Report: Climate change has already hit USA - and time is RUNNING OUT The US government–mandated Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) has released a mammoth 841-page report on the impact of climate change on the US, region by region, focusing on its effects on water, human health, agriculture, urban life, and more. The bottom line: climate disruption – their term – caused by human activities …
> A little knowledge of basic statistics would help you. May I recommend that you read the Wikipedia articles "Confidence interval" and "68–95–99.7 rule"? And then consider again whether the 95 percent number is arbitrary?
He's not saying that 95% as a suitable interval is not valid. He's saying that are no hard stats in the report to back it up.
> He's saying that are no hard stats in the report to back it up.
And it took me less than a minute and a single search of the real report to find out that he's wrong.
And I quote:
'Note that the same methodology can be used to analyze the postwar cooling and the recent “pause” in the warming; this is the subject of current work in progress.'
I would ask them why current climate models do not predict the postwar cooling or the "pause" and why is this work in progress. That their analysis still does not account for these rather major issues would lead any reasonable person to wonder where the word confidence could be used in all seriousness in this context.
Thanks for the Lovejoy reference, Vogon! Even if it weren't flawed, it's too new for the IPCC or US reports to have included, so I'm still waiting for the stats/math supporting the 95% there.
What I DO like about Lovejoy (great name!) 2014 is that he admits that the current IPCC approach to e.g. "fingerprinting" is all based on models which have known flaws and can't even account for the current "pause" in global surface temps. Thus, he argues that an empirical data-based approach is required, and in this he is exactly right.
In Lovejoy 2014 his source of "empirical" data is multiproxy reconstructions of past temperatures as a source of info on natural variability in the climate. Unfortunately, not only are multiproxy reconstructions known to be flawed in that they report artificially low variability, the three particular reconstructions he uses are known to be flawed in technique and/or by using flawed proxies. Sadly, GIGO.
I will keep him in mind, as I really enjoyed his writing style and approach of attacking the problems that should have been studied starting ten or 15 years ago. If he decides to go in search of multiproxy data worthy of his techniques, I hope he'll consult his fellow Canadian Stephen McIntyre.
"...the science now shows with 95 percent certainty that human activity is the dominant cause of observed warming since the mid-20th century," is actually just based on the report writers' personal opinions, and not on any mathematical or statistical calculation"No - as it it says 'science shows' so via measurements and probability statistics. You are confusing this with 'I think'.
Sorry, you've been deceived as well. Here's the link to the IPCC report. Feel free to post a reference to any "measurements and probability statistics" in it that are used to get "95 percent certainty."
Wow, 5 thumbs down so far, yet nobody has been able to post an example of or reference to a numeric derivation of the "95 percent certainty"??? I'm happy to be corrected, but the hiding behind downthumbies is just gonna make me arrogant :)
> Here's the link to the IPCC report
No, that's a link to a denier site.
The actual IPCC report is here: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
You can for instance have a look in the "Summary for Policy Makers" and have a look at picture SPM6 on page 18, in which the 95% confidence interval for predicted global average temperature change due to human+natural forcings contains the actually measured temperature for the period, while the predicted temperature change for only natural forcings is wholly outside the 95% range (i.e. is rejected).
If you want more detail, refer to the corresponding section of the full text and supplement.
It seems that many of the adverse-impact worries center on cloud effects: too much rain, not enough rain, snow at the wrong part of the season, and so forth. With predictions of increased droughts and damage due to torrential rains, I would expect that such phenomena are well-understood and well-modeled.
However, prominent climate scientists such as modeler Gavin Schmidt at GISS have admitted that we don't yet understand either the magnitude of the effect that clouds have on climate, or even the sign(!) -- whether they lead to increased or decreased temperatures. Given that, it's not surprising that models are not considered reliable in predicting regional rain and snow or the lack thereof.
Yet, the US climate assessment report persists in predicting them. I thought it was only the Republicans that were supposed to be denying published science. :)
Clouds reduce ground radiation and night and reduce sun radiation to the ground by day.
The greatest diurnal range in temperatures is in deserts.
That is they are both insulators and shields.
So the actual effect of water vapour that has cndensed is complex.
Water is one of the few things that is present in normal earth temperatures in three phases with considerable energy being required to make the transitions in any case so the amount of energy tied up in water is immense. It is a great thermostat. Oceans seldom dip below zero and seldom rise above about 35C at the surface.
