Climate Change

[Tankus]

Back in the days when climate change was global warming
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html

No doubt it'll have another badge in the next decade

Too many variables for a reliable model perhaps ....?

Too many of us anyway....

 

[gentlegreen]

"too" or "to" ?

Tankus

 

[Sasaferrato]

The key words in any article on Global Warming climate change are 'perhaps', 'maybe', 'possibly' and 'if'.

The scenario changes almost daily as real life indicates that prognostications are wrong. What do you expect when the major body is chaired by a railway engineer with a large income from carbon trading?

 

[Sasaferrato]

I saw that story on scribbler's blog:
DC Superior Court Finds Indication of ‘Actual Malice’ in Climate Change Deniers’ Repeated Attacks on Michael Mann


The greed and criminal stupidity of the denialist/crapitalist vermin is beyond contempt.

The gullibility and naivety of the believers is breathtaking.

Please note, when the phrase '... in x years' is used, it is an absolute indicator that the event has happened before.

 

[Crispy]

The key words in any article on Global Warming climate change are 'perhaps', 'maybe', 'possibly' and 'if'.

Whereas if you read the actual scientific papers and reports, rather than 2nd hand accounts in the mass media, you'll find much more detailed nuanced phrases. There is uncertainty, but it is quantified uncertainty, with upper and lower bounds.

The scenario changes almost daily as real life indicates that prognostications are wrong.

Also Known As Science. And as the years go by, the models and predictions are indeed refined and altered. But the trend is always upward, even at the lowest bounds of uncertainty.

 

[Quartz]

It was bad when done to Lomborg and it's still bad when done to Mann.

 

[Dr Jon]

Climate: another harassed scientist fights back

Just as Michael Mann did, Monnett fought back and the battle is now over with a settlement in which BOEM has agreed to pay Monnett a compensation and to to remove the letter of reprimand he had received from them.

 

[teqniq]

Snow in St Catherine's in the South Sinai



and

KarenCNN: Incredible. RT @AmrElGabry: For the first time in 112 years, it snows in Cairo http://t.co/k738tbZvpW

 

[MikeMcc]

Back in the days when climate change was global warming
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html

No doubt it'll have another badge in the next decade

Too many variables for a reliable model perhaps ....?

Too many of us anyway....

Here's a small hint, the IPCC was formed in 1988, guess what the CC bit stands for...? In a hundred years, or a thousand years, they may well be wondering what snowfalls were in the UK. We have a lot of warming still waiting to hit us, no matter what we do.

Global waming is a facet of climate change, the phrases have been used interchangeably for decades. There has never been a transition of discussing global warming to discussing climate change. It's a strawman.

And what do you understand about modelling? Not much it seems. GCMs are well developed studies of the known mechanisms. Each has it's limitations, particularly in the parameterization of small scale phenomenon (for instance the effects of the mountain ranges in the UK which have a profound effect but are contained within one 5 deg x 5 deg area). There are areas of study that will improve the models, particularly dealing with particulate aerosols and the flow characteristics of the Antarctic and Greenland glaciers. To imply that there are too many variables to be able to generate realistic models is patently ridiculous. Try reading up on GCMs, specifically how they break up the system into manageable portions and then link those components together to see how they interact. They then hindcast the models to check that they accurately recreate historical data. But no, your reaction is 'Too many variables for a reliable model perhaps'. So the work of hundreds of research scientists, modellers, programmers, statistians, the product of thousands of hours of research, programming, refining, etc is written off because you don't like it...

 

[MikeMcc]

The key words in any article on Global Warming climate change are 'perhaps', 'maybe', 'possibly' and 'if'.
The scenario changes almost daily as real life indicates that prognostications are wrong. What do you expect when the major body is chaired by a railway engineer with a large income from carbon trading?

As it is in ANY scientific study. The drive is to refine the experiment to minimise the uncertainty. The recent IPCC reported an uncertainty of less than 5% that there is a potential natural cause. It doesn't say how much less than 5% that is, it could be considerably less. A p-test of 95% is the gold standard for effective truth in the matter (unless someone brings out the Nobel worthy dis-proving piece of evidence).
That railway engineer (his university qualification and first job) has also spent many years in the energy industry. He has an MSc in Industrial Engineering, and a PHD in Industrial Engineering and Economics. When it was suggested that he was raking it in KPMG did a review, the findings of which were:

"No evidence was found that indicated personal financial benefits accruing to Dr Pachauri from his various advisory roles that would have led to a conflict of interest". The report explains its objectives and methodology and states that "Work done by us was as considered necessary at that point in time" and that it is based on the information provided by TERI, Pachauri and Pachauri's tax counsel. In a caveat the review explains that its scope was "significantly different from an audit and cannot be relied on to provide the same level of assurance as an audit". Examined payments made by private sector companies and found that payments amounting to $326,399 were made to TERI itself, not to Pachauri. He had received only his annual salary from TERI, amounting to £45,000 a year, plus a maximum of about £2,174 from outside earnings. He received no payment for chairing the IPCC.

