fail

4/19/2012 3:32:59 PM

Quote :

"nor do I believe that people in the 1800s collected this information"

There are indirect methods to go back and collect information from the past. Nobody was around 800k years ago either but we have accurate data on atmospheric composition from ice core samples.

4/19/2012 4:28:17 PM

Quote :

"800k years ago either but we have accurate data on atmospheric composition from ice core samples."

I beg to differ. There is no way of knowing if it's accurate or not. Actually I know it's not accurate because 800,000 is an estimated number to the degree of 10^5.

Scientists change the age of extrapolated ages all the time.

4/19/2012 4:35:22 PM

They know from all of the trapped UV rays in the ice cores. No, wait, they don't because the UV rays melted the ice. /globalwarming

4/19/2012 4:38:42 PM

Quote :

"I beg to differ. There is no way of knowing if it's accurate or not. Actually I know it's not accurate because 800,000 is an estimated number to the degree of 10^5. Scientists change the age of extrapolated ages all the time."

We have no way of really knowing whether anything is accurate or not. Doesn't change the fact that indirect evidence, especially multiple lines of indirect evidence that corroborate each other are compelling.

4/19/2012 4:52:51 PM

We can check its accuracy against years that we have direct evidence for and seeing it match perfectly.

4/19/2012 5:30:58 PM

Quote :

"yes. both adjusted data sets. it's like you don't know what that word means. "

All of those adjustments are documented, there's nothing sinister about trying to make data sets over long periods of time Jive.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cmb-faq/temperature-monitoring.html

They graph adjusted temperatures and raw temperatures (Adjusted on top and Raw on the bottom):



You can download the adjusted and unadjusted data here:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/ghcnm/v3.php



[Edited on April 19, 2012 at 5:44 PM. Reason : .]

4/19/2012 5:42:59 PM

Quote :

"We can check its accuracy against years that we have direct evidence for and seeing it match perfectly."

That too. Constantly have to bring this argument out against fucking idiots who try to refute radiological dating.

4/19/2012 8:05:34 PM

See: Parallax, Red Shift, etc.

4/19/2012 8:26:28 PM

Quote :

"^ Do you have brain damage or something that prevents you from communicating in any way other than simple refutation? I would like to think that posters on TSB would fit some general definition of "educated" but sometimes I wonder."

Sorry, when I made that post I thought it referred to the US. Since it's unlabeled (and after comparing it to other charts) I assume it is for Global Temp. Of course, its all about the increments of measurement used to make things look worse than they truly are. For instance here is temperature data as recorded by the Hadley Center in the UK:



Its hard to be alarmed when the margin of error is almost as large as the change itself.

4/23/2012 11:51:50 AM

Has anyone thought about what is going to happen when the ice caps melt completely?

Quote :

"We are going to heat a container that has 72.0 grams of ice (no liquid water yet!) in it. To make the illustration simple, please consider that 100% of the heat applied goes into the water. There is no loss of heat into heating the container and no heat is lost to the air. Step One: solid ice rises in temperature As we apply heat, the ice will rise in temperature until it arrives at its normal melting point of zero Celsius. Step Two: solid ice melts the temperature DOES NOT CHANGE. It remains at zero during the time the ice melts. Step Three: liquid water rises in temperature Once the ice is totally melted, the temperature can now begin to rise again. http://www.chemteam.info/Thermochem/Time-Temperature-Graph.html "

Do you think this is going to happen with the ocean water temperatures as the polar caps melt?
If so, can we expect the average temperature of Earth to reach 50+ degrees hotter?

Does this not scare the shit out anybody?

[Edited on April 23, 2012 at 12:20 PM. Reason : .]

4/23/2012 12:19:34 PM

no, i plan on joining The Smokers.

4/23/2012 2:20:31 PM

Quote :

"If so, can we expect the average temperature of Earth to reach 50+ degrees hotter?"

wut?

4/23/2012 2:39:15 PM

^^^it would take thousands of years for all of that to melt. Even if it were to happen (it won't) I'm sure we'll have figured out a way to go extinct by then.

4/23/2012 7:34:55 PM

Well, keep in mind that much of it melts every summer only to be replaced come winter.

4/23/2012 9:15:14 PM

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/23/11144098-gaia-scientist-james-lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change?lite

Quote :

"James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too. ... “The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said. “The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said. “The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added. He pointed to Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future."

