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Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

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Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#331

Post by revelio »

amelius wrote: post #103
altacc wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a prelude to a simplistic "the models aren't accurate, so climate change probably isn't really a problem". However the problem with that is that the overwhelming majority of observations and models, many of which are far from simple and use large amounts of data, point to climate change being real, unusually rapid and anthropogenic. Using the argument that these models aren't accurate ignores the fac…

It sounds like a very basic mistake, though. Now I wonder how well climate research is funded.

It's incredibly well funded, that's part of the problem. Every time they make extreme claims their funding levels go up, because rich people and governments conclude studying the climate is the most important thing that can be done with the money.

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#332

Post by revelio »

jarenmf wrote: post #122
slibhb wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However the problem with that is that the overwhelming majority of observations and models, many of which are far from simple and use large amounts of data, point to climate change being real, unusually rapid and anthropogenic I think climate change is a problem (not a crisis) but it's important to note that if a scientist questions climate science, he becomes a pariah. In such an environment, it's hard to know how…

> if a scientist questions climate science, he becomes a pariah As a climate scientist myself, I can tell you this is untrue and a harmful legend. As climate science is mostly atmospheric physics, biology and chemistry, it's pretty much very easy to disagree with anyone if you have a good argument supported by data. If you have strong scientific arguments, it does not matter even if the whole world is against you. On…

>> As a climate scientist myself, I can tell you this is untrue and a harmful legend

Other climatologists say otherwise:

https://reason.com/2017/01/04/georgia-tech-climatologist-jud...

There's also a long list of people who were listed as IPCC reviewers, who claim they pointed out serious flaws in the research, were ignored, and whose names were then put on the final report anyway.

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#333

Post by revelio »

Aachen wrote: post #173
bleuchase wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Climategate happened. So there is legitimate reason to be skeptical of dire claims. And yes, I’m aware all of those involved in the scandal were cleared of wrongdoing. That’s like the FBI investigating itself and finding nothing wrong. Anyways, the fundamental assumption of most models—-that humans are behind climate change—-has not been sufficiently evaluated or tested. I find starting with that assumption uns…

I don't know whether you're being genuine or just trolling/flame baiting. If you are serious, maybe start by reading what those emails you're referring to actually said.

They're correct. This article goes deep into the emails, what they said, the non-investigation that followed and more:

https://www.rossmckitrick.com/uploads/4/8/0/8/4808045/climat...

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#334

Post by flavius29663 »

the_why_of_y wrote: post #284
flavius29663 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

before modern man, there were 30-60 mil buffaloes in the US, now there are 30 mil cows. It's kinda a net zero

The "Cattle Inventory: United States" chart here claims there are 95 million, down from a peak of 130 million in 1970s. https://cairncrestfarm.com/blog/how-many-cows-are-there-in-t...

I guess it depends how you count them:

> Other key findings in the report were:

    Of the 89.3 million head inventory, all cows and heifers that have calved totaled 38.3 million.
    There are 28.9 million beef cows in the United States as of Jan. 1, 2023, down 4% from last year.
    The number of milk cows in the United States increased to 9.40 million.
    U.S. calf crop was estimated at 34.5 million head, down 2% from 2021.
    All cattle on feed were at 14.2 million head, down 4% from 2022.
from https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2023/01-31-2023.php

So the question is: did they estimate the young buffalo calves as well? That seems to be what brings the cow total number from 40 to 90 million.

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#335

Post by revelio »

acdha wrote: post #303
shrubble wrote: post #40

This is exactly what the "deniers" have been saying - that the mathematical model is not fleshed out enough, and the data is not present in sufficiently accurate quantity, for the climate models to be accurate. This research shows that the mechanism of action was misunderstood all this time. What else hasn't been researched enough and has simplistic assumptions baked into the climate models? That shockingly simplisti…

If you want to talk about predictive power, let’s look at the first IPCC report from 1990. That had estimates which we now have data to judge them against, and have held up well: https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/12/ipccs-climate-projec... Similarly, Dr. James Hansen (director of NASA's Goddard Institute) testified before Congress based on his 1988 study predicting global warming and his numbers were very close to…

As the Ars article makes it clear, the predicted range of temperature change was extremely wide, 0.35 to 0.7 degrees by now even if you allow for the re-scaling to a shorter time period, yet actual change was at the very lowest point of that uncertainty interval.

That by itself doesn't tell us that they understand the climate though. Remember that previously they were extrapolating a cooling trend into an ice age. Anyone can extrapolate a linear trend forward on a graph into a disaster zone territory, but that doesn't imply real understanding.

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#336

Post by revelio »

dmbche wrote: post #311
revelio wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hockey stick graphs are indeed alarming, but also fraudulent, and the IPCC has even accepted that in the past! Look into the history of these graphs, the Mann lawsuit, the work McIntyre did on showing how these graphs were manufactured etc. After it was shown how Mann did it the NAS investigated and hockey sticks vanished from IPCC reports for around 15 years. Then one snuck back in to the latest report but only in t…

I'm sorry, you're spewing nonsense. For anyone having read this far: - "the mann lawsuit" is climategate, where some people found a single sentence out of context that sounded off out of years of emails. Mann sued the people that accused him of skewing the facts, and won a defamation suit. - while you write about things around the hockey stick graph, you dance around describing what they show. You can't "manufacture"…

That's backwards! Michael Mann filed a defamation lawsuit against a skeptic and then lost it nine years later. The court awarded the defendant full costs:

https://climatechangedispatch.com/tim-ball-defeats-michael-m...

