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Comments 28201 to 28250:
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CBDunkerson at 00:35 AM on 25 July 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30B
I've been saying for a few years now that US coal was being killed off by economic forces. A Washington Post article seems to confirm this. New Obama administration EPA regulations which would sharply cut back on coal power are about to go into effect and the GOP had been promising all out war to block them... only to discover that most states are already on track to meet the requirements without any regulatory pressure at all. Natural gas, wind, and solar have been decimating US coal. Coal plants are being shut down en masse... years before end of life. That has changed investments in those plants into losses... which in turn has virtually eliminated investment in and development of new coal plants. More than 70% of the new US electricity deployed so far this year has been renewable.
Natural gas isn't as cheap for the rest of the world, but wind and solar are and will soon be having a similar impact world wide. Even China and India are now looking at reducing their plans for coal, and that change will only accelerate as wind and solar costs continue to fall. Coal is dying.
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chriskoz at 00:24 AM on 25 July 2015Lomborg: a detailed citation analysis
Huh! The LNP govs did not give up on this pathetic effort and they want to place Lomborg in Flinders Uni now. Hold your breath about the "Australian pride". Will see if FU (or yet another education institution before the project collapses) accepts the lure of $4m govt grant...
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Jutland at 00:15 AM on 25 July 2015Climate's changed before
Tom @490, ah that's helpful, thank you. I had not realised that albedo changes had such substantial historic effects on past climates. I will read Hansen's paper.
It is reassuring to know that we need to reach c 950 ppm before Antarctica warms by 10C above pre-industrial, because that's about 183 years away (assuming a linear 3 ppm annual rise in CO2) and human energy use will presumably have moved off fossil fuels sometime well before then. At least I hope so.
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chriskoz at 00:14 AM on 25 July 2015The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example
bozzza@10,
This thread (where, interestingly in your comment therein, you've coiled a term 'clever country') is the appropriate place to talk about Lomborg. Your upbringing of Lomborg & 'clever country' here does not make any sense & I would not be surprised if it was deleted.
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Tom Curtis at 22:43 PM on 24 July 2015Climate's changed before
Jutland @488, you are correct that orbital forcings only kick of the variation between glacial and interglacial; and also that CO2 forcing is a major driver of the temperature change. It is, however, not the major driver. Rather, albedo effects from changes in sea ice extent, growth of ice sheets and reduction in forest cover. Hansen quantifies the differences in his well known paper, Target Atmospheric CO2, saying:
"Climate forcing in the LGM equilibrium state due to the slow-feedback ice age surface properties, i.e., increased ice area, different vegetation distribution, and continental shelf exposure, was -3.5 ± 1 W/m2relative to the Holocene. Additional forcing due to reduced amounts of long-lived GHGs (CO2, CH4, N2O), including the indirect effects of CH4 on tropospheric ozone and stratospheric water vapor (fig. S1) was -3 ± 0.5 W/m2. Global forcing due to slight changes in the Earth’s orbit is a negligible fraction of 1 W/m2(fig. S2). The total 6.5 W/m2forcing and global surface temperature change of 5 ± 1°C relative to the Holocene yield an empirical sensitivity ~¾ ± ¼ °C per W/m2forcing, i.e., a Charney sensitivity of 3 ± 1 °C for the 4 W/m2forcing of doubled CO2. This empirical fast-feedback climate sensitivity allows water vapor, clouds, aerosols, sea ice, and all other fast feedbacks that exist in the real world to respond naturally to global climate change."
6.5 W/m^2 is the equivalent to the forcing of a 3.4-fold increase in CO2 concentration. In otherwords, we should expect a 10 C increase in Antarctic temperatures with an increase of CO2 from 280 ppmv to 952 ppmv. That, of course, is just the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) which does not include the impacts of long term feedbacks such as the melting of ice sheets. Including those will result in higher temperatures, but only after the course of many centuries. What is more, if we are sensible and end all CO2 emissions, CO2 concentrations will fall significantly so that we will never experience the Earth System response to the peak CO2 levels.
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Jutland at 21:44 PM on 24 July 2015Climate's changed before
Apologies, here's the image correctly linked
Jutland
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CBDunkerson at 21:33 PM on 24 July 2015Global warming deniers are an endangered species
anticorncon6, yes the article is suggesting that global warming deniers are getting less common. This is backed up by surveys. There is an old saying that new scientific paradigms are never 'accepted'... it's just that all of their detractors eventually die out. We're seeing the same thing with global warming... disbelief of the physics is disproportionately found amongst the elderly.
