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shoyemore at 07:33 AM on 11 July 2014The power of pie-charts to communicate consensus
I forget to add: Good post, and thanks for the reminder about simple, direct visuals.
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shoyemore at 07:31 AM on 11 July 2014The power of pie-charts to communicate consensus
Edward Tufte in The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (p.178):
A table is nearly always better than a dumb pie chart; the only thing worse than a pie chart is several of them ....
The effectiveness of these pie charts comes their big, red (or blue) in-your-face, single number or statement, almost like shouting it out loud.
The two side-by-side pass muster because they are of equal size. Whoever created the denier slide never read Tufte, who warns against asking a viewer to compare pies of different sizes. And who stuck the sun in there, and what does it mean?
The moral is when you use pie charts, use 'em mostly one at a time and Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS).
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scaddenp at 07:17 AM on 11 July 2014Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
Logan, the article has been noted as needing update but it will sit in the queue with many others. As Tom points out, a good literature review of both volcanic and anthropogenic estimate papers is needed for such an update. Note though that while it is good to put emissions in a context, it is worth noting that no revision of estimates is going get humans off the hook. As Rob points out, FF and volcanoes have different isotopic signitures. Almost all of the increase in CO2 since pre-industrial is of human origin.
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scaddenp at 06:10 AM on 11 July 2014It's cooling
Jetfuel.
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Rob Honeycutt at 02:20 AM on 11 July 2014Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
That's also confirmed by carbon isotope measurements as well. So, we have two methods that converge on the same answer.
The Robin Wylie article is bizarrely over-the-top with regards to rhetoric, with the title stating that volcanic CO2 levels are "staggering." And, of course, when you google the article title you see that it's been reposted numerous times throughout the denial blogosphere.
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JoeT at 01:56 AM on 11 July 2014El Niño in 2014: Still On the Way?
Thanks again Rob for another very interesting article. The one thing that I hadn't read anywhere else is that the PDO has shifted to a positive state. How robust do you think this change is? Is it possible that it could shift back to a negative state? Perhaps you could elaborate more on what you think the broader implications might be. Should we expect surface temperature to increase again at rates last seen in the 80s and 90s?
Moderator Response:(Rob P) - Is the weakening Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) a sign of the climate moving toward a positive Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO), or 'accelerated warming decades' as Meehl et al (2013) put it? That's a very interesting question.
I'll have a future blog post about that, but not only is the PDO positive, but the North Atlantic subpolar gyre is cooling - consistent with the spin-down of the North Atlantic subtropical gyre, and the subsequent reduction in the northward transport of warm subtropical surface water.
This image from Meehl (2013) - based on the NCAR climate model runs - differentiates the hiatus vs accelerated warming decades. The approximate area of the North Atlantic subpolar gyre is south of the southern tip of Greenland.
Note that the subpolar gyres spin in the opposite direction to the subtropical ones creating surface divergence. Therefore upwelling (Ekman suction) occurs in the subpolar gyres - as opposed to surface convergence and downwelling (Ekman pumping) in the subtropical gyres.
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KR at 00:04 AM on 11 July 2014Rose-colored glasses: Antarctic sea ice is the Mail on Sunday's latest global warming distraction
PluviAL - Potential sea level rise for _total_ icecap melt would be ~80.32m, not 200:
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Tom Curtis at 00:01 AM on 11 July 2014Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
Logan, I agree that the article should be updated to include the recent figures. Those figures indicate 637 Mt per year of CO2 from volcanic sources (including volcanic lakes), and 300 Mt per year from non-volcanic sources (ie, metamorphism), the later derived from Morner and Etiope (2002). In Burton et al (2013), the 937 Mt CO2 per annum from geophysical sources is compared to 35,000 Mt CO2 per annum as calculated by Friedlingstein et al (2010). That estimate was for 2010. A more recent estimate (for 2012), by Le Quere et al (2013), indicates total anthropogenic emissions of CO2 of 38,867 +/- 2,600 Mt CO2 per annum (10.6 +/- 0.71 PgC). Consequently CO2 from geophysical sources represents 2.4% of anthropogenic CO2.
