Arguments
Recent Comments
Prev 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 Next
Comments 20401 to 20450:
-
Glenn Tamblyn at 13:25 PM on 5 April 2017Elevator Pitches - Chapter 02 - Radiative Gases
Interesting find Tom.
And thus maybe rotational isn't a factor in the IR bands for CO. Interesting however that it is a factor for H2O - another feature to add to waters status as a really 'interesting' molecule. -
chriskoz at 10:22 AM on 5 April 2017Inconceivable! The latest theatrical House 'Science' committee hearing
bjchip@1,
They SHOULD be going to jail.
Lamar brings his politics to dictate his science. His ignorance is simply a symptom of the destruction of our democracy.
(comment policy violating emphasis original)
I note that rep. Lamar Smith is the democratically elected senator in TX. So he (or his ignorance) is the actual product (rather than destruction) of US democracy. And that democracy is working fine to date: e.g. takeover of Congress seats at each term, takeover of WH by successive administrations; all happenning peacefuly according to Constitution, without any hint of voter fraud. I'd add from myself, that the system is working amazingly well, given its recent absurd outcome of installation the biggest imaginable Moron-In-Chief and Psychopath-In-Chief in WH. Rep. Smith is trying to follow the WH example in his absurd denial of climate science but I think he does not quite match the WH lead because it other aspects of life he may be more reasonable and less disconnected from reality.
My point here is that your logic is wrong in labeling Rep. Smith "a symptom of the destruction of our democracy". Rather, if people follow your calls to sue him and throw him to jail; or "a march, [...] a general strike", and domestic violence is to ensue, then Rep. Smith may be the reason of the "destruction of our democracy".
Moderator Response:[PS] Your point on democracy is well made but while this thread is a necessarily about politics, your characterizations are over the line on comments policy.
-
bjchip at 08:30 AM on 5 April 2017Inconceivable! The latest theatrical House 'Science' committee hearing
Without putting too fine a point on it, Lamar and his fellow travellers are committing treason, damaging the future of the nation for their personal financial gain. That it looks like politics-as-usual is a measure of the degree that the Overton Window has shifted in the USA. They are traitors to the human species.
They SHOULD be getting sued. They SHOULD be getting impeached. They SHOULD be going to jail.
...and that is not happening and not likely to happen until Mother Nature opens up her can of whup'@55 and lays in all of us in about a decade or so, for their hubris and for permitting our hands to be tied by such as them. That will be unmistakably happening by 2030 and we're going to be in dire straits by then.
The alternative is perhaps not a march, but a general strike, possibly the first such in the history of the Nation. The government is in this one specific way, entirely wrong by adopting ignorance as a sacrament.
We HAVE to make it clear that a majority of Americans voted for revolution, not for this ignorance, and that we want them to be draining the swamp instead of importing bigger Alligators. Not just a march now.
What is necessary is something that kicks them hard enough to actually get their attention. To get the attention of the media too. To shift the Overton window on this back somewhere in the vicinity of where we actually live. A serious threat of secession of some regions of the country could also be appropriate. Lamar brings his politics to dictate his science. His ignorance is simply a symptom of the destruction of our democracy.
Moderator Response:[JH] The use of "all-caps" constitutes shouting and is is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy. If you want to emphasize a word or words, the use of bold font is acceptable.
-
DaveMartsolf at 05:25 AM on 5 April 2017We're heading into an ice age
From the time-stamp history of the past 368 comments I see a drastic slow-down in discussion of this topic in the last 4 years. Is there a better "Arguement" topic in which to post regarding this topic?
Moderator Response:[JH] Enter "Ice Age" in the search engine and take your picks among the articles that are listed.
[PS] All threads remain open. Regulars use the "Comments" item to view comments so anything added to any thread is visible. If this article has the content you wish comment on then go ahead here, but be sure to read and abide by the comments policy.
-
John Hartz at 00:48 AM on 5 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
NASA has just updated it's Sea Level Facts webpage. It contains two charts. The first chart tracks the change in sea level since 1993 as observed by satellites. The second chart, derived from coastal tide gauge data, shows how much sea level changed from about 1870 to 2000.
Click here to access this NASA webpage.
-
Nick Palmer at 22:33 PM on 4 April 2017Dear Mr President 2.0: the discovery of the Greenhouse Effect - in Tweets
Superb satire
-
KR at 21:17 PM on 4 April 2017CO2 lags temperature
malpeli - Long story short with Humlum: if you remove the trend before analysis, then claim from what's left that the trend doesn't exist, you have done your analysis incorrectly. I won't speculate on why his analysis is so poor, but I'll point out that Humlum has a history of similar errors.
-
Leto at 08:59 AM on 4 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
JF: If you want to keep using the colloquial terms "squash" or "squeeze", as a short hand for a scalar transformation of the ordinate of a graph, that's fine with me.
RH: Squeeze' was your original term, not mine.
JF: " 'Squeeze' was your original term, not mine." Do you have a point? A scalar transformation of either the ordinate or the abscissa in any graph is a fair math move.
