Climate Change

[skidman]

Originally Posted by 3catcircus

The issue I have is the claim that people are warming the planet at a faster rate based upon data that has been cherry-picked to fit a model - rather than updating the model to fit the data.

Absolute nonsense. Any modeling, no matter if simple stochastic models or sophisticated numeric models are considered, involves multistep recalibration procedures with the most complete data sets available.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by 3catcircus

I don't think anyone is serving that daily weather is a predictor of long term trends.

Your ex president and his followers do. He said this numerous times, and around 50 percent in the US believe him.

The issue I have is the claim that people are warming the planet at a faster rate based upon data that has been cherry-picked to fit a model - rather than updating the model to fit the data.

The issue I have with people like you is that you form your opinion, deny all else and then look for arguments to support that view.
Science works exactly the other way round, and it has nothing to do with cherry picking.

We know that climate change proponents have, for example, arbitrarily thrown out data from stations that are recording cooler temps and lower levels of CO2 than they need in order to make reality for their model.

You "know"? How so? From Fox News or the American thinker? Or from a reliable source?

You discard outlier data from different measurements from the same station. You don't throw out the entire station.

No, this is called statistics, error analysys and error checking and correction, following logic and proven concepts.

We also have *no* real ideas of what the climate did before we started recording data.

Oh yes we have. Indeed we can thoroughly know and reconstruct how the climate was in the Perm or Carbon geological eras some 300 million years ago, using numerous methods. In some cases we can even reconstruct daily events, if not with an exact date within the entire scale. Just because you do not know it does not mean those methods do not exist.
Then there are the "creationists" of course, but i take it you are not one of them.

We can go off of imperfect personal accounts throughout the ages and we also know that the earth has been warming since the middle ages and since the end of the pleistocene before that. The best we can do is things like counting tree rings and carbon dating, which have their own issues when it comes to accuracy. But - data recorded by prior civilizations? Good luck with that.

And again yes there are a lot of methods. In the more recent past, as long as you have trees with rings you can count (and add this to palynology), you have quite an exact timetabe to rely on, exact enough for one to 5 years. Even the numerous crises that befell older civilisations like in Sumer or during the bronze age can well be related to changes in climate, from corn rests to famines and such. There were ice ages and less harsh cold ages , mass migration, and it can all be proven by all kinds of methods.
If you want to get back to before human civilisation existed there are other methods.

In our arrogance, for all we know, the planet is supposed to be warmer - more diversity of life, more O2-CO2 exchange between plants and animals, more evolutionary change.

Arrogance.. i fail to see where is arrogance in science. Maybe if the scientist is a fraud. In most cases, the latter will then not be scientists.
Monocultures and killing species in a number unheard of except from mass extinctions eras ago, may not necessarily end in more diversity.
What i find arrogant is to not understand the past, scientific methods, but tell the world "how things work". This is "arrogant", and dumb. And if mankind follows it it will be its end.

[Rockstar]

Well yes, it may have been cherry picked.

http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=9864

Conclusion: There is an increase of recent global temperatures of about 0.1C when moving from HadCRUT4.6 to HadCRUT5. Half of this increase is due to interpolation and half is due to using HadSST4 instead of HadSST3.

Thank you for illustrating the differences so clearly!
If I remember correctly, every new version of HadCRUT (3,4 5), GISS, NOAA and RSS that has been developed the last 20 years has resulted in an increasing warming trend compared to the previous version, the only exception is UAH (5,6 vrs 6.0) .

Now, if we assume that all these revisions are genuine improvements and that the absolute temperatures measured by the metereological stations and boyes are not changed (from which tha anomalies are calculated), the actual change is that the new versions estimate past decades to have been colder than the previous version did. Is there a reasnable explanation for such a phenomenen – that we systematically have been overestimating temperature levels in the previous 2-5 decades?

I'm all for a cleaner environment it would be a great benefit to the health of the population of earth. But because of humanity's propensity for self flagellation I tend to be very skeptical of politicians and believers of the Godwizard Science when they fiercely promote AGW. The last five major planetary extinction events were related to climate change due to, out gassing, orbit, volcanic activity, meteors. It's something you or I will ever be able to control.


Arrogance is when Godwizard Science and his disciples promote one single theory, AGW. There are other just as valid theories and reasons as to why a climate can and will change. None of which should prevent anyone from cleaning up their act.

[3catcircus]

Originally Posted by skidman

Absolute nonsense. Any modeling, no matter if simple stochastic models or sophisticated numeric models are considered, involves multistep recalibration procedures with the most complete data sets available.

