Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
1–10 of 39 posts
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#2Global warming is one of those topics I've always withheld judgement on because it's such a huge topic that, even ignoring politics, it seems very hard to get a solid understanding of the science.
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#3"Let us look at the predictions made in 1990: they predicted an increase in temperature of 0.3C per decade, plus minus 0.1C. Yet less than 0.2C of warming per decade was observed. To be blunt, they got it flat wrong."
How much less than 0.2C was it? 0.3 +/- 0.1 means it can be anywhere from 0.2 to 0.4, so unless it was grossly under 0.2, it wasn't flat wrong.
"there are alternatives to banning oil production: solar radiation management. We might be able to setup space mirrors or otherwise increasing the reflectivity of our atmosphere." ... "But keep in mind that we will soon run out of cheap oil in any case."
In other words, "Fear not, for we might just come up with some miracle technology or something. It might just all work out in the end so just stay the course and don't worry!"
If you're going to call out others for poorly reasoned arguments, at least have well reasoned arguments of your own.
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#4Global warming is one of those topics I've always withheld judgement on because it's such a huge topic that, even ignoring politics, it seems very hard to get a solid understanding of the science.
Unfortunately, by deciding to be "neutral" on the issue, you're exactly where the climate change deniers want you to be.
The deniers don't have to be proven correct to prevent action on climate change, they just have to put out enough FUD to create doubt.
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#5"Let us look at the predictions made in 1990: they predicted an increase in temperature of 0.3C per decade, plus minus 0.1C. Yet less than 0.2C of warming per decade was observed. To be blunt, they got it flat wrong." How much less than 0.2C was it? 0.3 +/- 0.1 means it can be anywhere from 0.2 to 0.4, so unless it was grossly under 0.2, it wasn't flat wrong. "there are alternatives to banning oil production: solar r…
Also wasn't that 0.3C in a nothing done to avert it scenario? With various green efforts around the world I would expect it to not quite hit the mark.
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#6Global warming is one of those topics I've always withheld judgement on because it's such a huge topic that, even ignoring politics, it seems very hard to get a solid understanding of the science.
That's true - but when there's risk of something, you need to buy insurance. Alt. energy, geo-enginnering, and small CO2 taxes are all ways of hedging that we should deploy in some combination. We can't say "don't know, therefore do nothing".
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#7"Let us look at the predictions made in 1990: they predicted an increase in temperature of 0.3C per decade, plus minus 0.1C. Yet less than 0.2C of warming per decade was observed. To be blunt, they got it flat wrong." How much less than 0.2C was it? 0.3 +/- 0.1 means it can be anywhere from 0.2 to 0.4, so unless it was grossly under 0.2, it wasn't flat wrong. "there are alternatives to banning oil production: solar r…
Also, China is now liquifying coal.
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#8"Let us look at the predictions made in 1990: they predicted an increase in temperature of 0.3C per decade, plus minus 0.1C. Yet less than 0.2C of warming per decade was observed. To be blunt, they got it flat wrong." How much less than 0.2C was it? 0.3 +/- 0.1 means it can be anywhere from 0.2 to 0.4, so unless it was grossly under 0.2, it wasn't flat wrong. "there are alternatives to banning oil production: solar r…
I think the bigger thing to pull from that quote centers on the word "prediction". The IPCC FAR didn't really make any predictions. Instead, it made a series of projections (twelve of them, to be precise) based on running various sets of hypothetical parameters through a climate model.
Some of those projections were based on very pessimistic scenarios (very high CO2 sensitivity, very high future CO2 emissions). They projected very high increase in temperature. Other projections were based on more optimistic scenarios. They projected a lower increase in temperature.
Now, the number that the author quotes (0.3C +/- 0.1C per decade) corresponds to the range for the block of projections that assumes a very high climate sensitivity - a sensitivity that turns out to be high. Since the projection was based on a scenario that did not correspond to reality, if we assume that the models were reasonably accurate then it should not surprise us that the projection didn't end up corresponding to reality, either. So there's an interesting omission. . . and an example of how what someone doesn't say can say as much about their position as what they do say.
Another omission that speaks volumes is highlighted if you compare the projections for scenarios that ended up being more representative of how those parameters did evolve over the next two decades to what global temperatures have been doing over that time period. Far from the alarmist claims of gloom and doom that the author would like to suggest were made, the projection for the scenario that ended up most closely corresponding to what actually happened slightly underestimated the actual change in temperature. But by an amount that was quite small in comparison to the error bars, so an honest and scientific analysis of the TAR projections would force us to conclude that in this particular respect the IPCC's analysis was actually dead on.
Poorly reasoned arguments are certainly unfortunate. . . but if you really want to make your position look bad, try blatantly cherry-picking the data.
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#9"Let us look at the predictions made in 1990: they predicted an increase in temperature of 0.3C per decade, plus minus 0.1C. Yet less than 0.2C of warming per decade was observed. To be blunt, they got it flat wrong." How much less than 0.2C was it? 0.3 +/- 0.1 means it can be anywhere from 0.2 to 0.4, so unless it was grossly under 0.2, it wasn't flat wrong. "there are alternatives to banning oil production: solar r…
Even more ridiculous.. the full quote is:
"We might be able to setup space mirrors or otherwise increasing the reflectivity of our atmosphere. Obviously, we cannot hope to both keep pumping CO2 in the atmosphere, and correct for it afterward: this could quickly become economically infeasible."
In the context of killing the planet and the entire human race, we still mention a plan could be "economically infeasible".
Jeez.
Re: Facts about global warming that you should keep for yourself
#10Global warming is one of those topics I've always withheld judgement on because it's such a huge topic that, even ignoring politics, it seems very hard to get a solid understanding of the science.
Unfortunately, by deciding to be "neutral" on the issue, you're exactly where the climate change deniers want you to be. The deniers don't have to be proven correct to prevent action on climate change, they just have to put out enough FUD to create doubt.
As IBM and Microsoft were aware, to win with FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt), they didn't have to convince you to buy their product, they just had to convince you not to buy the competitions', thereby starving the competition out.
Cigarettes, seat belts, lead paint, asbestos, Linux, climate change. They've all been fought using the same tactics.