[Wadsworth]

(05-03-2014 05:49 PM)Sawyer Wrote:  

Wadsworth, what are your political beliefs? Would you call yourself left wing generally?

I consider myself a liberal I suppose, although I'm totally dismayed by what contemporary liberalism has become. I think there should be some government spending, but on the whole I favor free markets and I think it's best to err on the side of personal liberty.

[The Lizard of Oz]

(05-03-2014 05:43 PM)Wadsworth Wrote:  

(05-03-2014 03:38 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

Not sure what you mean by that, but let me note that I hold a Ph.D. in the "hardest" possible science from one of the handful of best departments in the world in that subject.

I'd rather not get sucked into another climate change debate online, but as a chemist, I hope you'll indulge me. What is the hardest possible science?

I think theoretical physics would fit the bill.

Again, I am not implying in any way that my background gives me any special authority on this or other subjects; only that any errors I make are unlikely to be the result of basic scientific illiteracy.

Furthermore: even those people who really are, to an extent, scientifically illiterate and who dismiss the "global warming" scare simply because they've just lived through the coldest winter of their lives, are not being as stupid as you might think. They are taking the evidence of their own five senses and using a little common sense in trying to weigh and evaluate what they are being told.

The reason this in itself is not at all stupid is that not all science is created equal. If I am building a bridge and I want to know if it will hold, I will rely more on the equations of mechanics and materials science than on my or someone else's hunch about the matter; and this is because the scientific fields in question have been intricately quantified and have made endless predictions that have been exquisitely confirmed by experiment.

Whereas "climate science" is for the most part a collection of jury-rigged Rube Goldberg "models" with a myriad fudge factors that have been introduced so that they can more or less adequately "postdict" the past (not that they do that particularly well). Any and all actual predictions these models have made "out of sample" have always failed miserably. Thus there is absolutely no reason for anyone to give these models some special consideration and to trust them more than the layman's impressions and common sense.

The only part of "climate science" that is very clear and not subject to any doubt is the basic mechanism of the greenhouse effect, which has been understood for a century and more, and follows from elementary physics. One can also make a simple estimate of the resulting sensitivity of the temperature to CO2 concentration, and this estimate results in something that is quite modest and would not give anyone cause for alarm. To justify the alarm, elaborate models have been constructed that involve "positive feedback loops", so that the warming becomes amplified due to this or that mechanism and the true sensitivity exceeds the simple estimates. However, these feedback loops are just-so stories that rest on arbitrary and ill-understood assumptions; they are intrinsically implausible due to general homeostatic considerations, and they have failed every prediction test they've been subjected to.

*************

Finally, rather than engage in a debate about all this, what I suggest is that you read Lawson' essay, since it is an unusually clear and compelling presentation of the arguments. You might find it surprising in its lucidity and coherence, and perhaps it will make you see these things in a somewhat different way.

[Genghis Khan]

(05-03-2014 04:56 PM)The Lizard of Oz Wrote:  

(05-03-2014 04:46 PM)soup Wrote:  

No I remember hearing about the cooling aspect being taken into account. That it wa just a steady rise to a hotter climate. Something to do with having more water on the planet do to the caps melting and diluting the salinatipn in the oceans.

soup, it's pretty simple. You can just look at the model predictions -- since they made specific predictions -- and at what actually happened.

The models were predicting significant warming over the past 15 years with high confidence. A zero change in average temperature -- which is what actually happened -- falls outside the 95% confidence margin for the majority of the climate models. In plain language, it means that the model predictions have been falsified. It's really that simple -- no amount of hand-waving can sidestep this basic reality.

In a normal, responsible science, the consequence would be that the scientists would say, our models were wrong, so we're going to go back to the drawing board and reexamine our assumptions. But in contemporary climate science they will just make up new excuses as they go along. That is not how science works.

Don't confuse what you may hear from media adherents of the alarmist religion with what the reality is. These people are truly shameless in the manner of old Commie agitators, or say, Iraqi government spokesmen from Saddam's time: they have the gift of rehearsing the talking points of any given day with absolute conviction, even if they flatly contradict what they recited with equal conviction the day before.

Yeah, about those models:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm

Quote:

Where models have been running for sufficient time, they have also been proved to make accurate predictions. For example, the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo allowed modellers to test the accuracy of models by feeding in the data about the eruption. The models successfully predicted the climatic response after the eruption. Models also correctly predicted other effects subsequently confirmed by observation, including greater warming in the Arctic and over land, greater warming at night, and stratospheric cooling.

