Global Warming?

[Ender]

The reason these small claims are defended is that they are used by deniers to cast doubt on the whole theory. (And I use the term “denier” not as a pejorative. After all, if global warming is false, it is a good thing to be a denier.)

I have no reason to believe that you are inclined to play fast and loose with the truth, but if a claim is in doubt why would you defend it and should it not set off some alarms to find that sources you trust are defending doubtful propositions?

If a claim made by the theory (or its supporters) is wrong then it ought to throw doubt on the theory; that’s how the truth is arrived at, and there have been any number of claims made, ranging from doubtful to ridiculous, that put the theory of AGW in a bad light.

Ender

 

[Ender]

I guess I am missing something because what I read in “this other articel” is:

Estimates of recent changes in Antarctic land ice range from** losing** 100 Gt/year to over 300 Gt/year. Because 360 Gt/year represents an annual sea level rise of 1 mm/year, recent estimates indicate a contribution of between 0.27 mm/year and 0.83 mm/year coming from Antarctica. There is of course uncertainty in the estimations methods but multiple different types of measurement techniques (explained here) all show the same thing, Antarctica is losing land ice as a whole, and these **losses are accelerating **quickly.

That part of the article is from the “Copenhagen Diagnoses” which Skeptical Science was using as the basis for their assertion that Antarctica is losing ice. What WUWT said about this was:Looks like “Skeptical Science” will have to update their reliance on the “Cophagen Diagnosis” as well as their claim of “Antarctica is losing land ice as a whole, and these losses are accelerating quickly.”
These are the assertions the article purports to refute.

Ender

 

[weller2]

Condescension and sarcasm are not generally regarded as persuasive characteristics.

OK, listen. The reason I’m actually spending my time here is that you really got on my nerves with post #3.

If you don’t believe in global warming, it’s your problem. Really. I don’t care.

I am, however, deeply offended by your characterization of the study in the OP as at least double hearsay if not triple or more. I’m a scientist (though not in climate). I’ve read enough papers to know a bad study when I see one. That study is derivative – so what. Many studies are derivative. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad. You don’t like systematic review – fine. I don’t like it either. It’s hard labor with no glamour, and no opportunity for these ‘Eureka!’ moments we scientists love. Reading papers and putting tick marks in the table. Boring. But it has to be done. Many useful things were discovered this way – but sifting through papers for days does not make for a good story of discovery.

14 people did this study. Given the complexity of the climate code, they had to spend weeks just to learn how to use the models (particularly as they had no prior experience). There were hours spent hunting for long obsolete and forgotten software libraries the code depends on. There was swearing at cryptic error messages which one gets when trying to run old code through a modern compiler. Then, someone had to wrote several thousand lines of code just to translate the data formats used by different models, so the same (name removed by moderator)uts could be fed to all models and the output normalized to a common format, because of course, each model developer always believes that his way of saving data is the right one. 39 parsers, each for a different data format? My God. I am physically sick when I have to write ONE. And I have more experience in writing software then an average undergrad.

You don’t like their conclusions? Fine. That’s your right.

But dismissing something that 14 people have put several months of life into, without reading it, just because you don’t like the subject on principle – now, THAT is something extremely uncharitable. Maybe my parents didn’t teach me proper manners, but they did teach me that someone’s else hard work should be respected.

Then in post #62 you were nice enough to accuse me of having a totalitarian mindset, and say that AGW believers are totalitarians. I’m just going to say that: in my experience, accusations of totalitarism are usually thrown by people who have never experienced totalitarian government, nor knew anyone who did. Regulation of energy market to reduce CO2 is totalitarian? Fine. But what word then should we use to describe the regime that put my grandfather on a one-way train to Germany against his will? (He managed to escape from that train, though.) What about the other regime of the same time, whose soldiers have given my other grandfather and his family 30 minutes to pack whatever they could take, leave the house built over the years with their own hands and get on a train to God knows where – all that at gunpoint? (Don’t worry the place where that train was going to wasn’t bad at all… particularly if compared to that first train. Its destination still gives me shivers when I think about it. Well… okay. I digress.)

So… yeah. Please excuse me for the use of sarcasm to keep myself calm while responding to your claims.

“My card beats your card”

OK, now, your approach to this is getting interesting.

You have derided the OP study as derivative, i.e. not based on real data. So I give you the data from mankind’s, newest, state-of-art orbital platform. This baby measures ice thickness WITH THE PRECISION OF 1.6 CENTIMETER while orbiting 700km above the ice. The level of technology involved here is completely mind blowing. (In fact, for the last several hours I am fighting a sudden urge to get on the next plane to Toulouse, walk into the EADS/Astrium office and beg them on my knees to hire me. Just give me a job with whoever built this radar. I can even clean floors for them.)

