1981 Paper's Predictions for Global Temperatures Spot-On 371
Layzej writes "The Register reports on a paper published in Science in 1981 projecting global mean temperatures up to the year 2100. 'When the 1981 paper was written, temperatures in the northern hemispheres were declining, and global mean temperatures were below their 1940 levels. Despite those facts, the paper's authors confidently predicted a rise in temperature due to increasing CO2 emissions.' The prediction turns out to be remarkably accurate — even a bit optimistic. The article concludes that the 1981 paper is 'a nice example of a statement based on theory that could be falsified and up to now has withstood the test.'"
monkeys throwing darts... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, because the multiple predictions are not random, the way thrown darts are. This is Science 101. Multiple models are proposed to explain and/or predict an observable phenomenon. The model that makes the the most accurate predictions gains credence over the others.
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not a denier, but you're not really countering his point. If 500 scientists make 500 predictions, and one is right but 499 are wrong you can't really point to that one (possibly lucky) guy and say "see, we knew it!".
What if I come up with some new crackpot theory tying the price of tea in china to the average incidence of Herpes amongst 19-22 year olds and then predict the price in 5 years based on that theory. I then get lucky, and the price matches my prediction. Have I totally kicked ass with my new theory of Herpes-driven tea prices?
Like I said, I do believe in man-made GW, but the "other side" can easily find one loon who happened to be right and point to him as proving their point. We need broader theory and broader, more often repeatable tests.
This isn't a scientist chosen at random from 500 (Score:3)
This is James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who has been awarded more honours for science than almost anyone else I can think of... and produced this report when very few scientists were even looking at climatology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Hansen#Honors_and_awards [wikipedia.org]
I'm by no means an expert on climate science but I do know enough to know that the denialists are full of it. In fact, the US seems to be the only place in the world denialism is an accepted position.
And eve
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:5, Funny)
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Right, and scientists never formulate questionable theories for political or monetary reasons. At all. Ever.
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:5, Interesting)
The idea here is, we have a rough idea of the major inputs and outputs, so scientists have to guess at the coefficients and constants. There are a number of them, positive and negative, so you can actually be wrong on every single one of them and still get the right answer. In this case, it appears he was off by 30%, which isn't a very good indication of predictive power. (Yes I know his prediction was under, but the goal here is accuracy, not who can predict the best disaster).
When I get home from work I'll have a chance to read the paper in more depth, to get a better idea of how random his guesses were. It is definitely true that in 1988 he thought his prediction was better.
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Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:5, Insightful)
No it gained credence over other models that didn't get things right.
That in itself says nothing about whether it is actually correct in itself just whether it makes good predictions. A simpler model that makes exactly the same predictions would be prefered - that's what Occam's razor actually says after all. If the models make different predictions we don't need the razor we just see which one (if any) matches reality.
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:5, Informative)
Bullshit. Ptolemaic system made accurate predictions, but based on completely wrong understanding of reality. Credence my ass.
The Ptolemaic system was not discarded because it was wrong. It was discarded because the Newtonian System made more accurate predictions.
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:4, Informative)
The Ptolemaic system was not discarded because it was wrong. It was discarded because the Keplerian System made more accurate predictions.
FTFY.
[Johannes Kepler pre-dated Newton. Newton built on his work. The accuracy was already there. Newton just explained how the gravitational force led to Kepler's Laws]
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sorry, you're clueless.
"Climate" means 30-year average in this context. Being able to predict next year's specific temperatures has nothing to do with climate.
Think of the stock market. "Climate" is the 30-year graph and the ability to say "from 1982 to 2012 the trend is ever increasing". http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=0&chdd=0&chds=0&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1333730258898&chddm=4050760&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=INDEXDJX:.DJI&ntsp=0 [google.com]
"Weather" is saying "last year was up and down". http://www.google.com/finance?chdnp=0&chdd=0&chds=0&chdv=1&chvs=maximized&chdeh=0&chfdeh=0&chdet=1333730383316&chddm=98923&chls=IntervalBasedLine&q=INDEXDJX:.DJI&ntsp=0 [google.com]
You're confusing "long term trend" with "what will it be like this weekend". They are two distinctly different things.
