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tcflood at 06:31 AM on 10 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #26
tcflood @7, nigelj @8, gingerbaker @10:
Here is an interesting pass at evaluating the debate that also has useful references/links within.
Moderator Response:[PS] Fixed link. Pleas learn how to do this yourself with the link tool in the comment editor.
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One Planet Only Forever at 02:10 AM on 10 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
ubrew12@5,
"Climategate" exposed the exploitation of criminal theft of emails by very smart undeserving wealthy people who abused bits of information completely out of context to achieve a damaging objective. "Climategate" did not expose subversive actions by scientists. The worst that it exposed was the use of terms that can have a meaning twisted when they are taken out of context (like presenting the average of longer periods of data to hide a short-term decline, or excluding tree ring data that was inconsistent with all of the other data until the inconsistency was better understood). The fact that many people still believe it exposed anything else is a serious problem.
Increasing awareness and providing better explanations of what is going on is effectively being attacked by damaging irresponsible adults telling other people that they can believe what they prefer to believe and that anyone who says otherwise is a liar and a hypocrite and all manner of other derogatory names.
Unltimately, the only future for humanity is for the vast majority of the population to become compassionate considerate responsible adults who will rationally evaluate what is presented to them with the objective of improving the future for all of humanity. And that majority must have no hesitation to disappoint the stubborn people who resist becoming responsible adults because they like the idea of getting away with less acceptable behaviour.
The expectation that everyone must be allowed to believe whatever they want to excuse or defend doing what they please is the problem. Climate science is only one of many 'constantly improving understandings of what is really going on' that have exposed the fundamental problem. The solution to that problem is not the responsibility of climate scientists, acting to correct the problem has to be understood to be the responsibility/obligation/expectation of every 'leader/winner' (in business and government) in every society on this planet, no matter how unpopular or less profitable the many required corrections may be regionally.
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ubrew12 at 00:27 AM on 10 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
For those interested, I highly recommend the David Runciman article: "How climate scepticism turned into something more dangerous". Some quotes from that article: "climate scepticism is being driven out by climate cynicism. A sceptic questions the evidence... A cynic questions the motives... In these politically charged circumstances, there is no safe space for the facts to retreat to. That was made clear by... “climategate"... the emails betrayed the scientists’ awareness that the idea of a consensus on... climate change was under concerted attack. So they went out of their way to shore up the consensus. Which, when revealed, confirmed to their opponents that the consensus was a sham... we dislike hypocrisy more than we dislike lying... [and this] is not just a problem for climate politics. It is a problem for democracy... Trump has always been careful not to come across as the wrong sort of hypocrite: the kind who seems to be talking down to people. Hillary Clinton was not so careful. And when the voters get to choose between the two, the hypocrite loses to the liar... We live in an age when mistrust of politics has spilled over into mistrust of expertise... To respond with ever-greater certainty in the name of science is a big mistake... climate science... in the age of Trump should not keep saying that the populists are lying about the consensus. They should say that they are hypocrites about the doubt: they do not practise what they preach because they think they know the answers already. Climate change deniers argue they are only trying to discover the truth. We should all be sceptical about that."
Denial thrives on the idea of science hypocrisy. It is combatted not by attempting science purity, but by hammering on denial hypocrisy itself. At the very least, point out how someone cannot be a skeptic if he ignores the ocean of evidence before him to focus on one bit of cherry-picked data. And keep hammering the idea that much 'denial' is being funded by an industry with a $22 trillion interest in the outcome of this debate.
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jgnfld at 00:23 AM on 10 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
@29
The Greek scholar in my family assures me of a couple of things:
Thucydides wrote in a terrible, deeply nested style that is hard to work with. She said that many translations are more understandable that the original!
WRT the specific Greek terms underlying "sovereign reason" she says the term relates to "autocratic" more than any more positive connotation. That is rather than "motivated reasoning" one might render it as reasoning like an autocrat.
WRT Jo Nova, her political views totally outweigh her accurate reporting of actual science as this case clearly typifies.
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Eclectic at 23:25 PM on 9 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
Haze @33 , it is not altogether true that SkS comments columns are more strictly moderated than WUWT's & JoNova's.
Yes, WUWT & JoNova comments columns are [and please forgive the "Irishism" ..... ] not just "full of hyperbole and emotion" but also full of vitriol, conspiracy theorism, and mindless repetition of long-disproven ideas. And particularly telling counterpoints (against denialism) are deleted — according to hearsay from scientists who have attempted such posts.
OTOH, the past policy of SkS moderators seems to have been to only delete posts which were egregious rubbish and/or flagrantly in breach of Comments Guidelines. More recently (as you will have seen) the moderators have taken a softened approach to many "low-quality" posts, by striking them through yet leaving them visible. But not sparing them where spam or outrageous trolling is involved.
Judith Curry's blog is a different kettle of fish. Yes, the comments column has a goodly share of poor thinking and unscientific nonsense posts, but there are also many posts which at least make some attempt to grapple with the issues raised by her. Almost invariably ineffectually, though!!! Taken altogether, the Curry blog provides a space where genteel denialists can express themselves without the unpleasantness of associating themselves with the vitriolic hoi polloi.