John. If you do not understand RH's comment that 'squeeze' was your original term, consider this. Your first comment I have quoted above sounds as though you have disdain for folksy types who write 'squeeze' when they mean scalar transformation, but you will condescend to converse with them on their folksy level. It sounds like a conversational gambit to make onlookers perceive you as the mathematically sophisticated one. RH countered that the folksy term came from you. You then disowned your own rhetorical gambit, even as you dropped in "abscissa", which sounds like another attempt to portray yourself as mathematically elite. (None of us care, really, what terms are used, and scalar transformation is fine; the issue is simply tangential to the discussion.)
Maybe you did not mean it that way, but that is how it reads. On the other hand, I find it folksy and unsophisticated to consider the atempt to validate or invalidate a model based on ridiculously short time spans, such as 4 years.
Just keep in mind that you are conversing with people who understand this material better than you do.
-
Tom Curtis at 08:20 AM on 4 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
JohnFornaro, I have just taken a expanded image of the IPCC projections, and the upper limit of the likely range shows a 100 mm increase relative to 1986-2005 levels by 2020. Taking the midpoint of the baseline period, that requires a 100 mm increase relative to 1995, or a mean rate of 4 mm per year. The rate since 1995 has been approx 3.3 mm per year, for a total increase of approximately 69 mm since then, leaving a 31 mm increase or 7.75 mm per annum to reach the upper limit of the likely range. We have already exceded the lower limit of the likely range, and effectively reached median estimate for 2020. That suggests we are currently running between the median and upper likely limit of the AR5 projections, and on the upper likely limit of the AR4 projections. Unfortunately, that tells us the IPCC projections are running low for sea level rise other than from large scale ice sheet events, which will be lumpy and hence unlikely to show up over short periods early in the century. That is, on current evidence 2100 sea level will be in the upper range of the IPCC projection plus an unknown further amount from large scale ice sheet collapse.
I am not sure where you got the 4 cm expectation between now and 2020, but suspect it may be because you have not correctly baselined the IPCC projections.
-
chriskoz at 08:06 AM on 4 April 2017Elevator Pitches - Chapter 02 - Radiative Gases
Tom@24, Glenn@23,
Rotational energy quants at the molecular level are smaller than the vibrational. The result is that molecular rotation produce spectral lines in the radio part (some 100MHz or less), therefore not playing a mejor part in greenhouse effect (radiation in radio frequency constitutes a miniscule part of an outgoing body radiation at Earth temperature). That's probably why most GHE textbooks talks about virbational energy quants as the main phenomenon of interest.
But I suspect, in combination with vibrational changes, rotational changes may result in broadening of virbational spectral lines since the comination of two quants of a magnitude difference (if allowed) would produce a quant slightly shifted. However that's only my intuition as I'm not an expert in this field.
-
HK at 04:33 AM on 4 April 2017CO2 lags temperature
A big problem with Humlum’s claim is the period from 1940 to 1975.
Using SkS’s trend calculator I find the trend in this period to be -0.024oC/decade with data from NASA-GISS and -0.015oC/decade with data from Berkeley Earth, plus/minus some uncertainty for both.
In the same 35 year period the global mean CO2 concentration increased from 311 to 331 ppm. Where did those 155 gigatonnes of extra CO2 come from when both land and sea surface temperature trends were close to zero or slightly negative? -
michael sweet at 02:20 AM on 4 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
John,
We do not expect sea level rise to change much in the next four years. According to your graph at 72, from the middle of 2012 to the middle of 2016 (the last four years of data) sea level rose about 20 mm. Why are you so focused on the next four years? We already have the data you seek in the last four years. Sea level rise was in the range of 1-4 cm you indicate. Over time we expect the sea to rise faster.
Short time periods have much more noise than long time periods. El Nino's tend to have faster rise and La Nina's slower rise. If the next four years are mostly La Nina (through random chance) sea level may rise more slowly. That would mean nothing. From 2005 to 2011 we see this effect. From 2011 to 2016 we see faster rise as there more El Nino's. You need to adopt a longer time frame to eliminate the noise.
Sea level rise experts are people who have devoted their lives to learning about glaciers and the ocean. The partisans are absent from the scientific debate.
If you can provide the data about exactly how much CO2 will be emitted for the next 80 years the scientists can give you a better projection. You ask more than can be known.
There are many questions about how the great ice sheets will behave. 20 years ago scientists thought that the great ice sheets might grow from more snow. They learned that the sheets melt from below from a warming ocean. A few years ago scientists thought that there was no possible mechanism for greater than 2 meters of sea level rise before 2100. A mechanism for the disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet has now been discovered (3-4 meters of rise). It is not yet known exactly how that mechanism will affect the next 80 years. We have to go with the best science that we have today. That is reflected in the graphs you have posted.
Exact predictions of the future are hard. There is no doubt that AGW is causing the sea to rise and will continue to rise. If you think there is an issue with that, buy land in Miami.
