Bloomberg: What's really warming the world?

[LeafByNiggle]

Your slip is showing, LeafbyNiggle. Fortunately, I do not require your approval or judgement of coherency. It was explained once, twice, perhaps thrice, and if you need more explanation, re-read it, or not.

OK, it’s pretty well established now that you don’t have an explanation.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

If you can’t agree with my theory. Why should I agree with yours?

The evidence is there…increase in man made CO2 during the Industrial Revolution and civilization benefits.

Just like estesbob’s pirates vs global warming graph, eh? Except that the population boom started before well before 1850, but CO2 did not substantially increase until after 1850.

 

[sps49]

OK, it’s pretty well established now that you don’t have an explanation.

Believe what ever makes it easier for you to get through the day, LeafByNiggle.

 

[sps49]

Sorry, but that’s exactly how they do science. I know it’s crazy, reducing the very complex world to 2 variables by controlling for 3rd, 4th, 5th, and so on variables. But. hey, that’s just happens to be the way they do science. Don’t blame me.

In fact, what they often do in climate science is take out the GH effect to see what the expected temp would be (with the other known variables, just minus the GH effect), then compare that with actual data…and it’s closer to this comparison below between actual observations and the solar irradiance cycles. Note how the temps fairly well track the solar irradiance cycle up to about 1980, when the temps start really shooting up:

Umm, yes and no. I use the technique in my profession, as do many others in engineering and physics. The conditions under which this is attempted are that the system must be well understood, characterized, and well constrained for this to work, so that meaningful and reproducible results may be obtained. The fidelity of the current climate models is not great enough due to inadequate knowledge of the physical system. That is not to say that you can’t do it, it just means that the results have little meaning or are ambiguous as regards the actual planetary climate physical system responses.

 

[lynnvinc]

Umm, yes and no. I use the technique in my profession, as do many others in engineering and physics. The conditions under which this is attempted are that the system must be well understood, characterized, and well constrained for this to work, so that meaningful and reproducible results may be obtained. The fidelity of the current climate models is not great enough due to inadequate knowledge of the physical system. That is not to say that you can’t do it, it just means that the results have little meaning or are ambiguous as regards the actual planetary climate physical system responses.

Well you say not well understood and I say fairly well understood. So that is our difference.

Climate, unlike weather, is actually less complex and easier to understand. It’s just weird, but the macro-level of aggregated data is just less complex, with less variables and greater predictability. I’ve discussed this before – forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=13217892&postcount=861

 

[Ridgerunner]

Just like estesbob’s pirates vs global warming graph, eh? Except that the population boom started before well before 1850, but CO2 did not substantially increase until after 1850.

There have been other population booms associated with warming trends, though not with industry or fossil fuel use. There were the Roman warming period and the Medieval warming period. In both, population increased and we see the structural achievements of both, which took a pretty prosperous society to create.

Cooling periods tend to be associated with increased poverty and lower populations. The Little Ice Age ended well before 1850, so population increases in the early 19th Century might have been due to gradual warming having nothing to do with fossil fuel use.

 

[Theo520]

Found an interesting article on how the rich are greedily sucking up all the ‘green energy subsidies’

The Hood Robin Syndrome

There’s a new study out, under the imprimatur of the Energy Institute of the Haas School of Business in Berkeley, California, entitled The Distributional Effects of U.S. Clean Energy Tax Credits. As the title implies, it looks at who actually profited from the various “green energy” tax credits across the United States. SPOILER ALERT! It wasn’t the poor folks.
…

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)

 

[sps49]

Well you say not well understood and I say fairly well understood. So that is our difference.

Climate, unlike weather, is actually less complex and easier to understand. It’s just weird, but the macro-level of aggregated data is just less complex, with less variables and greater predictability. I’ve discussed this before – forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=13217892&postcount=861

They are stuck with using models because they can’t do the experiments you are talking about due to inadequate knowledge and inability to conduct even scaled controlled experiments. So they perform experiments on the models, with predictable results. Natural variability problems where the observations are not in phase with the model, the use of parameterizations, divergence problems, non-reproducible results, and an inability to provide a clean attribution case are real issues that face the climate science community. The fact that they can’t use anything but models does not justify the confidence that are placed on them, especially for policy decisions. All of these characteristics are common to systems that are not well understood, or even fairly well understood.

