SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - View Single Post - Hacked Emails Show Climate Science Ridden with Rancor

Skybird · 12-06-09, 08:19 AM

I should have known myself better.

This is just a shorter versons of what I typed before, I cut some things short.

Haplo,

I do not gloss over your medieval ice age argument. I just fail to read so much into it like you do, because as you say it is part of a natural fluctuation. And that is the reason why the medieval temperatures do not serve well as a parallel that could explain the even faster rise in temperature we see in the present. Because the natural conditions back then and in the past 150 years or less, do not compare. The warming today is being caused by different factors then the warming phase back then. later some comments more to that.

I do not want to spend another hour of typing, so I cut it short and link to two findings, that aimed at what I tried to say (and probably in a more complicated manner, as always

). the first is this article in the New Scientist, describing doubts why the medieval climate maybe cannot be used as an explanation for global warming today, because it may have been not a global phenomenon, but caused by just different patterns of heat distribution than today.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/...iscovered.html

the second is a german article mentioning a project regarding the present, and I summarise it in short words therefore.

http://www.focus.de/wissen/wissensch...id_448626.html

In that article they say that in Octobre, AP has ordered four statisticians to analyse - independently from each other - data sets provided by the american NOAA that included weather and temperature data, but the nature of the data was hidden from the analysts. All four statisticians came to the result that the data does not allow a conclusions that in the immediate past (the last years) a "cooling" has taken place. The statisticians were not aware of that the data they analysed was weather data - they did not know it, just dealth with the data formally and checking it with methodological tools of their profession. Even more: the conclusions of the statisticians mean that the American weather data by the NOAA indicate that the past years, including 2009, have been the warmest decade in the past 130 years since the beginning of recording weather data. According to that, 2005 has been the warmest year ever. the warmth record years of 1998 and 2005 are already lagging behind in people's minds, and the sceptic's argument that a cooling has taken place is being attacked by statisticians of the university of South Carolina for referring exclusively to the immediate past and trying to formulate a global, lasting trend by picking just the "rosins" from the past one or two years. They say that if you look at data since 1998 only, indeed that seems to indicate a minitrend downward, but doing so is simply misleading and wrong, because you just look at a very short timespan that happens to include a slight down-movement in the constant natural fluctuation of the general trend curve.

So much for that article.

We know for sure that in the past 11 or 12 centuries there have been 3 phases of relative coolings, followed by phases of relative warmings (logically! what naturally goes down, must naturally come up again). That this has been tried to hide in graphs linked to the IPCC reports, indeed is unforgivable, and bad science, or better: no science at all. But we are not sure about the quality of these phases, and currently the socalled medieval mini-ice age is beeing re-evaluated in temperatures, once it was said the phenomenen was global, it now gets seen as more regional, once it was seen as beeing all-low (and afterwards all-high) throughout the year, now one starts to think that the mean temepratures over the year possibly did not vary to the present by those excessive 3-5 degrees that once were assumed, but probably only differed by less than 1°C, but that the seasonal weather pendulum was swinging more extremely to the warm and cold poles: the summers were warmer, and the winter were colder. I think this is the most reasonable assumption indeed. In yearly averages, the weather was not that drastically different, probably, but the seasonal weather was far more extreme.

No serious scientist doubts that there are natural weather cycles, of various timespans, reaching from just 10-20 years, over a 300-400 year cycles to one including timespans of several thousand years. Occasionally I read the same three such cycles getting mentioned time and again. But there are huge differnces between scientiists and the sceptics camp in to what degree these could be held respinsible for the global weather trend of the modern era.

The point is that this natural fluctuation does not seem to be fit to explain the current acceleration in warming that we see, making it the fastest happening climate change and warming known in history. On the other hand we do know that we are emitting a lot of gasses that are proven in their effects on changing the temperature behavior of an atmosphere. And we see the close coincidence between the climate change starting to become conspicious in a statistical, methodological understanding, and the setting-in population explosion and industrialisation and environmental destruction done by man. These factors do not get explained by the medieval ice age at all (I also wonder why they call it the medieval ice age or mini-ice age, it wasn't an ice age, compared to a real ice age the climate still was pretty much moderate).