The problem of Curry's blog is mostly with her own efforts. She revels in vague (and unjustifiable) "uncertainties". Always her underlying message is: We must wait and do nothing; we must carry on with Business-As-Usual ; we must carry on with more studies over many decades. Unsurprisingly, she is seen as (and doubtless is) an apologist for Fossil Fuel Industry. For which reason she is a darling of right-wing anti-science extremists, especially those in high places! And like other FF Industry apologists, she entirely fails to make a case against the mainstream consensus science position.
Vague uncertainties and woolly sophistries are the stock-in-trade of Curry. On top of that, she sometimes features guest authors who spout rubbish & crazy theories — crazy stuff, which she does not trouble to deny or critique, but she says they were included in her blog "because they are interesting". A tasty bone for the crazier end of the spectrum of her blog's followers ;-)
For an example of Curry sophistry & confusionism & absurdity :- try this gem ...
"The Brumbergs are correct to conclude: In our view, the fact that so many scientists agree so closely about the [causes of the] earth's warming is, in itself, evidence of a lack of evidence for [human caused] global warming."
— Quelle superbe post-modernist claptrap, eh!!!
Moderator Response:[PS] Sks continues to improve tools available to moderators rather than change moderation policy. Deleting a comment is a blunt instrument, providing the commentator with little feedback as to why they were moderated. If someone spent 30 minutes writing it and blew it with a rant at the end, then losing the whole comment is annoying. The provision of selective snip and strike-through tools to moderators allows for some education as to what is acceptable here and what is not. Of course we still have to deal with trolls who have no intention of complying with comments policy...
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SirCharles at 22:45 PM on 9 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
The Skeptical Science Facebook link is incorrect.
Moderator Response:[JH] Corrected. Thank you for bringing this glitch to our attention.
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Haze at 19:53 PM on 9 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
@31 Yes I do visit sites that have different view points. I look at WUWT, JoNova and Climate etc and Skeptical Science, Real Climate and Open Mind. I also subscribe to The Guardian and The Australian as I like to get views from both sides of politics too
@31 and 32. WUWT, JoNova but not really Judith Curry do tend to over simplify the topic and exaggerate minutiae and the readers are less likely to be scientifically inclined as those visiting this and other similar sites. This leads to comments that are full of hyperbole and emotion but often not well thought through. I think the real difference though is that the climate science sites are far more strictly moderated and emotive incorrectness is not tolerated. Thus comments to, say, SkS need more thought than those to, say, WUWT
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Digby Scorgie at 18:32 PM on 9 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
nigelj @31
People too lazy to spend any time at reputable climate websites but not so lazy as to patronise denier websites?
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nigelj at 18:11 PM on 9 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
Haze, confirmation bias is indeed as you say a problem that effects everyone, but I would suggest maybe not equally. I long ago recognised my own biases, and make a point of reading both sides of all debates about equally, and carefully, and it's clear others on this website do the same. Maybe you do as well.
Most climate sceptics I know that are just ordinary people haven't even read one mainstream book on the subject, or something like the NASA website, or this website, and they make various pathetic excuses that its all a scam so why bother. A lot of people are lazy and want glib answers, and I think they populate denialist websites or general media websites.
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Eclectic at 16:04 PM on 9 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
Thanks, Haze @29 , for the excellent Thucydides quote.
I guess a more modern translater would have rendered "Sovereign Reason" into some form of "Motivated Reasoning".
Ultimately however, we must choose between truth and falsehood — and JoNova has chosen falsehood.
The scientific evidence is overwhelmingly clear, in this matter of AGW/Climate-Change, that JoNova and others of her type are quite wrong — and so to that extent there is no moral equivalence between the "followers" of JoNova (et alia) and the "followers" of SkepticalScience (& other such organizations dedicated to scientific truth). The two groups are worlds apart, morally.
Emotions are always an enormous part of what motivates us humans: yet we must acknowledge there are good emotions and evil emotions. Sadly, it is the "Dark Side" emotion of selfishness which impels the science-deniers, and leads them to commit lies and deceptions (and self-deceptions).
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Haze at 13:03 PM on 9 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
@28. I try to see the best in people rather than the worst. Jo Nova, who is a scientist with an Honours degree from the University of Western Australia in a hard science, does in fact post comments that do not support her views. As for her readers, it is impossible to comment on whether or not they want to be accurately informed. They almost certainly however do prefer to have their biases confirmed. This is a common human trait, first described by Thucydides in about 400BC in his treatise "The Pelopennesian War" . He wrote:
"For it is a habit of humanity to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not fancy."
Much subsequent research has unequivocally confirmed this comment. Jo Nova's readers are extremely unlikely to be any different from readers of other sites, even sites such as Skepticalscience
as do many readers of readers on any blog site including sites such as Skeptical Science?
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nigelj at 11:30 AM on 9 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
OPOF @2, yes sustainable economic growth has to be the main goal or criteria, for our quality of life, and planetary stability. I would even argue prosperity as well.
Of course sustainable growth might reduce rates of crude gdp growth output, or equally alternatively it could be more neutral, or even positive. When limits are put on some resources or activities, efforts often simply move into other activities, and enhance those. Plenty of small countries with strong environmental standards have reasonable gdp growth rates such as Scandinavia.
