How many scientists really dispute global warming?
- Thread starter Free Thinker
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Who is Jansen and what data manipulation are you talking about? Scurrilous and unfounded accusations are your standard operating procedure.
You are talking nonsense. Climate models are based on physics not guessing. The rate of warming has been fairly close to that predicted by Hansen's models. This was not a head or tails bet.
OK I concede. I think that if I modify it slightly to say "the future cannot be predicted with absolute certainty", then it is indisputable. I disagree with what you are implying (I think), that predicting day and night, or even that a structure will hold is the same as predicting climate change. The very few factors involved with predicting day and night are all known, making it more of an observation than a prediction of future events. A structure holding is not a prediction of the future, it is based on factors which can be quantified, the materials involved, gravity, geometry, etc. and I believe whatever they think is safe they multiply by 3 or 6 as a rule of thumb.
Predicting climate change would consist of the sum of our knowledge of the universe, our solar system, and our planet. There are unknown variables in all of these fields which obviously cannot be accounted for, and there is a serious lack of historical statistics. Hansen's models may be 100% correct but is it not possible that they can be flawed and coincidentally appear right? I am asking as I have never seen the results. Think of indivduals that try and predict the market, when they are right they are geniuses who can never be wrong. There is no one that can actually predict with accuracy what the market will do, if they could then they would never be wrong, never lose money, and would be the richest person ever with no one ever catching up. I think that the climate is likely much more complex than the market (in terms of factors involved) so I distrust predictions of its future, is that not reasonable?
Also, I meant to reply to your last post which was definently the most concise and convincing argument that I have seen yet. Although if Lucrum was right about CO2 lagging temp, then that argument fails IMO. Understand that I am fully aware that I may be wrong. However, even in that event, I don't think that there is any way whatsoever for anyone to claim with certainty, the consequences of global warming. My point is we should do our best to keep the planet clean, without interrupting our economy.
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results/24359/Warmest_October_Claim_Was_Wrong_NASA_Admits.html
NASAâs Goddard Institute for Space Studiesâknown as GISSâwas forced to admit it committed an egregious error when it publicly claimed October 2008 was the warmest October in history.
It turns out October 2008 was nowhere near a record. Global temperature measurements of the Earthâs lower atmosphere by NASA satellite instruments show it was fairly typical compared to temperatures over the past 30 years and significantly cooler than average temperatures over the past seven years.
The top figure on page 10, provided by meteorologist Anthony Watts, shows the correct temperature for October 2008.
GISS Under Fire
Many climate scientists have criticized GISS in recent years for routinely claiming significantly higher global temperatures than those reported by other scientists; for employing a staff that appears to see its role more as advocates than as scientists; for getting caught claiming recent years were warmer than the data indicated; and for failing to provide transparency in how they manipulate raw temperature data before presenting their adjusted âofficialâ temperature reports.
After GISS generated substantial media attention with its claim October 2008 was the warmest October in history, a number of global warming âskepticsâ smelled something fishy and examined the data themselves. They soon discovered NASA and its partners at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration had copied the September 2008 temperature data from Russia into the October Russian temperature dataset.
Assuming the error was innocent, scientists wondered why GISS hadnât double-checked its data when it published an October global temperature chart that appeared quite ordinary except for an astonishing warm-temperature anomaly over Russia.
Prominent skeptics, including statistician Steve McIntyre, report their previous requests to be allowed to examine GISSâs raw temperature data and temperature adjustment models were frequently answered by rude and uncooperative responses. It was these same skeptics, reproducing the data and temperature charts on their own, who discovered the error.
Alarmists Fight Transparency
GISSâs overstatement of October warmth was reminiscent of another GISS scandal.
In late 2007 McIntyre discovered GISS had been systematically reporting overly warm U.S. temperatures. McIntyre caused a sensation in late 2007 when he proved NASA had been unjustifiably adding a significant 0.l5º Celsius to its U.S. temperature reports since the year 2000.
As a result of McIntyreâs research, scientists discovered 2006 was not the warmest year in U.S. history, as GISS had very publicly claimed. In fact, 1934 was the warmest year, and 2006 fell to a distant fourth. Only four of the top 11 warmest years have occurred since 1954, according to the corrected data.
