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Comments 104551 to 104600:

  1. How significance tests are misused in climate science
    Dear All, Thank you all for your reactions to my post. I hope you don't mind it if stick my oar in in some of the topics you raised. If I have overlooked something, please let me know. Sorry for the somewhat rambling response here ... Re post 1, and the pirate-global mean temperature correlation: Alexandre is of course right to say that we need statistics and physics to make any progress. What I am highlighting, though, is not that specific issue (which is serious and important in itself). I am highlighting that significance tests are used to give certain statistical results higher "credibility" than others, based on a largely spurious test. So it is the selection of statistical results that I am objecting to, not the statistical results per se. Some posts (specifically Steve L) refer to the frequentist vs Bayesian discussion. This is interesting in itself, but in my paper I am simply applying Bayes' equation, which also a frequentists would accept as indisputable. The difference comes in the interpretation of the meaning of these probabilities. Indeed, significance tests have a clear frequentist flavour, while hypothesis tests have a much more Bayesian flavour. I think it is hard to escape that scientific hypotheses naturally fit a Bayesian framework. Nonetheless, I think the distinction between Bayesian and frequentist interpretations is largely irrelevant to the discussion at hand. Several posts point out that scientists should know about this and also that climate science should not be singled out. Indeed, in my paper I point to more general references which highlight the misuse of significance tests in a wide spectrum of fields (medicine, economics, sociology, psychology, biology, ...) In fact, I suspect that your average research psychologist knows more about the pitfalls of significance tests than the climate scientist. In those more "softer" fields, people have had to mainly rely on statistics from the start and therefore needed to know how to use statistics from day one. In those fields, many people have pointed this problem out (and it still seems to persist). Climate science has always been a subfield of physics, where significance tests are largely irrelevant. I bet that most physicists (by training, I am a theoretical physicist myself) didn't get a stats course in their curriculum! However, these days more and more geographical thinking seems to enter the field of climate science with the resulting lack of rigour and physical underpinning. Many climate scientists have become geographers of their model worlds! Also, the point I am making is not new: many people are aware of the problems with significance tests, and many people have pointed it out before (although most practitioners probably believe that climate scientists would know better). It boggles the mind that the error keeps on being propagated - surely an interesting question for a psychologist or sociologist to get their teeth into. I do have an opinion about why this may be, but that would make this post even longer. Regarding the somewhat rambling posts about 75% of papers being misleading in part. I claim that 75% of papers (in my own paper I clearly state that this is based just 1 (one) sample and make no claim regarding its statistical significance!) make a technical misuse of significance tests: they use it to select or highlight certain statistical results in favour of others. Perhaps I should write a post where I discuss what significance tests can be used for (largely for debunking fake hypotheses, but even this is an application with its own pitfalls). However, this is generally not how significance tests are presented in the literature. The latter of course follows from the fact that very few scientists would publish negative results (in fact, they would probably have a hard time to get it past the reviewers). Some people, including John Cook himself, pointed me to a post by Tamino. Tamino also highlights some further points from my original paper. Let me just add two little comments to Tamino's interesting post: Tamino states that "I’ve certainly struggled to emphasize to colleagues that a highly significant statistical result does not prove that one’s hypothesis is true, it merely negates the null hypothesis." This is again the error of the transposed conditional: a low p-value does not negate the null-hypothesis, it just indicates that our statistical result would be unlikely in case the null-hypothesis were true. It is remarkable how easily we can stray into this error. Tamino also seems to indicate that the p-value does provide useful quantitative information. I cannot find any evidence in his post of this. Yes, the p-value is quantitative, but its usefulness is never really made clear. The p-value is perhaps an indication of the signal-to-noise ratio; a high p-value means that it will be difficult to see any evidence of any claimed effect. A low p-value indicates very little really: we want to study the validity of some hypothesis assuming it is false; some attempt at a reductio ad absurdum proof of your hypothesis - unfortunately it is not quite that ...
