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BS: Climate Change Again - New Report
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Subject: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: JohnInKansas Date: 02 Apr 14 - 07:46 PM Those interested will likely already know that the UN Panel on Climate Change has issued a new report that looks at a little different part of the puzzle than earlier ones. Earlier reports looked mostly at whether or not global warming is real. The subgroup producing this report was tasked with looking at the effects warming is having, and will have. A report on the report is fairly brief and will give an idea of the widespread effects of change. There has been piecemeal discussion of some of these effects, but this report attemts to put it all together. The picture isn't pretty: Climate Report: Warming Is a Big Risk for People Seth Borenstein, The Associated Press First published March 24th 2014, 11:27 am [Brief Quote] If you think of climate change as a hazard for some far-off polar bears years from now, you're mistaken. That's the message from top climate scientists gathering in Japan this week to assess the impact of global warming. In fact, they will say, the dangers of a warming Earth are immediate and very human. "The polar bear is us," says Patricia Romero Lankao of the federally financed National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., referring to the first species to be listed as threatened by global warming due to melting sea ice. She will be among the more than 60 scientists in Japan to finish writing a massive and authoritative report on the impacts of global warming. With representatives from about 100 governments at this week's meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, they'll wrap up a summary that tells world leaders how bad the problem is. The key message from leaked drafts and interviews with the authors and other scientists: The big risks and overall effects of global warming are far more immediate and local than scientists once thought. It's not just about melting ice, threatened animals and plants. It's about the human problems of hunger, disease, drought, flooding, refugees and war, becoming worse. "The polar bear is us." The report says scientists have already observed many changes from warming, such as an increase in heat waves in North America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Severe floods, such as the one that displaced 90,000 people in Mozambique in 2008, are now more common in Africa and Australia. Europe and North America are getting more intense downpours that can be damaging. Melting ice in the Arctic is not only affecting the polar bear, but already changing the culture and livelihoods of indigenous people in northern Canada. Past panel reports have been ignored because global warming's effects seemed too distant in time and location, says Pennsylvania State University scientist Michael Mann. This report finds "It's not far-off in the future and it's not exotic creatures — it's us and now," says Mann, who didn't work on this latest report. The United Nations established the climate change panel in 1988 and its work is done by three groups. One looks at the science behind global warming. The group meeting in Japan beginning Tuesday studies its impacts. And a third looks at ways to slow warming. Its reports have reiterated what nearly every major scientific organization has said: The burning of coal, oil and gas is producing an increasing amount of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. Those gases change Earth's climate, bringing warmer temperatures and more extreme weather, and the problem is worsening. The panel won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007, months after it issued its last report. Since then, the impact group has been reviewing the latest research and writing 30 chapters on warming's effects and regional impacts. Those chapters haven't been officially released but were posted on a skeptical website. War, poverty and famine The key message can be summed up in one word that the overall report uses more than 5,000 times: risk. "Climate change really is a challenge in managing risks," says the report's chief author, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution of Science in California. "It's very clear that we are not prepared for the kind of events we're seeing." Already the effects of global warming are "widespread and consequential," says one part of the larger report, noting that science has compiled more evidence and done much more research since the last report in 2007. If climate change continues, the panel's larger report predicts these harms: VIOLENCE: For the first time, the panel is emphasizing the nuanced link between conflict and warming temperatures. Participating scientists say warming won't cause wars, but it will add a destabilizing factor that will make existing threats worse. FOOD: Global food prices will rise between 3 and 84 percent by 2050 because of warmer temperatures and changes in rain patterns. Hotspots of hunger may emerge in cities. WATER: About one-third of the world's population will see groundwater supplies drop by more than 10 percent by 2080, when compared with 1980 levels. For every degree of warming, more of the world will have significantly less water available. HEALTH: Major increases in health problems are likely, with more illnesses and injury from heat waves and fires and more food and water-borne diseases. But the report also notes that warming's effects on health is relatively small compared with other problems, like poverty. WEALTH: Many of the poor will get poorer. Economic growth and