As for the temperature not having increased:
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_dat...3-1-1.html



Perhaps I'm a bit slow, but where's the proof global average temperatures haven't changed? You did say "A zero change in average temperature", got proof to back it up?

[The Lizard of Oz]

(05-03-2014 09:57 PM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  

Yeah, about those models:
https://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm

Quote:

Where models have been running for sufficient time, they have also been proved to make accurate predictions. For example, the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo allowed modellers to test the accuracy of models by feeding in the data about the eruption. The models successfully predicted the climatic response after the eruption. Models also correctly predicted other effects subsequently confirmed by observation, including greater warming in the Arctic and over land, greater warming at night, and stratospheric cooling.

As for the temperature not having increased:
https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_dat...3-1-1.html



Perhaps I'm a bit slow, but where's the proof global average temperatures haven't changed? You did say "A zero change in average temperature", got proof to back it up?

Yeah -- look it up dude. The IPCC acknowledges that the change in GATA (Global Average Temperature Anomaly) over the past 17 years is zero. You can look at any of the major temperature records, they all tell the same story. This also flatly contradicts the model predictions.

[The Lizard of Oz]

By the way, not very smart of "Skeptical Science" to begin their debunking of the "myth" about the models with this quote:

Quote:

Climate Myth...

Models are unreliable
"[Models] are full of fudge factors that are fitted to the existing climate, so the models more or less agree with the observed data. But there is no reason to believe that the same fudge factors would give the right behaviour in a world with different chemistry, for example in a world with increased CO2 in the atmosphere." (Freeman Dyson)

In the first place, because the quote is completely accurate, and in the second, because it was stated by Freeman Dyson who just happens to be one of the most brilliant and erudite scientists of the past century or so who has made fundamental contributions to particle physics. In the face of something confidently stated by Freeman Dyson, a "basic rebuttal" by some fool at "Skeptical Science" does not look very convincing.

[Genghis Khan]

So what if Freeman Dyson is one of the most brilliant scientists in the past century, doesn't mean he can't be wrong. As a physicist, I'm sure you're well aware of Einstein's position on quantum mechanics?

As for the change in GATA being zero over 17 years. I apologize, I didn't read the part in your original post about taking a 15 year ("The models were predicting significant warming over the past 15 years with high confidence"). For that I'm sorry.

That said, you should know not to take such short time periods for statistical purposes:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/...ence-ipcc/

Quote:

Schmidt pointed out, however, that the real anomaly in the recent climate record is not the last decade but the year 1998, which saw a sharp spike in atmospheric temperatures. "If you take 1998 out, there is no pause," he said. According to NASA data, the ten hottest years since 1880 have all happened since 1998, with 2010 being the hottest of all.

http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2...pause-ipcc

Quote:

This has occurred despite the fact that claiming that global warming has "paused" is deeply misleading. The IPCC explained as much in its just-released report, where it noted that although the rate of warming is somewhat smaller over the last 15 years, selectively seizing on this period, from 1998-2012, basically represents a case of bad statistics.

After all, the year 1998 was a record temperature year, due to a strong El Niño. So by making it the first year of an analysis you're stacking the deck. "If you shift just 2 years earlier, so use 1996-2010 instead of 1998-2012, the trend is 0.14 C per decade, so slightly greater than the long-term trend," explains Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at NASA who was heavily involved in producing the IPCC report. This is why climate scientists generally don't seize on 15 year periods and make a big thing about them.

[The Lizard of Oz]

Again, the point about the 17 year absence of warming, or "hiatus" as the IPCC likes to call it, is that it directly contradicts model predictions. All the models were predicting significant warming for this period, and the actual measured temperature departs from the predictions by an amount which is highly statistically significant -- in other words, it falsifies the models and that is why they are now scrambling to produce new explanations about the "missing heat" that is supposedly at the bottom of the ocean.

As Kevin Trenberth, one of the main climate honchos, put it: "The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t." This was written in 2009 and the travesty has gotten worse since then.

[The Lizard of Oz]

Here is a good plot over a much longer time period. It shows the predictions of 90 models from the IPCC ensemble vs observed data both for surface and troposphere temperatures. More than 95% of the models show a stronger warming trend than the observed data. In other words almost every single model in the ensemble systematically overpredicts the warming. You can also clearly see the recent pause in warming in the observed data.