Solutions are often not as costly as expected. The obvious example was strong controls on vehicle pollution in the 1950s and 1960s, which ended up having virtually no effect on company profitability.
Cheap renewable power is emerging, and would make make recycling more economically feasible, and reduce the need to expand mining in sensitive areas. This is a virtuous circle.
Of course there are arguably ultimate limits to economic growth due to ultimate resource limits. There are numerous writings on this, but we are a fair way away from that yet, and many things can be recycled.
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One Planet Only Forever at 09:08 AM on 9 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
nigelj,
Economic growth in sustainable ways is the only growth that can be sustained. And that does indeed include the production of longer lasting goods and infrastructure.
The appearance of economic growth from the expansion or prolonging of understandably unacceptable and ultimately unsustainable activity like the burning up of buried ancient hydrocarbons, wasteful consumerism, or increased consumer debt cannot be expected to last.
Sadly for many Americans (and many others who developed along the path pushed along by the least concientious people created by the undeniably failing American Experiment in the freedom for everyone to beleive and do as they please - the sad perversion of the original intent to have everyone free from unjust authoritarian actions) they bought into the lie that they did not have to change the way they lived. G.W Bush declared that Big Lie when announcing that the USA would not join the Kyoto agreement.
Much of the developed perception of prosperity and opportunity in the USA is a mirage, a figment of the imagination, the result of unsustainable and damaging activity that the biggest beneficiaries attempt to mask and excuse. Because they over-developed so much in incorrect ways and fought against changing their ways many of them undeniably have the most to lose and now fight even more viciously against being the ones to suffer that inevitable bigger loss (hoping the future generation suffers the consequence).
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nigelj at 07:35 AM on 9 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27
Justin Trudeau makes a good point that "strong economic growth and environmental protection can go hand in hand." There are more jobs in renewable energy than coal, study after study has observed this. Trump is living in the past too much.
thinkprogress.org/clean-energy-more-jobs-than-fossil-fuels-32f615915399
Having said that, growth in simple output terms may slow a little long term, and already has since the 1970s, probably due to saturated markets, and more people may be choosing more lesiure time, and quality over simple quantity.
Apartment living is not conducive to raw output of more quantity of "stuff". And why would I need a new washing machine every year? The low hanging fruit that generate easy growth have all been picked. Getting gdp growth in manufacturing is easy, but it's not so easy in services based economies.
A lot of money is also going into non productive speculation. It's a complicated issue overall.
Hope I'm not sounding too contradictory. The ideas are not incompatible, if you think about it
I'm not promoting zero growth, because some forward momentum is a good thing, but it looks to be inevitably slowing and maybe we shouldn't panic. Quality may come to replace quantity.
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scaddenp at 06:45 AM on 9 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
Climate4You is Ole Humlum's misinformation organ.
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nigelj at 06:12 AM on 9 July 2017Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world
Singelton Engineer, thanks. I had another look at the map and realise it has a zoom key. I didn't see this originally, as the way I manipulated the page hid the key, and I never noticed it. My fault. I'm a twit.
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michael sweet at 03:16 AM on 9 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #26
I thought that this article in the Los Angeles Times about 5,000 dairy cows dying during a heat wave was interesting. The local redering facilities were overfll so they ahve nowhere to take all the bodies.
When someone says that the effects of AGW will only be felt in the future this is a good example of currrent effects of too much heat. But who cares of milk and other dairy products cost more?/sark
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:52 AM on 9 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
nigelj@37,
I agree that critical thinking is important. My point is that critical thinking without 'being moved by rational consideration of distant motives' can lead to incredibly dangerous and damaging thoughts and actions. And 'being moved by rational consideration of distant motives' would likely result in a 'non-critical thinker' accepting/following a helpful dogma/propaganda and being dismissive of harmful dogma/propaganda.
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John Hartz at 01:27 AM on 9 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
Recommended supplemental reading:
The Moral Outrageousness of Trump’s Decision on the Paris Agreement by Donald Brown, Ethics & Climate, July 7, 2017
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jgnfld at 23:43 PM on 8 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
@27...
Do you honestly think Jo Nova cares one whit about "informing readers"? Or that the majority of the readers there want to be accurately informed as opposed to having their biases confirmed?
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SingletonEngineer at 22:53 PM on 8 July 2017Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world
@ Nigelj:
My screen is touch-sensitive: I can drag the map with a finger tip.
I can also double-click to re-centre the map and thus bring the full text out from behind the other graphics.
So, problem solved! If only they were all this simple.
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rjmhudson at 22:38 PM on 8 July 2017SkS Analogy 9 - The greenhouse effect is a stack of blankets
Everyone is intimately familiar with warming up their own body with blankets, so this analogy is worth keeping in the tool box. It's actually quite accurate for the Earth at night time and explaining why nighttime lows have been increasing rapidly.
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Eclectic at 21:48 PM on 8 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
Thank you Mr Too@30 and Mr Scaddenp@38 , for pointing to the website Climate4you .com , which I hadn't come across before.
Climate4you seems a trashy website (though not as trashy as WUWT). At first glance at their "Overview" page, they appear to present many graphs scientifically analysing data — but their commentary in text is containing many unscientific statements.
