Global Warming Since 1997 Underestimated By Half 534
Layzej writes "A new paper shows that global temperature rise of the past 15 years has been greatly underestimated. The reason is that the weather station network covers only about 85% of the planet. Satellite data shows that the parts of the Earth that are not covered by the surface station network, especially the Arctic, have warmed exceptionally fast over the last 15 years. Most temperature reconstructions simply omit any region not covered. A temperature reconstruction developed by NASA somewhat addresses the gaps by filling in missing data using temperatures from the nearest available observations. Now Kevin Cowtan (University of York) and Robert Way (University of Ottawa) have developed a new method to fill the data gaps using satellite data. The researchers describe their methods and findings in this YouTube video. 'The most important part of our work was testing the skill of each of these approaches in reconstructing unobserved temperatures. To do this we took the observed data and further reduced the coverage by setting aside some of the observations. We then reconstructed the global temperatures using each method in turn. Finally, we compared the reconstructed temperatures to the observed temperatures where they are available... While infilling works well over the oceans, the hybrid model works particularly well at restoring temperatures in the vicinity of the unobserved regions.' The authors note that 'While short term trends are generally treated with a suitable level of caution by specialists in the field, they feature significantly in the public discourse on climate change.'"
Install more weather stations (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly they have a cooling effect.
Re:Install more weather stations (Score:5, Funny)
But those few square kilometers that we miss to cover will spontaneously catch fire when all warming have to flee to them.
Re:Install more weather stations (Score:5, Funny)
I have read some stuff about "chilling effects" of certain government programs. Maybe these programs should not be dismantled but rather refocused?
So what? (Score:4, Insightful)
Japan is rejecting its existing CO2 commitments, Australia is rejecting existing and new CO2 laws, and we're seeing rejections of carbon trading systems in Europe.
So what is the point?
The only reason we have such intense political conflict over the issue is that it is used to justify taxes, restrictions, and various other regulations.
Well... Those aren't going to be happening any time soon indifferent to the science.
The economy is terrible.
People already feel over taxed.
Any further taxes, restrictions, or regulations along these lines won't be accepted.
So why are you guys still trying so hard? For now at least... its over. Its done.
AGW may be the doom of humanity and we might all be living under water while Kevin Costner drinks his own pee while shooting "smokers" in their mad max oil tanker.... But that won't change the fact that people will vote these regulations down.
So... if you're interested in doing anything besides spinning your wheels uselessly... figure out another way to contribute to a solution besides unpopular heavy handed government restrictions.
I say that with the full knowledge that about a dozen people are about to tell me that that is the only thing that will work. Well, no it won't because it won't be accepted and therefore won't work. So if that is all we've got then there is no solution. If people won't accept it... then it won't work. Unless you want to try an Eco-dictatorship where you just shoot people that disagree. Have fun with that.
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Name one important transition throughout history that occurred smoothly. Hell, ending prohibition on alchohol took some work and that was something everyone should be able to agree to. Look at pot legalization or gay marriage today. It should be clear at this point that the biggest pro
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Sure. Try to fly to the moon by flapping your arms... then call anyone that says that's impossible stupid.
Keep up the good work.
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That word... (Score:3)
Don't be so defeatist.
It's not defeatist to point out that something that cannot happen, will not.
What is truly defeatist is to continue to pretend that the impossible solution is the only way to fix the problem.
For example, instead of beating people over the head with more regulation that they plainly will not accept, you can push for people to accept things they are already ambivalent about, like nuclear energy (which reduces CO2 emissions).
If you are not willing to do that, you are basically telling peop
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I suspect that you don't *want* to believe me, which is fine.
Believe what? I don't put much stock in cultists, that is true. I believe in the careful application of science, not the politics of fear.
I hope you remember this little conversation in a decades time,
We are a decade in from when your cult of fear started their efforts, and real-world measurements all over have crush what you are said. So when you say "remember in a decade", it's plain you cannot even take your own advice on that front. In ano
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If the cost is close to zero then you won't need to enact any taxes, carbon trading, or restrictions.
All of that has a very high cost. But you said you had a low cost. So you won't use any of that.
How will you reduce carbon emissions without racking up costs?
I'm assuming unicorn magic now because short of major technological innovations that's about all we've got.
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It would be really nice, wouldn't it, if someone getting something wrong the first time meant they couldn't possibly be right about it ever again?