As to when they will finally die out completely... I'd say that we will continue to have global warming deniers until the fossil fuel interests funding the disinformation campaign lose their financial clout. Then the new moneyed interests will tell the deniers that they all believed in global warming all along, and so shall it be. Should be less than twenty years before the start of the 'great conversion'.
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MA Rodger at 21:32 PM on 24 July 2015NOAA State of the Climate report: Which seven records were broken in 2014?
The graphic discussed @1 to 3 came from this NOAA web page and, as the caption there now reads, the graphic's datum should have read (and now does read) "1993 average" not the un-corrected "1993-2013 average" as in the post above.
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Jutland at 21:32 PM on 24 July 2015Climate's changed before
I find this particular image in AR5 WG1, figure 5.03 about climate over the past 800,000 years, a bit scary:
Its purpose is to demonstrate the correlation between past climates and insolation changes, which is why it shows precession, obliquity and eccentricity. But these orbital factors only kick off each period of heating, it's clear that CO2 does most of the work in raising temperatures, and it is the correlation between CO2 and temperatue in the diagram which is what interests me.
CO2 has each time risen from about 200 ppm to about 280 ppm, or thereabouts, which is roughly a 40% rise. What I find worrying is that this 40% CO2 rise seems to correlate consistently with a rise in Antarctic temperature of about 10C. That is a large effect. (And it's just 40%; a doubling of CO2 would be even larger.)
Anthopogenic CO2 is now 40% above pre-industrial levels (280 ppm up to 400 ppm) so does that mean we already have 10C locked in for the polar regions?
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CBDunkerson at 21:24 PM on 24 July 2015The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example
bozza @8, just a quibble. Technically, volume = area x thickness... and area = extent x concentration.
There usually isn't a big difference between area and extent because the average concentration is relatively near 100%. However, sometimes, such as right now, you get large swaths of ocean covered with low concentration broken up ice and thus the actual surface area of the ice is significantly less than the extent of ocean with ice.
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Tom Curtis at 20:08 PM on 24 July 2015The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example
Jim Hunt @2, perhaps you need to say it with pictures, given that the lawyer is so mathematically challenged. Ie, sea ice volume anomaly (what the article should have been talking about):
And sea ice extent anomaly (what the article in fact talked about):
From these it is clear that the 2014 arctic sea ice volume is lower than that of any year prior to 2008, and the 2013 sea ice extent lower than that of any year prior to 2007.
Put another way, for the daily mail "decades" means nine years or less.
Of course, that particular mathematical incompetence may well pass muster with a fact checker who does not know (apparently) that 1/x * x = 1, or that the final value in a time series does not always lie on the trend line.
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bozzza at 18:28 PM on 24 July 2015Global warming deniers are an endangered species
The global warming denier hides as the global warming negotiator,... hence Bjorn Lomborg still being offered University status at Flinders University to spruik his idea that fossil fuels should be allowed to warm our kids earth by 3 degrees instead of 2...
He doesn't deny global warming, you must understand, ..just asks why fossil fuels shouldn't be allowed a bit more breathing room to continue making profits for a little bit more!
(Like an ear worm he will make you sing along if given airplay!!)
The global warming denier is Abbott hiding as, of course- this is politics, the negotiator! Wow, strategy and stuff.... just watch Holloywood and vote for whatever...cool, yeh! Beer is in the fridge and we've got hotdogs yay!
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bozzza at 18:12 PM on 24 July 2015The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example
If Lomborg gets the gig at Flinders University will that increase or decrease the good communication of climate science?
More to the point, if Lomborg gets the gig at Flinders University will that be the last straw for the once allegedly 'clever country',... ?
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bozzza at 18:06 PM on 24 July 2015The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example
First, yes, extent decreased since 1979, but the paper is about volume (which is extent x thickness). Second, the 41% increase is with regards to the 2012 mega-record low, which was 80% lower than 1979, off the top of my head. Third, this is a pure lie: “the northern ice-cap INCREASED by a staggering 41 per cent in 2013 and, despite a modest shortage last year, is bigger than at any time for decades.” It’s not an ice cap, and the Arctic sea ice pack isn’t bigger than at any time for decades.
