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What's Really Warming the World?

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Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#191

Post by merpnderp »

dnautics wrote: post #117
cholantesh wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spencer is pretty out there. He's gone on record to say that warming proponents are advancing an argument that will lead to more deaths than the NSDAP's policies did, and is a signatory to the Evangelical Declaration on Climate Change, which suggests that this is largely a matter of faith for him...

He does also maintain one of the satellite records, which does show global warming over the period 1960-2000 (not so much the last 10 years because of the global warming hiatus).

RSS troposphere's hiatus goes back to December 1996 as of May 2015.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#192

Post by skylan_q »

istvan__ wrote: post #94

Well correlation is not causation. is it y=f(x) or y=x(f)? aka is is warmer because of the higher greenhouse gases or is there more greenhouse gases because of the warmer climate (that could have been caused by things like leaving an ice age and approaching a warm period in Earth's life) Just to clarify, i support green technology and I think this is definitely the way to go but I don't like the unjustified crusade u…

There's also confounding variables to take into account. One of those might not be driving the other.

Many commenters above are speaking about how hard it is to eject someone out of a bias, but I don't know why they're doing this. They're lamenting the inefficacy of logic to convince people while not applying it in this very case. The graph just shows a correlation.

http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#194

Post by tosseraccount »

hackuser wrote: post #185
tosseraccount wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many hacker news readers would prefer sources such as peer reviewed science journal articles where the authors claim proof one way or the other. The best way to evaluate science is to look at the raw data and the scientist's original paper.

This is a summary of research in those peer-reviewed journals, the summary being far better reviewed (by hundreds and thousands, as described) than the individual articles. I don't know about other HN readers, but I don't have time or expertise to keep up on individual articles. I doubt many climate scientists have the expertise in all those different fields.

I'm not afraid of looking at the source. Many times the "summaries" get distorted. Statements like "provide some evidence for" gets translated into "this proves". Popular press often does this.

The actual raw data and original article and independent confirmation is the gold standard for science.

I've chased down many stories reporting "proof" in many fields and , after examining the actual article, found that it actually said "well, this might be some evidence for possibly maybe supporting something".

This is a hazard in MANY fields.

Many people know this.

We Hacker News readers ran in to this a couple of days ago. Somebody said "Fasting helps in cancer therapy" and listed some science papers. It was voted up.

The actual papers DID NOT SAY THAT. They said "this small sample might provide some evidence but more study needs to be done".

These are separate things and careful readers can discern this.

Appeal to Authority or to a Mob or to Fashion is NOT science.

We need proof or it's not settled science.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#195

Post by hackuser »

fexl wrote: post #171
hackuser wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of this is answered in the IPCC reports, which have readable, short summaries: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9772353

I searched on the words "vapor" and "vapour" and found nothing. I also search on the word "water" and found nothing relevant to my question.

Perhaps the searches are [EDIT: not] looking in the PDFs? I just opened the Summary for Policymakers for the Physical Science Basis report, and found a few discussions of water vapor in the atmosphere.

I'd try looking at "Physical Science Basis" and "Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability" reports; try the Summaries for Policymakers first, and the full reports if those don't have what you need (though go straight to the full reports if you have time -- they can be fascinating!).

I hope that helps.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#196

Post by merpnderp »

gtrubetskoy wrote: post #155

What's always been puzzling me is why the relationship between man-produced emissions and climate is considered important in the fossil fuel debate. As if it's not enough that the air in major cities and vast parts of entire countries is literally toxic.

No kidding. Coal releases trace amounts of uranium into the atmosphere, not to mention the mercury.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#197

Post by fexl »

dnautics wrote: post #121
fexl wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/temperature-cha... There you can see a strong correlation between CO2 levels and temperature going back nearly half a million years. Teasing out cause and effect is the interesting task.

yeah, that correlation is totally the wrong way; the blue curve leads the red curve. Now, Look at the key: Temperature change (blue) and carbon dioxide change (red)

Yes I understand that effect, and it makes sense that higher temperatures might cause more CO2 to come out of solution, as in a bottle of soda going flat more quickly at room temperature than in the refrigerator.

That said, I am not certain that the recent dramatic spike to 400 ppm of CO2 (from what I've read) could be entirely caused by the fairly moderate temperature rises measured in recent years.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#198

Post by hackuser »

tosseraccount wrote: post #194
hackuser wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a summary of research in those peer-reviewed journals, the summary being far better reviewed (by hundreds and thousands, as described) than the individual articles. I don't know about other HN readers, but I don't have time or expertise to keep up on individual articles. I doubt many climate scientists have the expertise in all those different fields.

I'm not afraid of looking at the source. Many times the "summaries" get distorted. Statements like "provide some evidence for" gets translated into "this proves". Popular press often does this. The actual raw data and original article and independent confirmation is the gold standard for science. I've chased down many stories reporting "proof" in many fields and , after examining the actual article, found that it act…

> Statements like "provide some evidence" for gets translated into "this proves".

For what it's worth, the IPCC reports are very, very careful about this. They have a chart (though it can be hard to find) of exactly what confidence/probability is meant by each phrasing.

EDIT: for example, from the Sythesis Summary for Policymakers report:

The following terms have been used to indicate the assessed likelihood of an outcome or a result: virtually certain 99–100% probability, very likely 90–100%, likely 66–100%, about as likely as not 33–66%, unlikely 0–33%, very unlikely 0–10%, exceptionally unlikely 0–1%. Additional terms (extremely likely 95–100%, more likely than not >50–100%, more unlikely than likely 0–

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#199

Post by lamontcg »

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…

The shape of the curve is driven by the independent variable (CO2 concentration, volcanic activity, etc). The magnitude needs to get adjusted so that it doesn't produce inconsistent results when extrapolated backwards in time. Which is the problem with explaining the recent spike in temperature as anything other than CO2 concentration. Most of the other variables like solar flux are relatively steady so that if you increase their climate forcing effect you get a really bad fit in the 1900s which is non-physical.

There's also additional data like satellite measurements of the broadening of the absorption lines of CO2 and H2O in the IR blackbody spectra that the Earth radiates and the measurement of the shortfall of outgoing radiation in the radiation budget which are consistent with GHG effects and independently confirm these models.

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