Wikipedia

Now the Telegraph has had to fork out £100k and make a public apology for these lies, have you got that sort of cash? Nice try for an Ad Hom attack and a strawman...

 

[Sasaferrato]

As it is in ANY scientific study. The drive is to refine the experiment to minimise the uncertainty. The recent IPCC reported an uncertainty of less than 5% that there is a potential natural cause. It doesn't say how much less than 5% that is, it could be considerably less. A p-test of 95% is the gold standard for effective truth in the matter (unless someone brings out the Nobel worthy dis-proving piece of evidence).
That railway engineer (his university qualification and first job) has also spent many years in the energy industry. He has an MSc in Industrial Engineering, and a PHD in Industrial Engineering and Economics. When it was suggested that he was raking it in KPMG did a review, the findings of which were:

Wikipedia

Now the Telegraph has had to fork out £100k and make a public apology for these lies, have you got that sort of cash? Nice try for an Ad Hom attack and a strawman...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25383373 More ice, not less.

I really love to see the wriggling that goes on when the facts don't support half-baked theories.

A lot of people making a very good living from the 'climate change' industry.

Oh, btw, remember the first graphs put out, the ones that conveniently forgot the last warm period?

In the past 50 millennia, we have had very hot weather, and an ice age. How curious that the were not related to 'anthropogenic climate change'.

Also by the way, none of the 'extra' qualifications make a railway engineer a climatologist.

'In a caveat the review explains that its scope was "significantly different from an audit and cannot be relied on to provide the same level of assurance as an audit".' Very reassuring.

 

[Sasaferrato]

Whereas if you read the actual scientific papers and reports, rather than 2nd hand accounts in the mass media, you'll find much more detailed nuanced phrases. There is uncertainty, but it is quantified uncertainty, with upper and lower bounds.

Also Known As Science. And as the years go by, the models and predictions are indeed refined and altered. But the trend is always upward, even at the lowest bounds of uncertainty.

Or on the other hand, what is known colloquially as a 'bag of bollocks'.

You lot's faith in this very uncertain process is touching, or touched.

 

[Crispy]

Or on the other hand, what is known colloquially as a 'bag of bollocks'

Have you got a reasoned argument, or just derision? Because while there have been well-reasoned arguments against the anthropegenic climate change theory, they have been mostly turned around or defused (as is represented by the narrowing confidence figures in the IPCC reports)

 

[gentlegreen]

faith

I think this is possibly the linguistic nub of your issue with the scientific consensus.

 

[Dr Jon]

Meanwhile, a US Navy Climate Model Shows Zero Sea Ice By Summer 2016:

The high resolution Regional Arctic Systems Model (RASM) constructed by US Navy Scientist Professor Wieslaw Maslowski shows the potential for the Arctic to be ice free come 2016 +/- 3 years.
...
Dr. Peter Wadhams, a world renown sea ice expert who has spent about 30 years monitoring the state of sea ice aboard British Navy submarines has projected that the Arctic could reach an ice-free state by the end of summer during 2015 or 2016.
Another climate expert, Dr. Carlos Duarte, head of the Ocean Institute at the University of Australia, has projected that the Arctic will reach an ice free state by 2015.

link

More ice, not less.

Why is Antarctic sea ice growing?

In 2013, enough fossil fuels were burned so that carbon pollution level hit
the milestone of 400 parts per million. Scientist confirmed, again, that this is
bad news for most of the residents of planet earth, with many plants and animals
facing extinction. This carbon pollution trapped enough heat to help fuel heat
waves, droughts, wildfires, and floods. The oceans grew in size as sea levels
reached record highs this year — meaning any storm making landfall became even
more deadly.

link

Earth has its Warmest November in Recorded History

 

[MikeMcc]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25383373 More ice, not less.

I really love to see the wriggling that goes on when the facts don't support half-baked theories.

A lot of people making a very good living from the 'climate change' industry.

Oh, btw, remember the first graphs put out, the ones that conveniently forgot the last warm period?