The data and the methods keep changing, but the conclusion stays the same: drastic modifications of human behavior, imposed by fiat from our academic and political betters. None of the models with dire predictions have had any actual, demonstrable predictive power yet we are supposed to take them seriously?
I could smoke and eat nothing but steak and eggs.
Only one of those activities would be bad for you. Seriously, the lipid hypothesis is bullshit.
No one would have to worry about the deficit.
An odd point to bring up in a discussion about increasing government involvement. Roughly speaking, the de
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Doesn't matter what the australian government is doing. That is one data point in a cloud of data points.
If I showed you ONE weather station that had consistent cooling over the last 100 years would that convince you that global warming wasn't happening?
No.
So... why are you ignoring the fact that this legislation is unpopular throughout the world and not being accepted.
Again. The chinese and indians have said they won't even consider it.
The middle east won't accept it.
Russia won't accept it.
Japan is rejecti
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Please show me what percentage (or any non-modeled number) of that rise is due to human activity. Now, we can talk about solutions.
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I happen to think there are still people willing to discuss options rationally. I know most no longer believe that, and I know most are too busy insulting those who don't toe the line THEY maintain, but let's just try it anyway for a bit, ok?
Your assertion that "thermonuclear war" or "germ warfare" is "what it would take" to reduce world popu
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Three easy ways to lower the birth rate (without enforcing draconian "One Child Per Couple" policies) is to a) raise the standard of living of people, b) distribute birth control (including "morning after" pills) and provide education about it, and c) guarantee women's rights worldwide.
A) Poor people in rural areas tend to have more children because they need more hands helping and because that raises the odds that one of their kids will marry and have kids of their own. If these people had access to bette
Orders of magnitude errors dont inspire confidence (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: Orders of magnitude errors dont inspire confid (Score:5, Funny)
No no no. You don't understand. *this* time we got it right.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They don't really understand what's going on, at least with any degree of precision. That's why responsible climatologists give overall projections a wide error band. However, pretty much all the predictions based on honest science (as opposed to throwing spaghetti against the wall) point in the same direction.
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No, the science always matters. Just because we can't pull the political will out to fix it (and I agree with you, we are very, very unlikely to change anything this late in the game), but doing the science is important.
First of all, this isn't going to be a total Zombie apocalypse. It may well be pretty bad in some places, not so much in others. Climate change is going to be going on - basically forever as far as humans go. Better predictions may well help future generations minimize harm. At some po
Re:Orders of magnitude errors dont inspire confide (Score:5, Insightful)
At some point it's going to be obvious to even US Republican Senators that climate change is going to economically effect their tiny little world and they might try to do something about it.
It's already obvious to the Pentagon, but everybody knows that place is full of pinko, tree-hugging, industry hating, enviro-whackos.
Especially (Score:4, Interesting)
The method used works well over the oceans - is that where they omitted data and the used the prediction method? But it works "particularly well" where we have no actual data to validate it...
Re:Especially (Score:4, Informative)
The method used works well over the oceans - is that where they omitted data and the used the prediction method? But it works "particularly well" where we have no actual data to validate it...
no - while the infilling that NASA uses works well over the oceans. The hybrid method (leveraging satellite data) works particularly well over the unobserved regions.
And yes - they do have data to validate it. Read the preceding paragraph: The most important part of our work was testing the skill of each of these approaches in reconstructing unobserved temperatures. To do this we took the observed data and further reduced the coverage by setting aside some of the observations. So to test the skill of the various methods they just compare the results against the data that they set aside during the tests.
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In a geologic sense, 10 years is but a blink of an eye.
That's pretty much the problem we're in. A decade means nothing. A century is starting to show a hint of a trend. And we, as human, affect climate SO radically that we don't even needed a century to have an impact on the climate. Sadly, we can't really sit around for a century doing what we're doing now and then go "hey look, 70 years ago we could have prevented this".
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The postulated AGW effect, far from being uniquely rapid, is in fact, much more gradual than some naturally caused pronounced climate effects. By orders of magnitude.
The Younger Dryas [wikipedia.org] of just 12 thousand years ago caused a mini ice age lasting 1300 years. It had long been thought to be about a decade in onset (still much more rapid than AGW effect), but recent evidence [sciencedaily.com] now suggests that it transformed a warm and sunny Europe into an icy, near-glacial freeze in only six months.
