111–120 of 211 posts
Has anyone else noticed that the conservative rhetoric has quietly switched from "global warming doesn't exist so we don't have to do anything" to "global warming isn't caused by people so there is nothing we can do"?
By "conservative rhetoric" I assume you mean the only scientifically provable stance that there is on the issue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty easy to understand why it's being downvoted. It doesn't contribute to the conversation--it's a pedantic tangent that isn't any more interesting than noting that (1) the surface of the Earth used to be molten and (2) all matter in the known Universe was a lot hotter during the big bang. Is that relevant?
The surface of the Earth was molten some 4.5 billion years ago. The big bang was about 14 billion years ago. The start of the relative record is a mere 135 years ago. It is absurd to conflate the two, and it's a critical foundation for the statement. By simple random odds (which given that weather stations are few and far between, simple odds of micro-climates can shift temperature slightly), even with zero influence…
Imaging we have a coin that I claim is biased. (Just pretend that front-page story about how it's impossible to bias a coin didn't happen.) I've flipped it dozens or hundreds of times and nearly every time it comes up heads.
After I've done this for a while, I start saying, check this out, I'm pretty sure this coin is biased. I provide my data to support the claim. But it's an ongoing investigation, so I'm still flipping the coin, and it keeps coming up mostly heads. Every so often I publish a confirming tidbit, like, "I just flipped the coin 5 times and every time it came up heads. This is even more confirmation that it's biased."
What you're doing is basically taking that statement and saying, that doesn't mean anything, a fair coin would produce 5 heads in a row 1 out of every 32 attempts.
Then I do another experiment, flip the coin four times and each time it's heads. Your reply is that it's meaningless because a fair coin would reproduce this 1 out of every 16 attempts.
Another experiment. Six heads. You say it's meaningless, because a fair coin would do this 1 out of 64 times.
And we keep on going. With each announcement you point out, correctly, that this specific, individual result could pretty easily occur by random chance. And yet each of your responses is useless and misguided, because it ignores all the other results.
Setting a new high is not remarkable. Doing it repeatedly starts to get more interesting. Doing it while average temperatures have been rising steadily for over a century is more compelling. Put all the data together and, while each little piece can be said to mean little because it could have happened by random chance, the sum total is highly compelling.
I find it continually amazing how many people find NASA sending rockets into space all the time to be an expected and everyday part of modern life, but then don't trust them with a thermometer.
NOAA NASA
So, yes, NOAA != NASA, but I think the parent comment was still spot on.
REF: http://www.ucsusa.org/our-work/center-science-and-democracy/...
Has anyone else noticed that the conservative rhetoric has quietly switched from "global warming doesn't exist so we don't have to do anything" to "global warming isn't caused by people so there is nothing we can do"?
And don't forget "global warming is inevitable now, so there's nothing we can do". In my experience a good Fox News segment can use all three of these, at the same time, and switch back and forth among them, with no cognitive dissonance apparent. I don't think any of them are really being phased out, it's just that if any particular one is defeated in conversation, the arguer switches to one of the other arguments. E…
- It's not happening.
- It's happening but it's natural.
- It's happening and might be man-made, but it's beneficial.
- It's happening and might be man-made, and it's harmful, but it's not worth the cost to mitigate.
- It's happening and might be man-made, and it's harmful, and free-market solutions will solve it.
And yes, it often freely switches between them depending on the context.
Has anyone else noticed that the conservative rhetoric has quietly switched from "global warming doesn't exist so we don't have to do anything" to "global warming isn't caused by people so there is nothing we can do"?
I don't think it's called global warming anymore, it's called climate change. Besides, I don't understand why it's ok for liberals to make fun of conservatives using "extreme snow" during winter as an argument against climate change but that liberals using exceptional heat during summer as an argument for climate change is ok. A few months of extra cold or heat is not enough to prove or disprove climate change. Last…
The 'extreme snow' was limited to certain parts of the US - the west coast got very little on the whole. Whereas this high temperature data is a global average. So they're not really the same thing.
