a high degree of confidence to be influenced by the larger trend, it should be ignored or suppressed? That sounds more like a situation where politically motivated individuals should leave the science alone.
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If only scientists and supporting institutions had done a better job to just stay in their own lane... simply boringly run models and offer informed predictions rather than inject activism there would be less propensity for confusion between roles of science and politics.
Then everything that happened the recent 30 years to work against climate change, would not even happen 30 years in the future.
If you have a smoking friend and you are a medical you are not allowed to point out to him that smoking is danger
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Much of the current problems with climate reality in my view can be traced back to scientists going that extra mile to sound alarms and suggest or imply political remedies.
Bullshit. Most of the current problems with the acceptance of climate reality can actually be traced back to ideological opposition, initially funded by corporations who feared regulation that would reduce their profit margins. It was deliberately politicized and not by the scientists.
I bet even the mademade global warming side (Score:2)
Heat (Score:2)
Climate Models (Score:2, Interesting)
From TFA about halfway in:
Whenever I read the words 'climate model', I generally replace them in my head with the words 'wildly inaccurate climate model'. Scott Adams has some interesting things to [dilbert.com]
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Scott Adams has some interesting things to say [dilbert.com] about the subject.
No, what he's saying is absolutely stupid. Climate models are based on physics models, not just a bunch of made-up offsets.
Here's a well known model forecast, with real temperatures plotted inside it: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DK... [twimg.com]
Here you can find all the details about these models:
https://cmip.llnl.gov/index.ht... [llnl.gov]
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Thankfully, we have a satellite record covering most of that same time period, and it has NOT been constantly massaged, homogenized, extrapolated, and fitted.
Satellite temperature are much more massaged. Satellites don't measure surface air temperature, so the data has to be reconstructed.
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Information Theoretic Study Needed (Score:2)
This just in (Score:2)
no, no they can't..and they don't (Score:2)
The general consensus in science is individual events can't be attributed.
one paper saying it can doesn't change that.
Why Bother? (Score:2)
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So who do I believe, just about all the scientists in the world, or some assclown who doesn't know the difference between a model and a theory?
Hmmm...tough choice.
Re:Lets have some predictions then (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly not "about all the scientists in the world". You see, it is extremely unlikely that "about all the scientists in the world" actually studied our climate. The vast majority of them have different fields of study, and as far as climate is concerned, do not have any more authority than your average slashdot poster. At best they can claim to have read an article or two, in a popular magazine - same as the rest of us.
Appealing to the authority of people who really don't have any is, however, a highly suspicious tactic. I'm also struck by the fact that no government in the world is even considering investing in the only reliable, non-polluting form of energy that we have (i.e. nuclear). If climate change were a real problem, why isn't there a Manhattan project-style investment into nuclear fusion and thorium energy? Fusion research ambles along on minimal investment. Thorium is known to be a clean and safe source of nuclear energy, but nobody seems to care. Instead we blow billions on completely unreliable renewable energy sources that even after decades of investment and large scale destruction of the landscape still supply only a tiny fraction of our energy needs.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm
There's a word called "hyperbole". Learn it. Understand it. When somebody says, "That dude's got all the money in the world", they don't mean the dude literally has every dollar, ruble, rial and pound all the mints in the world ever printed or stamped.
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So... Every time we read about that "97% of scientists agree", we are to understand that it is mere hyperbole? I call BS.
People were happily shouting 97%! 97%! And now you were called on it, and suddenly it is only hyperbole. I'd say it was lies and manipulation, perpetrated throughout the media.
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No, 97% of climate scientists agree.
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wow - some guy says "all the scientists in the world" as an off-hand comment, and you have to take it literally, ignoring any possible context for those words?
Then double wow - you say that because we're not investing in nuclear, climate change can't be much of a problem!? Let me put it another way - "because very few people worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster, climate change can't be that much of a big deal".
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I'm not asking you to not believe them, I'm asking for some clear predictions ... so in twenty years you can see whether your faith was justified. Without that it's not science, it's truly just blind faith. Religion.