What I've been saying for a while now. Get 100 climate scientists together and they will produce some fearmongering projections. That is the nature of the beast. Alarmists keep their funding going by producing increasingly scary predictions for the future. They also feed off of each other. It is no different from the hysteria that surrounded the Y2K bug, bird flu, swine flu, etc.

Yes, the Earth is getting warmer. Yes, the science is there to make the obvious link between rising temperatures and greenhouse gases. But the threat to the world is greatly overstated.

4/23/2012 11:32:45 PM

I'm confused as to how the negative impacts of a 4-7 degrees C increase in temperature are overstated.

Provided you agree with the models, the imperative is completely obvious.

4/23/2012 11:41:52 PM

But to agree with the models you must first ignore their terrible track record (did any predict the warming would stop for a decade?) but you also must accept the high positive feedback multipliers they assume, for which the science is best described as contradictory.

4/24/2012 12:08:02 AM

Someone JUST explained how temperature remains constant during a phase change. Its completely appropriate that temperature would stop increasing with the record amounts of melting we've seen in the last decade. Heat and temperature are not the same thing. It would be nice if everyone had a basic understanding of chemistry before forming an opinion on one of its applications.

4/24/2012 12:47:40 AM

Quote :

"But to agree with the models you must first ignore their terrible track record (did any predict the warming would stop for a decade?) but you also must accept the high positive feedback multipliers they assume, for which the science is best described as contradictory."

arrrrrgh

Quote :

"Yes, the Earth is getting warmer. Yes, the science is there to make the obvious link between rising temperatures and greenhouse gases. But the threat to the world is greatly overstated."

It's not that I can't figure out how these statements don't contradict each other. The bigger problem is that I have no ability to predict what you believe about the next thing, or otherwise put together a coherent picture of what you believe.

I'm just going to embed this.



The basics have been hashed out again and again. A warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor, water vapor itself is a greenhouse gas. It doesn't throw the system completely off-kilter, it's just that one unit of forcing moves the temperature more than one degree in that direction. The same thing can be done the other way in control systems. If increasing temperature introduced more cooling gas into the atmosphere, then one unit of forcing would move the temperature less than 1 degree.

4/24/2012 1:04:15 AM

^ I have read the theory re-hashed time and again. But it is not settled science that the environment is dominated by high positive feedbacks. The temperature data does not support it. In the temperature data temperatures have risen about 1 degC per every doubling of CO2. We only expect to double CO2 levels in the future, so given the best data we have, we should expect temperature to rise another 1 degC. But alarmists argue an historical progression based upon the temperature record is wrong and model accordingly. They have strong theories for why their position is right. Not only are they assuming that all past warming is due to CO2 but that there are additional effects masking or hiding the true magnitude of past warming. Meanwhile, there are strong theories for why they are wrong: that some past warming has either been natural or due to non-CO2 forcing such as changes in land-use and that the readily identifiable positive feedbacks are countered by readily identifiable negative feedbacks.

Who is right? We'll know when we have more temperature record. So far, all we see is 1 degC per doubling of CO2. For the last 10 years, CO2 has continued rising in earnest while the temperature record has flattened. Obviously temperatures will resume rising soon enough, but it already needs to jump quite far to catch up with the predicted 7 degC per doubling of CO2.

Quote :

"Someone JUST explained how temperature remains constant during a phase change."

^^ We've been in a phase change for the last several hundred years since the mini ice age. So why did the temperature increase in the 20th century yet stop now? Like I said, the amount of net ice melted every year is dwarfed by the annual winter snowfall.

4/24/2012 8:49:28 AM

Those temperatures were global averages. Temperatures go up a lot more in the polar regions which speeds up the meltin of ice. We've seen melting speed up. Temperature goes down in some other areas that are bigger so overall it doesn't change by a whole lot. Thats the global average.

4/24/2012 4:40:59 PM

that MSNBC article is hilarious

Quote :

"Asked if he was now a climate skeptic, Lovelock told msnbc.com: “It depends what you mean by a skeptic. I’m not a denier.”"

4/24/2012 4:52:22 PM

Why is that hilarious? He probably self-identifies as a skeptic (which all rational people do) but doesn't want to be taken as a climate denialist which are sometimes called "climate skeptics."