Most outrageous, I thought, was their comment that some rather minor variations of atmospheric CO2 during the (pre-industrial) Holocene period were evidence that the CO2 level had no correlation with Earth's surface temperatures & climate changes over time, and therefore CO2 could be disregarded as a significant factor in climate change.
They also denigrated the validity of any corrections of the various temperature records — calling these corrections "administrative changes" that downgraded the "reliability" of the various data sets (from various organizations).
Then they praised the UAH satellite records of so-called "lower troposphere" [what the man-in-the-street would really think of as upper atmosphere and having little relevance to down here on the surface of the planet] and they pooh-poohed the extensive actual surface records and the ocean heat/temperature records.
On top of that, they implied that various "cycles" in the recent and mid-Holocene were a major cause of the modern rapid warming. And combine that with their strange urge to fit entirely inappropriate polynomial/non-linear trend curves to a plethora of widely-scattered data points.
All-in-all, they appeared to focus on minor variations in temperature data sets, as though these mathematical variations had a real life of their own — and without the slightest acknowledgement that all true data records are merely a representation of real physical events which have real physical causes.
In summary : Climate4you is a trashy website (despite its specious graphs and its temperate language in the "Overview").
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AndyF at 20:38 PM on 8 July 2017A Quick and Dirty Analysis of GHCN Surface Temperature Data
I know this is an old article, but does anyone know where to find the raw+adjusted GHCN data today to repeat the exercise done by Caerbannof and KevinC back in 2011?
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scaddenp at 14:20 PM on 8 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
Hopefully too, the information provided here would have helped you form an accurate impression of the reliability of what you find at climate4you.
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Haze at 08:18 AM on 8 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
@23. Tom Curtis thanks for your detailed, thorough and informative remarks, they are much appreciated and I certainly was not aware of the information you have provided. Perhaps you could post the comment on Jennifer Marohasy's and Jo Nova's sites to inform readers there that the BoM does take care to ensure accuracy and fidelity of its temperature observations and does not make alterations on a whim. Thanks again. With regard to posting on other sites, I really think you should as your comment would challenge the perceptions of readers at those sites. BUt perhaps not as positions are often too entrenched to change
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nigelj at 08:08 AM on 8 July 2017Mapped: How climate change affects extreme weather around the world
What an extremely impressive map. One nit pick, some of the explanations towards Australia are partly hidden under the key.
We have the majority of evidence pointing to the human fingerprint, but it's interesting that a few studies find otherwise. This shows the lack of the great conspiracy theory the denialists talk about, but will be utterly lost on them.
I have heard sceptics say "theres no evidence climate change caused this event" which may be true, but no matter how many times you explain climate change made the events more probable, or more numerous or more severe, it fails to shift their views. They just repeat their mantra. It's like they dont register what we say.
Maybe their mind literally switches off to anything that contradicts their world view, or vested interests etc, and they aren't even aware this mind filtering is happening. It could be a form af sensory gating.
www.scientificamerican.com/article/your-hidden-censor-what-your-mind-will-not-let-you-see/
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ubrew12 at 07:38 AM on 8 July 2017Climate's changed before
About a month ago, I took the Pages-2k graph (last 2000 years of global temperature using tree ring proxies) and roughly calculated the temperature change per century, last 20 centuries, and the standard deviation in this metric for this 2000 year period. I then took 5-century intervals from the Marcott graph (last 11,000 years, ocean sediment data), calculated the average temperature change per century (over 5 centuries), and imposed the standard deviation I'd gotten from Pages-2k to each of these to calculate my best estimate of the temperature change per century for the 100 centuries prior to Christs birth. I then applied this same technique to the Shakun graph (last 20,000 years). However, in that case I used 10-century intervals to get the average temperature change per century and imposed the Pages-2k standard deviation upon that average to get 10 data points representing the likely variance over them. At the end of all this activity, I had 219 data points representing the likely temperature change per century for the 220 centuries (22,000 years) before the 20th century. The average was 0.014 C/century, the standard deviation was 0.077 C/century, so the 3-sigma point is 0.24 C/century. Warming in the 20th century was 0.78 C/century. To me this proves, statistically, that modern warming is nothing like anything that has occurred in the previous 22,000 years. Its about 3 times what would be considered extremely unusual from the natural record. And warming in the last 25 years, if it continues, is about 3 times that again (2.2 C/century). My question is: does anybody know where this kind of analysis has been performed in the Science record? I'm sure it has, and to a much greater degree. I just want to know where to find it so I can refer to it whenever somebody claims 'Its all natural'.
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nigelj at 07:26 AM on 8 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
I agree the reason for temperature adjustments is all there if you look. I have just done some reading on it myself, and put some links on the Republican Party article. If I can find this material in about one minute, sceptics have no excuse to be ignorant. The explanations are utterly compelling, and take little time to read. I have never even seen a sceptic try to refute them, and instead they just nag away, creating confusion, never clarity.
But maybe Haze partly has a point that making mistakes and having to correct them is never a good look. So try and minimise them, and openly explain what went wrong. We should avoid getting too defensive.
