Climate Change - The Scientific Debate (Vol. II)

Climate Change - The Scientific Debate (Vol. II)

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Discussion

plunker

542 posts

128 months

Tuesday 8th November 2016
quotequote all
PRTVR said:
Rhyolith said:
I am well aware of the repetition.



Edited by Rhyolith on Tuesday 8th November 13:56


Edited by Rhyolith on Tuesday 8th November 13:58


Edited by Rhyolith on Tuesday 8th November 13:58
So what was your name in your previous existence on this site ?
You are one of the few people who after a month of being here mastered multiple replies in a single post, so who are you?
noob! biggrin


LongQ

13,864 posts

235 months

Tuesday 8th November 2016
quotequote all
Rhyolith said:
jshell said:
Well there's one thing, you've certainly read all of the pamphlets. Everything you have mentioned has been dealt with or previously discussed time and time again on these pages. Almost everything you mention has been comprehensively debunked but I imagine posters are fatigued with going around in endless circles. You mention nothing new, nothing really relevant, nothing that adds weight to the argument - it's just rinse, lather, repeat. Even to the point of the stupid 97% consensus, FFS!

I'm going to give you just one example: The myth that Climate Change will slow down or stop the Gulf stream and plunge Europe into an ice age: http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/
I am well aware of the repetition. The thing is that a lot people still don't seem to understand the basic reasons that climate change is such a widely accepted theory, so I think its needs going over again.

I don't actually know where the 97% figure comes from, e.g. what is defined as "agreeing with human climate change", etc. Which is why I am dubious about using it and clearly used the term "apparently".

That article you posted is not a scientific one, language its written in makes this clear from the get go. I have given some more specific examples in case that is not enough for you.

1. They have no data, only references to more publications all by the same author or from the same intuition, which is not permitted for obvious reasons in actual peer reviewed journals. "Using observations and climate models" what observations? what climate models? Where is the data?

2."This would leave the temperature contrast across the Atlantic unchanged and not plunge Europe back into the ice age or anything like it." "Plunge" Europe back into an ice age? It is currently a subject of scientific debated to wether its technically an "ice age" whenever there is an ice cap anywhere on the globe. As here are currently two that would put us in one now. A scientist doing proper research into this field would be aware of this debate and not use the term without defining which definition they are using. The article clearly has no awareness this debate is even happening (so is not an expert in the field).

3."The determinants of North Atlantic regional climates
We showed that there are three processes that need to be evaluated:" No they haven't, where is the data and interpretation backing up this claim?

"The ocean absorbs heat in summer and releases it in winter." (this is supported by science) "Regions that are downwind of oceans in winter will have mild climates." (errr... massively oversimplified, not really useful) "This process does not require ocean currents or ocean heat transport." (this is a meaningless statement... why would it require anything? I assume they are trying to say ocean currents don't transport heat... which is not supported by science).

"The atmosphere moves heat poleward and warm climates where the heat converges. In additions, the waviness in the atmospheric flow creates warm climates where the air flows poleward and cold climates where it flows equator ward." (this is ridiculously over simplified, to the point of being not supported by science. The movement of heat is not even over the whole globe, indeed its very uneven and complicated and cannot be reduced to something as simple as that).

"The ocean moves heat poleward and will warm climates where it releases heat and the atmosphere picks it up and moves it onto land." (the ocean does not always move the heat poleward... the atmosphere can too and the two often work in tandem.)

A key part of their argument is that the wind direction is predominantly in the same direction as the gulf stream and thus that is what is responsible for the movement of warm air to Europe. Why do you thing the wind is prominently in that direction? Because the guid stream is there and vice versa, its all one system. If one shuts down or is disrupted then the whole thing gets effected.




Your clearly not a scientist (no offence intended) and the article you referenced is not scientific either. My point stands.
The author of the non-scientific article.