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:5, Informative)
If you can predict the climate, publish your predictions for each and every weather station so we can compare predicted values to actual values. (Oh, and yes, I do know the difference between weather and climate.) But no, we get some hazy predictions for something in 100 years, yet nothing for next year.
It's funny. You claim that you know the difference between weather and climate, and yet you repeatedly mix up the concepts the rest of the time. If you know the difference, why do you want to be given a prediction for a specific location? If you know the difference, why do you want to be given a prediction for the coming year?
The bizarre thing is that if you look at the graph you can see what they thought it would be next year, and indeed all years to the end of the graph. As it gets further into the future then the error range gets bigger because they can't know what the human response to this problem would be.
Moronic arguments about weather vs. climate are not science.
And moronic arguments that get weather vs climate wrong are also not science. This doesn't change merely because you keep mistakenly claiming that you do know the difference.
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Oh not this horseshit again. There was never a "Global Cooling" frenzy.
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"Oh not this horseshit again. There was never a "Global Cooling" frenzy."
Wanna bet? I guarantee there was one before the last mini ice age we had.
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I don't understand your comment. The last "mini ice age" was in the early middle ages, far before climatology or anything approximating it existed. Could you characterize what you mean there being a frenzy, and identify some of the related publications/records associated with it?
Call it informing the ignorant if you'd like to do so.
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Technically, you are correct, sir. Freezing or starving to death would not be well described as a 'frenzy'.
They died having no idea why their crops failed, other than blaming God and the lessers.
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It's cherry-picked info. (I'm not saying Climate Change is not happening, just saying this is not science). I'm not sure what part of this data is falsifiable. It doesn't have any kind of error analysis and some of the assumptions are known to be false or be different than expected. You can't simply say, "It will get warmer", be off by as much as 30% and get credit for good science. This is the kind of thing that drives me nuts. Climate change *could* be a serious thing but it gets washed up with politi
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not sure what part of this data is falsifiable
Data is not falsifiable, it is either correct or it isn't: it is scientific theory that's falsifiable.
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Don't confuse bad reporting, and uninformed opinion with actual prediction.
The paper is a good one, and it's predictions has stood up to time. Along with several others.
I'm sure some yahoo some where made the outlandish claim the water will rise a foot. I will also be he wasn't an expert or he was taken out of context.
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Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:4, Informative)
Honestly, I think you should have kept that to yourself, because on second thought it doesn't make much sense. Nostradamus' "predictions" are incredibly ambiguous, which is why they can be made fit observations after the fact. Quantities such as degrees Celcius/Fahrenheit are not; the observations either fit within the specified level of precision or not.
Reverse cherry-picking (Score:3)
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean the way Einstein predicted things that "fit after the fact"? Just last year we found at least one more of his predictions was true. He's just like Nostradamus, right?
A model gets proposed, then tested. The ones that are closest to reality are proven correct, the ones that don't are proven incorrect. You are saying that this person's credibility is strained because a lot of other people were wrong? If that is how we measure credibility, then how is anyone supposed to be credible?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/05/science/space/05gravity.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss [nytimes.com]
There was a 2007 story about this, but from what I can tell the experiment didn't conclude until 2011.
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You are saying that this person's credibility is strained because a lot of other people were wrong?
Yes. Exactly this. The problem is that all of the summaries, and archives and research are now so tainted by political agenda on both sides, that all of it is questionable. How can the non-professional know what is solid an what is tainted now? Not a good thing... Not a good thing at all. The truth should not be this hard to find!
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The truth should not be this hard to find!
It's hard to find for the non-professional because it's hard for the professional. We don't have enough data.
If we had multiple earths, and could run double-blind experiments, then there would be no problem. As it is, we only have 60 years of good, solid temperature data, we don't know the warming effect of the atmosphere to within 10 degrees, and the climate is a chaotic system.
