Climate Change - The Scientific Debate
Discussion
Jinx said:
plunker said:
Sorry to confuse you - I've added some context to my post to help you out.
Cheers - still though you are assuming that the "sceptics" are embracing the "sun what won it" meme It was just drive-by comment in kind - file under 'absurdia'.
Variomatic said:
Jinx said:
Cheers - still though you are assuming that the "sceptics" are embracing the "sun what won it" meme rather than celebrating the evidence that obviously the science is definitely not settled and that CO2 influence on climate must be much less than previously advocated.
You're probably wasting your fingers, Jinx.Plunker, like most True Believers, subscribes to an over-simplistic One True Cause belief system where CO2 is the One True Cause. Given that starting point, they assume that everyone else must do the same. That's why they genuinely believe that:
All sceptics say CO2 has no effect, when in fact all he serious ones accept happily that it does.
All sceptics grasp every new development as "proof" that AGW isn't real, when what they're really doing is saying "look! (even) more evidence of problems with the theory"
All sceptics are consipracy theorising, right wing creationists. Which is odd because I'm an AGW sceptic and I'm about as right wing as Marx (Karl, not Groucho) and haven't bothered with god-bothering since prayers in junior school assembly because that's when I grew out of imaginary friends.
But it's natural and understandable for them to believe these things because they themselves aren't capable of grasping subtleties like "maybe it's lots of little things rather than One True Cause".
Which is why debating them is generally about as productive as trying to explain to a 2 year old why they shouldn't touch the gas ring instead of just keeping them away from it.
This isn't even in that category. It's in the 'sceptics spin new development into a problem for CO2-climate theory but isn't in the slightest' category
Ok enough - I don't think all sceptics are one way or the other.
plunker said:
Ok enough - I don't think all sceptics are one way or the other.
I don't think all believers are as I pained either - but a drive-by for a drive-by is fair 
I do think it's a shame that many of the most vocal on both sides seem to fit the stereotypes we've created though. That's why I have far more respect for people like Briffa and Spencer who've generally kept their heads down and tried to concentrate on the science rather than the politics and activism.
IainT said:
109er said:
Have been dipping in and reading this debate on and off for some time. Now, in yesterdays paper
a weather man using everything at hand admitted that they cannot say with certainty what the
weather would be like in 2-3 days time. The 'author' of the letter then stated 'If the powers that be
with all their equipment, records and charts cant forecast the weather with certainty 2-3 days ahead,
how can some of these so called 'experts' claim to say/tell what it will be like in 20-30 years time'.
I myself think he has a valid point
It's only a valid point if the underlying mechanisms that generate long-term trends are poorly understood and that understanding fails to produce models that reasonably mirror reality.a weather man using everything at hand admitted that they cannot say with certainty what the
weather would be like in 2-3 days time. The 'author' of the letter then stated 'If the powers that be
with all their equipment, records and charts cant forecast the weather with certainty 2-3 days ahead,
how can some of these so called 'experts' claim to say/tell what it will be like in 20-30 years time'.
I myself think he has a valid point
Short-term weather and long-term 'climate' should not be linked in terms of viability of prediction if we can view it in the light of the above.
TX.
IainT said:
109er said:
Have been dipping in and reading this debate on and off for some time. Now, in yesterdays paper
a weather man using everything at hand admitted that they cannot say with certainty what the
weather would be like in 2-3 days time. The 'author' of the letter then stated 'If the powers that be
with all their equipment, records and charts cant forecast the weather with certainty 2-3 days ahead,
how can some of these so called 'experts' claim to say/tell what it will be like in 20-30 years time'.
I myself think he has a valid point
It's only a valid point if the underlying mechanisms that generate long-term trends are poorly understood and that understanding fails to produce models that reasonably mirror reality.a weather man using everything at hand admitted that they cannot say with certainty what the
weather would be like in 2-3 days time. The 'author' of the letter then stated 'If the powers that be
with all their equipment, records and charts cant forecast the weather with certainty 2-3 days ahead,
how can some of these so called 'experts' claim to say/tell what it will be like in 20-30 years time'.
I myself think he has a valid point
Short-term weather and long-term 'climate' should not be linked in terms of viability of prediction if we can view it in the light of the above.
deeen said:
Great. So if the "underlying mechanisms" are understood now, why did the Earth go into the Ice Ages? And why did it come out of them?