So, data from this wonder of French technology shows that the ice is shrinking. No, wait. It’s not shrinking. It’s disappearing. It’s not modeling, it’s not speculation, it’s direct measurement over the last 3 years. It’s what you have demanded: hard data.

(among the endless cards and quotations available to those who have time to look them up or are fed them by some mentor)

Well, now. It’s not my fault that you don’t have time to do some reading on the subject of global warming. It can take time – when I got interested in the subject 3 years ago I was reading literature in the evenings for about 6 months. I’m also deeply grateful to one professor of atmospheric physics who has several times destroyed me in the comment section of his blog. I’ve learned a lot.

I would certainly think Canada would want to patrol the arctic oceans since the Russians have been doing it for going on a century now,

Of course! But doesn’t it strike you as strange that Canada was never interested in patrolling these waters before? No gunboats in their own backyard since ever! Maybe, just maybe, it has to do with the fact that the waterways in question used to be covered with ice, and therefore not navigable?

 

[weller2]

Interesting-last year they told us we should be concerned about the surface Ice melt. wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-08/28/record-arctic-melt

This year we are told that’s not important its the volume that counts.

Well, you cannot blame science for advancing

Of course, it’s VOLUME that counts. Problem is, it’s very difficult to measure thickness of the ice on the North Pole. The only good way to do this is to fly a radar over Arctic. You could do that using a airplane (and people were doing that), but an airplane will not cover the whole area. So there was no good data about the thicknes of the ice. So people were using SURFACE instead, because it’s easy to measure – you just need a satellite photograph.

But ice is melting from the bottom. (Well, duh. That’s where it touches water.) So ice was thinning, and over years a 4m thick ice sheet became 2m thick ice sheet, then 1m thick – but from above, a 4m ice sheet and 1m ice sheet look the same – they have the same surface. Of course, the surface was also decreasing (because the further south, the smaller the initial thickness was), but much slower. So modellers developed models based on the observed rate of SURFACE decrease, and predicted that Arctic will be ice-free by 2080.

Here it gets interesting. Upthread someone ridiculed a guy named Maslowski for making a prediction that Arctic will be ice free by 2013. Guess what. In 2007, when Maslowski said what he said, the consensus was still that it would be 2080. Maslowski essentially claimed that the ice is much thinner then everyone else thinks (because the ice melts from the bottom), and so, the SURFACE measurement is worthless. Maslowski predicted (in 2007), that Artic would be completely ice free (only briefly in summer!) by 2016 plus or minus 3 years. Because he estimated that VOLUME of the ice will hit zero by then, and well, a zero VOLUME must have zero SURFACE. That was reported by journalists as 2013, 'cause you know, better headlines.

As usual with great discoveries everyone thought that Maslowski is wrong. Modellers stood by 2080. IPCC, using models, stood by 2080. Well, in 2010 the Europeans have launched CryoSat-2 – a satellite which could actually measure ice cover worldwide, and with precision. (Actually, they launched CryoSat-1 in 2005, but the rocket malfunctioned and it fell into the sea.) Anyway. CryoSat goes into orbit, and starts measuring ice cover. The result is a shock. Arctic ice is much thinner than everyone thought… except for Maslowski. His guess was right.

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content...ea-ice-min-volume-comparison-1979-2012-v2.jpg

As for Maslowski’s claim of ice-free (in summer) Arctic somewhere between 2013 and 2019 – judge for yourself.

 

[Lapey]

Climate Change is REAL. You can have your own opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts. And facts say human activity is causing climate change.

No, the theories state this, not the facts. You can make your type bold, large or even capitalize the writing, I still do not believe you are correct. I believe you sincerely think you are right and that this is best for society, but i do not buy the MMGW hoax.

 

[TARRAT]

No, the theories state this, not the facts. You can make your type bold, large or even capitalize the writing, I still do not believe you are correct. I believe you sincerely think you are right and that this is best for society, but i do not buy the MMGW hoax.

Amen:thumbsup:

 

[estesbob]

OK, listen. The reason I’m actually spending my time here is that you really got on my nerves with post #3.

If you don’t believe in global warming, it’s your problem. Really. I don’t care.

?

I dont care if you believe in it as long as you don’t expect me to go along with massive tax increases and crushing govt regulation to fix you claim exists I and dont.