Since McIntyre discovered GISSâs error and similar statistical errors in prominent global warming alarmist Michael Mannâs famous 1998 âhockey stickâ graph purporting to show more rapid global warming than has in fact occurred, GISS scientists and their allies who claim humans are causing a global warming crisis have been remarkably unwilling to share their data with McIntyre. GISS climate modeler Gavin Schmidt refuses even to acknowledge McIntyre by name.
More GISS Monkey Business
In addition to its current data problems, meteorologist Art Horn reports GISS has recently been retroactively adjusting temperature data gathered years and even decades ago, to give the impression current temperatures are rising faster than they are.
âRecently I was looking at some graphical temperature data from NASA,â Horn wrote on meteorologist Joseph DâAleoâs ICECAP blog. âI was able to find a graph of United States temperature from 1880 up to 1999. I then went to the NASA GISS site and found the most recent plot of this data. I wanted to compare the two and see if there had been any changes in the trends. ...
âWell, it was quite an eye opener!â Horn wrote. âGoing back and forth between the images there is [in GISSâs new temperature reports, compared with prior GISS temperature reports] a clear cooling [in] the temperatures before 1970 and a clear warming of the temperatures after 1970. It is unmistakable and quite remarkable.
âWe all know that [GISS Director] Dr. James Hansen is one of the worldâs most visible global warming alarmists,â Horn added. âHe is also caretaker of the NASA GISS data. It would appear that he is not happy with the trend of temperature in the United States. It would also appear that he is doing something about it. By adjusting temperatures in the past downward and adjusting more recent temperatures upward we get an amplification (or at least the appearance of one) of the rise in temperature between the late 1970s and the late 1990s.â
McIntyre reports that after GISS was forced to lower its October 2008 temperature data regarding Russia, it mysteriously and retroactively raised the temperatures that reportedly occurred in October 2008 in other parts of the world.
For example, while GISSâs initial global temperature chart shows the astonishing (and false) warming anomaly over Russia (seen in crimson in the middle graph) and not much warming over northern Canada, GISSâs subsequent chart with the corrected Russian data now shows a mysterious retroactive warming over northern Canada.
âAll of a sudden, a âhot spotâ has developed over the Canadian Arctic Islands and the Arctic Ocean north of North America, that wasnât there on Monday (it was gray on Monday),â McIntyre reported on November 12, just after GISS corrected its overly warm Russian data. âA smaller hot spot also developed over Australia.â
Hansen has publicly called for Nuremburg-style âhigh crimes against humanityâ trials against people who dispute his alarmist global warming claims.
They took the data from Siberia in October and threw it out. They replaced it with the data for September, then claimed it was the warmest October ever. It was all accidential I am sure.
For Dcraig this story just was not on his radar. He is an informed leftist and the rest of us are just dumb shits. That may be true, until you include the facts.
Mistakes happen. Period.
From the NASA web site:
"In the past our procedure has been to run the analysis program upon receipt of all three data sets and make the analysis publicly available immediately. This procedure worked very well from a scientific perspective, with the broad availability of the analysis helping reveal any problems with input data sets. However, because confusion was generated in the media after one of the October 2008 input data sets was found to contain significant flaws (some October station records inadvertently repeated September data in the October data slot), we have instituted a new procedure. The GISS analysis is first made available internally before it is released publicly. If any suspect data are detected, they will be reported back to the data providers for resolution. This process may introduce significant delays. We apologize for any inconvenience due to this delay, but it should reduce the likelihood of instances of future confusion and misinformation. "
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2008/
There is no evidence whatsoever of deliberate falsification of the record. NONE. But you and your ilk keep repeating lies in the hope that mud sticks. It has got nothing to do with science just your loopy conspiracy theory politics.
NASA GISS takes the data from the GHCN data set. Ir does not compile the data set. The data provided to GISS had some September data wrongly reported as October. That is all - end of story. But you just go ahead repeating the same old lies over and over again.
And by the way, the linked article is full of untruths including the claim that 1934 was the hottest year ever. This is true only for the United States which covers something like 2% of the Earths surface. This has been pointed out repeatedly but stupid, ignorant web articles from deniers repeat the same untruths over and over again.
