AGW Theory - Discussion

Hey Erik the red did find it in the summer when it was green.

Either way Greenland has been warm before, the greater point is still there.

Not only have temperatures risen since this time period, they actually rose DURING that period, just not as fast as predicted.


Anecdotal, complete data cherrypicking, and arbitrary time frame taken out of context.


Anecdotal and irrelevant.


Sounds convincing, but completely anecdotal and without context.


Again, fallacious and anecdotal. A few drops of cyanide will kill you, relative quantity is not proof of anything.


Doesn't reference any models or where they fail, appeal to ignorance and references to god (srsly?)


Besides obvious strawman, they fail to refute any of the findings of the study they falsely quote.

The list goes on...

There are actual holes in the current AGW theories, but this source is beyond incredulous.

Yeah, no. Even if it was found in the summer, it wouldn't look radically different than it does in summer today.

Your text to link here...

Make several points, denial kicks in and they are dismissed as "anecdotal".

Looks like you're already one knuckle deep sticking your fingers in your ears.

I'll ask my favorite question.

Is there one climate model that has accurately predicted the rise (or lack of) in global atmospheric temps over the last 40 years?

By this I of course mean a model that correctly predicted it BEFORE it happened, or didn't happen I should say.

Are there two?

It's anecdotal because it is.

This is as pointless as a Lordgrim anti-vax thread. AGW theory isn't a political discussion. It's evidence-based, which is why I made the thread I did and tried to phrase the topic around policy. No one wants to discuss the theory as evidenced by the completely ignored (by the OP, no less) request for any credible literature refuting the human role in climate change. It's not like I fault anyone for that. It's not particularly cutting-edge or controversial within the scientific community. The problem arises when those of less-than-basic scientific literacy think they've undermined the whole of science when, in reality, they don't understand what they're reading.

But whatevs. There was a discussion over the 95% statistic in another thread so may as well drop it here.
The emphasis is mine as the phrase 'extremely likely' has a definition specified by the IPCC as 95% confidence. That statistic is derived from a later figure (10.5) in Ch. 10. http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar5/wg1/WG1AR5_Chapter10_FINAL.pdf
It's worth noting that the IPCC does not conduct research itself but rather synthesizes information from the general field into large, comprehensive reports.

I see the regression continues...

Also worth noting that the IPCC was criticized for under-reporting their confidence levels and they should actually be better estimated as 99%. We'll probably see that in the next report they release.
You keep asking it like this hasn't been answered several times already.

Edit: TypOoOoOoOoOoOos

Bored so:
The modern warming trend is littered with "pauses". Short-term variation means nothing when the long-term trend is the interest. Sure, it would be great if models could reach resolutions of 1 year as "skeptics" seem to think they do, but that isn't the current goal.
Sea ice isn't the concern. It's land ice, and its levels are what have been declining. Land ice is water that has been locked away for centuries (millenia?) so it's rapid release back into the hydrologic system is a problem. Sea ice has a seasonal melt/freeze cycle.
Dumb. It's relative, obviously. Try feeding yourself on CO2.
Plain denial. Climate models are some of the most substantial evidence for CO2 as the cause as models using only natural forcings, such as solar and volcanic activity, come no where close to estimating the current energy balance of the planet.
Also dumb. Also relative. N and O aren't GH gases. Water vapor is the most potent GH gas, but humans have no direct effect on those concentrations. CO2 and methane increases are the concern because of our direct (and some indirect) contribution to their concentrations AND the positive feedback those increases have on atmospheric water vapor.
Which models are wrong? And anyone bringing up Al Gore deserves to be ignored.
Plain denial again. Does that paper have to be explained here again? (No.)

Mmkay, I've been reading through the report. It's definitely not the most well-written report I've seen, but I guess it'll have to do. I doubt anyone else can even remotely follow this report, and since I really don't have a large numbers of hours to spare to figure all this out on my own, these questions will be directed at you specifically.



If GHG increases likely contributed 0.5°C to 1.3°C and other anthropogenic forcings likely contributed –0.6°C to 0.1°C, with natural forcings and internal variability essentially being a wash, wouldn't that include the possibility that said anthropogenic forcings (such as aerosols) have essentially negated the effect of greenhouse gases?

Shhh Ravael, you are starting to sound like a denier there.

Actually they don't.

The only thing they agree on is that the world's climate is changing, just like it has for the past 4,700,000,000 years. The question is are humans having a significant impact on it, and is that theoretical impact positive or negative.

Most of the worlds' scientists are in the "we don't have enough information to form a reliable opinion on the matter and need more info". There are a small minority,heavily favored by the political left, who say "we don't have time to meet scientific standards of certainty, trust us because the world will end if we do something right now".