Originally Posted by Catfish

Your ex president and his followers do. He said this numerous times, and around 50 percent in the US believe him.

The issue I have with people like you is that you form your opinion, deny all else and then look for arguments to support that view.
Science works exactly the other way round, and it has nothing to do with cherry picking.

You "know"? How so? From Fox News or the American thinker? Or from a reliable source?

No, this is called statistics, error analysys and error checking and correction, following logic and proven concepts.

Oh yes we have. Indeed we can thoroughly know and reconstruct how the climate was in the Perm or Carbon geological eras some 300 million years ago, using numerous methods. In some cases we can even reconstruct daily events, if not with an exact date within the entire scale. Just because you do not know it does not mean those methods do not exist.
Then there are the "creationists" of course, but i take it you are not one of them.

And again yes there are a lot of methods. In the more recent past, as long as you have trees with rings you can count (and add this to palynology), you have quite an exact timetabe to rely on, exact enough for one to 5 years. Even the numerous crises that befell older civilisations like in Sumer or during the bronze age can well be related to changes in climate, from corn rests to famines and such. There were ice ages and less harsh cold ages , mass migration, and it can all be proven by all kinds of methods.
If you want to get back to before human civilisation existed there are other methods.

Arrogance.. i fail to see where is arrogance in science. Maybe if the scientist is a fraud. In most cases, the latter will then not be scientists.
Monocultures and killing species in a number unheard of except from mass extinctions eras ago, may not necessarily end in more diversity.
What i find arrogant is to not understand the past, scientific methods, but tell the world "how things work". This is "arrogant", and dumb. And if mankind follows it it will be its end.

I'm just gonna respond to this by pointing out the single-minded, rigidly-formed *religious* response to any questioning of the data or of the way the data is used or interpreted.

Any scientist worth the title should continue to welcome questioning of the science, the production of ever more objective quality evidence, and refinement of their models. When those models are tested and found to not actually conform to reality, they need to be revised.

Instead, we get "burn her, she's a witch" in response.

I'll continue being a heretic when it comes to the cult of global warming.

[mapuc]

I found the article. I tried to find the English version in Nature Geoscience-without any luck, so the Swedish article will be translated

"
New research: The Gulf Stream has slowed down by up to 20 percent

The northern part of the Gulf Stream is weakening and global warming is the cause.

In a forthcoming issue of the journal Nature Geoscience, another group of researchers confirms that so far it has been a 10-20 percent slowdown.

The Gulf Stream system is weaker than it has been in 1600 years. If global warming continues, researchers warn that it could stop completely.

Warmer seas and the fact that the ice at the North Pole is melting faster than expected are behind it.

The Gulf Stream gives us mild winters and warm, green summers in the Nordic countries. Without it, the average temperature would drop by 5-10 degrees, according to studies at the Met Office Hadley Center. It may not sound like much, but then you should know that it is six degrees that separates our current climate from the previous ice age. Parts of Sweden could have winter temperatures of minus 50, just like in Alaska which is at our latitudes but which is not covered by the warm currents.

The disaster film "The Day after Tomorrow" which came out in 2004 and showed a ragged and flooded Manhattan did indeed exaggerate the speed of the course of events, but was not entirely wrong about what the consequences could be of a stopped Gulf Stream.
" End of article

The rest of it is how the Gulf stream works and what it do.

Markus

[skidman]

Thank you for illustrating the differences so clearly!
If I remember correctly, every new version of HadCRUT (3,4 5), GISS, NOAA and RSS that has been developed the last 20 years has resulted in an increasing warming trend compared to the previous version, the only exception is UAH (5,6 vrs 6.0) .

Now, if we assume that all these revisions are genuine improvements and that the absolute temperatures measured by the metereological stations and boyes are not changed (from which tha anomalies are calculated), the actual change is that the new versions estimate past decades to have been colder than the previous version did. Is there a reasnable explanation for such a phenomenen – that we systematically have been overestimating temperature levels in the previous 2-5 decades?

Explanation is given by Best if you read a little further: A lack of temperature data especially for arctic environments (and neglecting ocean layering me thinks) And that's the great challenge in climate change modeling: Extrapolating from a data set of very accurate global temperature measurements that cover only 65-70 years.

Best is known for causing a lot of turbulence and at least he gets the math right most of the time. Don't know if most of his results still come from that free to download model and are still computed on his iMac.

Funny thing is Best is elaborating on a systematic error because of changes in data acquisition still all of the graphs show a 0.5°C increase from 1995 to 2020.