Thee were several dramatically [wattsupwiththat.com]
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Regardless of which side of the warming debate you're on, hearing reports that a climate projection was off by half doesn't instill confidence that scientists really understand what's going on.
And having somebody claim this is about "climate projections" will show us what?
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A factor of a half is not "orders of magnitude" larger. It's of order 0 in fact.
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Well, it depends on your base, and we're all computer scientists here.
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Regardless, if we spend money to reduce our greenhouse gases and it turns out global warming was a myth, no harm no foul, and as an added bonus, we have less smog!
If we don't spend money to reduce our greenhouse gases and it turns out global warming is real, we're boned.
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Not necessarily. This story does a good job explaining that many solutions to global warming involve completely turning our backs on the poor.
http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/voices/michael-shellenberger-and-ted-nordhaus//the-great-progressive-reversal/ [thebreakthrough.org]
That is not "no harm, no foul".
I'm not saying, "damn the consequences, coal power for the poor". But I am saying that the idea that we can improve peoples lives without giving them affordable power is a preposterous "nobel savage" myth.
The climate scien
Same goes for Doctors. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Orders of magnitude errors dont inspire confide (Score:5, Insightful)
Science really isn't about confidence. It's about evidence. If holding the line, even when you know you're wrong, is what makes people feel confident, it's no wonder they turn to religion. But I'm personally thankful that at least one discipline isn't afraid to publish results that contradict earlier findings, if that's where the evidence leads.
As someone who understands this process, findings like this lend tremendous credibility to the scientific community, and yes, boost my confidence in the work they're doing and the integrity of the published results. It's what makes science the best method we know of for understanding reality.
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Regardless of which side of the warming debate you're on, hearing reports that a climate projection was off by half doesn't instill confidence that scientists really understand what's going on.
An order of magnitude error is a factor of 10. This was a factor of 0.5.
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"No, no, really.
This time I'm SURE we're right on."
-Scientists*
*ie activists posing as scientists. Real science is a matter of hypothesis and testing, not public proclamations and "demands for action".
Headline - by half? (Score:2)
The only thing in TFS is that they cover 85% of the globe, where does the "half" come from?
Re:Headline - by half? (Score:5, Informative)
The only thing in TFS is that they cover 85% of the globe, where does the "half" come from?
From the paper, which actually found 2.5 times as much warming by leveraging satellite data as the CRUtemp does by ignoring the unobserved region. The paper shows that the Arctic is warming at about eight times the pace of the rest of the planet. This is not an unexpected finding: see polar amplification [wikipedia.org]
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well, apparently the numbers they chose for the missing areas increase the total warming by "half".
which kind of implies that the warming there has been enermous.
but the figures from these closest one's were already used in previous estimates? and snow etc of polar regions has been pretty well in focus? so huh?
85%? (Score:2)
The reason is that the weather station network covers only about 85% of the planet
What does that even mean?
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"Aw, you can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. Forty percent of all people know that." - Homer Simpson
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It means that there are no surface weather stations on 15% of the planet.
Models all the way down (Score:4, Insightful)
One model predicts global warming. A second model guesses at the surface temperature in places where there are no thermometers and finds warming. The second model confirms the first.
And this is science.
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If it's 100 degrees at point A and it's 100 degrees at point C, will a point B between them be more likely to have 100 degrees or 0 degrees?
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The temperature in Seattle, WA is 8C. The temperature in Spokane, WA is 2C. What is the temperature in Moses Lake, WA?
0C.
Re:Models all the way down (Score:4, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
We are looking very fucked recently (Score:4, Insightful)
Between the jellyfish blooms and this...things are looking much worse all the sudden. I'm not even getting into the various "superstorms" yet.
A risky idea that might get us out of this is to dump lots of money into a "manhattan project" for fusion power and photovoltaics. Advances in those fields could solve global warming quite easily.
Re:We are looking very fucked recently (Score:5, Insightful)
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We wouldn't have to stop using fossil fuels quickly and entirely to be on a good path to solving global warming. Fusion and photovoltaics could eliminate the need for fossil fuels to power the electrical grid, and by extension, to power most cars. That would only leave aircraft, rail and trucking, and a few super-polluting supertankers & other large ships.