And let's not forget another thing: global warming can cause paradox effects. When you have ice melting in the arctic, the water vaporises into the air - and condenses (?) on the still present ice areas in other parts of the arctic that are still coller in relation, making the ice thicker there for a temporary time only. The melting ice is sweet water, but sea currents, amongst others depend on salienity differences, so the adding of huge ammounts of sweet water into the salt water ocean changes the pattern and energetic intensity of global currents, with all effects on climate that brings. If the Gulf Stream lowers it's activity, it brings less warmth to Europe, which translates into a relative REGIONAL cooling that is caused by global waming nevertheless. In the past years, there have been reports saying that some experts said the Gld Stream already has lost 18% in activity in the past years. Factors like this have been predicted and explained since the mid or late 80s, but still get picked out of context and then serve as an excuse or should I say: axe-cuse? - to doubt global warming - in principle the same distortion of methodology as the statisticians complain about in the article I summarised above.

I repeatedly said that science is no religion, claiming to have the ultimate, the final, the total truth, but I said that science tries - or at least should try - to bring observations made and systematically gained data into explanation models that combine and explain them in the currently best way possible, which means: logically, and as uncomplicated as possible, the models then get tested and usd for prediction, and eventually altered, which often is a constantly running process, making theories change over time, eventually. This is no treacherous or cheating behavior trying to supoort an agenda, but just natural acting in science. If sticking to this principle, I cannot do different than to assume that currently the theory of man-made emissions and environmental changes causing the major drive for an non-natural acceleration in global climate change - is the most appropriate explanation model available to us at the present moment. The emails do not change that in principle or detail, to me the "scandal" very much is a fabricated conspiration theory only.

I leave it here, it already is longer again then planned, and I already have typed so much this morning.