Shit's getting warmer, but are their models for predicting how much warmer and what the effects will be getting any better? Only way to find out is to predict and see. Run the experiment.
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97% was debunked.
Nope. [skepticalscience.com]
Re:Lets have some predictions then (Score:4, Interesting)
In fact let's make it interesting - shall we?
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The only conspiracy which would go 170 years back would be scientists conspiring to declare the little ice age a global phenomenon. But the scientific consensus has once again embraced the little ice age as global, so that has gone from conspiracy to "fact" once again.
Moving the goal posts does nothing to make the scientific opinion about attribution any more trustworthy. Either they can make predictions, in which case 20 years is a long enough timespan to judge them on it, or it's not science.
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It's a climate story. Just sit back, pass the popcorn and enjoy the rants from both sides.
I decided a long time ago to not get involved anymore. I have no kids and the world, even according to the worst predictions, will last longer than me. So why bother caring?
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It's a climate story. Just sit back, pass the popcorn and enjoy the rants from both sides.
I decided a long time ago to not get involved anymore. I have no kids and the world, even according to the worst predictions, will last longer than me. So why bother caring?
In the long run we are all dead. Why bother doing anything?
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Enjoyment. Entertainment. And most of all, pointing from my hilltop at people trying to escape the floods and saying "Told ya."
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'Caused climate change' has just become a synonym for 'caused by small government'
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Here's a good link for seeing what weather looks like worldwide. https://www.ventusky.com/ [ventusky.com] Right now, Western North America and Europe are quite mild while Eastern North America and Eastern Asia are very cold. While you're there, change the date to Firday and observe seriously cold air moving into the normally mild American SouthEast. There are going to be a lot of alligators wishing they'd stayed in the tropics.
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Re:Climate change is not climate (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not even the coldest on record in the US. Globally its by and far the WARMEST on record per NOAA, NASA, ESA, and pretty much every other major organization that measures the data on a global scale.
The only people who claim otherwise are the same people who think a single snowstorm is proof the earth is getting cooler (AKA, insane people)
Re: Climate change is not climate (Score:2, Insightful)
If once in 100-year temperature lows are "weather", then 1-in-100-year highs are "weather" and 1-in-100-year hurricanes are "weather". It's all probabilities vs averages.
The biggest problem is a lack of historical data to create the baseline for the current climate models. We have about 50 years of good satellite data which shows warming, vs 150 years of ground based samples that don't. It doesn't help that East Anglia climatologists were caught cherry picking and smoothing the ground based data to make
Re: Climate change is not climate (Score:5, Insightful)
We have about 50 years of good satellite data which shows warming, vs 150 years of ground based samples that don't.
The ground based samples are better quality. A satellite doesn't measure surface air temperature. Instead it measure the IR radiation coming from the surface, mixed in with the radiation coming from the entire column of air, and then has to perform complicated modelling to figure out what portion of the IR actually comes from the bottom layer.
And the 150 years of ground data clearly show warming. https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gis... [nasa.gov]
It doesn't help that East Anglia climatologists were caught cherry picking
They weren't. Here's a nice article explaining the temperature adjustments: https://skepticalscience.com/u... [skepticalscience.com]
Even without the adjustments, there's a very clear warming. A team of scientists from Berkeley had doubts about these adjustments, so they started with the raw data, and redid everything themselves. They ended up with almost the same graph.
Here's some more info: http://berkeleyearth.org/summa... [berkeleyearth.org]
Re:Do you know what science isn't? (Score:5, Informative)
No, that's not what's being done here and anyone who reads this like that is scientifically illiterate.
The entire 'weather is climate' argument is used by the denialist baffoons to try and discredit the entire concept of climate change. It's essentially saying 'since it happens to be very cold outside the climate cannot be warming.' This is not that in reverse, because the scientists are not trying to prove that the climate is warming by pointing at singular weather events, they don't need to do that because the fact that the global climate is warming has been proven a long time ago by the data and the scientific consensus on the topic is very clear.