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OK, enough (Score:4, Informative)
Look, I am fed up with this. Just turned 40 last Sunday. Have pictures from all the 40 birthdays. All the way through the 70-ties and half 80-ies I am on ski - 50 cm or more snow, winter is in full swing. Late 80-ties and early 90-ties - cold but not freezing. After that it became ridiculously hot until last Sunday when the absolute record was set - it was 23 (I repeat 23 degrees!!!). And BTW, this 20-23 degrees lasted for 4 weeks in total (mid-October -mid November). Utterly ridiculous and unheard off.
Since 10 years the fruit trees in our garden do not bear fruit because it is too hot in January and February, so they start blossoming too early. Then a few frosts in March and they are gone. 17 degrees Celsius in mid-February (for a week or longer)? In my country where this is the coldest month? WTF?!?
Say what you will about anecdotes, I don't give a damn. My experience is unambiguous. The Earth is warming.
Re:OK, enough (Score:5, Funny)
Say what you will about anecdotes, I don't give a damn. My experience is unambiguous. The Earth is warming.
No you must be wrong. It's as cool as it has ever been in my gas-guzzler with the aircon on full.
Global Warming vs. Terrorism (Score:5, Insightful)
I admit, it's a bit off topic, but it is something that has bugged me for ages and I still didn't find an answer, so please, maybe someone can shed some light on it:
Why is there a "controversy" about Global Warming, and why is there none about "Terrorism"?
Global Warming may or may not happen. Ok. I don't want to discuss what kind of "proof" one side or the other may have, let's just say it may or may not happen. Likewise, terrorism. There may or may not be terrorist attacks on some parts of "our" (with varying definitions of "our") soil. Again, I don't want to discuss whether or not they would happen.
The point now is: We try to do anything in our power to prevent terrorist attacks, while at the same time we argue whether or not we should do anything to prevent Global Warming. My question is: From a risk management point of view, shouldn't it be the other way 'round?
Both are classic examples of Risk Management problems. Risk and cost to mitigate vs. reward/damage contained. It's the usual 2x2 matrix. On X, we have "do nothing" and "do something", on Y we have "nothing happens" and "something happens" (ok, very simplified, but you get the idea). So, in case of terrorism, that would net us:
We don't do anything and nothing happens: Pre-9/11 situation, no cost, perfect situation
We do prepare and nothing happens: Possibly the current situation, high cost and no damage
We prepare and an attack happens: Also the possibly current situation, high cost but with good damage control, leading to no/little damage
We don't prepare and an attack happens: Worst case scenario, no cost to prepare but high damages, possibly costing thousands of lives.
When you do the same matrix for Global Warming, it looks quite similar, though with a teeny-tiny little twist at the end:
We don't do anything and nothing happens: Current situation and best case future scenario
We do prepare and nothing happens: High cost, potential change in our lifestyle for no gain.
We prepare and an attack happens: Also high cost, but climate changes can be mitigated to the point where only little/no damage has to be suffered.
We don't prepare and an attack happens: Worst case scenario, with millions on coastlines being dead or homeless, with out of control storms and the weather from hell.
The thing I have problems with now is: The former can, worst case, cost a few thousand lives with maybe a building or two gone. The latter can literally cost millions of lives with coastal areas becoming uninhabitable for decades, if not forever, with storms causing damages in the billions and unforeseeable effects to agriculture and nature (and of course tourism, but I guess that's the least of our concerns then). And we're not talking about some brown bodies being killed, that could well be millions of AMERICANS dead, so the usual "Anyone outside the US doesn't count as human to the US" won't apply.
Yet we pump billions into the defense against terrorism, but we keep bickering on whether or not Global Warming may or may not happen. Anyone able to explain the sense in that?
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Re:Global Warming vs. Terrorism (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Global Warming vs. Terrorism (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a couple of reasons:
1. Intrusiveness. The War on Terrorism hardly affects most people in their day-to-day lives - they have to take off their shoes at airports, nameless bureaucracies have computers read thru their humdrum emails and it was a very defined subset of Americans who were shipped off to war. The War on Carbon potentially affects everything because it makes day to day life so much more expensive and restricts normal consumer choice (you want a filament lightbulb? Too bad - buy a CFL! Don't like them for some reason? Buy an LED for 10x as much! Oh, and did we tell you that your yearly trip to Grandma in Arizona is killing the planet? Stop doing that!).