[Genghis Khan]

Honestly, that's a pretty fair point. I can't disagree with that. That said though, Trenberth and other scientists have come up with possible explanations:

http://www.nature.com/news/climate-chang...at-1.14525

Now that I think about it, you're right though. A lot of these models have been falsified, and I have no doubt more models will be in the future too. All the more so since we're slowly understanding climate better and better (not least because some models have predicted certain events quite well, even if they're not up to the task to do more complex predictions) and so we're updating our models. No scientific field has started off being completely accurate. I imagine at some point, the models will be good enough to predict future changes quite well. I also imagine it'll probably be a bit too late by then.

As for scrambling to produce new explanations...yeah, that's kinda what happens in most scientific field when a new and unexplainable observation is made. So I don't necessarily find that a good ground to dismiss climate change. But as I've said, I do agree more is still to be learned and models still need to get improved.

[The Lizard of Oz]

(05-03-2014 11:33 PM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  

I also imagine it'll probably be a bit too late by then.

You imagine it based on what? What will it be too late for?

To even "imagine" that it will be "too late" in any meaningful sense you have to believe in some fantastical ideas about "tipping points" of warming which will proceed at a rate even faster than the IPCC model predictions. There is absolutely zero reason to believe any of these imaginary scenarios, especially since actual warming is proceeding at a rate that is a good deal slower than those predictions.

So again, this idea that we have to "act" before it's "too late" -- what is the justification for it?

At this point someone would inevitably mention the dreaded "precautionary principle" and that is one reason it's really worth reading Lawson's essay because his discussion of it is particularly good. This so-called principle is in fact complete nonsense. It is impossible to act in such a way as to prevent any catastrophe that anyone can imagine based on zero evidence. To give just a simple example, for all we know runaway cooling is as much a danger to mankind as runaway warming. Can we plausibly act in such a way as to prevent both of these at any cost?

(05-03-2014 11:33 PM)Genghis Khan Wrote:  

As for scrambling to produce new explanations...yeah, that's kinda what happens in most scientific field when a new and unexplainable observation is made. So I don't necessarily find that a good ground to dismiss climate change. But as I've said, I do agree more is still to be learned and models still need to get improved.

Not really -- you're writing as if there is some established theory that has passed many major tests and these discrepancies are just tinkering around the edges. That is not how it is. The reality is that the most basic parameters of the theory are not understood at all. Every climate scientist would agree, if pressed, that the feedback loops that determine temperature sensitivity are mainly controlled by the behavior of clouds; but clouds are essentially not understood at all. The current models just assume positive amplification -- which increases sensitivity -- based on some very rickety assumptions. In fact, it's just as likely that the true feedback is neutral or even negative.

It is really worth reading Lord Lawson's essay in full since all these points are discussed there cogently and thoroughly. The idea that well, we may not understand a few things but that should not prevent us from acting now now now before it's too late just makes no sense whatsoever. There is not even any reason to believe that moderate warming would do more harm than good!

[BIGINJAPAN]

Has the whole world not discovered what a fraud the IPCC is?

How are they even taken into any sort of consideration anymore ? They have been busted numerous times fudging their data. I can't read or listen to anyone's argument that includes any data or talking points from the IPCC.

I am all ears and eyes to guys that want to present facts from other sources regarding " climate change " but I think we should all stop referencing the IPCC.

[Glaucon]

This whole climate change debate reminds me of the very serious theological discussions in the medieval times about Adam's belly button.

[Fortitudinal]

My two cents, from a different perspective.

One thing that seems to go missing in Science a lot is that of the common person and pre-literate societies. All of them had to eat too, and depended even more than we do on weather pattern recognition.

Over the years I make a point of chatting with farmers and people who live off the land.

Although this could not be called a formal science, they are technologies of sorts, patterns and practices for local adaptations to local climates passed down generation to generation.
It may never have been written, but as anyone might guess, learning how to read the land and the climate is absolutely crucial for any civilization or group of people. Hell, it built civilization.

You think the Egyptian farmers didnt know exactly when the river flooded? you bet your ass they had that down pat. Same goes for rice plantations all over Asia and corn farmers in Latin America. Timing is absolutely critical.

I have met old timer Mayan farmers,farmers in Malaysia, deep in Western China. Canada too.

All of they said that they had used the same techniques that their grandfathers used and their grandfathers used.
All of them said that what they knew and had been taught about the local patterns has changed a lot.
All of them tell me that what they had learned is not working well anymore. Remember these are ancestral practices that had endured the test of n number of years, not only the last 100.

Soon it will be impossible for them to really know when to take a chance (every harvest is chance).

This is a big problem.

Without knowing when to start planting, when to worry about rain, when to do pest control, people will starve.
Westerners grossly overestimate the resources and know-how that technology has given us (cf biotech, weather prediction, pest control). But the truth is that you cant eat microchips. And when things really go to shit people will starve. Starving people are the most dangerous, because they have nothing to lose.

