51–60 of 157 posts
The issue of human contribution to climate change is much more complicated than that. This is an interesting contribution to the discussion, but it shouldn't be the only piece of information we go from.
More on the author of this post: https://www.skepticalscience.com/skeptic_Roy_Spencer.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Spencer_(scientist)#Views Another interpretation of this post: http://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/1xuccb/95_of_climat... (also see ovis's link in a reply below) Regarding very similar claims: https://www.skepticalscience.com/curry-mcintyre-resist-ipcc-... http://www.skepticalscience.com/ipc…
"It is a little known fact that the extra carbon dioxide (and methane, an especially potent greenhouse gas) emitted by joggers accounts for close to 10% of the current Global Warming problem." [1] Ban gym class! Ban exercise! [1] http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/tcs_daily/2005/06/time-for-ac...
I don't know enough about meteorology to comment on the article, but this quote bugged me: "And if humans are the cause of only, say, 50% of the warming (e.g. our published paper), then there is even less reason to force expensive and prosperity-destroying energy policies down our throats." No, there's the exact same amount of reason. This isn't a morality play, who's "fault" it is doesn't matter. If there were a met…
I think you're missing the point. Climate change policy is an optimization problem: how much money do we spend (either active on counter-measures or passively by capping energy usage) to reduce temperature change by some amount. If we can only affect it half as much as we thought we could, would we still spend the same amount? Maybe, but it's not exactly a no-brainer.
Maybe you'd have to spend twice as much to have the desired effect.
I'm a natural skeptic, so when everyone believes something I think that is the most important time to question it. I found Economist Bjorn Lomborg's take on climate change to be very impactful... http://www.ted.com/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_prioritie... The basic idea is: that given our limited resources how can we do the most good? The answer is that focusing that effort on climate change is frivolous even by…
The problem with doing net present value calculations on climate change is the possibility of "infinite" cost events. Sure it might make more sense from a NPV perspective to spend a given number of dollars on say improving the water treatment in poor countries rather than stopping GHG emissions, but only if we know the maximum cost of climate change. The problem becomes how do you do a NPV calculation on the possibil…
Never having taken place, thinking about such events would seem to challenge to both frequentist and Bayesian schools of thought.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"It is a little known fact that the extra carbon dioxide (and methane, an especially potent greenhouse gas) emitted by joggers accounts for close to 10% of the current Global Warming problem." [1] Ban gym class! Ban exercise! [1] http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/tcs_daily/2005/06/time-for-ac...
Was there supposed to be a link there?
Simply put, there is no precedent in the entire history of the planet Earth for overall heating as pronounced and rapid as the past 100 years of AGW. There are really only two possibilities: either humans are responsible for basically all of the heating, or there is a giant demon who is trying to stir-fry the human race.
So if you think that the recent warming is not anthropogenic... find Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, and Harold Ramis, fast.
To anybody reading this article, While Dr. Spencer does have real credentials, he is a know denier. I'm not saying that makes him necessarily wrong, but he is extremely biased in his views, and often publish research to back up those biased views. So I think he's comments should be taken with a grain of salt.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the impact of global warming is significantly smaller than predicted and the human-induced contribution to that reduced warming is also much smaller than claimed, then expensive "green" policies indeed need to be reevaluated. Your fault reasoning has nothing to do with it. Think of it from a programming perspective. You've suddenly discovered that your program runtime wasn't near as slow as you thought. Plus you'v…
Except that the entire "humans are responsible for say n%" is the latest diversionary tactic by climate deniers to sucker rational people onto opposing policy that mitigates climate change. The argument is akin to saying "your program slowdown is - and I'm making up a number out of thin air - 50% caused by systems outside of your control so you should definitely spend 50% less time optimizing the things you can optim…
If humans caused 100% of the change then we can stop causing it. If humans caused 0% of the change then we can't stop causing it and must adapt to it. If humans caused 50% of the change, then we can stop some of it but will have to adapt to the rest.
Obviously the premise has a huge bearing on the action we can and should take.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering how strongly your sources disagree with the OP, I find it surprising that the opposing graphs are not all that far off from each other. The graph from the last article you linked to: http://skepticalscience.com//pics/ProjvsObs.png The graph from the OP: http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/CMIP5-90-mode... In both cases the actuals are at the low end of the predicted range. They disagree as to h…
see http://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/02/roy-spencers-latest-decei... (courtesy ovis below)
"If the deep ocean ends up averaging 4.1 deg. C, rather than 4.0 deg. C, it won’t really matter." He must be blissfully unaware of how badly the oceans are being affected right now by our impact.