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What's Really Warming the World?

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Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#291

Post by moultano »

paulhauggis wrote: post #270
Daishiman wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 resea…

>Again, "Do the fucking research" is not a debate.

Why do you want to debate instead of learn? Why not go read the IPCC report in which your questions are likely to be answered? Don't count on the lay interest of HN commentators, go read what the experts have to say directly. That's what that report is for.

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

We have a pretty good guess. Native Americans suddenly lost 95% of their population due to plagues introduced from Europe. They in turn stopped burning the forests of the Eastern US. The forests recovered, and pulled a huge amount of carbon out of the air. This caused an ice age.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#292

Post by talmand »

ahallock wrote: post #95
macinjosh wrote: post #83

Please don't take this as a denial of climate change, it is an honest question. How do scientists learn the levels of ozone, aerosols, green house gases, and the other data points going so far back at a global scale? Is the data from before the latter half of the 20th century spotty? If so, why is it considered good enough to use in a context of scientific research where quality and correctness of data is paramount?

The fact that you have to have a disclaimer up front makes me sad.

It's a serious problem in multiple areas in society these days; the inability to ask simple questions that may go against the "accepted" narrative without being personally attacked. Science, religion, politics, sports, it's everywhere.

It's a seriously sad state of affairs, but nothing new really, if you think about it. The reach of modern communications has inflated the problem in my opinion.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#293

Post by davidgerard »

jessaustin wrote: post #258
paulhauggis wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bring up some simple questions and I am immediately silenced. I guess I didn't realize HN was anti-science and anti-intellectual.

http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html

That essay is not, however, an invitation to the Galileo gambit.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#294

Post by ska »

dnautics wrote: post #249
ska wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

does 2.5.6 from http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-cha... address this adequately? (I was curious from your comment, but only spent a minute looking)

Read the section yourself and ask if it does. They say right there that they don't do the calculations because it's too uncertain.

Ah, but that's not at all the same as not addressing it, or as you state "I have never seen anyone talk about this alternative hypothesis." (of course I read it, and asked that question)

They are talking about it, and saying that it's a potential source of error that nobody knows how to account for yet, which is pretty common in science. If someone can demonstrate that the potential effect is dominant, it's a real problem. If someone can demonstrate that the potential effect is trivial it can safely be left alone. Otherwise you do the best modeling you can with the best data you can and talk about the possible confounding issues as so we proceed.

So I don't see any particularly damning issue here, have I missed something? It would be nice to resolve the differences between estimates. Is i the lack of analysis of radiative forcing that is bothering you? Do we have any reason to believe it can be a significant term? These sources of vapor are certainly not large (relative to total sources of water vapor in the atmosphere) so I'm not seeing the mechanism.

This really isn't my area, and as always I'm more than happy to be wrong (I learn more that way).

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#295

Post by drjesusphd »

Since I seem to be repeating myself all over this thread:

It is basic physics (the optics of IR and visible light and thermodynamics) that trace amounts of CO2 and methane can significantly warm the atmosphere.

We know physics pretty damn well, and if you do not accept this, there is no conversation.

Sure, one should look at the data to see to what extent this is happening and there are all kinds of questions one can ask. But all this talk of "correlation is not causation" is nonsense.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#296

Post by hackuser »

fexl wrote: post #207
hackuser wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

I opened the "Summary for Policymakers" listed right on their home page, and it popped up a PDF titled "AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM-1.pdf". That's where I searched on the word "vapor" and found only one occurrence -- inside the word "evaporation". I guess the "for the Physical Science Basis" report is something different that I haven't found yet.

Holy cow do they make it hard. I had JavaScript off, which made their page much more usable. Either do that or ...

With JavaScript on, apparantly the UX concept is 'Easter eggs': There are 4 images arranged horizontally at the top. If you click image, one the section beneath it changes. The second image is "Physical Science Basis".

All that work making the reports accessible, hamstrung by web design.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#297

Post by npsimons »

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.

So, that's an interesting phenomenom, albeit one with possible explanations (that others have provided), but I'd like to volley a question back to you: have you performed the same experiments that Arrhenious[1] performed in 1896, that has been reproduced thousands of times before, and come up with a different result? (ie, that CO2 doesn't create a greenhouse effect).

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_ef...

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#298

Post by spdustin »

tosseraccount wrote: post #231
hackuser wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ou…

OK. I'm curious. What prestige science journal article says "virtually certain" that man is primary cause of global warming? What phrasing in the results section makes you feel that it is "near proof" ? I'm not asking for "it is likely or probable". I'll buy that. I want solid proof ... or , uh "almost proof". [edit: nobody up to it ? ]

Am I to understand that you'll only "bet the climate" if it's a sure thing? I'm curious to know if all important decisions you make are backed only by "virtually certain" odds that the outcome of your decision will be as you predicted.

Not trolling, honestly. I really want to better understand this mindset.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#299

Post by crygin »

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.

Ugh. This is exactly the type of poorly-informed response you generally get when people attempt to "read the data" for themselves with little to no understanding of the science behind it. Seems to be a lot of that going around HN today.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#300

Post by phaemon »

merpnderp wrote: post #189
pcrh wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're correct that the article failed to point out that the increase in CO2 was unambiguously man made. Now, is the temperature increase caused by the increase in CO2 - likely so since the correlation is so close. Have they exhaustively excluded other possible causes -- maybe, maybe not...?

Why does everyone ignore the UAH and RSS troposphere data? It's the best data (by far the most accurate) we have on atmospheric temperature, and it shows no warming since 1996. http://images.remss.com/msu/msu_time_series.html I have a simple R script to find the trend if you want to see it yourself.

Can I ask you two questions?

What does your R script attempt to show?

What is your null hypothesis?

Thanks!

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