-
Rob Honeycutt at 02:05 AM on 4 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
JF... I'd suggest that "persuasion" is merely Scott Adams favorite dog whistle. I'd also say that, no, altering a graph just for the purposes of persuasion is not appopriate.
A good example is with climate deniers. It seems to be persuasive to many when they take a temperature graph of the holocene and change the Y-axis to start a 0°C. Like here. That is persuasive for those who are not inclined to look any deeper into the matter.
The problem is, for every piece of incontrovertible evidence there is another anti-science meme produced by someone out there designed to cast doubt on the science. Google any climate topic out there and see what comes up. It's a smattering of both real science and conspiracy addled fake science, and for most people it's hard (sometimes impossible) to tell the difference.
I am curious about this statement, though.
"The "climate experts" have no idea by what amount the sea levels might be rising, and they have no idea of how much sea level rise would be non-partisan, incontrovertible proof of sea level rise."
Climate experts actually do have a strong idea of how much sea levels are rising. They also understand the uncertainties and the variability within the data. So, I'm not clear how you justify that statement.
And the second half of that statement just doesn't make sense to me. "Non-partisan, incontrovertible proof" (evidence would be a better word) doesn't seem to describe anything since science is, by nature, non-partisan.
-
JohnFornaro at 01:21 AM on 4 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Rob Honeycutt @ 79:
"'Squeeze' was your original term, not mine."
Do you have a point? A scalar transformation of either the ordinate or the abscissa in any graph is a fair math move.
From:
https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Change-the-scale-of-the-vertical-value-axis-in-a-chart-05973661-e56a-4486-a9f3-f9ce41df0021
"You can customize the scale to better meet your needs."
For example, one might want to make a flat line look like a sharply rising line. One might want to misinform shallow thinking politicians, always a fair move in principle.
I'm studying whether or not one to four cm of sea level rise, if observed and measured accurately by 2020, three years from now, would be incontrovertible evidence that the graphs of the two models that I studied have accurately predicted sea level rise. I guess not.
The "climate experts" have no idea by what amount the sea levels might be rising, and they have no idea of how much sea level rise would be non-partisan, incontrovertible proof of sea level rise. The issue continues to be persuasion.
Nice chatting tho.
Moderator Response:[JH] Your condescending tone is neither warranted nor welcome.
-
MA Rodger at 01:01 AM on 4 April 2017Breathing contributes to CO2 buildup
Grumpymel @93.
Your argument only works if you assume that an apple (or other plant-matter that would grow and decay in its stead) somehow does not emit CO2 when it decays. An apple contains carbon and oxygen so as it decays, what happens to the carbon and oxygen? Is it only humanity that by eating apples and other food breath out CO2?
-
Tom Curtis at 00:12 AM on 4 April 2017Elevator Pitches - Chapter 02 - Radiative Gases
Glenn Tamblyn @23, evidently so (scroll down to figure 4.14).
-
Grumpymel at 00:07 AM on 4 April 2017Breathing contributes to CO2 buildup
I've been reconsidering this for a bit now and I think Plimer actually has a point about exhalation contributing to GW in a minor way. Hear this out. I know that carbon is a cycle but at only one point in that cycle is it acting as a GHG in the atmosphere. What actually determines how much warming GHG contributes to at any point is how much is in the atmosphere at that point, correct?
If something happaned to increase the percentage of time that carbon spent in the atmospheric portion of it's cycle then that would increase the amount of carbon in the atmosphere at any given time and if the factor that caused that change were persistant rather then transient, the amount of carbon in the atmosphere at any given time would be consistantly higher as well, correct?
For example, if hypothetically, at base line carbon spent 50 percent of it's cycle in the atmosphere and 50 percent in the non-atmospheric portion and some factor came along to change that ratio to 90 percent of it's time in atmosphere and 10 percent out, we'd have significantly more GHG in our atmosphere, correct?
So the question, it seems to me, is "Does human consumption of carbon increase the amount of time it spends in the atmosphere?" or perhaps more directly "Does eating an apple return it's carbon to the atmosphere more rapidly then had we not picked it, let it fall to the ground, decay and rot"? Given what human consumption does to an apple compared to what would happen via natural decay...I'd have to say the answer was likely yes. We significantly decrease the amount of time it takes for carbon to return to the atmosphere.
That doesn't mean that exhalation is a major factor in climate change but I'd have to say that yes, more humans on the planet consuming food and exhaling carbon back into the atmosphere probably does result in a consistantly larger amount of carbon in the atmosphere then if we weren't engaged in such activity.
-
Glenn Tamblyn at 22:31 PM on 3 April 2017Elevator Pitches - Chapter 02 - Radiative Gases
Also Jim, Tom, just speculating,
Since CO has a permanent dipole like H2O, it might also capable of being IR active through rotational absorption. -
Tom Curtis at 22:03 PM on 3 April 2017CO2 lags temperature
Malpeli @562, the short answer is that in determining the lags, Humlum first subtracts from each monthly temperature or CO2 concentration value, the value of that same data from the month exactly one year before. The effect of this process is to remove the trend. Therefore, at most all he can logically conclude is that temperature is responsible for the variations in CO2 concentration around the trend line. He is certainly unable to conclude from that that temperature is responsible for the trend in CO2, as he has removed all data about that trend from his analysis.
