Global Waming "Evidence"?

[wacki]

What we're being told is that "global warming" is "settled science", and that we should drastically diminsh our standard of living in order to prevent destruction of the world.  For that, my standard of proof is very high indeed.

No, that is what conservationists and morons like Al Gore want you to believe.  Most scientists want to replace oil and coal with much more advanced technologies.   The media understands this concept about as well as they understand firearms.  Which is to say they are pretty clueless.

[mountainclmbr]

It is my opinion that the UN started with the "fix" and worked backwards. Kind of like Jeopardy: "Alex, I'll take politics for 100". "OK Mr. Gore, and the answer is socialism". "Alex, What is the cure for global warming or for global cooling, depending on whether the answer is stated in 2007 or 1970". "Mr. Gore, you are our winner!"

[Ron]

How did you form an opinion on something you don't understand?  I can see relying on someone more knowledgeable, but you seem to be saying that only the scientist that agree with GW are to be believed.  Sounds sort of circular to me.

It is the consensus of the scientific community that man is contributing to global warming.

Consensus is when a bunch of folks with the same presuppositions all get together and agree with each other, not to be confused with the scientific method.

There is comfort in numbers.

[griz]

Iain, I guess my problem is that you claim to not be knowledgeable enough to dispute the anti GW claims, but assert that some of anti GW claims are wrong.

At any rate, I suspect that I also do not know enough to authoratively say what is right, but I will still be skeptical until I see the one thing that several people have asked for:  evidence that man has caused GW.

Have a good weekend, Griz

[Iain]

griz, I'm not really asserting that certain claims are wrong, I don't believe I've engaged in any in depth analysis of any scientific claims that have been made. There are certain things that I recognise as misunderstandings or even misinformation, but I'm not sure where I've been explicit except on the issue of water vapour which is a commonly raised issue.

Ron, I'm not sure how to address the issue of consensus in science. I think when you say it is not to be confused with the scientific method you overstate your case. Consensus is when scientists agree that the theory best fits the facts, and it is usually arrived at by this method of peer review. I'm loath to mention Naomi Oreske because there lies a whole other can of worms, but a quick search on her name will take you to her study of peer reviewed climate science papers and how many of them (in her estimation, which is part of my hestitation to mention her) disagreed with the consensus position on climate change.

There are definite valid questions as to whether (as a scientist acquantaince of mine put it earlier today) science drives consensus or consensus drives science. But I would be very careful about assuming this is mere safety in numbers or that this is based on 'presuppositions', the consensus position is that of the IPCC 3rd Report, and the signatories to that report include very weighty bodies from around the world. I'm not about to delve greatly into Popper and the scientific method, but perhaps the idea that consensus is not part of the scientific method, but comes about as a result of the scientific method is worth a thought.

I find consensus difficult because there is always someone who disagrees with consensus and thinks that this makes them the new Galileo. Sure there are very notable exceptions - but in general the vast vast majority of those who oppose the scientific consensus turn out to be wrong.

And to mountainclmbr and my last contribution to this thread. If someone other than me in one of these threads read the words '...and scientists predicted global cooling in the 1970's...' and responded by saying something like 'Not one peer reviewed scientific paper has yet been found that predicted global cooling in the 1970's. Sure there were newspaper stories about it, but there have been newspaper stories about all sorts of questionable scientific claims. To compare a few newspaper stories to a vast canon of peer reviewed scientific work, regardless of my views of the veracity of those papers, is to err on the side of the ridiculous' then I'd probably quit these discussions pretty happy.

And griz, hope you have/had a good weekend too.

[m1911owner]

My understanding of scientific method is that the way that consensus is developed is that people take the predictions a theory makes, and perform experiments to see if the theory reliably predicts outcomes.

Like, for example, the prediction that the "climate experts" made that the 2007-2008 hurricane season will be the most devastating on record.  The devastating hurricanes we've experienced this fall and winter provide evidence that the theory is correct.

Oops, what a minute...  What hurricanes?