I'm all for a cleaner environment it would be a great benefit to the health of the population of earth. But because of humanity's propensity for self flagellation I tend to be very skeptical of politicians and believers of the Godwizard Science when they fiercely promote AGW. The last five major planetary extinction events were related to climate change due to, out gassing, orbit, volcanic activity, meteors. It's something you or I will ever be able to control.

Let's just for a second assume No. 6 is different. Let's assume the tendency towards self flagellation comes from the insight that the footprint of the average first world citizen in terms of CO2 emission is decadently high and a reduction could take at least the sting out of the dynamics of a process we can not stop if the number of Homo sapiens populating the earth is not reduced significantly (by unholy processes nobody wants to take place). Advocating science when its beneficial and demonizing it when you don't like the results is childish.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by 3catcircus

I'm just gonna respond to this by pointing out the single-minded, rigidly-formed *religious* response to any questioning of the data or of the way the data is used or interpreted.

You do not really want to compare scientific results, you want to believe your opinion. I have clearly said there are methods to measure the climate some million years ago. If 99 percent of the world' scientists agree, and there is one Trump and his cult saying otherwise, your decision.

Any scientist worth the title should continue to welcome questioning of the science, the production of ever more objective quality evidence, and refinement of their models. When those models are tested and found to not actually conform to reality, they need to be revised.

And this is exactly what i said. A theory is derived from numerous single proven conclusions, and only as good or accepted until a better one evolves. And denial of global warming is not a better theory, nor is it proven.

A better theory does not mean that some conspiracy nut cries that his theory is better just because it is his one.

Instead, we get "burn her, she's a witch" in response.

The Trump "argument", all are against me, must be a witch hunt.
Unfortunately it seems we are not able to openly call out liars anymore because they are so touchy, thin-skinned snowflakes. Remember Trump fired anyone who did not support his personal opinion? Why believing him then without ever questioning? That is the real dumb cult.

And the real problem is that it takes a lot of time to debunk lies, because when you do it properly you have to present evidence, books, graphs, and common sense. But the time this takes is out of proportion in comparison to spread a dumb lie.
So someone debunked your lie? Spout out ten fresh new ones, give them something to do and divert from the real issues. Has been perfected in the last 5 years, not only in the US of course.

In the time they debunk those myths you can create a dozen new lies, and no one can and will catch up ever.


The major consensus is temperatures are rising. And no "quanon shamane" or oil boss, or Trump with his own agenda of greed and power (to fill up his bank account and give a sh!t about the future) will convince me of the contrary. Evidence, provided by scientific methods will.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by Catfish

The issue I have with people like you is that you form your opinion, deny all else and then look for arguments to support that view..

Ummm... everyone does that. Surprise.

[Catfish]

^ True. But this was my reaction to 3catcircus assertion
"The issue I have is the claim that people are warming the planet at a faster rate based upon data that has been cherry-picked to fit a model - rather than updating the model to fit the data."
No, the model is not fixed, and it is being discussed back and forth, and updated constantly, and 98 percent of scientists agree. It is that obvious. All i can say i cannot understand how people willingly want to believe something that 98 percent do not agree with, without understanding the background.
Now if you are one of the 98 percent, should one look at their arguments? Yes. Should one put them to the test? Of course. So you do this and you find the data wrong, the new theory or model unproven. So you dismiss this as unpoven, without evidence, going only along the tests, and the theory.

While you could also see that all this is done to somehow help an obscure theory pretending that communists/Biden lovers/liberal snowflakes/the swamp want to shut down the economy because oil is evil. You never said this so you try reason, does not convince. You present data, does not matter since Alex Jones has other data. But from which source? Hah all sources that disagree with Trump are fake news. And roughly 50 percent believe this. Yes, it is hopeless.

However in this context i can say that after studying all this boring stuff and having done some probing myself, the scientific consensus is that earth's climate is warming. Could be sun's radiation cycles, but not in this case. This is one side, the other side is that CO levels are skyrocketing since around 1950. Now you explain to me how this can be, and what the causes are.

Two of hundreds of links
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

[3catcircus]

Originally Posted by Catfish

^ True. But this was my reaction to 3catcircus assertion
"The issue I have is the claim that people are warming the planet at a faster rate based upon data that has been cherry-picked to fit a model - rather than updating the model to fit the data."
No, the model is not fixed, and it is being discussed back and forth, and updated constantly, and 98 percent of scientists agree. It is that obvious. All i can say i cannot understand how people willingly want to believe something that 98 percent do not agree with, without understanding the background.
Now if you are one of the 98 percent, should one look at their arguments? Yes. Should one put them to the test? Of course. So you do this and you find the data wrong, the new theory or model unproven. So you dismiss this as unpoven, without evidence, going only along the tests, and the theory.

