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What's Really Warming the World?

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Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#31

Post by yequalsx »

batou wrote: post #18
moubarak wrote: post #4

i read an article a while back on the economist which suggested that if you look at a longer span (much longer than 1880) you will find that this is a natural cycle that the Earth/Sun go through. We just happen to be at that point in the cycle. i really doubt we humans can affect climate changes in any way. An interactive colourful plot doesn't convince me.

Indeed. Didn't Feynman say that the real measure of science is experiment? Show me the experiments otherwise we have merely observations and conjecture. They might be right, but at the moment we've established hypothesis and nothing more.

We humans are right now conducting the experiment. Despite empirical evidence, data, modeling, and application of our knowledge the effects of green house gases we continue to pump them into the atmosphere on a massive scale. In another 30 - 40 years the experiment will yield conclusive results. Then I suppose global warming deniers like Rush Limbaugh will shrug their shoulders and say, "Well, we now have our experimental evidence."

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#32

Post by mikeash »

batou wrote: post #18
moubarak wrote: post #4

i read an article a while back on the economist which suggested that if you look at a longer span (much longer than 1880) you will find that this is a natural cycle that the Earth/Sun go through. We just happen to be at that point in the cycle. i really doubt we humans can affect climate changes in any way. An interactive colourful plot doesn't convince me.

Indeed. Didn't Feynman say that the real measure of science is experiment? Show me the experiments otherwise we have merely observations and conjecture. They might be right, but at the moment we've established hypothesis and nothing more.

The experiment isn't controlled, but it's being performed. The experiment is, "Let's dump gigatons of excess CO2 into the atmosphere and see what happens!" So far, what happens is that global temperatures go up noticeably.

What are you proposing we should do? Should we just ignore the whole thing until it's proven?

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#34

Post by mikeash »

moubarak wrote: post #27
mikeash wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no known natural cycle in which the rate of change in global temperature matches what's been happening in the past few decades. Current and even projected temperatures are well within the range of what happens naturally, but it's happening much faster than it ever has before. This has worrying implications for the ability of ecosystems to adapt, and more importantly for us humans, for the ability of civiliza…

I'm a non-secular person that's why. I certainly don't have the numbers, i read them here and there. But i base it on knowledge coming from scriptures. Scientists are hardworking people, but i don't take their numbers as faith.

OK, so you think humans can't possibly affect the climate because the all-powerful creator of the universe said it couldn't happen?

Why are you even trying to put a factual basis on your doubt, then? Why talk about natural cycles and all that, if your actual source for doubt is divine?

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#35

Post by moubarak »

flavor8 wrote: post #29
moubarak wrote: post #4

i read an article a while back on the economist which suggested that if you look at a longer span (much longer than 1880) you will find that this is a natural cycle that the Earth/Sun go through. We just happen to be at that point in the cycle. i really doubt we humans can affect climate changes in any way. An interactive colourful plot doesn't convince me.

> i really doubt we humans can affect climate changes in any way On what basis, exactly? Would you be convinced if climate scientists critiqued your unit testing approach?

as i answered before, merely on a non-secular basis. Not all knowledge comes from science and experiments. There is so much knowledge in religious scriptures.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#36

Post by crimsonalucard »

This article only serves to stroke the ego of people who already believe that CO2 emissions cause global warming. It does nothing for people who already deny it.

Evidence, no matter how strong doesn't serve to change the nature of a man. People would rather bend the logic and the evidence to fit their convenient perception of reality.

Which brings me to the question: "What can change a nature of a man?" Imminent danger? If an assailant had a gun pointed at your head, it'd be impossible to deny. How can this evidence about global warming be presented so that it can't be denied?

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#37

Post by _petronius »

nixy wrote: post #8

In climate 130 years is not a long time. I wish these articles showed graphs with historical data that go back thousands of years so that I could see how, in a historical context, greenhouse emissions are affecting the world. I've only ever seen data from the 1900's, and it looks pretty hockey stick, but would be interesting to see fluctuations with the ice age(s) and local highs included. Edit: historical data is of…

I think in the context of convincing people that we urgently need to address the current climate problem (for economic, ecological, and security reasons), that might be distracting.

Assuming there are probably other interglacial periods in Earth's long history that were a lot warmer than the current one[0], or maybe had lots more greenhouse gasses from some non-human source (if such a thing is geologically possible), that doesn't make the implications of global temperature rise on current human society any less disastrous, or absolve the fact that the current warming period is from gasses released by burning fossil fuels.

The fact is, that the Earth has had worse ecological disasters than the human species (although not many, and most of them were caused by big asteroid impacts[1]). So I'm less afraid of how this stacks up against the entire climatalogical history of the planet than I am of armed conflicts breaking out over water rights, or the loss of huge swaths of agricultural land.

[0]: And it looks like there are: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interglacial [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#Major_extinct...

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#38

Post by cholantesh »

moubarak wrote: post #27
mikeash wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no known natural cycle in which the rate of change in global temperature matches what's been happening in the past few decades. Current and even projected temperatures are well within the range of what happens naturally, but it's happening much faster than it ever has before. This has worrying implications for the ability of ecosystems to adapt, and more importantly for us humans, for the ability of civiliza…

I'm a non-secular person that's why. I certainly don't have the numbers, i read them here and there. But i base it on knowledge coming from scriptures. Scientists are hardworking people, but i don't take their numbers as faith.

Which scriptures? And why are human-authored documents so trustworthy in that one scenario?

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#39

Post by CountSessine »

mikeash wrote: post #21
Sapient wrote: post #2

It would be a really nice visualisation of the factors if it worked properly. It was impossible to read and navigate for me.

On my MacBook Pro using Chrome, it was even worse. Impossible to read at least tells me that something is wrong, but using the trackpad to scroll through the options in a natural flicking way actually skips over multiple entries at a time with only the barest flicker to indicate that it happened. I got almost to the end before I realized I had only seen about one third of the information they were trying to present.…

Eccch. This is the second Bloomberg article in as many days (the first was on Paul Krugman) to co-opt scrolling. I read a BBC article yesterday that did the same thing.

Jesus, webdevs. Stop this shit now.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#40

Post by natermer »

tosseraccount wrote: post #19
jasonkester wrote: post #3

Cool visualization. It's worth keeping in mind that the modeled data lines up with reality because it's supposed to. That's how you calibrate your model, by making sure it fits reality. The real trick is to see how well your model extrapolates from the data you have out into the future. As in, if you feed it data up to, say, 1990, will it correctly spit out 2015 temperatures that fit the reality of 2015, or will it s…

Is there a scorecard for which models have performed well?

None of the models have performed very well. You probably won't find a scorecard because it's embarrassing.
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