Further, when you examine the data you see a variation in temperature across a range of 1 C, and a variation of of CO2 concentration across about 3 ppmv. It follows that if we accept Humlum's analysis as he presents it, we would deduce (very roughly) a relationship in which each 1 C of temperature rise would result in 3 ppmv increase in CO2 concentration. We would then note that there has been approximately a 1 C increase in Global Mean Surface Temperature since 1900, and hence deduce that CO2 levels have only risen by 3 ppmv due to the increase in temperature, with the rest being due to some other factor. I have done that analysis more exactly using the full Mauna Loa record together with the BEST Land Ocean Temperature Index and found an expected increase of 0.56 +/- 0.32 ppmv of CO2 per degree increase in GMST. Humlum knows the implications of that data, and therefore carefully does not include the relevant analysis in his paper.
-
malpeli at 20:51 PM on 3 April 2017CO2 lags temperature
I have recently come across a study that has led me to question the very basis of anthropomorphic climate change (something I haven't been seriously forced into before). This study claims to have revealed that present day CO2 increases still lag behind temperature increases when you would expect it to precede it as the main driver of the observed temperature increase since 1975. From the abstract:
"The maximum positive correlation between CO2 and temperature is found for CO2 lagging 11-12 months in relation to global sea surface temperature, 9.5-10 months to global surface air temperature, and about 9 months to global lower troposphere temperature"
If CO2 is indeed the driver of this current period of accelerated warming, as the theory states, surely temperature would lag CO2, wouldn't it? What am I missing here?
http://www.tech-know-group.com/papers/Carbon_dioxide_Humlum_et_al.pdf
Apologies if this study has been covered elsewhere but my limited research indicates that it's been ignored by subscribers to the anthropomorphic climate change theory since it was published and contrarians are using it with little resistance.
I do not like being wrong, being repeatedly accused of belonging to the church of global warming is irritating enough. But cognitive dissonance is a worse. I'm more inclined to change my outlook than ignore evidence, though not without a fight obviously...
Does anyone have any suggestions as to why CO2 might still lag temperature, if indeed it is? -
SirCharles at 12:38 PM on 3 April 2017Scientists understood the climate 150 years ago better than the EPA head today
Even Fox News slams EPA chief’s climate denial: ‘All kinds of studies contradict you’
Chris Wallace utterly debunks Scott Pruitt’s lies about the central role carbon pollution plays in warming.
-
Rob Honeycutt at 04:48 AM on 3 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
JF... "I'm not getting the sense that you agree with these two sources."
You're still missing the point here. I'm disagreeing with the use of those as being incontrovertible evidence. You're selecting a very short time frame which is prone to a great deal of variation and will give you different answers for different time frames. Thus, no, you're not going to get incontrovertible evidence using such a method. Even if the results currently agreed with the overall scientific evidence, over a different time frame they very well may give you a very different result.
When discussing climate change it's best to avoid short time frames for anything, even if you think they agree with a point you're trying to make.
-
Kiwiiano at 04:01 AM on 3 April 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #13
The Antarctic is "inside out" compared to the Arctic. A big block of ice surrounded by water, rather than water surrounded by land, hence we aren't seeing the same strange new patterns.
However, that doesn't mean we aren't seeing different strange new patterns, and more intense rainfall and prolonged droughts are just what was predicted with a more energetic atmosphere.
-
Rob Honeycutt at 03:58 AM on 3 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
JF... 1) "Squeeze" was your original term, not mine. 2) You've not explained what you mean by "scalular transformation" nor have you demonstrated that you have the capacity to work with data rather than rescaling an image file.
The incontrovertible evidence you're looking for relative to sea level rise is going to be related to ice mass losses since that is where most of the future contributions to SLR will come from.
-
John Hartz at 23:56 PM on 2 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
MA Rodgers: We also need to keep in mind that sea level rise is does not occur uniformly throughout the global ocean system.
-
MA Rodger at 23:50 PM on 2 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
JohnFornaro @76.
Concerning predictions of SLR, the graph you present @73 shows a 2000-17 SLR of 30mm (lowest) to 120mm (highest) with a "likely" range of 60mm to 100mm.
The data used in the graph you present @72 gives an average SL in 2000 of 16mm and an average for the final 12-months of data (to June 2016) of 82mm. This implies an SLR over the 15½ years of 62mm and pro rata a 17 year SLR (2000-17) of 68mm.
The graph @73 can be scaled to provide a projection of 2017-20 SLR (It would be perhaps 11mm to 22mm "likely".) but the lumpy nature of the SLR record strongly suggests that using such a projection as "incontovertible evidence" (I'm not sure of what) would be foolhardy.
-
JohnFornaro at 21:58 PM on 2 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Rob:
If you want to keep using the colloquial terms "squash" or "squeeze", as a short hand for a scalar transformation of the ordinate of a graph, that's fine with me.