There will be adaptation, eventually. Western world will likely be shielded from this. But be prepared for a flood of refugees, civil unrest in countries and a rise in the anti west sentiment. I would bet good money on this.

Can this be stopped is still out, for sure. However, what are YOU doing about it?
How about some good old fashioned OWN THE PROBLEM and PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY?

I've written about this before elsewhere on this site, but the main culprit for habitat loss (and change in microclimates) is agriculture and especially cattle ranching. Hog farming is not far behind. Connecting the dots shouldn't be all that hard, but for most, this is still a call they rather not hear. . . 'nobody is doing anything about climate change!' 'governments should do something about it!' Industry should do something about it!'. This is the red pill of weather change.

The day of reckoning will come much faster for everyone if YOU dont change your habits. Owning up is one way to start.

Change consumption patterns, change of diets, change your outlook. If the western world did it, we would see tremendous results.

The real climate change is where YOU should be changing.

[Dusty]

This is great. Ted Cruz really makes a fool of this Sierra Club guy.

[Tokyo Joe]

Dusty: Awesome link -- thanks for posting that.

The length of The Pause that Senator Cruz very accurately and very rightly references reached a duration of 18 years and 8 months through August 2015. Here is the RSS satellite data --



If any of you are interested in this topic, check out this excellent article from last month by Christopher Monckton, a man whose head is screwed on straight:

http://www.climatedepot.com/2015/09/02/a...-8-months/

The hell of it is, we have entered a strong el Niño year, so the temperatures will most definitely be ticking upward, at least for a while. You can bet the Year Zero fucktards will milk the transient el Niño for all it's worth and sweep The Pause under the rug, even though it totally demolished the "predictions" of every single General Circulation Model (GCM), i.e. absolute garbage "science" by mental-midget men (and women, LOL!) who couldn't hack it in a real scientific discipline. Truly gifted and honest physicists like Richard Lindzen are the very rare exception that prove this rule: "Climate scientists" are weak-minded and usually dishonest SJWs who bask in, and undeservedly benefit from, the reflected Glory of genuine Men of Science and all they have accomplished over the past 400 years.

Christopher Monckton Wrote:

As ever, a warning about the current el Niño. It is becoming ever more likely that the temperature increase that usually accompanies an el Niño will begin to shorten the Pause somewhat, just in time for the Paris climate summit, though a subsequent La Niña would be likely to bring about a resumption and perhaps even a lengthening of the Pause.

The spike in global temperatures caused by the thermohaline circulation carrying the warmer waters from the tropical Pacific all around the world usually occurs in the northern-hemisphere winter during an el Niño year.

However, the year or two after an el Niño usually – but not always – brings an offsetting la Niña, cooling first the ocean surface and then the air temperature and restoring global temperature to normal.

[zombiejimmorrison]

Quote:

Finally, the climate change alarmist movement is fundamentally an apocalyptic religious cult far more than any sort of scientific endeavor. While the authority of traditional religions as well as new-fangled quasi-religions like Communism has declined, humans are still beset by a sense of guilt and sin, and by the notion that we will be punished for our transgressions. This explains the deep appeal of the idea that we are responsible for changing the Earth's climate through the sinfully gluttonous consumption of fossil fuels, and that Nature, in turn, will exact a terrible price for our greed and hubris.

This 100 times. This nagging guilt is holding everyone back. If we can't have it in religion we need to get out guilt fix through other means.

[Tytalus]

If you want hard facts on Climate Change, look into what the Insurance Companies have to say about it. They're the ones who have to have some degree of accuracy to pinpoint floods, earthquakes, storms etc for damages in order to price the risk correctly and not go bankrupt insuring things.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

Ay - the debate is in my opinion settled and settled since a good few years already.

The climate models are all false.
There is trillions of dollars in it and total control over consumption so that's why the elite is after that shit.
CO2 is not causing warming. It was always vice-versa and centuries before any CO2 spike the temperatures spiking way before that.
The climate has not been warming since almost 19 years despite mankind blowing up ever more CO2 out.
The global planners have been caught multiple times faking data - Climategate, colleges, weather stations being closed in the countryside and the ones at the airport in summer being pushed as a sign that the earth is warming.
And the most destructive thing is that Earth actually would benefit from more CO2 - probably some 200-300% would do some good. And the CO2 concentration in millions of Earth history was some 10.000% higher and it was way more beneficial for plant-life - also we could still breathe in it. We would have giant potatoes and corn.

In summary - it's all a scam.