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Jim Hunt at 17:41 PM on 24 July 2015The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example
bozzza @7. Have you followed the link and read the comments? If so, what do you fail to understand?
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anticorncob6 at 14:22 PM on 24 July 2015Global warming deniers are an endangered species
Is this article actually suggesting that global warming deniers are getting less common? I find that difficult to believe. I've always believed that, until global warming gets so bad that nobody can ignore it or dismiss it as a natural cycle or an illusion, we will always have global warming deniers.
With all the recent news about climate change, I'd say that AGW deniers are getting angrier and more aggresive because of it, and are not struggling to stay in denial at all.
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bozzza at 12:08 PM on 24 July 2015The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example
@2, ..what?
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bozzza at 12:05 PM on 24 July 2015CO2 lags temperature
TGU,
You are talking about the uncertainty principle where there is never enough measurement to satisfy all consumers of science. Science, in the end, is about consensus and it starts with nomenclature.
Do you know what 'error value' is?
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bozzza at 11:56 AM on 24 July 2015Global warming deniers are an endangered species
I predict more interest in formula-e and TESLA stocks...
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denisaf at 11:16 AM on 24 July 2015Global warming deniers are an endangered species
Irreversible rapid climate change and ocean acidification is under way, largely due to past greenhouse gas emissions by technological systems using fossil fuels. That is the stark reality regardless of what people believe. Policies that aim to reduce the rate of emissions as rapidly as possible are to be welcomed even though all that will do is slow down global warming slightly. It can not stop the increase in warming and the associated deleterious consequences. The wiset thing to do is to follow the lead of the Netherlands, London and New York in carrying out works to cope with the sea level rise. There are many activities that can be embraced to aid adapting to climate change and ocean acidification given wider understanding of physical reality rather than the hype of those who stand to lose financially if remedial actions are undertaken.
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mancan18 at 09:21 AM on 24 July 2015Global warming deniers are an endangered species
Unfortunately, how do you influence people like Rupert Murdoch whose media outlets constantly promote anti-Climate Change messages and right wing think tanks that drive the anti-Climate Change policies and arguments of neoconservative politicians? They seem to believe and actively argue that Climate Change is bunk and is a part of some huge conspiracy. Unfortunately, although their numbers are small, they have a much greater influence upon the general public view because of their media reach, their ability to dominate the political debate, and their ability to distort and confuse the scientific message. For these people, it would take one of the major ice sheets in Greenland or West Antarctica to slip into the ocean and significantly increase the sea level in a short period of time. It seems the prospect of an ice free Arctic doesn't phase them, and the many photos of widespread glacier retreat over the last 30 years also doesn't convince them. They just trot out another cherry picked counter example. In fact, with some of them, even a sudden rise in sea level due to an ice sheet slipping into the sea wouldn't convince them, and even if it did, they would plead ignorance and say: "Oh we didn't know".
These people have a much greater influence than their numbers would suggest because of their wealth and the powerful vested interests that back them. It is due to them that the 97% scientific consensus related to Climate Change is not matched in the public view. With honest reporting in the popular media, then the consensus between the two would be much closer. How you achieve balanced reporting to the wider public that reflects the scientific consensus is the problem.
In short, while the scientific argument is clear, the problem is to overcome the political argument which can be summarise as follows:
Climate Change Denial by a Few Powerful Vested Interests + Political Ideology => Public Confusion => Polarised Politics => No Political Consensus => No Effective Action to Minimise the Impact of Climate Change.
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RM at 09:00 AM on 24 July 2015The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example
Strange, I had posted a couple questions here about a current story, it seems to have been deleted, what gives?
Moderator Response:[RH] Your comments (along with mine) were deleted for being off-topic for the thread you posted on. Please refer to the SkS commenting policy page.
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ubrew12 at 07:35 AM on 24 July 2015The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example
Jim Hunt@5: Sorry, I'm from the US
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scaddenp at 07:20 AM on 24 July 2015CO2 lags temperature
"How can this be refuted when all we have is relatively miniscule time slices of human impact to compare?"
Well the usual way - decades of hard work doing measurements and examining the evidence.
