“climate change delivered by the postmanâ€

Re: “climate change delivered by the postman”

I have been following along quietly, but when I look at this graph, I wonder how it is possible to know within a fraction of a degree the climate of 600 years ago. How is this done, and how is it known to be that accurate?

 

See the link in the prior post.

 

Thanks. Got it and read the chapter on tree ring reconstruction.

Wow, that is one long chain of calculations, based on models, assumed to be correctly compensated for non-climate factors. I can see where Tim is holding an interesting position. Since it is impossible for one person to analyze and validate/invalidate every study and model, then the overall report must be considered valid until shown otherwise....but no way one person can do this.

This is important to me since there are now official scientific meetings discussing "active" measures to "fight" global warming. Cloud seeding, ocean seeding of iron, Areosol management, etc. are all being actively discussed. I certainly hope we do not start polluting the ocean with scrap metal because the larger scientific community thought consensus was accuracy.

 

And most telling of all, different unrelated methods. Tree rings, bore hole sounding and glacier temperature validation, just to name three. They all independently conclude that the earth is warming at a rate unprecedented in human history.

 

Re: “climate change delivered by the postman”

No you do not have to resort to trust. You can still analyze, question, criticize, and evaluate.....continously. What Tim Bikes is continually doing is just that. Sure he can be thought of as being on the wrong side of the fence, but I have got to support someone who continues to think for themselves intelligently.

My father in law had ulcers. He was continually prescribed stress medications....even though he had nothing stressing him. Turns out ALL the experts on ulcers were wrong. Once antibiotics were prescribed, the ulcer was cured. Trust is earned, not given. In climate science, we are far from being justified in trusting the experts.

 

The experts were not wrong. They were basing their recommendations on the latest data. One of their own (another expert) did an experiment that showed helicobacter was involved in ulcers. The experts evaluated the new information, agreed and changed their recommendation.

This is nothing similar between a researcher that conducts research to find new information and a contrarian that only tries to infuse misinformation to the debate.

This is why Scientists Know Better Than You--Even When They're Wrong

 

Re: “climate change delivered by the postman”

Yes, the experts were most definitely wrong on the cause of ulcers. That was why my father in law got the wrong prescription routinely....unless we have some new wishy-washy definition of "wrong".

As far as the experts evaluating the new ulcer info, the following quote is quite accurate; "The H. pylori hypothesis was poorly received, so in an act of self-experimentation Marshall drank a Petri dish containing a culture of organisms extracted from a patient and soon developed gastritis. His symptoms disappeared after two weeks, but he took antibiotics to kill the remaining bacteria at the urging of his wife, since halitosis is one of the symptoms of infection. This experiment was published in 1984 in the Australian Medical Journal and is among the most cited articles from the journal."

It looks like the experts initially decided to ignore Marshall and his departure from the "known answer". Educating the medical profession was not the result of intelligent discourse, It was the result on hammering continously to get the medical profession to start listening. Marshall was very much a contrarian...who was right while the majority was wrong. Testing and experimentation (on himself!) eventually hammered the truth home.

Now back to climate change. I read the link. I agree with the part about an uneducated person usually being wrong compared to an person educated on the subject.....so I try not to be an uneducated person on the subject. I do not find Tim Bikes to be uneducated on the subject either. That is not a statement he is correct, but he could be correct on some points. No way I am making my decisions on faith when the info is available to evaluate myself.

 

There you go. What testing and experimenting are global warming contrarians doing?

 

Re: “climate change delivered by the postman”

I'm not sure of the point. Hopefully it is not that only researchers that agree with the IPCC position should be considered capable of good science.

 

FL_Prius_driver, read Good Calories, Bad Calories and it'll be like deja vu all over again, but with nutrition science. You like Gary Taubes, if I recall, so you'll enjoy it. Consensus is dangerous because it creates group think and ownership of ideas. People become emotionally invested in those ideas and you get the exact problem cited above.

