canpakes wrote:Well, now.
[WALL OF TEXT]
DarkHelmet wrote:I would have thought Water Dog was a Boy Scout as a kid. I guess not. Too bad. He could have learned a little bit about conservation, and how human activities impact nature.
It's funny how a little pushback against rhetoric like "pompous" evolves into this whole other thing.
Doctor CamNC4Me wrote:The sense I get is we all know global warming is occurring, but there's really no sort of understanding or consensus that is being effectively discussed in a manner that's accessible to people who're buys living their lives on a day to day basis. Trusting the government to fix anything that won't have a desultory effect on your average Joe is, well, a very faithful position to have. And the fact of the matter is politicians really aren't our best, brightest, most competent, or otherwise preferred people to be in a position to understand and direct us on this issue. They just believe, too. And that's a problem when you're talking economics.
It would be nice to discuss whether warming is in fact occurring or not, and what that actually means, but alas, RI doesn't want to discuss that. [SEE HIS THOUSAND PAGE REPORT FROM HIS "ONE TRUE" AUTHORITAY] RI doesn't want to get into this because I'm sure he appreciates how complex even this starting question is. It's not like you can just go out and take the temperature of the planet. Doesn't work like that. I mean record cold and snow are hitting the country right now, record low temps being recorded in half the country. Oh, but, something something, that's proof of climate change! Ree, climate vs. weather you dummy, reeeeee. (by the way, since people are insufferable, I will state FTR that the last sentences are meant to have a little fun with people. I just love talking about global warming when my balls are freezing.)
RI talks about Working Group 1.
Here's a fun quote from WG1, from the executive summary.
IPCC, AR5/WG1 wrote:Improve methods to quantify uncertainties of climate projections and scenarios, including development and exploration of long-term ensemble simulations using complex models. The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible. Rather the focus must be upon the prediction of the probability distribution of the system's future possible states by the generation of ensembles of model solutions. Addressing adequately the statistical nature of climate is computationally intensive and requires the application of new methods of model diagnosis, but such statistical information is essential.
They admit, right in their own report, that it could all be wrong. Let that sink in. It's like a terms of use agreement for a software application. If you've ever read that gibberish, they all say basically the same thing, "we make no guarantees whatsoever, the software almost certainly will crash, consider yourself lucky if it doesn't, don't say you weren't warned."
WG1's forecasts have been proven to be wrong. Grossly wrong. In 2015, as part of some court testimony, Lindzen addressed this, saying,
Richard Lindzen wrote:The current federal SCC is based on the IPCC’s 2007 projected range of 2°C to 4.5°C, with a “best estimate” of 3.0°C. In 2010, the IWG assumed that the IPCC’s range was accurate, in 2013 the IWG declined to revisit the issue, and in July 2015 the IWG made only a technical adjustment in the way the probability distribution of the climate sensitivity value was presented. Yet today the best evidence indicates that the IWG’s assumptions are wrong, that a much lower climate sensitivity value of 1°C or 1.5°C is correct, and that a climate sensitivity of more than 2.0 C is extremely unlikely. Accordingly, the assumptions of Hanemann, Polasky, and Martin are invalid.
Many other sources, but I keep citing Lindzen cause I know it gets under RI's skin. But notice what he said, "a much lower climate sensitivity value of 1°C or 1.5°C is correct." What is the latest report that the IPCC just released. SR15. In a nutshell what is the difference between SR15 and AR5 (the one RI is referring to)? Well, it dials up the doom rhetoric, and quietly walks back the actual numerical projections. Down to 1.5C specifically, hence the name, SR15. Lindzen must be a prophet, cause they went with his suggested number.
Lindzen addresses some other interesting points as well.
