Climate Change?

Lol. Whatever dude. I have a science degree. Thanks for the shoutout.

 

The question is, are we refuting scientific research or just stating what other scientists have concluded? Not every scientist agrees that climate change is greatly influenced by mankind. Some concluded that it is mostly natural. Some of them actually lay it out in easy to read format so that there is no need to be a scientist.

Your claim that the science is pretty solid is quite curious since I read something from a top scientist that doesn't really support that.

Yes, it may be quite clear that humans have contributed but it seems equally clear that they have no idea as to what extent.

 

Yikes.

This is part of the problem. You don't take a ridiculously complex system like the global climate and boil it down to a few bullet points. It's problematic (on both sides of the issue). When you oversimplify, it makes it more likely that people who aren't familiar with the data will think they are familiar with it and will make their erroneous conclusions. And then it becomes arguing about which scientist you believe as opposed to the research itself.

The beauty of science is that it's not an "opinion" about who is right or wrong. Anyone can go look at the data. Anyone can gather contradictory data. Anyone can plot the graphs and look at the error bars and track the errors of a model system.

But if you line up a few hundred climatologists, I guarantee you would find dozens who disagree with the conclusions of the IPCC report. The question is to what degree do they disagree, and why?

Much of the blame for these misunderstandings come from the media and the politicians. Some of the blame comes from an uneducated public who doesn't have the ability or the time to understand the information. And some of the blame comes from scientists (on both sides) who feel that - in order to get their "message" out there - exaggerate to gain the attention of the politicians and the media.

When I tell you the research is solid, I'm talking about the entire body of research. I question some of the analyses being used. I question some of the confidence intervals they put around some of the models. I question the accuracy of some of the models given the lack of overall data. But this is not new information, and this information is not being "hidden" from the public. It's all out there for those who care to read it. But overall, it's good work. I know people who have contributed to the reports. They're not bad people. They don't have an agenda. They aren't in this for money or fame. They are fascinated by a specific area of research. (For example, one of them works on amount and type of forest cover in Peru and its possible effect on climate.) He's a bright guy, and he does good work. He's not "out to get" fossil fuel companies. He's not interested in anything but his work and furthering his field's understanding of climatology.




I guess I could probably sum up my feelings on the entire topic with the following two comics:

 

Oof. "I don't think climate change should be political but I'm going to bring up a political party at least two times in this discussion". And 31000 scientists (not sure if they're even climate-related scientists. Does a physicist who studies string theory count as relevant in that petition?) probably does come to 97% of climate-related scientists agreeing that it's real. Looks like a big number, but it's a relative thing.

And as the second image in Cappy's post points out, why don't we want to become less reliant on fossil fuels? Why don't we want to recycle more efficiently when we live on a planet with finite resources? If it somehow turned out to be a hoax, and Peyton Manning doesn't make the Hall of Fame, then it's a hoax that sure did benefit society in the long term luckily.

 

So are you trying to say that you think the majority of climate change is caused by mankind?

 

I really don't think anyone is saying we shouldn't pollute less, find alternative energy, reduce mans footprint in the environment so to say. I wish we could rely more on wind, solar, hydro, etc. and in effect use less fossil fuels. I can at the same time believe that nature has a much greater effect on climate change than mankind. These are not 2 issues that walk in lockstep with each other, that is just a silly argument made by some on one side of the issue.

Now the 97% figure, lets examine that. That number was come up with by some who chose to use the term “climate denier” in their abstract, should give you an idea of their point of view right off the bat. They chose how many authored reports was sufficient to be called a climate researcher, that number just happened to knock out 80% of the scientists that disagree with anthropogenic climate change but less than 10% who agree with ACC. Do scientists really need to author 20 papers on the subject to have a grasp of it? Are they not able to have an opinion on the subject from reviewing others papers?

 

Climate change is such silliness. Basically: temp averages have risen over last century and instead of that being natural, they assign it to humans. Of course there have been about 40 million centuries throughout the earths history during which temps have risen or fallen, and 15,000 years ago there were huge ice sheets across the top half of North America which somehow melted up to the current arctic before naughty cars and planes spewed CO2, but somehow only this century's warming is unnatural....got it.....