2. The sheer cost. Most mitigation schemes for global warming are in the ludicrous number range - trillions of dollars a year for 100 or more years. On top of that drag, most are designed to destroy economic growth (you almost have to in order to ratchet down energy use fast enough). This isn't a boo-hoo First World Problem - it's mostly a tragic Third World Problem. Germany gives up a few percentages of economic growth for 50 years - that's a hit (and the government would fall). Ethiopia gives up economic growth for 50 years and you're consigning millions to abject poverty and breeds radicalism.
3. The perception gap. The War on Terror seems to affect the rich and powerful in the same ways it affects the poor and the hoi-polloi - maybe a little less (they're rich!) but it seems somewhat similar. Even Mitt Romney has to take his shoes off at the airport. AGW mitigation, however, seems to be a problem that only the poor and middle class need to sacrifice for - Al Gore has numerous mansions, jets all over the world, uses more energy in a day than most families do in a week. AGW "solutions" seem to nicely dovetail with the natural desires of the elite - less upward mobility, pricier and/or more organic food, paternalism toward their lessers.
The optics on AGW are terrible - which is one reason there's such resistance. Killing bad guys, however expensive and destructive that may be, appeals to a lot of folks. If there were better optics - and a range of policy choices that didn't seem to favor the technocratic elite - you might not have such hostility.
Re:Global Warming vs. Terrorism (Score:4, Insightful)
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Here is the direct answer to your question, it has to do with the economic intersts that each policy affects.
Defense and security spending is a type of economic stimulus and makes many people a lot of money.
Global warming is about using and spending less and potentially costs people money.
As a result people evalulate the risks of these two situations differently.
How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? (Score:3)
Instead of dreaming up new ways to interpolate over spotty and incomplete data, why don't they invest in some thermometers and stick them where they need to fill in the data gaps going forward? Real measurements trump "we think this is what the measurements would have been" any day of the week.
And if the response is, it's hard to put up weather stations in all of these far off and exotic locales, tough beans. The fact that science is hard doesn't make incomplete measurements and convoluted interpolations any more solid.
Amazing (Score:4, Informative)
I thought Slashdot was the place for rational individuals. Instead many of the posters are simply in denial what's happening. Of course AGW is being exploited, but the change is still real, and the humans have changed the Earth's atmosphere and the capacity to react to such sudden changes. What's happening now on the global scale is a natural feedback for the historically sudden input by one species and its technology.
If you still don't find that logical - taking into account simple physical phenomena known for over 100 years (and direct observations) - imagine this:
Alien race starts to pour greenhouse gases into the Earth's atmosphere. Who do you think is guilty of the resulting warming? What if the alien race starts to chop trees and rain forests, and - gasp - what if they actually maintain billion head cattle population (responsible of major chunk of the greenhouse gas emissions)?
The cattle population for example would be at its natural level if we stopped feeding it, letting the cattle to find its own food.
It's amazing how denial can work, isn't it? It's natural however - the first phase of confronting something uneasy - but it's still there on the path to understanding, so don't worry you are well on your way.
In other news ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The authors note that 'While short term trends are generally treated with a suitable level of caution by specialists in the field, they feature significantly in the public discourse on climate change.'
Which is a nice way of saying that the results of this data is to be taken with a grain of salt. But they acknowledge that the general public will probably grab them and run of in some direction or other, screaming nonsense.
Its always so much worse than it was last week (Score:3, Insightful)
How is it that EVERY SINGLE WEEK there is some new story about how AGW is WAY worse than we thought.
You want to know why no one gives a shit about AGW? This is why? You can only tell me my life is over tomorrow for so many days before I realize you're talking out your ass ... even if I'm a stupid moron.
EVERY FUCKING THING THAT HAPPENS IS CAUSED BY GLOBAL WARMING ...
And no one gives a shit because common sense tells us that we should be dead by now ... well, 20 or 30 years ago, according to these guys and their 'OMG WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT'.
Re:youtube? (Score:5, Informative)
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Since most of the deniers seem to get their arguments from quality sites like youtube they probably thought it was a good place to post a video with some real research.
The mistake they make is thinking the deniers are interested in science at all....
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Isn't that the same thing these days?
Re:youtube? (Score:4, Informative)
*FACEPALM*
I understand not reading the story. This is Slashdot after all. But not reading the summary? Come on man. There's a link to paper right at the start of the summary. The youtube vid was to explain it to the average Joe, not for passing a scientific review.