The two sources that were suggested to me predict a sea level rise of one to four cm in the next three years. I believe that would be incontovertible evidence of sea level rise. I'm not getting the sense that you agree with these two sources.
-
Rob Honeycutt at 10:55 AM on 2 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
JF... Simple lies are always more persuasive than the complex truth. That doesn't mean it's right to tell lies. In other words, whether squashing (or "squeezing", as you originally termed it) two data series together is more persuasive is irrelevant.
The issue we face with sea level rise has little to do with the measured amount of sea level rise to date, since what is critical about SLR is ice sheet contributions.
Do you grasp that, at the peak of the last interglacial when global mean temperature was about 1°C warmer than now, global sea level was about 20 feet higher than today? That is the crisis that looms before us today.
Do you grasp that, with >3-4°C rise in global mean temperature it's likely we could eventually see total loss of the ice sheets. That takes some centuries to play out, but think of it this way. We are but a few centuries removed from the Renaissance. Within a single generation of energy use today, we could be ensuring people within a few hundred years of us would see about 70 meters of sea level rise. And whether or not you think bringing up morality muddies the waters or not, that absolutely has deep moral implication.
What you're doing is exactly what climate deniers do. They try to pick out a short time scale that ignores nearly all the important relevant research on the matter, and say, "Well, look here! There's no crisis!" That is an act of pure deception. That is hiding the actual relevant information (which is widely available) in favor of a convenient and easy lie.
That, in a nutshell, is the problem. It is very easy to create and disseminate misinformation. It is far more difficult to do real science and communicate its meaning and implications.
-
chriskoz at 09:47 AM on 2 April 2017Scientists understood the climate 150 years ago better than the EPA head today
michael sweet@13,
We can generalise that and say T-man does not read (or if he does he does not understand) most documents and applications he signs, eitheir as a head of his corporation or as POTUS. But we still acknowledge that all documents signed by current POTUS are valid and legally bound, as if he understood what he signed.
-
nigelj at 08:18 AM on 2 April 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #13
The jetstream issue is interesting. We have just had historically record floods in Auckland NZ, the worst in a long time. The primary cause was a sub tropical low coming from the north west and stalling, as it met a stubborn high to the east of the country.
I have seen no expert comment on whether it's linked to climate change, but the event included unprecedented short bursts of intense rainfall and this is consistent with higher atmospheric moisture. The stalled system is also consistent with changes to the jet stream discussed. However I don't know if these are happening with the southern jet stream as much as the northern one.
-
nigelj at 07:50 AM on 2 April 2017Scientists understood the climate 150 years ago better than the EPA head today
Michael Sweet @12 and 13, a couple of things occur to me.
I have seen similar numbers, that many more work in renewable energy in America than coal. I think the net effect of Trump's coal policies will be to shift a few people from renewable energy back coal, which is no real gain for the country as a whole.
It's possible Trump also has visions of more coal export, but that will not be an easy road, given other countries are starting to embrace renewable energy. His whole coal plan is badly considered, and will crash into various economic realities, just as his other policies have crashed into various realities. There's a common theme happening.
I can understand coal miners wanting to protect their jobs. I mean its really important to have some empathy, (Im sure you would have) but times do change. I remember Margaret Thatcher closing down state owned coal mines,due to inefficiency and the discovery of north sea oil. It had to be done (although I'm not a fan of her general world view, and over zealous belief in markets).
The thing is for the government, and all of us, to help the people displaced from jobs, with appropriate assistance.
You know what Trump will say about the sea wall. He will say he doesn't doubt sea level is rising, just what the cause is. These people always have some slippery answer. I just pray he is voted out in 4 years.
-
michael sweet at 06:35 AM on 2 April 2017Scientists understood the climate 150 years ago better than the EPA head today
Tom Curtis @6,
While I am sure you are correct that Trump did not read the application for sea walls because of sea level rise, I think it is still appropriate to cite this application as if he did read it. If his corporation is concerned about sea level rise it is a strong argument that he should take action to help the rest of us.
-
michael sweet at 06:32 AM on 2 April 2017Scientists understood the climate 150 years ago better than the EPA head today
BBHY at 5:
I strongly agree with you. Recent DOE reports claim that 600,000 people in the USA work in renewable energy. Only 174,000 worked in coal counting transportation and energy production plants. The people who work in renewable energy need to increase their visibility.
Paul Krugman in the New York Times suggested that many voters in coal country voted against their own best interest because they have always thought that coal was critical for their economy. It is their mindset. The reality is that coal is only a small fraction of jobs. Even in West Virginia, one of the most coal dependent states, only a few percent of workers have coal related jobs. Many more have health insurance from Obama care.
Hopefully the renewable energy workers can get organized. Currently the fossil fuel executives dominate the politicians.
-
nigelj at 06:06 AM on 2 April 2017Scientists understood the climate 150 years ago better than the EPA head today
I don't think Scott Pruitt was completely doubting the greenhouse effect. He was more doubting whether we can quantify how much recent warming is the greenhouse effect, and how much is from natural influences. So the article is factually correct, but missed the target a little for me.