  2. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    archiesteel #144 I said, "which is in turn tied directly to natural chemical energy." then you said, "So is Religion. So is making stuff up. So it trolling. What is your point? " The point is clear. If something itnt profitable, it will ultimately affect the bottom line. Get the bottom line low enough and you wont have chemicals (food) to even get out of bed. Or do you run on batteries? Actually, even that would be chemical.
  3. Jacob Bock Axelsen at 22:04 PM on 15 November 2010
    Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    @Dana Thanks for your efforts. You might be interested in reading the report from the Danish Climate Commission (it is also in English). www.klimakommissionen.dk
  4. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Actually Thoughtful #147 "How many of us are using renewable energy right now?" I just threw another log in the fireplace.
  5. Berényi Péter at 21:37 PM on 15 November 2010
    Ice-Free Arctic
    #17 Camburn at 05:16 AM on 8 November, 2010 And not least, is the tremendous amount of soot that China spews that lands in the Arctic. Yes. Here is an intercomparison of Annual total number of hours of Reduced Visibility observed at the Hong Kong Observatory and Annual Minimum Sea Ice Extent in the Arctic (reversed scale). The teleconnection between Chinese soot and Arctic melt is undeniable. Let me note it is possible to burn coal with no soot output while it is impossible to burn it without producing CO2. Eliminating black carbon emissions is not even prohibitively expensive. It is routinely done in Europe and to a somewhat lesser extent in the US of A. Some background material: JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 110, D04204, 2005 doi:10.1029/2004JD005296 Distant origins of Arctic black carbon: A Goddard Institute for Space Studies ModelE experiment Dorothy Koch and James Hansen "The (former) Soviet Union (FSU) was implicated as a major source of Arctic haze in many studies. Novakov et al. [2003] found that black carbon emissions from the FSU in the late 1990s was less than 1/4 their peak levels of 1980. European emissions are also about 1/3 their levels in the 1970s. However China and India have doubled their BC emissions since the late 1970s. Thus BC emissions are more heavily weighted toward south Asia than they were in the 1970s and 1980s, when many of the Arctic haze studies took place."
  6. Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    Argus, #4 The book goes more like this: X makes argument A and uses tactic B against scientific proposition M X makes argument A and uses tactic B against scientific proposition N X makes argument A and uses tactic B against scientific proposition O M could be "acid rain", N could be "nuclear winter", O could be "tobacco smoking increases cancer risk" or "the ozone hole" ... And so on ... X has been demonstrated to be wrong in each case, but the use of argument A and tactic B have been invaluable in confusing the public, influencing key politicians and delaying corrective action. This has been worth $billions to important interests. X has been handsomely remunerated for his/ her work in propagating argument A and using tactic B. Now, X is using argument A and tactic B against P, which is global warming. What can you deduce from the foregoing?
  7. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    I hope I may be allowed to make an observation on Camburn's posts above. If he/she wants to take it further, I suggest moving the discussion to Extreme weather isn't caused by global warming. Camburn wrote : "Russian heat wave: Black Swan Event not related to GAWG. So says Dr. Martin P. Hoerling of NOAA." As usual, things are not quite as simple as some would have us believe : As we learn from our 2010 experience what a sustained heat wave of +5ºC to+10ºC implies for human health, water resources, and agricultural productivity, a more meaningful appreciation for the potential consequences of the projected climate changes will emerge. It is clear that the random occurrence of a summertime block in the presence of the projected changes in future surface temperature would produce heat waves materially more severe than the 2010 event. The Russian Heat Wave of 2010 - Dr. Martin Hoerling As for Camburn's second link (HERE in translation), it is a collection of stories and reports, without any comparative data whatsover. Would anyone rely on this rather than something like the previous NOAA report ?