I don’t think the weather vs climate argument is compelling, but I understand why you made it, and why we disagree.

 

[lynnvinc]

They are stuck with using models because they can’t do the experiments you are talking about due to inadequate knowledge and inability to conduct even scaled controlled experiments. So they perform experiments on the models, with predictable results. Natural variability problems where the observations are not in phase with the model, the use of parameterizations, divergence problems, non-reproducible results, and an inability to provide a clean attribution case are real issues that face the climate science community. The fact that they can’t use anything but models does not justify the confidence that are placed on them, especially for policy decisions. All of these characteristics are common to systems that are not well understood, or even fairly well understood.

I don’t think the weather vs climate argument is compelling, but I understand why you made it, and why we disagree.

The info I provided earlier was the observed data, not models.

However, you are right bec there isn’t another earth to use as the control – no GHGs for that planet, and load them in on our planet. Such a project would never pass the IRB.

However, there is a “natural experiment” which actually led to the discovery of the GH effect some 200 years ago: Venus is a lot hotter than would be expected given its distance from the sun, and Mars is slightly warming than expected given its distance, and Earth is 30C warmer than expected, which is just right for life and civilization to thrive.

But I guess those keen on further experimentation would like to pump in as much GHGs as possible to see if we can make it sizzle.

 

[vz71]

Well you say not well understood and I say fairly well understood. So that is our difference.

Climate, unlike weather, is actually less complex and easier to understand. It’s just weird, but the macro-level of aggregated data is just less complex, with less variables and greater predictability. I’ve discussed this before – forums.catholic-questions.org/showpost.php?p=13217892&postcount=861

The first step in wisdom is knowing how much you do not know.
The planet is marvelously complex. Anyone claiming they know enough to predict climate and tell us what we should do and what effect it will have is selling a scam.

 

[sps49]

The info I provided earlier was the observed data, not models.
However, you are right bec there isn’t another earth to use as the control – no GHGs for that planet, and load them in on our planet. Such a project would never pass the IRB.
However, there is a “natural experiment” which actually led to the discovery of the GH effect some 200 years ago: Venus is a lot hotter than would be expected given its distance from the sun, and Mars is slightly warming than expected given its distance, and Earth is 30C warmer than expected, which is just right for life and civilization to thrive.
But I guess those keen on further experimentation would like to pump in as much GHGs as possible to see if we can make it sizzle.

Your comment :

So, let’s control for el nino and la nina years and mention volcanoes (cooling effect) years:
-snipped chart-
It just gives much stronger evidence that AGW is real and there was no “pause.”

The “lets control for el nino” bit is impossible to do without a model, and if done with current models is not going to tell us anything because we can’t verify it due to poor fidelity and other issues. The trend line is itself a statistical model, not the data, and is not terribly useful if you don’t understand the system well, and even then is of limited value. It may be evidence of something, but not what you think.

Venus and Mars are two separate cases that don’t apply to the Earth, and even their systems are not well understood. Since we really can’t predict the future with the tools that we have what is happening, the “sizzle” effect is fantasy.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

The “lets control for el nino” bit is impossible to do without a model…

Read this Wikipedia article to see what the phrase “control for…” means in scientific experiments. As you can see “controlling for X” in scientific experiments does not require a model, or even a good understanding of the system behavior.

 

[sps49]

Read this Wikipedia article to see what the phrase “control for…” means in scientific experiments. As you can see “controlling for X” in scientific experiments does not require a model, or even a good understanding of the system behavior.

Only if you wish to modify a trillion dollar global economy and you don’t give a rip about getting an accurate result. Of course you may conduct poor experiments, LeafByNiggle, anyone may, and apparently are.

Experiments are models, try again.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Only if you wish to modify a trillion dollar global economy and you don’t give a rip about getting an accurate result. Of course you may conduct poor experiments, LeafByNiggle, anyone may, and apparently are.

Experiments done without models are not necessarily poor experiments. For example, to screen for drugs that might be effective against hypertension, it is common to give many candidate drugs to laboratory rats to see what might be promising. This not a “poor” experiment, despite the fact that we understand very little of how rats’ metabolism works, and we certainly don’t have a validated model for rats, or any living thing. Yet the results are accurate. They tell what the drug does to rats. And sometimes they control for other variables, like the age of the rats, or the temperature in their cages.