> I think we should start focusing on real solutions.
Sounds good to me. Taxes, it must be said, are also a way to spur innovation, because it can focus people's attention on using less of the taxed resource. Here's Greg Mankiw's take on that. He's a Republican economist.
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2006/10/pigou-club-manifesto....
For those who believe that climate change is real, and a significant threat to our longevity on this planet, would you please view / read this and share your thoughts? http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=... I don't believe defeatism is helpful, but I got a very Prince "Party Like It's 1999" feeling after consuming this. What should we do? If we pull all the fossil fuels out of our economy tom…
I don't see the case for human extinction here. Your link mentions it, but doesn't appear to lay out the case at all, so I don't know what that statement is based on, but I don't see how it would occur. The potential disruption due to climate change is immense, but people will survive. The problem is not how to keep humanity alive, but how to keep civilization going without some sort of major backslide, and without getting a couple of billion people killed.
Data: Hottest month ever! Group A: Weather != Climate. Data: Coldest month ever! Group B: Weather != Climate. Round and round we go.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's pretty easy to understand why it's being downvoted. It doesn't contribute to the conversation--it's a pedantic tangent that isn't any more interesting than noting that (1) the surface of the Earth used to be molten and (2) all matter in the known Universe was a lot hotter during the big bang. Is that relevant?
The surface of the Earth was molten some 4.5 billion years ago. The big bang was about 14 billion years ago. The start of the relative record is a mere 135 years ago. It is absurd to conflate the two, and it's a critical foundation for the statement. By simple random odds (which given that weather stations are few and far between, simple odds of micro-climates can shift temperature slightly), even with zero influence…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are significant temperature records that go back much farther than 1880 even. Many navies and armies kept records from all over the world, so we actually have lots more data than people think. There are also bodies of science that deal with 'aftcasting', which is making a weather forecast for a date in the past. These techniques have been refined to the point where we can make 1-day aftcasts for ~1850 that are…
To be honest, and this is my opinion only, but 2-3 day forcasts, at least in my area, are horribly inaccurate . In my state, it's a common joke that being a meteorologist is the only job you can have where you can be wrong 95% of the time, and still keep your job. Seriously, our forecasts are nearly always wrong. So.....saying we can make as accurate of forecasts for 200 years ago...that's not really saying much. Thi…
Meteorologists lower the quality of the data they receive.
People don't want bad news. People don't want to hear that it's going to rain on their weekend. People won't tune in to hear constant bad news.
So meteorologists take the positive and optimistic side.
The reality of forecasting is that much of the data, models, the warnings, are all created by the NWS.
The further you get from real NWS data, the lower the quality tends to be. It's like a game of telephone, except with forecasting.
National forecasters like The Weather Channel utilize tons of NWS data and models, and present it in a more friendly way. Generally there is a loss of quality here (and, when you look at TWC's buzzfeed approach to weather, it's not hard to see why they might respect clicks above all else).
Then, further down the pipe, away from the NWS and the actual source, away from National broadcasters, we get to local broadcasters. Once again, these guys are largely relying on upstream info, just packaging for the local audience.
It's not surprising that local meteorologists provide the lowest quality forecasting, because that's not really their job to provide highly accurate forecasting. Their job is actually to keep you watching through a commercial break, so the show remains on-air. The NWS is the service whose job is it to accurately forecast.
It's interesting to me that if you say "today was hotter than any day on record" The answer given always seems to be global warming. However if you say "today was colder than any day on record" (also happens very frequently) the answer given is "That's weather, not climate." Edit: Apparently this is not interesting to HNers. Bring on the downvotes.
Seems there are now three things that can not be discussed rationally: politics, religion and climate change. It is a perversion of science when a scientific theory is no longer subject to healthy criticism and skepticism.
I find it really disturbing that so much of (American) politics today is a debate over facts. Politics should be about debating priorities and principles and approaches based on commonly accepted facts.