So we try to use short cuts, like simulating different atmospheric compositions in bottles, or extrapolating from the data we
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:5, Insightful)
I see no evidence that you even read this paper. All you are doing it spouting the standard denialist memes: it's cherry picked; it's not science; it's not falsifiable, etc. You say there is no error analysis, but does that mean that they gave a single temperature prediction? No, even just looking at the graph in the article you can see there is quite a wide range to their prediction with different areas based on what the human response to this problem was.
You say some of the assumptions are false? Which ones? Why did you not include even a single example of how they got it wrong? And here is the my biggest problem:
You can't simply say, "It will get warmer", be off by as much as 30% and get credit for good science.
I did a search in the article for the text "It will get warmer" and could not find a match. It seems that the scientists behind the paper agreed with you, and so they didn't just make a single proclaimation without showing any supporting evidence.
Climate change *could* be a serious thing but it gets washed up with politically driven junk from activists. They are doing more harm than good.
Surely it is the skeptics that are doing the most harm. You know the ones. They have claimed over the past decade that global warming is false because it is actually getting cooler (although they have had to change this to claim that the temperature has remained steady once it became obvious that it was not getting cooler). They are the ones who make claims about climate changes without providing any supporting evidence, but will also deride scientists (who do actually show their working and their data) as doing the same.
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not commenting on the climate one way or the other, but when you have dozens of different predictions over the years is it really surprising that a couple of them happened to hit the mark?
Well that's pretty much how science works. Lots of different people with different theories make different predictions based on those theories.
The guys that make accurate predictions the most are the ones whose theories scientists start to believe are true.
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The guys that make accurate predictions the most are the ones whose theories scientists start to believe are true.
Only if they consistently make accurate predictions, and not just hit the Loto once.
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:4, Insightful)
Only if they consistently make accurate predictions, and not just hit the Loto once.
Unfortunately, for this particular research area, we only have one planet to experiment on. So they can't exactly reset the planet back to 1981, change the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, and re-run the experiment to see what the difference is.
Besides, they didn't just randomly draw a curve on a piece of paper, they designed a mathematical model, fed data into it, and made predictions based on that.
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a difference between a scientific theory that ends up correctly modeling reality for a long period of time and me just making wild guesses. However, a lot of people will conflate the two, saying that all those scientists were doing was making wild guesses that happened to pan out. This is the same kind of thing that creationists say, when they point out that evolution is "just a theory". It also allows them to create their own competing "theory", consisting of a bunch of mythological stories.
Science is not just a bunch of old guys with wild hair who sit around, pulling shit out of their ass, and saying, "Hey, this sounds good. Let's go with this wild guess. The public will eat it up, and we'll get more grant money!"
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:4, Insightful)
Science is not just a bunch of old guys with wild hair who sit around, pulling shit out of their ass, and saying, "Hey, this sounds good. Let's go with this wild guess. The public will eat it up, and we'll get more grant money!"
Actually, it does include people like that too... And unfortunately, those guys are most likely to get the press. For the record, "Peer Reviewed" is not USA Today.
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You're correct. What you describe is the mainstream tenured academic world, not capital-s Science. There are always some scientists out there working in the corner somewhere, unnoticed.
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The big difference between CO2/Global warming and cigarettes/cancer is that for cigarettes cancer, we have all the people who don't smoke, and are not exposed to copious amounts of smoke as a control. For CO2/global warming, no control exists. Temperatures have always fluctuated, and so it is difficult to discern whether we have a trend or not, therefore it is harder to be more certain as to the effect of CO2 on the climate.
And besides, I have not seen too much evidence that CO2 does bad things. My own not
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Well, it depends on your notion of causality. Increased CO2 concentration, by itself, is a relatively minor thing. But there are many effects of increased CO2 concentration that are, in fact, bad. The two major ones that I can see are increased global temperatures leading to climate change and ocean acidification. The severity and validity of the former is still hotly debated, the latter hardly gets any attention at all.
It is
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That is, indeed, an uninformed hypothesis. Experimental test, however, have been made.