Any human based system will make a few mistakes. But do a bit of reading, and you find the climate science process goes to extreme lengths to minimise mistakes, identify mistakes, and biased temperatures or faulty measuring equipment, and correct them. The result is the big picture is very reliable.
Sceptics like Jo Nova are nit picking, and relying on the fact most people dont have time to check the detail. Its a form of cynical manipulation, and is not genuine scepticism that confronts issues openly. It's crowd manipulation. It's not genuine scepticism in the honourable, traditional sense of the term. Proper scepticism has to operate within rational boundaries.
For decent, rational scepticism read "Skeptic, by Michael Shermer"
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HK at 06:43 AM on 8 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
Zeke Hausfather explains the corrections of the RSS TLT data here.
The satellites used by RSS and UAH are launched into so-called sun-synchronous orbits that cause them to pass over the same location at the same local time every day. This is achieved by letting the orbital plane rotate one degree per day in a counter clockwise direction as seen from above the North Pole. The problem is that the very minor atmospheric drag may slow them down by several hours over a few years if they don’t have some propulsion system to offset that.The chart below shows how much the local time when the satellites cross the equator from south to north has drifted over the years. Two of the satellites, NOAA-11 and 14, drifted 7 hours over a period of about 10 years, while the two European satellites METOP-A and B (still in use) have kept the time almost perfectly. BTW, these same satellites also measure other weather and climate parameters, including the distribution of Arctic sea ice.
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nigelj at 06:30 AM on 8 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
OPOF @29, what you say is true, but better critical thinking would help more people identify the economic, ethical and social villains you are talking about. The system requires good information to work optimally, and only critical thinking can preserve this.
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nigelj at 06:27 AM on 8 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
Too@30, the second graph on your link page is for the history of Greenlands warming. It shows a strong warming in the so called minoan warm period, and an apparent weak warming in the so called modern warming period, according to their labels on the graph.
It is accurate, but incomplete, as it only shows temperatures to early last century. It is deceitful, or "Lies By Omission".
The full picture is here, and you can see although Greenland was very warm in the past, recent warming is more rapid. The recent instrumental record is grafted on in red.
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gws at 04:50 AM on 8 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
Along a different tangent ... notice Rick Perry's body languarge in that video (hands, #10). It suggests that he (subconsciously) knows he is going to a place he is uncomfortable with.
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Daniel Bailey at 03:40 AM on 8 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
@too
Note that the next figure (Fig. 3) from your link is a complete fabrication/misrepresentation, as it uses Alley's GISP2 core data (last data point 1855), so it misses all the warming of the instrumental record.
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Daniel Bailey at 03:33 AM on 8 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
@too
"Is the graph accurate and what process causes these glacial/interglacial cycles?"
The graph uses "Present" as 1950, like all ice-core-derived products. Thus it purposefully truncates the warming post-1950.
For previous ice ages and why they happen, one of the best summaries of the sceince extent is Berger et al 2016: Interglacials of the last 800,000 years. This paper is a wealth of information, all presented in context. As such, it's no easy read, being 58 pages long (not counting supplemental data).
Concepts covered in the paper:
Ice Ages, Glacial and Interglacial phases (and the transitions into and out of them), Stadials and Interstadials
Forcings (precession, obliquity, eccentricity, insolation)
Isotopes (the ratios of water isotopes are an example of a strong temperature proxy; others exist)
Proxies (temperature, greenhouse gases, ice volume/sea level, marine sediments and corals, terrestrial/speleothems/cave data and ice core gases, etc.)
Marine Isotope StagesIce Age - A period where continental-sized ice sheets exist
Interglacials - loosely defined as the absence of Northern Hemisphere land-based ice sheets outside of Greenland and sea levels similar to those of today
Glacials - the time within the past 2 million+ years not found in an interglacial (lower sea levels and widespread continental ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere)
Stadials/Interstadials - generally referred to as much shorter intervals of time (still millennial-scale events themselves) found within glacial phases and within the transition from glacial to interglacial phases (stadials are colder periods and interstadials warmer; transitions between these can be very abrupt; a requirement for both is continental ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere outside of Greenland)
Terminations - the end of an icy glacial phase and the ensuing (relatively rapid) transition to an interglacial phase
Inceptions - the end of a warm interglacial and the slow slide into an icy glacial phase (slow compared to terminations)
Insolation - the warming from the sun received at the surface of the Earth, itself dependent upon the distance of the Earth from the sun, the time of year and the angle at which the sun's rays strike the Earth
Marine Isotope Stages (commonly referred to as MIS) - periods of warmth, as deduced by proxy records from marine sediments; MIS are numbered sequentially backwards from the present Holocene (MIS1) to earlier such.As a general note, conditions that existed during previous glacial and interglacial phases are not identical, for physical reasons. So while glacial phases were colder, with more ice and lower sea levels than interglacials, the amounts of land-based ice, the amount the sea levels dropped or rose were not identical in different glacial phases, nor were they in different interglacial phases. Why? Because those conditions present then were based on the above mentioned parameters, which all were somewhat different. But what DID occur was the sum of the physics extent at those times.
My main takeaways:
1. Human actions, by increasing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, ensure that our climate will become warmer in the next century and remain warm for many millennia to come (pages 162 and 163 of the paper).