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http://www.climate.gov/news-features/features/five-things-know-about-2014-global-temperatures

As of Oct 24th 2014 was the warmest year on record. The October 2013 to September 2014 12 month period *is* the warmest on record.

 

"Warmest on record" being warmest the last 100 years? 150 years?
Can't exactly count years no one was actually out there with a thermometer now can we?

And just saying it is the warmest on record does not give any further evidence that humankind is the major cause of the warming.

I was also just looking at another source and while I am not a scientist it looks like the running 13 month average was higher back in the late 90's and again 2010

 

Been cold as fucking balls around here for about a week, just putting the data out there.

 

The point is that this much snow is almost certainly a result of global warming.

Why? Because it takes water vapor in the atmosphere to make snow. Water vapor that has been handily tied up at the poles and in the highlands in the form of glaciers and pack ice for millennia at this point. When you have as much free-floating water vapor in the atmosphere as we have now the areas that do not tend towards drought get overwhelmed with storm surges like this one.

The cold air is always there in the northern hemisphere at this point of the annual cycle, although it has often been contained by the polar vortex, only occasionally coming this far south across a massive front. Now it is no longer contained because temperatures in the Arctic have been higher over the last several years than the norm. This has caused arctic air patterns to seep further south and created colder winter temperatures for the Central US, Northeast US, Scandinavia and Western Russia.

http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

This is something that has happened over time and like most climate-related events we're only seeing the biggest effects after the pattern has been in play for a fairly long time, since 1996 roughly in the Arctic. It takes a long time for the amount of water that the two poles and the mountain glaciers held to become freed and really put into play. Even the refreezes, when they occur are shallower and less packed than the millennial accumulation that melted away in the first place.

Whether all of this is good or bad remains to be seen but it is unwise in the extreme to assume that a warmer world is going to be better for humanity. It may be better but it also may be much worse. Taking measures to reduce our impact on the effect is the wise course of action. It creates the lowest vector effects and will reduce the speed of the onset of whatever is next.

Human society is not structured to handle heavy impacts like this smoothly. All the ancient societies were eventually brought low by significant climactic changes that they failed to adapt too, in some cases because they didn't realize the effect was there until it was too late and in others because they didn't realize what their contribution to the effect was and were unable to get out of the way when it landed on them.

 

That was the point of your last post (which you haven't responded about)? Or just something to distract from the way your last post got hammered into the sand with a hippo butt?

 

I didn't specifically want to call out his chart as inaccurate. Here's the NOAA chart complete with the calculator that runs it: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/cag/time-series/global/globe/land_ocean/12/9/1880-2014.

It says the 2009-2010 Oct-Sept was .65C above normal and 2013-2014 Oct-Sept was .67C above normal.

It says the 1997-1998 Oct-Sept was .66C above normal.

The differences are close enough that it didn't seem worthwhile specifically calling out his chart as inaccurate. The NOAA, which has the job of tracking this stuff, says that Oct 2013 to Sept 2014 is the warmest 12 month Oct-Sept span on record and I'm not going to dispute them given they do this for a living.

The overall issue isn't one that lends itself well to catcalls from the sidelines. Funny idiots who don't look at the issue really hard are part of the problem.

Not that I consider you an idiot but the other half definitely applies.

Edit: actually looking at the month by month tabulations it appears that Oct 2013 to Sept 2014 *was* the warmest 12 month period in the database extending back to 1880.

 

Let me be more specific. You made a post about 2013-2014 being the warmest year on record, and never fucking bothered to answer about how we only have about a century and a half of reliable temperature records.

Dude, the more of these science posts that I read from you, the more I realize that you just latch onto whatever shit supports your argument, before you just give up.

But I guess we've been down that road before.

I'm not suggesting that there isn't a warming trend or climate change trend that can be supported. I just think that you don't do very well when it comes to those arguments.

Come to think of it, that applies to pretty much any politically motivated post you make.

 

Maybe so, but that's better than being an asshole debater, which is the only frame of reference you use in this type of argument.

Maybe you should have stayed banned. Keep fucking around and I'm sure you'll get there.

And yeah, I'm done with you.

 

Sad day in America.