Terminator X said:
I can take a guess at what the weather / climate may be in 5 days time or indeed 100 years; no one will know of course until either 5 days or 100 years have elapsed. I may even have a fancy model showing all sorts of fantastic colours and lines too. The honest answer is that they are guessing trying to predict the future, which is not possible.
TX.
I should avoid making subtle points on PH. Actually I didn't think it was all that subtle but I guess it was...TX.
For the record the key word, in two locations in my post, is if as we see obs not matching the outcome of that understanding (models) then the understanding is clearly not complete. Maybe I should have added a <sarcasm>...</sarcasm> tag? I think the HTML spec needs one...
In reality some of the mechanisms are reasonably well understood but much of it woefully lacking. We can't predict/model changes in PDO and AMO which are surely key to accurate modelling. There is large disagreement between two firmly entrenched camps on how much warming CO2 can and will cause - the feedbacks and complexity of other factors make correlating CO2 and temps nigh on impossible.
Terminator X said:
I can take a guess at what the weather / climate may be in 5 days time or indeed 100 years; no one will know of course until either 5 days or 100 years have elapsed. I may even have a fancy model showing all sorts of fantastic colours and lines too. The honest answer is that they are guessing trying to predict the future, which is not possible.
TX.
Of course it's possible to predict the future. Physics and chemistry are absolutely predictable. If you put chemical x with chemical y, the reaction will be the same every single time.TX.
There are countless examples of how computer models are used to 'predict the future'.
When they build skyscrapers they create models that will accurately predict how its structure will cope with the weight distribution, strong winds, earthquakes etc., and refine it accordingly. Those models are so reliable that we can now build wonderfully absurd structures like the Burj Khalifa.
The only time you can't rely on a computer model is when it doesn't include all the variables and it seems climate models need constant refinement to include the things they hadn't considered.
The principle of using them to predict the future climate, however, is by far the best solution we have.
durbster said:
The principle of using them to predict the future climate, however, is by far the best solution we have.
The problem with that approach is that by far the best solution I have to moving the static caravan in my garden down the road is my trusty Pug 405 because I don't own a flatbed. But, if I hook it up and head merrily down he A55, I will be (rightly) stopped and told not to be so bloody stupid.Sometimes "the best we have" simply isn't up to the job, in which case the job can't be done no maer how much we'd like to do it. Going by their results to date, that's exactly the situaion we're in with current climate models - they're not fit for purpose.
If it really matters as much as we're old then we should be concentrating on finding something that is fit for purpose rather than doggedly dragging the caravan down the road in a cloud of clutch smoke!
But that's the beauty of using software - you can update it. I'm going to guess that the models used to create the Burj Khalifa were rather more sophisticated than the computer models in the 1980s. 
There's absolutely no reason to think the climate models can't be improved to the point where they're absolutely reliable. It might take another 5, 10, 50 years but it's the right path to be on.
There's absolutely no reason to think the climate models can't be improved to the point where they're absolutely reliable. It might take another 5, 10, 50 years but it's the right path to be on.
durbster said:
Of course it's possible to predict the future. Physics and chemistry are absolutely predictable. If you put chemical x with chemical y, the reaction will be the same every single time.
There are countless examples of how computer models are used to 'predict the future'.
When they build skyscrapers they create models that will accurately predict how its structure will cope with the weight distribution, strong winds, earthquakes etc., and refine it accordingly. Those models are so reliable that we can now build wonderfully absurd structures like the Burj Khalifa.
The only time you can't rely on a computer model is when it doesn't include all the variables and it seems climate models need constant refinement to include the things they hadn't considered.
The principle of using them to predict the future climate, however, is by far the best solution we have.
Solution or tool?There are countless examples of how computer models are used to 'predict the future'.
When they build skyscrapers they create models that will accurately predict how its structure will cope with the weight distribution, strong winds, earthquakes etc., and refine it accordingly. Those models are so reliable that we can now build wonderfully absurd structures like the Burj Khalifa.
The only time you can't rely on a computer model is when it doesn't include all the variables and it seems climate models need constant refinement to include the things they hadn't considered.
The principle of using them to predict the future climate, however, is by far the best solution we have.
for practical purposes the Burj Khalifa (along with a lot of large scale modern architecture in rich countries) is a solution to a vanity project. What it provides in terms of the accommodation of a building could have been provided in other ways. In itself it is not a solution to a need problem but it is an engineered solution to a vanity problem of some sort that, as a byproduct of the work put in, more or less seems to satisfy the basic hypothetical need. Just not very cost effectively.