Clouds are also great dissipators of energy if they are big enough and go high enough. Rain is also the chief mechanism by which CO2 is scrubbed out of the atmosphere, back towards the biosphere.Clouds and rain are intensely localised phenomena: geography makes a huge difference.
None of this is incorporated in the grossly over simplified climate models used by the AGW hypothesis.
Many years ago I was tasked with designing a video amplifier - high speed analohgue amplifier to drive a CRT grid.
"Why dont you use our new modelling package on the time share computer'
So I did. I keyed in all the transistor data and told it to optimise.
Then I built it. Hopeless. The model had no concept of the Miller effect - modulation of collector base capacitance by collector voltage...a side effect you can ignore for small voltage variations, but not when you are trying to swing a hundred volts.
I learnt to be wary of computer models...
"I learnt to be wary of computer models..."
I can sympathise at least with that view.
"None of this is incorporated in the grossly over simplified climate models used by the AGW hypothesis."
Right - but temperature and sea levels have been demonstrably rising for a long time - and the conclusions of what will happen based not on a computer model, but on say historical measurements of CO2 versus average temperature over the last few hundred thousands years are also pretty clear...
but temperature and sea levels have been demonstrably rising for a long time
We know that sea levels have been rising slowly but steadily during the past century or so, and there's been no increase in that rate, so no worries on the sea level front for hundreds of years from now at least.
Temperatures have been fluctuating substantially during the past 120 years of thermometer records, and there is plausible evidence that temperatures were higher than they are today about 1000 years ago as well as during other periods in the last 10,000 years.
The predictions of significant warming before 2100 *are* in fact based on computer models, not on any formulas linked to empirical measurements.
"there's been no increase in that rate"
Perhaps you missed the sharply upwards curving graph in the article?
"there is plausible evidence that temperatures were higher than they are today about 1000 years ago as well as during other periods in the last 10,000 years."
No there isn't - see the Wikipedia article on the temperature record.
"The predictions of significant warming before 2100 *are* in fact based on computer models"
~ 800,000 years of available figures for average temperature versus CO2 in the atmosphere also predicts a similar outcome.
@vogon
"there's been no increase in that rate"Perhaps you missed the sharply upwards curving graph in the article?
I certainly missed any *sea level* data in that graph; perhaps you can point me to a source for your special X-Ray goggles? :)
No there isn't - see the Wikipedia article on the temperature record.
Really? Wikipedia? That may explain things... :)
~ 800,000 years of available figures for average temperature versus CO2 in the atmosphere also predicts a similar outcome.
OK, so what temp does the 800,000 years predict for 280ppm? for 340ppm? for 400ppm? Is it even technically a function?
"adaptation would be mammoth undertakings"
This would be true if we didn't have 200 years to do it in. It turns out to be a very small activity if you do it year-by-year once it starts. Remember, it hasn't actually started yet. Neither the global temperature increase, nor the promised increase in ocean height.
At the moment, all the evidence to hand shows is that we have a $100B fraud on our hands.
"This would be true if we didn't have 200 years to do it in."
How about in a few decades?
It turns out to be a very small activity if you do it year-by-year once it starts."
Really? - let's see your calculations of global changes required to support say a 1m sea rise and a 2 degrees increase in surface temperature by 2100 (being quite conservative values) ?
You might want to start here: http://architecture2030.org/hot_topics/nation_under_siege
Already a photoshopped data, hodge podge science fable, climate alchemy now has another mortal defect....all the "Laws" of radiation theory are invalid. See Dr Pierre-Marie Robitaille video at ThermalPhysics(.)org
Absorption/emission varies with temperature and pressure, Kirchoff, Planck, Stefan and Boltzman Laws are invalid.
that quite a bit of global warming is clearly anthropogenic. It is all the hot air emanating from politicians and commentards alike. Most models fail to take that into account
On a serious note, I do not know (i.e. with 100.0000% scientific certainty) whether global warming or climate change is anthropogenic or not. Climate has changed a lot over earth's history, and CO2 levels are quite low at the moment, as compared to the mesozoic era AFAIK. It is also rather cold compared to e.g. the Jurassic. That suited a bunch of big lizards (OK, not really lizards), but not our current society, which has adapted to the current climate. Climate change may therefore disrupt our cosy lifestyle. To me it does not matter so much whether we are to blame. It is more important to see how we can get by, using fewer non-renewable resources, and how we can deal with a potential crisis, preferably without bloodshed. Mankind's performance in the latter case is not stellar, I agree, but maybe we can work things out this time.