In the tests that I'm familiar with high temperatures and increased CO2 did, indeed, produce rapid plant growth. They also yielded plants that had weak stems and were deficient in protein. This is not a net gain. And if you raised the temperature a bit more the plants didn't even grow faster. Also, this is presuming that extra water was available. I'm sure there have been other tests with slightly different plants or
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not commenting on the climate one way or the other
Sure you are. You're argument in a nutshell, goes like this:
1. Premise: There were hundreds of predictions about what would happen to the climate over a 30 year period.
2. Premise: One prediction was demonstrably right.
3. Inference: because 99.9% of the predictions were wrong, the one that was right must be due to pure chance.
4. Final conclusion: I can safely ignore any other prediction about climate from anybody, because the only way it can be right is by pure chance.
Well, that's not how science works. The logic of science works more like this:
1. Premise: There were hundreds of predictions about what would happen to the climate over a 30 year period, each using different models and ideas to arrive at that prediction.
2. Premise: One prediction was demonstrably closer to right than the others.
3. Inference: The models and ideas that produced the correct prediction are closer to the truth than those that didn't correctly predict a result.
4. Final conclusion: When making the next prediction, start from using those models and ideas and you'll get pretty close to the right answer.
Here's a similar problem from physics:
Model A: Acceleration due to Earth's gravity near the ground in a vacuum is ~10 m/s^2, so the ball should fall 100 meters in 4 seconds.
Model B: Acceleration due to Earth's gravity near the ground in a vacuum is ~5 m/s^2, so the ball should fall 100 meters in ~5.8 seconds.
Time for a ball to fall 100 is slightly over 4 seconds. Ergo, 10 m/s^2 is less wrong than 5 m/s^2.
In the words of Isaac Asimov, Model A is wrong, Model B is wrong, but if you think that Model A is as wrong as Model B, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
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That problem from physics is not similar at all.
A model does not have to produce the closest prediction for it to be the most correct model. Getting the closest prediction can be completely down to chance.
For example, how much CO2 did he predict we would have put up there. How much rainforest depletion did he allow for. How much did he allow for other greenhouse gases. It could turn out that he predicted much higher temperatures based on a much smaller amount of CO2 emitted, which would make his model wrong
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Model A: Acceleration due to Earth's gravity near the ground in a vacuum is ~10 m/s^2, so the ball should fall 100 meters in 4 seconds. Model B: Acceleration due to Earth's gravity near the ground in a vacuum is ~5 m/s^2, so the ball should fall 100 meters in ~5.8 seconds. Time for a ball to fall 100 is slightly over 4 seconds. Ergo, 10 m/s^2 is less wrong than 5 m/s^2.
In the words of Isaac Asimov, Model A is wrong, Model B is wrong, but if you think that Model A is as wrong as Model B, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
This example is clueless: the OP wasn't questioning the identificated parameters of the model, but the model: in your example both models are the same!
To show you how wrong your example is:
Model A: acceleration due to Earth's gravity near the ground in a vacuum is 9 m/s^2, so according to A a 0.5 kilos ball should fall 1000 meters in ~14.9 seconds.
Model B: acceleration due to Earth's gravity near the ground in a vacuum is (4 + weight/0.086) m/s^2, so according to B a 0.5 kilos ball should fall 1000 mete
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:4, Insightful)
In my example, both models had acceleration due to gravity as a constant, determined to be that way from previous experiment or theory, and so the question was what that constant actually was.
And of course, Model B goes to pot as soon as you change the parameters of the test, dropping the ball 100 meters instead of 1000 meters, dropping a ball weighing something other than 0.5 kilos, etc. In the case of climate science, the model not only has to predict where things are now, it obviously has to predict many data points in between 1981 and now.
Alternately, and this seems to be the standard demanded by those who disagree that climate change is real, we could build a second planet Earth, place it in a clone of our solar system, and then try different levels of carbon emissions to see what happens. The obvious objection here is that such an experiment could not be carried out.
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Intriguing example. Too bad your math was wrong.
Time for the ball to fall 100 meters is about 4.5 s
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The Global Cooling was a prediction for the year 5000, not for 2100. It might confuse you, but actually both Global Warming and Global Cooling could be correct. We have proof that in 1981, there were sufficiently exact climate models for the last 30 years, and we have good arguments, that the Global Cooling is a valid prediction too.