2. Terminations involve rapid, nonlinear, reactions of ice volume, CO2, and temperature to external astronomical forcing.
3. Glacial inception is a slower process involving a global sequence of changes.
4. Interglacials have been typically 10–30 thousand years long.
5. The slow response of ice sheets mean that sea level highstands (the period of maximum sea level rise experienced in an interglacial) may be attained later than the periods of peak forcing and peak warmth.
6. All ages referenced in the paper refer to 1950 as present.
7. Average dating uncertainties within the ice core records are several centuries to several millennia, +/-.
8. GHG concentrations can only be directly measured for the past 800,000 years from the ice core records; all others use different proxies to infer such or to infer temperatures/sea levels.
9. Due to ocean mixing times, a millennia is the minimum duration to measure the mean state of the global ocean.
10. The differences between the interglacials and today (and between the interglacials themselves) are very small between 60 degrees North and 60 degrees South; the differences are primarily found in the high latitudes/polar regions and expressed in high or low levels of land-based ice sheets (or the complete lack thereof).
11. The radiative forcing from GHGs found in interglacials with high levels of GHGs vs those interglacials with lower amounts (~280 ppm vs ~250 ppm for CO2) is about 1 W/m-2, driving a global temperature difference of about 1 degree C.
12. All interglacials were warm enough to lose most land-based ice sheets outside of Greenland in the Northern Hemisphere, with the warmest implying further ice sheet mass losses from Greenland and/or Antarctica.
13. There is strong evidence of higher sea levels (and lower levels of land-based ice sheet mass) during the previous interglacial (MIS 5) and MIS11.
14. The warmth of MIS5 is due to both higher levels of CO2 and insolation being high, whereas MIS11 (one of the warmest interglacials) was warm only because of high levels of CO2.
15. The duration of a termination of a glacial phase is 4,000-9,000 years, with CO2 jumping 50-100 ppm, more or less synchronously with Antarctic temperatures; CH4 makes its transitions within a few decades, toward the end of the CO2 rise (implying terrestrial emissions form peat bogs and wetlands).
16. Terminations generally only occur when a large ice volume/low sea level has been reached (meaning that a nonlinear tendency towards instability is present in the ice sheets).
17. The onset of the last 4 interglacials occurred during the period during which Northern Hemisphere daily summer insolation is rising.
18. The primary source for Co2 injection into the atmosphere during terminations is the deep oceans, with the primary locations for such being the Southern Ocean.
19. Stadial/interstadial seesawing can produce an "overshoot" in Antarctic temperatures, possibly contributing to complete collapses and disintegrations of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (MIS 5e, 9e and 11c), and a rapid pulse injection of CO2 released form the Southern Ocean.
20. No stadial/interstadials have occurred during interglacials, which are less variable than glacial phases; basically, the climate is pretty variable ordinarily, but that variability is suppressed during interglacials (during which variability is of centennial-to-millennial durations).
21. Holocene climate (the last 12,000 years) is preserved in proxy records of decadal scale temporal resolution. Such are also emerging for MIS5 and earlier interglacials.
22. There is some evidence of an anthropogenic contribution to both the warmth and higher CO2 levels of the Holocene (MIS1); i.e., the Ruddiman Hypothesis.
23. By 2100, global temperatures will exceed those during all of the Holocene (MIS1), under all emissions scenarios.
24. Summer temperatures appears to be the most important driver of glacial inception.
25. Glacial inception is unlikely to happen within the next approximate 50,000 years (when the next strong drop in Northern Hemisphere summer insolation occurs) if either atmospheric CO2 concentration remains above 300ppm or cumulative carbon emissions exceed 1,000 Pg C; only for an atmospheric CO2 content below the preindustrial level may a glaciation occur within the next 10,000 years.
Summary: Given the continued anthropogenic CO2 emissions, glacial inception is very unlikely to occur in the next 50,000 years, because the timescale for CO2 and temperature reduction toward unperturbed values in the absence of active removal is very long, and only weak precessional forcing occurs in the next two precessional cycles.
Berger et al 2016 - Interglacials of the last 800,000years (open access)
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Tom Curtis at 03:00 AM on 8 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
too @30, this graph from Hansen shows the relative change in forcing between the preindustrial values and the Last Glacial Maximum, and would be fairly representative for most glacial cycles:
As ubrew12 notes, the trigger for the change in ice sheet extent (the primary driver of albedo changes) and GHG concentrations are changes in orbital parameters that result in near zero change in overall forcing, but significant changes in particularly sensitive regions such as the North Atlantic.
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michael sweet at 02:51 AM on 8 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
Tom,
It is always interesting to see you find exactly the information that is being asked for. Haze asks why the BOM cannot exactly say how they record the data and you provide a link to their methods. Other readers should note that it is very time consuming to find these references and thank you for your diligence. Hopefully casual readers will realize that scientific methods are carefully documented and skeptic claims that changes are made without reasons are false.
It is impossible for the OBM to satisfy deniers like Marohassy and JoNova. They both know what the BOM does and they ignore those protocols for their own reasons.