Richard Seager is a senior research scientist at
Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory. After obtaining his Ph.D. from
Columbia in 1990, Seager held postdoctoral positions at Lamont-Doherty and at the University of
Washington in Seattle. His current research interests include the causes of extratropical drought,
the climate of the last millennium and the experimental prediction of decadal variability in climate.


So, on that basis of what is and is not a scientific article, we could come up with a list of oft referred to cites that would qualify for the same negative opinion from out new friend.

We could, perhaps, start with the IPCC reports? Even the incumbent author there have admitted that they are mainly political.

One thing Rhyolith does seem ot have right is that the Science of Climate Change is pretty much dead.

Long ago those who took the lead in what might be termed "Warmism" showed a leaning towards working with political influence, recognising that without that nothing much was likely to happen.

No doubt they also spotted, being rather "bright" people, that politicians like missions and gravy trains and will start both given half an idea for something that might be to their benefit in one way or another.

They also tend, in their careers as politicians, not to be very deep thinkers about anything other than what is good for them.

This is, of course, a generalisation, but not a bad one in my opinion.

Probably 97% true.




Rhyolith

124 posts

92 months

Tuesday 8th November 2016
quotequote all
LongQ said:
The author of the non-scientific article.

Richard Seager is a senior research scientist at
Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory. After obtaining his Ph.D. from
Columbia in 1990, Seager held postdoctoral positions at Lamont-Doherty and at the University of
Washington in Seattle. His current research interests include the causes of extratropical drought,
the climate of the last millennium and the experimental prediction of decadal variability in climate.


The qualifications of the author don't make it a scientific paper, but the standards applied while collecting data, interpreting the data and writing it up. It needs to be written using a standard scientific format with any interpretations backed up by clearly displayed data and/or citations (citing ONLY your own papers as that article does is not legit, I think the reason why is fairly obvious). This paper does not do this.

LongQ said:
So, on that basis of what is and is not a scientific article, we could come up with a list of oft referred to cites that would qualify for the same negative opinion from out new friend.

We could, perhaps, start with the IPCC reports? Even the incumbent author there have admitted that they are mainly political.

The IPCC is a report written to help governments understand the current scientific consensus on climate change. Its well recognised by British Universities, scientific organisations and individual scientists. Could you reference what the IPCC author said?

LongQ said:
One thing Rhyolith does seem ot have right is that the Science of Climate Change is pretty much dead.

The debate on whether human induced climate change is real has ended due to the current level of consensus. Climate science is certainly not dead!

LongQ said:
Long ago those who took the lead in what might be termed "Warmism" showed a leaning towards working with political influence, recognising that without that nothing much was likely to happen..

So your saying people who believe humans can/are causing global warming are politically bent? Some almost certainly are, whereas others won't be just like with an other topic. This is the whole point of a scientific peer review system... challenge its integrity all you want, its still as objective and scientific as your gonna get.

LongQ said:
No doubt they also spotted, being rather "bright" people, that politicians like missions and gravy trains and will start both given half an idea for something that might be to their benefit in one way or another..

They also tend, in their careers as politicians, not to be very deep thinkers about anything other than what is good for them.

This is, of course, a generalisation, but not a bad one in my opinion.
So climate change has only become such a mainstream theory because politicians push it for there own gain? What about the media (news papers, etc), they have pushed it as a major crisis way more than politicians and this is ignored. I will agree that CC is overhyped as the world ending disaster, when in reality its just going to make life generally harder (not just for humans). This is typical sensationalism and undermines the scientists who make a lot effort to make their findings as objective as possible. Which is why I decide to take my views on the topic from the scientists and essentially ignore politicians and the media on the subject... cause your right they just twist it to their own gains (publicity and dramatic stories).




Most forums seem to use largely same formatting system thats on here, so I was already familiar with it smile

Edited by Rhyolith on Tuesday 8th November 22:32


Edited by Rhyolith on Tuesday 8th November 22:33


Edited by Rhyolith on Tuesday 8th November 22:34


Edited by Rhyolith on Tuesday 8th November 22:35

Toltec

7,166 posts

225 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all
Picking up on something posted earlier is the critical issue the rate of change rather than the degree of change?