A couple of things to consider. The natural glacial cycle is driven by regular cycles in the earth's orbital parameters. The change in solar radiation at around 65N is tightly correlated with the glacial cycle because of feedbacks in albedo and GHGs that ensue. Eg see Hansen and Sato 2012.
The maximum milankovich forcing per century at 65N at 0.25W/m2. Compare that 1.66W/m2 from CO2 alone operating not just at one region of the earth but over the whole globe. If the natural cycle was dominant, then we would be cooling slowly now.
Secondly, the orbital cycle have been around a long time but they can only induce the glacial cycle when global temperatures are low enough for the albedo feedback to cut in. The last time we had 400ppm CO2 in atmosphere was in the Pliocene and there were no glacial cycles then.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 06:34 AM on 24 July 2015CO2 lags temperature
TGU
Try a simple calculation. CO2 concentrations vary over a glacial cycle between around 180 to 280 parts per million (ppm). The fastest rate of change is during the warming phase when they vary by that much over perhaps 10,000 years. Thats 1 ppm/century.
Today CO2 levels are rising at around 1 ppm every 22 weeks! -
Jim Hunt at 06:10 AM on 24 July 2015The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example
Ubrew - Thanks for your input, and quite so! We're currently formally pursuing the "Daily Mail Comment" via the official channels.
Are you by any chance from the UK, and if so are you willing and able to complain also? -
ubrew12 at 06:01 AM on 24 July 2015The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example
Also note the IPCC report (p4) is talking about an 'annual mean' in ice extent, while the 'staggering 41 per cent' increase is referring to the summer minimum volume (the most sensitive time of year).
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ubrew12 at 05:51 AM on 24 July 2015The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example
Jim Hunt@1: From your link: "The Readers’ Editor is a lawyer... I have looked into the matter with care... IPCC report (p4 notes). ‘The annual mean Arctic sea-ice extent decreased...4.1% per decade'...[therefore] between 1979 and 2012, the shrinkage of the ice-cap couldn’t have been more than 12 per cent... the 41 per cent increase in the ice-cap reported by the UCL study must presumably mean that it’s bigger than in 1979" Besides the fact that IPCC is talking about 'extent', while the Daily Mail is reporting on 'volume', percent declines are always lower than percent increases. If ice declines from 7 (103 km3) to 5 (103 km3) in a single year, that's only a 29% decrease. If it increases the following year back to 7 (103 km3), thats a 40% increase.
Also a general note: the Daily Mail reportage on this article has the proper provision: "the volume of ice jumped by 41 per cent in 2013, relative to the previous year", while the Daily Mail Opinion does not: "INCREASED by a staggering 41 per cent in 2013... bigger than at any time for decades"
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CBDunkerson at 04:25 AM on 24 July 2015Global warming deniers are an endangered species
I wonder if there'll be a telethon... 'Save the Climate Change Deniers! These special creatures are rapidly vanishing from the Earth as rising temperatures and melting ice make their natural habitat increasingly unsustainable. 'Skeptics', as they are also affectionately known, need an environment of ignorance and doubt in order to thrive. The increasing obviousness of global climate change is having a devastating impact on 'skeptic' populations all over the world. Please help us save these rare organisms, before it's too late!"
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CBDunkerson at 04:18 AM on 24 July 2015CO2 lags temperature
TGU, we are "in another peak cycle"... otherwise known as an interglacial. The current interglacial began about eleven thousand years ago when CO2 levels rose to ~280 ppm (from a low of ~180 ppm during the previous glaciation). They then stayed at about that level (+/- 15 ppm) for thousands of years... until, starting around 1850, they began growing at a rate orders of magnitude faster than anything in the Vostok chart above. We are now at 400 ppm.
In short, we were at the peak of a natural cycle which plays out every ~100,000 years... and then in ~150 years humans drove up the atmospheric CO2 level by an amount greater than the entire range of variation over the course of that natural cycle, with more still to come. That's how we know that we aren't "just" at the peak of the natural cycle... we started there, but are now far far above the range that cycle has ever experienced.
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The_Debtor at 03:35 AM on 24 July 2015Glaciers are growing
Aerosols were likely the biggest contributor to glacial retreat in Europe from 1850 to 1910. Aerosol loading in the Himalayas due to Indian, European and African fossil fuel consumption are likely the largest contributors to glacial retreat in the Himalayas. There are uncertainties if aerosols from China make their way into the Himalayas.