Just my tuppence
Re:It seems to me
One point that I don't often see made is that what the temperatures were in the distant past is not a good point to make about ignoring global warming. The earth was inhospitable to life for the majority of its history. A lot of people claim that it is evident that humans aren't causing global warming because the earth has been hotter in the past and we weren't here to cause it. Well, regardless of that, the earth is warming and we need to stop it if practical, and if not learn to live with it for as long as we can. I certainly don't have a definitive interpretation of the data. But I believe in the scientific method and I advocate for more data gathering, more analysis and experiments where feasible. If the earth gets more inhospitable it won't be good. Regardless of any placing of blame.
quote: "The earth was inhospitable to life for the majority of its history."
Life is surprisingly hardy, it can survive within inches of ocean floor volcanic vents, it can survive in meters of glacial ice, and in all sots of conditions in between. It's also theorised that we've had cyanobacteria around for 3.5 billion years, which would actually be the majority of the Earth's 4.5 billion years. It's only been inhospitable to life for maybe 20-25% of it's early history ^^;
Even if the planet goes up 10C in average global temperature, there will be life. 3.5 billion years and several extinction events have already shown that life is still around, it's just the form that changes.
From a personal, human, perspective, we do need to pull our fingers out though; blamestorming is fine keeping the B-Ark element amused, but we should be making sure that the technology and infrastructure is in place to support the continued survival of homo sapiens in the face of climate change, regardless of the contributing factors. Sea levels due to rise? Sort out some decent (sustainable) oceanic farming initiatives, and prioritise the development of floating installations or placing critical non-floating infrastructure a few hundred meters above sea level.
Placing blame is not the problem. The problem is the Watermelon "solution" to this theoretical problem. The solutions all appear to be based in some measure that results in more money for government. For example, in my neck of the woods we have a "carbon tax". This carbon tax takes money from us and hands that money to government, and this is supposed to somehow reduce the creation of CO2.
I guess I will create a little less CO2, and all the other taxpayers will create a little less CO2 because we have less money available to purchase heating fuel or gasoline or whatever... but then what happens to the tax money we paid? Did the government dig a big hole and bury it? Or did the government pay that money to someone else, who then spent it on things like heating fuel and gasoline?
IOW, the carbon tax is a con game that does nothing to address the supposed problem, it is simply another ridiculous tax grab foisted on us by government to benefit themselves.
Yep time is running out before everyone, even the most hardened Skeptical science/Real climate/Sci American/Nature subscribing echo chamber-ist, realises that CO2 is not the global thermostat they thought it was.
As temperatures drop well beyond what can be fiddled in the global temperature data sets as the real threat of a maunder minimum little ice age approaches the fear of a backlash will grow.
Keep an eye on the satellite temperature sets and buy thermals.
What happened a million years ago or even 100,000 years ago is more or less irrelevant now - the climate and environment changes all the time. It's the correlation* between the fairly rapid temperature increase and the increase in production of CO2 due to industrialisation that's significant here; there's a very real chance that we might be affecting the climate and so we might be able to prevent things getting 'worse' (obviously a matter of perspective). The last 20 years of stagnation isn't significant yet, the overall trend is still upwards.
Personally I think that trying to achieve some kind of political consensus is pointless now, and that it's probably easier for each region to try and mitigate their own problems - if they can do it in a way that doesn't screw neighbouring regions over, all the better.
*Yes, I know.
True what happened a million years ago is irrelevent. What happened OVER the last million years IS relevent because it shows to the common man that any correlation in the last 100 years is chance. But you are a believer and in denial over the lack of warming in thr last 20 years so you willfully missed my point.
OK yes, I missed your point there about the millions years. But the last 20 (still more like 10/12) years of lack of warming is insignificant, there have been other flat periods over the last 100 years followed by periods of increase. If it continues flat for another 20 years or starts to continuously decrease then it might indicate something (assuming there are no other significant changes).