I am talking in an ecological sense not inconvenience to humans.

plunker

542 posts

128 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all
Rhyolith said:
LongQ said:
The author of the non-scientific article.

Richard Seager is a senior research scientist at
Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth
Observatory. After obtaining his Ph.D. from
Columbia in 1990, Seager held postdoctoral positions at Lamont-Doherty and at the University of
Washington in Seattle. His current research interests include the causes of extratropical drought,
the climate of the last millennium and the experimental prediction of decadal variability in climate.


The qualifications of the author don't make it a scientific paper, but the standards applied while collecting data, interpreting the data and writing it up. It needs to be written using a standard scientific format with any interpretations backed up by clearly displayed data and/or citations (citing ONLY your own papers as that article does is not legit, I think the reason why is fairly obvious). This paper does not do this.
This is odd - I can only assume you haven't seen the link near the top to Seager's 2002 paper which is the research he's discussing informally in the article. At 24 pages it's quite long and there's 32 citations, none of which are self-citations (though I'm not quite sure why that's a bad thing).

It's here if you still can't see the link in the article:

http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/pubs/S...

I would add that I don't necessarily agree with Jshell who in haste to score points thinks this is the last word on the subject. There's been subsequent work that partly agrees and partly disagrees etc so not exactly 'settled science'. Some discussion of that here:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-sim...








Jinx

11,410 posts

262 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all
Toltec said:
Picking up on something posted earlier is the critical issue the rate of change rather than the degree of change?

I am talking in an ecological sense not inconvenience to humans.
No different from the rate of change in the early part of last century (at least until the last lot of "revisions" )

durbster

10,311 posts

224 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all
Toltec said:
Picking up on something posted earlier is the critical issue the rate of change rather than the degree of change?

I am talking in an ecological sense not inconvenience to humans.
Actually I think it's mainly about inconvenience to humans, although that's understating it. The infrastructure we have built is not at all portable, so if the environment changes rapidly, we do not have the ability to adapt to it.

robinessex

11,089 posts

183 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all

Jinx

11,410 posts

262 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all
durbster said:
Actually I think it's mainly about inconvenience to humans, although that's understating it. The infrastructure we have built is not at all portable, so if the environment changes rapidly, we do not have the ability to adapt to it.
Nonsense. From any measure humanity is prospering in a warmer climate.

Rhyolith

124 posts

92 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all
Toltec said:
Picking up on something posted earlier is the critical issue the rate of change rather than the degree of change?

I am talking in an ecological sense not inconvenience to humans.
Yes.

plunker said:
This is odd - I can only assume you haven't seen the link near the top to Seager's 2002 paper which is the research he's discussing informally in the article. At 24 pages it's quite long and there's 32 citations, none of which are self-citations (though I'm not quite sure why that's a bad thing).

It's here if you still can't see the link in the article:

http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/pubs/S...
Yes, thats way better! Their conclusion seems to be that ocean based heat transport does not account for the for the extent for the temperature differences between North America and Europe (oversimplified), which is interesting. I would have to have more climate science specific knowledge and expertise than I do to challenge a paper like this, or even to know if I want to!

(I still stand by that the earlier cited article (the one this one is cited in) is not a scientific paper btw.)

plunker said:
I would add that I don't necessarily agree with Jshell who in haste to score points thinks this is the last word on the subject. There's been subsequent work that partly agrees and partly disagrees etc so not exactly 'settled science'. Some discussion of that here:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-sim...
I agree. It certainly challenges the 'Cold Britain' theory as a possible effect of the melting of the Greenland ice sheet and the relative importance of the gulf stream to Britain's warm climate, but does not just end the discussion.




Has anyone aware of a paper like this that challenges that theory human of human induced global warming (or more likely one of it s components)?

robinessex

11,089 posts

183 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all
durbster said:
Toltec said:
Picking up on something posted earlier is the critical issue the rate of change rather than the degree of change?