poverty reduction will slow down. If temperatures rise high enough, the world's overall income may start to go down, by as much as 2 percent, but that's difficult to forecast. According to the report, risks from warming-related extreme weather, now at a moderate level, are likely to get worse with just a bit more warming. While it doesn't say climate change caused the events, the report cites droughts in northern Mexico and the south-central United States, and hurricanes such as 2012's Sandy, as illustrations of how vulnerable people are to weather extremes. It does say the deadly European heat wave in 2003 was made more likely because of global warming. [end quote – additional at the link] The complete report, still considered a "final draft" and subject to possible change, was posted "for publication" a day or two ago (31 March 2014) at: Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability Approximately 34 "Chapters" are posted (PDF) but so far as I could see they must be downloaded/saved one at a time. A quick look indicates about 2,669 pages and around 96.5 MB. It's suggested that one shouldn't try to read it all at one sitting. Chapters are named descriptively, so one might read a chapter and comment on effects it discusses. John |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Ebbie Date: 03 Apr 14 - 01:59 AM Do you think the report will finally convince the deniers that the problems are real, and dire, and immediate? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Mr Red Date: 03 Apr 14 - 11:06 AM I have noticed there are more news items where people are at last saying "Global Warming is real, now lets talk about how we cope with it" rather than the alarmist (to skeptics) reports. Though alarm is about right if you want your grandchildren served up boiled or fried. It is a step in the right direction. But I personally won't hold back when people ask why there are forest fires raging, or hurricanes are increasing in intensity, or migrating birds now overwinter in the UK. It all could be the natural results of sunspots, the earth's orbit ovality, precession and wobble on the earths axis, the magnetic field doing strange things lately, or little green men form Mars returning our visits. But I say "OK prove it", there are real effects up there (in most cases). I always remember the suggestion that we should paint our rooves white to mitigate global warming (from a "let's do something about it" scientist) - is was met with howls of laughter. Abedo is not a word the average schmuck understands. On reflection! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Greg F. Date: 03 Apr 14 - 11:13 AM Do you think the report will finally convince the deniers that the problems are real, and dire, and immediate? No. No more than will facts change the minds of creationists, fundagelicals, Holocaust deniers and ignorant, mindless idiots of all sorts. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Stu Date: 03 Apr 14 - 12:05 PM What Greg said but with added vested interests such as the hydrocarbon industries, the every industries, politicians of every ilk the world over (with a special disdain reserved for those in the 'developed' world) and the media, whom appear to be working for the 100% almost exclusively now, with some of the worst science reporting I've ever witnessed (I'm looking at you BBC). |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: GUEST,matt milton Date: 04 Apr 14 - 09:28 AM BBC treatment of climate change is really appalling. I'm talking about Radio 4's Today Programme here, because that's my main interface with BBC news. The main cause of complaint is the way the programme makers have always set up a combative for-and-against model, as if it were the school debating society. (I suspect that's cos the programme's producers are probably all ex-public-schoolboys, but that's just my pet theory). It's always one "climate change is real" spokesperson (usually a climate scientist) and one "climate change is a balderdash!" spokesperson (usually not a scientist, and often Nigel Lawson). It's stupid to begin with: why can't they have two climate scientists if they really must fly in the face of scientific opinion and treat it like an "is it real or not?" question?! They could have one of the 3% of cimate scientists who are sceptical about it duking it out with one of the 97% that acknowledge it's a terrifying problem! Instead it's always a rather boffinish, reticent, softly spoken scientist, who is often not the best public speaker, debating with someone like Nigel Lawson, well-versed in public speaking, super-confident, arrogant and great at conveying information he has either totally misunderstood or is cynically peddling. The crazy thing is that now the BBC will, one day, have one of these "impartial" for-and-against debates about whether climate change exists. And the very next day, have one of these "impartial" for-and-against debates about whether it is even possible to mitigate climate change's catastrophic effects!! It's insane. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Richard Bridge Date: 04 Apr 14 - 09:56 AM Albedo, not abedo. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: GUEST,I am the walrus Date: 04 Apr 14 - 06:16 PM "The polar bear is us," says Patricia Romero Lankao of the federally financed National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. Federally financed. Says it all. To institute a new tax you first convince the people of the need for the tax. Not convinced. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Greg F. Date: 04 Apr 14 - 06:25 PM You bet, Walrus. Of course, walruses will be in deep trouble as the polar ice melts.... enjoy extinction, eh? