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Post by unkleE on Jan 2, 2013 3:39:04 GMT
I have a short fuse with denialists. It doesn't sound to me that he is a "denialist". He said: "I think the case for AGW is plausible but the evidence remains unconvincing."So he's still uncertain about it. You and I both disagree with him, but hopefully giving him the information may help him assess the evidence for himself.
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Post by sankari on Jan 2, 2013 13:38:32 GMT
I have a short fuse with denialists. It doesn't sound to me that he is a "denialist". He said: "I think the case for AGW is plausible but the evidence remains unconvincing."So he's still uncertain about it. You and I both disagree with him, but hopefully giving him the information may help him assess the evidence for himself. I didn't expect a genuine climate change agnostic to uncritically accept denialist propaganda. Perhaps my expectations were too high.
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Post by ignorantianescia on Jan 5, 2013 13:38:41 GMT
One common sceptic assumption that seemed to pop up in this thread is that renewable energy is expensive and as a result impractical. But I want to be sure that some sceptics here actually believe this. So could any sceptic who does show a hand?
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Post by himself on Jan 8, 2013 1:41:41 GMT
- Interesting graph showing that the cooling trend from 1940s-1970s has now become a leveling-off. Global warming is mighty puissant when it can change the temperatures of past years. Successive Panel reports have provided cooler and cooler revised temps for the 1880s and warmer revised temps for the 2000s.
- The world seems to have been warming at the rate of 1 degC/cent for the past 400 years, well before modern industry. To me that whispers 'rebound from the Little Ice Age.' So a prediction of future warming of 1degC in the next century is not exactly astonishing. The astonishing thing is how the Earth managed the warming since the 1600s without Evil Western Technological Civilization. Most of the power back then was watermills and windmills.
- The Little Ice Age was connected in some fashion to solar activity. (NOT to direct solar irradiance, btw.) Current climate models take no account of solar effects and therefore fail to anticipate these cyclic cooling episodes. Clearly something important is missing from the models, but the Team includes no astrophysicists. (Nor any statisticians or computer scientists, apparently.)
- Astrophysicists expect the current crest to be followed by cooling through about 2030. This can be combated vigorously by aggressive adjustments to the data. (NOAA tells us that solar performance is running well behind the model predictions, which predict a more muscular (though still reduced Cycle 24) than has been developing. The model was revised several times when Solar Minimum lasted longer (and longer) than expected, but it is still optimistic versus performance.
Solar magnetic field strength hit a step change in late 2005 and is still nowhere near what it was. Dudes, something bad has happened to the sun and people are still in denial. It is not unreasonable to suppose that the Solar Grand Max - the period of heightened solar activity that has been our constant companion for more than a century - is coming to an end. A new Dalton Minimum or even a Maunder Minimum may be in the cards. Solar 24 may have already peaked.
- It is precisely the unexplained variations in the real world that the climate models cannot account for that are of interest.
- Most folks seem unaware of the condition and calibration issues affecting the temperature stations, the adjustments that are made to raw temperature data, the problem of geographical distribution, the method of decomposition on the model polynomials, and so on. It's not entirely clear whether red noise is adequately accounted for. NOAA has been quietly addressing much of this by building a new ground station network in the US the specs for which are refreshing to read -- identical instrumentation at all stations, regular calibrations, geographical stratification, locations well away from heat islands, etc. But it seems to yield temperatures two degrees less than the old network.
- Perhaps it is simply my years of practice in applied statistics, but I long ago learned to be cautious about the actual production of measurements. E.g., in June 95 when the National Observatory of Athens replaced its thermometer, temperatures increased. When they finally got money to calibrate the new thermometer in Jan 97, temperatures dropped to less than with the previous thermometer. That is, every measurement is a product produced by a "manufacturing process" and needs to be regarded as such. As W.E. Deming pointed out long ago, you cannot cast an average through a set of data than is not in statistical control.
