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What's Really Warming the World?

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Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#481

Post by Aloha »

DougWebb wrote: post #282
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its actually irrelevant whether this has happened before. Its happening now, impacting us, and maybe we can do something about it. The Pollyanna approach "Its natural" doesn't help us when cities are going underwater.

Maybe we can do something, but what? Do we build walls around the cities so they don't flood, or do we set up a scheme where developing countries pay a ransom to rich countries so they can continue to pollute, while rich countries starve their poor citizens of affordable energy while funnelling tax money into companies owned by rich citizens to do R&D work on energy sources that won't be viable on a large scale for d…

The issue that I have with the folks who advocate anthropogenic climate change is that near as I can tell there is no way to preserve the standard of living on the planet (feed, clothe, power, etc) and end climate change soon enough, the only way to get even a 50% cut of emissions within a decade is effectively managing to reduce the population of the planet by a similar number.

I think we'd be better off figuring out how to cope with climate change and generally reduce our consumption of natural resources, rather than focusing to tightly on one evil (carbon).

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#482

Post by cholantesh »

Aloha wrote: post #480
cholantesh wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? You think it doesn't matter that the primary author on a paper about climate science doesn't even have an undergraduate-level education in the subject? That the second one credited has a history of accepting large sums of money to write papers endorsing spurious claims DIRECTLY RELATING to climate change?

Are you going to tell me that every person who has ever written a paper on computer science needs to have a degree in it? While I won't question this guys qualification might be questionable - making a blanket statement that someone must be specifically educated in a subject to write a good paper on it is specious.

How often does it happen that a layman manages to get published in a well-regarded journal? Out of all the papers that laypeople publish anywhere, how many survive scrutiny from experts in the paper's problem domain? And out of those, how many that actively seek to overturn a paradigm succeed?

Based on this metric alone, it is highly unlikely that Monkcton is qualified to discuss climate change, and as it happens, his published work tends to be published by fairly obscure journals whose standards of review are questionable, and when they pass the desks of career climatologists, the result is generally unfavourable to him.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#483

Post by ryanobjc »

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…

I'm pretty much in phase #6. It's the only thing that keeps me functional on a day to day basis!

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#484

Post by seizethecheese »

jameshart wrote: post #476
seizethecheese wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please try to be specific in your criticism. What misunderstanding does the above poster have about the science or the data?

Well, for one, that their uneducated skim through the IPCC report found a mistake which thousands of qualified scientists had missed, one so fundamental that it undermines all of the rest of the work in the report and the conclusions it leads to.

The scientists say so, therefore the commenter is wrong? This still doesn't explain why the above is wrong. Attacking the premises of an argument is sound logic, and should be welcome. Ad hominem arguments should be called out.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#485

Post by phaemon »

merpnderp wrote: post #408
phaemon wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

You made yourself clear. To follow the metaphor, if the increase in tidal levels over the past 19.5 years were significantly different to the increase in tidal levels over (say) the past 30 years then it needs an explanation.

If they were not, then the simple explanation is that 19.5 years is not enough data to draw any conclusions. That's just how it works. You can't draw a conclusion from a lack of data.

EDIT: Forgot to say: at the moment, what you are trying to show is that there has been no significant warming over the past 19 years. Your null hypothesis is that there has been no warming over the past 19 years. When what you're trying to show is the same as your null hypothesis, you're doing something wrong.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#486

Post by Aloha »

cholantesh wrote: post #482
Aloha wrote: post #480

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you going to tell me that every person who has ever written a paper on computer science needs to have a degree in it? While I won't question this guys qualification might be questionable - making a blanket statement that someone must be specifically educated in a subject to write a good paper on it is specious.

How often does it happen that a layman manages to get published in a well-regarded journal? Out of all the papers that laypeople publish anywhere, how many survive scrutiny from experts in the paper's problem domain? And out of those, how many that actively seek to overturn a paradigm succeed? Based on this metric alone, it is highly unlikely that Monkcton is qualified to discuss climate change, and as it happens, hi…

There is a difference between "layman", "well known expert in their field", "so and so with a degree in $field" "well known expert in their field with a masters in $field"

If you read my reply, I don't question the guys qualifications, I was objecting to the blanket statement of "you must have a degree in $field, to be expert" - many papers in technology, are written by people without degrees in that field.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#487

Post by williesleg »

I'm just so utterly amazed that they could measure temperature with such precision for so many years. I'd imagine rooms full of temperature calculator people crunching numbers from their precise temperature measuring instruments. Bravo!

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#488

Post by Zuider »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #393
marcus_holmes wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ad-hominem. Who cares who wrote it, what does it say?

Ad hominem fallacy fallacy: http://laurencetennant.com/bonds/adhominem.html Pointing out that someone is not trustworthy when considering whether or not to trust their conclusions is not ad-hom.

Attacking a persons 'trustworthiness' instead of dealing with their arguments and evidence is pretty much the dictionary definition of the ad-hominem diversion. It doesn't interest me to learn that he kicks cats or dresses in lingerie and calls himself Marjorie at the weekends. If you believe that he is wrong, then show where and how he is in error.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#489

Post by EdSharkey »

triangleman wrote: post #439
astrodust wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm sure you have the time, inclination and expertise to look over billions of data points and make your own conclusions.

A layperson named Steve McIntyre did just that, after reading the IPCC's 3rd Assessment Report and seeing the prominently featured "Hockey Stick" based on a paper by Mann et al., and wondering, hmm... perhaps this study is reproducible? The rabbit hole that McIntyre and his colleagues have found themselves in over the last 10 years has, in my view, demonstrated the value of hacker-types taking an interest in climate…

From your link:

"Of crucial importance here: the data for the bottom panel of Figure 6 is from a folder called CENSORED on Mann’s FTP site. He did this very experiment himself and discovered that the PCs lose their hockeystick shape when the Graybill-Idso series are removed. In so doing he discovered that the hockey stick is not a global pattern, it is driven by a flawed group of US proxies that experts do not consider valid as climate indicators. But he did not disclose this fatal weakness of his results, and it only came to light because of Stephen McIntyre’s laborious efforts."

Geez, that's so damning.

Re: What's Really Warming the World?

#490

Post by Benjamin_Dobell »

By no means suggesting CO2 isn't responsible for global warming - quite frankly I have zero idea, I just try listen to what the experts say. However, this article in particular is pretty offensively stupid. It shows some graphs that indicate a correlation between CO2 and heat increase. That's by no means scientific evidence for a cause. Again, not saying there isn't any evidence CO2 is the cause, it's just this article is incredibly misleading.
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