My understanding is most research says the warming since the 1970's is at least 90% due to human causes including fossil fuels and methane etc. I totally accept this evidence. This leaves the question of why Pruit would doubt the vast weight of evidence.
Instead he chooses to believe someone like Judith Curry or Richard Lindzen who minimise human contributions to climate change. It's hard to figure people like Pruitt out. Maybe they are just pig headed stubborn, (and definitely hypocrites)
-
nigelj at 05:55 AM on 2 April 2017Scientists understood the climate 150 years ago better than the EPA head today
Factotum @7, I agree with your definition of stupid, and comments on Donald Rumsfeld.
One reason people with high IQ's do weird or dumb things sometimes might be a lack of "emotional intelligence" which is empathy.
Long term creative thinking and planning also requires a strong imagination which is not the same as IQ. Einstein is believed to have an IQ of about 175, but also a highly developed imagination, and ability to visualise. It was a potent combination.
Neo-conservatism and extreme conservatism seems extremely retrograde and dangerous to me, but extreme liberalism has downsides as well. It's often (although not always) the extremes we need to be most worried about.
-
Tom Curtis at 04:56 AM on 2 April 2017Scientists understood the climate 150 years ago better than the EPA head today
joe @8, the statute in question (Clean Air Act, Sect 202 a 1; USC 7521 a 1) reads:
"The Administrator shall by regulation prescribe (and from time to time revise) in accordance with the provisions of this section, standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare. Such standards shall be applicable to such vehicles and engines for their useful life (as determined under subsection (d) of this section, relating to useful life of vehicles for purposes of certification), whether such vehicles and engines are designed as complete systems or incorporate devices to prevent or control such pollution."
In particular, the Administrator may only promulgate regulations regarding pollutants which "...which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare". That appears to be the basis of Pruitt's challenge, but it does not require an independent study by the EPA. Rather, in requires the Administrator to form an opinion, while placing no restrictions on how that opinion is formed. Clearly, regulations based on opinions not formed rationally would not stand against legal challenge, but an opinion formed by reading peer reviewed reviews of the evidence, whether in scientific journals, or from major scientific bodies, are formed rationally. Therefore, prima facie, Pruitt's case was based on bullshiting. That is especially the case given that the endangerment finding was not based simply on the IPCC, but on "...the Synthesis and Assessment Products of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) published between 2006 and 2009, the 2009 USGCRP scientific assessment, National Research Council (NRC) reports under the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) 2009 State of the Climate in 2008 report, the 2009 EPA annual U.S. Inventory of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, and the 2009 EPA assessment of the impacts of global change on regional U.S. air quality", two of which are the EPA's own products. They further relied on their own independent review of more recent literature. In short, even had Pruitt been correct in law, he was incorrect in fact with regard to the EPA's proceedure. These facts are likely to have been know to Pruitt before commencing the litigation, which served the purpose of sending a political signal to voters (and, as it happens, to Trump), rather than any real expectation of overturning the EPA endangerment finding by litigation.
This judgement of the argument (though not of the strategic reasons for the litigation) is not just mine. The US Court of Appeals determined, with regard to this argument, that:
"This argument is little more than a semantic trick. EPA did not delegate, explicitly or otherwise, any decision-making to any of those entities. EPA simply did here what it and other decision-makers often must do to make a science-based judgment: it sought out and reviewed existing scientific evidence to determine whether a particular finding was warranted. It makes no difference that much of the scientific evidence in large part consisted of “syntheses” of individual studies and research. Even individual studies and research papers often synthesize past work in an area and then build upon it. This is how science works. EPA is not required to re-prove the existence of the atomevery time it approaches a scientific question."
(My emphasis.)
-
joe - at 01:49 AM on 2 April 2017Scientists understood the climate 150 years ago better than the EPA head today
#4 Chriskoz - Believe it or not, Pruitt's primary argument was that the EPA should not have relied upon the multiple reports on climate change issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (established by the United Nations which synthesizes the work of thousands of scientists),
The statute for making the endangerment finding by the EPA is that the EPA is required to make an independent scientific inquiry. Relying on an outside group doesnt satisfy the statutory requirement.
-
JohnFornaro at 01:16 AM on 2 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Apologies for not knowing how to use the image link tool.
-
JohnFornaro at 01:15 AM on 2 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Moderator Response:[RH] Fixed image size.
-
JohnFornaro at 01:14 AM on 2 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
-
JohnFornaro at 01:10 AM on 2 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
Tom Curtis @ 69:
"You have, off course, not actually presented the combined graph here. And certainly the original graphs do not have the same scale."
Off course I cannot share the graph I made because the software limitations of the site preclude the addition of one's own material.
Anyhow, here are the two graphs I compared this morning:
RealClimate, Graph #1 (The NOAA highest projection, Parris, et al, 2012)
http://www.realclimate.org/images//Horton_SLR_Survey.png
Colorado, Graph #2 (University of Colorado 2016)
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/files/2016_rel4/sl_ns_global.png
Rob Honeycutt @ 70:
"You must know the key mechanisms at play in order to resolve this."