[wacki]

Like, for example, the prediction that the "climate experts" made that the 2007-2008 hurricane season will be the most devastating on record.  The devastating hurricanes we've experienced this fall and winter provide evidence that the theory is correct.

Oops, what a minute...  What hurricanes?

The meteorologists made those predictions and not the climatologists.  The climatologists do things on multi-year averages.  For an explanation as to why there were no hurricanes this year please read this:

http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptic_arguments/SAL.htm

It's due to a dust storm called Calima.  There is no dust storm in the Pacific and they are setting record numbers of typhoons.

[m1911owner]

The meteorologists made those predictions and not the climatologists.

So, are seriously going to try to tell me if there actually were a lot of serious hurricanes this year, the climatologists wouldn't be falling all over themselves saying, "See, I told you so!"?

When I was in school, cherry-picking results would earn you an "F". 

[wacki]

The meteorologists made those predictions and not the climatologists.

So, are seriously going to try to tell me if there actually were a lot of serious hurricanes this year, the climatologists wouldn't be falling all over themselves saying, "See, I told you so!"?

That is exactly what I'm saying.  Well, at least among the good climatologists.  If you go to Realclimate.org you will see they are constantly reminding us not to look at any individual year.  The new GRACE satellite has been suggesting catastrophic ice melt for almost four years now yet the guys at realclimate have been saying "it's too early to tell".  Some climate functions only need a sample set of a week.  Other climate functions need decades of data.  It totally relies on the underlying physics of what they are studying.

When I was in school, cherry-picking results would earn you an "F". 

Well know offense but the only person that is jumping to conclusions based off of any single year is you.  You made a conclusion and I explained to you why it is wrong (dust storm Calima).  In all honesty I don't think eliminating our fossil fuel consumption is something we need to fear.  I have no doubt it can be accomplished with very little, if any, pain to society.  My gut feeling is that in the long term it will make us much much better off.  However, I also think the systems many democrats want us to follow are just absolutely retarded and even counterproductive.  History has shown us that complex regulations get abused and manipulated.  And if you look at what is going on in Europe, you will see that Kyotto is no exception.

[Ron]

In all honesty I don't think eliminating our fossil fuel consumption is something we need to fear.  I have no doubt it can be accomplished with very little, if any, pain to society.

Thats just wacki!

OK, I admit when I saw your username I made a mental note to use that line first chance I got, lol.

If it was THAT easy I think we would be moving away from fossil fuels. Instead I think it is more likely we will be strip mining more and making oil from coal.

I would rather see more nuclear power and domestic drilling ie. ANWAR

[wacki]

If it was THAT easy I think we would be moving away from fossil fuels. Instead I think it is more likely we will be strip mining more and making oil from coal.

No we wouldn't.  The person that owns a mine or oil well has a life long cash cow.  If solar cells become mainstream then your solar power plant is only as good as the next generation of solar cells.  Competition becomes fierce and decentralized.  Anybody willing to put a panel on their roof is a possible competitor.  That would be a nightmare for the current generation of power companies.  You simply can't own the sun.

 And I didn't say it would be easy.  It will be difficult.  The good news is that there is lots of low hanging fruit.  I mean we are still using civil war era battery technology in our cars for crying out loud.  It will take billions of dollars and many years of research, but there is little doubt it can be done.  Some say it will take an effort on the scale of an 8 year Manhattan project.  I personally don't think it will take that long for most of the major improvements but it certainly won't be a small effort.  There are some people that believe a 1 billion dollar "sacrificial lamb" would bring solar power into the mainstream.  The sacrificial lamb is for the construction of a solar silicon/wafer fab plant.  That way solar companies won't have to rely on computer industry waste.  Once the economy of scales are in effect then a market will open and other techs like thin film will likely replace silicon based solar cells.  When it comes to a multi-trillion dollar industry like fossil fuels (nevermind auto, trains, etc), 1 billion dollars is nothing.  Unfortunately nobody is willing to burn a billion dollars of their hard earned money and the fossil fuel industry owns Washington.  If nobody is willing to risk 1 billion, who is going to risk 5 billion a year for 10 years?  There are only two industries that can make that kind of investment.  They are the oil/coal companies and Washington.  Neither one of those have any interest in making changes at the moment.  Their current projects are mostly for show.  Talk to any real scientist in the field and he/she will tell you that both hydrogen and corn-ethanol are boondoggles.