Not only did the B.C. Supreme Court grant Ball’s application for dismissal of the nine-year, multi-million dollar lawsuit, it also took the additional step of awarding full legal costs to Ball.

The case was about whether Mann was engaged in knowing scientific fraud when he made his false hockey stick graph. Tim Ball said he did, and Mann sued, but in the end he preferred to lose the case rather than reveal his data and working, which says a lot:

In the pre-trial Discovery Process, the parties must give up key evidence in a reasonable fashion, that proves or disproves the Claim. Dr. Mann lost his case because he abused Discovery by refusing to honor the “concessions” he made to Ball in 2018 to finally show in open court his R2 regression numbers (Mann’s math ‘working out’) for his graph (see ‘update’ at foot of article).

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#337

Post by revelio »

dmbche wrote: post #313
revelio wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hockey stick graphs are indeed alarming, but also fraudulent, and the IPCC has even accepted that in the past! Look into the history of these graphs, the Mann lawsuit, the work McIntyre did on showing how these graphs were manufactured etc. After it was shown how Mann did it the NAS investigated and hockey sticks vanished from IPCC reports for around 15 years. Then one snuck back in to the latest report but only in t…

Oh and for McIntyre, here is a paper rebutting all his work : https://web.archive.org/web/20130124033049/http://www.cgd.uc...

That paper comes from the same group as the original MM paper (one of the authors studied under Mann even), has some of the same problems and was itself rebutted:

https://climateaudit.org/2006/08/30/wahl-and-ammann-again-1/

WA reported that reconstructions without bristlecones (their Scenario 6) lack “skill” in reconstruction and “climatological meaning”, a finding with which we concur. The NAS Panel says that bristlecones should be avoided in temperature reconstructions. Thus, MBH-type reconstructions (with PC networks) with or without bristlecones are both eliminated. So much for the “refutation” of our criticisms.

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#338

Post by sbaiddn »

myshpa wrote: post #129
sbaiddn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Earth doesn't feel anything because it is not sentient. Anthropomorphizing topics causes us to treat them emotionally. The OP has an excellent point which you didn't address them: most methane in the atmosphere is from natural causes. When the amount due to humans is removed, the effect on heating is not very significant in comparison of our CO2 emissions . Stated another way, the OP is warning against premature…

I think that we'll have to do not one, two or three big changes, but maybe hundreds/thousands of small ones. "Human activities contribute significantly to the total amount of methane emissions in the atmosphere. According to the Global Methane Budget, human activities account for about 60% of global methane emissions, while natural sources account for the remaining 40%. To put this into perspective, it is estimated t…

You wouldn't cite a random bloke on the internet, a person that has reason and consciousness, why are citing a language model that is trained on what the stupidest of blokes have said on the internet?

If we really cared about CO2 emissions we'd lower and strictly enforce interstate speed to 50 mpg. My Golf's milage goes up 30-40% when I drive 55 vs 80 (any slower is dangerous with 70+ traffic). All for an extra six minutes of commute time.

We don't actually care about emissions, not enough to do something meaningful about it. So we buy stupid electric cars and go on about cow farts. It's all posturing and virtue signaling.

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#339

Post by revelio »

dmbche wrote: post #316
revelio wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the changes were much larger than that, but recall from the climategate emails that they spent a lot of time trying to find ways to cover up the data around that. Look into the history of "hockey stick" graphs to see just how far they go. Historical evidence from outside their field shows there must have been changes of many degrees in the relatively recent past, e.g. bison fossils at altitudes indicating 5-6 deg…

How large were they? With a source please, you say a lot of garbage that I'd like not to have to sift through. Every source I see shows clearly that both your events were much less than 1°. Bison fossils? What about ree rings and ice core samples? How are bones a possible indiction of anything? Climate gate had a single sentence that seemed off to someone who has never done statistical analysis, if taken out of conte…

ClimateGate had numerous emails that in context showed serious malfeasance. They were literally saying they were going to exclude any scientific work that disagreed with them "even if they had to redefine the peer reviewed literature to do so". It certainly wasn't a single sentence. Try reading them yourself and see!

Re: fossils. Example: http://www.museumgolling.at/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/9_Sch...

But there are other lines of evidence that work in similar ways. They are based on the discovery and dating of fossils at altitudes where that form of life can't exist today because it's too cold, and then from that calculate how warm it must have been at the time (much warmer than today, even in the relatively recent past).

Re: tree rings/ice cores. These are called proxy reconstructions and they routinely conflict with each other, meaning they can't really be temperature proxies. Nonetheless, PCs are regularly discarded in a form of industrial scale cherry picking in order to create a hockey stick. An example of the problem is here, where proxies are randomly selected and plotted showing how almost none of them show any kind of hockey stick:

https://climateaudit.org/2021/08/11/the-ipcc-ar6-hockeystick...

Re: Methane may not warm the Earth quite as much as previously thought

#340

Post by sbaiddn »

hkt wrote: post #143
sbaiddn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Earth doesn't feel anything because it is not sentient. Anthropomorphizing topics causes us to treat them emotionally. The OP has an excellent point which you didn't address them: most methane in the atmosphere is from natural causes. When the amount due to humans is removed, the effect on heating is not very significant in comparison of our CO2 emissions . Stated another way, the OP is warning against premature…

If we're seeking to halt climate change, it seems quite reasonable to look at effective measures for that. If decreasing methane emissions from landfill or farming might contribute, it seems odd to write those things off. This is partly due to the way we silo investment in the west: there isn't an organisation that is a single point of coordination and can make the tradeoffs logically. So for better or worse, we shou…

We could slash emissions tomorrow by lowering the speed limit.

We aren't because we don't actually care.

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