Re:youtube? (Score:4, Informative)
Another idiot who doesn't understand the difference between weather and climate and the effects of natural variability.
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Please explain how this was feigned, fudged, and fibbed. I'm sure there are plenty of denialist websites that can help you with that.
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Let me help you more: the AC post directly above yours "cites" http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/14/curry-on-the-cowtan-way-pausebuster-is-there-anything-useful-in-it/ [wattsupwiththat.com] Please translate into your own words.
Re:High School Physics (Score:5, Informative)
Fail.
Cowtan and Way circumvent both problems by using an established geostatistical interpolation method called kriging – but they do not apply it to the temperature data itself (which would be similar to what GISS does), but to the difference between satellite and ground data. So they produce a hybrid temperature field. This consists of the surface data where they exist. But in the data gaps, it consists of satellite data that have been converted to near-surface temperatures, where the difference between the two is determined by a kriging interpolation from the edges. As this is redone for each new month, a possible drift of the satellite data is no longer an issue.
Prerequisite for success is, of course, that this difference is sufficiently smooth, i.e. has no strong small-scale structure. This can be tested on artificially generated data gaps, in places where one knows the actual surface temperature values but holds them back in the calculation. Cowtan and Way perform extensive validation tests, which demonstrate that their hybrid method provides significantly better results than a normal interpolation on the surface data as done by GISS.
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That's the spirit! A shoot-from-the-hip comment, not backed by any calculation, measurement or modelling, but hey. someone (with and actual doctorate!) claims something doesn't make sense to her. Case closed, you found one Ph.D. who off the top of her head makes a critical comment (BTW, that's never happened to a peer reviewed paper before) and it proves that the whole thing is nonsense!
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Not really. The method they use when filling the gaps is to make the gaps cooler than the average when it deals with historic data and warmer than the average when it comes to new data and for some magic reason all our measuring stations are in places that has observed the least change.
As a denier I only need to take their estimated difference and flip it around. With the invented values for 2012 placed at 1997 and the invented values for 1997 placed at 2012 you can clearly see that there have been no globa
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Now, for looking at the global warming/changing hysteria, their hockey stick chart looks surprisingly similar to the population chart covering the same years. Somehow they believe that an increase in a trace gas is leading to a mass extinction, while it is tracking with the opposite.
Obviously the increased population of one species means that there couldn't possibly be large scale extinction of other species (which is what "mass extinction" means). Similarly, the increased population of jellyfish must mean the oceans are in fine shape.
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Re:Twice as much to deny! (Score:5, Funny)
Uhh, is it me or do folks really not know how to read basic charts? Yes, the temperature changes due to cycling glacial periods are real. They are also spread out across vast chunks of time; the rate of these cyclic background climate changes are very, very, very slow.
Not guilty, your Honor! Death is a natural cycle; he was dying before I ever met him! The bullets I shot into him had nothing to do with it.
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No they do not.
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Hey, it's the classic scientific method: Form a hypothesis, observe the evidence and/or conduct experiments then collect data, and if said data/evidence doesn't match your hypothesis then alter the experiment or means of observing until it does. Now THAT'S empiricism!!
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A bit of a lull in temperature increase (AFAIK, it's still going up, but more slowly) is nothing significant when you've got long-term trends that are flagrantly obvious, such as decreasing seasonal ice in the Arctic (last year was the sixth smallest ice cover since monitoring started in the 1970s), more glacial ice sliding off Antarctica (probably due to more melting at the base, which speeds glacier flow), more melting on the surface of the Greenland ice sheet than ever before observed, and the great majo
Re:Double down (Score:5, Insightful)
Sigh, +4 Insightful.
Are you a climatologist? Your keep making these accusations without any references, citations... What exactly makes you so sure the experts are wrong?
On the one hand we have these publically funded (and therefore to some extent accountable) scientists saying that, yes, there is very likely an enormous problem. On the other hand we have privately funded "thinktanks" like Heartland and some flaky websites saying, variously (and sometimes simultaneously)
-- AGW is not happening.
-- AGW may be happening but there's nothing we can do about it.
-- AGW is happening but we should not try to do anything about it because the suggested courses of action are just Marxist plots to sap and impurify our precious bodily bodily fluids.