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:4, Insightful)
Seriously though, has it never occurred to you that there are huge disinformation campaigns out there funded by biased parties?
Yep. On both sides. This is why both sides have zero credibility with the other. Both sides call the others lying bastards, and for a vocal minority on both sides, they are right.
Re:monkeys throwing darts... (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly why the "controversy" is political and not scientific.
If the arguments were scientific, the conclusions would not be divided among party lines - yet they are. That should tell you something.
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Yep. On both sides. This is why both sides have zero credibility with the other. Both sides call the others lying bastards, and for a vocal minority on both sides, they are right.
I'm curious. Who do you think is funding the side that's supported by 90% of climate scientists worldwide?
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And for the record, the Chicago Climate Exchange funded a lot of now debunked research.
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"Who do you think is funding the side that's supported by 90% of climate scientists worldwide?"
The side that seeks to exercise power over us.
And yes, the 'other' side does also. They just seem to have different intentions for that power.
Under Crony Capitalism, none of this matters. We hear the policy debates, and meanwhile everyone in power is busy getting rich and ingratiating themselves to their conspirators, who are sucking us dry.
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Note: that doesn't mean that CO2 is good.
For plants, it kinda is... You know... For them to grow and stuff? I think it may be required...
What? (Score:5, Funny)
Shit I'm old.
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I started to feel old in the eighties, you insensitive clod!
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
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Are you looking to start a flame war, son? Get off my lawn, dipshit.
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I was just going to point out to GP that we invented all the mobile phones and mp3 players and other cool stuff he wastes his time playing with, so we have some small claim to knowing things about science.
But your way is good too.
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The eighties was 30 years ago?
Shit I'm old.
Shut up. I am an age denialist, and your messing me up!
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Tell me about it. I read the paper when it came out.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:30% off is spot-on (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm going to make a wild guess that you don't know very much about science in any field.
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Pretty good for something missing thirty years' worth of research on the lower-order effects.
Also, generally in science "rigor" is used to describe quality of methodology, not level of accuracy or standards for accuracy.
Re:30% off is spot-on (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, warming is 30% higher than they predicted, they were clearly wrong.
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Yep, only in soft science fields (social sciences, like climate science, basically) does a 30% prediction inaccuracy get pushed about as "he was right because he was optimistic".
If he were 30% high, he'd be ignored because it doesn't suit the political agenda.
What that really means? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am very far from being a specialist in this topic. The The Register article seems to imply that global warming must be true, given that there was ONE paper in 80s already anticipating it. That is not necessarily true. The prediction can be result of pure chance in a possibly erratic research study (I have no clue if that is the case or not). One could perhaps make an stronger statement in that direction if MANY papers anticipated global warming (possibly using different models).
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Many have.
And you don't have a chance of erratic behaviors that account for 30 years of confirming data.
Sure, if this was 1987 we could say that, not anymore.
Of course Climate change is a fact, and that humans are the primary instigators is also a fact.
Too bad religious assholes create ignorance, destroy scientific credibility, and spread the false ides of 'controversy' about anything that doesn't jive with there ignorant belief.
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typepad.com or nasa.gov. Pick the one you think is most trustworthy on science issues.
(http://climate.nasa.gov/)
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The prediction can be result of pure chance in a possibly erratic research study
While that may be true, consider the approach this paper used, roughly:
SUNSPOTS (Score:2)
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Really? This graph of sunspot activity [nasa.gov] looks like it correlates well with temperature graphs [nasa.gov]?
The referenced paper (in TFS, that is) actually talks about variation in solar luminosity and in volcanic aerosols as the primary source of variation about the long-term trend.
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" I bet you would show that the temperature rise pretty much is spot on with the rise in geomagnetic activity from the sun, "
no, you wouldn'ty. This is knwon data, these comparisons have been done.
Climate change is ON TOP OIF change in temperature from the sun.
When the sun was 'cooler' our temperature didn't rise as fast, but it did rise. Under you premise we would expect it to return to previous temperatures, it didn't.
You idea is provable wrong.