[Edited on April 24, 2012 at 5:21 PM. Reason : no unicode, wtf ?_?]

4/24/2012 5:20:31 PM

Its hilarious because he finally admitted to being an alarmist

Quote :

"He probably self-identifies as a skeptic (which all rational people do)"

some of those rational people who have been self-identifying as skeptics over the last few years in this very thread were called idiots for not fully jumping on board with the universal consensus of impending disaster

Quote :

"doesn't want to be taken as a climate denialist which are sometimes called "climate skeptics.""

yeah but its kind of ironic, since much of his own work and prognostications of doomsday scenarios being certainties are what gave true skeptics a bad name in the first place

4/24/2012 5:26:32 PM

Sure you guys will love this, but the Sun is doing something it does every so often right now where it develops 3-4 (or maybe more) poles. Last time this occurred was ~300 years ago... essentially it leads to cooling (see the Maunder Minimum).



Interesting stuff... will be interesting to see if this is more short term or longer term like what occured during the Maunder Minimum period.

http://io9.com/5906413/our-sun-could-soon-have-four-poles
http://www.tgdaily.com/space-features/62908-as-sun-flips-polarity-scientists-are-bemused

Note: poles flip every 11 years, but this occurrence is far less frequent

[Edited on May 1, 2012 at 4:52 AM. Reason : added note]

5/1/2012 4:50:52 AM

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/04/11/bering_sea_ice_cover/

5/4/2012 8:54:27 AM

^ Hmmmm, I thought that was predicted... not sure about that strait, but I thought # of ice blocks was predicted to increase for a certain period of time. Let me research this further... I didn't think it was going to decrease but rather increase for a extended period of time given temperature projections.


EDIT:

http://kucb.org/news/article/bering-sea-ice-extent-breaks-records/

Quote :

"Despite a chilly winter in some part of the Arctic, the overall ice cover was the ninth lowest since the satellite record began in 1979. That’s still a sizeable quantity of ice – 5.9 million square miles, or roughly the size of the United States and Canada combined – but about 200,000 square miles less than the 30-year average."

Yeah, looking at just the strait, small area or a small period of time does not really prove anything honestly in the case of OMG GLOBAL COOLING or OMG GLOBAL WARMING bs.

Note how the article you posted only looks at the Bering Strait...this is from the article link I posted:

Quote :

"Most of the missing ice was in the Barents and Kara Seas, above western Russia, where higher-than-average temperatures kept sea ice from forming. Meanwhile, closer to home, the Bering Sea had record ice cover in February and March and it remains well above average even now, halfway through April."

[Edited on May 4, 2012 at 9:07 AM. Reason : indeed]

5/4/2012 9:00:25 AM

Quote :

"But it is not settled science that the environment is dominated by high positive feedbacks. "

Well then how about addressing it instead of just contradicting it? Water vapor increases with temperature and is, itself, a greenhouse gas.

Quote :

"But alarmists argue an historical progression based upon the temperature record is wrong and model accordingly. They have strong theories for why their position is right."

This just isn't even coherent. You don't have a choice to argue on just mechanisms or evidence. Any theory has to be consistent with both our observations and our understanding of the physical systems. Climate science does accomplish this. It wouldn't be science otherwise.

Quote :

"Meanwhile, there are strong theories for why they are wrong: that some past warming has either been natural or due to non-CO2 forcing such as changes in land-use and that the readily identifiable positive feedbacks are countered by readily identifiable negative feedbacks. "

The scientific hypothesis that past warming is from CO2 is a weak one so far because of the errors associated with the forcing factors.



I argue this constantly. The fact that the total artificial forcing is positive is probably only like a 95% confidence statement, the other 5% being the possibility that we have so far only cooled (and not warmed) the Earth. But it's obvious that once CO2 rises further, we will have unambiguous artificial increases in temperature. This argument is based entirely on the mechanisms.

Quote :

"We'll know when we have more temperature record. So far, all we see is 1 degC per doubling of CO2. For the last 10 years, CO2 has continued rising in earnest while the temperature record has flattened. Obviously temperatures will resume rising soon enough, but it already needs to jump quite far to catch up with the predicted 7 degC per doubling of CO2."