[Wutang]

This points to a deeper problem about the possibility of making rational decisions that I've been wondering for a long time now. "Appeal to authority" is one of the classical logical fallacies but it seems it's usually not adhered to when the authority has scientific clout of some sort. Someone could object with "Well the authority is using the scientific method for his position and we could trust that since it's proved so reliable" that but I would argue that to the average person who is not a practicing professional scientist, he simply wouldn't be able to understand whether a scientific argument being advanced is valid or not since he not only doesn't have the training the scientist does but he also doesn't have access to the data being used. In other words, the average person is essentially appealing to authority and he can only hope that the authority isn't lying to him.

For example I am a believer in climate change. However upon thinking about why exactly I believed in it the only reason I could come up with is that is simply because a lot of scientists have said it is a fact. I am not knowledgeable in meteorology and other scientific disciplines that are involved in determining whether it global warning is indeed happening so I can't actually make a determination with my own mind on whether it's a fact or not and instead I have to hope that the authorities aren't lying or aren't mistaken-ed.

Copied from another thread:

thread-50914.html

[H1N1]

I've just discovered this chap Mark Steyn. He talks a huge amount of sense on the climate change madness - he is being sued by Michael Mann for casting aspersions on his climate change hypothesis, and is fighting an important case against him on the subject.

Mr Steyn talks in some depth about how much of this is motivated by a hatred for mankind. He is clearly a disciple of TLoO

[Simeon_Strangelight]

(06-17-2016 03:56 PM)H1N1 Wrote:  

I've just discovered this chap Mark Steyn. He talks a huge amount of sense on the climate change madness - he is being sued by Michael Mann for casting aspersions on his climate change hypothesis, and is fighting an important case against him on the subject.

Mr Steyn talks in some depth about how much of this is motivated by a hatred for mankind. He is clearly a disciple of TLoO

Mark Steyn is also a loud critic of the migration policies in Europe. Essentially he stands for rational discussion of all topics - no surprise there. Only because something is supported by the majority of the establishment with their trillions of dollars does not mean it is the right view.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

Jeez - I found the 750.000$ taxpayer founded climate change musical - The Great Immensity:

Marxist propaganda from the finest:

[H1N1]

I thought this was a very clear and useful interview.

Edit: and this one:

[Guitarman]

"Lawson notes that the existence of the "greenhouse effect" is an undeniable fact that follows from basic physics. This means that the presence of greenhouse gases, of which water vapor is by far the most important but carbon dioxide (CO2) is one, warms the Earth's atmosphere (indeed, without greenhouse gases the planet would not be habitable at all). This means that, other things being equal, increased concentration of the greenhouse gas CO2 will lead to warmer temperature. However, there are 4 questions to consider:
"

Much as I like Lawson and what he and the GWPF have done to fight Global Warming alarmism, I do not agree with the first statement. My understanding is that a "greenhouse effect" from re-radiated IR is in effect impossible because it contravenes the laws of thermodynamics.

[Simeon_Strangelight]

(10-05-2016 03:41 AM)Guitarman Wrote:  

"Lawson notes that the existence of the "greenhouse effect" is an undeniable fact that follows from basic physics. This means that the presence of greenhouse gases, of which water vapor is by far the most important but carbon dioxide (CO2) is one, warms the Earth's atmosphere (indeed, without greenhouse gases the planet would not be habitable at all). This means that, other things being equal, increased concentration of the greenhouse gas CO2 will lead to warmer temperature. However, there are 4 questions to consider:
"

Much as I like Lawson and what he and the GWPF have done to fight Global Warming alarmism, I do not agree with the first statement. My understanding is that a "greenhouse effect" from re-radiated IR is in effect impossible because it contravenes the laws of thermodynamics.

Lord Christopher Monckton said so too - yes C02 is a greenhouse gas, but a ridiculously small one.

First factor that creates ice ages and warming periods: THE SUN

Influence grade 99,999995%

Water vapor: 0,000004%

CO2: 0,000001%

Either way - this summer has significantly cooled and I read the reports that the next global cooling based on sunspot-activity climatologists is about to start from the year 2016.

So in the next decades it is likely that earth will experience a new ice age - just as was happening 200 years ago when Napoleon's armies froze in Russia.

Maybe it will get even colder than that for a few decades.

The globalists have changed the name to climate change and will say that we caused the cooling, while simple sun-activity caused it.

The only thing we did was blow up CO2 which has only positive effects like greater plant growth and slightly warmer climate (though our net effect is ridiculously low). It won't be enough and mankind will see that a colder climate is much worse than a warmer one.