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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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The predictions given have not panned out though.
I think the point is that climate is the average of weather, and that from year to year, the average changes a little, but the weather can change much more. Over time, like a century the small changes add up, they are all going in the same direction...
So interestingly, the predictions of 1896 were correct, that fossil fuel use would change the climate. It took decades (actually probably 60 years) before the climate change was large compared to the yearly variation of the weather to produce an overwhelmingly convincing picture.
Climate scientists started out to understand climate, which they assumed was driven by natural forces, and found that they could not explain all the changes without evoking the CO2 increases caused by humans. This one prediction has "come true" and is confirmed in the data.
That data includes establishing a baseline CO2 concentration before the industrial period.
The predictions are based on averaging over time, and most climate scientists would take a 30 year period for that averaging. It has been about 30 years since the first indications of the human component to climate change have been discussed.
Predictions on the 10 year time scale are intermediate between weather forecasts and climate projections. Difficult, but not thought impossible, with our current understanding. The challenging goal has driven a lot of science discussions trying to describe that system.
It should be noted that these changes, the hiatus, are not the biggest factors determining the climate. There was a "hiatus" from about 1940 to 1970, yet since 1880 the global mean temperatures have increased. The difficulty in making these shorter term forecasts has to do with the apparent fact that the natural variability doesn't average out over 10 years...
Most of the arguments that are made against the current scientific model of climate change have been investigated by the climate scientists themselves. The fact that they do not pan out has more to do with their failure to be consistent with the observations than with some murky conspiracy. The scientific literature is available to read for everyone... and all arguments meet the same level of scientific scrutiny.
I don't think anyone, least of all the climate scientists, think it is an easy task to project into the future accurately. They have been very scrupulous in trying to bound the likely maximum and minimum changes, and to state the most likely values facing the near term (next 100 year) changes. This injects the language of "uncertainty" into the discussion, which can be used to a disadvantage in debates... the desire for "absolute certainty" essentially eliminates any science, since science is all about understanding with uncertainty, which is intrinsic in how we measure things as well as a fundamental part of our theories. Insisting on "absolute certainty" essentially eliminates science from the discussion. No scientist will claim "absolute certainty" on anything.
However, as I said before, quantifying uncertainty is possible, and important, and especially important to the policy discussion. Actually understanding where the uncertainties come from help guide research both in the modeling and the observations and experiments. The field concentrates on what is "uncertain" and moves on from that which it has determined is "certain."
Most scientific discussions are around those uncertain bits... with less discussion about the certain bits. When someone from the outside looks into a passionate scientific debate, it's usually all about what we don't know. It's easy to get the impression that this debate reflects the state of understanding, hard to see that this is often small compared to what we do understand.
By and large, the predictions have panned out... the climate of North America has changed, and it has changed in a way that would not have happened without the contributions of humans, in particular, CO2 into the atmosphere. The arctic has changed even more dramatically. The oceans are changing also. And while this has happened in my lifetime, most people reading STForum are too young to see the changes... and even I have to listen to stories of older people, many of whom have died, to get a sense of what the climate was like at the beginning of the 20th century.
This is the largest challenge to humans, to be able to see across a time longer than a human lifetime, at the changes. In my lifetime the human population has doubled. That population has increased its resource use by more than that factor. While people proclaim that the predictions of human population stress have not occurred, it's not at all obvious that they have not, that we are just not seeing the changes. The planet is a very different place than it was 1000 years ago, and 1000 years isn't a very long time period for the Earth, or life on the Earth, or even human history.
Taking that kind of perspective is going to be necessary. Something that doesn't pan out in your lifetime isn't a failed prediction.
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Cragar
climber
MSLA - MT
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Very few lay people have either the stomach, the brains, or the time to research journal articles for the words "straight from the authors minds", trusting instead the media's accounting.
Since humans are now below goldfish in terms of attention span it is no wonder that folks have a hard time with basic science(accuracy vs. precision as noted hella above) these days. The unfettered access to the internet where you can find anything to support your belief leaves 'us' with what we see here and in society in general. Long live the FOX!
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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38f here this morning at latitude 62.5. Fresh snow in the Talkeetnas at and above 2500'.
Four inches of new snow in Barrow this morning. Much of Canada showing signs of an early winter.
Looks like the seasonal arctic melt may have already reached bottom. Perhaps the highest average september extent in a decade.
The solar minimum of cycle 24 is still 5 years off.
What great scientist said; " the anthropogenic signal is rather feeble compared to the range of natural variability".
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Norton
Social climber
quitcherbellyachin
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38f here this morning at latitude 62.5. Fresh snow in the Talkeetnas at and above 2500'.
gee Rick, do you still not know the difference between local weather and CLIMATE?
honestly, post after post, you prove that you just can't understand even simple concepts
grow up already will you?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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you would see that a carbon tax would help the poor. How is that a problem for you?
Prolly cause we've seen this song and dance at every party.
Like the tobacco tax. Half the price of a pack is tax. Why? Because the government deemed that the product being sold has a negative impact. So the business model says raise the price to curb useage. But does that really work? On top of that, the tax monies were promised to help curb the negative results and addiction. have you seen any evidence from their promise?
Besides the negative commercials and ads that are designed to provoke guilt in the users(tax payers).
it's the oldest adage, levy some guilt levies money.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Big promises,Big lies
For example, in California last year, just one percent of that's state's $53 billion budget for K-12 education came from lottery funds.
Is The Lottery Shortchanging Schools?