Richard Lindzen wrote:This rebuttal report also addresses the issue of the temperature record and a recent paper by Karl et al (2015) that has been described in the press as “disproving” the hiatus in discernible warming for almost the past two decades, which until now has been widely accepted by climate researchers. The temperature record is a source of considerable confusion. The record generally presented is one of the global mean temperature anomaly. That is to say, one is not averaging the temperature itself, but rather the temperature deviation from a thirty year mean at each station. Figure 10 of my testimony displays the main indisputable fact about this quantity: namely, it is very small compared to other changes at any given location. Given that the observations were never designed for climate purposes, it is not surprising that there is uncertainty on the order of tenths of a degree in addition to problems of systematic error (such as the effect of urbanization). This means that ‘adjustments’ of a few tenths of a degree are always possible. However, as Michaels (2008) noted, the large majority of such adjustments lead to conclusions like ‘it is worse than was thought’ or ‘the data is closer to models than initially thought.’ Given that errors are generally assumed to be random, this would suppose that there was an initial bias against global warming and against models; this is implausible to say the least.
In other words, it is highly suspicious that “adjustments” almost invariably produce results that favor advocates of a certain camp. That suggests that “adjustments” do not necessarily reflect impartial science. Under these circumstances, the recent attempt by Karl et al (2015) to adjust data so as to eliminate the so-called ‘pause’ of the last 18 years is suspect ab initio. Indeed, as Michaels et al (2015) and numerous others have pointed out, there are many bases for such suspicion. For example, the paper made an upward adjustment of 0.12°C in measurements from surface buoys, supposedly to make them “homogeneous” with measurements taken by engine intake channels in marine vessels, even though temperature readings from ship engine intakes are clearly contaminated by heat conduction from the engine itself and are therefore less appropriate for scientific use. The Karl paper also cherry picks certain start dates and end dates to create intervals yielding equal trends.
However, there is a larger point to be made: namely, all these adjustments act to disguise the fact that we are dealing with small quantities. By emphasizing the question of whether it is warming or not, they deflect attention from the only important question of ‘how much.’ As Spencer and Christy (2015) note, the adjusted temperature record of Karl et al (2015) still leaves their warming rate much smaller than IPCC models project (viz Figure 1). Note also that the apparent agreement between the models and temperature record before 1998 is largely due to the use aerosol adjustments by models. As I explained in my testimony, recent work by Stevens (2015) shows that the adjustments required by the more sensitive models exceeds what now appears possible. This would substantially increase the apparent discrepancy between the models and observational data.
Groups active in promoting climate concern have recently published papers showing that models with high sensitivity are markedly incompatible with observations. These results are too recent to have been included in the latest IPCC reports which are now out of date. This is especially the case for the reports of Working Groups II and III (dealing with impacts and mitigation respectively, but not with the scientific underpinnings). Working Groups II and III generally use the worst case scenarios from WG I, and these no longer are viable scenarios. Testimonies that rely on these sources (i.e., the testimony of Hanemann, Polasky, and Martin) are flawed to the extent that they rely on these sources.
The projections are all BS. Worse, BS is at least good for fertilizer. There are more questions than there are answers.
You say, "The sense I get is we all know global warming is occurring, but there's really no sort of understanding or consensus..."
Sort of. The way I would phrase it is that we all mostly agree on the facts. We could get into all that, because some think certain things are facts which aren't actually facts. But, when there is an actual fact, nobody disagrees. We agree on the facts, however we disagree strongly on the interpretation of those facts. Like, how do modern climate observations relate to the natural variability? What is the sensitivity of the climate system to increasing concentrations of CO2 and other greenhouse gases? To what degree does human activities affect the climate? Do the negatives outweigh the benefits? And so on. There is no consensus about any of it.
If there was an asteroid headed for the planet, do you think the public would "deny" it? No. You show them the radar tracking, you show them the images, you show them the video of it approaching, you show them the track and it's headed right for the earth, you show them the simulation that reasonably predicts we're screwed if this thing hits. People are NOT stupid, despite the pompous grumblings that take place around here. If there was solid credible evidence for CAGW, people would come together and listen.