The Burton et al estimate is likely to be too high rather than too low, in that it is significantly greater than recent estimates of in gassing of CO2.
While important to update the figures in the interests of accuracy, it remains clear that geophysically sourced CO2 is emitted far to slow to have been responsible for the recent rapid rise in CO2, which is entirely of anthropogenic origin.
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MA Rodger at 23:56 PM on 10 July 2014Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
PhilippeChantreau @254.
It was linked @250. Burton et al (2013) Deep Carbon Emissions from Volcanoes.
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PhilippeChantreau at 23:32 PM on 10 July 2014Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
Logan, the link to the Italian study mentioned in the Op-ed you cite does not lead anywhere, can you reference it otherwise?
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CBDunkerson at 23:05 PM on 10 July 2014New Jersey science education standards may be blocked by climate contrarians
I think this was one of those situations where few enough wingnuts were paying attention that the BOE could get away with making a rational decision. It is entirely true that NJ has plenty of crazy climate deniers who could have demanded the new standards be blocked, and the BOE (all appointed by the GOP governor) would then likely have done so. I suspect that even Christie knows global warming is a real problem, he just can't admit that without alienating his supporters.
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Logan at 21:06 PM on 10 July 2014Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
Here's a recent article by a volcanologist, summarizing latest developments in volcanic CO2 emission research, and the significant uncertainties in the field:
Long Invisible, Research Shows Volcanic CO2 Levels Are Staggering
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Logan at 20:31 PM on 10 July 2014Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
The article could be updated because "Humans emit 100 times more CO2 than volcanoes" no longer reflects current best estimates. Human emission is about 50 times more than volcanic.
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MA Rodger at 17:46 PM on 10 July 2014Models are unreliable
There is a further fundamental difference between financial models and models of physical systems.
Financial models are far more tightly coupled to the system they model. Indeed, the financial model is itself part of the system it models. That is, a model of some form (and probably many models of many forms) will have been developed and adopted as a guide to decision-making by those involved in the financial trading that is being modelled. Likewise any learning from the modelling about the workings of the financial system will also feed back into the workings of the system. Such coupling between model and system is probably seen as a problem by the financial modellers.
There is potential feedback from climate models into the climate system but here it is the difficulty in achieving that feedback which is seen as a problem (eg CO2 emissions have bad consequences => stop CO2 emissions).
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ubrew12 at 14:49 PM on 10 July 2014Rose-colored glasses: Antarctic sea ice is the Mail on Sunday's latest global warming distraction
PluviAL@6: it seems to me we're having trouble maintaining our freshwater reservoirs as they are, and indeed, are quickly draining underwater aquifers (like the Ogallala) as quickly as we can. I'm not hopeful, especially in a globally warmed world of drought, etc, that we could long keep our hands off the irrigation cornucopia that is a freshwater reservoir designed to counter sea level rise. But its an original idea you have, so don't want to discourage you. Perhaps elevated seawater reservoirs over marginal lands is possible.
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grindupBaker at 13:37 PM on 10 July 2014Rose-colored glasses: Antarctic sea ice is the Mail on Sunday's latest global warming distraction
28,000,000 km**3 ice on Antarctica so it's 78m of sea level rise for the whole lot. End of last glaciation was ~130m SLR from Laurentide ice sheet, the smaller one to its West & Scandanavian ~2x as much as Antarctica. I read that Antarctica ice = ~10x Greenland ice so that sounds right. I also read Antarctica ice = ~7x Greenland ice some place that seemed knowledgeable (maybe a lecture) but I'm staying with 10x for now. I still got my daughter's bucket & spade from 40 years ago if you need a hand moving the ocean up onto the land a bit.