12-06-09, 08:19 AM	#5
Skybird Soaring Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: the mental asylum named Germany Posts: 42,717 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	I should have known myself better. This is just a shorter versons of what I typed before, I cut some things short. Haplo, I do not gloss over your medieval ice age argument. I just fail to read so much into it like you do, because as you say it is part of a natural fluctuation. And that is the reason why the medieval temperatures do not serve well as a parallel that could explain the even faster rise in temperature we see in the present. Because the natural conditions back then and in the past 150 years or less, do not compare. The warming today is being caused by different factors then the warming phase back then. later some comments more to that. I do not want to spend another hour of typing, so I cut it short and link to two findings, that aimed at what I tried to say (and probably in a more complicated manner, as always ). the first is this article in the New Scientist, describing doubts why the medieval climate maybe cannot be used as an explanation for global warming today, because it may have been not a global phenomenon, but caused by just different patterns of heat distribution than today. http://www.newscientist.com/article/...iscovered.html the second is a german article mentioning a project regarding the present, and I summarise it in short words therefore. http://www.focus.de/wissen/wissensch...id_448626.html In that article they say that in Octobre, AP has ordered four statisticians to analyse - independently from each other - data sets provided by the american NOAA that included weather and temperature data, but the nature of the data was hidden from the analysts. All four statisticians came to the result that the data does not allow a conclusions that in the immediate past (the last years) a "cooling" has taken place. The statisticians were not aware of that the data they analysed was weather data - they did not know it, just dealth with the data formally and checking it with methodological tools of their profession. Even more: the conclusions of the statisticians mean that the American weather data by the NOAA indicate that the past years, including 2009, have been the warmest decade in the past 130 years since the beginning of recording weather data. According to that, 2005 has been the warmest year ever. the warmth record years of 1998 and 2005 are already lagging behind in people's minds, and the sceptic's argument that a cooling has taken place is being attacked by statisticians of the university of South Carolina for referring exclusively to the immediate past and trying to formulate a global, lasting trend by picking just the "rosins" from the past one or two years. They say that if you look at data since 1998 only, indeed that seems to indicate a minitrend downward, but doing so is simply misleading and wrong, because you just look at a very short timespan that happens to include a slight down-movement in the constant natural fluctuation of the general trend curve. So much for that article. We know for sure that in the past 11 or 12 centuries there have been 3 phases of relative coolings, followed by phases of relative warmings (logically! what naturally goes down, must naturally come up again). That this has been tried to hide in graphs linked to the IPCC reports, indeed is unforgivable, and bad science, or better: no science at all. But we are not sure about the quality of these phases, and currently the socalled medieval mini-ice age is beeing re-evaluated in temperatures, once it was said the phenomenen was global, it now gets seen as more regional, once it was seen as beeing all-low (and afterwards all-high) throughout the year, now one starts to think that the mean temepratures over the year possibly did not vary to the present by those excessive 3-5 degrees that once were assumed, but probably only differed by less than 1°C, but that the seasonal weather pendulum was swinging more extremely to the warm and cold poles: the summers were warmer, and the winter were colder. I think this is the most reasonable assumption indeed. In yearly averages, the weather was not that drastically different, probably, but the seasonal weather was far more extreme. No serious scientist doubts that there are natural weather cycles, of various timespans, reaching from just 10-20 years, over a 300-400 year cycles to one including timespans of several thousand years. Occasionally I read the same three such cycles getting mentioned time and again. But there are huge differnces between scientiists and the sceptics camp in to what degree these could be held respinsible for the global weather trend of the modern era. The point is that this natural fluctuation does not seem to be fit to explain the current acceleration in warming that we see, making it the fastest happening climate change and warming known in history. On the other hand we do know that we are emitting a lot of gasses that are proven in their effects on changing the temperature behavior of an atmosphere. And we see the close coincidence between the climate change starting to become conspicious in a statistical, methodological understanding, and the setting-in population explosion and industrialisation and environmental destruction done by man. These factors do not get explained by the medieval ice age at all (I also wonder why they call it the medieval ice age or mini-ice age, it wasn't an ice age, compared to a real ice age the climate still was pretty much moderate). And let's not forget another thing: global warming can cause paradox effects. When you have ice melting in the arctic, the water vaporises into the air - and condenses (?) on the still present ice areas in other parts of the arctic that are still coller in relation, making the ice thicker there for a temporary time only. The melting ice is sweet water, but sea currents, amongst others depend on salienity differences, so the adding of huge ammounts of sweet water into the salt water ocean changes the pattern and energetic intensity of global currents, with all effects on climate that brings. If the Gulf Stream lowers it's activity, it brings less warmth to Europe, which translates into a relative REGIONAL cooling that is caused by global waming nevertheless. In the past years, there have been reports saying that some experts said the Gld Stream already has lost 18% in activity in the past years. Factors like this have been predicted and explained since the mid or late 80s, but still get picked out of context and then serve as an excuse or should I say: axe-cuse? - to doubt global warming - in principle the same distortion of methodology as the statisticians complain about in the article I summarised above. I repeatedly said that science is no religion, claiming to have the ultimate, the final, the total truth, but I said that science tries - or at least should try - to bring observations made and systematically gained data into explanation models that combine and explain them in the currently best way possible, which means: logically, and as uncomplicated as possible, the models then get tested and usd for prediction, and eventually altered, which often is a constantly running process, making theories change over time, eventually. This is no treacherous or cheating behavior trying to supoort an agenda, but just natural acting in science. If sticking to this principle, I cannot do different than to assume that currently the theory of man-made emissions and environmental changes causing the major drive for an non-natural acceleration in global climate change - is the most appropriate explanation model available to us at the present moment. The emails do not change that in principle or detail, to me the "scandal" very much is a fabricated conspiration theory only. I leave it here, it already is longer again then planned, and I already have typed so much this morning. __________________ If you feel nuts, consult an expert. Last edited by Skybird; 12-06-09 at 08:40 AM.