While you could also see that all this is done to somehow help an obscure theory pretending that communists/Biden lovers/liberal snowflakes/the swamp want to shut down the economy because oil is evil. You never said this so you try reason, does not convince. You present data, does not matter since Alex Jones has other data. But from which source? Hah all sources that disagree with Trump are fake news. And roughly 50 percent believe this. Yes, it is hopeless.

However in this context i can say that after studying all this boring stuff and having done some probing myself, the scientific consensus is that earth's climate is warming. Could be sun's radiation cycles, but not in this case. This is one side, the other side is that CO levels are skyrocketing since around 1950. Now you explain to me how this can be, and what the causes are.

Two of hundreds of links
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

I'm not sure why you're bringing Trump into this - he had nothing to do with it.

Fact of the matter is that the IPCC is still the authority that governments look to, and they have most assuredly cherry-picked data and massaged it over the years to support their narrative with one goal - a carbon tax on wealthy nations while China and India continue on as the biggest polluters on the planet - the intent is to continuously keep the populace alarmed and begging to be led to a solution - and some folks will be getting rich in the process.

It's not just climate studies - ALL science is tainted by politics and finance to some degree because academics are in a publish-or-perish situation where they're always in a search for more grant money.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by 3catcircus

I'm not sure why you're bringing Trump into this - he had nothing to do with it.

Trump is a staunch climate change denier, at least he was when he began his presidency. I doubt he changed his mind, i doubt anything can. First act was to get out of the Paris agreement, then he opened US nature reservates to be exploited by industry, without real need or sensible reason. It was just to "show 'em" and p.. off people with a conscious mind about the environment.

Second, he did not listen to advice, we all saw what happens if an advisor kept trying to explain something to him, energy, climate or else.

Third during his presidency he succesfully drove a wedge between a consensus of science and politics. That a lot of people now rather believe in conspiracies than facts is definitely his work.

The IPCC, yes .. "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is an intergovernmental body of the United Nations[1][2] that is dedicated to providing the world with objective, scientific information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of the risk of human-induced[3] climate change, its natural, political, and economic impacts and risks, and possible response options."

Trump made it look as if it was an organisation founded to personnally annoy him, support the left and be anti-capitalistic. NONSENSE.
It is not there to lick the boots of politicians, unfortunately this climate discussion has of course reached political dimensions.

I personally find the idea of a carbon tax and trading with it(!) idiotic (the EU does it ), but hey if there's money in it why don't some Americans like it?
I also think that electric cars are not the future, at least not now. I say this because the emissions being produced by loading a giant fleet of electric cars (and buiding them and the batteries) has a very bad cumulative energy balance. You have power line losses, batteries have to be renewed every some years; in all you just transfer the exhaust to where you not directly see it, cheating yourself. Electric energy produced by coal is not clean. Nuclear energy is debatable, (since the cooling efforts are heating rivers and lakes, let alone radioactive waste problem), but that's not the point here.

If we can build better, faster-loading batteries without using dirty resources like mercury or rare earths this could become something.

China and India do not care for anything, yes. Smaller nations can do what they want, those big ones will always out-pollute them, this is the usual argument. China has shown a bit of insight with the the Beijing smoke pollution, but for them it is nationalist politics, hegemony and "China first", and ignore other consequences.
If a nation like the US acts like that, i think there is reason for concern.

It's not just climate studies - ALL science is tainted by politics and finance to some degree because academics are in a publish-or-perish situation where they're always in a search for more grant money.

Some, sure. But the vast majority of real scientists is committed to be true, this is in a way the reason why you become one.

It can all be bent, manipulated, twisted, but it is my honest opinion that most scientists are less prone for bribery than politicians, or the industry.
This is why they are so useful idiots, too reluctant to say what's really on the table, always cutting back logic in favour of idiots. Some politicians need a punch in the face, just to get grounded again.

[Onkel Neal]

I love how all us untutored experts in climate change, epidemiology, economics, public policy, and motor oil rely on the experts to form our unstaunched opinions. But the experts, well, there's a bit of ego and personality there too.


Climate heretic: Judith Curry turns on her colleagues
https://www.nature.com/news/2010/101....2010.577.html

Curry's saga began with a Science paper she co-authored in 2005, which linked an increase in powerful tropical cyclones to global warming. It earned her scathing attacks on skeptical climate blogs. They claimed there were serious problems with the hurricane statistics the paper relied on, particularly from before the 1970s, and that she and her co-authors had failed to take natural variability sufficiently into account. "We were generally aware of these problems when we wrote the paper," Curry says, "but the critics argued that these issues were much more significant than we had acknowledged."