"the lack of warming in the last 20 years."
Average global surface temperature has still been increasing in the last 20 years. A tiny bit slower than before, but that's because the heat is currently going into the oceans instead. And guess what - the oceans' capacity to store heat is finite...
You need to go back to school. The heat capacity of the oceans is magnitudes greater than the atmosphere. Ergo for all intensive purposes it is infinite. So if the heat is somehow magically going into the oceans now when it wasn't before it makes global warming a non-problem (for the heat to come back out of the oceans would require the laws of physics to change - and y' canna' change the laws of physics).
Actually the heat capacity of the oceans is about 1,000 times greater than the atmosphere - so nowhere near infinite. Also a warming climate tends to concentrate the heat in the upper layers and thereby impede downward mixing of the warmth. Resulting stratification can enhance the early surface temperature response to radiative forcing from increased greenhouse gases, even as it delays the ultimate fully-mixed equilibrium warming of the entire system.
So take the 1000 times then. So a doubling of CO2 leads to an increase of about 3 degrees in the atmosphere (including feedbacks - IPCC bad case scenario) - so this is 3/1000 of a degree warming in the oceans........
So rough approximation of square root of f' all (all things being equal).
Again where is the problem AC? Even AR5 says the likelihood of anything negative happening before 2100 is at the "very low confidence" level.
"Move the starting point of the graph to 1 million year ago and you will see how ludicrous it is to conclude co2 causes warming"
Well I moved it back as far as records exist (800,000 years) and temperature versus CO2 still correlates: http://warmgloblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/co2-and-temperature-changes-are.html
"Warmists are in denial over the lack of warming in the last 20 years."
All current figures still show continued warming over that period.
We can all believe in MMCC Co2 theory and its utterly destructive effects because 97% of scientists agree that it is real and it is coming with 95% certainty! And your total commitment to the cause must be 110% and your taxes will rise 10% per year from now on to provide 300% more funding for more scientists/books/robes/churches to ensure the truth reaches 99% of the worlds population (with money money) and drown the 1% to demonstrate that the worlds water has risen*. 100% of the worlds extreme weather events will be recorded and compared to the 90% recorded past extreme weather events (where deemed applicable to the cause) of the last 6 months to give an accurate representation of how strange the event is in human history (starting point of human history is variable to the last perfect day as per your holy text revision 660, book of Gore chapter 5 verse 8).
* Containers may be required to fetch the water which will increase tax to ensure production of a green bucket not using anything Co2 intensive. Maybe the hollowed skulls of heretics! Because what else is a witch good for?
For those interested in how much this rhetorical "300%" more money means for science, you might try looking at the uk research council budgets - eg http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/ (0.8bn) or http://www.nerc.ac.uk/
Then, just for a lark, you could compare their budgets to the annual uk spend on petfood given at http://www.pfma.org.uk/ or
http://www.independent.co.uk/property/house-and-home/pets/news/pampered-pets-uk-7717640.html
(range 2.1 to 2.7bn)
Yep. 300% would put EPSRC on a par with cats, dogs, goldfish, and budgies.
As for what is actually happening to science budgets, well, you can search for those news items yourself. Do let us know what you find.
There are three types of denial, which are often phased:
1) Straight denial — It's not happening
2) Minimization denial — OK, it's happening, but it's not as bad as you say
3) Transference denial — OK, it's happening and it's bad, but it's somebody else's fault
@ Identity
That is where the religion becomes a problem. You point out all the flaws and failures and believers do group up into those forms of denial. Just no reasoning with them nor discussion, they think they are right and everyone else is a heretic (they call denier which must be confusing for them)
1 Actually the idea that people thought the world was flat is a myth.
2 The earth does look round, have you ever seen the sea?
3 No, 'the church' never told you that the earth was flat.
This typifies the sort of blind fath the warmists have in emotive misleading nonsense.
I can pretty much gurantee that none of the warmists reading this have ever looked at a graph of the raw tempertures (all the temperature readings not just the warmer ones)
Warmist - why are you so angry - is it because you suspect that it is possible that you have not had the time or expertise to actually look at the real data and you may just be following a lie. That you have been very foolish and are not capable of or dont have the time for independant thought and research?
Or are you, understandably, just chicken little afraid?