I'm afraid that it is more persuasive to present graphs of the data at the same scale. It should be clear that I am talking about measurable sea level rise, not the cause of the rise. You use the colloquial term "squash". I have applied a scalar transformation of the ordinate of Graph #2 to match the ordinate scale of Graph #1. I have no problem with using the colloquial term "squash" if it means, in this case, scalar transformation of the ordinate with the purpose of comparing two graphs at the same scale.
I have not chosen an indeterminate timeframe, but have limited my analysis of the two charts to the period, 2017 to 2020.
Graph #1 projects about 4cm of sea level rise in the period from 2017 to 2020. Graph #2 projects about 1cm of sea level rise in the period from 2017 to 2020, according to the trend line.
If either of these values is observed and measured between 2017 and 2020, would that be incontovertible evidence that the models predict sea level rise correctly?
Moderator Response:[JH] Models of sea level do not predict. Rather they forecast what sea level rise will be under a given set of input assumptions about climate forcings and other key factors. Ditto for GCMs.
-
factotum at 01:08 AM on 2 April 2017Scientists understood the climate 150 years ago better than the EPA head today
I am writing a book on managing stupid: Here is a key element.
Unable or unwilling to learn anything new except from an authority figure that you recognize and accept
note that this definition includes not only those with learning disabilities which puts their IQ in the room temp range, but also people who have IQ's in the mensa range.
For example, we have Donald Rumsfeld and his stupidity vis-a-vis the Iraq War. We have he Rocket Scientists who were responsible for the destruction of the Columbia, because they failed to learn from the destruction of the Challenger and failed to address the root causes the Explosion.
And we have After Long Term Capital Management imploded in 1997, and almost took down the world economic system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long-Term_Capital_Management Two of the prinnciples of LTCM were Myron Scholes and Robert Merton who won a nobel prize for their economic theories which were the basis of LTCM. So not exactly dummies. Unfortunately, they proved to be unable to see when the environment had changend, and their theories no longer applied.
CONSERVATIVE:
adjective
1.
holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation, typically in relation to politics or religion.
synonyms: traditionalist, traditional, conventional, orthodox, old-fashioned, dyed-in-the-wool, hidebound, unadventurous, set in one's ways; More
noun
1.
a person who is averse to change and holds to traditional values and attitudes, typically in relation to politics.
synonyms: right-winger, reactionary, rightist, diehard; More
I do not know how to fix this. I am fairly certain that the solution lies in putting together a log to psychologists and marketing people, backed with money and working with a principle that I just discovered called MAYA which is used in design. This is Most Advanced Yet Acceptable
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MAYA_Design bearing in mind that what is acceptable to a stupid conservative will be -— well limited.
I can say with a fair amount of certainty that logic and reason will have all the effect of trying to teach algebra to a fish.
-
Tom Curtis at 23:54 PM on 1 April 2017Scientists understood the climate 150 years ago better than the EPA head today
BBYH @5, apparently Trump is required to have a sea wall at Mar-A-Lago as a result of local ordinances. I saw no reporting that he was seeking to extend those walls due to fears about sea level rise. Of course, he probably should take some measures to combat sea level rise at Mar-A-Lago given that sea level rise is likely to face flooding in 210 days per year by mid century, although most of that will be in lower lying parts of the property away from the main buildings:
What I did find reported is that Trump applied for a permit for a sea wall to protect an Irish golf course he owns, citing increased risk of erosion due to sea level and more frequent storms, both of which are attributed to climate change in the application. Not too much should be read into that, however, as there is substantial evidence Trump does not read relevant documents submitted in his name and the citation may reflect the activities of an underling executing due dilligence, without reflecting Trump's actual views.
-
Jim Eager at 22:57 PM on 1 April 2017Elevator Pitches - Chapter 02 - Radiative Gases
OK Tom, now it makes sense to me. Thanks.
-
Leto at 22:30 PM on 1 April 2017Models are unreliable
David @1039... You appear to misunderstand the nature of medical testing and medical prognostication.
You pregnancy example misses the point. Pregnancy is unusual in medicine, because it is an almost pefect binary condition - someone cannot usually be "a little bit pregnant" (ambiguous cases can actually occur, but they are rare). And of course, that binary nature partly reflects that pregnancy is not even a disease, but is instead a highly evolved biologically programmed physiological state. With pregnancy, there is little of the conceptual messiness that is usually associated with defining a disease and deciding which cases to lump together under the same categorical label. Pregnancy testing is also unusually accurate compared to nearly any other medical test you could have named.
Most medical conditions are less well-defined, and cannot be modelled with any accuracy. Although it is often known that, say, treatment A will be more effective than placebo, it is often not even known whether treatment A will be better than treatment B. Moreover, it is rarely the case that the precise disease course for an individual patient can be plotted predictively. For most cancers, for instance, a specialist will often quote an approximate median survival, which is no more than the time interval within which they expect half the patients with that cancer to die. For the individual patient, the actual surivival time is likely to diverge substantially from that median. Other times, the specialist may quote the expected 5-year survival as a percentage, but for an individual patient, 5-year survival will either be 100% or 0%, so the crude 5-year survival model does not apply.