  8. Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    I read both books this year. Schneider's modelling predicted a "nuclear autumn" that was somewhat less disastrous than the "nuclear winter" predictions. Schneider (and many others - Oreskes quotes Kerry Emanuel in her book) thought Sagan had jumped a gun by going public with the "nuclear winter" scenario in news publications before the science was fully tested. Oreskes does not deal with Schneider's part in the controversy, but is critical of Sagan for "violating scientific norms". Her presentation has the dispute on two levels - firstly, the science, and then, how it was publicized. On the science, she emphasizes that "scientists broadly agreed that a nuclear war would lead to significant secondary climatic effects". It was at the conclusion that deniers took aim.
  9. Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    Her book appears to be an example of using the method: 'Guilt by association as an ad hominem fallacy' (wikipedia): If you are skeptic towards the AGW hypothesis, you are just like those people who did not believe that acid rain, DDT, CFCs and smoking was dangerous. Also, because the arguments used in global warming skepticism look similar to those false ones used against DDT or whatever, consequently AGW must be true. Quote: ''Guilt by association can sometimes also be a type of ad hominem fallacy, if the argument attacks a person because of the similarity between the views of someone making an argument and other proponents of the argument. This form of the argument is as follows: A makes claim P. Bs also make claim P. Therefore, A is a B. Example I: Social justice is a philosophy shared by Nazis and Communists, therefore churches that teach social justice are equivalent to Marxists and Fascists.''
    Response: You probably should read the book before posting such criticisms. Her book doesn't make that argument at all. Her point is that the people who are skepticial towards AGW are the same people who used the same arguments against other areas of scientific consensus. It's not 'Guilt by association' if you're talking about the same person.

    AGW isn't true because the skeptic arguments are similar to skeptic arguments against DDT, etc. AGW is true because of the multiple lines of evidence. Scientists built a consensus on smoking, acid rain and ozone depletion by gradually accumulating multiple lines of evidence painting a single, consistent picture. Similarly, scientists have built up many lines of evidence that humans are causing global warming. And when the evidence is so strong, the only way to refute it is the diversional and rhetorical techniques employed by the Merchants of Doubt.

    But Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway explain it a lot better than I do and in much greater detail, so I'd recommend reading their book.
  10. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    #6 @Robert Way Whatever you had in mind when you asked, costs in terms of relinquished GDP growth are in table 1. As the initial "and" let you deduct, my answer was intended for Camburn (#1) who seems to be arguing "something must be done but not in this very moment" by comparing something recurrent -annual- with some one time cost depicted as abruptly incurred. This new argument is the way to get a new ten-year delay and it is the expected response to this site's 'moving into solutions' new approach. So, I expect more of this kind: A comparing a function and it's derivative in an argument, B pointing that fact and C asking B 'so, what's the function then?'.
  11. Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    "When scientists calculated that nuclear war would cause a devastating nuclear winter, the same group of scientists sought to cast doubt not only on the science but on the entire scientific establishment." Just an aside: Steve Schneider, in his 'Science as a Contact Sport', argues that Sagan's case for a nuclear winter wasn't as scientifically certain as Sagan was making out. He also points out you hardly need the nuclear winter argument to conclude that global nuclear war is a bad idea. He bought it up in the book to make clear that we have to follow the science at all costs. I haven't read Merchants of Doubt, so I don't know what Oreskes argues (or indeed if Sagan is the 'nuclear winter' proponent) but thought it worth mentioning.
  12. Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    Read the book. Highly recommended. There are several videos on You Tube featuring Naomi Oreskes e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T4UF_Rmlio
  13. CO2 limits will harm the economy
    Not much of a problem. Massive new bureaucracy? I don't think so. Taxes are one thing modern governments have lots of experience with - income taxes, goods & services, excise, import duties - all well established, ho-hum, routine procedures. Hand over the legislation and the public servants will just do the same as they've always done. Heavy industry, light industry, any industry? All you have to do is organise import duties to match homegrown production taxes so that it won't matter where the stuff is produced, the same imposts will go on.