A close inspection of the chart above illustrates that while CO2 has rocket, warming came to an abrupt halt in 1997. Oh, and BTW, the governments own weather data show NO statistically significant increase in the frequency or intensity of extreme weather events over the past 100 years (the AGW alarmists are deliberately using the increased cost of such events due to there being more of everything to be damaged to mask this inconvenient truth).
Half the climate change articles are pro-Science, and I can post normally.
Half the climate change articles are rabidly denialist, and anything I post gets two days of "awaiting moderation" regardless of content, and then randomly get posted, rejected or simply disappears.
Climate change has been occurring during the last many years of computer and space ads.
But not one person is looking at the sources.
In the Teampa Tribune in 2007 or so, there was an item about the airports changing their coordinates on the incoming runways to aid planes coming in to the the airport. I am quite sure the reporter got fired for the article.
A comment at the end of the article claimed that the USAF had been doing the same thing since 1982.
It was a bit shocking, but with six SRB's around each airborn shuttle to the stars, it means that the 2.8 million pounds of force on the launchpad from each SRB has created a huge launchpad sledge hammer into the earth. And the SRBs that are tossed back and laid in the ocean is one reason that the coral reefs in the Atlantic are dying. When will the moneymen wake up? Our earth is being destroyed and it cannot take much more. Anyone complaining about carbon monoxide or any other airborn chemical is baying up at the wrong tree- clutching animal that is on its last hour of life before the hunters shoot it.
I don't believe it. And I'm not going to be shamed into believing it by these arrogant, "smarter than thou," self-important, environmental poindexters, especially when my skepticism is all their fault to begin with. These unpersuasive scammers have been crying wolf and trying to defraud the public for years! It is no wonder that they are disbelieved now. I remember back in the 70's, when it was a "ozone hole" causing the "greenhouse effect" that was going to bring about a "new ice age." (You don't believe me? Just do an on-line search for the words "global cooling 1970's") Thus the lobbyists got their way, taxes and regulations.
Here are a few headlines from the 70's (back when it was global cooling); "Science: Another Ice Age?" (Time Magazine, November 13, 1972) "The Ice Age Cometh" (The Saturday Review, March 24, 1973), "Scientists Fear Smog Could Cause Ice Age" (Milwaukee Journal, December 5, 1974), "B-r-r-r-r: New Ice Age on way soon?" (The Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1975). Books were written; "The Cooling: Has the Next Ice Age Already Begun?" (Lowell Ponte, 1976), "Blizzard - What Happens if it Doesn’t Stop?" (George Stone, 1977). And talk about celebrity scientists like Bill Nye, back then we had Carl Sagan, and Isaac Asimov "A Choice of Catastrophes - The Disasters That Threaten Our World" (1979), and (not a scientist but he played one on TV) Leonard Nimoy "The Coming Ice Age" (In Search Of TV Show, Season 2, Episode 23, May 1978). Back then it was the same argument as it is now, "these scientists are smarter than we are and they know what they are talking about." They made it seem like you were a Luddite with a planetary death wish if you doubted the "accepted scientific fact" that the end of the world was just around the corner (they were worse than the Jehovah's Witnesses).
This scam goes way back; The existence of the greenhouse effect was argued for by Joseph Fourier in 1824. The argument and the evidence was further strengthened by Claude Pouillet in 1827 and 1838, and reasoned from experimental observations by John Tyndall in 1859, and more fully quantified by Svante Arrhenius in 1896. In 1917 Alexander Graham Bell wrote “[The unchecked burning of fossil fuels] would have a sort of greenhouse effect”, and “The net result is the greenhouse becomes a sort of hot-house.” No doubt a long time ago a crop destroying wildfire was blamed upon a fire-breathing dragon (carbon production) to whom some group of witch-doctors (ancient scientists) insisted that the villagers appease with sacrifices (taxes and regulations). It is no wonder that the public has become inured to this blatant fear mongering, and it's not the people's fault either; the fault lies squarely with the "wolf crying" scientists themselves (even if they turn out to be right in the future, you can't blame people for being skeptical today).
Sadly, Salverda, you appear to be a comprehensively and fully embarrassing raving looney. Please take your meds, son, and extend my sincere apologies to those poor unfortunates tasked with dealing with you on a daily basis.
Poor soul...
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