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PluviAL at 13:13 PM on 10 July 2014Rose-colored glasses: Antarctic sea ice is the Mail on Sunday's latest global warming distraction
Chris, sorry to give thums down, the amount of sea level rise from Antarctica is a lot more than 60 meters, its closer to 200m. But perhaps I am wrong about that. What I calculate is 217 meters from all ice, and only 8 meters from Greenland ice. What I also understand is that Antarctica contributes more water to see level than Greenland. I think we will discover that the one meter or even the 4 meters forecasted by the most well accepted models are too optimistic. We need to plan for much more sea level change. That's the big deal. Antarctic sea ice, is probably an anomoly from our understanding of the mechanics of A-ice propagation, probably a little bit from additional fresh water, a little bit from additional energy in the Antarctic Ocean from higher energy content in the globe overall, and a little bit of something else. But it does not matter at all since it all melts, and has no effect on sea level.
Currently I am writing a paper on how to control sea level rise by moving equal or larger amounts of fresh water from the sea onto the land. To control it we need to move about 8000 km3 per year for 180 years. Its a big order, but duable. 1km3 is 18 days of the historic average Colorado. Any brave souls out there who might want to colaborate?
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scaddenp at 12:05 PM on 10 July 2014Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
Thanks for that Logan. I see that this study includes outgassing from volcanic lakes which were missing from earlier estimates. However, as the paper notes, the emissions are still insignificant compared to anthropogenic sources.
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DSL at 12:02 PM on 10 July 2014It's cooling
Jetfuel, I believe you've failed to respond to a wide range of criticisms of your posts. Now you use 1.6% of the Earth's surface to represent the whole. Brilliant, I must say. Such analytical saavy will get you far in major journals such as Energy & Environment. Snort. Bye bye, jetfuel. This was likely the straw--or cherry--that broke the dromedary.
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jetfuel at 11:54 AM on 10 July 2014It's cooling
<Snip>
Moderator Response:[PS] You have already been warned on sloganeering and cherry-picking (2% area of earth, short time intervals). If you can explain why such cherry-picking has any significance then your post will stand. The issue has been explained to you in earlier responses which it appears you did not bother to read.
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One Planet Only Forever at 11:31 AM on 10 July 2014El Niño in 2014: Still On the Way?
A very clear and thorough presentation of this multi-faceted aspect of our planet's complex, but increasingly better understood, climate system.
In the opening of the 3rd last paragraph I believe you transposed east and west. I believe it should be:
"This means that further Kelvin waves will makes their way across the Pacific Ocean, thus transporting more ocean heat from west to east, and giving the system a further nudge toward El Niño when it reaches the eastern Pacific in about two months time."
Moderator Response:(Rob P) - Thanks for pointing that out. Now fixed.
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Logan at 10:53 AM on 10 July 2014Volcanoes emit more CO2 than humans
There is a more recent paper on the topic:
Burton, Michael R., Georgina M. Sawyer, and Domenico Granieri. "Deep carbon emissions from volcanoes." Rev Mineral Geochem 75 (2013): 323-354.
This estimates that the total volcanic emission is 637 million tonnes per year.
Most existing volcanoes have not been measured, so all estimates have large uncertainties.
Moderator Response:[PS] Added link to paper
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howardlee at 10:25 AM on 10 July 2014New Jersey science education standards may be blocked by climate contrarians
Result! The NJ BOE did adopt the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), which includes climate science.
The NJ BOE press release is here. Interestingly it is being spun as a re-adoption of existing standards rather than an adoption of new standards.
CBDunkerson - you were right!
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scaddenp at 07:04 AM on 10 July 2014Models are unreliable
I have responded to nearlyman's complaint of "its too hard" in a more suitable thread.
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scaddenp at 07:03 AM on 10 July 2014CO2 limits will make little difference
Responding to points by nearlyman in another thread. You might like to read the article above. There are a couple of points to make about China. While it is building more coal capacity, the figure for new coal plants misses coal plants taken out of production as too old and inefficient. Second, China's investment is renewables is large and investing in nuclear.