- The climate modelers use automated algorithms to clean data like Athens 95, but this is bad practice. Each anomaly [original sense] needs to be assessed for its own particular assignable cause and the adjustment must be pertinent to this cause. Not having the time or funding to do things right does not improve the results of doing it poorly.
- Michael Mann's "trick" consisted of this. He had done a regression of measured temperature and tree ring thickness during the historical era (call this Period A). This was used to post-dict temperatures of early eras (Period pre-A) from a decomposition model that included selected tree rings. That is, the factors of the regression formula were not the actual measured variables but complex combinations of pieces of the variables. There is nothing wrong with this, per se. However, when the proxies were projected into the new data beyond the initial regression period (Period post-A), the tree ring data (etc.) predicted temperatures less than the thermometer record.
Now, any quality engineer worth his salt would realize that this would bring into question the initial correlation during A and undermine its use for pre-A. What Mann did was - without annotation on the graph - to replace the proxy measurements with thermometer measurements. This gave the appearance of the proxies being reliable when in fact the mis-match of proxy-vs-actual in post-A called the whole postdiction into question. Foresters could have told him. Tree rings are subject to hosts of variables from year to year, and temperature is not even the most important of them. And some species are more sensitive than others. That's why the Statistics Section of NAS ripped it.
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Post by sandwiches on Jan 8, 2013 20:21:37 GMT
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/08/australia-heatwave-wildfires-alertAustralian heatwave puts south-east on alert as wildfires burn out of control Fire service issues 'catastrophic' warnings in New South Wales with temperatures expected to breach 45C in coming days Australia's Bureau of Meteorology has been forced to add new colours to its temperature map – deep purple and incandescent pink.
My spouse is firmly of the opinion that God did not mean humans to inhabit Australia (all those stories about deadly snakes/spiders, salt-water crocodiles and general heat and the fact that her very nice cousin was forced to emigrate there by his apparently unpleasant wife who then divorced him) (Aborigines may disagree in that native humans were doing OK until recently). What's the Aussie view on climate change?
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Post by unkleE on Jan 8, 2013 21:48:05 GMT
My spouse is firmly of the opinion that God did not mean humans to inhabit Australia (all those stories about deadly snakes/spiders, salt-water crocodiles and general heat and the fact that her very nice cousin was forced to emigrate there by his apparently unpleasant wife who then divorced him) (Aborigines may disagree in that native humans were doing OK until recently). There would some who would say that Aussie culture is subhuman anyway, and the indigenous people would likely wish the rest of us had not persevered here! We have the full range of opinion like everywhere else, from those wanting urgent and strong action now through to those (mostly the Murdoch media and assorted conservative shock jocks) who say it's all a green plot. Most are in the middle, believing something's going on, but not really sure whether to worry or just let things happen. Yesterday was one of the hottest days ever recorded in Australia, apparently, reaching 43 degrees Celsius here in Sydney, and up to 45 I think inland. The thermometer on our verandah reached 42. But just as a run of cold weather doesn't prove the global warming is a hoax, neither does this week of heat wave prove it is true. Besides, this morning it is a cool 25 after a cool southerly came through overnight, and most Aussies have beer in the fridge, so she'll be right! We sometimes can be radical and iconoclastic, but more often Aussies are happy to be lulled into inaction by irresponsible media (not just on this issue, but on many). But there are other Aussies here, I wonder how they feel. Or are they all away at the beach on summer holiday??
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Post by sankari on Jan 9, 2013 0:28:16 GMT
But there are other Aussies here, I wonder how they feel. Or are they all away at the beach on summer holiday?? Fortigurn and I are both Australians. We accept the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming.
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Post by sankari on Jan 9, 2013 0:34:36 GMT
(Aborigines may disagree in that native humans were doing OK until recently). Only if they believe that being stuck in the Stone Age for 30,000 years with no hope of advancement is 'doing OK.'
