Live data from Hacker News

Global Green Up Slows Warming

earthobservatory.nasa.gov

81–90 of 98 posts

Re: Global Green Up Slows Warming

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3154232/ecoh... Science creates more and more powerful tools, but scientific progress is not something innately good. The powerful tools can be used for good or bad (nukes, climate disruptions, synthesis of new viruses).

Okay but can you prove that the tax money was used with the intent of creating the virus? That was your assertion

Stop putting words in my mouth, I never mentioned intent. My point is that when you play with fire, you're bound to get a burn.

In this case, we gave money to someone playing with fire. I'm not going to go as far as implying a malicious intent - but neither I'm ruling out pyromaniacs.

Re: Global Green Up Slows Warming

#82
More CO2 in the atmosphere should result in a greening effect, right?

Measurements of warming in these models are controversial. How can they establish that 0,25 increase in the average temperature of the Earth has occurred? How does an average even makes sense, in such discrepancy in temperatures observed worldwide. How can models properly reflect the reality of 0.25c degrees, or whatever low predicted increase, will have on the planet?

Also, how do they account for urbanization effects (which in itself causes warming), and placement of thermometers around these areas.

I have more questions than certainties about this issue.

Re: Global Green Up Slows Warming

#83
post #4

The key line for those who don't read the article: "Scientists say that global greening since the early 1980s may have reduced global warming by as much as 0.2° to 0.25° Celsius (0.36° to 0.45° Fahrenheit). In other words, the world would be even warmer than it is if not for the surge in plant growth." The surge in plant growth is a result of increased amount of CO2 in the air as a result of anthropogenic activity. Q…

>increased amount of CO2 in the air as a result of anthropogenic activity Couple of questions because I'm curious... What percentage of the 0.04% CO2 in Earth's atmosphere do humans contribute? Has it yet been absolutely proven 100% that a gas comprising 0.04% of Earth's atmosphere is the main culprit/control knob which controls climate(s) around the Earth?

"Carbon emissions" is a collection of gasses, one of which is CO2. It's pretty common to equate the damage different gases do to CO2 and refer to it as "Carbon", which then get's messy when people paraphrase and leave out some context. For example Methane does something like 80x more damage than CO2 by weight, so it said a ton of Methane is "80 tons of carbon"

And Science doesn't work by "Absolutely 100% proving" anything. Bayesian statistics which underpins almost all of modern science lets us take highly educated guesses with communicable confidence in that guess. So stop looking for "100% absolute proof" to be convinced, you won't get it.

Re: Global Green Up Slows Warming

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it was around 1 gigaton of CO2 caused by humans for every 40 gigatons of CO2 caused naturally, which is about 2.5% of total CO2 emissions every year.

Thanks, so that's 2.5% of 0.04%, right? Has it been proven that a gas comprising 0.04% of Earth's atmosphere is the main factor which affects Earth's climate(s)? I'm asking, because 0.04% of something seems like a particularly small fraction to have such a dramatic effect on a whole planet's weather and climate. Especially in a non-linear dynamic and chaotic - hence very difficult to predict - system like Earth's wea…

> main factor which affects Earth's climate

This is such a dubious statement you keep repeating. Is it the main one? No, probably not. If you took out all the Nitrogen, shit would break a lot faster than if you took out all the CO2. You could probably name a few others.

However it is proven that carbon emissions is the main thing affecting the the change we are observing in earth's climate. And I shouldn't have to, because you are who you are, I'm going to staple on "within reasonable amount of certainty"

Re: Global Green Up Slows Warming

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's heretical about asking honest straightforward questions? This is a loaded question ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question ), since it implies that this question-asking is honest and straightforward. On the contrary, it seems like OP is "jaqing off" ( https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Just_asking_questions ); unless, of course, they can absolutely prove 100% that they're acting in good faith.

Can you absolutely prove 100% that you're acting in good faith?

Nope, but that's no matter, since whether or not I am acting in good faith is logically independent of whether OP is jaqing off (see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque ).

In contrast, OP's hunch about the climate emergency either not existing because the concentration of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere is "small" (according to some unspecified criteria), and/or fixing itself due to plant growth, run counter to the consensus position of the world scientific community, and hence the burden of proof is on OP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)

It was their choice to raise that burden to the unachievable height of '100% absolute proof' :)

Re: Global Green Up Slows Warming

#86

More CO2 in the atmosphere should result in a greening effect, right? Measurements of warming in these models are controversial. How can they establish that 0,25 increase in the average temperature of the Earth has occurred? How does an average even makes sense, in such discrepancy in temperatures observed worldwide. How can models properly reflect the reality of 0.25c degrees, or whatever low predicted increase, wil…

> How does an average even makes sense, in such discrepancy in temperatures observed worldwide.

> Also, how do they account for urbanization effects (which in itself causes warming), and placement of thermometers around these areas.

Related to your worries, 11 years ago a group of physicists from outside the meteorology and climate science community, had similar worries. Maybe meteorologists and climate scientists haven't done a good analysis of the existing land surface temperature measurements? What about the urban heat island effect, growing cities, and moving measurement locations?

