Most of them are indeed of the 70’s popular press variety, the problem is that most scientists were not consulted, most did predict that warming was coming even if there was a “Pause” and cooling back then.
This argument is already a classic crock from the denier media.
Please watch this and learn that your sources lied (and continue to lie) to you in regards to the cap ice not melting or constantly recuperating, the predicted effects of increasing global warming gases are already happening and are bound to get worse the longer we wait from doing a more significant effort.
I note that not a single one of those quotes is from a climate scientist talking about climate. This is just another attempt to invoke the silly “experts don’t know nuthin’” meme that I dealt with over here. It’s not a very useful argument.
I am convinced that you have no idea what climate scientists really understand and what they don’t, what the difference is, and what this means in terms of actionable policy. In fact it’s obvious from your post that you don’t.
You (and others) need to stop conflating “movements” with science. Nuclear power is an important clean-energy option that has been strongly advocated by many climate scientists.
I don’t think another round of ‘no it’s not happening - yes it is’ is all that useful. To my mind at least, that question is as settled as any question can be.
A much more interesting (to me) debate is ‘how bad will it be - is it really the worst probem we have?’
Wouldn’t it be awful? I mean, suppose they put oodles of money into research, and we get the one Einstein level genius who discovers the Holy Grail of energy…cheap, green energy for everybody, rivers full of drinkable water and edible fish. subsistence farmers producing enough to ensure they do not starve, all that good shit and then discover…to our horror and dismay!..that global warming wasn’t that big a deal, and we started a golden age of cheap green energy by mistake!
Well, as pointed before this is not likely to have no repercussions on the other problems we have to deal with.
What it strikes me the overall impression I get from contrarians that on this subject we can not chew gum and walk at the same time, we have and should deal with those issues at the same time.
If you think about it, for example, an effort like offering support to poor nations to deploy better energy sources that are becoming cheaper will make those nations to not depend on the whims of dictators or authoritarians that control fossil fuels. That is bound to do a lot to control war.
Just in the context of the topic of this thread, it is an interesting idea to debate the relative ranking of various problems. Rather than, say, a sterile “debate” about whether global man-made climate change is even happening at all - a debate I think is at this point pretty pointless, as it is pretty settled.
Naturally, the various problems are likely to be interdependent - and that goes multiple ways: a real all-out great power war is very likely to have terrible environmental effects, even if nuclear weapons are not used; income inequality is likely to lead “have-not” nations to adopt energy policies that are climate-change-accelerators; etc.
Deciding which problem is chicken and which is egg is likely to prove somewhat circular.
Let’s say that Congress authorized the President to appoint a czar who would have dictatorial powers on one subject and the President wanted you to be that czar and wanted you to pick the subject.
How many of you would honestly pick climate change as your issue, as opposed to health care or reining in the banks, or income redistribution?
This thread is about the #1 threat, not all the various threats. Effective management means setting priorities, because sometimes priorities can conflict. Climate change policy can conflict with energy prices, job growth, trade, and fighting poverty.
For example, if your top priority was to eliminate poverty, that would exacerbate climate change. So you’d have to decide which is more important. You can still fight climate change while fighting poverty, but you’ll be significantly less effective because about 2 billion more people will be driving cars than today.
You can also fight poverty while fighting climate change, but if climate change is the priority than you’re going to be doing it in such a way that as poor people enter the middle class, they won’t use much more energy. They might not be able to have their own cars or buy bigger houses.
Gigo you post that as though you have any idea of what I actually know and what I have actually studied.
The Earth Day predictions were an attempt to show that making predictions is hard, especially about the future. And yes, some of those guys were scientists. More importantly, they were taken seriously even though their predictions were absolutely wrong. Hell, Micheal E Mann of the Hockey Stick fame is all buddy buddy with Ehrlich and Ehrlich never got anything right which makes one wonder what Mann thinks about failed predictions.
A quick question for you (no peaking): What effect did switching from canvas buckets to metal buckets have on SST readings? How about engine intake readings? When did that happen? I know because I’ve actually read papers on those questions.
My interest in this area started about the time of the CRU hack. I saw the source code and was extremely shocked at the horrid source code and the sad state of the databases. At any of the companies I worked for that kind of work would have had the developer fired instantly.
So I started looking at things. I got the source for Manns Hockeystick and ran it with pink noise. I checked on Mannian proxies by looking at the actual source data. I’ve looked surface temps and krieging. And I have not been impressed with the science. There are a ton of assumptions and they rely too heavily on computer models. And some of the most visiable scientists really suck at math.