Insisting on perfect prognostication before acting would be foolish in a medical context. If even one oncologist reported that a lung mass was an early-stage cancer, and that removing it would be associated with greatly improved median survival, then most people would have the mass removed. If a second, third and subsequent opinion is concordant, then it would be crazy to leave the mass in place, refusing to cooperate until the oncologist provides an accurate chart of its projected growth. It would be crazy to wait and confirm that the cancer really was capable of spreading to other organs, etc.
For climate science, we have the added problem that there is only one planet, and this is the first time that AGW has occurred, so we have to act before fine-tuning the prognostic model.
Don't confuse uncertainties in the fine points of prognostication with uncertainties in the diagnosis. There is no serious doubt about the planetary diagnosis at this point, and it is obvious what we need to do to fix it.
-
BBHY at 22:03 PM on 1 April 2017Scientists understood the climate 150 years ago better than the EPA head today
1) I heard that Trump has applied for a permit to build a sea wall at Mar-A-Lago to protect it from rising sea level. Can anyone confirm that? Seems like that would be an important point to use against his policies. It shows that his assertions that he doesn't believe the science to be totally phony.
2) Trump says he is helping energy workers, but I haven't seen anyone in the media point out that those in the wind and solar industries are also energy workers. Again, this is about politics, not about jobs or the economy or the science.
-
chriskoz at 21:10 PM on 1 April 2017Scientists understood the climate 150 years ago better than the EPA head today
Tom@3,
I think it's even possible to prove that we are talking about the deceit rather than hypocrisy here.
In his lawsuit against EPA as reported by Ecowatch:
Scott Pruitt filed a lawsuit to overturn the endangerment finding, which he and his fellow litigants characterized as "arbitrary and capricious." Believe it or not, Pruitt's primary argument was that the EPA should not have relied upon the multiple reports on climate change issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (established by the United Nations which synthesizes the work of thousands of scientists), the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) (a Bush administration body of 13 federal agencies that issued 21 reports on climate change) and the National Research Council (NRC) (the research arm of the National Academy of Sciences).
Pruitt's legal brief never quite explains what is wrong with relying upon the world's most prominent experts, but it claimed that the EPA in effect wrongly delegated its decision-making to these bodies.
(my emphasis)
Pruitt argued that the decision about about CO2 being declared pollutant cannot be made from the findings of the scientific bodies with highest expertise (IPCC) and highest organisation importance (NAS). At the same time, his statement quoted by this OP "We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis" can only be interpreted as a willful lie because it's in 100% contrast with the intent of the lawsuit where he wanted to e.g. suppress the IPCC analysis as an input to EPA. Of course it's difficult to prove a deceit in a court. In case of Pruitt, he can always claim that he meant the "alternative science" (i.e. denialist organisations such as NIPCC) as debaters in his last statement, and claim ignorance to refute the charges. But it can be argued that at his level, he must understand the reality that the main participants in his "debate" are the ones he wanted to suppress. With just a minimum level of responsibility, one cannot possibly claim that he does not understand such basics.
Sadly, I think Pruitt would win such lawsuit in US court: just as his boss won the presidency: on the grounds of utter ignorance and disconnection form reality. How sad, how miserable is the state of US politics that led the absurd outcome we're witnessing.
-
Tom Curtis at 15:11 PM on 1 April 2017Elevator Pitches - Chapter 02 - Radiative Gases
Jim Eager @20, the CO2 oscillations that emit or absorb IR photons do so because they generate an oscillating dipole. If they did not, they would not be able to do so (as is conveniently shown by the symmetric stretching oscillation which generates no dipole, and emits and absorbs no IR photons). In CO, I suspect that there is only a single oscillation, ie, a stretching oscilation. Because CO always has a dipole, that stretching oscillation will also generate an oscillating dipole, and hence allow the emission and absorption of IR radiation at a precise frequency.
-
Jim Eager at 13:01 PM on 1 April 2017Elevator Pitches - Chapter 02 - Radiative Gases
Tom, I understand the CO2 bending and asymmetric stretching modes, but I'm still not quite grasping how CO works. It's not a stretching or bending vibration, it's simply becuse of the electrical charge imbalance?
-
Rob Honeycutt at 11:21 AM on 1 April 2017A Perfect (Twitter) Storm
John... As for which predictive models is going to best project sea level rise, this is exactly my point.
You must know the key mechanisms at play in order to resolve this.
Current SLR is partly a function of thermal expansion of the oceans and partly a function of ice sheet contributions. The thermal expansion part is reasonably easy to model (for researcher capable of doing that work). Ice sheet contributions are vastly more complex.
Thus, I will say it one more time, squashing two charts down to the same scale will tell you absolutely nothing about the ice sheet dynamics which will be the primary issue with future sea level rise.
Prev 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 Next