 

[weller2]

No, the theories state this, not the facts. You can make your type bold, large or even capitalize the writing, I still do not believe you are correct. I believe you sincerely think you are right and that this is best for society, but i do not buy the MMGW hoax.

Let’s play. Propose an alternative theory which explains the following observations:

• increase in the atmospheric content of CO2
• corresponding decrease in the atmospheric content of oxygen
• change in 13C/12C isotopic ratios in atmospheric CO2
• cooling of the stratosphere

 

[estesbob]

Well, you cannot blame science for advancing

]

And thats the problem- Alarmists constantly make claims and then when the claims do not materialize they come up with even more claims accompanied by pretty charts and graphs and tell us science has “advanced” Well if they were wriong the first time why should I trust them now?

 

[estesbob]

Let’s play. Propose an alternative theory which explains the following observations:

• increase in the atmospheric content of CO2
• corresponding decrease in the atmospheric content of oxygen
• change in 13C/12C isotopic ratios in atmospheric CO2
• cooling of the stratosphere

Weather.

 

[LeafByNiggle]

… but i do not buy the MMGW hoax.

That’s a loaded word, “hoax”. It implies that all the scientists at NASA that are claiming global warming are engaged in a deliberate deception. I could understand your saying that they are mistaken in their beliefs. But it is quite presumptuous to claim they are promoting a hoax.

 

[Ridgerunner]

OK, listen. The reason I’m actually spending my time here is that you really got on my nerves with post #3.

If you don’t believe in global warming, it’s your problem. Really. I don’t care.

I am, however, deeply offended by your characterization of the study in the OP as at least double hearsay if not triple or more. I’m a scientist (though not in climate). I’ve read enough papers to know a bad study when I see one. That study is derivative – so what. Many studies are derivative. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad. You don’t like systematic review – fine. I don’t like it either. It’s hard labor with no glamour, and no opportunity for these ‘Eureka!’ moments we scientists love. Reading papers and putting tick marks in the table. Boring. But it has to be done. Many useful things were discovered this way – but sifting through papers for days does not make for a good story of discovery.

14 people did this study. Given the complexity of the climate code, they had to spend weeks just to learn how to use the models (particularly as they had no prior experience). There were hours spent hunting for long obsolete and forgotten software libraries the code depends on. There was swearing at cryptic error messages which one gets when trying to run old code through a modern compiler. Then, someone had to wrote several thousand lines of code just to translate the data formats used by different models, so the same (name removed by moderator)uts could be fed to all models and the output normalized to a common format, because of course, each model developer always believes that his way of saving data is the right one. 39 parsers, each for a different data format? My God. I am physically sick when I have to write ONE. And I have more experience in writing software then an average undergrad.

You don’t like their conclusions? Fine. That’s your right.

But dismissing something that 14 people have put several months of life into, without reading it, just because you don’t like the subject on principle – now, THAT is something extremely uncharitable. Maybe my parents didn’t teach me proper manners, but they did teach me that someone’s else hard work should be respected.

Then in post #62 you were nice enough to accuse me of having a totalitarian mindset, and say that AGW believers are totalitarians. I’m just going to say that: in my experience, accusations of totalitarism are usually thrown by people who have never experienced totalitarian government, nor knew anyone who did. Regulation of energy market to reduce CO2 is totalitarian? Fine. But what word then should we use to describe the regime that put my grandfather on a one-way train to Germany against his will? (He managed to escape from that train, though.) What about the other regime of the same time, whose soldiers have given my other grandfather and his family 30 minutes to pack whatever they could take, leave the house built over the years with their own hands and get on a train to God knows where – all that at gunpoint? (Don’t worry the place where that train was going to wasn’t bad at all… particularly if compared to that first train. Its destination still gives me shivers when I think about it. Well… okay. I digress.)

So… yeah. Please excuse me for the use of sarcasm to keep myself calm while responding to your claims.

OK, now, your approach to this is getting interesting.

You have derided the OP study as derivative, i.e. not based on real data. So I give you the data from mankind’s, newest, state-of-art orbital platform. This baby measures ice thickness WITH THE PRECISION OF 1.6 CENTIMETER while orbiting 700km above the ice. The level of technology involved here is completely mind blowing. (In fact, for the last several hours I am fighting a sudden urge to get on the next plane to Toulouse, walk into the EADS/Astrium office and beg them on my knees to hire me. Just give me a job with whoever built this radar. I can even clean floors for them.)

So, data from this wonder of French technology shows that the ice is shrinking. No, wait. It’s not shrinking. It’s disappearing. It’s not modeling, it’s not speculation, it’s direct measurement over the last 3 years. It’s what you have demanded: hard data.