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: GUEST,Shimrod Date: 05 Apr 14 - 01:56 AM I remember a newspaper photograph from 2011. It was of a street in the North African city of Tripoli, during the Libyan civil war. The whole street was flooded from a burst water-main and there were several, bullet-riddled cars half submerged in the water. All of the building in the street were wrecked and a couple had huge holes punched through them. I remember the hairs standing up on the back of my neck as it occurred to me that the photo showed what the near future will probably look like! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Ed T Date: 13 Apr 14 - 09:37 AM Odds that global warming is due to natural factors? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: pdq Date: 13 Apr 14 - 10:45 AM Here are the first few paragraphs from the above link: The study, published online April 6 in the journal Climate Dynamics, represents a new approach to the question of whether global warming in the industrial era has been caused largely by man-made emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. Rather than using complex computer models to estimate the effects of greenhouse-gas emissions, Lovejoy examines historical data to assess the competing hypothesis: that warming over the past century is due to natural long-term variations in temperature. "This study will be a blow to any remaining climate-change deniers," Lovejoy says. "Their two most convincing arguments - that the warming is natural in origin, and that the computer models are wrong - are either directly contradicted by this analysis, or simply do not apply to it." Lovejoy's study applies statistical methodology to determine the probability that global warming since 1880 is due to natural variability. His conclusion: the natural-warming hypothesis may be ruled out "with confidence levels great than 99%, and most likely greater than 99.9%." To assess the natural variability before much human interference, the new study uses "multi-proxy climate reconstructions" developed by scientists in recent years to estimate historical temperatures, as well as fluctuation-analysis techniques from nonlinear geophysics. The climate reconstructions take into account a variety of gauges found in nature, such as tree rings, ice cores, and lake sediments. And the fluctuation-analysis techniques make it possible to understand the temperature variations over wide ranges of time scales. For the industrial era, Lovejoy's analysis uses carbon-dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels as a proxy for all man-made climate influences - a simplification justified by the tight relationship between global economic activity and the emission of greenhouse gases and particulate pollution, he says. "This allows the new approach to implicitly include the cooling effects of particulate pollution that are still poorly quantified in computer models," he adds. This guy is a statistician and seems to have no idea what science is. He uses only one factor to base his number-twisting around: CO2 concentration. "This study will be a blow to any remaining climate-change deniers," Lovejoy says. No dude, it is a joke to a real scientist. So are you. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Greg F. Date: 13 Apr 14 - 11:03 AM Actually, PeeDee, YOU (and your fellow deniers) are a joke to real scientists. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Ed T Date: 13 Apr 14 - 11:13 AM What Is Statistics? Statistics is the science of learning from data, and of measuring, controlling, and communicating uncertainty; and it thereby provides the navigation essential for controlling the course of scientific and societal advances (Davidian, M. and Louis, T. A., 10.1126/science.1218685). |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: pdq Date: 13 Apr 14 - 11:32 AM "Empiricism has stood in contrast to rationalism, the position originally associated with Descartes, which holds that knowledge is created by the human intellect, not by observation. Critical rationalism is a contrasting 20th-century approach to science, first defined by Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper. Popper rejected the way that empiricism describes the connection between theory and observation. He claimed that theories are not generated by observation, but that observation is made in the light of theories and that the only way a theory can be affected by observation is when it comes in conflict with it. Popper proposed falsifiability as the landmark of scientific theories, and falsification as the empirical method, to replace verifiability and induction by purely deductive notions. Popper further claimed that there is actually only one universal method, not specific to science: the negative method of criticism, trial and error. It covers all products of the human mind, including science, mathematics, philosophy, and art." Note: statistics and art as 'products of the mind' and not as science. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Greg F. Date: 13 Apr 14 - 11:35 AM PeeDee, see 13 Apr 14 - 11:03 AM |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: GUEST,Shimrod Date: 13 Apr 14 - 12:22 PM Climate change denial all becomes clear when you factor in the influence of 'free-market' dogma. In a recent edition of the 'Independent' newspaper (UK) there was an interesting letter from a correspondent named Steve Edwards. He wrote: "The deniers are nearly always comfortably off, or supported by billionaires such as the Koch brothers. In their arguments they are wrong about almost every detail except the truth which really haunts them. It is that that their free-market model, based on unfettered pillaging of our planet's resources, has to end if climate change is to be checked. If not we are headed for the greatest extinction of species (including our own) since the Permian era. However, like all religious fanatics, the deniers would no doubt consider that a small price to pay to protect the sanctity of their dogma." Yes, the free-market 'notion' is a sort of quasi-religious dogma but it's not based on faith (i.e. fervent, unquestioning belief in something invisible for which there is no evidence) but insatiable, limitless greed. I strongly suspect that they couldn't give a flying f**k about the future as long as they get super-rich now, now, now! God (who probably doesn't exist) help us!! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: pdq Date: 13 Apr 14 - 01:10 PM Once again, ShamRude shows that constant exposure to disinformation and propaganda web sites will cause personality disorders and eventually cause debilitating mental illness. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: GUEST,Shimrod Date: 13 Apr 14 - 01:15 PM Well, at least pdq, I don't the works of Karl Popper as a sort of 'get-out-of-jail-free-card' every time I'm in a hole! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Greg F. Date: 13 Apr 14 - 01:29 PM So PeeDee- you got a problem with the reality that 95%-plus of climate scientists disagree with your idiocy? You one of the few, the proud, the brain-dead? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Ed T Date: 13 Apr 14 - 04:51 PM "statistics and art as 'products of the mind' and not as science." I believe the quoted "Popper" was a philosopher, not a scientist. Many see philosophy more as an art , than a science -with products (assessments) of the mind-as with statistics. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: pdq Date: 13 Apr 14 - 05:09 PM Thanks, Mr. Ed... At least you made an attempt to discuss the statement rather than hauling-off and calling people who disagree with you horrible names (see "Jack The Ass" and "The F Word"). All you need to know about Global Warming is that the average temerature has risen 1 degree Celcius since the heart of the Irish Troubles of 1848 until 1998, 150 years. Since then it has gone back down 0.12 degrees. All the rest of the noise is political and it is bullshit. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Richard Bridge Date: 13 Apr 14 - 05:14 PM Statistics establish a correlation with the stated degree of probability. They do not of themselves (please note those two words) establish cause and effect. Popper appears to overlook the methodology of scientific observation. One posits a theory, then formulates what it will predict, then tests those predictions. Thus, in fact, observation roots speculation which may then be tested. Ever studied stats, Peedee? It was the only one of my subsidiaries in which I got first. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: pdq Date: 13 Apr 14 - 05:17 PM false premise = shit results Them's the facts, ma'm. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Greg F. Date: 13 Apr 14 - 05:43 PM false premise = shit results Thanks for explaining yourself and your method and your results, PeeDee. Now, about those 95% + of the worlds climate scientisss..... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Ed T Date: 13 Apr 14 - 06:00 PM Feeling dejected because the stuff you recently posted on this topic means much to anyone, pdq. You will just have to try harder and think bigger. ;) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: pdq Date: 13 Apr 14 - 06:08 PM Well, Mr. Ed... Perhaps you should go back to what you do most of the time and post a link to site with professionally-written talking points. You know that talking points work because people like you do no have to think. They try to make someone who knows nothing about a subject talk like an expert, at least their small minds tell them so. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Ed T Date: 13 Apr 14 - 06:22 PM I don t have time for your tantrum nonsense, pdq. If you have anything meaningful to add on the topic, I would like to see it. If you "spent your load" with the earlier stuff, it's ok, I understand. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: pdq Date: 13 Apr 14 - 06:32 PM Dear Mr. Ed... You have given one link to a very lame site where a statistician takes one item, CO2 concentration, applies statistical ideas about probability, and comes to a "conlusion" that is completely devoid of science. That is your entire contribution to this thread. Come back after you take at least one science class. I have batchelors degree and some graduate work in hard sciences and I am here if you need an answer to any of your little questions. Least I can do for a beginner. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Greg F. Date: 13 Apr 14 - 06:42 PM I have batchelors degree and some graduate work in hard sciences Please tell us the universities that granted these degrees so we can warn people away from what- judging by your grasp of science- are mere diploma mills. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Steve Shaw Date: 13 Apr 14 - 07:21 PM I have batchelors degree [sic] and some graduate work in hard sciences Where I come from we have bachelors' degrees, retaining "Batchelor's" for dried peas. I got my bachelor's degree in a science discipline. I don't recall whether it was hard science or soft science. I don't think the profs ever apprised us of the difference. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Ed T Date: 13 Apr 14 - 07:27 PM "Show you yours, and I will show you mine" Now that you have impressed us that you have a degree, of some type, (unlike others on mudcat), show us some related results on the topic. Your challenge, since you brought it up. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: pdq Date: 13 Apr 14 - 07:45 PM A bachelors degree requires a lot of hard work and is not given away for just showing up. Math, music, art, philosophy and others are "products of the mind" but not true science. Anthropology is a classic "soft science". It is a hybrid of many disiplines of which some are opinion-based, not fact-based. Chemistry, biology, geology... "hard sciences". Fact-based and tested over and over. As close to Truth as we humans can get. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Steve Shaw Date: 13 Apr 14 - 07:55 PM I think I can safely say that I've never read such arrant nonsense in my life, and this on a forum inhabited by pete, Goofus and Wacko! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: pdq Date: 13 Apr 14 - 08:01 PM That is an opinion, so it cannot be considered science. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Steve Shaw Date: 13 Apr 14 - 08:12 PM It wasn't meant to be considered as such, which is why I started it with "I think". I thought you were supposed to be a scientist. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: pdq Date: 13 Apr 14 - 08:14 PM You would be more entertaining if you "lighten up". |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Greg F. Date: 13 Apr 14 - 08:18 PM I thought you were supposed to be a scientist. PeeDee is a professional, card-carrying jackass and has been since his first post years since. With his undergraduate degree he thinks he knows more than actual scientists. Do a search if you don't wish to take my word for it. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Steve Shaw Date: 13 Apr 14 - 08:20 PM Can't be arsed. There are plenty like him around here. Best to shrug. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: GUEST,Stim Date: 13 Apr 14 - 10:09 PM "Some graduate work in the hard sciences" means that, for one reason or another, you were unable to sustain yourself in a graduate program, PDQ. One assumes that you were able to turn things around and ultimately found you way into something that was meaningful and manageable. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: GUEST,.gargoyle Date: 13 Apr 14 - 11:08 PM One man's clam.... Is another man's oyster. We know that giant forests and giant beasts once lived above and below both tropics. Of course there is change. ADAP ! ! ! Sincerley, Gargoyle Where we once grew wheat...we might grow rice...wbere we once grew cattle, we might grow GMO mice. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: GUEST Date: 14 Apr 14 - 04:52 PM Looks like a good time to get into the cartography business. Remember the breakup of the old USSR. Map-selling companies were printing like crazy. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: GUEST Date: 14 Apr 14 - 06:28 PM ""One man's clam....Is another man's oyster"". They are indeed both filter-feeding marine bivalve molluscs, but, beyond that, they are actually different ;) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Richard Bridge Date: 14 Apr 14 - 06:32 PM Maths is a hard science, not a soft science. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Jeri Date: 14 Apr 14 - 06:43 PM Oyster gotta swim; clam gotta burrow. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Ed T Date: 02 Nov 14 - 02:21 PM ""2 November 2014 – Citing "clear and growing" human influence on the climate system, a United Nations report issued today has warned that if left unchecked, climate change will increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems."" UN Report |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Nigel Parsons Date: 02 Nov 14 - 08:37 PM ""2 November 2014 – Citing "clear and growing" human influence on the climate system, a United Nations report issued today has warned that if left unchecked, climate change will increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems."" Lovely quote, and it does represent accurately the linked report. However, read it carefully: a United Nations report issued today has warned that if left unchecked, climate change will increase the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems The "get out clause" in that quote is "will increase the likelihood of". If there was any degree of certainty in the "scientific method" being used, it could state that "a United Nations report issued today has warned that if left unchecked, climate change will cause severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems" Many declarations can be better understood by looking at what they are careful to avoid saying. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Steve Shaw Date: 02 Nov 14 - 09:05 PM We just can't behave ourselves. Emissions are at their highest-ever levels in spite of "protocols". We look at thousands of wind turbines that operate with the sort of technology that my bike dynamo used to light up my bike lights when I was kid in the 50s (when you stopped pedalling the lights went out) and feel good about it instead of investing in energy conservation and carbon capture. We have India and China enjoying massive growth and the US doing next to bugger all about its emissions. We're stuffed unless we go down one path, and a few years ago I never thought I'd hear meself saying it: nuclear power is the only answer, and we need to get on with it, fast. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Steve Shaw Date: 02 Nov 14 - 09:09 PM Well, Nigel, the scientific method does not deal in certainties, ever (we tend to leave that approach to religion). Those little caveats you point to are not attempts at arse-covering. They are what science always does. You misread, I'm afraid. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Greg F. Date: 29 Aug 17 - 06:47 PM Ann Coulter: "I don't believe Hurricane Harvey is God's punishment for Houston electing a lesbian mayor. But that is more credible than "climate change"." |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Mr Red Date: 30 Aug 17 - 04:12 AM Hurrican Harvey wasn't caused by Climate Change. But the severity was. Hotter oceans (provable fact), faster winds (known result). And more water carried! The number of severe hurricanes (and typhoons) is possibly on the increase but, given the numbers, difficult to ascertain. The number of lesser hurricanes is statistically greater than "since records began". As reported in the New Scientist. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Steve Shaw Date: 30 Aug 17 - 05:39 AM "Severity" I think we can say, from our knowledge of physics, that a hotter world may mean more energetic storms. There's more energy available for the storm system, both from hotter air and ocean and from the release of a greater amount of latent heat of condensation as that extra water vapour that the hotter air can now hold condenses back into water. A double energy whammy. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Iains Date: 30 Aug 17 - 06:45 AM A little background. http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/research/txhur.pdf https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/a-sizzling-gulf-of-mexico-could-bring-more-spring-storms/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/08/did-climate-change-intensify-hurricane-harvey/538158/ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Nigel Parsons Date: 30 Aug 17 - 07:41 AM Renewed after 3 years, so I've just spotted Steve's response: From: Steve Shaw - PM Date: 02 Nov 14 - 09:09 PM Well, Nigel, the scientific method does not deal in certainties, ever (we tend to leave that approach to religion). Those little caveats you point to are not attempts at arse-covering. They are what science always does. You misread, I'm afraid. "Scientific method does not deal in certainties". I though scientific method was intended to start with theories, and proceed to proofs. If something is proven, then it is a certainty. If not it's just a theory. Of the two of us I feel it is the soi disant scientist who doesn't understand scientific method. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: David Carter (UK) Date: 30 Aug 17 - 07:57 AM Scientific method starts with theories, then proceeds to people trying to falsify the theory. Not proofs, proofs are a thing for pure mathematics. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Donuel Date: 30 Aug 17 - 08:16 AM Climate change deniers used to be an invented career that paid better than six figures by oil companies. To take up that mantle for free is foolish, behind the times and futile. Severe is a word that was useful once upon a time when related to meteorology. That was then. Now the word is extreme. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Greg F. Date: 30 Aug 17 - 09:30 AM used to be an invented career that paid better than six figures by oil companies Still does pay - courtesy of the Koch brothers and our Sec. of State Exxon-Mobil Tillotsen. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Vashta Nerada Date: 30 Aug 17 - 09:37 AM Man made contributions to Harvey's severity. Paving without zoning or planning. It's a major contributing factor, but 50 inches of rain is still unprecedented and would have inundated the region. We know that the severity and impact of hurricanes on coastal cities is exacerbated by at least two factors: higher sea levels, caused primarily by the thermal expansion of seawater; and greater storm intensity, caused by higher sea temperatures and the ability of warm air to hold more water than cold air. The heat of an urban area and the pavement that has been laid willy-nilly in Houston conspired to aggravate the impact of all of that rain. The questions people need to ask themselves - are they willing to just build wherever, or will they move out of flood plains. Will they zone so runoff is better managed? Will communities work to move the poorest, most vulnerable, into safer areas without marginalizing them or simply rendering them homeless? Will media start addressing Climate Change as a real thing and keep up the pressure on local, state, and federal managers? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Vashta Nerada Date: 30 Aug 17 - 10:03 AM As to the links above, the NOAA story was nine years old, and climate science has really come into its own since then. The ARS Technica story seemed to ask odd questions and let the topic fizzle, stopping at questioning just one professor from Colorado. But what about later this year? Does exceptionally warm water in winter augur a harsh hurricane season? The short answer is not really, says Phil Klotzbach, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University who specializes in seasonal hurricane activity. "They really don't correlate well with Atlantic hurricane activity," he said of winter sea surface temperatures. "I think the primary issue is that Gulf sea surface temperatures are always plenty hot to support major hurricane activity during the season." Klotzbach was wrong, and the apparently incurious author offers no examination of what those factors of "vertical wind shear and moisture levels" are, just uses this piece to dismiss the theory that the current conditions could cause real problems because this guy says so. From the Atlantic article: Climate scientists, who specialize in thinking about the Earth system as a whole, are often reticent to link any one weather event to global climate change. But they say that aspects of the case of Hurricane Harvey—and the recent history of tropical cyclones worldwide—suggest global warming is making a bad situation worse. . . . A mild statement a little further down notes "A draft version of a major U.S. government review of climate science due out later this year says there is "medium confidence" that human activities "have contributed to the observed upward trend in North Atlantic hurricane activity since the 1970s."" - but this draft is issued by the Trump administration, burying federal science, dismissing experts in order to craft the Orange businessman's version of things. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Steve Shaw Date: 30 Aug 17 - 12:04 PM "...it's just a theory..." You are arguing from ignorance, Nigel. The scientific process's finest achievements are its theories. Theories are the best explanations we have for the phenomena we observe. They are accumulations of evidence and interpretations thereof from as many angles as possible. Science does not concern itself with proofs. In fact, the best science always challenges notions that looks like they're in danger of reaching triumphalist certainties. You may be certain that certain phenomena occur. I can touch my fingertip and thumb tip together, that much is as certain as certain can be (you could always ask me for a video). But knowing that is not science. All the science is in the observation and the explanation of evidence. And there's always someone waiting to turn your notions on their heads. That's how human knowledge expands. There's no other way. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Stu Date: 30 Aug 17 - 04:14 PM "...it's just a theory." There's an issue, right there. Go and find out what a theory is and why theories aren't "just" anything. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Mr Red Date: 31 Aug 17 - 03:08 AM If something is proven, then it is a certainty. If not it's just a theory. I think it is safer to say if the theory predicts something that is later found to be "fact" then the theory is functionally useful (in context). eg Relativity struggles with Quantum Mechanics Life just ain't binary. And I can prove that! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Stu Date: 31 Aug 17 - 04:01 AM "I think it is safer to say if the theory predicts something that is later found to be "fact" then the theory is functionally useful (in context)." No. No. No. Go and read up and what a scientific theory is. This sentence makes zero sense at all, it's self-contradictory. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: SPB-Cooperator Date: 31 Aug 17 - 05:32 AM Sometimes I think it is worth letting climate change take its full course. It is worth it as they will finally have the proof they are demanding, and when their children and grandchildren suffer, they will only have themselves to blame. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: beardedbruce Date: 17 May 18 - 08:06 AM Inconvenient Science: NASA data show that global temperatures dropped sharply over the past two years. Not that you'd know it, since that wasn't deemed news. Does that make NASA a global warming denier? Writing in Real Clear Markets, Aaron Brown looked at the official NASA global temperature data and noticed something surprising. From February 2016 to February 2018, "global average temperatures dropped by 0.56 degrees Celsius." That, he notes, is the biggest two-year drop in the past century. "The 2016-2018 Big Chill," he writes, "was composed of two Little Chills, the biggest five month drop ever (February to June 2016) and the fourth biggest (February to June 2017). A similar event from February to June 2018 would bring global average temperatures below the 1980s average." Isn't this just the sort of man-bites-dog story that the mainstream media always says is newsworthy? In this case, it didn't warrant any news coverage. In fact, in the three weeks since Real Clear Markets ran Brown's story, no other news outlet picked up on it. They did, however, find time to report on such things as tourism's impact on climate change, how global warming will generate more hurricanes this year, and threaten fish habitats, and make islands uninhabitable. They wrote about a UN official saying that "our window of time for addressing climate change is closing very quickly." Reporters even found time to cover a group that says they want to carve President Trump's face into a glacier to prove climate change "is happening." In other words, the mainstream news covered stories that repeated what climate change advocates have been saying ad nauseam for decades. That's not to say that a two-year stretch of cooling means that global warming is a hoax. Two years out of hundreds or thousands doesn't necessarily mean anything. And there could be a reasonable explanation. But the drop in temperatures at least merits a "Hey, what's going on here?" story. What's more, journalists are perfectly willing to jump on any individual weather anomaly — or even a picture of a starving polar bear — as proof of global warming. (We haven't seen any stories pinning Hawaii's recent volcanic activity on global warming yet, but won't be surprised if someone tries to make the connection.) We've noted this refusal to cover inconvenient scientific findings many times in this space over the years. Hiding The Evidence There was the study published in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate showing that climate