That political favoritism is the cause of all the controversy. Science itself has always been controversial. Even now there are many competing theory's regarding the nature of matter and space time, quantum mechanics vs general relativity vs string theory folks, each with their own take and theory on what the base relationship between gravity, energy, matter and time is. What you don't see is the quantum mechanics folks screaming that the general relativity are "quantum mechanic denies" and that if the world doesn't give 100% support to quantum mechanics we will all die through some horrible set of calamities that only they could stop. Instead each side keeps working on their own theories by conducting experiments and studying the interactions between subatomic particles while giving basic scientific respect to the dissenting opinions.

What has been demonstrated is that AGW scientists, like all scientists, believe in their own theories and wish to conduct research in that vein. What has also been demonstrated is that political entities wish to use this science as an excuse to grant themselves more power and control while simultaneously hurting their enemies.

These political entities have even gone so far as to create a pseudo-religious cult out of Humans Caused Global Warming theory and link every conceivable ill known to man as a result of non-believers sinning against the Gaia goddess. Taken on their own, AGW supports start to sound more and more like doomsday cultists "repent because the end is nigh".

Anyhow the only thing that needs mentioning is that AGW theory, as pushed by the political left since the 90's, stated with absolute certainty that as the current CO2 levels the world would be several degree's warmer, the polar ice caps would already be gone, much of coastal area's would already be flooded and that we'd already be past the point of no return. Yes they were that specific, that persistent and that sure of their theory. This hasn't happened, the year 2012 has come and gone and the world is still here. Temperatures haven't gone up in over eighteen years even though the "science" (models are not science) were absolutely positively beyond a doubt and unquestionably sure it should of it. That alone is enough to warrant taking a step back and rethinking this approach, yet in the face of this disaster AGW supporters want to double down and push even harder.

That is the very definition of fanaticism. To redouble effort while losing sight of the goal.

I have, it's not science, it's a political paper. The way they played with numbers was worse then an Enron accountant executive. It basically was, "if the world is warmer then it's warmer, if it's colder then it's warmer, if it stayed the same then it's warmer". They pretty much ignore all data that disagrees with their predetermined conclusion, and since that includes all current data they are forced to selectively use 15~50 year old data and extrapolate to get current data.

:Edit:
To make king happy

ftfy. Seriously, don't tie Enron to accountants.....

I might have to slap you with a rubber duck next time....

Possible, but unlikely given the distributions and observed temperature changes. Like I said before, the IPCC compiles multiple works into one semi-coherent document. In that statistic, GHGs are seperated from other anthropogenic forcings, but in a later paragraph these two are combined in another study into total anthropogenic forcing, which produces a narrower range. Or at least that is my understanding of it. It's a presentation of multiple data sets and differing methodology that may not always produce completely consistent results when lined up side-by-side.

And before someone jumps on that last statement, neither of those results disproves the observed warming trend.

To give everyone an idea of how AGW folks can get a positive "warmth" factor out of a negative trend, the atmosphere and ocean are not uniform in density. Because our planet is rotating and we have air and ocean currents, it causes different parts to be warmed / cooled at different rates. This is why it only makes sense when taken in as a whole. What they will do is look at the warming / cooling of the upper atmosphere, lower atmosphere, upper ocean, middle ocean and the various land mass's, then pick whichever one happened to warm the most.

So you can have a cooling in the upper and lower atmospheres, a slight warming of the middle ocean with the upper ocean being neutral. By selectively choosing to only look at the middle ocean they can construct a statement that "the temperatures of X are going up Y", and then later during a press release leave out the X part.

This is also how they can make the statement that "every year is the hottest year on record!". It's true only if taken in context of what exactly they measured, which is frequently dropped when it hits MSNBC / ABC / CNN. This is why I no longer take articles at face value, too much manipulation of perception taking place. Instead I just go to the studies and data themselves and read. It takes me a few hours each time, and I sometimes have to contact friends of mine who are better versed in the nuances involved.

We'll have none of that until at least page 9.

Thank you

Well, that's precisely why I ask for raw data so that I can cut through the crap. I'm not going to draw a conclusion one way or another off of that alone, but statistics that can produce a net zero are always eyebrow raising when people are claiming certainty. Finding that one took me all of five minutes, but I'll revisit the paper tomorrow and see what else is in there.

Anthony Watts and friends over at Watts Up With That do a really good job of parsing through all the data and comparing it to what the media is saying, they frequently don't match.

