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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Dave, I think that cost is a much bigger factor than many realize. K-man and I obviously differ on why climate change is such a tough sell. Many instinctively decided that the risk from anthropogenic climate change isn't worth the cost of mitigation.
That's an open question, although economists are finally starting to make some progress in methodology there. The marginal cost/marginal benefit issue, however, should not cloud our evaluation of whether and how human activity affects climate. We cannot have a sober assessment of the economic stakes until we have a reasonable understanding of the science. I think we have a pretty good handle on the science, but I can't convince the public of that as long as our public statement is "anyone with whom we disagree is a crook, dupe of the oil companies, or an imbecile."
I realize that conventional wisdom says that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. Unfortunately, we may burn up because those who need to convince the undecided are, in fact, underestimating the intelligence of the undecided.
John
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Don't even bother me with the NOAA fudge factory data HT. Its well known that they are twisting it into forms belieing reality. Made to order to keep the doomists salivating.
Anyone know of a good campground off interstate 5 between Ashland and Eugene Oregon? Getting a bit road weary and have too far to travel yet.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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reproducibility with independent data sets in climate science is difficult but not impossible...
take the paleoclimate work where many different proxies are studied, in fact, the need to verify the existing proxies against new proxies strengthens the overall conclusions. So Mann's initial work was challenged by many new proxies. If those proxies disagreed with Mann, we could conclude that his initial claim that the global mean temperatures of the recent past which show a dramatic increase commencing with the industrial age activities would have been called into question.
instead, these independent data sets agreed with Mann, as they should have if Mann's original observation was correct. All we can say now is that these many sets of proxies are consistent with Mann's observations.
similarly with other paleoclimate proxies... like the one in the recent issue of Science I linked above...
in another recent article, new data sets allow various assumptions in our modeling to be tested... for instance mass transport in the ocean. As our models become better, they require refinements in the underlying "physics packages." In some ways the departures from the calculated values can be reconciled with the more complete understanding of the system.
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/345/6194/322.abstract
Science 345, 322 (2014)
Oceanic mass transport by mesoscale eddies
Zhengguang Zhang, Wei Wang, Bo Qiu
Oceanic transports of heat, salt, fresh water, dissolved CO₂, and other tracers regulate global climate change and the distribution of natural marine resources. The time-mean ocean circulation transports fluid as a conveyor belt, but fluid parcels can also be trapped and transported discretely by migrating mesoscale eddies. By combining available satellite altimetry and Argo profiling float data, we showed that the eddy-induced zonal mass transport can reach a total meridionally integrated value of up to 30 to 40 sverdrups (Sv) (1 Sv = 10⁶ cubic meters per second), and it occurs mainly in subtropical regions, where the background flows are weak. This transport is comparable in magnitude to that of the large-scale wind- and thermohaline-driven circulation.
all of these pieces fit together to give a consistent picture of the climate, which is still a work in progress, but has yielded a compelling explanation of the departure of the climate from what would have been expected in the absence of human activity.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Its not the temp increase corresponding with the industrial age that sceptics question so much, rather its Manns smoothing of the past. Do you want to look at the interactive globe again Ed? You remember, the one with peer reviewed studies of paleoclimate from all corners of the globe verifying the Medieval Warm period and Little Ice Age that "the Mann" smoothed out of existence with his Hockey Stick paper.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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I'll use or bastardize the language in any way I see fit to get my point across El Bruceo
Smoothing as commonly used here is weighted averaging, also commonly subject to bias in selection and/or treatment of data and time sequence.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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look rick, I'm not trying to convince you. First off, you don't understand enough to actually look at the quantitative issues you are criticizing, if you did you could make an argument. Right now you're letting other people do that for you.
secondly, your beliefs have nothing to do with climate science, they have to do with the political consequences of policy which would respond to the conclusions of climate science. your major difficulty is that if the climate science is correct and humans are changing the climate in significant ways, you would feel compelled to actually have to do something about it.
you distrust the government, you distrust the science community, you distrust the economists, you distrust the policy makers. you believe they are trying to take something away from you that you feel is rightfully yours, in some giant conspiracy.
how could you ever be convinced otherwise?
you couldn't.
when I look at the scientific literature for climate science the totality makes a very convincing case for significant contribution to the climate due to human activity, largely the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere.
I know it will be an absolutely difficult problem to reduce the CO2 emissions, and it will have a big effect on the global economy. but not controlling those emissions will have a major detrimental effect on the economy too, as far as we understand it.
wise policies will have to find a way to respond to the potential future problem while taking into account our limited accuracy of predicting on the decadal time scale. predicting on the century time scale is more accurate, and the predictions of the changes paint a picture of the Earth that is not so great, at least not for humans.
you can count on technology fixes, maybe that would work out, but maybe it won't, who can tell? but we can find ways of reducing the CO2 emissions, first by not burning fossil fuels.
I know you are not convinced.
I am convinced.
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wilbeer
Mountain climber
Terence Wilson greeneck alleghenys,ny,
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I am convinced, as well.