models exaggerate global warming from CO2 emissions by as much as 45%. It was ignored. Then there was the study in the journal Nature Geoscience that found that climate models were faulty, and that, as one of the authors put it, "We haven't seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models." Nor did the press see fit to report on findings from the University of Alabama-Huntsville showing that the Earth's atmosphere appears to be less sensitive to changing CO2 levels than previously assumed. How about the fact that the U.S. has cut CO2 emissions over the past 13 years faster than any other industrialized nation? Or that polar bear populations are increasing? Or that we haven't seen any increase in violent weather in decades? Crickets. Reporters no doubt worry that covering such findings will only embolden "deniers" and undermine support for immediate, drastic action. But if fears of catastrophic climate change are warranted — which we seriously doubt — ignoring things like the rapid cooling in the past two years carries an even bigger risk. ************************************************************************ Suppose, Brown writes, the two-year cooling trend continues. "At some point the news will leak out that all global warming since 1980 has been wiped out in two and a half years, and that record-setting events went unreported." He goes on: "Some people could go from uncritical acceptance of steadily rising temperatures to uncritical refusal to accept any warming at all." ************************************************************************ Brown is right. News outlets should decide what gets covered based on its news value, not on whether it pushes an agenda. Otherwise, they're doing the public a disservice and putting their own already shaky credibility at greater risk. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: gillymor Date: 17 May 18 - 09:38 AM Another perspective from the WaPo It looks like you're the one pushing an agenda, as usual. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Stilly River Sage Date: 17 May 18 - 11:30 AM Does that make NASA a global warming denier? No, it makes you slow on the uptake. It is called Climate Change, "global warming" has little meaning in regard to the changes taking place. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Stu Date: 17 May 18 - 11:55 AM Even a cursory look through the literature on climate change (that's the stuff the actual scientists working in the field write, peer-reviewed) would show that we moved on some time ago from the discussion about whether global warming is happening to what the consequences are. The bias shown in reporting that the article highlights is pretty much non-existent, given that for science at least the matter is pretty much settled; indeed the climate deniers have had a platform for way too long as the stakes are high if we don't react with definitive action soon. In fact, the two-year cooling is a bit of a false-flag as it doesn't alter the trend of climbing temperatures and amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and is a natural fluctuation, a wobble on the upward trajectory of the graph. The cooling is largely due to El Nina cooling the Pacific and this has effects on global temperatures, and this will be reversed when El Nino kicks in and water temperatures rise again. Articles that enable the sort of science-denial shown in statements such as the one Acme quoted above are motivated by non-science concerns that seem to be mainly related to religion, right-wing ideology or business. Of course in the Trumpish/Brexiteer world we live in it seems people prefer simple but wrong explanations to complex and correct ones. Climate science is massively complex, and trying to get certain parts of our society to pay attention for more than a few seconds is becoming increasingly difficult. This is why it is these very people who tend to make shit up* *See also flat-earthers, chem trail advocates, creationists, moon-landing deniers and Man U fans. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: Donuel Date: 18 May 18 - 08:29 PM This thread is a true tribute to the truth of John from Kansas. Stu you got one thing dead wrong BB you got it all wrong. gillymor got it right. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: beardedbruce Date: 21 May 18 - 10:39 AM There was the study published in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate showing that climate models exaggerate global warming from CO2 emissions by as much as 45%. It was ignored. Then there was the study in the journal Nature Geoscience that found that climate models were faulty, and that, as one of the authors put it, "We haven't seen that rapid acceleration in warming after 2000 that we see in the models." Nor did the press see fit to report on findings from the University of Alabama-Huntsville showing that the Earth's atmosphere appears to be less sensitive to changing CO2 levels than previously assumed. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Climate Change Again - New Report From: David Carter (UK) Date: 21 May 18 - 10:47 AM Or to be very precise Bruce, and to actually quote what the Nature Geoscience actually says about the article it carries: "A team of climate scientists has delivered a rare bit of good news: it could be easier than previously thought to limit global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, as called for in the 2015 Paris climate agreement. But even if the team is right — and some researchers are already questioning the conclusions — heroic efforts to curb greenhouse-gas emissions will still be necessary to limit warming." The full article is here. |