Experiments are models, try again.

Once again I direct your attention to a Wikipedia article so that you may learn what a model is. Note in particular the paragraph “Modelling as a substitute for direct measurement and experimentation”, which shows that experiments are not models. What you can say is that experiments are often conducted to try to validate models. But experiments can be conducted for other purposes besides validating models, as my example of an anti-hypertension screen shows. Please don’t try again. You are embarrassing yourself.

 

[lynnvinc]

Found an interesting article on how the rich are greedily sucking up all the ‘green energy subsidies’

There’s a new study out, under the imprimatur of the Energy Institute of the Haas School of Business in Berkeley, California, entitled *

As the title implies, it looks at who actually profited from the various “green energy” tax credits across the United States. SPOILER ALERT! It wasn’t the poor folks.
*
So?

The real point is that the poor are not losing as much, since it is the poor who are mainly harmed by the externalities of dirty energy for electricity and vehicles – from resource extraction, processing, combustion, waste, and spills/accidents. From local, regional, and global environmental harms, including the many harmful effects from AGW.

There are poor people in a town next to mine dying from leukemia, etc from a 33 acre benzene plume under their homes and schools caused by decades of petrol and natural gas leaking there, which the state refuses to clean up. That’s just one of the very many examples of how people, esp the poor, are harmed by dirty energy.

While having an EV to a large extent does require that one own or live in a home – since they need to be plugged in – eventually apts may also provide outlets for EVs. And while it pretty much requires owning a home with a south sloping roof to get into PV solar energy, many can purchase renewable (subsidized and cheaper) energy, such as wind-generated energy, from local providers. For now for the most part it does require upfront investment money for many of these, even with the subsidies, which the poor often do not have, tho there are some schemes in some areas where a company provides that and gets paid back slowly with the savings from the renewables.

You have raised a valid problem about the poor not being as able to get into the huge benefits of EVs and PV panels, but the solution is not end these subsidies and encourage people to go around killing and harming others from dirty energy use, but helping more poor people get into EVs and PV panels, esp since they not only reduce harms to others and future generations, but also end up saving people money long run. In that respect the poor really need to get into these things more than the rich do. And for now people would also have to be paying enough income tax to get full benefit of the EV and PV tax breaks, however they can take their tax breaks over 3 years, rather than just one year, so that people who are paying at least $2500 in taxes could get into these things.

In my area there is an organization, Proyecto Azteca, to help colonia people (who are extremely poor and live in shacks in unincorporated areas, historically the migrant farm community) move into homes with solar panels, energy efficient construction, and xeriscaped yards. They have to go thru training and put in some “sweat equity,” but are gaining the benefits of those savings and subsidies. We need more programs like that.

As for the mainly well-off who are doing the right thing by switching to renewable energy and EVs they are helping provide a better future and hope for life on earth, while those well-off people who could afford these things and have homes that make them feasible, esp if they are also energy/resource hogs (inefficient and non-conservative), are remiss in not doing the right things for the poor and future generations. Shame on them.

These subsidies are “seed money” to help these cleaner industries become viable and give incentives for people to support them by their purchases so that we all, rich and poor, can have a better world. Eventually they will not be needed, especially since they are rapidly becoming financially beneficial as much as they are environmentally beneficial. (It would also be good to end all the fossil fuel subsidies and tax-breaks, as well; maybe even get rid of corporate welfare and give the money to the poor instead.)

People using dirty electricity and driving dirty ICE cars should be feeling guilty of the harms they are doing. I know I was until we switched to an EV and PV panels, and I still feel there is more we can and should do…and I think I’ll feel that way and be into doing more up until the day I die.

We are our brothers keepers, and should not be in the business of harming them thru our profligate dirty energy use. Hurrah for the policy-makers who have made it easier for people to get into cleaner energy. They are true heroes.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

There have been other population booms associated with warming trends, though not with industry or fossil fuel use. There were the Roman warming period and the Medieval warming period. In both, population increased and we see the structural achievements of both, which took a pretty prosperous society to create.