Re: Double down (Score:5, Funny)
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I'd say the science is pretty new. Things need time to settle down before we can sit back and take them for what they're worth.There simply hasn't been enough time for it to have established rigor and respect.
This doesn't mean I don't believe in AGW, but it also doesn't mean I blindly support the deindustrialization of the western world witho
Re:Double down (Score:5, Insightful)
In most cases I would agree. The problem here is that, if the vast majority of climatologists are even remotely on the right track, we do not have the luxury of "sitting back" until things settle down.
I guess for me it boils down to this: if there is a nonzero probability X that future generations will suffer devastating consequences of our pollution, we should do everything we can to mitigate that. This is true even for small X because the scale of consequences are potentially very large.
But more to the point, even though you are right that this science is new, I put more value on the statements of experts in the field, rather than some random person on the Interwebs who, for all I know, just refuses to take it seriously because the implications might inconvenience her slightly.
The energy captured in coal, gas and oil is the result of many millions of years of sunshine. I just can't reasonably expect there to be no significant effects to our releasing that in a matter of a few decades.
Re:Double down (Score:5, Insightful)
Careful, some might accuse you of crisis mongering.
Yes, and others stand accused of crisis whitewashing. What is your point?
Vague declarations of doom are not a rational basis on which to surrender all of one's economic freedom and much of one's standard of living.
I wouldn't call the IPCC reports "vague declarations of doom". They are quite concrete declarations of doom. There is a bit of a spectrum of options between fingers-in-ears and surrendering all economic freedom (whatever that means) and standard of living -- unless perhaps you're Koch, BP, and so on.
Some people just can't stop looking for a Messiah, a Prophet to simultaneously fill them with fear and then promise to deliver them from that fear.
You invoke an image of some sectarian cult. This is not an accurate description of the position of a large majority of climate scientists. Sure, it is a relatively young field. But that's still better, warts and all, than no science. Not to mention the anti-science punted by vested interests.
Re: (Score:3)
The problem is that if the science is even half right then we don't have the luxury of the time to wait to be absolutely certain. Had we investing in moderate, completely reasonable solution 60+ years ago when the scientists first agreed that we had a serious problem on our hands we could have nipped this problem in the bud at very little expense. If we start doing things immediately we need to make some serious changes, and it will probably cost us at least several percent of the Gross Global Product. I
Re: (Score:3)
| This doesn't mean I don't believe in AGW, but it also doesn't mean I blindly support the deindustrialization of the western world without, you know, a little more investigation.
There's been tremendous investigation over 50 years. Enough.
And it doesn't mean the deindustrialization of the western world---in fact it would have been easier had we started when the science was good enough to motivate action (early 1990's) by any sane criterion but there's been a large campaign of anti-scientific dissembling and
Re:Double down (Score:5, Insightful)
If the warming projections increase, then that is a very serious problem with their science.
If the warming projections do not change, then that is a very serious problem with their science.
That's how it works for you Jane Q, whether you admit it or not. The fundamental principle is that AGW is wrong, you are right, and your mind finds the "logic" to fit.
There are people who think the earth is less than 10000 years old. I work with one of them. He has an explanation for everything, but he doesn't understand what he's talking about. Who am I to point out the finer details of radiometric dating, when he will not listen, because if he's not right about the young earth thing, then his web of belief [lenin.ru] will fall to bits.
My question to you is this: are you capable of learning something about climate science?
Re: (Score:3)
How about this: Are YOU a climate scientist? (Considering the fact that you work with a YEC, I'd doubt it.)
If not, your opinion just happens to match consensus. Don't pretend for a second that you came to that conclusion on your own after spending years examining the data. You just read a few blogs and popular articles and decided that this is what smart people are supposed to believe.
If JQP is not a climate scientist, there's a good chance she did exactly as you did, and happened to come to a different
Re:Double down (Score:5, Interesting)
You be trolling ma'am. You toss off an overstated, inflammatory reply - that's trolling.
Yes, it's also factually incorrect. But that's life.
Re:Double down (Score:4, Informative)
What this video to learn about how people like you think about whether it is warming or not [youtube.com].
If. You. Dare.
It's not that you disagree with people, but that you are incapable of processing information. like the above video. I'm sure it will make no sense to you, but typical people will laugh and shake their head.