Perhaps changing your units to Fahrenheit will resolve the conflict you have here, because the IPCC certainly does not predict what you represent.



the SRES B1, A1T, B2, A1B, A2 and A1FI illustrative marker scenarios are about 600, 700, 800, 850, 1250 and 1,550 ppm respectively

A doubling of CO2 would be 250 ppm x 2 = 500 ppm. That would be their lowest case scenario here, which more-or-less results in no, or minimal, warming. Once we quadruple the CO2 concentrations the IPCC predicts half of the 7 degC you quote. No wonder you had such a problem with their data! I would too if I had those figures.

5/4/2012 11:23:44 AM

5/4/2012 11:38:04 AM

Quote :

"In some ways, this is an almost perfect illustration of what has happened to the 'right.' A refusal to acknowledge scientific reality; and a brutalist style of public propaganda that focuses entirely on guilt by the most extreme association."

http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2012/05/the-right-and-the-climate-a-new-low.html

5/4/2012 5:34:53 PM

I think everyone acknowledges the "alarmists" out there that exaggerate. Its essentially the same what the media does to increase ratings, but in this case, alarmists seek to increase funding.

I know people that believe there is 0 evidence of global warming and that carbon dioxide has not increased and/or do not play a role in trapping more heat. I feel like some people are so "thick skulled" that they will disagree with any statement from someone of the opposite party. Going along with the comment above me, I feel like the global warming crap is highly polarized politically.

I do feel that a lot of people are rationale about it... acknowledging that it has been occurring, while maybe also acknowledging it might not be as much of a doomsday scenario as some predict. These are the types of people I would like to talk with about the role of government, regulations, and other policies in regards to this. The "thick skulled" others I would likely never even get that far.

5/4/2012 9:08:35 PM

http://www.vancouverobserver.com/blogs/climatesnapshot/2012/06/04/climate-change-stunner-usa-leads-world-co2-cuts-2006

The world has yet to figure out how to stop the relentless increase in climate pollution. But mixed in with all the bad news there was one shining ray of hope. One of the biggest obstacles to climate action may be shifting. As the IEA highlighted:

"US emissions have now fallen by 430 Mt (7.7%) since 2006, the largest reduction of all countries or regions. This development has arisen from lower oil use in the transport sector … and a substantial shift from coal to gas in the power sector."

How big is a cut of 430 million tons of CO2? It's equal to eliminating the combined emissions of ten western states: Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada.

It seems the planet's biggest all-time CO2 polluter is finally reducing its emissions. Not only that, but as the chart above shows, US CO2 emissions are falling even faster than what President Obama pledged in the global Copenhagen Accord.

Here is the biggest shocker of all: the average American's CO2 emissions are down to levels not seen since 1964 -- over half a century ago."

6/7/2012 12:54:55 PM

I think for that to be meaningful you have to cross-reference it with rates in our trading partners lke China, India, Indonesia, etc. One explanation for the reduction since 1964 might be that in 1964 we had a massive, robust manufacturing sector, whereas nowadays a lot of our CO2 emissions are effectively outsourced along with the production itself.

Back then, you could total up the factories and total up the individuals and get the CO2 that results from American activity, but that was because individuals bought goods from factories they worked in. Now, we buy goods from factories elsewhere, so the CO2 doesn't show up on our record, despite the products reaching us anyway.

[Edited on June 7, 2012 at 1:48 PM. Reason : .]

6/7/2012 1:47:20 PM

Quote :

"I think everyone acknowledges the "alarmists" out there that exaggerate. "

Actually, the mainstream "alarmism" falls on the "moderate" scale of predicted severity when you look at the papers being published. Even the IPCC publishes the more conservative estimates almost exclusively.

[Edited on June 7, 2012 at 1:58 PM. Reason : .]

6/7/2012 1:58:43 PM

^^ U.S. manufacturing output is around triple what it was in 1965 and the population has yet to double. But it is plausible to think the product mix has changed.

6/7/2012 9:09:34 PM

4x^

*dusts off hands*

Problem solved!

6/7/2012 9:56:08 PM

Quote :

"All of those adjustments are documented, there's nothing sinister about trying to make data sets over long periods of time Jive. "

Only, they are not documented. We can't get the people who made the adjustments to release their computer code that shows how they made the adjustments. But, hey, a hallmark of science is not releasing your methods. And a hallmark of following the law is for a scientist working at a public university using public funds not to release his work to the public when asked, as required by law.

