182 replies to this topic

[Doug1o29]

socrates.junior, on 17 January 2013 - 12:48 AM, said:

What is important about the average temperature from 51-80? Why is that the baseline? I'm curious.

It takes 30 years to acquire enough data to know whether you're looking at a change in climate, or just normal variation.  These comparisons started in the early 80s, so they used the most-recent 30 year period.  It takes a bunch of work to change the basis and then you just have to get used to a new one, so nobody has changed it.
In a word:  inertia.
Doug

[socrates.junior]

Odd, seems like there should be better methods of doing it.

EDIT: Sorry, that was a little too concise. I'll elaborate. Longer timescales? 30 random years from the middle of the 20th century are a really random baseline. You'd think that with the importance of the issue, some better system could be devised.

Edited by socrates.junior, 17 January 2013 - 01:23 AM.

[Zaphod222]

The basic false premise of the whole scam is that the climate is somehow naturally "stable", and that it only changes because of human interference.
Which is of course patently false. The only thing that has remained constant with the world´s climate over millions of years is that it ALWAYS changes; sometimes drastically.

[Doug1o29]

Zaphod222, on 16 January 2013 - 11:36 PM, said:

Since global warming is fundamentally a taxation and grant scheme, it certainly is not at standstill. If the figures do not match the warmers` fiction, they´ll adjust them.

As only about 20% of the world's weather records have been digitized for computers, you will see small changes in the numbers as data is added.  This will rarely be more than one or two hundredths of a degree, however.  Also, as stations come online, or go off, the basis of the dataset changes, making small adjustments necessary so that we aren't comparing two different sets of stations.  Again, this will rarely cause a change larger than one or two hundredths of a degree.

As for grants:  Most researchers are paid a fixed salary and have a small budget for things like computers, office supplies and perhaps some miscellaneous lab equipment.  But if they want to do something that requires special equipment, that takes a grant.  This is because costs between different disciplines are highly variable.  An atomic physicist may require equipment costing millions of dollars, but for me - a good new increment borer costs about $400.  I started a new project recently that required a rarely-used computer program; that took a grant for $453.  Several years ago I needed a collection of shortleaf pine cores from half-a-state away.  I got a grant for $2300 for that - it mostly went to travel.

Another term for "grants" is "contracts."  Most research is done under contract for government agencies, big corporations and the like.  It's no different from hiring a contractor to fix your roof.  The roofer knows how to fix a roof and I know how to analyze data.  I used to have a forestry consulting business - everything I did was under a contract - a grant.  If the researcher works for government or a university, his paycheck is set, sometimes by law.  How much he brings in in grants earns him browny points, but not a raise.

Most people, especially climatologists, don't make all that much money.  My daughter graduated with a degree in geology two years ago and is now making twice what I do and I'm nearing retirement - if I can afford to.
Doug

[Doug1o29]

socrates.junior, on 17 January 2013 - 01:17 AM, said:

Longer timescales? 30 random years from the middle of the 20th century are a really random baseline. You'd think that with the importance of the issue, some better system could be devised.

Good weather records only go back to the late 19th century.  The Palmer Drought Severity Index starts in 1895 because there isn't enough data from earlier.  In Oklahoma, good precip records start in 1892 (20 stations in the whole Indian Territory) and temperature records are often hit-or-miss up into the 1920s.  That doesn't leave much choice as to which years you are going to use as a baseline.  And any baseline is arbitrary.  You need a constant standard to compare changes.  Any constant will do.
Doug

[Doug1o29]

Zaphod222, on 17 January 2013 - 01:24 AM, said:

The basic false premise of the whole scam is that the climate is somehow naturally "stable", and that it only changes because of human interference.

I don't know which pseudo-science site you're getting your information from, but any climatologist will tell you that statement is flat-out wrong.  Climate varies naturally; we know that and have known it since forever.  But, when you subtract the effects of known climate forcings, you're left with about 1.6 degrees C. that you can't explain.  Unless you cite the known physics of carbon.  The increase in CO2 readily explains that increase in temps.  And humans are the major contributors to atmospheric carbon.  Especially, wood and charcoal cooking fires, changes in soil microbes brought on by logging and farming and, of course, industrial pollution.  Methane from the thawing of permafrost and melting of clathrates is now being added to the mix.