Aerosols reduce albedo and increase the skin temperature. This same effect, surface darkening effect (SDE), is also leading to a reduction in boreal forest snowpack accumulation (video). It is also having an effect on the Sierra Nevadas in California. The Himalayas is the largest reserve of ice outside of the polar regions. Anthropogenic aerosol forcing is largest contributor to this glacial retreat – not anthropogenic GHG forcing. There are many uncertainties regarding the role of aerosols in global warming; it is also the largest source of uncertainty regarding anthropogenic radiative forcing (IPCC chart).
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The Great Unknown at 02:12 AM on 24 July 2015CO2 lags temperature
Looking at the Temp and CO2 chart, the striking thing to me is the regularity of the events and the peaks. Seems hard to refute that we AREN'T just in another peak cycle. How can this be refuted when all we have is relatively miniscule time slices of human impact to compare? Empircally incompatible.
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Jim Hunt at 01:42 AM on 24 July 2015The importance of good climate communication: a recent Arctic example
It seems that you and I have been thinking along remarkably similar lines John, except that I set the Daily Mail's official complaints procedure in motion yesterday. I received a reply from The Mail's legal eagles today:
A packet of peanuts for the first person to spot the minor arithmetical error.
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Jim Hunt at 20:49 PM on 23 July 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30A
Regarding the new CPOM paper on CryoSat-2 Arctic sea ice volume measurements, I'm afraid I have taken exception to both the Daily Mail and the Guardian's coverage:
An Inconvenient Truth About The Mail’s Climate CoverageWhilst searching [Rachel Tilling's] paper for the word “ice” returns lots of results a search for the word “cap” returns zero results, just like “recovery”.
not to mention:
I have already lodged an official complaint about the antics of The Daily Mail’s imaginary time machine. If you would like to do as well then here is the appropriate form to fill in: -
michael sweet at 20:35 PM on 23 July 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30A
Defined here: An event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and that would be extremely difficult to predict.
Black swans can simply be rare events or they may indicate that the system is about to shift to a new normal.
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bozzza at 18:00 PM on 23 July 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30A
comment from the Artctic sea ice volume rebounds article:
By Bart R (Canada)
on July 21st, 2015
On the whole, I agree with Neven.It is an excellent article.
Terms like ‘recover’ however, when discussing complex systems seem inherently untrustworthy. The world’s climate is rapidly changing, and the Arctic is integral to the whole. “Recover” is as impossible as being rained on by the same raindrop twice.
More to the point, Black Swan behaviour is always a ‘recovery’ in its second phase; it’s the third phase where the system begins to seek new states.
It is as appropriate to conclude from the ‘recovery’ of 2013-2014 that the Arctic system has had its second major destabilization in under two decades, and that all bets may be off for projecting where it next lands.
While we can expect the Arctic to more frequently visit some states it had not exhibited in the past under a Chaos Theoretical framing, we can’t know properly what those will be. Hansen’s argument of shut down of the Conveyor is no less likely than an El Padre-dominated climate with temperature highs at the poles unseen in 2.4 million years.
Five years of satellite feed is not enough to draw conclusions from of the scale this article contemplates.
Does anyone know what "Black Swan Behaviour" is ?
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bozzza at 17:42 PM on 23 July 2015Arctic sea ice has recovered
Si Senor, am doing that now!
Keenly watching the Arctic sea extent graphs dipping down toward 2 standard deviations again, however... I don't like the angle on that graphology...
Tieing the two sources together(...without having finished reading the article yet because I'm a betting man..) I am glad to be empowered by the knowledge that whilst 3 metre plus ice recovered in a big way in 2013 it fell back again in 2014.
This is exactly what I needed, thanx!!! Are we witnessing disintegration? I won't be sleeping for approximately 7 days I'm telling you now!!
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SirCharles at 14:21 PM on 23 July 2015The oceans are warming faster than climate models predicted
I just watched a European public channel where they claimed that the current uptake of the oceans - and within the equalisation of the heating - could soon have an end and fire back. Are you aware of any studies that would be indicating this?
Sorry for being lazy now doing my own research. But nevertheless, I think this is an issue of importance concerning surface temperatures sky rocketing again (the 'hiatus' which has actually never happened).