She did not necessarily agree with the criticisms, but rather than dismissing them, as many scientists might have done, she began to engage with the critics. "The lead author on the paper, Peter J. Webster, supports me in speaking with skeptics," Curry says, "and we now have very cordial interactions with Chris Landsea (whom we were at loggerheads with in 2005/2006), and we have had discussions with Pat Michaels on this subject." In the course of engaging with the skeptics, Curry ventured onto a blog run by Roger Pielke, Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado who is often critical of the climate science establishment, and onto Climate Audit, run by statistician Steve McIntyre. The latter, Curry adds, "became my blog of choice, because I found the discussions very interesting and I thought, 'Well, these are the people I want to reach rather than preaching to the converted over at [the mainstream climate science blog] RealClimate.'"

It was here that Curry began to develop respect for climate outsiders—or at least, some of them. And it made her reconsider her uncritical defense of the IPCC over the years. Curry says, "I realize I engaged in groupthink myself"—not on the hurricane paper per se but more broadly in her unquestioning acceptance of the idea that IPCC reports represent the best available thinking about climate change.

urry began to find other examples where she thought the IPCC was "torquing the science" in various ways. For example, she says, "a senior leader at one of the big climate-modeling institutions told me that climate modelers seem to be spending 80 percent of their time on the IPCC production runs and 20 percent of their time developing better climate models." She also asserts that the IPCC has violated its own rules by accepting nonpeer-reviewed papers and assigning high-status positions to relatively untested scientists who happen to feed into the organization's "narrative" of impending doom.

So it is important to emphasize that nothing she encountered led her to question the science; she still has no doubt that the planet is warming, that human-generated greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, are in large part to blame, or that the plausible worst-case scenario could be catastrophic. She does not believe that the Climategate e-mails are evidence of fraud or that the IPCC is some kind of grand international conspiracy. What she does believe is that the mainstream climate science community has moved beyond the ivory tower into a type of fortress mentality, in which insiders can do no wrong and outsiders are forbidden entry.

[3catcircus]

Originally Posted by Onkel Neal

I love how all us untutored experts in climate change, epidemiology, economics, public policy, and motor oil rely on the experts to form our unstaunched opinions. But the experts, well, there's a bit of ego and personality there too.


Climate heretic: Judith Curry turns on her colleagues
https://www.nature.com/news/2010/101....2010.577.html

The most important thing about this article is that she engaged her critics. All too often, the experts are in an echo chamber and completely miss obvious (and not so obvious) flaws in their own studies. The ones with a fatal level of hubris are the ones who pooh-pooh the critics rather than accept that their critics might very well be experts in their own right - who have actually experienced a situation that is of concern in regards to the subject at hand.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by 3catcircus

The most important thing about this article is that she engaged her critics. All too often, the experts are in an echo chamber and completely miss obvious (and not so obvious) flaws in their own studies. The ones with a fatal level of hubris are the ones who pooh-pooh the critics rather than accept that their critics might very well be experts in their own right - who have actually experienced a situation that is of concern in regards to the subject at hand.

This is what science always SHOULD do, but human scientists are of course human, with "ego and personality" as Neal wrote, they may err or be morons, like anyone else

What is also written in the article is that

"Climate skeptics have seized on Curry's statements to cast doubt on the basic science of climate change.

So it is important to emphasize that nothing she encountered led her to question the science; she still has no doubt that the planet is warming, that human-generated greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, are in large part to blame, or that the plausible worst-case scenario could be catastrophic.

She does not believe that the Climategate e-mails are evidence of fraud or that the IPCC is some kind of grand international conspiracy. What she does believe is that the mainstream climate science community has moved beyond the ivory tower into a type of fortress mentality, in which insiders can do no wrong and outsiders are forbidden entry."

Especially the last sentence make her a good scientist in my book.


@Neal: re the "untutored experts" i beg to differ, we did indeed inspect drilling cores for evidence and change in earth's history (including climate changes etc.), as well i can hold Skybird-long monologues on motor oils, or oil in general. (Though i better spare you all that )

[Onkel Neal]

Hahaha, yeah, I love you, man. Always great discussions. I threw in the motor oil category, as you may know, if you start an oil thread on a motorcycle or performance car forum, it will reach max crazy faster than any other topic. Bar none! In fact, if you are doing your daily visit of the mc forum and you see a new topic with something like "I just got this new bike, what kind of oil should I run?" .... brace yourself, it will be wild.