I am talking in an ecological sense not inconvenience to humans.
Actually I think it's mainly about inconvenience to humans, although that's understating it. The infrastructure we have built is not at all portable, so if the environment changes rapidly, we do not have the ability to adapt to it.
Of course. Bloody obvious us humans can't accomodate an average temperature rise of 1ºC in a 100 yrs. We're all gonna frizzle up !!!!!

Rhyolith

124 posts

92 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all
Jinx said:
Nonsense. From any measure humanity is prospering in a warmer climate.
Give an example.

Rhyolith

124 posts

92 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all
robinessex said:
Of course. Bloody obvious us humans can't accomodate an average temperature rise of 1ºC in a 100 yrs. We're all gonna frizzle up !!!!!
Its not the 1 degree rise in of itself thats the issue, its the climatic impacts of that temperature rise. For example, will it result in more flooding, bigger deserts, higher sea levels? The answer is not simple at all, you can see just how complicated answering just one such question is in the paper about the gulf stream above.

Toltec

7,166 posts

225 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all
I have, briefly, looked at some of the ice core data from Antartica on http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatol...

While past temperature cannot be directly measured I understand it and a host of other climatic data can be inferred from the measurements. On a relatively brief inspection the data sets span back up to 800K years with sample rates between a couple of decades to a couple of thousand years. There are some sets for the last thousand years or so with decadal samples and there are sets spanning several hundred thousand years with 100 to 1000 years samples. I could not find anything going back ten to twenty thousand years at all, never mind with decadal or at least two or three sample per century.

It was a quick look and I may just not have found it, what I am interested in is data that decadal or better sample rates over the last 10 or 20 thousand years.

This site http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/the-big-picture-6...

has graphs for some of the ice cores showing large fluctuations, but the sample rates are low. The recent temperature changes are shown over the last fifty years so without historic data sampled at 10 to 20 years intervals it is hard to tell if the fluctuations we are seeing now are unusual or not.


robinessex

11,089 posts

183 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all
Rhyolith said:
robinessex said:
Of course. Bloody obvious us humans can't accomodate an average temperature rise of 1ºC in a 100 yrs. We're all gonna frizzle up !!!!!
Its not the 1 degree rise in of itself thats the issue, its the climatic impacts of that temperature rise. For example, will it result in more flooding, bigger deserts, higher sea levels? The answer is not simple at all, you can see just how complicated answering just one such question is in the paper about the gulf stream above.
Ok. Proove it. And the create the opposite, a 1ºC drop. And assess the impacts of that. I know which I prefer. And we're going to get one or the other, because the planets temperature isn't fixed. Oh bugger !! Create more CO2? No, hang on, lets create less!! Oh st, no ones knows. Let's go down the pub for a beer instead!

Rhyolith

124 posts

92 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all
Toltec said:
I have, briefly, looked at some of the ice core data from Antartica on http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatol...

While past temperature cannot be directly measured I understand it and a host of other climatic data can be inferred from the measurements. On a relatively brief inspection the data sets span back up to 800K years with sample rates between a couple of decades to a couple of thousand years. There are some sets for the last thousand years or so with decadal samples and there are sets spanning several hundred thousand years with 100 to 1000 years samples. I could not find anything going back ten to twenty thousand years at all, never mind with decadal or at least two or three sample per century.

It was a quick look and I may just not have found it, what I am interested in is data that decadal or better sample rates over the last 10 or 20 thousand years.

This site http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/the-big-picture-6...

has graphs for some of the ice cores showing large fluctuations, but the sample rates are low. The recent temperature changes are shown over the last fifty years so without historic data sampled at 10 to 20 years intervals it is hard to tell if the fluctuations we are seeing now are unusual or not.
What your talking is known as "data resolution" amongst scientists. The maxium data resolution that can be onbtained generally goes down the further back in history you go.