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Which is of course patently false. The only thing that has remained constant with the world´s climate over millions of years is that it ALWAYS changes; sometimes drastically.

Glad we agree.
Doug

[Zaphod222]

Doug1o29, on 17 January 2013 - 02:09 AM, said:

I don't know which pseudo-science site you're getting your information from, but any climatologist will tell you that statement is flat-out wrong.  Climate varies naturally; we know that and have known it since forever.  But, when you subtract the effects of known climate forcings, you're left with about 1.6 degrees C. that you can't explain.  Unless you cite the known physics of carbon.  The increase in CO2 readily explains that increase in temps.

I don´t know what sources you are getting your information from, but the claim that "any climatologist" has bought into the "global warming" scam is flat-out wrong. There are plenty who do not agree with the simplistic models presented by the global warming activists. And the idea that you can "subtract the effects of known climate forcings" is ludicrious. (What is a "climate forcing" anyway?) The climate is influenced by a huge number of factors; to single out CO2 as the only one and to pretend that you can reduce everything to one single chemical is not science, it is political convenience. Fyi, for a while the UN itself tried to reduce climate change on Methane (i.e. cow farts). Google it. That was just as silly.

By the way, the CO2 content of the earth`s atmosphere does not explain the simultaneous global warming that happened simultaneously on Mars. Or do you now suggest the Mars is occupied by SUV driving humans.

[Br Cornelius]

Zaphod222, on 17 January 2013 - 01:24 AM, said:

The basic false premise of the whole scam is that the climate is somehow naturally "stable", and that it only changes because of human interference.
Which is of course patently false. The only thing that has remained constant with the world´s climate over millions of years is that it ALWAYS changes; sometimes drastically.

Wrong. Climate science is all about understanding all variables. natural and anthropogenic.

Br Cornelius

[Br Cornelius]

Zaphod222, on 17 January 2013 - 04:05 AM, said:

I don´t know what sources you are getting your information from, but the claim that "any climatologist" has bought into the "global warming" scam is flat-out wrong. There are plenty who do not agree with the simplistic models presented by the global warming activists. And the idea that you can "subtract the effects of known climate forcings" is ludicrious. (What is a "climate forcing" anyway?) The climate is influenced by a huge number of factors; to single out CO2 as the only one and to pretend that you can reduce everything to one single chemical is not science, it is political convenience. Fyi, for a while the UN itself tried to reduce climate change on Methane (i.e. cow farts). Google it. That was just as silly.

By the way, the CO2 content of the earth`s atmosphere does not explain the simultaneous global warming that happened simultaneously on Mars. Or do you now suggest the Mars is occupied by SUV driving humans.

Seasons explains the warming on mars, for which there is very scant evidence for long term trends - certainly minimal compared to the earth for which you are not confident in  mans data. Ironic what you choose to believe.

Br Cornelius

[Little Fish]

Br Cornelius, on 17 January 2013 - 07:40 AM, said:

Seasons explains the warming on mars

"In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row."
http://news.national...rs-warming.html

Edited by Little Fish, 17 January 2013 - 11:01 AM.

[Doug1o29]

Zaphod222, on 17 January 2013 - 04:05 AM, said:

I don´t know what sources you are getting your information from, but the claim that "any climatologist" has bought into the "global warming" scam is flat-out wrong.

The following is a list of journals that carry articles by climatologists.  And this is just journals publishing under the Springer umbrella group.  There are others like El Sevier and numerous independent professional journals like Dendrochronologia, the Tree Ring Bulletin and Tree Ring Research, to name three in my own field.

