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Author
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Topic: Some thoughts on (you know?) CLIMATE CHANGE
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Leonard
HMFIC
Member # 2
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posted April 17, 2015 10:52 AM
What It Would Take to Prove Global Warming
By Robert Tracinski
APRIL 17, 2015
Recently, Reason‘s Ronald Bailey asked what it would take to convince conservatives and libertarians that global warming is real.
If generally rising temperatures, decreasing diurnal temperature differences, melting glacial and sea ice, smaller snow extent, stronger rainstorms, and warming oceans are not enough to persuade you that man-made climate [change] is occurring, what evidence would be?
This has since been picked up by Jonathan Adler at the Washington Post‘s token right-leaning blog, the Volokh Conspiracy. There’s no pressure: Bailey and Adler merely insinuate that you are “obscurantist”—that is, you hate new knowledge—if you don’t agree.
That, by the way—the smug insistence of global warming alarmists on presenting themselves as the embodiment of scientific knowledge as such—is one of the reasons I stopped taking them seriously. In fact, I have thought about what it would take to convince me of global warming is real. And it’s pretty clear that Bailey has not thought about it.
He really hasn’t. He’s thought a lot about the various scientific claims made by those who insist global warming is a man-made catastrophe. But he has not thought about how those claims add up or how they would have to add up to be convincing. All Bailey’s piece amounts to is: here is a long list of factual claims that seem to support the global warming scare; how high do I have to pile up these claims before you are convinced?
There is no sense that the proof of global warming has to proceed according to some systematic method, requiring it to clear specific hurdles at specific stages. Which betrays an unscientific way of thinking.
When I refer to “global warming,” and when Bailey and Adler refer to it, that term is a stand-in, not just for the trivial claim that average global temperatures are rising, but for “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming”: i.e., global temperatures are rising, it’s our fault, and we’re all gonna die.
I’ve gone on record a long time ago sketching out what stages would be required to demonstrate that humans are causing rising global temperatures, never mind the much more dubious proposition that warmer weather is going to be a catastrophe. Let me elaborate on it here.
There are three main requirements.
1) A clear understanding of the temperature record.
The warmists don’t just have to show that temperatures are getting warmer, because variation is normal. That’s what makes “climate change” such an appallingly stupid euphemism. The climate is always changing. The environmentalists are the real climate-change “deniers” because they basically want global temperatures to maintain absolute stasis relative to 1970—not coincidentally the point at which environmentalists first began paying any attention to the issue.
That’s what makes ‘climate change’ such an appallingly stupid euphemism. The climate is always changing.
So to demonstrate human-caused global warming, we would have to have a long-term temperature record that allows us to isolate what the normal baseline is, so we know what natural variation looks like and we can identify any un-natural, man-made effect. A big part of the problem is that we only have accurate global thermometer measurements going back 135 years—a blink of an eye on the time-scales that are relevant to determining natural variation of temperature. Within that, we only have a few decades of warming that could conceivably be blamed on human emissions of carbon dioxide: a minor run up in temperatures from the 1970s to the late 1990s. Since then, warming has leveled off (despite strenuous attempts to pretend otherwise). I think it’s impossible to claim, on that basis, that we even know what natural temperature variation is, much less to demonstrate that we’ve deviated from it.
(This is putting aside doubts about whether adjustments made to the temperature record, which are necessary to account for things like changes in the locations of weather stations, have managed to screen out “urban heat island” effects or have been biased to exaggerate the extent of warming.)
Various environmentalist attempts to create a “hockey stick” that makes current temperatures look abnormal have been embarrassing failures, involving problems like an improper mixing of recent thermometer measurements with less accurate “proxy” measurements that estimate temperatures farther into the past. And they prove my point about warmists being believers in climate stasis. The hockey stick graphs all assume that global temperature have been basically flat for 2,000 or 10,000 years, so that minor recent warming looks like a radical departure. Who’s really denying climate change?
And if you look at temperatures on the really big scale, we’re all just playing for time until the next ice age comes.
Assuming we can eventually compile a temperature record that is long enough and reliable enough to distinguish the effect of human activity from natural variation, we would also have to understand how human beings are causing this effect. Which leads us to the second big requirement.
2) A full understanding of the underlying physical mechanisms.
We have to know what physical mechanisms determine global temperatures and how they interact. The glibbest thing said by environmentalists—and proof that the person who says it has no understanding of science—is that human-caused global warming is “basic physics” because we know carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Carbon dioxide is a very weak greenhouse gas and there is no theory that claims it can cause runaway warming all on its own. The warmists’ theory requires feedback mechanisms that amplify the effect of carbon dioxide. Without that, there is no human-caused global warming. But those feedback mechanisms are dubious, unproven assumptions.