The other point is that West has simply exported emissions to China. A carbon tax on imported goods made with coal energy would hasten further the move to renewables. Coal is substitutable. The sooner we stop building more plants the better. -
Rob Honeycutt at 06:31 AM on 10 July 2014Models are unreliable
It's interesting. I see people who do other forms of modeling coming from two different sides to diss climate modeling. One side comes from financial modeling where the modeling is purely statistical. The other side is from engineering modelers, who say that the physics can't be sufficiently constrained to return reliable data.
These are two completely contradictory positions, with both sides claiming to have a deep understanding of modeling.
All modeling is wrong. That's just a fact. The point of modeling is that it is instructive. It teaches you things that you otherwise could not understand in the absence of the models.
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grindupBaker at 05:54 AM on 10 July 2014El Niño in 2014: Still On the Way?
Just eyeballing the figures and computing with error bars as wide as a spiv I get:
450 degree-metres 7,700 km latitude 2,200 km longtitude
=7.6 * 10**18 kg-degrees
=31 zettajoulesDoes that sound about right or does somebody have a better estimate of the heat content in that pool of warm water vis-a-vis the temperature benchmark for its anomaly ?
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Dikran Marsupial at 05:08 AM on 10 July 2014Models are unreliable
nearlyman, there is a *big* difference between models used for financial prediction and climate models, which is that climate models are based on physics, rather than being statistical models that have been fit to the data. With statistical models, the more parameters you have in the model, the (exponentially) more data you need to estimate their parameters correctly (the "curse of dimensionality"). This is not the case with physics based models, where most of the parameters of the models are constrained by physics (i.e. we can perform separate experiments to characterise what different components of the model do).
However, if you really do believe the models are "laughably wrong", that suggests to me that perhaps you have been getting your information on the performance of models from the blogsphere, rather than from the journal papers (or even blog articles written by those who have read and understood the journal papers). If you would like to give a specific example of a model projection that is "laughably wrong" (as JH suggests), I am sure that there will be plenty of people here willing to discuss it with you. If you are unwilling to provide specifics, I suspect your posts will be viewed as trolling; this is intended as well meant advice. -
DSL at 04:29 AM on 10 July 2014Models are unreliable
nearlyman, just out of curiosity, and to get a baseline understanding, what counts--for you--as "laughably wrong" where climate modeling is concerned?
Moderator Response:[JH] I addressed nearlyman's assertion in a Moderator's comment to his post.
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nearlyman at 04:16 AM on 10 July 2014Models are unreliable
I spent my career building models of financial markets. The notion that a model is 'good' if it correctly predicts unseen data from the historical record is laughable (i.e. the model is tested on a rolling window of data to see if it accurately predicts the subsequent unseen period).
There are two problems, one well understood and one almost universally ignored. The first is that as new explanatory variables are added to the model to improve the forecast accuracy, the unreliability of the model increases. This can be calculated - and almost always means that in complex systems, simple models outperform as predictors even though they are less accurate when back tested. Any discussion of the models that does not discuss this trade off is nonsense. In markets this means that the 'best' models are only slightly better than random, but are reliably better - the key then is risk management. I believe that the same should apply to a complex system like climate. The uncertainty in a 'good' model will make it useless for predicting the future and only useful for risk management.
The less common problem ignored by scientists in many many disciplines, is that knowing what models do not work is a hidden 'look ahead' that is the bane of quant reseachers in financial markets. For example, when building a model of the stock market, it is very very difficult to forget that it crashed in 1987. This knowledge influences the choices that model builders make - they just cannot help themselves. That is why so few people make money in systemaic trading - it is not just a scientific, mathematical, statistical and computational challenge - it is philosophically and psychologically challenging. In markets it doesn't really matter - long live the deluded models with their artificial certainty! They represent profit opportunity for other participants. In building climate models we do not have this comfort.