As for nuclear, did you know that coal releases 100x more radiation into the air?  Nuclear is actually a really clean tech (outside of the nuke dumps) and there have been numerous breakthroughs with breeding fuel from waste and long term storage.  Waste really isn't a problem IMO.  However, there is only a limited amount of uranium and if we go to plutonium and other fuels we will have major security problems with weapons grade nuclear fuel.  Thorium offers a lot of hope for a clean and safe nuclear future but the last time I read up on it the tech is still being developed.

[MechAg94]

I find consensus difficult because there is always someone who disagrees with consensus and thinks that this makes them the new Galileo. Sure there are very notable exceptions - but in general the vast vast majority of those who oppose the scientific consensus turn out to be wrong.

The problem is that "consensus" is being thrown about some sort of proof or justification for proceding with the assumption that man is causing global warming.  Consensus, in and of itself, is not evidence and proves nothing. 

Normally, consensus develops as facts, evidence, and experimentation prove that a theory is correct.  In this case, AGW supporters can't find the evidence so they seem to be skipping that part and trying to develop consensus anyway. 

[mountainclmbr]

I will hold out with a healthy amount of skepticism. Just look at the history of the GW debate. It started with the UN computer model that was cherry picked to predict the problem and then a so called fix cooked up at Kyoto that would dwarf the food for oil program.

Most of the scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO think that Global Warming and Global Cooling cycles  have natural causes. Most try to stay away from politics, but have privately said that the conclusions of many scientists seems driven by where their funding comes from. The wife of one of my coworkers is an environmental professor who studies GW. Her specialty is proving humans cause GW through observations of bird migration and flight patterns. I have been PC with this coworker and have not asked how you can prove one proves the other.

A funny story I heard from one of the NCAR scientists. He said that a big group of them went to the opening of Al Gores "An Inconvenient Truth". He said that the movie was so stupid that they were just busting up laughing, but it was during parts that were supposed to be serious or even frightening. He was sure everyone else in the theater thought they were crazy.

[Iain]

Ok, I lied. That wasn't my last contribution.

MechAg94, I think you'd find that if you presented such an argument to a climatologist they'd tell you that their consensus has come about because of the science, and that they're very sorry you haven't done the reading to understand that.

Mountainclmbr - I guess your acquaintances from NCAR didn't do any work to this page then*. Or any number of other pages on NCAR's website. Strangely that page addresses quite a lot of the usual stuff. Does your claim ("Most of the scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO think that Global Warming and Global Cooling cycles  have natural causes") have any basis in reality?

We could wait until after February the 2nd and then give some the NCAR scientists who are working on the up coming IPCC report a call - http://www.ucar.edu/news/releases/2007/ipcctips.shtml One of those heavily peer reviewed documents that outlines what the 'consensus' (dirty word, dirty dirty word) is.

*Note this, it seems to directly contradict your assertion

However, climate simulations at NCAR have shown that solar changes explain less than a third of the warm-up during the last century. The most straightforward explanation for a warming Earth is the greenhouse gases emitted when fossil fuels are burned in homes, gas and coal-fired power plants, vehicles, and factories.

http://www.ucar.edu/research/climate/future.jsp

[m1911owner]

However, climate simulations at NCAR have shown that solar changes explain less than a third of the warm-up during the last century. The most straightforward explanation for a warming Earth is the greenhouse gases emitted when fossil fuels are burned in homes, gas and coal-fired power plants, vehicles, and factories.

http://www.ucar.edu/research/climate/future.jsp

The above-referenced article demonstrates well exactly what I've been talking about.