"The net effect of say earmarked education lottery revenue on education expenditures is close to zero," said Clotfelter
The other big winner here will be the IRS -- the federal tax alone on a lump sum payment in the neighborhood of $100 million.
Back in 90 when they initiated the lottery they promised HALF the monies would go to schools.
Big Business, Big Politics, Big Promises = Big Lies
It's a scientific fact!
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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^^^one hand clapping?
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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Does this look like a hiatus (from FortMental Sep 2). What has happened is that the increased heat has mostly gone to polar regions and the ocean heat sink. This has temporarily delayed increased surface temps. It does nothing to disprove global warming.
Once we start talking about policy options,
political considerations will make a difference.
Congress is no smarter than the general public, which as was pointed out,
thinks there is a big difference between "global warming" and "climate change."
People will vote for a tax if it called something else as a disguise. But won't vote for something straightforward like federal gas taxes, even just to keep up with inflation, so they have falling for decades, in constant dollars.
People have a much more favorable opinion of a carbon tax if it comes with a clear system for how that revenue will be allocated. But what that often means is that instead of using the additional tax revenue to alter existing tax systems, the new tax law brings with it a giant wasteful new bureaucracy. So in California most ballot initiatives like the lottery and cigarette tax came with a bunch of rules and bureaucracies. And now California is going with a unilateral cap and trade bureaucracy, which will be gamed by whoever is the new Enron, and make CA even less competitive.
So is my point that we will screw up a new policy no matter what? No. I still have the slightest optimism that we aren't quite that stupid. I think we need to be upfront about calling it a tax, and not pretend it's something else, pandering to those who are for it only if it is hidden behind enough earmarks. If you try to hide it behind a special complicated allocation system, it will mostly be lost to fraud, waste, and abuse.
It is by far the most simple to just add the tax raised as a simple addition to general revenue. No new bureaucracy that way. But to keep it revenue neutral and not regressive, it can easily be used to alter existing tax structures, without adding any new government bureaucracy. Each year there can be slight simple adjustments in taxes so that every dime from a carbon tax could be used for simple 2 line changes such as:
 Lower Social Security tax rate.
pay a roughly equal amount to each household by altering income tax and EITC brackets.
It's more obvious that government should not pick particular winners to subsidize (like Solyndra http://www.pv-tech.org/news/photon_energy_brings_bankrupted_solyndras_modules_back_to_european_market);. However the total waste of subsidies like that pales when compared to wasteful spending on permanent allocation bureaucracies. Particular research subsidies often do work at small development scale, just not at full scale, especially when the subsidy selection committee is neutral and has enough choices, but in general it's more effective to tax what we don't want (carbon emissions), and let people react and develop alternatives however they want. Or set up awards to whoever can first deliver a new advancement, similar to what DARPA has done with autonomous cars and commercial spaceflight. It can work to have general rules like 20-33 percent renewable power, but then you can have arbitrary definitions of what qualifies, like the special rule in California that disqualified pumped water energy storage, even though that is by far the best large scale energy storage system ever.
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TGT
Social climber
So Cal
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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How much do you want to bet that North Face products are made in China?
It's good that its paid spokeman talks the green talk, but bad the manufacturing walked. Great, another large corporation can go green here on the publics subsidy dime while the actual labor Intensive manufacture helps another coal fired chinese power plant go online weekly. But, then again, you can't see that from California.
What Mono, is the above propoganda graph your porn. Do you get all excited while masturbating over this shet? Give us a break, friggin wierdo.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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The top five oil producers earned $93 billion in profits last year.
And they'll make more than that next year. and the year after that. and after that..........
IF the planet is truly suffering, THEN STOP PRODUCING!
Why is the blame and guilt always directed to the addict, and not the dealer?
Let those fat bast*rds pay to clean up THEIR mess! And keep ur hands out of my pocket
Since when did the socialist liberals want more taxation without representation?
Whoever it is, continues to produce and put this product out for-sale, and now you want to punish me for using it?
Does that really seem mature?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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malemute ur anti-encourage-able!
90%+ of TNF's product line is manufactured in.... CHINA.
Are you sure that's all? back in 95 Vanity Fair bought'em out.Along with A5.
They moved manufacturing(mostly?) to china. No more building for bro's by bro's! ONLY for profit! Now they sell in places like Sportsauthority, and Big5, next Wallmart. Vanity Freaks took the name and reputation from TNF for nothing more than profit.FTV!(fuc the vanity's)
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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But know its the messenger and not the science, that turns people off.
That's not always true (I'd throw in a big dose of What's in it for ME), but it does help explain why even politicians rarely accomplish anything anymore, besides selling out.
No matter how level headed most people are, the internet/fast media often leads to too much focus on differences, and allows a few who may be poor spokespeople to bring down the discussion, leading to even more mudslinging.
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rick sumner
Trad climber
reno, nevada/ wasilla alaska
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Been watching this Tesla battery factory location sweepstakes with interest for months now. They've apparently settled on Reno (actually about 10 miles east of Sparks off interstate 80) as the manufacturing location for a lithium battery factory with 6500 good paying jobs. Thankyou california for "leveling the playing field" for export of your jobs. I hear tell that come jan. 1st your energy and fuel prices will be "neccessarily skyrocketing" even higher as the state leads the nation in implementing the progressive agenda. Any guesses where you hard earned tax dollars will end up?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Thankyou california
Don't thank her. She's not responsible for taxation without representation.
Thank the malemutes!
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