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ubrew12 at 02:42 AM on 8 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
too@30 asks "what process causes these glacial/interglacial cycles?" Carbon Dioxide causes them. They are touched off by orbital changes, but since Earth is a sphere there's no 'side' it can point toward the Sun that should automatically cause more warming than any other 'side'. When the Southern hemisphere, which is mostly ocean, is pointed toward the Sun, it vents more CO2 from the Southern Ocean, and this causes the Northern Hemisphere to melt its ice sheets despite the fact that its getting less sunlight overall. SkepticalScience talks about this in 'myth 12: CO2 lags temperature'. Also, potholer54 did a good video explaining this. Google "potholer54 The "800 year lag" unravelled" to find it.
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too at 00:51 AM on 8 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
That article did prompt me to dig a little further. I found the second graph on this page rather interesting and was wondering what other peoples thoughts were on it.
http://climate4you.com/GlobalTemperatures.htm#An overview to get things into perspective
It's the Temp Anomaly (deg C) versus Years BP graphic.
Is the graph accurate and what process causes these glacial/interglacial cycles?
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johnlhh at 23:51 PM on 7 July 2017Increasing CO2 has little to no effect
The whole reason is that CO2 is the GHG that we can do something about. Even if not the main cause. The discussion is entertainment.
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Tom Curtis at 22:22 PM on 7 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
Haze @22, so you are suggesting that BOM should make statements such as:
"The standard scientific practice is to detect potential artificial jumps by comparing data from the station of interest (the candidate station) with data from other nearby stations where the suspected artificial jump is absent (reference stations). If there is an artificial jump in the data, this will be reflected in the candidate station warming or cooling relative to other surrounding stations.
This method of detection avoids falsely identifying actual climatic shifts and natural variability (such as that associated with the 1997–98 El Niño) as spurious artefacts in the data. The comparison with neighbours also serves the valuable purpose of largely rendering the test data free of trends."
(Full explanation here under question 5)
Or perhaps this on the cutoffs:
"3. Internal consistency of METAR and maximum/minimum temperature data
This check flagged data violating either of the following:
•Maximum temperature 4°C or more above the highest METAR temperature of the day, providing that there was no point during the day when there were more than 70 minutes between METAR temperatures.
•Maximum temperature 1°C or more below the highest METAR temperature of the day. (The tolerance on this test was used because many METAR temperatures, particularly manually observed ones, are only archived to the nearest whole degree.)Equivalent criteria were used for daily minimum temperatures."
(From here, which has a link to it here. METARS are meteorological reports produced for aviation on a regular basis through the day.)
The fact is that BOM has taken the time to detail its methods, their justification, and the relative rate of errors in original observations (" The error rate in temperature observations is low – experience with operational quality control procedures at the Bureau of Meteorology in
recent years suggests that it is in the order of a few tenths of one per cent – but such a rate still equates to the potential for several tens of thousands of errors in a data set of the size of ACORN-SAT"). These detailed explanations are typically ignored by AGW "skeptics", as also by the general public. It is certainly not the practise of the general public, having read some bombshell "revelation" by Marohassy, to carefully read the BOM site conjuring up a twitter storm.This, then, shows the fundamental problem of the idea that "perception is reality". The perception is artfully generated by people with an intention to distort the data (ie, Marohassy and JoNova etc). They are feeding an uncritical audience who lap it up because it feeds their prejudices. In that context, no amount of careful explanation by BOM will change the perception for that audience because they are not listening. Marohassy has been shown to be wrong on Australian temperature data repeatedly, but creates no perception problem for her because her audience does not care.
In that context, expecting BOM to operate on managing perceptions is an impossible task. What they need to do is concentrate on the science so that anybody who actually thinks critically about the issue can see they are doing a very good job. I mean, think about it. Consider the thousands of observations BOM makes every day, then ask yourself, how many imagined problems have those "skeptics" actually found. Even if all were real problems, the result is a very high accuracy rate.
The further solution is for people to stop giving others a pass on lazy, motivated reasoning. If somebody feeds you a Marohassy article, call them out for not fact checking, for the (often) implicit conspiracy theory they are accepting, and for their uncritical thinking. This should be particularly the case if the person involved is in a position of relative authority (journalist, MP, etc). There is no excuse for spreading ignorance and falsehoods, and that they are doing it second hand only makes them more foolish.
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Haze at 20:53 PM on 7 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
"So what do you propose that BoM do differently?" In this case to allay suspicion, state explicitly what the cut off points for automatic temperature adjustments are, how they are determined, what is the range around the cut off point and what form does human intervention take. Surely it wouldn't be too difficult to say (for example only) that automatic adjustments occur when a recorded temperature measurement is 1-2 C above the highest or lowest temperature rcorded at the particular station, that human intervention is based on assessment of several factors and giv e examples And as for appeasing deniers, politicians who are any good, spend considerable time and energy to sell their message to the public. If the BoM thinks that that is not their role, well, fair enough but spending, say, a day to put an explanation on their web site doesn't seem a huge ask to ensure corrections made are entirely undedrstandable and above all, transparent.
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scaddenp at 20:30 PM on 7 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
So what do you propose that BoM do differently? Not put QC controls on data because idiot deniers will misrepresent it? Guess what, BoM is actually trying to do their job with as much precision and care as budgets allow. Appeasing deniers that continue to invent, distort, misrepresent your actions because they are wedded to the idea that global warming is the invention of a global comspiracy of scientists is not their job.