Journals that carry climatology-related articles published under the Springer group:
Journal of Climate
Acta Meteorologica Sinica
Acta Oceanologica Sinica
Advanes in Atmospheris Science
AMBIO
Asia-Pacific Journal of Atmospheric Sciences
Boundary-Layer Meteorology
Climate Dynamics
Climate Change
Environmental Fluid Dynamics
GPS Solutions
International Journal of Biometeorology
International Journal of Disaster Risk Management
Irrigation and Drainage Systems
Irrigation Science
Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry
Journal of Paleoclimatology
Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences
Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change
Ocean Dynamics
Physical Oceanography
Precision Agriculture
Regional Environmental Change
Russian Meteorology and Hydrology
Solar Physics
Studia Geophysica et Geodaetica
Sustainability Science
Theoretical and Applied Climatology
Vegetation History and Archaeobotany
Water Resources Management
Water Air and Soil Pollution

Each of these carries professional articles by climatologists.  Most deal with nuances of warming or how some aspect of the climate system works.  None attempt to refute warming or its mostly-human causes.  El Sevier has a similar list and there are several others.  You can also find articles by climate scientists in other journals, like the Journal of Forestry and the Southern Journal of Applied Forestry and others that on the surface do not seem to be related to climatology.  I suggest you do some reading.

For a list of professional articles on what climatologists think, see http://connection.eb...-climate-change

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There are plenty who do not agree with the simplistic models presented by the global warming activists.

You are making the beginner mistake of assuming that computer simulation models are the only tool used in climate science.  I use tree rings and weather records.  Other people use ice cores, sediment cores, telescopes, satellites, chemicals, test tubes....  It's a long list.  I am in the final stages of a study of winter storms in the central US using tree ring records (I can name the dates of ice storms and major snow storms +/- two months going back to 1650 when this area was Indian country.  To be able to do this, I have done a lot of reading on ice storms, statistical analysis, regression modelling and a long list of "ologies."  Climate science impacts my work and vice versa.  So, I am one of those "climate scientists" who has "bought into" global warming.

Quote

And the idea that you can "subtract the effects of known climate forcings" is ludicrious.

Not a statistician, are you?  I have the equivalent of a masters in statistics (The term on the degree says "Forest Biometry.").  I frequently subtract the effects of a variable so I can study another one.  SAS has all the programming you need for this.  So does S-PLUS and NCSS.  The process is not only possible, it is completely routine.

Quote

(What is a "climate forcing" anyway?)

A climate forcing is simply a physical driver of climate.  These include the Milankovic Cycles, solar cycles, albedo, El Nino Southern Oscillation, etc.  Physical forces that affect climate.

For study purposes these are quantified.  An example would be the precise positions of the north pole when studying the effects of the Chandler Wobble on weather patterns (The effects of this "insignificant" wobble show up in tree ring records from Missouri and Oklahoma.).  One might also use the North Atlantic Oscillation index (There are several NAO indices.).  Or the Palmer Drought Severity Index, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, etc.

Quote

The climate is influenced by a huge number of factors; to single out CO2 as the only one and to pretend that you can reduce everything to one single chemical is not science, it is political convenience.

Like you say, CO2 is just one component of the equation, but it is an important one.  The "carbon fingerprint" causes greater warming in dry areas than in wet ones.  That is predicted from the the emission/absorption specturm of CO2.  When we look to see where warming is greatest, we find those areas to be the interior of continents in winter (when water is frozen) and the edges of dry deserts, exactly as predicted by carbon chemistry.  That's the basic test for carbon-caused warming, BTW.

Quote

Fyi, for a while the UN itself tried to reduce climate change on Methane (i.e. cow farts). Google it. That was just as silly.

Perhaps you don't remember how that story got started.  It was back in the 80s when the US Environmental Protection Agency (not the UN) put out an article that flippantly suggested that methane from cows could be a driving factor for warming.  It was meant as a joke, BUT:  one of those "environmental" political groups (Sierra Club, I think) picked it up and decided to use it to harass the EPA.  They filed suit claiming that the EPA was required to investigate ALL possible causes of warming.  To settle the suit, the EPA agreed to determine how much methane was being emitted by cattle and that led to some unfortunate cows wearing cumbersome devices designed to measure their "emissions."  The study concluded that cattle "emissions" were insignificant, but that didn't pacify the "environmental" nut brigade.  So EPA had to do another study:  that one concluded that there WAS a significant effect, and that in turn required a third study to break the deadlock.  Now, several studies later, the consensus is that cattle account for about 28% of human-related methane production.  This is one of those issues that everybody wishes would die, but it just won't.