 

No. Only those that actually gather data and publish it in peer-reviewed journals. Not a single published paper fundamentally disagrees with anthropogenic global warming. Its just a matter of degrees.

To answer Tripp. On any field there will be erroneous ideas presented as correct. The beauty of science is that groupthink and other forms of delusion do not persist. In the long term and after continued research the erroneous idea can be disproven.

In the meanwhile, I'll take the possibly erroneous idea of a scientist over the certainly erroneous idea of interest groups and contrarians.

 

I agree Alric - this is most likely accurate. But there is a big difference between AGW that causes 0.5 C to 1.0 C of incremental warming for a doubling of CO2, vs. empirically unsupported models that suggest 4.0 - 5.0 C warming (or more). The scary scenarios get a lot of attention, but I am utterly convinced they are wrong.

The lower tropospheric satellite temperature trend data from 1979-2007 - as I posted before (post #31) - is a prime example of why I am convinced the anthropogenic CO2 warming is minimal (note I did not say non-existent). And thus far, nobody has demonstrated to me how the 1998 temperature "step" is attributable to CO2, instead of bearing some relation to El Nino.

Occam's Razor suggests the most simple solution is preferred. Based on the pre/post 1998 temperature trend lines, the 1998 El Nino would seem to be the preferred explanation, rather than the continous rise in CO2 over the 30 year period that apparently had little continous effect.

Given this, can anyone suggest why CO2 is the more simple and preferred solution in explaining the "step" in this time series?

If not, I stand by my contention that a doubling of CO2 will result in approximately 1.0 C (or less) of temperature rise, as Schwartz has calculated.

 

You realize Schwartz is not an accurate model of the earth's atmosphere but an interesting simplified mode based on the assumption that there is a single heat capacity for the whole system. The work is of interest and of value but it should not be considered a complete model as opposed to those that include ocean and other atmospheric compartments. Here is the realclimate.org link to their Schwartz discussion:

RealClimate

Needless to say, there is no reason to pick this result as opposed to most other climatologists.

I think you are giving the "1998 temperature step" too much importance. A blip in a complex system is unimportant compared to the long term trend. Specially when you have an explanation for the blip.

 

And a response has now been published in the same journal as Schwartz (Comment on “Heat capacity, time constant, and sensitivity of Earth's climate system†by S. E. Schwartz, subscription required). A near final draft of the response is available online.

 

That's true but it can literally take decades to change and often for no other reason than the personalities subverting the challenges die or retire. Science is a human endeavour, after all. To say that an article is rubbish because isn't published in a peer reviewed journal is dangerous. Yes, op-ed pieces don't count, but serious research is different. Unfortunately, it's tough to be a good judge unless you have the background to evaluate the article yourself.

My personal stance lies somewhere between yours and Tim's. I tend to take the risk management point of view and consider the fact that we don't have a good handle on the error bars to be a very BAD thing. The unknown is what will cause the most damage.

 

Re: “climate change delivered by the postman”

I most certainly agree there. The focus that interest me is what actions follow from future GW predictions that are assumed to be flawless (since we have convinced the majority that the past predictions are close enough to flawless). The models and proxies for determining past temperature are eventually going to be used to select and drive future actions and policies. This potentially includes advocating active measures, such as seeding the ocean with iron. The fuel for such active measures is models that predict dramatic GW effects ahead.

In the meantime, some real damage can be done. Think of all the damaging drug combinations that have injured people in the past and still ongoing.

I'll continue to try and think for myself where possible. No question that interest groups are bad, but more than a few scientist have been found to be bad sources as well.

 

Re: “climate change delivered by the postman”

It's been sitting on the back of my mind as a necessary addition to my reading list. Now it's moving up.

 

I would rather think of all the suffering drugs have alleviated in most people.

 

And some people would like to think about all of the good things that fossil fuels allow us to do. In fact, sometime last year we were discussing an article by some denialist group that was attacking Al Gore's flick because it didn't give coal credit for the massive increases in the standard of living that occurred in the last century or so (silly, but true).