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What's Really Warming the World?

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Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#401

Post by ocschwar »

merpnderp wrote: post #352
ocschwar wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hint: decades don't have to start with year 10*n+0.

We already know the full data set has a 1.2K/century trend (this is annual trend most commonly used to represent the data). Decadal moving averages aren't going to shed more light than that. We also know that if you just grab the last 19 years and 6 months, or any smaller subset of that, you'll see 0 to negative trends.

Which is why you should not follow along the denialist gambit and grab just those two data points.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#403

Post by Zuider »

bjt wrote: post #365
themgt wrote: post #346

Helpful when reading this thread to keep in mind Michael Mann's six stages of climate change denial: 1. CO2 is not actually increasing. 2. Even if it is, the increase has no impact on the climate since there is no convincing evidence of warming. 3. Even if there is warming, it is due to natural causes. 4. Even if the warming cannot be explained by natural causes, the human impact is small, and the impact of continued…

Though I wouldn't accept #5 and #6 exactly as phrased, it does seem like positive effects ought to be balanced against the negative, and the uncertainty of future technological developments ought to inform our current decision of how much to spend addressing climate change. Does that make me a climate change denier?

Your position is similar to that of Swedish environmentalist and academic, Bjorn Lomberg who accepts that rising CO2 levels are the cause of warming, and that this is a problem, but argues that the dangers are overstated and resources would be better devoted to mitigation of climate change and addressing other pressing issues such as global poverty.

Despite his relatively orthodox views, he was recently run off campus at the University of Western Australia where he had set up a think tank, The Consensus Centre, to which the Australian government had pledged $4 million.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-08/bjorn-lomborg-uwa-cons...

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#404

Post by reitanqild »

JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #360
suprfnk wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The first four stages have always baffled me. Anyone who knows basic chemistry Well, there you go. A lot of people don't.

The baffling part about it is how someone can ignorantly argue correlations of basic chemistry when they don't know basic chemistry.

Another interesting tidbit: You'll find this on both sides of most public discussions I guess.

A whole lot of the people who tries to defend man made global warming in public forums seems to be parroting what they have heard, just like the naysayers.

Getting to the facts instead of gettings served up brochures seems hard and asking questions gets you smacked down by a bunch of zealots.

Which is why I found this piece interesting: at least some numbers and charts that seems understandable.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#405

Post by pistle »

EdSharkey wrote: post #361
pistle wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're out of step and, yourself, out of line. https://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?r=326 The name change agenda is most often liked to a Republican strategist based on focus groups saying CC was LESS scary than GW.

I was pointing out how the parent sounded like a creep with his groupthink shaming routine. What a bore. You can spin what I said with some "republicans are evil" noise, but my original point stands. As for you, don't be so religious. Your "out of step" crack makes you sound like a creep too.

Good on you if you don't have time to read the link, but your point doesn't stand if you took a minute to read the linked article. Remaining blissfully, self-righteously uninformed in your name-calling (shaming) routine has no quarter here.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#406

Post by contravariant »

scarmig wrote: post #334
drjesusphd wrote: post #295

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…

The science around climate change is well established--it's happening, it's man-made, and it will continue--but it's a bit more complicated than that. The physics suggests a relatively small increase in temperature (<1C); it's the positive feedbacks, particularly water vapor vapor feedbacks, that make climate change so potentially costly.

It doesn't help that estimates of the climate sensitivity seem to be all over the place.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#407

Post by reitanqild »

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.

Me to. Way too many people, on both sides, will attack anyone who comes across as unsupportive.

Especially when it happens on HN and other sites that I come to to learn and discuss.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#408

Post by merpnderp »

phaemon wrote: post #354
merpnderp wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My R script merely finds the first time the temperature trend turns positive since last data point. My null hypothesis is when does the trend turn positive since the last data point. I'm not trying to be a smart ass, I'm just wanting to make clear I'm not making any grand claims, except that the most rigorous data, with the tightest confidence intervals (measured in fractions of K instead of multiple K's), says that…

> My null hypothesis is when does the trend turn positive since the last data point. I'm not trying to be a smart ass I'm sure you're not, and certainly you seem to be making a good faith effort to analyse the data, but I'm afraid you're just doing it wrong. You can't just keep testing up to x data points till you hit a significance level and then say "this proves x-1 doesn't show the trend". Imagine you were measuri…

Thank you for the great response, certainly good stuff to think about. But I think I did not make myself clear. The RSS trop data shows there is a 1.2K/century trend. My interest was in "the pause" over the last ~20 years.

So the metaphor becomes, imagine you were told the tide was coming in at a steady rate and that CO2 was causing it. Then for 19.5 years CO2 continued to grow at a steady rate, but the tide didn't come any closer during that period. That is certainly interesting in an of itself; and needs an explanation.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#409

Post by tosseraccount »

astrodust wrote: post #400
tosseraccount wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand. Can you explain? Are you saying people can not understand this data?

You know, why don't you help us out and wget some data from CERN and give them some insight into their ongoing LHC experiments. I'm sure they could use a nudge in the right direction, and I bet a little bit of Perl or Python is all they need to solve some deep mysteries. Oh, and you have 6,000TB of disk space to download the data from the ATLAS sensor, right? Once you're done that there's all kinds of data regarding…

You're right. I couldn't process 6 petabytes in perl.

I'd use C for that amount of data.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#410

Post by fasteo »

drjesusphd wrote: post #272
fasteo wrote: post #188

I am not negating the global warming issue here, but what I see is just a correlation of two time series, much like the correlation between "US Spending on science, space and technology" and "Suicides by hanging, strangulation or suffocation" [1] [1] http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

There exists a physical mechanism by which relatively small amounts of greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere. Do you question this?

Of course not.

What I question is that the increase in the average land-ocean temperature has a causal and unique relationship with the increase in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.

And I question this based only in the charts and information presented here.

>>> The computer model that generated the results for this graphic is called "ModelE2," and was created by NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which has been a leader in climate projections for a generation.

- Is ModelE2 completely foolproof ?

>>> ModelE2 contains something on the order of 500,000 lines of code, and is run on a supercomputer at the NASA Center for Climate Simulation in Greenbelt, Maryland.

- How many bugs could you find in 500.000 lines of code ? The "Excel depression" article came to my mind after seeing this [1]

Again, I am not negating the global warning issue, but I am for critical thinking for these fundamental problems.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/19/opinion/krugman-the-excel-...

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