Quote :

"Its completely appropriate that temperature would stop increasing with the record amounts of melting we've seen in the last decade."

no, it's really not. you're trying to say that ALL of the has gone exclusively to the poles to melt the icecaps and has had zero effect anywhere else, because, well, uhh.... that's what you say it does.

Quote :

""

Ahhh, the old radiative forcing calculation, where they put a bunch of people on teams to calculate each component, separated them and told them to calculate worst case numbers, and each team made conflicting assumptions to get their worst-case numbers, and then they came back together, combined the results and expected the results to be meaningful. that's good science right there!

6/7/2012 10:40:51 PM

Radiative forcing is a constant physical property of elements and compounds, like their atomic weight, not exactly something with worst and best case scenarios. You might gain some traction claiming model incongruity regarding feedback cycles, but radiative forcing components aren't exactly up for interpretations. Hell, you can replicate at least some radiative forcing measurements in your own garage if you want to buy a few bits of equipment.



[Edited on June 8, 2012 at 11:14 AM. Reason : .]

6/8/2012 11:07:14 AM

Quote :

"Ahhh, the old radiative forcing calculation, where they put a bunch of people on teams to calculate each component, separated them and told them to calculate worst case numbers, and each team made conflicting assumptions to get their worst-case numbers, and then they came back together, combined the results and expected the results to be meaningful. that's good science right there!"

So just tell me if you disagree with this graph:

http://scienceofdoom.com/2010/02/19/co2-an-insignificant-trace-gas-part-seven-the-boring-numbers/



Just go right ahead and tell me. Is this (W/m^2) per (ppm) correlation wrong? You could not be asked a question more simple and straightforward than this.

6/8/2012 11:16:00 AM

You would do better to drop the arguments about radiative forcing and attach the water vapor feedback multiplier.

/advice that doesn't help me at all

6/9/2012 3:38:16 PM

attach? are you Greg Hyer?

6/11/2012 9:06:19 PM

obligatory hot weather bump

7/2/2012 9:05:32 AM

Quote :

"WASHINGTON (AP) — If you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, scientists suggest taking a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks. Horrendous wildfires. Oppressive heat waves. Devastating droughts. Flooding from giant deluges. And a powerful freak wind storm called a derecho. These are the kinds of extremes climate scientists have predicted will come with climate change, although it's far too early to say that is the cause. Nor will they say global warming is the reason 3,215 daily high temperature records were set in the month of June."

http://news.yahoo.com/us-summer-global-warming-looks-064915370.html

7/3/2012 2:03:48 PM

I already saw that article. All you need to read is the author: Seth Borenstein. The guy is an unapologetic full on global warming believer. You will find no "unbiased" reporting there.

Lovely sensationalist piece though...

[Edited on July 3, 2012 at 7:50 PM. Reason : e]

7/3/2012 7:50:32 PM

You deny global warming even though it's happening right in front of your face.

7/3/2012 7:59:05 PM

It makes me wonder what point we'll get to when the majority of thinking people will finally acknowledge "well fuck, something is seriously wrong here and our contribution likely made this worse". I don't just mean for any potential warming, but any type of environmental damage caused by way of our apathy, complacency or corporate coverup.

7/3/2012 8:01:54 PM

^^no you dumb shit, I deny that humans are having much of an impact on the climate. Global warming (and cooling) has been going on since the dawn of time.

^I hear you. Personally I think that water pollution, urbanization (and suburbanization), air pollution (and not the life blood CO2) and deforestation all have quite the impact on our planet.

[Edited on July 3, 2012 at 11:31 PM. Reason : k]

7/3/2012 11:29:20 PM

we need to plant more goddamn trees to eat this goddamn co2 amirite?

legislate all non-classic cars made before 2000 off the road.

run them on unicorn piss.

that combined with the sea shepards and obamas documented environmental championing should be all we need!

(obvious sarcasm, but yeah, fuck this weather)! some people just gotta learn, THE HARD WAY!

7/3/2012 11:43:13 PM

Quote :

"^no you dumb shit, I deny that humans are having much of an impact on the climate. Global warming (and cooling) has been going on since the dawn of time."

You say that because you have proof or do you say that to make yourself feel better? Specifically addressing "humans are [not] having much of an impact on the climate."

Have you see human impact on land yet?


[Edited on July 4, 2012 at 12:14 AM. Reason : .]

7/4/2012 12:13:05 AM