Quote

By the way, the CO2 content of the earth`s atmosphere does not explain the simultaneous global warming that happened simultaneously on Mars. Or do you now suggest the Mars is occupied by SUV driving humans.

That may make sense to you, but I see no connections between earth and Mars.  Remember those Milankovic Cycles?  Mars goes through something similar.  Add in seasons and there's your explanation.
Doug

Edited by Doug1o29, 17 January 2013 - 03:03 PM.

[Br Cornelius]

Little Fish, on 17 January 2013 - 11:01 AM, said:

"In 2005 data from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor and Odyssey missions revealed that the carbon dioxide "ice caps" near Mars's south pole had been diminishing for three summers in a row."
http://news.national...rs-warming.html

Mars has a highly variable orbital path which is the most likely explanation for long term cyclic trends in its climate beyond its 589 day year. However it is absolutely impossible to say since there is no long term data on the trends in the climate of mars on which to base any useful statement. 3 years of change could very easily be attributable to a single dust storm and its effect on planetary albedo.

Br Cornelius

[TheLastLazyGun]

questionmark, on 09 January 2013 - 01:29 PM, said:

If the ice caps keep on melting at the same rate they are now it is not good

If the ice caps are supposed to be melting, nobody's told Antarctica that.

Ice is NOT melting at the South Pole.  In fact, there is more and more ice there all the time.

What has not been reported much in the media is that in September 2012 - just four months ago -  there was more ice in Antarctica than ever recorded in that month.

However, in August 2012, America's National Public Radio (NPR) published an article on its website, “Ten years ago, a piece of ice the size of Rhode Island disintegrated and melted in the waters off Antarctica. Two other massive ice shelves along the Antarctic Peninsula had suffered similar fates a few years before. The events became poster children for the effects of global warming. … There’s no question that unusually warm air triggered the final demise of these huge chunks of ice.”

NPR, for reasons known only to themselves, failed to mention anywhere in the article that Antarctic sea ice has been growing since satellites first began measuring the ice 33 years ago and the sea ice had been above the 33-year average throughout 2012.

As meteorologist Anthony Watts explains here, http://wattsupwithth...-exceed-losses/ new data show ice mass is accumulating on the Antarctic continent as well as in the ocean surrounding Antarctica (see the image below). The new data contradict an assertion by global warming alarmists that the expanding Antarctic sea ice is coming at the expense of a decline in Antarctic continental ice.

So convinced were the global warming scaremongerers that ice is melting at the poles that many of them even predicted there would be no ice left at all in the Antarctic by the end of summer 2012.  Again, they've been shown to be well and truly wrong.

Edited by TheLastLazyGun, 20 January 2013 - 06:07 PM.

[TheLastLazyGun]

Little Fish, on 09 January 2013 - 08:50 PM, said:

this article says a computer model predicts a 0.03C rise in the next few years, which essentially means there will have been no global warming for 20 years, and you all claim this means thermageddon.
"by 2017 temperatures will have remained about the same for two decades."
get some perspective people.

co2 will have increased about 10-15% over this 20 year period which means that co2 is not the deadly gas you all think it is, or to say the same thing differently, something else controls the temperature.

There are some scientists who believe that CO2 - an entirely natural gas - is not the cause of any "global warming" which may have occurred (probably quite naturally) at some point in the past.  They believe that the reason why atmospheric warming equates with a rise in CO2 is because a rise in atmospheric warming actually causes a rise in CO2, rather than a rise in CO2 causing atmospheric warming.

It could well be that the global warming alarmists have been reading that data the wrong way round.

Edited by TheLastLazyGun, 20 January 2013 - 06:13 PM.

[Br Cornelius]

Opinion aint worth a fig unless backed up with facts and references.

Br Cornelius