Yes, Drj, you keep quoting McIntyre and the same echo chamber of non-climatologists, as filtered through blogs.
The civil engineering example is interesting because civil or mechanical engineers do NOT have complete knowledge of their designs in the sense that a set of equations can be written down and solved analytically. It is just not possible. They use approximations through modeling that is based on physical principles and the supporting mathematics. One example is finite element analysis which is somewhat like climate modeling in that the system is broken down into a (large but finite) number of pieces and their interactions calculated based on physical principles. It cannot be 100% correct, but it is in general very successful in predicting the future of the structure if properly used. Which is one of the reasons for safety factors.
Making this a bit more abstract, it is true that most of science and engineering relies on incomplete models that are not "100%" correct. Here is a very simple example. In a vacuum, if you drop something then you can solve the equation of motion analytically. But moving onto something just a little more complicated (though seemingly simple) and it can't be done. The famous three body problem - sun, earth and moon. Nobody has been able to provide a general analytic solution to the equations of motion. If you want to find out where they are sometime in the future you need a model which will give you an approximation. The model will not be 100% correct but some models will be better than others as I proved conclusively by my feeble attempt as a physics student trying to write a FORTRAN program for a such a model.
The point of this is that most of nature can only be modeled. And a lot of science is modeling.
First of all predictions do not need 100% certainty to be useful, and models do not need complete knowledge to provide useful approximations. Any individual climate model is certainly fair game as a subject for criticism but the assertion that climate cannot be modeled to produce useful forecasts is wholly unsubstantiated. The analogy with predicting price in financial markets is misplaced because we really have very few (if any) well know quantifiable principles to base models on. A bit of hand waving about supply and demand doesn't really cut it. On the other hand there is a lot of physical principles known to a large degree of certainty that are used in formulating climate models.
In the absence of mathematical proofs, the weight of evidence supports AGW. It is a fact that temperature is rising. So what has changed? What is causing the change? Solar irradience change - no. Cosmic rays?- no? CO2 change? - yes. Could CO2 have this effect - yes. That CO2 is a greenhouse gas is as certain as that gravity is a force of nature. Could there be other factors ( some strong negative feedback) that counteracts the warming effect of CO2? It seems possible that there might be. So how do we investigate - we build climate models based on physical principles to better understand the changes. What do they tell us - there are feedbacks both positive and negative, but the best science available suggests on balance positive. As far as we can test these models they do quite well. Do observations support the CO2 hypothesis? yes - there is currently a measured inbalance between energy received from the sun and energy radiated off into space and an enhanced green house effect is by far the best explanation. There really is an awful lot of evidence for AGW. And weight of evidence is the only sensible thing to base a judgement on.
You can find a brief and informative discussion about CO2 lag/lead temperature here:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Why-does-CO2-lag-temperature.html
As a general comment, I would add that there is no basic physical principle that says CO2 leads or lags temperature. If there were, then it would be a powerful argument -but there isn't. Detailed research is needed as to the current factors driving climate change. Large scale human activity adds the new factor.
So they didn't swap the data last year?
Demonstration and statement of fact is not predicting. Night follows day is a fact, not a prediction. If you were to say that tomorrow, night will not follow day, that would be a prediction.
In regard to climate change a statement of fact would be that 100 years from now the earth, assuming it still exists, will have a measurable temperature. A prediction would be, 100 years from now the overall climate of the earth will be warmer.
What climate cultists are trying to pull off is that predictions and statements of fact are one of the same. They're not! Sometimes predictions come true, sometimes they don't. Bottom line is that you don't bet the farm on predictions.
When you say night follows day, and, specifically, that the sun will come up tomorrow, you're still making a prediction. You're just making a prediction with a extremely, extremely high degree of confidence. At some point in the future, maybe when the sun burns out, or some other event happens, that prediction may not be true.
Your second statment "a statement of fact would be that 100 years from now the earth, assuming it still exits, will have a measurable temperature" is just what you say it is - an assumption that is used in constructing an prediction, model or argument. It is not, however, a statement of fact.
We place bets all the time based on confidence in our predictions - we have a high degree of confidence that we will not die flying based on the statistics and historical data related to deaths from flying. We start our cars everyday with a large degree of confidence that they will not blow up.