I’ve discussed in detail GCMs and their limitations with people who actually built GCMs. Granted, they were using them for a different application but they built GCMs. I’ve discussed the state of models with a friend of mine who, in his job at Lawerence Livermore, had to get the models to run on LLNL computers. The gentleman was at the time quite high up on the compute side of the house. He had an interesting take which was basically ‘The models suck. Climate Change is real and its gonna be bad but the models suck’. I’ve known this guy for ~25 years and he is a full on granola eating, Burkenstock wearing green. Seriously, at the lake he would eat granola every morning and wore Burkenstocks. Anyway, even he thought the models were useless and we discussed them in detail.
I’ve looked at the Jonh Cook 97% fiasco. For an interesting read on all that Cook et al. get wrong, this is a good place to start. (A side note. Skeptical Science was founded by Cook who was, according to Cook himself, a self employed cartoonist and web developer at the time. And he likes dressing like a Nazi)
I’ve looked at the TCR estimates, the effect of the pause on the TCR estimates. And the effect of aerosols on TCR. And other things that are poorly understood, like clouds.
I’ve looked at the use of proxies. For example, using tree rings and lake sediments to do historical reconstructions of ocean currents. Seriously, they are measuring historical ocean currents using proxies that do not directly measure ocean currents. At least we know trees have a temperature response when tree rings are used though there are quite a few issues with tree rings.
I’ve also looked at the social side of the issue which is quite ugly. Instant attacks on anyone who dares question the dire predictions. The name slinging, denier for example. Gigo, a quick question for you. You seem to like throwing the word ‘denier’ around. Probably because it is easier than your usual posts on climate change which consist of a link to Skeptical Science. Anyway, can you name one thing I deny besides the accuracy of the models?
I looked at the surprise finding that more energy is coming into the magnetosphere from solar wind than anyone guessed. And I watched this suprise finding be totally ignored even though it would affect the magnetosphere and possibly really affect cloud formation. LinkLink 2
I won’t even go into model paramertization.
There is more but through all this I’ve come to the conclusion that, yes, the world has warmed. It will warm some more and CO2 is involved. But it won’t be catastrophic and the actual solutions we have to really limit CO2 won’t be used.
And all this time and money that is being put into Climate Change (were all gonna DIE!!!) could be put to use to solve some real, immediate problems.
Have we really established that CO[sub]2[/sub] emissions from stuff are the main driver? I mean, as opposed to the radical deforestation of the lands? Is it possible that we could greatly mitigate climate change by creating massive carbon-sinks through reforestation everywhere possible? What would the impact of that be on our lives?
This post wasn’t a reply to me but I’ll throw in a few responses. No, I have no idea what you’ve studied. But I’ve read what you’ve posted. And I’ll say again that I am convinced that you have no idea what climate scientists really understand and what they don’t, what the difference is, and what this means in terms of actionable policy.
So, SSTs are not increasing, deep-sea temperatures are not increasing, the world is not warming, and the radiative transfer of greenhouse gases is a myth? Or WTF are you saying? That radiative physics has been overestimated by idiot scientists unaware that, for instance, all their land temperature stations are now located on hot airport tarmacs and inside urban heat islands?
Perhaps you’d like to show us what “source code” you saw and why it’s the basis for invalidating the scientific consensus of every national science academy of every major industrialized nation on earth and the IPCC about the impact of GHG emissions on climate. I’ve looked at most of the CRU stuff and all I’ve ever seen is an astonishing degree of ignorance and mendacity on the part of those who’ve taken it upon themselves to “interpret” it for the benefit of the masses.
Apparently what you did was slavishly believe the crap the Steve McIntyre posted on his personal blog critiquing decentered PCA. If you had any interest in honestly examining Mann’s work you would have seen – as Wahl and Amman did in their 2006 and subsequent papers, and that many others did including a review by the National Academy of Sciences – that neither centered nor decentered PCA nor any type of statistical analysis substantially changed the shape of the data. But hey, you “started looking at things”, so now you know better than the National Academies, right?
Then you should have seen that none of the challenged proxies change the shape of the data, either. In fact, Mann was exceptionally rigorous in validating his proxies to an extent few others had ever done before. Yes, Virginia, the world really is warming, and it’s not because of Michael Mann.
I’m not impressed with the fact that you can’t even spell “kriging” (named after Danie Krige but commonly misspelled). Which in the context of paleoclimate chronologies has just been used to fill in gaps in proxy coverage for purposes of continuity and not for purposes of evil conspiracy.
Please explain what “assumptions rely too heavily on computer models” and why, and which scientists specifically suck at math. I am primarily aware of a few statisticians like Steve McIntyre who suck at integrity, who are so discredited that they can no longer get published, and who spend most of their time running discreditable Internet blogs.