Thanks, folks. -
ubrew12 at 08:52 AM on 23 July 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30A
Thanks for continuing this service. Don't let it overwhelm, there's plenty of information out there.
The first link to "Arctic sea ice volume rebounds, but not recovering" is not working (the second, lower link is working properly).
For anyone interested, here's this weeks listing of 'Climate Change News' by Mary Ellen Harte at Huffington Post (good source for news/links).
Moderator Response:[JH] Glitch fixed. Thank you for bringing it to our attention.
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wili at 07:31 AM on 23 July 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30A
"I therefore now have the time to produce the Weekly News Summary."
Huray!!
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Jonas at 07:23 AM on 23 July 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30A
Digital hugs to you and your wife! I am german and have no idea what the boob tube is (just looked it up .. I have none). I think you are right about the ABC .. But if 2 or 1 times is less work or fits better your life, that's fine too! (and 0 is fine too, because we first of all need to be sustainable privately .. it might also be a changing scheme, depending on your and your wifes time: I am happy with anything I get ..)
I found this website here, when I was deeply irritated by denial arguments on a sustainability forum, and I was very happy! Since this news roundup appeared, SkS has become my major site: I get here background science, gish gallop analysis (I never would be able to research myself), and context and news (your brilliant work) and tons of material and graphics I can link to, when needed and recently even a MOOC: digital hugs to the whole SkS team! I donate to SkS and I too (independently) recently took some decision which will enable me to donate more to SkS (and others).
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Jonas at 22:36 PM on 22 July 20152015 SkS Weekly News Roundup #30A
Really happy to still find the News Roundup :-) ..
Your selection is simply good.Moderator Response:[JH] Thank you.
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum...
My wife and I made a command decision to dramatically reduce the amount of time that we had been spending watching the boob tube. I therefore now have the time to produce the Weekly News Summary.
For the time being, I'll be cranking out three postings per week (A.B, and C) containing summaries/links to 10 articles each. I believe this change will be more user-friendly and timely than was the prior procees of two postings per week with 15 articles each.
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chriskoz at 18:34 PM on 22 July 2015The oceans are warming faster than climate models predicted
John@1,
You took this from my mouth. While the isotherm migration e.g. shown nicely as PDF graph in this study, is overall about the same, even slightly slower over ocean, your study gives the examples of much bigger, in some cases dramatic changes in the entire food chain due to small crustations dying or migrating as the result of OA.
No surprises here. While ocean helps to cool down the surface temperature by absorbing signifficant amount of human CO2, the ocean ecosystems pay the double price of not only warming but also acidification. While some people, especially those who are fixated on "2 degree warming target" are happy because they can pollute a bit more because of CO2 invasion into ocean, the big picture might look even bleaker as the result of that phenomenon - dramatic distortions in the food chain.
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Tom Curtis at 08:47 AM on 22 July 2015Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
What I find most interesting about Andy Robinson's screed is the claim that:
"What the climate scientist will say is that the highest probabilities (which are still often less than 1%) are that temperatures will increase and sea levels will rise, and we should make policy decisions accordingly."
(My emphasis)
There is a funny thing about probabilities. The more vague the statement, the higher the probability that it is true. Conversely, the more precise the statement, the less the probability that it is true. Indeed, the only statements for which absolutely precise statements have probabilities of 1 are those which are mathematical (or tautological) truths.
Thus, the probability that the correct answer to 2 + 2 is 4 is precisely 1. But if we seek the answer to 2 + 2 + e, where e is a normally distrubuted variable with mean (μ) = 0 and standard deviation of σ, then no matter what the value of σ, the probability that the answer is precisely 4 equals zero. That is because the probability of a given range of values for e is the area under the Probability Density Function of e, and if the area has a width of zero (ie a precise numerical value) the area is zero. This is true even though 4 is the modal value for the sum 2 + 2 + e. Conversely, as the range gets larger, the probability gets larger, regardless of the value of σ. That is because for two ranges, such that the second is larger than but includes the first, necessarilly the area under the curve of the PDF of the second equals that of the first plus the area of its range that does not overlap with the first. These properties of probabilities apply even when e has some more obscure distribution, unless (almost impossibly), the distribution consists of a finite number of singular values.
