Global Warming for Dummies

[JoelUpchurch]

@GIGObuster

Do you really check who was the host and adviser to the series?

Same goes for the Aji the gallina, ignorance is powerful over here.

Alley was the Narrator. That means the talking head that doesn’t write the dialog. Geoff Haines-Stiles is the writer and director.

[JoelUpchurch]

@GIGObuster

We found him before, not well regarded as a result of a closer inspection.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10863371&postcount=201

The best you could find was a straightdope post? Even I could do better than that.

Why don’t you actually try reading what he wrote in Forbes and respond to that instead of using Ad hominem attacks? Do you want to admit you don’t understand enough about climate science to answer what he wrote?

[GIGObuster]

@JoelUpchurch

Alley was the Narrator. That means the talking head that doesn’t write the dialog. Geoff Haines-Stiles is the writer and director.

And? If you think that means that he is not supporting and approving you will need to do better than that.

[GIGObuster]

@JoelUpchurch

The best you could find was a straightdope post? Even I could do better than that.

Why don’t you actually try reading what he wrote in Forbes and respond to that instead of using Ad hominem attacks? Do you want to admit you don’t understand enough about climate science to answer what he wrote?

And just like your dismissal of the latest scientist, mentioned mostly to show how wrong the Forbes writer was, you are assuming most dopers will not check the link.

[Aji_de_Gallina]

@GIGObuster

Do you really check who was the host and adviser to the series?

Same goes for the Aji the gallina, ignorance is powerful over here.

The host? Really? Who do ya think runs the show?
Also, I don’t do homework. I you want me to check a name, give the name.

@GIGObuster

We found him before, not well regarded as a result of a closer inspection.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10863371&postcount=201

No. “We” answered a different question, as usual. By the way, the link is wrong so we can’t check it.
Fail. Again.

---

Still no word on your gods at SkS. Why did you throw them under the bus?

[JoelUpchurch]

@GIGObuster

And? If you think that means that he is not supporting and approving you will need to do better than that.

No I don’t

[JoelUpchurch]

@GIGObuster

And just like your dismissal of the latest scientist, mentioned mostly to show how wrong the Forbes writer was, you are assuming most dopers will not check the link.

I did read it and it was yet another lame link to skeptical science. I’ve already stated my opinion about your links.

[GIGObuster]

@JoelUpchurch

No I don’t

Yes you do, as it is clear that he is not against anything shown in the show. But lets see him explain it:

Global Warming: It's Not About the Hockey Stick

At about the one minute mark one can see an example of one of his talks at his university:

“The basic for global warming is physics”

“Somebody who was going to argue against doing anything about global warming gave this person [a Republican congressperson] the [false] history rather that getting it from the scientific community.”

And… the same goes for Aji.

[GIGObuster]

@Aji_de_Gallina

No. “We” answered a different question, as usual. By the way, the link is wrong so we can’t check it.
Fail. Again.

The denier source’s fault indeed. But this is a very silly bit from you as the relevant quote from Warren Meyer is right there. And you are implying here that the cites with the math do not exist, what we have here is just an inability to Google.

EarthRef.org Reference Database (ERR) -- Quay et al. 2003

[PDF]

Redirect Notice

[JoelUpchurch]

@GIGObuster

Yes you do, as it is clear that he is not against anything shown in the show. But lets see him explain it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHhLcoPT9KM

At about the one minute mark one can see an example of one of his talks at his university:

“The basic for global warming is physics”

“Somebody who was going to argue against doing anything about global warming gave this person [a Republican congressperson] the [false] history rather that getting it from the scientific community.”

And… the same goes for Aji.

He is refuting an argument that nobody in the thread is making. Who in this thread has said anything about the hockey stick? Is your knowledge of Climate Science limited to stuff you see on television? In post 143 in this thread i said:

If you understand the actual math, you know more about global warming than 99% of the general public and practically all of Congress.

Why should I be shocked that a congressional aide said something stupid?

If you watch the video he is explaining something that Dr. Alvarez already explained much better in his article Cold Facts on Global Warming.

In fact Dr. Alley’s chart is a bit of a lie because he cuts off the left side of the chart where it shows the part of the spectrum that is blocked by water vapor. This is a prime example of someone who is acting like an advocate and not a scientist and only presents the facts that favor his case.