It is hardly the first example of its kind. There have been many engineering feats (for their time) over the past 10 thousand years or so, some of which survive to this day and many of which may have have some practical purpose but were in fact intended to be or became vanity projects. They may offer a tool to assess problems of the era in which they were engineered but as a solution may not have been so efficient or effective as their promoters claimed, even in their day.
At least those projects were relatively local (or perhaps I should say the ones that have survived in some way so that they could be re-discovered in later times) and had some visible and testable result for the engineering success even if we don't know or fully understand their original purpose or the "problem" they were trying to solve. In fact we tend to assume there was a real problem when in fact the need that drove the work may have been no more than vanity.
Still, there is little new under the Sun as they say. Alchemists spent centuries persuading people (much of the time) that they knew (more or less) how to turn "base metal" into gold. There was always some hidden missing secret link that meant they could not quite turn the theory into successful understanding and production. It seems there were always enough rich and powerful people who wanted to believe it could be done and were prepared to give money (and stature) to those who claimed to have the 'best tool for the job' for a handful of chancers to become wealthy and influential in their time without ever having a chance of success in their endeavours despite having "the best tools available" at the time.
durbster said:
But that's the beauty of using software - you can update it. I'm going to guess that the models used to create the Burj Khalifa were rather more sophisticated than the computer models in the 1980s.
There's absolutely no reason to think the climate models can't be improved to the point where they're absolutely reliable. It might take another 5, 10, 50 years but it's the right path to be on.
There actually are technical reasons to think that they might not be improved to that point. There's absolutely no reason to think the climate models can't be improved to the point where they're absolutely reliable. It might take another 5, 10, 50 years but it's the right path to be on.
The climate is a chaotic system which means that even though you can, in theory, predict its behaviour, any such prediction is extremely sensitive to the "staring conditions" of the model. That means that if you initialise it with, say, one grid cell's temperature wrong by any amount - even 0.01 degree - then, over time, the entire model will move away from reality and that divergence will become more rapid as it goes on.
This isn't a new problem, it's been known about since Lorenz' original work on climate simulations back in the 1960s - he came up wih the famous butterfly analogy to illustrate it - and the trouble is that, in a chaoic system, simply throwing more computing power at the problem will never solve it.
Given that global climate data is a mess, and (for example) temperatures are only ever measured with an accuracy of +/- 1/2 degree or so in the first place, it's likely that no matter how much the models are developed they will never hold true into the long term.
durbster said:
But that's the beauty of using software - you can update it. I'm going to guess that the models used to create the Burj Khalifa were rather more sophisticated than the computer models in the 1980s.
There's absolutely no reason to think the climate models can't be improved to the point where they're absolutely reliable. It might take another 5, 10, 50 years but it's the right path to be on.
So what you are saying is that we should not trust models now,but some time in the future we may be able to.....and here was I thinking the science was settled and all the windmills built and coal fired power stations shut down was based on a known certainty.There's absolutely no reason to think the climate models can't be improved to the point where they're absolutely reliable. It might take another 5, 10, 50 years but it's the right path to be on.
Do you accept that the system may be to complex to model over a short time scale ?
Do we have enough sensors to measure the variables, do we know all the variables and their interaction with each other, how do you forecast the effect of say a volcanic eruption and if you cannot is not the end result nothing more than a guess.
I am so waiting for the time that it will be proven that the best thing we ever did for the biosphere was enrich it with CO2 (that had previously been sequested under ground and out of reach). Any possible negative effects will be shown to be based on poorly designed models and a lack of understanding over the true climate drivers......
durbster said:
But that's the beauty of using software - you can update it. I'm going to guess that the models used to create the Burj Khalifa were rather more sophisticated than the computer models in the 1980s.
There's absolutely no reason to think the climate models can't be improved to the point where they're absolutely reliable. It might take another 5, 10, 50 years but it's the right path to be on.
The Earth's climate has shifted massively in the past with no human intervention - far more than any climate shift we have seen of late. This throws up several questionsThere's absolutely no reason to think the climate models can't be improved to the point where they're absolutely reliable. It might take another 5, 10, 50 years but it's the right path to be on.
1. How do we distinguish between a natural climate shift and one induced by humans?
2. What happens if one of these shifts occurs quite naturally - do we let it go or try and stop it?
3. Is a human induced climate shift necessarily worse than a natural one?
Even if we can predict the climate with greater accuracy than today - that still doesn't mean we will have control over it.