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Post by sankari on Jan 9, 2013 3:59:24 GMT
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Post by sankari on Jan 9, 2013 4:00:49 GMT
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Post by unkleE on Jan 9, 2013 7:36:02 GMT
Here's some photos of the bushfires. They came within 25km of Hobart They are truly scary, and remind me of bushfires in the part of Sydney (southern suburbs) where I live a few years back, where that wiped out great chunks of Como (2 suburbs away from us) and only a late wind change saved the whole village of Bundeena. Do you live anywhere near Dunalley, like Hobart?
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Post by sankari on Jan 9, 2013 7:48:49 GMT
Do you live anywhere near Dunalley, like Hobart? No, I'm in Adelaide. My stepfather's brother lives in Tasmania. He has lost his house.
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Post by sandwiches on Jan 9, 2013 17:50:28 GMT
Some of those images from Australia are heart-breaking. (not to mention somewhat apocalyptic - people still bathing in the sea with the land burning behind them). www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/jan/09/global-warming-met-office-pausedGlobal warming: has the rise in temperatures 'paused'?LiveThe Met Office has revised downwards a forecast for the rise in average global temperature by 2017. Has global warming, as some say, 'plateaued'? Perhaps it is the way the media reports such things: Media coverage
Various outlets have reported on the Met Office's announcement. Here's a round-up...
Daily Telegraph: "Global warming at a standstill, new Met Office figures show" Daily Mail: "Global warming has STALLED since 1998: Met Office admits Earth's temperature is rising slower than first thought" Daily Express: "Surprise Surprise... Global warming has stalled, admits Met Office" Canada's National Post: "Global warming hasn’t stopped, but it has stalled, says new prediction from British national weather service" Scotsman: "New warming model from Met Office" Times (subscription): "Global warming is over for five years, says Met Office" Channel 4: "Met Office: global warming predictions revised down" Energy and Environmental Management: "Met Office affirms its position on long-term global warming"Reaction from scientists
Yesterday, the Science Media Centre published a summary of reaction it had received from scientists...Prof Chris Rapley, professor of climate science at University College London: I despair of the way data such as this is translated as ‘global warming has stopped’! Global mean temperatures - whether measured or predicted - are not the issue. What matters is the energy balance of the planet and the changes that an energy imbalance will drive in the climate system - as well as the consequences for humans.
90% of the energy imbalance enters the ocean and is not visible to the global mean surface temperature value. The continuing rise in sea level demonstrates ongoing energy accumulation in the ocean (as well as a contribution from melting land ice).
Even if the global mean temperature were to remain unchanged, if the geographic patterns of temperature and rainfall change, the consequences will still be potentially severe. We only need to look at what is going on in Australia at this very moment.
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Post by sandwiches on Jan 9, 2013 17:59:11 GMT
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Post by sandwiches on Jan 9, 2013 19:17:38 GMT
Thought-provoking article by George Monbiot: www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jan/08/australia-heatwave-weather Heatwave: Australia's new weather demands a new politics Climate change clashes with the myth of a land where progress is limited only by the rate at which resources can be extractedClimate change denial is almost a national pastime in Australia. People such as Andrew Bolt and Ian Plimer have made a career out of it. The Australian – owned by Rupert Murdoch – takes such extreme anti-science positions that it sometimes makes the Sunday Telegraph look like the voice of reason.Perhaps this is unsurprising. Australia is the world's largest exporter of coal – the most carbon intensive fossil fuel. It's also a profligate consumer. Australians now burn, on average, slightly more carbon per capita than the citizens of the United States, and more than twice as much as the people of the United Kingdom. Taking meaningful action on climate change would require a serious reassessment of the way life is lived there.
Events have not been kind to the likes of Abbott, Bolt and Plimer. The current heatwave – so severe that the Bureau of Meteorology has been forced to add a new colour to its temperature maps – is just the latest event in a decade of extraordinary weather: weather of the kind that scientists have long warned is a likely consequence of man-made global warming.
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