"Climate Science" is just statistics, they don't do any experiments or even their own data acquisition. Instead they take data from other people's research, known as proxy data, and then feed it into the scientific equivalent of a giant excel spreedsheet. They then observe the results and write a paper about it. This is why it's considered a "soft science", it's not dealing with empirical experimentation. Now these sheets, known as "models" are pretty impressive, but ultimately it's 100% pure theory and very open to manipulation. Statistics can be made to say anything you want them to say by merely "adjusting" minor variables and coefficients.

I would say our FFXI DPS spreedsheets are more accurate then their models by virtual that we can conduct experiments while controlling for every variable (hit monster 100,000 times to figure out pDiff) vs just observation alone.

That should put a new spin on things.

I've seen plenty of left wing sites that were anti-science. They mostly center around environmentalism and global warming.

See science isn't political, it doesn't have left or right, it's not progressive or regressive. Science isn't about everyone agreeing on something and forming a "consensus". It's not about making people feel better or political correctness. It's about observing a natural event, forming a theory on that event, testing that theory by gathering data, and then analyzing the rest and using that to discard or alter the theory. In a complex reality this process is disruptive by nature, there will be many competing theories and often none is 100% correct. Often many theories are just different facets or understandings of the same phenomenon and with testing and study those theories get hammered out.

Take aether theory, which was is generally dismissed. Recent QM / String theories have defined reality as being a multidimensional manifold (same say eight, others as much as twelve dimensions) that's represented in three dimensional spacetime. That this folding up of space is how force carriers are able to propagate. This starts to quickly look very similar to aether theory.

This happens all the time in science, except in "Global Warming". Somehow we must make an exception and just assume they were 100% correct 30 years ago, 100% correct 20 years ago, 100% correct 10 years ago, 100% correct right now, and 100% correct 20 years from now. It's the demand for absolute fealty and submission that sends up all sorts of red flags. The only people who make those sorts of demands are fanatical religions.

That's because you have two political juggernauts locked into a last man standing death match. One of those political juggernauts decided to use the "Human generated Global Warming" theory as a weapon against the other while masquerading it as "science". The supporters of that other juggernauts rightfully opposed such a move.

Liberal progressive political entries have a long and well documented history of using a pseudo-rational interpretation "science" as a weapon of political convenience. A famous example of which is Soviet Lysenkoism. It started out as a simple theory, that instead of random Darwinian evolution, organic entities instead assumed traits related to their environment and passed those on genetically. This theory would seem plausible on the surface because it would produce very similar results to Darwinism in an uncontrolled environment. This theory was proven incorrect rather quickly, but not before the Soviet political entity decided it was a great way to spread their ideology. They equated Darwinian to Capitalism and thus their own Lysenko-Michurinism must be superior. The entire Soviet agricultural program was based on this "science", it's implementation resulted in massive famine and starvation but the political entity refused to adopt a different system. This one was just too damn politically convenient and if people died from it, well some sacrifices need to be made for the greater good.

The current US political left is directly descended from the Soviet cold war era political subversion. The USSR would take prominent US educators, media personal, reporters and other influential non-elected individuals to an all-expense paid vacation to the USSR. During that time they were handled and paraded around being shown this perfect idealistic world where everyone had happy, everything was clean, and that the evils of capitalism and industry had been conquered. They were plied with alcohol, drugs and extremely attractive women during their stay. Afterwards they would come back to the USA with this idea that communism was great and that it was the evil greedy industrial capitalists that were responsible for all the problems of inequality, wealth disparity, racism and every other social issue imaginable. That if we would just switch to a socialist state run economy, that we could be just like them. This political belief should sound familiar to anyone who's talked with a Democrat.

Of course it was all a fairy tale. Everything they were shown was doctored and fake, they had their perceptions manipulated with the express intention to start a political movement in the US that would handicap the industrial and scientific advantage the US had over the USSR.

This isn't some tin foil hat conspiracy theory, the soviets did this to many other nations too. They viewed the cold war not as military war but as a political and economic one and adapted their strategy accordingly. We have the testimony of former KGB agents who defected, one big name but also several who have corroborated this. Not forgiving the Republicans their own nastiness and and economies of truth, but just highlighting what kinds of political forces your dealing with. There are no "good guys" or "bad guys", just two titans locked in a struggle where each is attacking the power base of the other while trying to bolster their own power base using any means necessary. I could go on about the origins and power base's of each, but that's outside of this topic. Just now that we don't have a conservative party anymore, just two liberal ones. After the Civil Rights movement, Southern Democrats who felt they were being pushed out of the party fled wholesale to the Republican party and caused a massive shift in that party.