Moonhawk said:
The Earth's climate has shifted massively in the past with no human intervention - far more than any climate shift we have seen of late. This throws up several questions
1. How do we distinguish between a natural climate shift and one induced by humans?
2. What happens if one of these shifts occurs quite naturally - do we let it go or try and stop it?
3. Is a human induced climate shift necessarily worse than a natural one?
Even if we can predict the climate with greater accuracy than today - that still doesn't mean we will have control over it.
1. By studying it, coming up with theories and testing them.1. How do we distinguish between a natural climate shift and one induced by humans?
2. What happens if one of these shifts occurs quite naturally - do we let it go or try and stop it?
3. Is a human induced climate shift necessarily worse than a natural one?
Even if we can predict the climate with greater accuracy than today - that still doesn't mean we will have control over it.
2. If it threatens our survival, of course we try and stop it.
3. No.
durbster said:
2. If it threatens our survival, of course we try and stop it.
Really dangerous territory though - I get very worried when we hear people blathering on about how we should be geo-engineering to "protect" the climate. Frying pan to deep-freeze springs to mind.It's far better to adapt to the environment than alter it. Better to relocate, to change food production, etc.
IainT said:
Really dangerous territory though - I get very worried when we hear people blathering on about how we should be geo-engineering to "protect" the climate. Frying pan to deep-freeze springs to mind.
It's far better to adapt to the environment than alter it. Better to relocate, to change food production, etc.
Oh, I totally agree. Our track record at "improving" environments rather than adapting to them is catastrophic (see: Australia) but if we find ourselves in a situation where it's annihilation or having a go, I'd rather we had a go It's far better to adapt to the environment than alter it. Better to relocate, to change food production, etc.
For example, with the very real prospect of a global food shortage in my lifetime, I say bring on the GM crops (and/or permanent Mars settlement
).durbster said:
Oh, I totally agree. Our track record at "improving" environments rather than adapting to them is catastrophic (see: Australia) but if we find ourselves in a situation where it's annihilation or having a go, I'd rather we had a go
For example, with the very real prospect of a global food shortage in my lifetime, I say bring on the GM crops (and/or permanent Mars settlement).
No there isn't unless one is engineered by making energy and transportation prohibitively expensive.For example, with the very real prospect of a global food shortage in my lifetime, I say bring on the GM crops (and/or permanent Mars settlement
).durbster said:
IainT said:
Really dangerous territory though - I get very worried when we hear people blathering on about how we should be geo-engineering to "protect" the climate. Frying pan to deep-freeze springs to mind.
It's far better to adapt to the environment than alter it. Better to relocate, to change food production, etc.
Oh, I totally agree. Our track record at "improving" environments rather than adapting to them is catastrophic (see: Australia) but if we find ourselves in a situation where it's annihilation or having a go, I'd rather we had a go It's far better to adapt to the environment than alter it. Better to relocate, to change food production, etc.
For example, with the very real prospect of a global food shortage in my lifetime, I say bring on the GM crops (and/or permanent Mars settlement
).durbster said:
For example, with the very real prospect of a global food shortage in my lifetime, I say bring on the GM crops (and/or permanent Mars settlement ).
We had that one back in the 70s as well. Humanity was supposed to be all but wiped out by 1980. A coming Ice age and increasing population were fingered.).I seem to recall the names Ehrlich and Schnieder amongst the leaders of the cause back then.
Jinx said:
durbster said:
Oh, I totally agree. Our track record at "improving" environments rather than adapting to them is catastrophic (see: Australia) but if we find ourselves in a situation where it's annihilation or having a go, I'd rather we had a go
For example, with the very real prospect of a global food shortage in my lifetime, I say bring on the GM crops (and/or permanent Mars settlement).
No there isn't unless one is engineered by making energy and transportation prohibitively expensive.For example, with the very real prospect of a global food shortage in my lifetime, I say bring on the GM crops (and/or permanent Mars settlement
).
t we are that dumb! 
I'd have cited the Aral Sea and the surrounding dust bowl as a better example of how not to geo-engineer stuff than Australia, (assuming you're referring to the Murray/Darling basin)the aussies just need to control water abstraction or start desalinating, whereas the russkies have properly screwed the pooch and there doesn't seem to be a way back.
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