These physicists started the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature Project, went back to the original raw data, and reanalyzed everything, developing their own new statistical methods as needed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth

The result? The same observed warming rate as in the previous studies.

Maybe this kind of reanalysis needs to be done again every 10-20 years? Kind of like rewriting software from scratch.

Re: Global Green Up Slows Warming

#87

More CO2 in the atmosphere should result in a greening effect, right? Measurements of warming in these models are controversial. How can they establish that 0,25 increase in the average temperature of the Earth has occurred? How does an average even makes sense, in such discrepancy in temperatures observed worldwide. How can models properly reflect the reality of 0.25c degrees, or whatever low predicted increase, wil…

These models are controversial mostly because there are vested interests trying to create controversy around them; the actual scientific controversy is hard to find among all the random noise questions posted on marginally relevant discussion threads by people who evidently haven't read even the relevant Wikipedia articles, much less any papers on the actual models and predictions, even though there are entire journals full of them.

In particular, your questions about how the increase is measured are answered in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_temperature_recor..., your questions about the impact of land use changes are answered in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Changes_of_the_..., your question about how the models are calibrated to predict future effects is partly answered in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_climate_change#Warm..., and your question about how it makes sense to measure a temperature as an average reveals that you don't know what a temperature is and is answered in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature#Microscopic_statis....

You really need to rethink where you've been getting your information from and start practicing some minimal epistemic hygiene.

Re: Global Green Up Slows Warming

#88
post #86

More CO2 in the atmosphere should result in a greening effect, right? Measurements of warming in these models are controversial. How can they establish that 0,25 increase in the average temperature of the Earth has occurred? How does an average even makes sense, in such discrepancy in temperatures observed worldwide. How can models properly reflect the reality of 0.25c degrees, or whatever low predicted increase, wil…

> How does an average even makes sense, in such discrepancy in temperatures observed worldwide. > Also, how do they account for urbanization effects (which in itself causes warming), and placement of thermometers around these areas. Related to your worries, 11 years ago a group of physicists from outside the meteorology and climate science community, had similar worries. Maybe meteorologists and climate scientists ha…

It would be super awesome to have a fully reproducible version of the IPCC model so that anyone can download it and not only reproduce the original predictions but see what variations it's sensitive to.

Re: Global Green Up Slows Warming

#89
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IPCC reports describe the answers to those questions very thoroughly, no point in rehashing that here.

Does the IPCC conclusively prove with 100% certainty that the fraction of the 0.04% of CO2 comprising Earth's atmosphere humans contribute is the main thing which affects the Earth's climate(s)?

Are you making a good faith argument? Because it doesn't seem like it.

The list of things "conclusively prove[n] with 100% certainty" is vanishingly small and not a burden of proof that anyone applies to something unless they are looking for literally any reason to dismiss it out of hand. Other folks have already mentioned the difference between "carbon" in climate science parlance and "CO2" which you appear to have ignored in subsequent comments.

Assuming your question is indeed in good faith (I don't believe it is, but others may have the same question with a little more honesty) - anthropogenic climate change is a scientific theory that is the best answer to the evidence we currently have. No other theories taken seriously by the scientific community come close, and new data fits ACC models with more and more accuracy. So "no, but close enough."

Re: Global Green Up Slows Warming

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Settled science is an oxymoron.

You don't think it's settled science that water is H2O?

In the 01960s and 01970s it seemed like it might sometimes polymerize, which might have implied that it's always somewhat polymerized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polywater but after 12 years of research this turned out to be wrong. If someone got similar experimental results today, while taking more care to prevent the contamination that gave rise to the original results, and did it under different conditions that hadn't been intensively investigated during the original polywater period, it would definitely merit further investigation.

In 01988 Jacques Benveniste did some experiments which seemed to show some sort of chemical alteration of water in the presence of antibodies, though it didn't show up with the usual spectroscopic techniques: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_memory which were published in Nature. Replication attempts were made by several teams. They failed, so Benveniste was wrong.

So I wouldn't say it's "settled science" that water is H2O. When contrary evidence pops up, chemists investigate it and find out what's wrong with it; they don't just dismiss it. That would be unscientific.

We could also quibble about the meaning of "H2O", though perhaps this is less interesting. For example, although it's only about 0.1 ppm, a part of any sample of water exists in the form of free hydronium (H3O+) and hydroxyl (OH-) ions, not H2O. Because this is an equilibrium, you can't just remove the ions to get pure H2O; they come right back. This self-ionization is responsible for significant aspects of water's behavior, including the formation of streamers that limit the storage time of water-dielectric capacitors, and the particular way acid-base chemistry works in water.

Natural water also contains about 155 ppm DOH and D2O, though this can be removed, and it's arguable that this is within the meaning of "H2O" anyway.

And the water molecules in liquid water or ice form a continuous hydrogen-bonded network, though this was not known until 01920; to some extent it's just a matter of convention rather than objective fact that we consider those bonds to be "intermolecular", making water H2O rather than an (H2O)n polymer; we consider the weaker hydrogen bonds between DNA strands to make DNA a single molecule rather than two intertwined molecules. (The polywater affair, however, posited the formation of a covalent water polymer.)

Post reply on HN