Global warming slowdown could last another decade

[freeRadical]

Not an assumption, your comments about climate vs. weather show this. I’m not trying to be mean, but boundary value problems and initial value problems are separate beasts. The linked article makes this clear. What you need to show is that climate statistics over, say, 30 yrs or longer are so sensitive to initial conditions as to swamp the forced component introduced by CO2 or some other perturbation. This is simply not how the real world or complex models behave, at least for most metrics of interest.

Summer is always warmer than winter.

It is an assumption, my comments show no such thing. Maybe you do not fully understand chaotic systems. How much experience do you have with modeling?

 

[chris_colose]

It is an assumption, my comments show no such thing. Maybe you do not fully understand chaotic systems. How much experience do you have with modeling?

I work with climate models in my research, but my intent isn’t to compare who knows what.

The reason why weather exhibits predictability loss over timescales of days to a week is an entirely different issue than what we’re trying to answer using climate models. Hopefully, we can at least agree on the problem without getting into how much confidence we have in the actual model.

The reason I wrote summer is warmer than winter was to make a point about boundary value problems. If climate statistics were so strongly slaved to its initial state, then this seemingly trivial statement would not be so trivial.

 

[adawgj]

Investing requires money, money people aren’t too quick to part with. Especially in this economy. Solar power and wind propulsion will replace fossil fuels only when it becomes economically viable to do so, not before. Until then, alternative energy will have to be propped up by government. It is kinda hard to convince people to pay higher taxes for research into alternative energy when we have other short-term things we need to deal with like poverty and healthcare.

That’s why the government needs a balanced budget.

Depends on where you live too. A lot of people in California are investing into solar power because it is cheaper to do so.

Also just for the record I’m not an ardent global warming supporter I just believe it is scientific and real.

 

[Petersmate]

Growing up Presbyterian I was taught that Catholics were communists, not to mention Unitarians. Of course that was during the McCarthy era in the late 50s when people were finding communists under their beds – boo !!

Now that we are out of that era the bogymen of today seem to be the religious nut terrorists and I guess environmentalists (in the view of some) … I imagine some Protestants have Catholics right up on that bogyman list along side Muslims Eek, a Catholic

So that would make me a double bogeyman, being a Catholic and an environmentalist. Watch out, here I come

That be the maturity of a Two year old.
To mock someone means you want to be unreasonable.

Life never changes- the truth always hurts.

 

[Petersmate]

Except it isn’t

you took the words right out of my mouth

 

[freeRadical]

That’s why the government needs a balanced budget.

What does that have to do with what I posted?

Depends on where you live too. A lot of people in California are investing into solar power because it is cheaper to do so.

Why is it cheaper to invest in solar power in California then elsewhere?

 

[freeRadical]

I work with climate models in my research, but my intent isn’t to compare who knows what.

But you did.

The reason why weather exhibits predictability loss over timescales of days to a week is an entirely different issue than what we’re trying to answer using climate models. Hopefully, we can at least agree on the problem without getting into how much confidence we have in the actual model.

Isn’t climate just an aggregation of weather? Climate scientists seem to make the same mistake that macroeconomists make: Trying to model and predict aggregate behavior when they don’t fully understand the individual agents and behaviors that make up the systems they are aggregating.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Isn’t climate just an aggregation of weather? Climate scientists seem to make the same mistake that macroeconomists make: Trying to model and predict aggregate behavior when they don’t fully understand the individual agents and behaviors that make up the systems they are aggregating.

It is a false premise to say that in general one cannot accurately model the behavior of an aggregation of things without fully understanding the individual behavior of the things that make up that aggregation. Two counter examples that come to mind are nuclear decay and laws of thermodynamics. In nuclear decay, we can model quite accurately the rate at which uranium decays. And we could do this without understanding the inner workings of the uranium atom. In the laws of thermodynamics, we are able to state boundary conditions for the flow of heat, and we can do this without knowing the velocity of each individual molecule, which actually is heat. Maybe macroeconomics is different, and you do need to know how an individual makes spending decisions to predict how large populations will spend their money. But you have not made any attempt to show why the study of climate trends is more like macroeconomics than it is like nuclear decay in this regard.

 

[Arandur]

So what you’re suggesting – let me get this straight – is that our progeny spend an enormous amount of money, time, effort, and material (name removed by moderator)uts to make millions of acres in the arctic arable in hopes of feeding the world, and that we their ancestors just continue along our business-as-usual profligate path of causing AGW and concomitant pollution, wasting resources…even tho that path does not make economic sense even to our current generation.