Basic questions about the “sensitivity” of the climate to carbon dioxide have never been answered. Even Bailey admits this.
In recent years, there has [been] a lot of back and forth between researchers trying to refine their estimates of climate sensitivity. At the low end, some researchers think that temperatures would increase a comparatively trivial 1.5 degrees Celsius; on the high end, some worry it could go as high as high 6 degrees Celsius…. In a 2014 article in Geophysical Research Letters, a group of researchers calculated that it would take another 20 years of temperature observations for us to be confident that climate sensitivity is on the low end and more than 50 years of data to confirm the high end of the projections.
Well, fine then. Is it okay if we wait? (No, it isn’t, and I’ll get to the implications of that in a few moments.)
And this leaves out the possibility that the climate’s sensitivity to carbon dioxide is even lower, that other mechanisms such as cloud-formation might serve to dampen temperature increases.
Recently, I was amused at news that new science is debunking the “low sodium” diet fad of the past few decades. It turns out that “the low levels of salt recommended by the government might actually be dangerous” (which is not so amusing). This seems like a timely warning. Like the human body, the global climate is a hugely complicated system with a lot of factors that interact. We’re not even close to understanding it all, and having the government jump in and pick sides risks cementing a premature “consensus.”
The immense, untamed complexity of the climate is reflected in the poor performance of computerized climate models, which leads us to our last major hurdle in proving the theory of global warming.
3) The ability to make forecasting models with a track record of accurate predictions over the very long term.
We don’t know whether current warming departs from natural variation, nor have scientists proven the underlying mechanisms by which humans could cause such an increase. But even if we did know these things, we would have to be able to forecast with reasonable accuracy how big the effect is going to be. A very small warming may not even be noticeable or may have mostly salutary effects, such as a slightly longer growing season, whereas the impact of a much larger warming is likely to cause greater disruption.
It’s pretty clear that scientists aren’t any good yet at making global climate forecasts.
I should also point out that the “catastrophic” part of “catastrophic anthropogenic global warming” is a much larger question that is even harder to forecast. For example, global warming was supposed to lead to more hurricanes, which is why movie posters for Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth featured a hurricane emerging from an industrial smokestack. Then hurricane activity in the Atlantic promptly receded to historical lows.
It’s pretty clear that scientists aren’t any good yet at making global climate forecasts. Current temperatures are at or below the low range of all of the climate models. Nobody predicted the recent 17-year-long temperature plateau. And while they can come up with ad hoc explanations after the fact for why the data don’t match their models, the whole point of a forecast is to be able to get the right answer before the data comes in.
Given the abysmal record of climate forecasting, we should tell the warmists to go back and make a new set of predictions, then come back to us in 20 or 30 years and tell us how these predictions panned out. Then we’ll talk.
Given the abysmal record of climate forecasting, we should tell the warmists to go back and make a new set of predictions, then come back to us in 20 or 30 years and tell us how these predictions panned out.
Ah, but we’re not going to be allowed to wait. And that’s one of the things that is deeply unscientific about the global warming hysteria. The climate is a subject which, by its nature, requires detailed study of events that take many decades to unfold. It is a field in which the only way to gain knowledge is through extreme patience: gather painstaking, accurate data over a period of centuries, chug away at making predictions, figure out 20 years later that they failed, try to discover why they failed, then start over with a new set of predictions and wait another 20 years. It’s the kind of field where a conscientious professional plugs away so maybe in some future century those who follow after him will finally be able to figure it all out.
Yet this is the field that has suddenly been imbued with the Fierce Urgency of Now. We have to know now what the climate will do over the next 100 years, we have to decide now, we have to act now. So every rule of good science gets trampled down in the stampede. Which also explains the partisan gap on this issue, because we all know which side of the political debate stands to benefit from the stampede. And it’s not the right.
So yes, I know exactly what it would take to convince me that catastrophic anthropogenic global warming is really happening. And no, the warmists haven’t even come close.
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EL BEE Knows It All and Done It All.
Don't piss me off!
Posts: 31450 | From: Upland, CA | Registered: Jan 2003
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Az-Hunter
Hi, I'm Vic WELCOME TO THE U.S. Free baloney sandwiches here
Member # 17
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posted April 23, 2015 11:04 AM
It's a bit long, but take 7 minutes of your time and get a good laugh as well as a dose of levity concerning global warming, Carlin nails it to my mind.