[GIGObuster]

@JoelUpchurch

He is refuting an argument that nobody in the thread is making. Who in this thread has said anything about the hockey stick? Is your knowledge of Climate Science limited to stuff you see on television? In post 143 in this thread i said:

You are now intentionally missing the point of the OP:

It appears to me that the Global Warming Skeptics make a better argument to the general public with simple, easily understood statements such as the natural variability of weather, the difficulty of differentiating correlation and causation, the over-reliance on computer models which can’t possibly take every factor that affects such a complex system as weather into consideration, and, most recently, the statement that the world has not been warming for 15 years:

You are now telling others that the hockey Stick is not a celebrated cause that is denounced and attacked by many “skeptics” out there as that and other paleo-reconstructions are used to point out that indeed it is warming, and natural cycles are not driving the recent rise in temperature.

@JoelUpchurch

Why should I be shocked that a congressional aide said something stupid?

Not the point for you, but once again the issue I’m dealing is for the OP, there is a lot of basic stuff that is being ignored by the mainstream media and distorted by the right wing media. (And, as seen before, part of the former includes Forbes on this issue)

@JoelUpchurch

In fact Dr. Alley’s chart is a bit of a lie because he cuts off the left side of the chart where it shows the part of the spectrum that is blocked by water vapor. This is a prime example of someone who is acting like an advocate and not a scientist and only presents the facts that favor his case.

And then you have to resort to discredit what most scientists found before, doing exactly what the aide and then the congress critter followed (not being aware of the dumb things that specially Republicans ***believe *** the facts are and that they use erroneous information to vote accordingly, and that is one of the main reasons why almost nothing is being done right now in most of the USA)

You need to be aware of history and early research to know why your point here on Dr. Alley is not accurate.

http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

. A few years after Arrhenius published his hypothesis, another scientist in Sweden, Knut Ångström, asked an assistant to measure the passage of infrared radiation through a tube filled with carbon dioxide. The assistant (“Herr J. Koch,” otherwise unrecorded in history) put in rather less of the gas in total than would be found in a column of air reaching to the top of the atmosphere. The assistant reported that the amount of radiation that got through the tube scarcely changed when he cut the quantity of gas back by a third. Apparently it took only a trace of the gas to “saturate” the absorption — that is, in the bands of the spectrum where CO2 blocked radiation, it did it so thoroughly that more gas could make little difference.(7*)

Still more persuasive was the fact that water vapor, which is far more abundant in the air than carbon dioxide, also intercepts infrared radiation. In the crude spectrographs of the time, the smeared-out bands of the two gases entirely overlapped one another. More CO2 could not affect radiation in bands of the spectrum that water vapor, as well as CO2 itself, were already blocking entirely.(8)

These measurements and arguments had fatal flaws. Herr Koch had reported to Ångström that the absorption had not been reduced by more than 0.4% when he lowered the pressure, but a modern calculation shows that the absorption would have decreased about 1% — like many a researcher, the assistant was over confident about his degree of precision.(9*) But even if he had seen the1% shift, Ångström would have thought this an insignificant perturbation. He failed to understand that the logic of the experiment was altogether false.

The greenhouse effect will in fact operate even if the absorption of radiation were totally saturated in the lower atmosphere. The planet’s temperature is regulated by the thin upper layers where radiation does escape easily into space. Adding more greenhouse gas there will change the balance. Moreover, even a 1% change in that delicate balance would make a serious difference in the planet’s surface temperature. The logic is rather simple once it is grasped, but it takes a new way of looking at the atmosphere — not as a single slab, like the gas in Koch’s tube (or the glass over a greenhouse), but as a set of interacting layers. (The full explanation is in the essay on Simple Models, use link at right.)