Nope. You’ve missed almost all my points on the subject.

It’s cheaper and easier to just adapt. The economic cost of trying to stop or slow AGW is too great, will cause tons of other ills, and reduce our ability to adapt. And it won’t do much to mitigate it anyway. Even scientists promoting AGW say these things.

Then you consider the political hurdles involved in implementing such economy-wrecking policies as would be “necessary” in so many of these strategies attempting to address AGW, and compare that instead to simply letting people adapt as conditions change (which will happen naturally, no political intervention required, and happen in as naturally a market-driven and efficient process as possible), and you’ll find that it just makes sense to adapt.

BTW, China is the world’s largest CO2 producer, at almost 10% greater of the world’s share than the U.S. They are also increasing those levels faster than anyone else, as they industrialize cheaply and demand rises from a huge population gradually becoming more prosperous. They are pursuing some limited token efforts at alternative energy (the biggest being Three Gorges Dam, which of course had enormous catastrophic environmental and human costs), and in a sense it’s easier for them to do so because they need new energy, not to shift old energy sources.

The US regulatory environment is our own worst enemy. Aside from all that, though, the point is that it doesn’t matter what the US an the EU do. The developing world is the largest and fastest-growing population and producers of CO2 and environmental damage. The focus should be on them. If we can’t stop entirely their increase, and even roll it back, then there’s no point to us doing anything.

And this doesn’t even consider the impacts of forest and agricultural burning, or the widespread burning of wood and oil fuels for heat and cooking in the third world.

The fastest and most economical shift right now would be to widespread nuclear energy. But, as with even all the other alternative energy sources (wind, solar thermal, geothermal, tidal, hydro, etc), the radical environmentalists oppose them, too. So we will get nowhere.

Thus, best to just adapt. It’s an inescapable logical conclusion. I can even spell it out in simple premises to conclusion.

1. Assume AGW is happening and is substantially man-made.
2. Proponents of the theory admit that we can’t really stop it no matter what we do.
3. The costs of trying to stop it are extremely high and will reduce economic capacity.
4. The political difficulty with major initiatives to curb emissions is extremely high, opposed even by radical environmentalists who will accept no economical alternatives.
5. The developing world is now the leading source and fastest-growing source of emissions, and has little capability or incentive to reduce their emissions.
6. Any changes to the environment naturally cause adaptation responses in all species–including humans.
7. Historically, humans have adapted naturally in the most efficient means they can to changes in their environments.

Conclusion:
Since there is not realistic way to stop AGW, we must adapt. Therefore, it is better to spend our time and resources figuring out how best to do that, rather than wasting them on a futile effort to stop change that cannot be stopped.

 

[chris_colose]

freeRadical- I will try to post a more comprehensive reply in the next day or so on why I think that the climate system does not seem to behave in the way you think, and exhibits a certain simplicity in the emergent forced responses we observe amidst its complex subcomponents.

Leaf is on-target as a general response. Many complex systems (climate, the brain, stars, black holes, ecosystems) display emergent phenomena that are “simple” and can be made intelligible building from the ground-up, so an “all or nothing” approach is not a sensible scientific or philosophical platform for studying such systems. His example of how an incredibly simple equation of state emerges from very complex molecular dynamics is a good counterpoint, at least once we consider a statistical ensemble of molecules behaving in the thermodynamic limit. Another example is a pot of boiling water- even if the precise timing and distribution of individual bubbles are unpredictable, the boundary conditions imposed on the problem (e.g., water boils at 100 C at surface atmospheric pressure, decreases with altitude, etc) are well-known. The atmosphere itself is a fluid and is constrained by physical laws, and arbitrary departures from those constraints are simply not permissible.

None of this may be obvious and the notion of emergent simplicity in complex systems is generally under-appreciated by a lot of people not initiated into how we think about these things, so it deserves more of a response than I have time for right now.

 

[freeRadical]

It is a false premise to say that in general one cannot accurately model the behavior of an aggregation of things without fully understanding the individual behavior of the things that make up that aggregation.

It is a very valid premise.

But you have not made any attempt to show why the study of climate trends is more like macroeconomics than it is like nuclear decay in this regard.

Why does the study of climate trend more like nuclear decay and not like macroeconomics?