  14. Naomi Oreskes' Merchants of Doubt Australian tour
    Rats. Adelaide's fully booked. Someone'd better do a video.
    Response: Hmm, I didn't even think to book, I was just going to turn up (slaps forehead). Thanks for the tip!
  15. CO2 limits will harm the economy
    Do these analysis consider the global industry transfer- it may destroy the last bit of heavy industry in the US and send it somewhere they have no problem polluting much more- let alone other effects of that ? How about the cost the massive new bureacracy for this tax- I admit less than that for a carbon trading scheme? Even more disasterous for somewhere like Australia and no net benefit on carbon dioxide output.
  16. Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
    Thanks for the hard work, Robert! Will take me a while to digest and internalize. The Yooper
  17. Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
    Re: Camburn (30, 32) One more thing: Robert Way takes a very insightful look into the GRACE issue here. Topical, timely, worth the read. The Yooper
  18. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Dana "Economic impacts of carbon pricing" Hmmm! I thought that discussing the paradign used to assess these impacts would be relevant...Any way It doesn't matter. If you've got a chance, I suggest the following: Daly, H 1997: Beyond growth, the economics of sustainable development Jackson T 2009, Prosperity without Growth: economics for a finite planet
  19. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    The problem, TOP, is that the people are making these decisions based largely on falsehoods. Simple actions like improvements in fuel & energy efficiency will not only reduce CO2 emissions (by as much as 20% or more) but also reduce people's energy & fuel bills. Yet if you even suggest that to most people (especially those who listen to the mainstream press too much) they look at you like you're some kind of *Communist*! As to planting trees, TOP, well that's all well & good but-where do you suggest? Our global population grows in leaps & bounds-& forests are usually the first to go in our desire for living space. When you can convince the Economic Fundamentalists that forests are more important than more population growth, then you'll really have achieved something!
  20. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    One little flaw in all this. What if the people don't want it? I mean, just hypothetically, what if they vote out the politicians who favor this kind of legislation? @renewable guy To move the average temperature down you have to remove carbon, and you have to do it now. Cap and Trade won't do that. Planting trees will.
  21. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Mike - I provided links to the studies and models where possible. Phil263 - your second question is beyond the scope of this discussion. Camburn - by itself, a single country's cap and trade system would not have a significant impact on global temperatures. But we don't act in a vacuum. If the USA enacts serious climate legislation, other countries will follow suit. If we don't, they'll use our inaction as an excuse for their own (i.e. see Australia and Canada).
  22. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Camburn: ******************************************************************* According to climate models, a reduction in co2 growth would result in a decline in the projected temp trend of .1C by 2050. Do you really think that a .1C reduction in the rise of temp is going to change the sea levels by any degree? ****************************************************************** Moving the average earth temperature downward is a win and cap and trade can acheive that. And do so at a profit. When businesses get the economic signal from cap and trade, they will look at their bottom line and look for the way to acheive the carbon goals in the most efficient way. Cap and trade frees up the businesses to acheive the goals in the cheapest, most timely fashion. http://www.edf.org/page.cfm?tagID=1085 The site above does a nice job of tieing the financial incentives with reducing carbon emissions.
  23. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Dana Even though you mentioned other variables, GDP IS your headline indicator. I also note that "utility bills" "Gasoline prices" and "household costs" are all sub-variables that will come somewhere under the GDP calculation. What about costs such as: loss of clean air and clean water due to economic activity, loss of species,loss of pristine landscapes such as the Great Barrier Reef.... I know hard to quantify, but real nonetheless! And...you haven't addressed my second objection: IS ongoing economic growth (measured by GDP) sustainable and desirable? Can we keep using non-renewable resources as infinitum? Can we exploit renewable resources below replacement capacity? Reducing our carbon emissions is urgent, but the debate about human economic activities should be far broader.