Cooling periods tend to be associated with increased poverty and lower populations. The Little Ice Age ended well before 1850, so population increases in the early 19th Century might have been due to gradual warming having nothing to do with fossil fuel use.

Population booms associated with warming periods are totally understandable. The assertion I objected to was that the CO2 itself was responsible for the boom, through plants being able to make use of the CO2.

 

[TeachTheFaith]

Regardless of what any of us think about skewed study results, etc., the fact remains that we as human beings have been poor stewards of the planet God created for us. Pollution matters for so many reasons beyond global warming. As Pope Francis makes clear in his encyclical, we are each responsible for how we use the natural resources entrusted to us. It is always a complex question, with many variables in play. Here are a few very basic, very simple ways to be good stewards of the environment in our everyday lives: 1) Don’t use what you do not need. 2) Clean up after yourself. 3) Consider the long term effects of what you are doing. We do not need polluted soil, air and water. None of us can individually stop pollution, but we can individually stop polluting.
Don’t let semantics be your excuse for being a poor steward of God’s gifts.

 

[sps49]

Experiments done without models are not necessarily poor experiments. For example, to screen for drugs that might be effective against hypertension, it is common to give many candidate drugs to laboratory rats to see what might be promising. This not a “poor” experiment, despite the fact that we understand very little of how rats’ metabolism works, and we certainly don’t have a validated model for rats, or any living thing. Yet the results are accurate. They tell what the drug does to rats. And sometimes they control for other variables, like the age of the rats, or the temperature in their cages.

As I said, if you are not interested in accurate results, go ahead. You may rationalize this any way you wish, and indeed you are, but that is not a substitute for rigor in the physical sciences. Comparing physical science experimentation with animal trials/experimentation is not a good way to make your case.

Once again I direct your attention to a Wikipedia article so that you may learn what a model is. Note in particular the paragraph “Modelling as a substitute for direct measurement and experimentation”, which shows that experiments are not models. What you can say is that experiments are often conducted to try to validate models. But experiments can be conducted for other purposes besides validating models, as my example of an anti-hypertension screen shows. Please don’t try again. You are embarrassing yourself.

You are of course welcome to your own opinions about these and various other matters (even wikipedia opinions!), and I must admit that it is amusing to hear you chatter on about the various nuances you deem important, and even the haughty “Please don’t try again. You are embarrassing yourself” comment. That was a hoot! However, I don’t believe I will be availing myself of your advice any time soon. I am confident of my original statement, and you are certainly welcome to imagine victory if it helps.

 

[lynnvinc]

Regardless of what any of us think about skewed study results, etc., the fact remains that we as human beings have been poor stewards of the planet God created for us. Pollution matters for so many reasons beyond global warming. As Pope Francis makes clear in his encyclical, we are each responsible for how we use the natural resources entrusted to us. It is always a complex question, with many variables in play. Here are a few very basic, very simple ways to be good stewards of the environment in our everyday lives: 1) Don’t use what you do not need. 2) Clean up after yourself. 3) Consider the long term effects of what you are doing. We do not need polluted soil, air and water. None of us can individually stop pollution, but we can individually stop polluting.
Don’t let semantics be your excuse for being a poor steward of God’s gifts.

Good points.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Regardless of what any of us think about skewed study results, etc., the fact remains that we as human beings have been poor stewards of the planet God created for us. Pollution matters for so many reasons beyond global warming. As Pope Francis makes clear in his encyclical, we are each responsible for how we use the natural resources entrusted to us. It is always a complex question, with many variables in play. Here are a few very basic, very simple ways to be good stewards of the environment in our everyday lives: 1) Don’t use what you do not need. 2) Clean up after yourself. 3) Consider the long term effects of what you are doing. We do not need polluted soil, air and water. None of us can individually stop pollution, but we can individually stop polluting.
Don’t let semantics be your excuse for being a poor steward of God’s gifts.

I, at least, wonder about the morality of tossing out aluminum cans. One frequently sees some very poor looking people going along the road collecting them. Given that aluminum is very persistent and resists corrosion, are we doing an act of charity by tossing an aluminum can from our car, or are we despoiling God’s creation?

Me, I resolve it in favor of charity toward the can-pickers. (shhhhhh )