There is a lot of uncertainity in regards to trying to gain measurments of past climate. The evidence we have (as far as I am aware) strongly suggests that climate range as rapid as the last century is unusual.

A sizable portion of it is inferred, for example: If there is a valley that used to have a glacier in it, we can date the glacail deposits, which means we know when there was glacier there. That tells us something about the climate, mainly it was cold enough to have glaciers. Build up lots of information like that and there is your climatic history.

I do think there is a geniune scientific debate on the above on just how unusaul the current climate trend is. However it does not change the scienctific understanding we produce CO2 (along with destroying carbon sinks like forests), that turn leads to warmer global temperatures, that puts on planet wide ecosystems and peoples. And as of the moment, what past climate data we have suggests this climate change is unusaul.






Edited by Rhyolith on Wednesday 9th November 12:35


Edited by Rhyolith on Wednesday 9th November 12:38

Rhyolith

124 posts

92 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all
robinessex said:
Ok. Proove it. And the create the opposite, a 1ºC drop. And assess the impacts of that. I know which I prefer. And we're going to get one or the other, because the planets temperature isn't fixed. Oh bugger !! Create more CO2? No, hang on, lets create less!! Oh st, no ones knows. Let's go down the pub for a beer instead!
You really have no faith in science at all do you...

Jinx

11,410 posts

262 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all
Rhyolith said:
There is a lot of uncertainity in regards to trying to gain measurments of past climate. The evidence we have (as far as I am aware) strongly suggests that climate range as rapid as the last century is unusual.
If your resolution is in 100 year chunks then you have no evidence of the changes within those hundred years. So all you have is an average over 100 years (your resolution) . You need to average the last 100 years temperature record to then compare (a single point of data) - now compare that with the historic 100 year resolutions......

Does it look so unusual now?

Terminator X

15,228 posts

206 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all
Rhyolith said:
robinessex said:
Of course. Bloody obvious us humans can't accomodate an average temperature rise of 1ºC in a 100 yrs. We're all gonna frizzle up !!!!!
Its not the 1 degree rise in of itself thats the issue, its the climatic impacts of that temperature rise. For example, will it result in more flooding, bigger deserts, higher sea levels? The answer is not simple at all, you can see just how complicated answering just one such question is in the paper about the gulf stream above.
Sea levels are tied to glacial periods aren't they? We're still coming out of the last one so sea levels are on the rise and have been for 20,000 (?) years.

TX.

plunker

542 posts

128 months

Wednesday 9th November 2016
quotequote all
Toltec said:
I have, briefly, looked at some of the ice core data from Antartica on http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatol...

While past temperature cannot be directly measured I understand it and a host of other climatic data can be inferred from the measurements. On a relatively brief inspection the data sets span back up to 800K years with sample rates between a couple of decades to a couple of thousand years. There are some sets for the last thousand years or so with decadal samples and there are sets spanning several hundred thousand years with 100 to 1000 years samples. I could not find anything going back ten to twenty thousand years at all, never mind with decadal or at least two or three sample per century.

It was a quick look and I may just not have found it, what I am interested in is data that decadal or better sample rates over the last 10 or 20 thousand years.

This site http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/the-big-picture-6...

has graphs for some of the ice cores showing large fluctuations, but the sample rates are low. The recent temperature changes are shown over the last fifty years so without historic data sampled at 10 to 20 years intervals it is hard to tell if the fluctuations we are seeing now are unusual or not.
You can't do a direct comparison between temperature change in ice core records and global temps because ice cores are regional temperature proxies and there's higher variation at the regional level (especially at high latitudes) than the global average.

That leaves you looking at the controversial area of global temperature reconstructions that are derived from multiple proxy sources with weighting methods etc but you aren't going to find one with the resolution you want.

Marcott et al 2013 is a recent one and is I think the first to attempt a reconstruction of the entire holocene (11k yrs).

http://content.csbs.utah.edu/~mli/Economics%207004...





Edited by plunker on Wednesday 9th November 13:54