  24. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Camburn: Cap and trade is about investing our way out of a serious problem. It seems that this 200 billion for the United States for instance in oil imports would be a really good target for the US to work on as well as other countries. Strategic investment while pulling ourselves out of a slump. The government being the stimulus to move in a more self sufficient direction. The market will kick in its stimulus a little too late when we are already at the point of panic. To prepare for the problems down the road eases the magnitude of crisis. For instance cap and trade will accelerate us towards the solution for Peak Oil.
  25. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    I find it odd though, Mike, that some people accept the word of economists as Gospel Truth in matters relating to Privatization & De-regulation; yet they're suddenly not to be trusted the moment they start modeling the potential impacts of CO2 mitigation. For the record, a number of Economists *did* see the recent GFC coming, but their calls for action were largely ignored by a Republican Dominated Congress.
  26. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Mike, that coal is almost certainly going to run out one day-the faster we use it, the faster it will disappear. When it runs out, so too will the jobs & the money. So we have a choice: accept the need to switch to *sustainable* jobs before the source of your regions prosperity runs dry, or wait until after the coal is gone, & watch the whole area go the way of a host of Rust Belt Towns.
  27. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    I'm suspicious about any economist who predicts the GDP in 40 years time to a precision of 0.01%! ("The main exception is the IGEM analysis, which finds a 2.15% reduction in GDP for the Lieberman-Warner by bill by 2030, and a 3.59% reduction by 2050").
  28. Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
    Good Catch.
  29. Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
    Thank you Yooper.
  30. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Response to moderator: http://therese-phil.livejournal.com/171196.html Google translator will tranlate the link of historical Russian heat waves. This is off topic for this discussion and I will not comment on Russia again.
  31. Are ice sheet losses overestimated?
    Robert - Typo in para 5? as a first attempt but [not?] THE definitive
  32. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    dana1981: I really wish that the current economic distress will be temporary. However, economic history shows that this is far from a temporary condition. The void of leadership in the USA fortells of more floundering, rather than solutions to the debt crisis presented and acted upon. A rise in sea levels of 5 meters will not happen overnight, if it happens at all. According to climate models, a reduction in co2 growth would result in a decline in the projected temp trend of .1C by 2050. Do you really think that a .1C reduction in the rise of temp is going to change the sea levels by any degree?
  33. How significance tests are misused in climate science
    Humanity Rules, In the post you seemed to object to, I was referring to making claims based on statistical insignificance, as when many climate deniers misunderstood Phil Jones' remarks about warming since 1995 not being statistically significant as evidence that warming has stopped. A statistically insignificant warming trend isn't evidence either way. This is not the sort of error Dr. Ambaum is talking about. Are you aware of instances where climate scientists have made this error? TOP, Be sure you are not misinterpreting the author as saying climate scientists should be making weaker claims or that they are publishing "statistically significant" results that if tested the way the author thinks they should be would be insignificant. Chances are climate scientists would use Bayesian statistics to show that they can make even stronger claims of confidence. For example, because the physics of climate lead you to believe it should be warming with high probability, you can combine this prior probability with your analysis of the temperature data to give an even stronger confidence in the existence of a warming trend than you would have otherwise. If Phil Jones had followed Dr. Anbaum's advice when calculating statistical significance, he would have said something far less useful to those trying to cast doubt on warming. But I think he was right not to do it that way, as I mentioned above. And I should qualify that by saying I haven't read the paper, only this post, so maybe I don't understand what it is Dr. Anbaum thinks they should be doing when analyzing data.
  34. How significance tests are misused in climate science
    Dikran Marsupial posted an excellent explanation of the topic of this post, on Tamino's Open Mind blog. He made similar points to the ones I was trying to make here and here.