1. First, they acknowledge that solar output has increased.

2. They then posit that this change has been "fraction of a percent since 1900."  However, we've had satellites that can measure this flux for less than thirty years.  They are simply guessing the rest of the last century.  And if their logic has been the same as on the RealClimate site, their guess is that solar output has been increasing while we've been able to measure it, but hasn't been for the rest of the century.

3. They then assert that this increase in solar output accounts for no more than a third of "global warming", based on their simulations.  That would be the same simulations that predicted the devastating hurricanes this year?  And when they can't even get a single year right, we're supposed to believe these simulations when extrapolated out for a full century, based on input that's a (politically-biased) wild-ass guess to begin with?

(By the way, the astute might observe that if we were simply to suppose that the rest of the contury has been similar to the 30- years we've been able to measure, and applied exactly their logic with that assumption, it would account for around 100% of the "global warming" they purport.)

4. And then they conclude (paraphrased): "Since we can't figure out where this 'global warming' is coming from, we figure it must be anthropogenic."

I note that this last statement is essentially a complete admission that they actually have no evidence of a causal relationship between human activities and "global warming."

[Iain]

Well, for all your astuteness you failed to notice a few things. One, that wasn't a peer reviewed article. Two, it was a general summary of their scientific research (for the benefit of the public), which I expect they'd be happy to point you in the direction of, but you wouldn't read it. Three, it was posted purely as a riposte to the mountainclmbr's anecdotal assertion, that is their official position. Take up your issues with them, I expect they have an email address and are just dying to hear from every internet expert that will actually discuss the issue with them.

You've already had the hurricane issue addressed, but you've failed to respond to it, but raise it again. You have no basis or expertise to make the judgements you have made throughout this thread, both of those facts seriously reflect on the sincerity of your inquiries. In fact I'll go so far as to say that like near every other thread on this issue here on APS what you wanted was someone to agree with you, someone to reassure you that you were right, so I apologise for my input. Why do you think I constantly stated that this isn't the best place for this inquiry, I was giving you the opportunity to prove that your inquiry was genuine. It wasn't.

[m1911owner]

Iain, sorry I haven't had more time to respond to the hurricane issue in more depth.  I have to leave right now, but briefly: I don't consider the hurricane issue to have been "addressed."  That article was essentially, "Here's why you shouldn't hold our models to account for this spectular failure, and should believe everything else we have to say."  I don't buy that argument.  And the failure of their hurricane predictions remains a spectacular failure that very vividly demonstrates that their models are incapable of the sort of long-term prediction they assert for them.

[wacki]

In this case, AGW supporters can't find the evidence so they seem to be skipping that part and trying to develop consensus anyway. 

Just curious, have you ever read a single article on global warming that wasn't from an industry hack?  Just about every single paleoclimate proxy supports the global warming theory.

[wacki]

However, climate simulations at NCAR have shown that solar changes explain less than a third of the warm-up during the last century. The most straightforward explanation for a warming Earth is the greenhouse gases emitted when fossil fuels are burned in homes, gas and coal-fired power plants, vehicles, and factories.

http://www.ucar.edu/research/climate/future.jsp

The above-referenced article demonstrates well exactly what I've been talking about.

1. First, they acknowledge that solar output has increased.

Yes, but very little.  If the sun was a possibility then don't you think Lindzen would be all over it?

2. They then posit that this change has been "fraction of a percent since 1900."  However, we've had satellites that can measure this flux for less than thirty years.  They are simply guessing the rest of the last century.

Israel has been taking sunlight measurements since 1950.  And they can reconstruct cosmic radiation measurements via isotope reading in the ice cores.  That gives us a million years of readings.  Charles Greeley Abbot, of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, started studying the relationship between solar variation and weather in 1900.  So that gives us direct measurements that are over a hundred years old.  Your assertion that they are simply guessing is very wrong.

4. And then they conclude (paraphrased): "Since we can't figure out where this 'global warming' is coming from, we figure it must be anthropogenic."

That's not how it works.  People have been predicting global warming since the 1800s. (Joseph Fourier, 1827)   Those predictions were based off of basic principles of physics.  What is even more surprising is that the calculations made back then (Svente Arrhenius, 1896) have been rather accurate.