The first of these properties is almost irrelevant in science. That is because values are always quoted to a finite number of significant figures. Thus if our answer is quoted to one significant figure, the response 4 actually indicates that value lies in the range 3.5-4.5, which can have an arbitrarilly high probability depending on the value of σ. However, the second is always true. If statements are vague enough, they always have a high probability.
With these mathematical facts in mind, let us consider Robinson's claim. We can note that it is a tautology that sea level will either rise, or it will fall, or that it will stay the same. Ergo the probability that it will rise, or fall or stay the same is 1. It follows that if the probability that it will rise higher than the probability that it will fall, and/or that it will stay the same, then the probability that it will rise is equal to or greater than 1/3. That is, because of the vagueness of the claims Robinson puts in the "climate scientists" mouth, his quantification in parentheses necessarilly contradicts the statement that the "climate scientist" is supposed to indicate that a given possibility has the highest probability. Robinson in fact neatly demonstrates that he understands neither probabilities nor science; and ergo that his screed is merely a pointless diatribe.
Moderator Response:[PS] Please avoid inflammatory remarks as per comments policy.
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jgnfld at 04:50 AM on 22 July 2015NOAA State of the Climate report: Which seven records were broken in 2014?
What you want is this:
Moderator Response:[DB] Reduced image width that was breaking page formatting.
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jgnfld at 04:09 AM on 22 July 2015NOAA State of the Climate report: Which seven records were broken in 2014?
Looks to me as if the graphic placed here is mislabeled from Plate 1.1x (p. 53). The graphic there starts from 0. That is, it shows sea level rise starting with 1993 as the zero point. Baseline periods in other graphics are given in parentheses but for 1.1x the parentheses state "actual values".
Needs a labeling fix here, I think. -
psweet at 03:50 AM on 22 July 2015NOAA State of the Climate report: Which seven records were broken in 2014?
It looks like there's a problem with the sea-level graph. If I'm reading it right, then every year from 1993 on was above the 1993-2013 average? What did they use to calculate the average?
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KR at 00:53 AM on 22 July 2015Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
Andy Robinson - You might want to read through the appropriate SkS thread on chaotic behavior, and learn a bit about 'boundary condition' versus 'initial value' problems, before (incorrectly) invoking some kind of chaos based uncertainty. Your comment in that regard is nonsensical - starting with your assertion that there are exactly four variables.
The probabilities of sea level rise and temperature increase are 100%, as due to our fossil fuel emissions we've already committed to increases in both. The only uncertainties are how we respond, on what rate/time scale those changes will occur, and whether we act to limit their extent.
Overall, your comment is much akin to Giaever's - great certainty, based in apparently little background understanding. There is no reason an intelligent layman can't become quite familiar with the basics of climate change - but it takes rather more than the day and a half that Giaever devoted to it before pontificating.
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PhilippeChantreau at 23:32 PM on 21 July 2015Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
Andy Robinson please clarify your statement. If you are seriously arguing that the science shows the probability that oceans will rise and temperatures will increase is less than 0.01 you seriously need to do some reading.
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Andy Robinson at 23:23 PM on 21 July 2015Ivar Giaever - Nobel Winning Physicist and Climate Pseudoscientist
This is more perpetuation of the fallacy that science is the province of professional scientists, and that without professional standing in a given speciality, one may not dispute "the experts." The experts in a field have greater standing, but that standing does not convey immunity to criticism, and it does not convey rectitude.
Part of the problem is the use of hyperbole by those who are not scientists and do not understand the science to which they refer: calling climate change "the greatest threat to humanity" for example. It is a threat, certainly, but calling it the "greatest threat" is not a quantifiably verifiable risk assessment.
The attractors of climate change models are huge, ranging from little to no impact to catastrophic impacts. Each point in that four dimensional attractor has an associated probability, and none of the probabilities are much greater than zero. And no one can ever gather enough information with enough precision to claim "we will be at this point fifty years from now." And no climate scientist would make such a claim.
What the climate scientist will say is that the highest probabilities (which are still often less than 1%) are that temperatures will increase and sea levels will rise, and we should make policy decisions accordingly.It is the pseudo-intellect who takes this kind of statement and projects on it the certainty of holy writ. I agree with Giaever to the extent that many climate change advocates are remind me of religious fanatics. They are as much an embarassment to science as deniers.
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