For the record, I believe that the world is warming and that this will have consequences. I also believe that the models are laughably wrong and that there only reliable attribute is that they will continue to fail to predict the outcome at any useful level of accuracy once unleashed on truly unknown data (otherwise known as the future).
The sooner the debate moves on to how we manage the risk of a warming planet, the better.
Oh, by the way, it is also obvious that we cannot stop it warming by flying less or driving a Prius. This is is not just an economic observation (though economics alone mean it will not happen) but also an obvious consequence of the prisoner's dilemma. Why should I stop flying if the Chinese are building a new coal fired power station every week? I repeat risk management - if it warms by more than X, what could/should we do? That is where the money and time should be spent.
Moderator Response:[JH] You assert:
I also believe that the models are laughably wrong and that there only reliable attribute is that they will continue to fail to predict the outcome at any useful level of accuracy once unleashed on truly unknown data (otherwise known as the future).
Please document the sources of your expressed "beliefs."
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wili at 02:53 AM on 10 July 2014El Niño in 2014: Still On the Way?
May I suggest that, if you want this excellent piece to be fully accessible to all interested readers, you avoid the temptation of lapsing into acronym speak. I have been following this thing for quite a while, but I still forget, for example, what WWV is. Yes, you spell it out early on. But most interested but casual readers don't scour every word from beginning to end, but skim for the parts that interest them most. But when, as they skim, they hit more and more bewildering acronyms, the less likely they are to persevere. Thanks, again, for a great, informative piece. I hope it can be made even more informative for many more people with just some relatively minor adjustments.
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howardlee at 23:14 PM on 9 July 2014New Jersey science education standards may be blocked by climate contrarians
CBDunkerson - I hope you are right, and we'll find out tonight. Clearly Climate Parents were sufficiently concerned to mobilize and organize a petition, having seen the adoption derailed elsewhere.
I too live in NJ. From my conversations it's clear that most people here drink the Fox Kool-Aid when it comes to climate change, and regular editorials in the main newspaper - the Star Ledger - are very climate skeptical (like this and this). My eldest son went from K to 12 in NJ without a single science fair, and more than half his friends did not believe in evolution. Science seems to take much more of a back seat in education and popular discourse here compared to my experience in the UK.
Here's hoping that the NJ BOE does the right thing for our kids.
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funglestrumpet at 21:45 PM on 9 July 2014Rose-colored glasses: Antarctic sea ice is the Mail on Sunday's latest global warming distraction
David Rose is the wrong target. He would not get published if his work were not in line with that of the Mail Group's management, who must therefor be the target. Go after them, and David Rose and any like him will be caught in the cross-fire.
There is another aspect to be considered. It just might be the case that the Mail Group is following private briefing by the government. Why would the government do this? Read the Our Finite World blog and the Peak Prosperity blog and watch Oil, Smoke and Mirrors (www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVzJhlvtDms) and Peak mining & implications for natural resource management - Simon Michaux (www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFyTSiCXWEE). Oil, Smoke and Mirrors contains an interview with Michael Meacher, Minister of State for the Environment under Prime Minister Blair, which is worth watching for an insight into government policy. I think it would be difficult to read and watch these and still think that b.a.u. is remotely in possible. It certainly explains why the government might privately brief a newspaper's editor if it wanted the public to think that b.a.u. was not harmful in any way.
This site, having gained a reputation for honesty, should decide what it does about discussing the resource situation we face. Carry on as though b.a.u. is the likely outcome, or try and fix just what the climate is likely to be like and thus inform policy decisions accordingly.
Perhaps sks could do worse than call for an enquiry into how the press (and blogs?) should handle matters of concern to the security of the country. I have in mind a Leverson type of enquiry, but dealing with science, not scandal. Surely, we need something more formal than private briefings, if indeed they are in play. We need to decide how we deal with any who profit from publishing 'facts' harmful to their country that they can reasonably be assumed to know to be false. I don't see how that harms the principle of free speech, indeed surely it strengthens it. Today, you simply cannot believe anything a newspaper prints. If I knew that the author of a newspaper article and his editor could be punished, perhaps even banned from working in the media, I would believe what it says. Isn't that for the good of all?