The early experiments that sent radiation through gases in a tube, measuring bands of the spectrum at sea-level pressure and temperature, had been misleading. The bands seen at sea level were actually made up of overlapping spectral lines, which in the primitive early instruments had been smeared out into broad bands. Improved physics theory and precise laboratory measurements in the 1940s and after encouraged a new way of looking at the absorption. Scientists were especially struck to find that at low pressure and temperature, each band resolved into a cluster of sharply defined lines, like a picket fence, with gaps between the lines where radiation would get through.(24) As Hulburt and Callendar had claimed, the most important CO2 absorption lines did not lie exactly on top of water vapor lines. Instead of two overlapping bands, there were two sets of narrow lines with spaces for radiation to slip through. So even if water vapor in the lower layers of the atmosphere did entirely block any radiation that could have been absorbed by CO2, that would not keep the gas from making a difference in the rarified and frigid upper layers. Those layers held very little water vapor anyway. And scientists were coming to see that you couldn’t just calculate absorption for radiation passing through the atmosphere as a whole, you had to understand what happened in each layer — which was far harder to calculate.

BTW, the main reason why I pointed at him in still stands, it was indeed a reply to show that it is very silly for the Forbes contributor to claim that ideology of the left is driving this, when it is the consensus of evidence that informed scientists on what is going on, yes, even Republican scientists.

My Second Reply to Senator Hatch

The most important scientific issue is overall climate sensitivity–i.e., if the rate of energy input or output from the Earth is changed (by altering solar input, greenhouse gas concentrations, and so on,) how much will the average temperature change? One can apply basic physics to calculate that if you double the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, the temperature will rise by about 1.2 °C, and nobody (besides a few non-scientist crackpots) disputes this figure. When the feedbacks in the system kick in, however, they can cause the temperature change to vary from this initial figure. I gather from your website that you already understand this point, but here’s where you go wrong. What really matters is not whether the models have all the individual feedbacks (like water vapor and clouds) exactly right, but whether the magnitude of the feedbacks as a whole is about right. And this overall climate sensitivity is something that has been empirically estimated in a number of ways. So in fact, it is “backed up with something more than hypothetical computer modeling,” as you put it. Climate sensitivity has been estimated for the 20th century, for the last millennium, for the last several hundred thousand years, and even for the last several hundred million years, using different methods of estimating greenhouse gas concentrations and solar input, among other things. Obviously, all these different methods are going to have different degrees of uncertainty, but the fact is that they all come up with central estimates that are pretty close to that of the IPCC–about 3.0 °C for a doubling of CO2. They consistently indicate that the system is dominated by positive feedbacks. If you would like to have a look at a good summary of this evidence, with references to the primary literature, check out the following URL.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-sensitivity-advanced.htm

It’s true that there’s considerable uncertainty in the magnitude of the cloud feedback, for instance, but improving the representation of individual feedbacks in models is only likely to significantly affect the timing of temperature change, not the overall climate sensitivity, which has been empirically estimated. Since you brought up the fact that a few scientists think the Sun has a much bigger role in climate change than the IPCC models indicate, you will no doubt be interested to read in the article I linked that Tung and Camp (2007) estimated climate sensitivity by looking at the response of the climate to the 11-year solar cycle. And guess what? The sensitivity they estimated was the equivalent of about 2.3-4.1 °C for a doubling of CO2, which is quite similar to the IPCC estimate of 2.0-4.5 °C.

A second tactic often used by climate contrarians is to throw out statistics that seem to contradict model projections, when in reality they either don’t really contradict the projections, or aren’t really the kind of thing the models are designed to project with any confidence. Your response seems to indicate that you’ve been listening to these kinds of arguments, as well. You argue, for example, “The IPCC models did not predict that NOAA’s satellite data would show Utah’s annual average temperature declining in the last 15 years, with a steeper decline in the last 10 years. If human CO2 were the major climate driver, this would not be occurring. At least, this is what many climatologists (including IPCC lead authors) have told me.”

Of course, this item has another reason besides what even conservative experts on the matter are telling us about feedbacks like water vapor, it is that many experts do link also to Skeptical Science; as told before, the science cited is linked all over the web pages and many science places and experts that recommend it also put in ridicule the idea you have of disparaging what in reality is a resource to inform others on what the experts are saying on the matter, Skeptical Science is for climate scientists like Talkorgins.org is for evolution scientists and biologists.