"was in high school in the 70's, they were talking about a mi
You asked for it! (Score:5, Funny)
So, in yesterday's story about predicting the collapse of civilization, multiple posters snarked about how convenient it is to make predictions about what will happen 30 years from now, 'cause no one will remember you made those predictions--so you'll never be called to account for your oh-so-incorrect doomsday predictions.
I now calmly await for yesterday's posters to issue "I can see now that I was wrong" statements.
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Except that civilization will have collapsed by then and their mea culpa posts will be scrawled in charcoal on the sides of the burned-out husks of buildings.
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I'd actually worry about yesterday's prediction, though. We have an enormous problem with our worldwide food supplies and too many people to feed. Too much trash and negative impacts on the environment as well. Combine that with the fact that middle east oil will be largely gone by then, and the situation is ripe for another world war at the least.
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A Pointless Anecdote (Score:5, Interesting)
So, being an avid Slashdotter, I was fairly in tune with the Global Warming debate and would often talk to my new friends about it. Every single one of them either didn't want to hear it or thought I was an idiot. They seemed to only listen when I would bring up news items lending credibility to the absence of climate change. Then they asserted there was climate change but it is natural and so on and so forth. To this day, my friend from Texas does not recycle in his home. His Korean wife has asked me not to discuss global warming around her and continually asserts it was proven wrong years ago. My friend from Texas, being quite a bit smarter now likes to talk about what we can do about it without him having to alter his lifestyle at all. The reason for it is unimportant to him, now he just accepts that it's happening for some reason and how can we put something in space that can block the sun partially while maintaining a synchronous orbit around the sun between it and Earth. It's not that that is a simpler solution than reducing your personal carbon footprint but instead it's one that doesn't require government intervention (which he views as the ultimate evil) and doesn't require him to change.
So what do you do when you read news about this, do you whip out your biggest "I told you so" font and e-mail it out to your friends until they get tired of it? I mean, I can't even politely offer to collect the cans and bottles from one of my friend's parties and take them to the local recycling center. He's almost proud of his freedom to be able to send it to the dump. So I have two options. One is silence and apathy and the other is not having any friends in this area. Silence and apathy it is.
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(We're in the same area, it seems. I moved to NoVA about 2 years ago for work.)
Have you seen the Bullshit [youtube.com] episode on recycling? It might interest you. It seems that only aluminum and possibly steel are worth recycling from a net-energy/resources savings standpoint.
Plastic I recycle just to avoid the whole plastic forest [thescope.ca] issue. And, of course, all the damn bags that end up in the rivers around DC. My wife takes all the paper, shreds it and uses it in her compost pile.
But as for friends, don't waste your ti
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But if you were to address the central conceit of CO2 driving warming, would you accept it as falsified if say, we saw in the historical record of some ice core rising CO2 for 50 years, but falling temperatures?
Of course not, but you would probably be naive enough to believe this. You'd need to know more about the natural variability and the radiative forcings acting during that period. Which is why I keep telling you that climate science is based on examining the physical origins of temperature responses and not naive correlations.
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Which, you've admitted, is completely unknown information. And yet, you blithely believe you can discern between natural climate change, and unnatural climate change :)
Geeze, how dumb are you. It's completely unknown information in your hypothetical example which was specifically contrived to only present information about CO2 and temperature. In reality, we know something about natural variability and radiative forcings.
Shift to a productive debate... (Score:4, Interesting)
Extrapolation (Score:2, Funny)
http://xkcd.com/605/ [xkcd.com]
Seriously, things don't go in a straight line forever. Further, they were quite totally wrong, in that their predictions were too low. I don't know what the big deal is, other than AGW people glorying in their own selection bias.
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That's great work, you've shown that complex, data-based mathematical modelling by NASA scientists is just like someone drawing a line between points and cheering when it later turns out to match some data. And you did so with a cartoon!
I'm sure NASA will be pleased to learn that they can forget all that tiresome building of models and instead base all future rocketry on connecting-the-dots. I thank you, good sir.