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ubrew12 at 07:29 AM on 9 July 2014New Jersey science education standards may be blocked by climate contrarians
"America’s slumping education.. (currently ranked 23rd in the world)" Like many, I assumed that applied to K-12 only, but this article indicates that this mediocrity extends through college. A quote: "America’s perceived international dominance of higher education... rests largely on global rankings of TOP universities.... The fair way to compare the two systems... would be to conduct something like a PISA for higher education. That had never been done until late 2013, when the O.E.C.D. published exactly such a study... As with the measures of K-12 education, the United States battles it out for last place, this time with Italy and Spain. Countries that traditionally trounce America on the PISA test of 15-year-olds, such as Japan and Finland, also have much higher levels of proficiency and skill among adults."
Fortunately, Wyoming is pioneering a new way of teaching these inconvenient truths: ignore them. CBDunkerson@1: glad to see NJ isn't about to follow Wyoming's lead.
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Chris Snow at 05:12 AM on 9 July 2014Rose-colored glasses: Antarctic sea ice is the Mail on Sunday's latest global warming distraction
What's important in Antarctica is what is happening to the land ice and surprise, surprise, the Mail on Sunday doesn't say anything about that. After all, if all the Antarctic land ice were to suddenly destabilise and fall into the sea, then sea ice extent would rise dramatically and sea levels would rise by about 60 metres. Presumably, David Rose would regard this as nothing to worry about.
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MA Rodger at 03:18 AM on 9 July 2014Rose-colored glasses: Antarctic sea ice is the Mail on Sunday's latest global warming distraction
Regarding pre-1979 Antarctic Sea Ice:-
Tamino was using HADISST ice concentrations which use all sorts of data to create a very ambitious gridded reconstruction.
If seeing is believing, there is the Numbus-5 data for 1973-6 as well as the Nimbus-1 data for September 1964. Figure 5-13 in Zwally et al (1983) shows SIA from Nimbus-5 as high or higher than this recent "record" anomaly, while Figure 4 in Meier et al (2013) directly compares SIE from Nimbus-1 with 1979-2012 data (although sadly not the same 1979-2012 SIE values as derived by NSIDC) showing yet more ice back in the 1960s. -
CBDunkerson at 02:27 AM on 9 July 2014New Jersey science education standards may be blocked by climate contrarians
I'm going to have to challenge you on this one.
I actually live in New Jersey and have been following this issue, but haven't seen any indication that the standards might not pass. Indeed, the 'Education Week' article linked in the text seems to be more acknowledging that evolution and global warming deniers exist, and therefore could theoretically try to oppose adoption, than suggesting that anyone has actually done so.
To quote some other passages from the same article;
'That said, opponents on the basis of those factors "haven't come out of the woodwork yet [in New Jersey]," Heinz told me. "And our current standards have both those ideas in them already."'
'A recent article from online news service NJ Spotlight said the state board seems enthusiastic about the new standards and that educators have known "the shift has been coming for a few years."'
I think New Jersey's deceased (and living) scientists can rest easy on this issue. Our governor's climate denying policies in relation to the state shoreline would be a very different story.
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ubrew12 at 01:01 AM on 9 July 2014Rose-colored glasses: Antarctic sea ice is the Mail on Sunday's latest global warming distraction
If Tamino's Antarctic sea ice extent reconstruction (1870-2010) is correct (extent in 10^6 km2)
(or, see third graph in this link), Antarctica's sea ice extent mostly collapsed between 1940 and 1980. Although there's been a rise in extent since 1980, you can see that, taken in context, its in the noise. The bottom line is that Antarctica's sea ice is less than half of what it was a century ago, and shows no indication that it will recover its former glory.