Ive always maintained we couldn't change the earths climate even if we tried, much less thru accident?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoXFpymugbk&feature=player_embedded
Posts: 1627 | From: 5 miles west of Tim | Registered: Jan 2003
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Aznative
FARTS ON CLUELESS LIBERALS
Member # 506
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posted May 16, 2015 06:08 AM
It has nothing to do with real science. It has everything to do with the government wanting control of our energy use. They want to control it through taxation which is needed to fund obama care and education for the young.
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Never thought the devil would need a teleprompter but I could be wrong.
United State of America: RIP
Born July 4th 1776 died November 6th 2012
Posts: 1924 | From: Phoenix Az | Registered: Jan 2005
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Aznative
FARTS ON CLUELESS LIBERALS
Member # 506
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posted May 16, 2015 06:11 AM
AZ Hunter: that george carlin piece is funnnnny!!!!!!!!! I put it on Facebook to piss off my stupid liberal friends.
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Never thought the devil would need a teleprompter but I could be wrong.
United State of America: RIP
Born July 4th 1776 died November 6th 2012
Posts: 1924 | From: Phoenix Az | Registered: Jan 2005
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Moe
Knows what it's all about
Member # 4494
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posted May 16, 2015 09:07 AM
Maybe if they had covered up their cooked stats and lies better to begin with I could believe the entire global warming/climate change lie.
All one has to do is take a look at the Chicago Climate Exchange that was set u by the people, Al Gore, Obama, Soros a mulitude of others, who would get rich from trading carbon credits if cap and trade ever got passed.
First, back in the 70's, they tried out global cooling and nuclear winter to be in a panic about. When that didn't match what was happening they invented global warming.
[IMG]http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd162/pk1_04/Facebook_meme_Global_Co oling_11_zps0e9n9rxn.gif[/IMG]
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I snatch kisses. And vice versa.
Posts: 593 | From: Oregon | Registered: Nov 2013
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MI VHNTR
I'm not shaving 'til Obama's gone!
Member # 3370
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posted May 16, 2015 05:15 PM
quote:
What It Would Take to Prove Global Warming
They would have to alter the facts, or just plain lie, that 15 of the last 17 months here have had below normal temperatures recorded. Some of these cold months were the coldest recorded monthly temps since they began keeping temperature records here.
Glo-BULL warming my frozen backside.
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The Second Amendment isn't about Hunting. It's about Freedom.
FJB Let's Go Brandon
Posts: 394 | From: MI | Registered: Dec 2008
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Leonard
HMFIC
Member # 2
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posted May 16, 2015 07:25 PM
That's what they do! For years they have changed the data, without a good explanation. It's so stupid to alter data to fit ignorant computer projections. Who do they think they are kidding? Well, Obama, for one! That asshole is convinced, there is consensus, case closed. What's wrong with all you deniers?
And yet, they actually believe what they are saying. The CHICKEN LITTLES keep telling us the sky is falling. You people have to believe us, we'z scientists, and we need our grants to fund more studies.
Sure.
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EL BEE Knows It All and Done It All.
Don't piss me off!
Posts: 31450 | From: Upland, CA | Registered: Jan 2003
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Moe
Knows what it's all about
Member # 4494
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posted May 17, 2015 05:26 AM
Leonard.....Obama doesn't believe it any more than you or I. He and his party stand to profit from the lie. He calls me a denier and I call him a liar.
Up until last year we had a large boat we took out on the ocean fishing. Before driving the 2 hours to Newport we'd check the weather and ocean conditions to see if the drive was worth it. A short time after Obama took office we saw a change in the reporting. Many days NOAH told us that ocean conditions were hazardous with high seas so we stayed home. Then one day we thought we'd drive down and do some maintenance on the boat and sleep on it overnight. Conditions were supposed to be miserable yet when we got there we found the ocean to be calm with perfect conditions. We started noticing that the forecasts were frequently wrong calling for hazardous conditions and finding perfect conditions. It looked to us that NOAH was flat out lying in order to present an ugly picture for their records. We and a lot of others stopped relying on NOAH for an accurate forecast.
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I snatch kisses. And vice versa.
Posts: 593 | From: Oregon | Registered: Nov 2013
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MI VHNTR
I'm not shaving 'til Obama's gone!
Member # 3370
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posted May 17, 2015 05:05 PM
Of course they lie. It's part and parcel of being a good little democRAT. They have to follow their leaders and we all know that they are accomplished liars. The SOBs would lie where the truth would fit better.
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The Second Amendment isn't about Hunting. It's about Freedom.
FJB Let's Go Brandon
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