They're not claiming that 'weather equals climate', but the entire core of the issue of climate change is that climate affects the weather, that's the whole reason it's a problem. Heating of the entire climate is predicted to increase extreme weather phenomena on both ends of the spectrum (meaning: extreme cold and heat) as well as storms.
It's right there in the damn summary:
No-one's saying that these events were solely caused by global warming but it's pretty clear at this point that the continued warming of the atmosphere is bound to make heat waves and droughts both more common and more severe. Why anyone would think that studying how big of an affect the added energy is having on these events somehow means the experts in the field are 'reversing' the definitions of the term is beyond me.
The reason it's good that this is done is because there exists a misconception both among the general public as well as politicians that climate change is somehow a threat that solely exists in the future. But seeing as how nearly every year in the 2000s so far has broken the record for the hottest year, it's obvious that we're already seeing/feeling the effects of a warming climate, so in my opinion it's very good that this is brought to people's attention so that the sort of 'oh well, we'll deal with the problem later' attitude that some people seem to have can be countered. The problem is already here, and it's already affecting the global populace's health, economy and food production.
On a related note, the talk of climate change 'alarmists' has always seem moronic to me. It's not 'alarmism' to point out facts such as the global average temp is going up year after year, or that there are more and more extreme weather phenomenon. Take an analogy from medicine. Saying you wake up one day with a cough that gets increasingly worse as the days go by, until one day you spike a fever and start coughing blood. You go to the doctor who says they're going to need to do some tests on you, because the symptoms clearly indicate that something is wrong with your body and you may be in danger if that's left unchecked.
If one takes the same attitude in this scenario that many people seem to take towards climate change you'd stand up, laugh, and go 'ahahaha, you're just one of those 'human health alarmists'. Plenty of people have coughed blood and not died, so what do you know? Clearly nothing, so I'm just going to go home."
Now the thing to understand here is that the skeptic maybe right, but we need to consider the game theory of the situation: if your goal is to live longer, then your chances of survival are drastically increased by seeking medical attention, even though it is possible that your body will heal on its own without outside help. Put yourself in this situation and ask, would you rather choose a doctor who wants to ru
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not that in reverse, because the scientists are not trying to prove that the climate is warming by pointing at singular weather events, they don't need to do that because the fact that the global climate is warming has been proven a long time ago by the data and the scientific consensus on the topic is very clear.
Science doesn't prove good hypothesis like maths. It works on by falsifying bad ones. If your hypothesis is not falsifiable, it's not science.
Keeping looking for reasons your hypothesis being true is not science either - it's confirmation bias. Which of course is fine, you're free to believe whatever you want. But you're not going to convince many people to accept your preferred policies if the underlying basis of them is not scientific especially if those policies cost countless billions.
Meanwhile particle
Re:Do you know what science isn't? (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever I see "scientific consensus" I see someone who doesn't know what Science actually is. There is no consensus in science. Science doesn't require consensus, it requires testing and verification. Piltdown Man was once "Scientific Consensus" and we know how that turned out.
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Yup.
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And yet there are lots of things that the scientists have consensus in. How does the Sun shine is an example, along with related things such as, is the Sun getting hotter. The scientific consensus is pretty strong that the Sun shines through nuclear reactions even though no one has actually gone to the core of the Sun and observed fusion happening. Likewise the consensus is pretty strong that the Sun is getting hotter even though the rate is so low at perhaps a 10th of a degree every million years that we c
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Whenever I see "scientific consensus" I see someone who doesn't know what Science actually is.
Whenever I see someone denying the existence of scientific consensus I see someone denying reality.
There's scientific consensus about all sorts of things like whether phlogiston exists, whether the Earth is flat, what the orbits of the planets are and so on and so forth.
You're trying to pretend that consensus doesn't exist in science in a last desperate attempt to rationalize your contrarian opinions on climate sc
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Actually it is. "Falsifiable" is a term invented by an american scientist, and it basically means proof. In other words, it is used in "reverse meaning" in argumentations.