Well, now. It’s not my fault that you don’t have time to do some reading on the subject of global warming. It can take time – when I got interested in the subject 3 years ago I was reading literature in the evenings for about 6 months. I’m also deeply grateful to one professor of atmospheric physics who has several times destroyed me in the comment section of his blog. I’ve learned a lot.

Of course! But doesn’t it strike you as strange that Canada was never interested in patrolling these waters before? No gunboats in their own backyard since ever! Maybe, just maybe, it has to do with the fact that the waterways in question used to be covered with ice, and therefore not navigable?

The thread opened with an article about an article. That’s always a bit problematic because one writer is interpreting what he believes the other article said, and what its significance is.

(continued. your post is long, and so is my reply. Not enough room on one post.)

 

[Ridgerunner]

(continued)

I’ll admit that my view of what the posted article said about the non-posted article might be affected by the second writer’s understanding of the thing. But the writer of the article we read did not, in my view, give a very glowing account of the one he was reviewing. The article about which he was writing might have been quite different from what he understood it to say.

I’ll admit as well that you and I seem to be coming at the article about the article from different perspectives. I have spent a great deal of time working with lawyers because of my occupation. I have reviewed expert testimony perhaps thousands of times. It appears the level of evidence and the expectation of originality in the field I sometimes serve is very different from that which is deemed worthy of credit in scientific journals of this particular type, or at least of reports on them by other writers. The objections I made are admittedly of the sort I would suggest in a critique of an expert witnesses report or testimony, including his/her reliance on “scholarly treatises” that might or might not prove what the expert believes it does. Again, perhaps the problem is the writer of the NYT article, not the article in the scientific journal. But the NYT writer’s account of it describes it as being so wanting as to invite critique, as, indeed, the OP does, asking what we think about the NYT article.

I did exactly that.

Your background is obviously quite different and, as you say, my critique offended you, so you responded with a personal critique. But critique of an article one is invited to critique is not the same thing as being asked to debate the merits of MMGW from every possible aspect, most certainly those that the original article does not even seem to touch on.

Now, I recognize that you have brought your own research of sources to this thread in order to bolster the “article about the article”. I readily concede that I have not searched sources as thoroughly as you probably have. But as you are evidently a relative newcomer to this site, you would not be aware that these studies, graphs, counter-graphs, head counts of scientists have all been repeated many times here on CAF; endlessly, it seems, and from both sides. And it is for that reason I compared it (unfairly in your case because you have not seen it previously) to a high school debate. At a point, all of the information from one side tends to cancel out the information from the other; it becomes tedious and eventually nobody pays any attention to the thread anymore, and rightly so.

I did not (or at least did not intend to) say you, yourself, have a totalitarian mindset, but that the left generally does. At bottom, the totalitarian mindset is one that seeks to make people do that which is contrary to their own better instincts, beliefs and judgment, by compulsion if necessary, and brooks no dispute. I am put to mind of A. Solzhenitsyn’s image of Stalin treating the people as if they were, collectively, a puppy whose muzzle he was shoving into a bowl of milk. “Here! Drink up!” he has Stalin say, as the puppy’s face goes under. As MMGW is a pet doctrine of the left, and as the left is terribly insistent that utility rates must “skyrocket”, seemingly regardless of the consequences to others, particularly the poor and the elderly, one gets more than a whiff of the totalitarian mindset emanating from that quarter.

I would never feel qualified to comment on what your progenitors experienced in what was one of totalitarianism’s worst manifestations. But I do feel qualified to comment on it as I understand it from having read a great deal about its manifestations historically and upon the mindset as others have analyzed it, particularly in its early manifestations. I did not live with it personally, other than when I was very young and the KKK sought to oppress people like myself for the sake of an ideology so persuasive to them that they were willing to make others suffer for its sake.

 

[epan]

The apparent controversy is political. It is not a controversial topic among scientists.

 

[estesbob]

The apparent controversy is political. It is not a controversial topic among scientists.

As long as the government doesn’t try to “fix” the problem I dont care what they believe. the fact they have not been able to come up with an accurate model in the last 20 years disturbs me, to say the least.

 

[weller2]

You recognized it yourself - energy is reflected back into space without being absorbed; it’s a function of the Earth’s albedo.

Okay. Propose a mechanism which counteracts a CO2-driven warming by increasing albedo. Provide empirical data proving that such mechanism exists. Explain why this mechanism was not active before 1998.

I’ll just note from my side that melting of ice decreases albedo.