[JoelUpchurch]

I already stated that I don’t care what Congressmen say, but you keep trying to tar me with their statements. You keep linking to things that have nothing to do with what I said. You continue to ignore actual scientific papers I link to because you don’t understand. You are obviously incapable of discussing the actual science in climate science.

[GIGObuster]

@JoelUpchurch

I already stated that I don’t care what Congressmen say, but you keep trying to tar me with their statements. You keep linking to things that have nothing to do with what I said. You continue to ignore actual scientific papers I link to because you don’t understand. You are obviously incapable of discussing the actual science in climate science.

And making me understand unpublished science from your favorite source is not the point of the thread, but thanks for playing, in reality I was also testing, the discussion that you want to have was done before, the assumptions your favorite sources use are not well based, and are not considered much in the places that count. That you are not aware of many of the scientists involved and what is what they are saying is telling.

http://climatecrocks.com/2010/12/06/more-climate-testimony-richard-alley-and-ben-santer/

What is the difference? I mean, you know, you can look at a football team
and say they were losing back then and they are losing now, so what is the difference?

Dr. Alley: Right. So the first one is the physics. We just
cannot get away from the warming effect of CO2. It
has been known for over a century. It was really clarified by
the Air Force who were actually interested in what wavelength
should I use for the sensor on my heat-seeking missile. But
CO2 interacts with radiation and there is enough
CO2 to make a difference. And we just can’t get away
from that physics.

The second one is--is looking at is there any other 

possible thing to explain this. And it really took–I am sorry,
sir, it took a few billion dollars of your money and about 30
years to say that there is nothing else that we can find in
nature to do this. And this is because satellites are
expensive.

But someone says it is the sun. Well, then you need a 

satellite to watch the sun to see if the sun is getting
brighter, but it isn’t. And if someone says, well, it is
volcanoes, then we need a history of volcanoes and we need to
know what they are doing. And someone says it is cosmic rays,
we need cosmic ray monitors. And it has taken sort of 30 years
to get to the point of saying, no, we have looked really hard,
we can’t find anything else.

And there is a third piece, which is the fingerprinting, 

which is what Dr. Santer was discussing. If you were to say,
okay, yeah, I know we spend a lot of money on satellites and
the satellites say the sun is not getting brighter, but maybe,
maybe, maybe the satellites are wrong and the sun is getting
brighter and we can’t see it. That makes a prediction. It gets
warmer down here and it gets warmer way up at the top of the
stratosphere. CO2 says warm down there or colder up
there. What is going on is warmer down here and colder up
there? So the fingerprinting and time in space says that we got
it right on the other two pieces. It is mostly us now.

[brazil84]

@JoelUpchurch

I already stated that I don’t care what Congressmen say, but you keep trying to tar me with their statements. You keep linking to things that have nothing to do with what I said. You continue to ignore actual scientific papers I link to because you don’t understand. You are obviously incapable of discussing the actual science in climate science.

As far as I can tell, GIGOBuster just scans peoples’ arguments for key words, uses those words to search web sites like skeptical science; and then liberally cuts and pastes excerpts. If you have a question or argument which is not addressed on one of those sites, he just ignores it and posts another excerpt which misses the point.

[GIGObuster]

@brazil84

As far as I can tell, GIGOBuster just scans peoples’ arguments for key words, uses those words to search web sites like skeptical science; and then liberally cuts and pastes excerpts. If you have a question or argument which is not addressed on one of those sites, he just ignores it.

And this is just silly, I was willing to let his link to the full of math item lie there as it is just one site and it is not well regarded among the researchers and experts involved with this issue. But he had to come back with a flawed opinion site.

The self infected tarring from **JoelUpchurch **we are talking about now started by him citing a source that is playing fast and loose with ideologies and definitions and it has a history of being unreliable.

Then the self tarring was compounded by claiming that people like Dr. Alley are lying and that his opinion of Skeptical Science has any validity. Once again, a self infected tarring, the key words brazil84 is referring are there alright, but if only he had let his cite speak for itself and not add comments that showed a lack of pertinent information that everything would had been alright, when that does not happen one has to point at the self tarring.