  35. Hockey stick is broken
    My comment to part of this article is in relation to the section which says that the McIntyre(2004) publication says that "the hockey stick shape was the inevitable result of the statistical method used (principal components analysis). They also claimed temperatures over the 15th Century were derived from one bristlecone pine proxy record." I do not believe this is a correct interpretation of the aricle - i think the article claims that the hockey stick shape was a results of using an incorrect "scaling" of the time series by using only the last part of the entire time series - the 20th century only. He claims this overly weights the data and results in the hockey stick affect and the hockey stick is not actually resident in the data without this scaling (at least not as a PC1 component). In addition I do not think he claims that the data temperatures where from one bristlecone but that the bristlecone data is not necessarily reliable as it exagerates the true temparuture due to the species magnified growth in a higher C02 environment. This is evident in the article written in 2005 by McKitrick to the APEC Study group titled "what is the Hockey Stick Debate about?"
  36. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Camburn, please make up your mind. First you say these analyses could not forsee the economic problems which were already underway when they were done. Then you say the analyses ignored the current economic distress because they assumed it would be temporary - which is obviously true! I certainly hope you don't think the recession is permanent. Bern @ #10 is referencing the Stern Report (5-20% of GDP spent on mitigation). Your suggestion that mitigation will be cheap because sea level won't rise 5 meters is just a wee bit ridiculously oversimplified and wrong. Phil263 #9 - you may have noticed that GDP was only one of many economic factors analyzed here.
  37. Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
    Re: Camburn (30) You might be better served with investigating yourself the intricacies of both satellite altimetry and microwave sounding unit platforms: Here's an Open Mind piece Tamino did on the overall history and data corrections performed on orbital MSU platforms (rescued from Internet cache files), as well as a Skeptical Science piece on MSU satellite platforms. As far as Jason/Topex/Poseidon, a Skeptical Science piece on that can be found here, as well as one on sea level rise. Documentation on Jason/Topex/Poseidon corrections can be found here. Global altimetry data can be found here, if you're inclined to poke under the hood yourself. Geoid differences can play havoc with expectations surrounding sea levels. Hope that helps, The Yooper
  38. Solving Global Warming - Not Easy, But Not Too Hard
    Ah, BP, so you're saying we should put our immediate efforts toward improving energy efficiency of homes? Replacing thin walls/roofs with the thermal equivalent of your "2 feet thick brick walls"? I agree, there is much to be saved there, and in improving the efficiency of other wasteful forms of energy use. One minor example: when I lived in the US for a while, about 10 years back, I was absolutely astounded by the fact that you had 200-watt standard light globes. I'd never seen anything more than a 100w globe here in Australia (I'm talking standard globes, obviously spotlights and other lights have higher ratings). The thing that I found sad and amusing at the same time, was that, even using higher powered lights than a typical Aussie home, the American homes I saw were much, much darker inside - primarily because most American lights had very dark, heavy lampshades, designed to 'hide' the light, where most Australian fittings seem to be designed to spread light (frosted glass covers being very common here).
  39. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Russian heat wave: Black Swan Event not related to GAWG. So says Dr. Martin P. Hoerling of NOAA. But I have drifted off topic.
    Moderator Response: When making claims, please furnish a link for others' edification.
  40. The science isn't settled
    Eric, if as you wrote you chose to be 100% certain in your belief in a combination of classical, relativistic, and quantum theories that taken together are "completely consistent with the evidence," then you are being certain about at least one proven incorrect theory! Classical mechanics is incorrect if you observe with enough precision. It is not 100% correct for any cases, so you cannot restrict your application of it to certain cases just so you can have it be 100% correct. By your definitions, classical mechanics therefore is not a "theory" at all; it is merely a "notion." So you must believe that all scientists who use the term "classical mechanics theory" are wrong. Which leaves you alone being right. Which should give you pause. That was the reason I brought up the phrase "competing theories." Every scientist in every field uses that phrase, so are they all wrong and you are right? That was the reason I brought up "string theory." You can tack on the word "empirical" if you want, but that does not change my point that there is, to say the least, inadequate evidence to make most scientists 100% certain that string theory is 100% correct and non-string theories incorrect. Yet scientists use the term "string theory" instead of "string notion." Are they all wrong? Even worse for your position is the existence of multiple string "theories"--string theories competing among themselves! Yet scientists call all of them "theories." The reason I brought up inferential statistics as evidence for deciding if a theory is "correct," is that inferential statistics is all about certainty less than 100%. Yet inferential statistical results with certainties less than 100% are used in all scientific fields as evidence for theories. The relevance of all this to your original claim, and to the original post at the top of this page, is that climatologists are not cheating or being lax by stating subjective probabilities of theories being correct. That's how all real, working scientists in all fields work, even when they don't express those probabilities as numbers. Either all of them are wrong, or you are.