Besides that, CO2 doesn’t absorb radiation at all frequencies but only at a specific subset so if all the radiation at those frequencies is absorbed at some particular concentration then the addition of more CO2 will have no effect.

That’s true. Now, do the homework and look up at what CO2 concentration the effect saturates. Calculate equilibrium temperature for that CO2 concentration. Link to a site when you can find the needed formulas was posted by me uptherad. Otherwise, 30 seconds with Google

Whatever the precise statistical meaning of the term is, that value was touted as meaning “The models are right, accept them and move along.”

Yup, policymakers are idiots, journalists don’t know statistics, and IPCC is politicized. I’m in full agreement.

I’m thinking that missing the fact that warm air melts ice is pretty big.

No, that was not this. But it’s pretty apparent what happened if you look at Maslowski’s paper. People developing global models missed ocean currents under the Arctic, which bring in warmer water and melt the ice from below. Since there were no reliable measurements of ice thickness, and the ice cap did not shrink (it was melting from below) the global climate modellers did not put realistic Arctic melting in the models.

Funnily enough, it looks like the model for Arctic water circulation (and ice melting) Maslowski used to make his prediction was available in 2003, but apparently nobody tried to combine it with a global climate model.

That’s what I’m getting from this at least Oh well. Another disaster due to too much specialization

It’s also worth pointing out that if they as yet still don’t understand “whatever effect” it is that they missed how they were able to tweak their models to incorporate a 15 year period without warming and why they should be given any credence now at all?

As I said, importance of models (and their failures) is overblown. Again: in a first approximation, you can calculate final equilibrium temperature from radiative transfer. Aaannnd… I will give you the resulting formula:

dT = gamma * log2(C/C0)

C0 is preindutrial CO2 level = 280ppm
C is whatever target CO2 level you wish to have
dT is resulting increase in temperature
gamma is a magic number known as climate sensitivity (look it up!) Pure CO2-driven warming without feedbacks is about 2.5. The current concensus is that due to feedbacks the real value is 3-3.5.

Say that you get +3C warming. Then you take a temperature map, move isotherms by 3 degrees, and you can have a (very!) rough idea what to expect.

The climate model just gives you a more precise result (feedbacks etc.), tells you how and when you will get there (and what will happen along the way), and, the most important thing, draws you these nice colorful maps, which you can then give to journalists.

If we’ve had much higher CO2 concentrations in the past how did we ever have subsequent ice ages?

sites.google.com/site/thepaleoceneeocenethermalmaxim/2-paleocene-climate/why-earth-s-climate-is-different-today-1/ice-ages-and-the-role-of-co2

 

[weller2]

Weather.

Weather changes isotopic ratios? How?

And thats the problem- Alarmists constantly make claims and then when the claims do not materialize they come up with even more claims accompanied by pretty charts and graphs and tell us science has “advanced” Well if they were wriong the first time why should I trust them now?

Well, then you don’t listen to alarmist reports. Read the IPCC AR4 instead – it’s quite level-headed. Especially the part on scientific base of global warming.

ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/main.html
ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html

 

[Ridgerunner]

The apparent controversy is political. It is not a controversial topic among scientists.

Actually, it is controversial among scientists. Scientists are definitely not in agreement on MMGW. This appeared previously in a previous thread in which citations from thousands of scientists and the majority of meteorologists were cited who either do not believe in MMGW at all, or believe there is some effect so minimal as to be unworthy of draconian measures threatened by this administration. Some even believe there is MMGW but that it’s due to man-made causes like desertification.

This has been debated on CAF so many times, and with so many competing sources, no one who has seen them in the past could doubt that there is definitely disagreement among scientists. But now and then a true believer pops up on CAF and it starts all over again.

But I will agree with you that the push to make utility bills “skyrocket” is entirely political. Obama, himself, promised he would try to do that. Also, his promise to kill the coal industry is political as Joe Manchin’s protest makes clear.

 

[weller2]

…]

Thanks. I have no bad feelings towards you. This is a very politicized topic so people get emotional. I understand that.

I saw that people are posting things which indicate widespread misunderstanding of basic science behind global warming, so I jumped in to explain the basics while trying to steer clear of politics. Plus, I have an inside perspective on science, so certain failures of science are not shocking to me at all.

God bless you my friend

…And I’m off to sleep. Thanks for playing everyone

 

[estesbob]

Weather changes isotopic ratios? How?

Well, then you don’t listen to alarmist reports. Read the IPCC AR4 instead – it’s quite level-headed. Especially the part on scientific base of global warming.

ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/syr/en/main.html
ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/contents.html

But of course the report brushes aside the fact the warning stopped 15 years ago.