[Aji_de_Gallina]

@GIGObuster

Yes you do, as it is clear that he is not against anything shown in the show. But lets see him explain it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHhLcoPT9KM

At about the one minute mark one can see an example of one of his talks at his university:

“The basic for global warming is physics”

“Somebody who was going to argue against doing anything about global warming gave this person [a Republican congressperson] the [false] history rather that getting it from the scientific community.”

And… the same goes for Aji.

There is a gigantic difference between “look what this republican scientist says” and “it is clear that he is not against anything shown in the show”. It’s not his show.

A video from the greatest of scientists greenman3610+ (who I’m sure has a copule of PhDs in geology, physics, atmospheric sciences and computer modelling) about a topic we are not discussing, unless you have the very lame idea the showing that he belives in GW is going to give me a heart attack.
*I know it’s two guys

@JoelUpchurch

I already stated that I don’t care what Congressmen say, but you keep trying to tar me with their statements. You keep linking to things that have nothing to do with what I said. You continue to ignore actual scientific papers I link to because you don’t understand. You are obviously incapable of discussing the actual science in climate science.

The thing is that GigO keeps debating “generic denier” and gets cues from webpages with sections “how to respond to deniers”, instead of actually debating or, God forbid, presenting personal ideas.

@GIGObuster

The denier source’s fault indeed. But this is a very silly bit from you as the relevant quote from Warren Meyer is right there. And you are implying here that the cites with the math do not exist, what we have here is just an inability to Google.

EarthRef.org Reference Database (ERR) -- Quay et al. 2003

[PDF]
Redirect Notice

“The denier’s fault indeed”, so that means you didn’t check the link and didn’t allow us to verify the truth.

What, even more Lame-o Link-o?
The isotope research is very interesting, but it’s not an answer to the original post.

---

Still no word on your gods at SkS. Why did you throw them under the bus?
I won’t check your link in any real depth until you vouch for your gods.

[GIGObuster]

@Aji_de_Gallina

There is a gigantic difference between “look what this republican scientist says” and “it is clear that he is not against anything shown in the show”. It’s not his show.

He already said that Dr. Alley is lying.

@Aji_de_Gallina

---

Still no word on your gods at SkS. Why did you throw them under the bus?
I won’t check your link in any real depth until you vouch for your gods.

And repeating this just makes you look more ridiculous (Fine with me) as many scientists, even conservative ones like Bickmore, link to SkS and recommend it.

[JoelUpchurch]

@GIGObuster

And making me understand unpublished science from your favorite source is not the point of the thread, but thanks for playing, in reality I was also testing, the discussion that you want to have was done before, the assumptions your favorite sources use are not well based, and are not considered much in the places that count. That you are not aware of many of the scientists involved and what is what they are saying is telling.

http://climatecrocks.com/2010/12/06/more-climate-testimony-richard-alley-and-ben-santer/

Yet again you post something that has nothing to with what I said. I also publish links to peer-reviewed science papers and you ignore and prefer to link to you favorite blogger and don’t even understand what they said.

[GIGObuster]

@JoelUpchurch

Yet again you post something that has nothing to with what I said. I also publish links to peer-reviewed science papers and you ignore and prefer to link to you favorite blogger and don’t even understand what they said.

I and many others understand, Dr Alley is not lying, and does support all the items mentioned in the show and his points on water vapor are valid. And Forbes is a capitalist fool for using that contributor.

[JoelUpchurch]

@GIGObuster

He already said that Dr. Alley is lying.

And repeating this just makes you look more ridiculous (Fine with me) as many scientists, even conservative ones like Bickmore, link to SkS and recommend it.

I said the chart was a lie, not Doctor Alley.

If you watch the video he is explaining something that Dr. Alvarez already explained much better in his article Cold Facts on Global Warming.

In fact Dr. Alley’s chart is a bit of a lie because he cuts off the left side of the chart where it shows the part of the spectrum that is blocked by water vapor. This is a prime example of someone who is acting like an advocate and not a scientist and only presents the facts that favor his case.

I will change what I said from a bit of a lie to saying the his chart is misleading. The revised sentence would read:

In fact Dr. Alley’s chart is misleading because he cuts off the left side of the chart where it shows the part of the spectrum that is blocked by water vapor. This is a prime example of someone who is acting like an advocate and not a scientist and only presents the facts that favor his case.