  41. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    Bern: At the rate of climate change, mitigation is NOT a drain on GDP. 5m sea rise? How many centuries is that going to take? More people die every year from cold than die from heat. And when you talk heat waves....there have always been heat waves. Even the Russian heat wave this summer is not out of the ordinary climate wise. Look at Russian history please. (Besides, the cause was not from co2).
    Moderator Response: You make claims regarding many topics (covered elsewhere on this site), yet furnish no links for others to read and learn from. If you wish to make contributions to the individual threads whose topics you touch upon, please use the search engine at the upper left of each page for the most appropriate thread. Thanks for your compliance on this. Comments deemed off-topic will be deleted from the inappropriate threads.
  42. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    @Camburn at #5: Mitigation is a drain on GDP - if you have to spend 20% of GDP due to effects of climate change, that is not an increase in GDP - it's a very large pile of money & resources that have to be spent to fix a problem, that might otherwise be spend elsewhere. Your analogy of the interstate system is incorrect. The interstate road system is enabling infrastructure. The increases in commerce, trade, and other economic activity that it enabled more than paid for it's construction. Mitigation of climate change, on the other hand - how does it help the GDP if you have to evacuate every city below 5m above sea level, and reconstruct them on higher ground? How does it boost GDP to repair damage after more severe weather events? How is GDP increased by crop failures or increased mortality from heatwaves? These are all the sorts of effects that may occur from global warming induced climate change. I don't for a second doubt that there is the potential for some people to make a lot of money out of it (construction firms, for instance, will be busy for centuries rebuilding coastal cities on higher ground), but I'm afraid I don't see how that's a good thing for the economy, overall. It's like saying a plague is good for the economy, because all those extra coffins & burials cause a boom for the undertaking business...
  43. Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
    Daniel: I could show a chart showing negative sea level rise. I question the metrics of Jason/Topex. If they are as accurate as Grace was with the mass of ice loss, then they are inacurate. I picked on station in the middle of the Pacific. I was surprised at what NOAA had as I thought it would be more of a rise in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The tidal effects etc would be minimal in that area. In response to the moderator: I am sure that NOAA uses the latest tech when reporting sea levels by guage.
  44. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    The first problem with the above analyses is the assumption that GDP is a valid measure of a society's well being. GDP has been criticised by a number of economists including Nordhaus, Tobin and Daly who developed an alternative measure (ISEW: Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare). The second problem is the assumption that ongoing economic growth ( particularly in the US) is desirable. There is now a solid body of economic literature including work by Herman Daly and others which demonstrates that endless economic growth is not possible in our finite world.
  45. Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
    Also, just noticed your earlier point. "It looks like the output of a chaotic system". If you look at the instruments for just about any component of a power plant then they "look" chaotic too. You cant tell chaos by just looking at the graph. One feature of chaos is quasiperiod cycles, but milankovitch cycles are not quasiperiodic as analysis would show you. You would get a better feel for cause by plotting global temperature against estimated net forcing through time. Please, please try reading and understanding the science rather than reading to try and find an excuse to reject the conclusions.