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I'd wager you would fall into one of those believe-anything groups, tmosley. Every comment you make bets on a world of endless oil and no climate change. Let me make some verifiable predictions about you based on your commentary:
1) You drive a big, gass-guzzling pickup or SUV
2) You live in a predominantly rural state like Texas or Montana -- definitely not East Coast or West Coast
3) You believe Obama is a socalist and suspect he's secretly a muslim
4) You generally vote Republican or for whoever's right of
Prescient (Score:5, Interesting)
From the Hansen study:
"Political and economic forces affecting energy use and fuel choice make it unlikely that the CO2 issue will have a major impact on energy policies until convincing observations of the global warming are in hand."
Test of Time (Score:5, Interesting)
"a nice example of a statement based on theory that could be falsified and up to now has withstood the test."
Just wait till we finally reach a double of atmospheric CO2 values, at which point we'll get to see if the predictions Svante Arrhenius made in the late 19th / early 20th century pan out.
If the quantity of carbonic acid in the air should sink to one-half its present percentage, the temperature would fall by about 4 degrees; a diminution to one-quarter would reduce the temperature by 8 degrees. On the other hand, any doubling of the percentage of carbon dioxide in the air would raise the temperature of the earth's surface by 4 degrees; and if the carbon dioxide were increased fourfold, the temperature would rise by 8 degrees.
Although the sea, by absorbing carbonic acid, acts as a regulator of huge capacity, which takes up about five-sixths of the produced carbonic acid, we yet recognize that the slight percentage of carbonic acid in the atmosphere may by the advances of industry be changed to a noticeable degree in the course of a few centuries.
Spot On? (Score:2)
There are 2 fundamental problems, however. 1) There were no uncertainty ranges given. We can't say that a 30% deviation from one of the scenarios is accurate or inaccurate without these ranges. 2) The actual CO2 ppm emissions do not fall within the bounds of any of the proposed scenarios.
All we can say, definitively, is that events transpired outside the bounds of any of the scenarios and the results
Re:What about the rest? (Score:5, Funny)
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I would also be interested in knowing about other predictions, in particular predictions with specific numbers backed by plausible theoretical models, published in a respectable venue like Science or Nature (or some more specialized but still solidly peer-reviewed journal).
If indeed it turns out that there were a few hundred such models/predictions, and one turned out to be close to right, that would not be super impressive. But I'm not able to find those hundreds, if they exist...
Re:What about the rest? (Score:4, Informative)
I would also be interested in knowing about other predictions, in particular predictions with specific numbers backed by plausible theoretical models
Here's one from the same researcher [rankexploits.com], from 7 years later, after spending half a decade of super-computer time simulating the warming.
.3 degrees Celsius.
To understand the graph, the red line (Hansen A) was calculated assuming and annual increase of atmospheric CO2 of 1.5% per year. The orange line (Hansen B) was calculated assuming that the annual increase of atmospheric CO2 would be constant, and the yellow line (Hansen C) was calculated assuming CO2 output would decrease so much after 1990 that by 2000 it would cease to increase. He was optimistic in the scenario.
You can also look at the first IPCC report from 1990 [wikipedia.org] which predicted a rise of
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What were the other predictions? How do they relate to scientific observation? How did you find out about them? Are you sure you're not engaging in paranoid delusion?
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe the thing you should do is try to understand how science works?
"well... y'know what? even brownian motion gets it right if there's enough molecules. the trick is in being able to spot the one molecule that pops out at the right place at the right time, and this is no different, really."
seriously, you sound like an idiot.
Re: (Score:3)
Just adding a somewhat related anecdote (not my own) -
A Message From a Republican Meteorologist on Climate Change;
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-douglas/republican-climate-change_b_1374900.html [huffingtonpost.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Until then, you've got no reason to believe that modern observations aren't within the bounds of natural variation.
You keep repeating this fallacy. You seem to believe that just because the climate varied naturally in the past, present variation cannot be distinguished from natural variation. Natural variation isn't some unexplained statistical process, and attributing climate change doesn't arise from comparing current ranges of variation to past ranges of variation. Natural variation comes from physics. There aren't very many places where atmospheric heat can come from, and we can look in those places. Natural var