 

[freeRadical]

freeRadical- I will try to post a more comprehensive reply in the next day or so on why I think that the climate system does not seem to behave in the way you think, and exhibits a certain simplicity in the emergent forced responses we observe amidst its complex subcomponents.

Don’t waste your time.

None of this may be obvious and the notion of emergent simplicity in complex systems is generally under-appreciated by a lot of people not initiated into how we think about these things, so it deserves more of a response than I have time for right now.

But I am very initiated in how “we” think of these things.

Like I said, as someone who has extensive experience modeling very complex systems, I am unconvinced of their models and the predictions that come from these models, especially their confidence in these models and predictions.

 

[chris_colose]

Don’t waste your time.

But I am very initiated in how “we” think of these things.

Like I said, as someone who has extensive experience modeling very complex systems, I am unconvinced of their models and the predictions that come from these models, especially their confidence in these models and predictions.

Alright, I won’t waste my time. I’m not sure why you waste your time modeling things when you have no confidence in what you’re doing. But any gut feeling that such models (in climate at least, I’m not sure what you do) don’t have skill is immediately refuted by the fact that they do.

 

[freeRadical]

Alright, I won’t waste my time. Any gut feeling that such models don’t have skill is immediately refuted by the fact that they do.

Did I ever say that it was a “gut feeling”?

My thoughts are based on my experience with modeling complex systems.

We will have to agree to disagree that such models have “skill”.

 

[chris_colose]

Did I ever say that it was a “gut feeling”?

My thoughts are based on my experience with modeling complex systems.

We will have to agree to disagree that such models have “skill”.

Sorry, but there’s only one correct answer here. ‘Skill’ can be defined and mathematically formulated; the output of climate models e.g., in cmip5, are publicly accessible. You cannot just make up a fact about what models don’t do when they do it. There’s zero ambiguity here. Again, I’m not sure what field you come in from, but your experience evidently doesn’t translate into climate. If you are unwilling to hear how it does work in climate science, that’s your choice.

 

[Theo520]

Just a reminder on why people are frustrated and angry with the alarmist forecasts, and the excuse making that inevitably follows.

(Please Note: This uploaded content is no longer available.)
Since 2009:

1. Actual temperature has been flat, not increasing.
2. Actual solar activity has been far lower than predicted, not increasing
3. El Nino not as predicted

Net, another hypothesis failed the scientific method.

 

[styrgwillidar]

…
If you are unwilling to hear how it does work in climate science, that’s your choice.

It’s not a matter of hearing how they work. It’s a matter of seeing them work, to observe the climate and see if the models accurately predict the climate. When the model doesn’t match reality, it isn’t reality that’s wrong.

There’s an expression I like. “You don’t eat the menu.”

 

[LeafByNiggle]

Just a reminder on why people are frustrated and angry with the alarmist forecasts, and the excuse making that inevitably follows.

https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/09/guardian_5yrs_warming.png
Since 2009:

1. Actual temperature has been flat, not increasing.
2. Actual solar activity has been far lower than predicted, not increasing
3. El Nino not as predicted

Net, another hypothesis failed the scientific method.

So, you found a claim…correction: wattsupwiththat found a claim and packaged it and fed it to you, by a a couple of researcher in 2009 whose claim was about solar output. Are we supposed to treat this claim as representative of all the research that has been done on global warming? The only ones “frustrated and mad” about global warming claims are those with an ideological opposition to the claims.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

It is a very valid premise.

I gave two counter examples which totally demolished that premise.

Why does the study of climate trend more like nuclear decay and not like macroeconomics?

I was not the who tried to analyze climate trends by analogy to other fields of study. It is not up to me to prove that climate trends are not like macroeconomics. It is up to you to prove they are, since you are the one who made the claim.

 

[Theo520]

So, you found a claim…correction: wattsupwiththat found a claim and packaged it and fed it to you, by a a couple of researcher in 2009 whose claim was about solar output. Are we supposed to treat this claim as representative of all the research that has been done on global warming? The only ones “frustrated and mad” about global warming claims are those with an ideological opposition to the claims.

Leaf,
here is a direct link to the source article.
theguardian.com/environment/2009/jul/27/world-warming-faster-study

Here is a link to the published paper.
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2008GL034864/abstract

Are you familiar with the **Tu Quoque **logical fallacy?
You seem to indulge in it frequently here, when you don’t like were a legitimate story is shared.