Hard science is a lot more robust than you are making it out to be.  There are plenty of loons in the soft/social sciences.  I tend to be very skeptical of any statistical study of human nature.  That kind of science is just way too error prone.  But climate change is based off of very basic and very old physics.  The laws of physics are pretty solid.

[wacki]

Iain, sorry I haven't had more time to respond to the hurricane issue in more depth.  I have to leave right now, but briefly: I don't consider the hurricane issue to have been "addressed."  That article was essentially, "Here's why you shouldn't hold our models to account for this spectular failure, and should believe everything else we have to say."  I don't buy that argument.  And the failure of their hurricane predictions remains a spectacular failure that very vividly demonstrates that their models are incapable of the sort of long-term prediction they assert for them.

Did you even read the article on Calima I posted?  It sure doesn't seem like it.

[mountainclmbr]

My comments about NCAR scientists being largely non-political comes from a friend who I hike and snow shoe with. This could be highly subjective. He says that  the administration is highly political and probably to the left of the average CU professor (IMHO that is way left). He did mention that some worried that they could report "career limiting findings", but many did not worry since they could get better paying jobs in the private sector. Those about to retire have to watch their step. 

And since when did peer review prove something right? I have worked in research and development and have both written papers and reviewed papers. If you can pick your reviewers you can pick the result.

You can be pretty sure that human activity did not cause the sudden warming that ended the ice age 12,000 or so years ago. And did not cause either the preceeding ice ages or the interruptions in the ice ages for millions of years prior to that. And human activity probably did not cause the warming or the little ice age observed in Europe in the middle ages.

With thousands of interrelated variables affecting climate, there is no way to perform an experiment where you vary one thing, hold the other variables constant and measure what happens. But, it has always proven true that when socialism is the goal that the ends justify the means. That is why I am a skeptic.

[MechAg94]

wacki, everything I have read supporting GW is always full of words like "might", "may", "possibly" or other type of language that says they really don't know yet, but they really really think its true.  I have read a couple articles that were largely interviews with scientists running the models and publishing their results.  It was interesting reading just how much they had to mess with their model in order to show the global warming results they were looking for. 

[richyoung]

...when they can put CURRENT data in the models, run them backwards for 100 years, and get results that correspond to the records, then we'll talk.  Until then, its a stone cold fact that the so-called climatologists have to "correct" their best models to get CURRENT conditions when fed CURRENT data.  Further, since everyone wants to talk credentislas, I'm a computer guy, working for the government in the field of combat simulations, where we have to MODEL lots of things, including weather effects.  We do not now, nor are we ever likely, to have a computer complex and fast enough to model weather and climate and generate reliable results in a useful time span.  Even if we did, there isn't a sufficient historical record of good data, noer are there suffiecient sensors to take the "temperature" of the earth as a whole.

[wacki]

...when they can put CURRENT data in the models, run them backwards for 100 years, and get results that correspond to the records, then we'll talk. 

Can we talk yet?
http://www.logicalscience.com/skeptic_arguments/models-dont-work.html

Until then, its a stone cold fact that the so-called climatologists have to "correct" their best models to get CURRENT conditions when fed CURRENT data.  Further, since everyone wants to talk credentislas, I'm a computer guy, working for the government in the field of combat simulations, where we have to MODEL lots of things, including weather effects.  We do not now, nor are we ever likely, to have a computer complex and fast enough to model weather and climate and generate reliable results in a useful time span.  Even if we did, there isn't a sufficient historical record of good data, noer are there suffiecient sensors to take the "temperature" of the earth as a whole.

Are you saying accurately predicting the climate 20 years in advance is not useful?  Ok.

read that link please.  BTW, I'm a computer guy too. :-D

[wacki]

I have read a couple articles that were largely interviews with scientists running the models and publishing their results.  It was interesting reading just how much they had to mess with their model in order to show the global warming results they were looking for. 

Who am I to trust?  Your sourceless, linkless, and nameless post or this list of quotes:

http://www.logicalscience.com/consensus/consensus.htm

?