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wili at 22:42 PM on 8 July 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #27
Thanks, chris. Those are also covered at http://climatestate.com/2014/07/07/new-mechanism-uncovered-causing-potentially-rapid-antarctic-glacier-melt/. So what _will_ the new upward-revised melt rate be for WAIS given this study? How much more and faster will slr go up even than the already upward-revised sea-level-rise from the earlier studies this year? Is a meter rise before mid-century starting to look more probable? What about the ranges for the end of the century? Is anyone putting all these new findings together to come up with a new range of probable slr rates?
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chriskoz at 19:01 PM on 8 July 20142014 SkS Weekly Digest #27
In addition to the recent study by Matt England from USNW, which discussed the link between strenghtening trde winds and ocean warming, now we have another study from UNSW, by Paul Spence, also co-authored by Matt:
which discusses the antarctic surface water warming as the result of strenghteting circumpolar winds. The bad news from this latest study is: the WAIS melt rate will be revised upwarda when the results of this study are incorporated into melting models. Extra sea water warming that exceeds 2 °C is darn lot.
Also available (at least for me in Aus) are: the smh press release and full text from smh
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One Planet Only Forever at 15:12 PM on 8 July 2014Rose-colored glasses: Antarctic sea ice is the Mail on Sunday's latest global warming distraction
The persistence of the popularity of unfounded claim-making, not reporting, like the Mail's can best be explained by a consistency of thought processes by some people.
People who desire benefits from actions that are unacceptable are eager to create and accept unacceptable excuses for the things they want to get away with benefiting from. They are consistently unacceptable in their thoughts and actions. And the worst of them cannot be expected to change their mind. They will persist in attempting to get as much benefit from unacceptable actions and attitudes as they can get away with.
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Tom Curtis at 14:02 PM on 8 July 2014Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
NotAFossil @215 starts by saying, "If science was based on popular opinion, the earth would still be flat - and at the center of the universe."
When you first arrive at SkS, you see a button "Newcomers Start Here". If you follow it, it provides you with (among other things) a paragraph on good places for newcomers to start, including "Warming Indicators", "10 Human Fingerprints on Climate Change", "empirical evidence that humans are causing global warming", and then in the following paragraph, "Global Warming in a Nutshell" and "The History of Climate Science". The last of those also appears as a button on the home page, as does "The Big Picture". Of these, only the last mentions consensus at all, and that only the consensus of economists. Rather than focussing on the consensus, they all focus on the emperical evidence which shows global warming to be real, human caused, and potentially catastrophic.
The core of this website are the 176 rebutals to pseudo-skeptical myths about global warming. Of those, only 14 (8%) discuss the consensus. The rest primarilly focus on the scientific evidence for AGW (there are a few dealing with discussions of fraud). Of course, that 8% does not represent the level of SkS interest in the consensus. Rather, it reflects the level of pseudo-skeptic misinformation trying to persuade the uninformed that no consensus exists, even though it clearly does. (Note, due to an idiosyncrasy of the SkS search engine, it will search draft blog posts in addition to ones actually published. At least 1 of the 14 rebutals above is still in draft form, so is not actually part of the 176 published arguments. Ergo, 8% is an overstatement of the actual figure.)
From this, it is very clear that SkS realizes that it is not the consensus but the scientific evidence itself that is the real reason for accepting AGW. They discuss the consensus only to show the false claim by pseudo-skeptics that there is no consensus, that climate scientists are heavilly divided about AGW, is in fact a false claim.
Despite this, we repeatedly get pseudo-skeptics like NotAFossil who come in with their little slogans as if SkS ever argued that science is settled by consensus. They show by the way the focus on the consensus issue that, not only are they arguing a strawman, but they are actively avoiding engaging with the evidence that is so copiously presented elsewhere on SkS.
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scaddenp at 11:44 AM on 8 July 2014Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
Not to pile on too much, but not looking at public opinion but at informed opinion. Informed opinion since 2nd Century BC was that world was round.
We now have 3 different studies with different methodologies coming to same conclusion as to the state of scientific consensus. (the lastest published result is this one which is survey of publications).