Why is a personal Internet blog from a student in social psychology supposed to be a persuasive critique of climate science or any of its proponents? Is Jose Duarte really the best you can do?
For the record: John Cook is more of a science journalist than a climate scientist. As such, he and some of his colleagues sometimes oversimplify and gloss over details but by and large they get things right. His site is a reliable and informative (and award-winning) source for the casual reader.
I’ve looked at clouds, too. But please, tell us why you think this so-called “pause” should affect either TCR or ECS, and exactly how, and exactly by how much. There is a world of scientific fame waiting for you out there.
The “attacks” I’ve seen, such as they’ve been, have been impatience and frustration with established deniers who intentionally impede the scientific process, like Roy Spencer and Soon & Baliunas. Real scientists welcome constructive challenges. Constant denial by imbeciles just gets tiring and time-wasting.
And …? Why is this important, other than another straw-clutching excuse for “maybe it’s all caused by something else” or “maybe climate change will magically stop?”
Oh, please do!
Sadly, all the people who have studied and published on climate science the whole of their professional lives have mostly come to the opposite conclusion. Should we believe them, or should we believe you and Jose Duarte?
The OP ignored some of the politics of this. Obama had 5 problems on his plate when he took office. They were 1) extracting our massive troop deployment in Iraq, 2) passing a stimulus package to fight the worst downturn in post-war history, 3) reforming healthcare, a task that had defeated 3 or more Presidents, 4) passing legislation that would regulate financial entities that acted like banks as banks, so as to prevent another catastrophic financial crisis and 5) addressing the scientific consensus on global warming, and assigning a cost to the damage that greenhouse emissions impose on us.
Amazingly we’re 4 for 5, in the teeth of the most obstructionist Republican congress in the nation’s history. There’s more work to be done on all of them. But I would say at the current time, global warming is the most pressing issue in the list. The others are being acted on.
That said if we’re discussing worst case scenarios, the greatest threat to our planet today is full scale nuclear war. But while I can think of policies that can increase the odds of that happening (eg invade countries at random without making post-invasion plans), it’s hard to identify a new program that would reduce them. We’re already in serious talks with Iran and the Russian situation is balance of power stuff.
Thanks wolfpup seems that sleestak is never aware of the march of time.
Mann is not the only one that worked on this, there is indeed a hockey team of researches with papers that show that Mann did a good job.
For some reason contrarians think that debunking the one that dared to be a pioneer on something is like killing the lead zombie, they really seem to think that science works like that.
By only looking to discredit past reconstructions and never bothering with new ones with more data and sceptical settings (Muller and the Berkeley team also agreed that one does get indeed that shape too in the record, the earth is warming and the best explanation for the current warming is us) contrarians do look like the creationists that think that debunking Darwin will do the trick, forgetting all the new research that confirms evolution.
As for the models, there is also a lot of progress made that is ignored.
It is also important to review what science writer Peter Hadfield reported recently about what is driving the science of climate change, and it is indeed not the computer models:
[QUOTE]
The evidence for climate change WITHOUT computer models or the IPCC
[/QUOTE]
And nice to see a Godwin. For a more reasonable look at the Jose Duarte and what he gets wrong and the ideology that is driving him and the deniers that think it is funny to call people like John Cook nazis check this:
It depends on what you mean by “scientific backing”. Certainly the worst case scenarios already predicted, and with scientific backing, did not happen.
Again, what you point at is what the popular press was saying based on very few scientists, most scientists predicted warming even when cooling was being reporting in the short range.
As science reporter Peter Hatfield mentioned before, most exaggerations that contrarians report were indeed that, but they were coming from popularizers of science that made the impression that many worst case scenarios were going to take place sooner rather than later as published science reported.
It is true that in the deep past when high concentrations of CO2 caused the sea levels to rise dozens of feet above what it is today, it will take a few hundred years to reach that level now. But the immediate problem is that on the way to that we can expect about a meter of ocean rise by the end of the century if there was no acceleration of the loss of ice.
Unfortunately that acceleration loss is being observed now. So while again a catastrophe for coastal cities will be for a far future, in the meantime I have seen reports that the meter rise could be seen more likely in the 2050s and then as time does not end then much higher rises and higher costs are to be expected, with a lot of unrest caused by large human migration.
What it can be said is that estimations of what was going to happen with cap Ice, ocean rise and acidification are happening now, and it will get worse the longer we wait to make concerted efforts. Of course the biggest beneficiaries will be our closest future generations, and as the Greeks used to say, ‘Society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.’