  46. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    renweable guy: This isn't about profits to investors. IF that was the case, the Carbon Exchange in Chicago would not have shut down. This is about the economic impact to people. Fossil fuels are finite, no question about that unless you are Russian. The cost of fossil fuels will go up as they become more scarce. They are doing so now in case you haven't noticed. That, in and off itself, will drive people to conservation all on their own. IT is called economic self interest. Business is wayyyyyy ahead of cap and trade on carbon issues. One looks at energy consumption as a cost and does everything possible to reduce that cost. It is much much cheaper to insulate a building, install new windows etc than it is to pay the price of increased energy. That is one of the reasons that the US is a low, per unit of production, energy consumer. Short term thinking will get us cap and trade with no decernable effect on temperatures. The Copenhagen accords would have resulted in how much of a decrease in temps if the models are to be believed? Provide the figure if you would. And for that measely decrease, what would be the cost? Think in terms of economic stress, not only dollars, pounds, rubles etc. Cap and trade is an idea that was started by Enron, endorsed by Goldman Sachs. Why do you think they invested so much money in the concept? Prof Hansen sees through the smoke and mirrors of this idea. I have to agree with him in that it is about the most stupid idea that has every come about with regards to co2 restraints.
  47. Climate is chaotic and cannot be predicted
    Norman, "I am looking for changes in Earth's Albedo. Primarily during known ice ages." You can save yourself a lot of time trying to find things about climate science but just going to the ipcc WG1 report. (Why dont you just read it). Radiative forcing estimated at -3.2W/m2 for effects of ice and lowered sealevel. Vegetation change estimated at -1W/m2. GHG changes are estimated to contribute -2.8W/m2 for comparison purposes. See the report for references (many) on which these numbers are based. However, this has nothing to do with chaos. Albedo is straightforward and well-behaved. Also, remember your calculator is for airless earth. "It may take thousands of years for the intitial effects to demonstrate the chaotic nature of the climate system with all its complex feedbacks. " What is lacking is any evidence for your assertion. On the contrary, climate seems to behave instead as function of net forcings. If you are waiting for some effect in from say pinatoba to influence climate, then you are in for a very long wait.
  48. Economic Impacts of Carbon Pricing
    http://climateprogress.org/2010/11/14/debt-commission-carbon-budget/#more-36867 Climate Progress is probably one of the best I know for talking about costs of AGW. Cap and trade will reduce our dependence on oil over time by 200 billion a year. Reducing our trade deficit by half. Cap and trade is a wise investment in the future of any country that practices it. Becoming energy independent is the best investment any country could make in themselves. The failure of a business is to not recognize the importance of long term planning taking carbon into their business models. Increasing carbon into the atmosphere will cost much more than reducing carbon for our energy consumption. Short term thinking will only get us problems down the road. The benefits have been laid out for us to look at. We need businesses to see the importance of long term goals of the world society. This has to go wider than just profits to investors.
  49. How significance tests are misused in climate science
    #30: "stay within the bounds of the published work." OK. Look here, where we discussed the gross generalization in a 'published work' stating that many climate scientists are computer illiterate. In this case, the gross generalization was "this paper suggest 75% of climate science papers use statistical significance in a "misleading" way". My point was and remains: Broad generalizations like these include everyone in the affected class. That includes Watt$, Godd@rd, Mc&tyre and the like. If you want to stick with this nonsense, that requires that 75% of climate change denier posts are misleading. Better to drop both the name-calling ('fear-mongering'? really?) and the gross generalizing. Then maybe we can have an intelligent conversation.
  50. Climate cherry pickers: cooling oceans
    Re: Camburn (28) Why do you select a chart showing sea level rise at one tide station (which shows the sea level rising at that station) and then point to it as an example that:
    "there is not wide spread warming occuring."
     What does sea level rise at Midway Atoll have to do with warming? How about re-phrasing the point you wanted to make so that my partially non-functional brain can understand it. Thanks! The Yooper

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