In the past 50 millennia, we have had very hot weather, and an ice age. How curious that the were not related to 'anthropogenic climate change'.

Also by the way, none of the 'extra' qualifications make a railway engineer a climatologist.

'In a caveat the review explains that its scope was "significantly different from an audit and cannot be relied on to provide the same level of assurance as an audit".' Very reassuring.

There has never been two consecutive record braking years in terms of arctic ice, area, extent or volume. The trend is still decidedly downward.


http://psc.apl.washington.edu/wordp...e_volume/BPIOMASIceVolumeAnomalyCurrentV2.png for the larger image. So whose facts and wooly theories were these?

And what first graphs and what warm period? More precision and less arm waving please.

Re ice-ages that wonderfully well understood phenomenon called Milankovitch cycles triggered those. By the way, were still in an ice-age, but were are in an inter-glacial period too. Of course, they wouldn't be related to AGW because we weren't pumping huge volumes of CO2 into the atmosphere then, so that's another straw man. If the present climate relied purely on Milankovich cycles we would be cooling at the moment...

Nor does recycling old denier memes make you a climatologist either, nor a good debater.

Despite the caveat, it's still more evidence that the deniers have.

 

[gentlegreen]

How many thousands of people in the air at any one time. ?
They'll never give that up.
They'll be gasifying coal before we know it - or liquifying gas.

Unless some pandemic gets us all due to the aforementioned travel.

 

[ferrelhadley]

In the past 50 millennia, we have had very hot weather, and an ice age. How curious that the were not related to 'anthropogenic climate change'.

When the earth was slightly warmer than today, about 8000 years ago, the northern hemisphere summer was about 3 million km closer to the sun than today. The region around 60N exeperianced about 40 watts per square meter more solar energy during June, July. When the climate was cooler, before 12 000 years ago, we had been set into a glacial phase (around 100 000 years ago) with low latitude glaciation significantly increasing the global albedo and reducing the net energy we could absorb. It was only when the orbital alignments created enough energy to (over thousands of years) melt back the NH summer snow and ice fields, slowly reducing albedo, warming the planet and releasing CO2 from the oceans.

 

[Quartz]

Re ice-ages that wonderfully well understood phenomenon called Milankovitch cycles triggered those.

I thought it was the transit of Antarctica across the South Pole.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Interested to see that the Reddit science forum has banned Krazy Klimate Konspiracy theories.

The answer was found in the form of proactive moderation. About a year ago, we moderators became increasingly stringent with deniers. When a potentially controversial submission was posted, a warning would be issued stating the rules for comments (most importantly that your comment isn’t a conspiracy theory) and advising that further violations of the rules could result in the commenter being banned from the forum.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/19/newspapers-ban-climate-deniers-reddit-science

I think that's fair enough if a forum is explicitly there for discussions of peer-reviewed science. I think it's a bit harder to argue in the case of general public discussion though.

 

[Dr Jon]

I think that's fair enough if a forum is explicitly there for discussions of peer-reviewed science. I think it's a bit harder to argue in the case of general public discussion though.

Yeah. Better to have puppets like Lawson and Monckton make idiots of themselves in public, where we can see the hand of vested interests at work, than let them cause further distraction by bleating about censorship.

 

[teqniq]

Not like we didn't already know just perhaps not the extent....

Conservative groups spend up to $1bn a year to fight action on climate change

Conservative groups may have spent up to $1bn a year on the effort to deny science and oppose action on climate change, according to the first extensive study into the anatomy of the anti-climate effort.

The anti-climate effort has been largely underwritten by conservative billionaires, often working through secretive funding networks. They have displaced corporations as the prime supporters of 91 think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations which have worked to block action on climate change. Such financial support has hardened conservative opposition to climate policy, ultimately dooming any chances of action from Congress to cut greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet, the study found.

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Yeah. Better to have puppets like Lawson and Monckton make idiots of themselves in public, where we can see the hand of vested interests at work, than let them cause further distraction by bleating about censorship.

Well, it'd be nice if the media at least classified stuff clearly as peer-reviewed science as distinct from e.g. crazy climate conspiracy theory.

It's not like that's hard to do. It's just basic journalistic competence to verify that the story is legit, which in the case of science ultimately means checking that there's a peer-reviewed source.

Trouble is, crazy climate conspiracy theory makes for lurid headlines that sell papers and it resonates with various other reactionary themes that appeal strongly to the sort of people who also like Jeremy Clarkson, hate cyclists and think nuLabour are socialists etc.