It is absolutely given that a consensus does not make a theory correct. However, it is a myth that there is no scientific consensus. For policy makers, going with the consensus is the only rational choice. If you were ill, would you be like this guy? It's not like there is any other credible theory of climate.
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Bob Loblaw at 10:21 AM on 8 July 2014Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
NotAFossil:
The first step in writing a scientific paper or theses is the literature review. You are unlikely to advance the science if you don't know what it is. Knowledgable scientists base their opinions on the published literature, as well as their own work.
Follow the links to see what the quoted studies say. Then also follow this link to the paper that was based on "The Consensus Project" work (menu item at the top of the SkS page), where the "survey" is a survey of the literature - first by looking at abstracts, then by getting feedback from the authors of papers.
The result? The scientific literature on "global climate change" and "global warming" (the keywords in the search) is also almost universally in support of the idea that humans are responsible for over half of the recent warming.
This is scientific evidence that knowledgable, informed scientists are largely in agreement on the basics, which refutes the alternative argument that there is still significant scientific debate on whether or not humans are having an effect.
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Rob Honeycutt at 09:53 AM on 8 July 2014Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
The difference, NAFFFA (@215), is that realizing the world is a sphere is a a result of a scientific process. It was the result of careful observation. Same with the heliocentricity. Casual observation might make you think the sun revolves around the world, but it was careful scientific research that gave us the real answer.
Climate science is the same. We now have 150+ years of careful research showing us that CO2 is the biggest control knob managing the temperature of the earth. That nearly all researchers agree with this position is not surprising, given the overwhelming body of research.
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NotAFossilFuelFundedAnything... at 09:12 AM on 8 July 2014Infographic: 97 out of 100 climate experts think humans are causing global warming
If science was based on popular opinion, the earth would still be flat - and at the center of the universe. A two-question, vaguely worded survey of scientists, regardless of their qualifications, should not be tossed around like its scientific evidence of anything.
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CBDunkerson at 00:37 AM on 8 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
funglestrumpet wrote: "...personal transport that can go futher than the local supermarket without needing a flatbed truck to get it back home."
Chevy Volt? Nissan Leaf? Tesla?
We're well past the 'local use only' stage of electric vehicles. The Volt only has a 38 mile electric range, but that is enough to cover most daily automobile usage. The Leaf's 100 mile range covers something like 98%, and Tesla's 265 mile range (more with an extra battery pack) is good for anything short of non-stop cross country driving... and even that would be possible if their battery switching stations proliferate.
Granted, these vehicles are pricey, but the cost of rechargeable batteries is coming down almost as fast as solar... which is also helping with the need to store solar power in general.
Solar power and electrical storage are clearly going to supplant fossil fuel electricity production over the next few decades. That has been obvious for a few years now and getting moreso all the time. The only places you see fossil fuel generation increasing are the developing world (where they are ramping up every form of power generation they can) and temporarily in places like Japan and Germany that have shut down nuclear. Everywhere else you've got renewable power, mostly solar, growing faster than everything else combined. Transportation isn't as obvious, but a conversion from petroleum to electric power is now within reach and will be helped along by the falling price of solar electric power.
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PhilippeChantreau at 00:29 AM on 8 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
Well Glenn I can't say that I would ever advise to disagree with Thermodynamics... :-)
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Glenn Tamblyn at 20:05 PM on 7 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
funglestrumpet
""Or better still, seek some much needed councelling."
The image of the Koch's and similar seeking 'councelling' might just do my head in. Like we have just fallen down the rabbit hole into Wonderland and discovered it ain't too bad.
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Glenn Tamblyn at 20:02 PM on 7 July 2014Today’s Solar Power ‘Revolution’: Powerful Insights from Energy Experts
And someone from the Tea Party agreeing with left-wing renewable advocates!!!!
WOW.
This isn't just technically disruptive. It could be amazingly politically disruptive as well. The Koch's may come to regret ever starting the Tea Party.
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