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Haze at 19:54 PM on 7 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
You clearly are not au fait with the saying "perception is reality" The point I am trying, very badly it seems, to make is that to those who seize on anything that reinforces their prejudices, a report showing a BoM temperature was altered upward and then, after attention was drawn to the alteration, changed back to the original, reinforces their belief that temperatures are adjusted to fit the "Climate Change scam". And your comment "That is, unless your real "concern", as in the case of Jo Nova, is neither meteorology nor climate science but rather something else entirely" is a typical example of shooting the messenger. My "concern" as you put it, is, in fact, trying to show that actions by the BoM such as those reported by Jennifer Marohasy and picked up by Jo Nova are meat and drink to those who deny or who are sceptical about, the role of humans in Climate Change
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jgnfld at 18:57 PM on 7 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
@Haze...
Your "concerns" are noted.
As for your concern that this could have muddied the climatological record, did you know this station is not even part of the Australian Climate Observations Reference Network
– Surface Air Temperature (ACORN-SAT) dataset? You are arguing that a .4C difference in one value at one location that is not even used in climate analysis in the first place somehow introduces doubt in the whole science. That's a real denier stretch. Even if this station was part of the climate record this value if not edited would change the Australian monthly reported value about .0001C. Values are not reported to 4 decimal places as no one would make the claim the aggregated values are accurate to that level, so it would not affect the record at all.Have you ever dealt with a high quality national- or global-sized database? Those who do have a huge number of real concerns all designed to keep the error rate as low as possible. See the various tabs at http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/change/acorn-sat/ for a detailed description of all these issues and how they are dealt with.
Their concerns are much different from those reporting on daily values in daily meteorological forecasts and reporting as is the case here where .4C at one time at one locale is absolutely trivial. That is, unless your real "concern", as in the case of Jo Nova, is neither meteorology nor climate science but rather something else entirely.
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bozzza at 18:10 PM on 7 July 2017Planet Hacks: Flying
@4,
Ger, may I ask how you come to that assertion?
<...feels a Richard Branson moment coming on!>
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bozzza at 17:48 PM on 7 July 2017Planet Hacks: Flying
Does that mean there is a business case for cheaper flights at night?
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Haze at 16:10 PM on 7 July 2017Bad news for climate contrarians – 'the best data we have' just got hotter
@ 17 Yes I did look at the web site and although I read "The large volume of data associated with the more frequent observations (such as one minute data) limits the quality control of these observations to automatic processes, whereas some human interaction is involved in quality controlling maximum and minimum temperature data" I didn't see any reference to what the human interaction was nor were minimum and maximum cut off points and their range for automatic temperature quality control mentioned. It is these to which I was referring. As I noted, BoM did change the temperature from the -10.0C cut off that had previously been used to -10.4C. The inference that could be drawn, particularly by those receptive to such inferences, is that the BoM would not have reversed the initial change had it not been noted by others
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One Planet Only Forever at 15:25 PM on 7 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
nigelj@27,
My concern is deeper than critical thinking. Why don't the supposedly advanced societies raise the vast majority of their members to be 'moved by rational consideration of distant motives'? Why do they fail to raise responsible considerate adults?
The best explanation I have is that those who want to get away with the easier/lazier, less responsible, less considerate behaviour would struggle to be winners in such a society.
And once a few of those types get away with their undeserved competitive advantage others are eager to follow the unacceptable examples.
As more people focus on believing whatever they want to excuse what they want to get away with the society devolves to the point where the callous greedy and the intolerant can actually win popularity contests by the easy appeals to tempt people to try to benefit form being greedier and less tolerant (far easier than getting people to be moved by the rational consideration of distant motives). And if things are allowed to degenerate far enough the most abusive and aggressive among them can win the Presidency and the unfit for Leadership likes of that 'Winner' can be appointed to leadership roles by that undeniably undeserving President.
And the fuel for all of this is the creation of unsustainable and undeserved perceptions of prosperity and opportunity by over-development of the economy in the wrong direction (unsustainable and damaging development).
A main demand seems to be that people will change as long as the change is an improvement on their current developed perception of prosperity and opportunity (or fond regional memories of the prosperity of past-times before an unsustainable way of living came to its inevitable and deserved end).
Trying to get people to understand climate science also requires many of them to understand the unacceptability and unsustainability of their perceptions of personal prosperity and opportunity. And it requires many wealthy powerful people to accept that they deserve to lose the economic gambles they made.
A critical thinker is not immune to the powerful temptation of personal Winning. In fact, a critical thinker can choose to behave less acceptably and be 'very smart' about how they behave unacceptably.
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scaddenp at 15:05 PM on 7 July 2017Why the Republican Party's climate policy obstruction is indefensible
ubrew - models dont put ENSO/PDO etc into model at all. These are emergent features from running the physics. Its just that because they are essentially chaotic, each different model run produces a completely different wiggle.
I not sure about the subtely lost - the deniers writing up about perceived model/obs mismatches have to get the data in first place and publications very much emphasize what models predict and dont. If someone wont read your text, how are you supposed to communicate?
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