Pretty sure it was invented by Popper. And it means disproof
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The classical view of the philosophy of science is that it is the goal of science to prove hypotheses like "All swans are white" or to induce them from observational data. Popper argued that this would require the inference of a general rule from a number of individual cases, which is inadmissible in deductive logic.[2]:4 However, if one finds one single swan that is not white, deductive logic admits the conclusion that the statement that all swans are white is false. Falsificationism thus strives for questioning, for falsification, of hypotheses instead of proving them.
For a statement to be questioned using observation, it needs to be at least theoretically possible that it can come into conflict with observation. A key observation of falsificationism is thus that a criterion of demarcation is needed to distinguish those statements that can come into conflict with observation and those that cannot (Chorlton, 2012). Popper chose falsifiability as the name of this criterion.
My proposal is based upon an asymmetry between verifiability and falsifiability; an asymmetry which results from the logical form of universal statements. For these are never derivable from singular statements, but can be contradicted by singular statements.
--- Karl Popper, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, p. 19.
I.e. you can't prove 'All swans are white' by looking at a lot of swans because 'the inference of a general rule from a number of individual cases, which is inadmissible in deductive logic'. But you can disprove it by finding a single black swan. I.e it's based on disproof not proof.
That is nonsense. If that was the case we had no gravity wave detectors in space nor particle accelerators on earth.
I remember one of the justifications for particle accelerators was the possi
Re:Do you know what science isn't? (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn, son! You ARE an apologist, aren't you. TLDR. But, I would like to comment on one single statement you made:
How about severe cold temperatures and floods? Yep, I know -- we ALL know. Those too. You see, this is what makes you alarmists sound so ridiculous. Absolutely EVERY undesirable weather phenomenon is blamed on climate change.
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One wonders the only controversy left is what to rename it to next.
Global Warming
Climate Change
Climate Chaos and Disruption
and Extrematization
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
TLDR.
This explains why you don't understand anything about climate change, it seems you can't be bothered to read enough to understand. Here's a very simple explanation of both of things you find too incredible to believe:
Extreme cold events can be an effect of climate change because warming in Arctic allows the still very cold air to travel further south by weakening the air currents that used to keep that cold air trapped over the Arctic. It's important to understand that when that cold air escapes from the
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There are no server cold temperatures.
There are only a few times at a few spots temperatures that where ver common 10, 50 or 100 or more years ago.
The cold wave in east USA now and 2 or 3 years ago around the great lakes: that was the norm until shortly after WWII ended.
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Not true.
Science says, i can disprove your claim, by providing a example that falsifies your claim.
Outside it is raining, I dont like rain. This rain is not blamed on climate change, therefore, your statement, "Absolutely EVERY undesirable weather phenomenon is blamed on climate change." is demonstrably false.
Furthermore, nothing in global warming, prevents other extreme events (even local extreme cooling).
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Im no genius, or university graduate, just an old harware tech who learnt computing as a related skill, and only understand the fundamentals of climate change, however I understand basic science enough to be convinced by the evidence.
I just dont understand how such obvious, experimentally verifiable science can be doubted.
1. CO2 is a gas which blocks some infra red heat from exiting the atmosphere.
2. The greater the concentration in the atmosphere, the greater the insulating
effect.
3. The extra heat must go
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Climate is an average of the weather over a defined period. I.e. it is weather statistics. No weather event can be affected by statistics.
Just explained by it.
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We've now seen probably millions of prediction over decades on how global warming will reveal itself to us, and millions of them did not come true
What's the probability that the temperature rise we have seen since the 1960s is a result of random weather ?
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gis... [nasa.gov]
If you want to argue that the rise is not due to random weather, what alternative explanation would you suggest ?
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It's not quite compelling if you zoom out his graph for the PDO index.
http://research.jisao.washingt... [washington.edu]
As you can see, the index since 2000 has been mostly negative, while we continued record high temperatures.
https://data.giss.nasa.gov/gis... [nasa.gov]
> it's hard to say things are warmer by 0.03 deg C when your tolerance/error bar is 1 deg C).
Things are warmer by more than 1 deg C, and the error bar is about 0.1 deg C.
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