 

[fredfelt]

...
A lot of people making a very good living from the 'climate change' industry.
...

You really think that public money awarded to research is reason enough to distrust the science?

You really believe that this money, which is awarded in an accountable and open way, obfuscates the subject more than the the billions of dollars funnelled to lobby groups by big business? The very same lobby groups which started out to cast doubt on any links between smoking and cancer?

 

[Bernie Gunther]

Conservative groups may have spent up to $1bn a year on the effort to deny science and oppose action on climate change, according to the first extensive study into the anatomy of the anti-climate effort.

The anti-climate effort has been largely underwritten by conservative billionaires, often working through secretive funding networks. They have displaced corporations as the prime supporters of 91 think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations which have worked to block action on climate change. Such financial support has hardened conservative opposition to climate policy, ultimately dooming any chances of action from Congress to cut greenhouse gas emissions that are warming the planet, the study found.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/dec/20/conservative-groups-1bn-against-climate-change

This seems to be the actual paper being cited: http://www.drexel.edu/~/media/Files/now/pdfs/Institutionalizing Delay - Climatic Change.ashx

 

[Dr Jon]

I just noticed another study by the same author, showing that 75% of the income of denialist organizations now comes from unidentifiable sources.
Not just the Koch Brothers

 

[Bernie Gunther]

They put the funding though something called the Donors Trust to anonymise it these days.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/DonorsTrust

 

[ferrelhadley]

Current model estimates are getting it wrong.

Spoiler

Temperature rises resulting from unchecked climate change will be at the severe end of those projected, according to a new scientific study.

The scientist leading the research said that unless emissions of greenhouse gases were cut, the planet would heat up by a minimum of 4C by 2100, twice the level the world's governments deem dangerous.

The research indicates that fewer clouds form as the planet warms, meaning less sunlight is reflected back into space, driving temperatures up further still. The way clouds affect global warming has been the biggest mystery surrounding future climate change.

Professor Steven Sherwood, at the University of New South Wales, in Australia, who led the new work, said: "This study breaks new ground twice: first by identifying what is controlling the cloud changes and second by strongly discounting the lowest estimates of future global warming in favour of the higher and more damaging estimates."

"4C would likely be catastrophic rather than simply dangerous," Sherwood told the Guardian. "For example, it would make life difficult, if not impossible, in much of the tropics, and would guarantee the eventual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and some of the Antarctic ice sheet", with sea levels rising by many metres as a result.

 

[Quartz]

But is not that itself scaremongering? The Greenland ice sheet will take ten thousand years to melt. It's losing ~200 cubic km per year (measurements vary) and there's 2,850,000 cubic km of ice. That works out at over 10,000 years. Long after we've exhausted CO2-generating fuels - which will only last us another century or two - and long enough for normal CO2 levels to be restored.

 

[ferrelhadley]

But is not that itself scaremongering? The Greenland ice sheet will take ten thousand years to melt.

Did you pull that out your arse?

Historically ice sheets have melted in a broadly sigmoidal fashion, even when the global warming forced by orbital variation was around 0.1C per century the melt rate eventually peaked out at something like 20 m over 500 years.

Meltwater pulse 1A was an instance in the sea level rise of about 20 m in less than 500 years,[1] perhaps just 200 years.[2] The meltwater event occurred in a period of rapid climate change when the Holocene glacial retreat was going on during the end of the last ice age. Several researchers have narrowed the period of the pulse to between 13,000 and 14,600 years ago.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltwater_pulse_1A

These are non linear processes, for example Jakobshaven has been accelerating since 1997. Other major outlet glaciers are beginign to show signs of accelerating. Petermann has seen its sea ice buttress beginning to break up. This is the huge ice shelf of deep sea ice that is a huge friction break on Petermanns outflow. But there have been two gigantic calving events, breaking huge parts of this break. Once they are gone Petermann will speed up, increasing its outflow. Other non linear feedbacks will be the loss of summer sea ice increasing temperature, pushing the melt season further north and later.

Other non linear feedbacks include things like as the surface melt accelerates the water accumulates at the base of the glacier reducing friction. And the loss of summer sea ice will rapidly increase temperatures in the far north.


In the Antarctic things are much worse, there the two giant outlet glaciers of the EAIS, PIG and Thwaits are both melting back to 'lips', geological features that break their outflow.

These are the moderate responses to current warming.

Dont worry about all this 'sciencey' stuff. Stick to intuition and wild arsed guesses.