Marked for post of the year 2011.:O:

Peace Nobel, maybe? Of course only if you do not take offense from Wikileaks suggested for nomination, too! :D

On the issue, August, if you think that you know it so much better than dedicated scientific branches, just because you do not like what they conclude, then I cannot help it. But I must tell you that just recently the NOAA once again has explained why the colder winter we have had repeatedly in the past 5 years are exactly evidence for global warming. It is for two factors, and they are indeed known since many years now: first, the ice cape at the Northern pole has become smaller in area, which means less sunlight is getting reflected back into space. It's energy stays in the atmosphere, and warms it up, which results in a warming of the air and more ice melting, and even faster. With lesser ice cooling the water, and warmer air warming it up, water temperature in the polar area is growing. The change in temperature spreads in water masses and the polar atmosphere results in a softening up of a typical atmospheric condition at the pole during winter, which is a huge low pressure field that usually is rotating and maintains a strict temperature barrier that hinders cold air to drift southward. this barrier had been weakened due to the change in temperature contrasts in the air and in the water. And so the arctic cold air moved southward - and that is what we feel this winter, and in I think 2005 it was.

The likelihood that we will see more of these extremes in winter temperatures, is high, because the polar regions warm up constantly. At the same time, more extreme summer temps are expected both on the Northern and Southern half of the globe, causing different effects in different regions: for some, like middle Europe, it means more floods (In Germany we have seen an increase in flood events (frequency and intensity) by a factor of 4 in the past 10 years), for others, like the mid- and southern US, it means more droughts.

Maybe this is again too scientific for your taste, but I am not responsible if somebody has an anti-scientific attitude in general. I stay with sciences, because their reasoning in this case makes more sense to me than just a statement like "its winter here and it is snowing, so I don't believe in global warming". Same is true for research being done regarding past eras and their climates - the arguments there are much more convincing by chemical and physical findings that are solid and material, than just ridiculing them or dismissing them as irrelevant. You could as well question the C14 method, or geological analysis of sediment layers to conclude on the presence of oil. But both the chemical composition of such layers, and the tectonic structure and its physical characteristics, form better arguments than just saying "I don't believe it".

Ha! I even used a spell checker to treat my many typos! I should get a good will award, too!

For the same reason you find it easier to tell us what you have done yesterday and at what time, than to tell us in detail at what time you will do what activity tomorrow. The past is easier to remember than the future is to predict. A written book is easier to read, than a still-to-be-written book is to be imagined and written down.

Yeah but we're not talking about yesterday, now are we? We're talking many thousands of years ago. So, care to tell me exactly what you were doing on April 14th 1989? Remember it has to be in more detail than what you are likely to be doing tomorrow.

It'S in my diary. ;) If I would have kept one.

That's what according scientific research on past eras is about: finding kind of global "diaries". Like archeologists can make very educated conclusions by finding items, tools or cities in the sand, other scientists can make climatological conclusions by analysing sediment layers, chemical inclusions, petrified seeds, granulate density, etc etc.

It's funny to look at the temperature graphs the climate guys publish to show global temp (which, BTW, is not a "real" temp, or even a simple average, but rather a VERY complex algorithm where the modern data is populated by good data, and the old stuff is very, very dubious (in terms of assigning values to cells).

The graphs are frequently in hundredths or even thousandths of a degree. ROFL. They need to demonstrate their models are accurate to even a 10th of a degree, first. And they can only use as many significant figures as the least accurate base data they have. Even .1 degree might not be possible.

It would be an interesting exercise to remake the global warming graphs where all values are rounded to the nearest 0.1 degree, then again for them rounded to the nearest 0.5 degree, then again to the nearest degree. Then throw an error bar on there equal to our nearest rounding (+-0.1, +-0.5, +-1.0). I looked at a graph from 1880 to 2000, and rounded to 0.5 it would be flatlined at 0, then a blip at 0.5 near 2000+. Rounded to 1 degree (I cannot imagine the data from 1880 is any better than that) it's dead flat.

The more accurate graphs are fine for modern data, but are utterly silly going back in time.

I hereby award you the position of owner/pwner of Subsim. Were it not for your efforts, everyone here would be reduced to posting their submarine-related thoughts on one of those other crappy forums, or god forbid, a game-genre forum. Were it not for you, there would be no concerted effort to restore the Cavalla, nor would there be an effort to recover the relics lost in the hurricane. IIRC, Chad traveled hundreds of miles to participate and recovered an irreplaceable chronometer from a destroyed shipping container full of very nasty and foul-smelling coastal muck.

That's leadership, kids. Take some notes.

The problem with the "Diary" analogy Skybird is that the "geological" and other planetary data they use to reconstruct the past is not their diary. Its the diary of the earth aged over time and written in a language they barely can read.

So really the question is what were you doing on April 14, 1989, and to help you reconstruct it, here is a faded page of writing from the diary of someone you don't know who witnessed your day and wrote about what they thought was important. Oh, this is written in an obscure dialect of sanskrit. Please reconstruct that day using this, without consulting anything other google translater.

Can you get a little bit of it right? Maybe. But I wouldn't count on much.

So IOW you're saying that sediment layers can't really substitute for a real diary with recorded readings? :DL

Let's not confuse petrified seeds etc with actual recorded readings my friend. Anything that requires large amounts of interpretation and guesswork vastly increases the chances of misinterpretation and inaccuracy.

Then there are the gaps in those records, some many thousands of years of years long. With such spotty coverage it's no wonder they can't tell the immediate future with any degree of accuracy.

You make better analogies than I do Hap!

Note to self:

*scribbling*

"If you need..."

*scribble scribble*

"...to get something valuable..."

*scribble scribble*

"...out of a box full of..."

*scribble scribble*

"...old nasty muck..."

*scribble scribble*

"...make Chad do it."

:yeah:

Proxy data is really sketchy. Heck, direct measurement is non-trivial. When instrumentality changes, you see jumps in the temps. The "average" temp is not a simple average, but the product of a complicated model—and there are time frames within the model (the CRU model, anyway) where they literally ignore what the model churns out, then fill it in by hand because they know the model is broken in certain time periods (some might say "out their ass"). (Personally I'd say if one model doesn't work for all time periods, it's time to throw that model in the trash).

I don't have a problem with using proxies, that's all you have for the past. But if you do a proxy temp model, then even the modern stuff needs to be done with the same proxy with no tweaking to get the right answer.

The tree ring data, for example, is very subjective. Instead of a protocol where they use every tree, they pick and choose "good" trees. What do they look for in "treemometers?" They look for trees that give the data they want to see (cooler in the past, loads of growth during modern period). The trees rejected? Not a few, in fact only a few are judged to be good, the bulk are thrown out—the rejected trees are those that mess up the desired curve. It's confirmation bias. Guys have run the statistics with all trees included (if you get a statistical sample of trees, any general trend should show up) show no radical jump in values that they correlate with temp.

Remember, while we can see temps rising in the modern period with excellent data sets, it's only "out of the ordinary" if it is higher than all periods in the past. The past data is quite frankly crap. Hence my skepticism.

I don't like the fact that people with in my mind legitimate, scientific skepticism are called "deniers" (clearly meant to link them in quality with the only others who are so-called, the holocaust deniers). I think climate science has suffered greatly from being so politicized.

Very nice, Frau. How is it that you make a completely innocuous statement into something that makes the male of the species feel terrible about everything they do or say? Is this natural or is it a learned behaviour?

You must not have much experience with women to ask a question like that Gyrene! :DL

:haha:

I thought I was making a humorous statement about taking a stirring example of leadership and turning it into an excuse to get out of doing any of the dirty work myself.