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raymond phule
climber
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I'm guessing there's a simple explanation that I'm just not seeing.
yes
But given the fact that no one has provided one, I'm thinking there may not be a simple explanation. Or even a legitimate one.
I know that this is a useless advice for you but you can read monoliths posts in this thread. The explanation is actually given 2 or 3 times.
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raymond phule
climber
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Again, I'm asking how Figure 3 converts to Table 2. What's the math?
Sorry, but I am not going to explain you how to read a graph. Go to your nearest high school and ask them or something.
You have so far ignored almost everything that people have tried to teach you when you have been wrong about something. Why should anyone try anymore?
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monolith
climber
SF bay area
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Explain how scenario D (in the Figure 3 chart) translate to +0.63 W/m(2).
What would a real skeptic do when shown a graph and a claim about the data on that graph, Sketch?
Would a real skeptic actually place lines at the claim points and see how closely they match up?
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raymond phule
climber
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I didn't ask you to explain how to read a graph.... just a repost of the explanation you mentioned.
but the explanation is that you find the information in the graph because the data were given in the form of a graph.
Monolith also answered you by showing how to read a graph.
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monolith
climber
SF bay area
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No warming in 18 years? Interesting assertion.
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raymond phule
climber
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One interesting thing with that graph is that scenario b,c,d seems to be very similar up to 2025.
So I am not sure if the written explanation of the D scenario compared to the b,c scenarios are that important.
I also guess that early century doesn't mean 2001 or 2010.
So why care about the written explanations when the graphs at this time seems to so say something different than what you believe that the explanations say?
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 2, 2014 - 09:01am PT
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One problem with the IPCC is it's been label an agenda driven advocacy organization. What makes this label so damning is that it's come from several former participants, who were highly regarded by the climate research community until they broke ranks.
Wow, this is concerning indeed. Until you look at who is now greasing the pockets of those "former IPCC participants". I started by looking here:
UN Scientists Who Have Turned on the UN IPCC
You can read about the first scientist who is quoted in this article, Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, on the Heartland Institute site.
More research into those in the first article lead me here:
The Case Against the Skeptics Stirring Up the Warming Debate
Hoggan began looking into what he describes as a well-funded and highly organized PR campaign designed to do one thing: sow doubt among the general public about the reality of global warming, thereby staving off government regulation of greenhouse gases.
In an interview with Yale Environment 360 senior editor Fen Montaigne, Hoggan discusses the hundreds of millions of dollars that oil and coal companies and conservative foundations have spent to spread the message of doubt; describes the ersatz grassroots organizations or “astroturf groups” ....
So Sketch, who are the few who dissent against the IPCC findings and how are those few funded? If you look into it, you might be surprised to find Big Oil at the heart of the dissent. Does that change your view about those who dissent?
The next morsel from Sketch is this:
Getting close to 18 years with no warming.
This doesn't make sense when the past two months have each been the hottest on record for those months. Sketch, how do you explain that? While you're explaining that, also please explain how your claim squares with the fact the the world's hottest recorded years have all occurred in the past 18 years.
Sketch, can you save yourself form looking like a fool?
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monolith
climber
SF bay area
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Sketch neglects to explain that RSS is a satellite record of the lower troposphere(ie, not the surface) and that all the major land based temp databases show considerable warming in 18 years.
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raymond phule
climber
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Sketch neglects to explain that RSS is a satellite record of the lower troposphere(ie, not the surface) and that all the major land based temp databases show considerable warming in 18 years.
He also ignores that even Spencer thinks that it is something wrong with that data.
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monolith
climber
SF bay area
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Maybe the non-anthropogenic El Nino can raise temps.
That's hilarious Sketch, since one of the strongest El Nino's on record was used to start the 'pause'.
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 3, 2014 - 08:39am PT
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Scenario D? No way!
Good point Sketch.
Perhaps that's why we haven't seen an increase in temps in 18 years and the arctic sea ice coverage is achieving historic highs year over year.
But, what about this, what Ed wrote a few weeks ago:
What is relevant, and what has been discussed at length, is the idea that our models could have predictive power on a decadal time scale, with spatial resolutions that are much smaller than hemispheric. There is a considerable amount of scientific discussion on this point, and it is relevant to the larger discussion considering the recent behavior of the temperature anomaly.
It will be a major scientific accomplishment to obtain accurate climate forecasts on the decadal time scale for sub-continental space scales. These forecasts have a great influence on response to climate change that affect us all. Learning what the limits are in the accuracy of those forecasts is an important program. The current behavior of the anomaly is part of that learning process.
There is little scientific doubt that on the global scale and for century time periods, that the models make accurate predictions given CO2 emission scenarios. While the annual contribution of the emissions are small, the cumulative effects of a century of emissions overwhelms the natural variability.
Did you forget about this?
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 3, 2014 - 10:15am PT
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Are you saying it's too early to determine the accuracy of 1988 forecasts?
I assume you're referring to the forecasts that we've found to be incorrect as opposed to those that we've found to be correct, right?
Does an imperfect prediction from 1988 invalidate predictions made 25 years later, ones made with better data? What do predictions from 1988 and 2013 have in common?
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