An ideologue as the ability to look at a black wall and call it white. That is you.
Re:Double down (Score:5, Informative)
| And, really, it's right to be quite skeptical of any scientist who argues that "my theory wasn't wrong, 15 years of data was all wrong". That's an extraordinary claim.
Indeed, but that's not the claim.
And it's quite right be be skeptical of any internet poster who is "skeptical" of results which are disliked who doesn't really understand where they came from but is smug about their skepticism.
Closer to actual facts:
a) there are no calibrated ground-based stations in the Arctic because there is no ground in the Arctic.
b) the physics of increased greenhouse effect predicts larger effects in polar regions. (This also distinguishes global warming from enhanced greenhouse from global warming from increased solar output).
c) global warming is, of course global
d) combine (b) and (c) and you recognize that accurate quantification of global warming requires good evaluation of polar temperatures.
e) previous temperature reconstructions used simple extrapolation or ignored Arctic regions with no data.
f) authors propose new technique to assimilate data from multiple sources like satellites to improve coverage
g) authors calibrate/validate technique where good data were known
h) authors run the method and apply to Arctic regions with authentic missing data
i) results show substantial warming larger than estimates previously used in (e).
j) results with substantial warming in Arctic are more consistent with estimates using first-principles physics of greenhouse effects and what mainstream climate scientists have been predicting since 1992 or so.
next up:
k) scientists doing improved data processing showing closer correspondence to physics get accused of being shrill anti-capitalist nazis or the like.
Remember the previously skeptical Berkeley statistics professor---a favorite of the usual "skeptical" right-wing deception machine---who was convinced that the climatologists were doing their data analysis wrong and showing excessive global warming. And he & students got the underlying data sets and worked for years. And they found that the climatologists had the right answer all along (in fact their own estimates of warming were a touch higher than the climatologists).
Re: (Score:3)
For many years the actual measurement from ground stations were been "adjusted" upwards, matching predictions of early models. Does that prove the science was bad? No. Is "adjusting" the measured data in such a way that now the predictions of your model hold a huge warning signal that justifies extreme skepticism? Yes. That sort of thing, in any field, is quite corrosive to the scientific method.
Now we see the predictions of the early models failing despite all the "adjustments", and a method proposed b
Re: (Score:3)
| If you want to discuss Dunning-Kruger, then please explain to me: why is it that you think a 100% error in the basic quantity (temperature) that this whole discussion is about, is not a problem with the existing "science"?
It's an error in the magnitude of a change. The basic physical quantity as you put it is temperature on the Kelvin scale, so it's something of the size of 0.5-1 degree divided by 300K.
The existing science was very well aware of the dearth of non-satellite measurements in the Arctic, whic
Re: (Score:3)
No it hasn't, but there was a 25-year period in the mid-1900's when the temperature dropped significantly, which disproves global warming.
Post may contain traces of sarcasm.
Re:Double down (Score:5, Informative)
Why do you think the IPCC no longer uses the Hockey-stick graph?
They don't use Mann's original hockey stick graph from 1998 any more because it's 15 years old and numerous other newer reconstructions have been done since then. But if you take a look at Chapter 5 - "Information from Paleoclimate Archives" [climatechange2013.org] of the IPCC AR5 - WG I report you'll find that figures 5.7 & 5.8 still look remarkably like the original hockey stick graph. So they've got newer versions of it.
Re:Double down (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Double down (Score:4, Informative)
This video explains the source of the confusion [youtube.com].
Re:Climate Scientist != Statistician (Score:5, Insightful)
Climate Scientists are not Statisticians
But petroleum engineers are?
You should know better (Score:4, Insightful)
Advocates? You mean there was more than one of them?
This revisionist bullshit to fool the kiddies is disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself. Apart from one published paper global cooling was a "world of tomorrow!" newspaper fluff thing and there was less of it in the newspapers than bigfoot sightings.
Re: (Score:3)
These are the same people who got caught falsifying data [wikipedia.org] to meet their own political agenda. They keep 'creating' data from different sources. They may be right in some capacity but they've lied too many times be believable. And I'm still waiting for all the dire predictions from the 80's and 90's I grew up with happening.
Did you even read that Wikipedia article? Here's a quote: "Eight committees investigated the allegations and published reports, finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct"
Thanks for the citation but I suggest that you read it first as it does not support your conclusion.