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What's Really Warming the World?

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Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#261

Post by Daishiman »

paulhauggis wrote: post #240
hackuser wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also question how we know the difference between nature/cycles and man-made pollution. It's a great question, one which has occupied many scientists. It has been addressed in detail in the scientific research. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9772353 > The problem is that it's too political now. Remember that's a well-documented, established technique often used by people who want to obstruct things; cre…

"IIRC, 97% of climate scientists believe it's happening and caused by humans" Okay, show me a study that has the details on which parts are human made and which parts are caused by nature (with numbers). I have never seen this anywhere and You would think if they actually knew, we would have seen it by now. This isn't that difficult and it doesn't really make any sense that humans are causing 100%. Especially with th…

> Okay, show me a study that has the details on which parts are human made and which parts are caused by nature (with numbers). I have never seen this anywhere and You would think if they actually knew, we would have seen it by now. This isn't that difficult and it doesn't really make any sense that humans are causing 100%. Especially with things like the little ice age before we were around to pollute the earth.

Honestly dude, do the fucking research. Read the IPCC. Hell even Wikipedia has the fundamentals extremely well explained.

We know very, stupid well what's causing the climate to change. CO2 concentration is not just a correlation in the models, but has a directly observable physical effect that has been known about in labs and was later shown to be the primary reason for global warming.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#262

Post by npsimons »

triangleman wrote: post #250
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.

Because it's not a debate about science, it's a debate about policy. Imagine you are a Los Angeles politician looking to promote one of two policies: 1) Clean up the air in Los Angeles at a measurable cost of X, most of which will be paid by Los Angeles taxpayers (including said politician). 2) Reduce CO2 emissions worldwide at an unmeasurable cost of Y, most of which will be paid via the inflation of consumer prices…

> Because it's not a debate about science, it's a debate about policy.

Bingo! The science is settled, as much as any science ever can be. The problem comes in with people "just asking questions", the same questions, over and over again, that have been answered so many times, but people don't want to change their beliefs. Reminds me a lot of tactics used by certain other groups with deeply held beliefs.

I have to commend people like hackuser, whose patience is not only commendable, but astounding! I truly hope the sealions don't wear him down.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#263

Post by Daishiman »

300bps wrote: post #147
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…

Cool visualization. I agree, but I have to say their imagination on what other things might be causing warming is not very robust. For just one example, there are at least two major effects of burning: 1. Release of chemicals into the atmosphere (ex: carbon dioxide) 2. Directly heating the atmosphere There are literally billions of air conditioners, heaters, cars, factories, etc that all generate heat. The effect of…

They did the math already. The amount of directly released human heat is a drop in the bucket.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#265

Post by scarmig »

narrator wrote: post #247
hackuser wrote: post #122

This repeats some buried comments but I think it's worthwhile: I'm not a climate scientist, but in my experience the absolute most reliable, most time-efficient way to learn about climate change is the IPCC reports. I wonder if there is anything written in any other field that compares: http://www.ipcc.ch/ Specifically, if you are short on time, read the 'Summaries for Policymakers', written at the level and attentio…

A couple years back I read the IPCC reports trying to find out if global warming was real or not. I noticed the Vostok ice core data in the earlier reports showed the temperature rose first and then the CO2 rose. Likewise, the temperature fell first and then the CO2 fell later on. They fixed this little inconvenient data problem in the later reports.

The sad thing is, some people who aren't particularly familiar with scientific practice will read this as damning, while in reality it's anything but.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#266

Post by darkmighty »

wnewman wrote: post #60
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 real trick is to see how well your model extrapolates from the data you have out into the future." That is the most common way to show the modeller is not shamelessly overfitting.:-| Another way, though, is less common but not vanishingly uncommon: the model may be so much simpler than the data it fits that overfitting is not a plausible explanation. (Roughly there are too many bits of entropy in the match to th…

While the general gist of your argument is right, I think there are some non-trivial ways to overfit. There are some 25 constants in the standard model apparently that describe the world around us to enormous precision. This is so little information that of course the trivial 'overfitting by encoding observations directly' will fail, but we could still be overfitting by having an excess number of variables: perhaps there's really some mechanism in neutrino physics that explains neutrino oscillation without needing some constants to describe how it really happens. This might in turn boost tremendously our predictive precision for neutrino oscillation to match the precision of the other more fundamental variables in the model, for example. But I think you're right that it's so little data that we have some strong information theoretic guarantees that at least the model will have predictive power matching the precision of previous measurements.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#267

Post by [deleted] »

wnewman wrote: post #60
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 real trick is to see how well your model extrapolates from the data you have out into the future." That is the most common way to show the modeller is not shamelessly overfitting.:-| Another way, though, is less common but not vanishingly uncommon: the model may be so much simpler than the data it fits that overfitting is not a plausible explanation. (Roughly there are too many bits of entropy in the match to th…

[deleted]

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#268

Post by [deleted] »

paulhauggis wrote: post #240
hackuser wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I also question how we know the difference between nature/cycles and man-made pollution. It's a great question, one which has occupied many scientists. It has been addressed in detail in the scientific research. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9772353 > The problem is that it's too political now. Remember that's a well-documented, established technique often used by people who want to obstruct things; cre…

"IIRC, 97% of climate scientists believe it's happening and caused by humans" Okay, show me a study that has the details on which parts are human made and which parts are caused by nature (with numbers). I have never seen this anywhere and You would think if they actually knew, we would have seen it by now. This isn't that difficult and it doesn't really make any sense that humans are causing 100%. Especially with th…

[deleted]

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#269

Post by 300bps »

Daishiman wrote: post #263
300bps wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool visualization. I agree, but I have to say their imagination on what other things might be causing warming is not very robust. For just one example, there are at least two major effects of burning: 1. Release of chemicals into the atmosphere (ex: carbon dioxide) 2. Directly heating the atmosphere There are literally billions of air conditioners, heaters, cars, factories, etc that all generate heat. The effect of…

They did the math already. The amount of directly released human heat is a drop in the bucket.

I would love to see it if you have a source.

EDIT Thank you.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#270

Post by paulhauggis »

Daishiman wrote: post #261
paulhauggis wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"IIRC, 97% of climate scientists believe it's happening and caused by humans" Okay, show me a study that has the details on which parts are human made and which parts are caused by nature (with numbers). I have never seen this anywhere and You would think if they actually knew, we would have seen it by now. This isn't that difficult and it doesn't really make any sense that humans are causing 100%. Especially with th…

> Okay, show me a study that has the details on which parts are human made and which parts are caused by nature (with numbers). I have never seen this anywhere and You would think if they actually knew, we would have seen it by now. This isn't that difficult and it doesn't really make any sense that humans are causing 100%. Especially with things like the little ice age before we were around to pollute the earth. Hon…

"Honestly dude, do the fucking research. Read the IPCC. Hell even Wikipedia has the fundamentals extremely well explained. We know very, stupid well what's causing the climate to change. CO2 concentration is not just a correlation in the models, but has a directly observable physical effect that has been known about in labs and was later shown to be the primary reason for global warming."

Again, "Do the fucking research" is not a debate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

It's interesting that we had a major climate change before the industrial revolution and we still don't underestand completely how it happened.

Maybe I'm just smarter than most climate scientists? After all the number fudging that has happened in the last few weeks (and during climate gate), I think it might just be the case.

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